Brilliant Bad Girls

Speculative Fiction is sexy or should be and Lady E's gonna prove it this bi-week:

We've got quite a good conversation going in the Fantasy Forum right now about the difference between fiction written by men and women. Daniel and I noticed that all of the pubs reviewed in the first column had male editors. This column we want to recommend some great woman-led pubs for your pleasure.

Our first Lilithian Tome, helmed by imaginative sorceress, Christine Filipak, is Dark Realms. Though the pub's editor is officially listed as Mr. Dark, Christine is Art Director, and this quarterly feast-for-the-eyes is so beautiful that we feel Dark Realms should be designated first as a quarterly of pop-gothic Art.

Issue #4 offers a luminous sample of Gothic Fantasy paintings by Joseph Vargo, as well as a penetrating interview with the artist. Vargo's artistic vision is a combination of visual enchantment and ingenious storytelling. Ranging from stunningly dark werewolves to sinister angels and harlequins his works are themselves adventures, and meld visual seductiveness with a reflective, philosophical undertone. A thrilling mini-exhibit of a Master fantasist. Daniel especially loves the mad-jester on page 28.

Issue #2 features the digital eroticism of Eric Muss-Barnes, a Shellyian photo-imagist whose layered goth-visions of vamp women will haunt and exhilarate your work-beleaguered mind with wraithlike splendor. Visual poetry sung in a cyber idiom, "Using the computer allows me to create the sort of images I have been able to visualize all of my life", says Muss-Barnes. Veering a silk-cuff from the Decadents, EMB's moody creations, along with all of our issues of Dark Realms, are now added to our Art library, close to Fuseli.

Same issue Fantasy Art by Ruth Thompson is likewise stunning in brooding Wagnerian gloom punctuated by feminine muscle. Dragons, woodland Cathedrals, winged swordswomen, wolves, and moonlight soar off the pages and encircle you in a romantic world. We only wish we could stay there....

Dark Realms offers a visual cornucopia in every issue: photos, insets, calligraphy and runes -- stunning artwork adorns each and every page. A good place to start delving in is issue #6, exquisite watercolors by Amy Brown. Even the ads (and there aren't too many) in DR are visual stunners. We're deeply, deeply attracted and swooning under the Siren's spell -- but what about fiction?

Fiction enjoys minority status in Dark Realms. A single story embellishes each issue and authors are paid in copies. We protest this treatment of writers, nevertheless, we're happy to report that the stories usually exceed the quality of most write-for-nothing pubs.

"Share", a stone-gargoyle-come-to-life story from issue #6 was the best read of the three issues we sampled. What do rival gargoyles, an opossum, and a reckless cell-phone-chattering driver have to do with getting your evening meal? Find out when Karak the G. is deprived of his preferred entree -- a sleeping girl-child -- and must venture out into the streets of modern-metropolis in search of food. Writer Andrew Cohen sketches an entertaining spooky-story, though his tale seemed to veer to a sudden halt, unlike his protracted description of the plot-central car wreck. Despite bumpiness, we recommend you give it a read.

"The Dance Hall" from issue #4 impressed us a bit less. Michelle Scalise pens a familiar pastiche of "Dead Man Walking" and "The Silence of the Lambs". Sister Theresa, a nun sent to spiritually comfort a death row inmate, "Charlie" McKree, begins to have visionary experiences on the day of execution. The story hums through descriptions of painting with rat's blood and visionary recounts of "whore" murders, to a gratuitous revenge-ending. Michelle Scalise has sold over 200 poems and short stories. This is the first of hers we've seen and hope it won't be the last, as her prose is clean enough beneath its plebian surface. We just wish she would have tried harder with this tale.

Filmmaker/writer, Conall Pendergast, offers issue #2's, "Tapestry of Decay", a story which also uses the rat and the artist as sympathetic symbols of urban exile. This lightning-quick read describes an interlude with a mysterious, world-weary artist, "The Old Man", who leads the narrator to a privileged view of his "studio" and his magnum opus collage-sculpture. The story typifies the soul of Dark Realms: alienation and aesthetic sensitivity wreathed in black silk and candlelight, a gothic harbor for the lonely and misunderstood. "Tapestry of Decay" is a respectable mood-piece and stands as a primer to Dark Realms' goth-aesthetic creed. An enjoyable piece.

We heartily recommend Dark Realms. It's a quarterly treasure trove that will captivate your senses. In addition to fiction and visual delights, Dark Realms offers thoughtful essays, interviews with bands, artists, and writers, and also articles on occult topics. A great print pub all the way around, with a varied enough content to please just about any SF fan. We tip our starry wizards' caps to Christine Filipak, an authentically brilliant bad girl and gifted Aesthete.

Order your subscription to Dark Realms today.

Dispensing with visual labors of love, Horror Garage, bangs out its message and soul with the power of well yeah, a garage band.

Sex, Death, and Rock N Roll is the motto of the pub and they live up to it. This is a pulp-punk pub for the ambiguously Satanic and maybe even just the chronically depressed.

There's an air of literati, of the wine, reefer, and smack intellectual Beat fallout in these pages, mingled with body-piercing, tattooed psycho ad and illustrations, cranked out twice a year like a combination Literary tea and Punk Rock moshpit.

