Scarlet Galleon's Beautiful Monster, DEAD HARVEST

(Bigger than a T-Rex!  Bigger than a Rocket Ship of the XM Variety!)

What's bigger than a breadbasket, as that old saying goes?  Well, okay, Dead Harvest, the gargantuan first-born spawn of Scarlet Galleon Publications, isn't big enough to house a family of four or drive to the supermarket in, but I'd wager you could use it to conk one of the living dead over the head -- though that would require having enough muscle mass to heft it up that high. Dead Harvest weighs in at a quite-monstrous and lovely near-700 pages, and its covers are crammed full of enough amazing stories by many of today's most exciting voices in the Horror genre to last a voracious reader until the next harvest.  My gothic short story, "Uncle Sharlevoix's Epidermis", is one of 50 tales in all, by such horrific household names as James A. Moore, Richard Chizmar, Lori R. Lopez, and Tim Lebbon. Up-and-comers like the brilliant Aaron Gudmunson, E. G. Smith, and Patrick Lacey -- writers and friends alike, and some of the most exciting new voices out there -- round out this Who's-who beast of a read.

It was my pleasure to speak with Scarlet Galleon head honcho Mark Parker, the man behind the monster.

Mark, Dead Harvest is a colossus!  Why did you decide to super-size?

A lot of folks have commented on the size of DH, suggesting it could double as a doorstop, free weight, or lethal weapon. In truth, it was never my intention to do such a large anthology. I had the idea for a collection of about two-dozen stories or so. But what came as a surprise to me, was the sheer number of submissions Scarlet Galleon Publications received when the open call went out. I received nearly two hundred stories! Which, of course, made the process of reading them all quite arduous -- but very fulfilling. There was only one story in the bunch I simply would not consider, due to the subject matter. Culling through the stories was somewhat difficult, because I left the anthology un-themed, which is to say, when I titled the book, I was thinking more a harvest of stories, rather than stories with a harvest theme. That being said, it was challenging to put together a nice compliment of stories that would have a true kind of darkness to each of them. But in the end I think we achieved that balance. Readers have embraced the book and have loved the diversity of the stories. In terms of the large number, I found it nearly unbearable to pass on really cool stories simply for the sake of economy. I have learned my lesson, though. I doubt I would ever do such a large anthology in the future. I’m still not rested up from the first one. It was an audaciously daunting task for a first time publisher, to be sure.  

The book contains 50 stories by some pretty big heavy hitters in the modern horror scene.  When you were reading, what were you seeking, and what were some of the pleasant surprises that were accepted from the slush pile?

As a reader, I tend to enjoy stories that are atmospheric in nature. So I suppose that’s what I was looking for when I read through the submissions for DH. Because the book was subtitled, A Collection of Dark Tales, it left the un-themed theme almost too broad. I tend to prefer stories that haunt rather than shock. I’m of the school of Shirley Jackson, who Stephen King himself spoke of as a “woman who never felt the need to raise her voice.” For me that’s what I love in a well-written story. A story-line that sneaks up on you and leaves you with a kind of chill you simply can’t shake. In the stories that were finally selected for the book, I think each one imbues a kind of lingering chill, which was what I was looking for. In terms of what some of the ‘pleasant surprises’ were along the way, what surprised me most I suppose, was the affinity folks felt for the project from the start. The fact that DH attracted some of the biggest names in horror, still causes me to stop and pinch myself from time to time. That the book was graciously featured in the pages of Cemetery Dance magazine -- and is still selling in a limited number of signed copies by Richard Chizmar (Cemetery Dance’s founder) and his son, Billy, who both have stories in the book -- continues to make my head swim with disbelief. I’ve been reading the pages of Cemetery Dance since I was teen. To think that some of the industry’s largest, most well-respected writers are involved in SGP’s inaugural publication, is one of the greatest joys of my life, both personally and professionally. 

(Publisher Mark Parker)

In addition to running Scarlet Galleon Publications, which debuted with an amazing first book in DH, you’re also a writer with a pretty decent resume.  What are you presently writing?

Regarding my own writing, I currently have seven short stories to my credit. Biology of Blood, Lucky You, Way of the Witch, Halloween Night, and Banshee’s Cry. My first professional sale was a story titled The Scarlet Galleon, included in the anthology Wrapped in Red -- Thirteen Tales of Vampiric Horror by Sekhmet Press. And this year I wrote a longish story Killing Christmas that was published in the anthology for charity Return to Deathlehem through Grinning Skull Press. At present I’m finishing up a ‘50’s inspired B-Movie-style alien encounter story titled Eye in the Sky. Then I will dive into writing my full-length horror novel The Glowing. And then perhaps a collection of stories titled Dining with the Devil. I’m also planning to expand and republish some of the earlier stories that readers have all stated they’d wished were longer.  

What’s next for Scarlet Galleon Publications?

The next project planned for SGP will be Fearful Fathoms – Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror. Then the second volume in the Dead Harvest series.  

BEHOLD: DEAD HARVEST!

