The day is finally here! At long last, Exquisite Aberrations has been unleashed upon the public.

A collection of long-form short stories (published by FunDead Publications) that turn traditional Gothic horror tropes upside down by shifting the POV onto LGBTQ people, people of colour, and others often side-lined or othered in the history of the horror genre. The settings may be familiar – fog, gas lamps, haunted Victorian mansions, spooky graveyards – but the stories told will be new. (Read the much more eloquent blurb here.)

For my part, the anthology includes my novelette The Lunatic Song:

Pianist Charles Hale returns from a tour in Europe in disgrace following a romantic scandal with another man. His chance for redemption in eyes of polite society comes in the form of a dicey bargain with a notorious mass-murderer – and gifted musician – called Lawrence Roper. Piano lessons will be held in Bedlam.

It feels like a long time since I wrote this story but it’s still one of my favourites and, without sounding too self-aggrandising, I think it showcases some of my best writing. Sometime in the future, I plan to write a longer post about this story and its inspirations, and how I feel it fits into the theme of the anthology.

For now, you can read it in Exquisite Aberrations here.

Other authors include E. F. Sweetman, Nicole Vasari, and C. W. Blackwell (who by coincidence I’ll be meeting on the page again later this year in the Switchblade/Pulp Modern crossover issue, Tech Noir).

FunDead Publications is an awesome indie publisher based in Salem, Massachusetts. My short story The Sixpence in the Pudding was included in its 2016 Christmas horror anthology, O Horrid Night.

$1 from every sale of Exquisite Aberrations will be donated to the ACLU, which, among other causes, will help fight against the US abortion bans.

“Not much further on we came to the gates of Bedlam, as the Londoners called it, and the carriage juddered to a stop. From its proud chapel dome and grand Corinthian columns holding up the porch it could be mistaken for a museum. Hidden behind a shroud of oaks there appeared to be a fine garden. In fact, the only thing that attested to its true identity was the gate and fence itself, which stood twenty-feet tall and was topped with black iron spikes like poisoned arrowheads. That and the mournful call of the wind, which I realized after a minute of contemplation was not the wind at all.”

— The Lunatic Song