Don't be fooled that the writing or layout is amateurish. Ironically, Horror Garage is a carefully packaged pub and we find this a stimulating, if strange, concept for a cutting edge print pub.

We're very likely to revisit Horror Garage in future columns because we feel their strategy has succeeded and the magazine retains its authenticity while vaulting up to a higher quality of content than is usual for such "underground" pubs.

Issue #3 was our virgin-read, so we'll take a look at its fiction.

First we'd like to commend John Shirley for his confessional essay in issue #2, "Five Reasons I wear Black". This is a fascinating and wounding read, and Shirley scribes it with vast skill. As for his short story in issue #3, "The Claw Spurs", there is less expertise involved in his tale-within-a-tale on the outlaw trail, though this cowboy story is suitably chilling in overall effect. A group of nefarious cowpokes, including "Kid Dreed" and a storytelling vigilante, "Lone Hand", sparks up a murderous ruckus under a blood red moon. This tale is heavily lumbered, though Shirley writes with grace. There's a preponderance of exposition and a bit of inconsistency in the dialect voices. Still, a very good read. Energetically recommended.

"Drifting Apart" by Peter Crowther dumbfounded us with its length and laborious study of a dysfunctional midlife couple, "Janey" and "Greg' who haven't made love in a decade and whose lives on the dull side of the tracks, snug in the town of Forest Plains, lead Janey into paranoia and finally, to murderous insanity. The trouble starts when she discovers some rat poison in her cabinet and wonders if her husband means to kill her -- after all, nobody's ever so much as seen a rat on Fairfax Avenue. Crowther gives away a bit of misogyny in this tale, insinuating that the whole tragic outcome could be traceable to Janey's premenstrual syndrome. Satirical or not, this repetitious story would have been helped with editing.

"PIG" by Don Webb picks things back up for issue #3. This is a daunting tale of the Artist and His Muse, told from a woman, Joan's, POV, who becomes a lover and model for a genius sculptor and typical misanthropist, "Pig". The story weaves through a sophisticated, yet soap-operatic, labyrinth of art galleries, trysts, and sex-scenes, as "Pig's" fortunes mount to the Ascendant after his encounter with a mysterious spiritual tome called, "The Yellow Flower". Webb delivers a squelching verdict on the Pursuit of Beauty as an Artist's preoccupation, and ends his tale with a macabre revelation on the nature of the Muse. Highly recommended.

"Sutter's Psychology" by Debbie Macguffie begins with this excellent line, "We buried Henry alive for his own good." The tale starts out with Edgar Poe's most loved conversation starter, "What would it would be like to be buried alive?" Sparked by an episode of a Soap Opera where the heroine, Carly, is sent living to her grave, a group of bar-flys wind up daring one of their number, Henry, to premature burial firsthand. The main intriguer, Sutter, convinces the narrator, Mercy, self-described as "pathetic" to bury Henry under a three foot grave with a pipe for air. Of course, the climax concerns Henry's accidental death, or lack thereof, we found the ending of this story a bit silly, and wondered at the inclusion of scatological descriptions.

Horror Garage is a worthy investment at $10.00 for a year's subscription. Editor Paula Guran earns our accolade with issue #3 and we'll be going back to spotlight this pub again. Very highly recommended.

If you've seen one Victoria's Secret catalogue haven't you seen them all? I wonder when we lost touch with the concept that words are sexy. Don't believe me? Then why do we whisper the things we whisper in bed, when the kids are in the room, or when we're around our parents?

Click over to EroticSF.com if you have even two minutes to spare. You'll wind up making time for more or just clicking back over and over to see what's new. I've got to admit I was skeptically of their promise of Flash Erotic SF, but when I saw what Lady Mary's selected for her post, I was happily surprised.

Editor Lady Mary has exquisite taste in her flash fiction, the best we've seen, and you can check it out for free yourself at EroticSF.com.

If the short bits get you suitably aroused, why not order something longer? EroticSF.com offers full length short stories at reasonable prices.

Boredom is the opposite of erotic.

For the visually obsessed, try Barbarella website. A slow loader, but great images and kinkiness that won't offend anyone but the most straightlaced. And if you're straightlaced why are you reading this? In fact, why not read some flash and see some sights from both websites, they're free and guaranteed to banish yawns for your working afternoon.

Thank you Lady E. No sense in hiding it, I like both these sites myself.

Topic of next column is Free SF. We'll spotlight a high-voltage, eclectic site Ravenelectrick and also a site we feel is poised to Move Up in this world, Scifidimensions. Plus, we'll go to the top of the food chain with a look at SciFi.com.

This bi-week's Great Fiction brand is officially white-hot and ready to stamp on Dark Realms -- with a slight variation. We think Dark Realms an exquisite pub, but it exceeds purely fictional achievements, so we'll change our Brand this biweek to G.P. for Great Publication, and humbly burn our stamp into the pages of Dark Realms G.P. Congratulations, Christine, we hope you'll join us in the W&E Cafe for a round on the house.

Go to the Discussion Forum to disagree with Daniel E. Blackston or Lady E.

Until Next Time,
Daniel E. Blackston

Firebrand Fiction Reviews: all content © Daniel E. Blackston