In Sunshine Bright and Darkness Deep

 

Shameless plug time this month. In Sunshine Bright and Darkness Deep is a recently released anthology of some of the best and brightest new work emanating from the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA). A collection of short horror fiction selected and edited by Cameron Trost and the AHWA committee, released in September 2015 and available on Amazon and Booktopia among other outlets.

Herein lie fourteen tales of antipodean horror covering the broad scope of our weird and wonderful wide dead brown island continent. A few random thoughts on some of the work of my peers.

In no particular order I’ll start with Cameron Trost’s Veronica’s Dogs. I loved this story. Possibly one of the most eloquently penned and subtle pieces on the unsavoury subject of bestiality I have ever read. If not for the subject matter the tone of the piece reads as if it could have been crafted by a respected author from the Victorian era, but it quickly segues and becomes quite Freudian. What begins as the tale of the protagonist’s dangerous and obsessive desire ends with him left in the doghouse, so to speak.

Marty Young’s nautical tale Upon the dead Oceans is a well-crafted dystopian piece about a ship of doomed souls traversing the seas in a desperate search for signs of life in a dying post-apocalyptic world. It reminded me somewhat of the bleakness of Neville Shute’s On the Beach, but when I put this to Marty he said the piece was actually inspired by the early twentieth century English author William Hope Hodgson. Naturally, I researched said author, and yep, Marty was right, it is a good tribute. A wonderful fleeting glimpse of hope permeates the darkness at the story’s conclusion.

I rather enjoyed Natalie Satakovski’s Beast, not only because she’s a mate of mine and I edited the story in its early guises, but also because it’s a bloody ripper of a nasty little story. The protagonist is an unpleasant fellow whose disgusting perversions turn out to be surprisingly profitable. It also gets a tick from me because it’s the only story in the anthology with the “c” word in it. There’s also a bit of a nod to Patrick Suskind’s Perfume in here, for those with long memories.

Dan Rabarts takes us back to the trenches of old Europe and the Great War in Elffingern, a blood soaked tale about an ancient German demon stalking the war zone for human flesh. Digits to be precise, fingers, which ties in nicely with the interspersed tale of an Antipodean printing press in the immediate post war era, where the nightmares shared by a young boy and his returned serviceman Uncle threaten to resurrect the demon through the power of the written word. This one is pure quality.

Joanne Anderton’s Bullets is a wonderful mediation on love, loss and loneliness set deep in the Australian bush. An ageing widow finds love in the strangest place, but comes to learn of the terrible price she must pay to keep it. A very evocative piece, steeped in the lore of the Australian country town.

If Joanne Anderton’s tale evokes the spirit of the Australian bush and forbidden desire from the feminine perspective, then Mark Smith-Briggs’ The Hunt does the same from the opposing masculine view point. A story of mythical Australian beasts and shape-shifters, in which a pair of hunters get more than they bargained for when they stumble across an old house hidden in the bush.

In another ode to the Australian bush, J. Ashley Smith invites us to partake of Our Last Meal, in which a spurned lover retreats to a secluded log cabin to indulge in sad memories of love’s labour’s lost. Beautifully written, the story is one of a long drawn out suicide note. Visceral certainly, but very well crafted.

Meanwhile, Jason Nahrung continues his series on Australian vampires with Triage, another well-crafted tale from a writer whose work I’ve always enjoyed. Steve Cameron’s Bloodlust is another tale of vampires and those who hunt them. Stuart Olver’s The Grinning Tide delves into the psychology of loss and grief in another parched and rustic Australian setting. This story is so good I can barely do justice to it in a few words.

Space prevents me discussing them all, but these are a few of the excellent stories contained in this collection, and all of them are worthy of attention. Well worth shelling out just a few of your hard earned dollars to enjoy some of the best the Australian horror world has to offer.

Oh, and I’m in it too, with a story about two feuding hitmen who take a wrong turn on a road trip and don’t live to tell the tale.