In late 2012, while giving my then-Writing Room a dusting in readiness for our annual writers' group Christmas party, the idea for a new story hit in one of those very cool Eureka! moments.  I saw, quite clearly, a dusty room...only the dust, of which dead human skin is a major component, wasn't entirely lifeless.  Flesh had formed on the walls.  Something within that old house was growing in patches, trying to join together, to be resurrected.  "Uncle Sharlevoix's Epidermis" was born. A few weeks later, I landed for a second visit to When Words Count Writing Retreat Center in Vermont, where I taught a day-long workshop on living a literary life and, as blizzards socked us in for the new year, I completed the first draft of the story. During that wonderful time at the retreat center (where another short story and a novella were completed and much gourmet food was enjoyed), I received the phone call that confirmed our offer on the house we sought to purchase had been accepted -- a joyous but also distracting blessing.  When I returned home, the longhand draft went into a packing carton, and there it stayed until after we landed at our new/old New Englander in New Hampshire's North Country, Xanadu. Flash forward to this past August when, on a Friday night following a long day of writing on Xanadu's sun porch, I received notification that Mark Parker of Scarlet Galleon Publications had happily accepted the story for Dead Harvest.  The collection contains stories by some of the biggest names in horror -- fifty tales in all, with the book weighing in at a hefty/gargantuan 690 pages!

Many of my fellow contributors in the Dead Harvest Table of Contents shared the back-stories behind their stories.

E. G. Smith on "Autumn Lamb":  "The story was inspired by living in rural, Southwestern Idaho, where the friendly residents are easily outnumbered by both livestock and guns.  Millard is the stubborn first-cousin of many of the old farmers I've met around here.  He was originally going to be modeled closely on a good old boy neighbor who calls me up now and then to offer free bales of straw and tell semi-lewd jokes, but that quirk didn't fit the tone of the story and was left on the cutting room floor. I've raised goats (not sheep) and know what it's like to deal with a fox in the middle of a wintery night. Unlike gun-happy Millard, I adopted a gigantic Pyrenees-Bernard mix livestock guard dog, Hoss, who scares the predators away without any bloodshed, red or yellow."

Brian Kirk on "Seeds of Change":  "While I don't buy into the idea that the world is run by some secret Illuminati-like cult, I often wonder about the direction our society is heading in, how it's being guided, and by whom.  It seems like major decisions are being made that impact the masses without any concern over whether or not citizens agree with them, or attempt to get a consensus vote.  Placing nuclear reactors on fault lines is such an example.  As is genetically modifying our food.  We don't know the long-term effects of ingesting genetically-altered food, but Vice magazine recently published an article suggesting that GMO corn was causing farmers to become suicidal.  That worries me, and helped inspire my tragic story."

Jordan Phelps on "Beyond the Trees":  "This story began with a sharp contrast that just wouldn’t leave my head until I put it on paper. I saw a bustling festival in a large field -- there were bright lights, cheap rides, and wonderful smells. But most of all, there was joy. In the back corner of the festival, there was a stereotypical haunted house in which things jumped out at you, but nothing scary ever really happened. Behind all of this, there was the forest: a giant wall of shadows and claw-like branches that watched and waited behind the scenes. It began with this image, and with a young girl named Jane who had to see. From there, it explored the unknown: the differences between adults and children in dealing with it, the deep, primal fear it can bring forth without an ounce of shock value, and the horror of having no one to turn to when it chooses to present itself."

C. M. Saunders on "Harberry Close":  "Until quite recently, I lived in East London and worked in the south-west. That meant a near two-hour journey through one of the busiest cities in the world, during rush hour, twice a day. That journey used to drive me mad, with all the pushing, shoving, and elevated stress levels. It wasn't an easy route, either. A typical commute consisted of a fifteen-minute walk, two subway trains, an overground train, and a bus. If the weather was bad, or if there was some kind of strike or other disruption, it could easily add half an hour or more to my journey, which meant I would arrive at work late, then have to stay late to make the time back. I'm sure you get the picture. Anyway, the mid-way point in the journey was Waterloo station. I actually quite like Waterloo. It's one of London's nicer transport hubs. As I waited on the platform for my train every morning, I often found myself wondering what would happen if I somehow got on the wrong train. And where that wrong train may take me. Maybe somewhere like Harberry Close?"

Lori R. Lopez on “Cornstalker”:  “My stories and novels can originate from an image, a scrap of an idea, a full-blown plot unrolling in my head faster than I can scribble it down, or -- as in the case with ‘Cornstalker’ -- a single title, phrase, or word.  I came up with this pretty neat title, as I like to play with words, then immediately began to envision a creature stalking the corn, very large and imposing.  A back-story took shape involving a fictitious Native-American tribe.  This was some years ago, possibly ten or fifteen.  I’m not sure how many.  I have a number of ideas like that stuffed in a figurative closet, waiting for me to get back to them.  When I was kindly asked by Mark Parker to contribute something to Dead Harvest, it clicked that the time had come for this tale to be written.  While doing so, I had to pause and conduct research, including how to drive a semi-truck.  I don’t even drive a car.  I learned once.  That was years ago, too.  I’ve forgotten.  Well, semis are more complicated.  I didn’t actually go physically drive one, although that would have been cool.  It was all in my head, and boy, it was quite an adventure!”

Patrick Lacey on "Mrs. Alto's Garden":  "A few years back, I moved out of my childhood home of twenty-five years. As I left the backyard for the last time, I thought about how many animals had been buried there. There were countless goldfish, several cats, a hamster, and even a few lizards. Seemingly from nowhere, the location of most great ideas, I thought of oddly shaped flowers and vegetables growing from the spots where my pets now rested. It was a troubling thought, one that stuck with me for a long time. I knew I wanted to use it for a story one day but I couldn’t think of any characters or plots. Eventually, the idea blossomed (pun most definitely intended) and what resulted was 'Mrs. