BEHIND THE SCENES OF SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES,

BEHIND THE SCENES of SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES, – PART THREE

19/4/2021

SPAWN ANTHOLOGY “BEHIND THE SCENES” – PART THREE

SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES, edited by award-winning author and anthology editor Deborah Sheldon, will be released worldwide by IFWG Publishing Australia on 3 May 2021. Spawn is a selection of the darkest Australian fiction penned by established authors and fresh new voices. The stories range from the gothic and phantasmagorical, through the demonic and supernatural, to the dystopian and sci-fi.
In this four-part series exclusive to Ginger Nuts of Horror, most of the contributors have agreed to pull aside the curtain and reveal the inspiration behind their nightmarish tales.
“Part Three” includes insights from writers Janeen Webb, Charles Spiteri, Ash Tudor, Jason Fischer, Jack Dann, and Mark Towse.

Janeen Webb on “Mother Diamond”

True horror inhabits our domestic spaces, and the horror of coercive control comes in many guises. People have always treasured relics of the dead: from the ostentation of reliquaries for the bones of saints to the simplicity of rings of plaited hair, these keepsakes connect us to our past. In the Victorian period, mourning jewellery was highly popular, and came in many forms: carved jet brooches; gold lockets containing hair snipped from the deceased; creased sepia photographs of loved ones set inside silver fob watches, and so on, all designed to be worn near to the heart. But what if our past is something we’d prefer to leave behind? What if certain objects were interred with the dead for good reason? Disturbing the dead is never a good idea. And the power of the mourning keepsake is always two-edged...
When I read an article about a company which, for a hefty price, will take the cremated ashes of one's deceased pet, subject them to extreme pressures, and return them as a manufactured diamond—the ultimate keepsake—I followed the technological trail down the rabbit hole. In the end, it was a short step to apply the process to human remains, transmogrifying the deceased into wearable art. As in much of my work, I literalised the metaphor, turning it into something strange and grotesque before I transposed it into fiction. And I asked the obvious question: what if a keepsake diamond carries its own curse? “Mother Diamond” is the result.

www.janeenwebb.com.au

Charles Spiteri on “The Remarkable Compass for Finding the Departed”

I started writing “The Remarkable Compass for Finding the Departed” about ten years ago. I went into it knowing exactly what type of story it was, where I wanted it to go, what I wanted to do with it. Although I had a great opening and loved the main character and the mythology behind the story, no matter what I did it just didn’t feel right. I got frustrated, angry even, punching in words just to finish it, because for better or for worse I didn’t like leaving stories unfinished. Eventually I abandoned it, but it was always there at the back of my mind, so much so that every now and then I would take another stab at it, much to my regret.

A few things happened that steered the story into what it is today.

My wife and I went through the IVF program. For some it works; for us it didn’t. It is deceptive that every IVF story in the media, no matter how challenging and torturous the procedure is for the couple, ends with the fairy tale of the couple having a baby.

And, as though I wasn’t busy enough writing and working, I developed a bit of a passion for hand-tool woodworking, where I destroyed a lot of projects before I learned to pay attention to what the wood was telling me, to not fight the grain, but to patiently go with it.

It follows that I threw away my preconceptions. I realised that our IVF experience fit right in; it was a story about dealing with loss, a through-line that resonated. And now, because I was seeing the story and not the writing, I got rid of the great opening, which had only served as a distraction.

From there I just followed the grain.

Also, this is the story that introduces my character, Demicoli. He has a world of adventures I am keen to explore in the future.

https://twitter.com/strangemachina

Ash Tudor on “Empty Bellies”

Everyone is pregnant. At least, it feels that way. My husband and I are playing baby-bingo, trying to predict which of our friends will be the next to make a pregnancy announcement. My Facebook feed is full of sonograms and gender reveals. I look around at my friends, at my former classmates and online acquaintances and see myself in the childless minority.
“Do you want to have children?”

It was such an easy question when I was twenty-three. I could be flippant and answer with a shrug. “Maybe in a few years or so”. It’s not that I rejected the idea of children. I simply didn’t factor them into my grand old plans. I intended to spend my days travelling the world, studying ancient cultures and drinking spiced rum until sunup.

Now I’m about to hit thirty. People ask me the same questions with an added flavour of concern. “Aren’t you going to have children soon? Do you want kids?” I still shrug, but now my flippant response is unacceptable. People who’ve always shown disinterest in my reproductive system now view my bunless oven as a problem. It seems my ovaries have started making a ticking noise and everyone can hear it, except me. The truth is I’m in no hurry. Yet, the flood of new babies has got me thinking. Maybe I should be in a hurry. Maybe I should be downright terrified at the prospect of being ‘undecided’ in my thirties while everyone around me is adhering to the same baby-making schedule. I feel like I missed a memo. Should I be worried?

These thoughts were running laps in my mind and causing furious distractions during my writing sessions. (I was working on a horror story about mermaids, if you’re wondering) So, I decided to do what I think a lot of writers do; I treated my writing like therapy. I spewed out my conflicting maternal desires, my fears and my indifferences, and ended up with the short story, “Empty Bellies”.

I expected the story to be a cathartic epic, with page after page of nonsensical baby-themed turmoil (to birth or not to birth, and all that jazz). After less than two thousand words, I was surprised to find myself finished. It is to date the shortest story I’ve ever completed. I implanted the rational side of my mind into the character of Alma. In Alma we see a woman heavily involved in the maternal world and yet is disinterested in any personal maternal calling. She shows no fear of being a mother and is certainly not afraid of being pregnant; she simply has no appetite for a baby-filled life. The second character represents the other side of my brain. A chaotic side. In her, I place all my anxieties and my fears of motherhood. “Empty Bellies” is a tale of two characters meeting, of two worlds colliding, of the rational trying to shake hands with the primal. It is a story that helped me reconcile two duelling sides of mind and if you’re hoping that the ending will have a similar kind of peaceful reconciliation, well, I can only apologise.

http://twitter.com/ashtudor888

Jason Fischer on “A Rose for Becca”

I’ve sometimes dabbled in body-horror tales, usually as some additional layer of awful crafted onto a zombie story, but “A Rose for Becca” was different. First published in Borderlands #11, and reprinted in Spawn, this was a story intended to blur the lines between flora and fauna, and to look deeper into what a body actually is. Especially, what happens when the boundaries of our classifications are blurred?

Of course, being one of my early stories, this was draped across a postapocalyptic tale. What still draws me to this story of weird pregnancy and birth is this memory: my grandfather had just passed away, and my father and I were clearing up his overgrown back yard as part of the usual scramble to put a long lived-in house into order.

The garden was feral with life, a once neatly-planned arrangement growing in all directions. The rose bushes, once so neatly contained in the high garden beds, now cascaded down onto the cement area we’d once played in as kids. Length after length of woody rose stem went into the chipper, and I could not help but think that I was feeding in thorny fingers, one after the other—and then I went home and wrote the story in one hit.

Into “A Rose for Becca” I poured all of those feelings of loss, the changes as we wiped away an old life and house into an empty slate for the new owners. Most of all, it was a story of fear; fear of the encroaching green, how given enough time, nature will claw back a cement patch filled with Christmases, birthdays and Easters, joining together, concealing every clue that people had ever been here.

This was only in the period of perhaps five to ten years, in the back yard of two ailing pensioners. Extrapolating this to a world scale, the consequences felt horrifying to me, and still do—in my own back yard, the mowers, tools and poisons only do so much to beat back all that green…

http://jasonfischer.com.au

Jack Dann on “Grieving the Spirit”

As I’ve learned over the long years (to my Brobdingnagian chagrin!), the writer doesn’t tell the story; the story tells the writer. Which is exactly what happened with “Grieving the Spirit”. I was certain that this would be at the very least a novelette; but the story, or, rather, the characters had very different ideas. They took—or, rather, stole—my premise and most of my dialogue and then decided to narrate their own story. They decided that conciseness and precision were more important than the author’s predilection to gild and re-gild the proverbial lily. Oh, they happily used my notes, plot arc, and research; but the story—its cut and thrust and emphasis (and most of the dialogue)—is all theirs.

About a quarter of the way into the story, their whispers became shouts: they told me where to go in no uncertain terms...and then they told me where to stop.

So, gentle and empathetic reader, don’t blame the author. The characters (in their infinite wisdom) made him do it!

https://jackdann.com/

Mark Towse on “A Sense of Belonging”

“A Sense of Belonging” is about our overwhelming human need to fit in, to be part of something greater. But what if we could never settle? What if we were fed lies and deceit as a child in attempts to protect us from who we really are? Would you want to know? Perhaps sometimes, it’s best not to.

This one had me worried as the first draft came in at just over 7,000 words. I had two worlds to get lost in, and that certainly made the tale more interesting while also extremely challenging to write within the specified word count. I was concerned about losing the epic feel of the story, but thankfully, after some crafty editing, I believe it packs even more of a punch.

The story begins with Jon, the main character, on a journey into the mountains in an attempt to find answers, but also on the run from unspeakable events back home. Nostalgically he recalls adventures with his father and the stories he used to tell; tales of a different world, shadows within shadows, and horrors no man should ever have to experience. Such tall tales brought him and his father closer together. Over time, though, his father started going on more trips, spending more time away, until one day, he never came back. Jon’s journey in search of answers is long and arduous, made even more so by the visions of his wife and son that haunt him along the way. It’s a mammoth journey of self-discovery and the person we become when we finally connect the dots from our past.

That’s all I can say without giving too much away, but I can guarantee it’s not a smooth ride and packs more than a few sucker punches.

In my limited spare time, I love to hike. It’s all about the senses, and I really wanted to explore that more in a story, especially the contrasting feel of the forest by day to the one lit only by the sliver of moon. I wanted the reader to feel the forest’s heartbeat, to think of it as a living breathing being in its own right, with its own light-and-dark persona.
I hope you enjoy my story!

https://marktowsedarkfiction.wordpress.com

SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES, BEHIND THE SCENES – PART TWO

SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES, PART ONE

DEBORAH SHELDON is an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia, who writes short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. Her collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Collected Work’ Award. Her fiction has also been nominated for various Australian Shadows and Aurealis Awards, and long-listed for a Bram Stoker Award. As editor of Midnight Echo 14, she won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award. Other credits include feature articles, non-fiction books, TV scripts and award-winning medical writing. http://deborahsheldon.wordpress.com

IFWG PUBLISHING AUSTRALIA and its US-oriented imprint, IFWG Publishing International, are based in Queensland Australia and has been operating for 10 years. The Australian imprint’s releases are distributed through Novella in Australia and Gazelle in the UK and Europe. Most Australian publications are co-released through the International imprint and distributed through Chicago-based IPG, to our North American and Latin American readers. The Australian/UK imprint website:
https://ifwgaustralia.com/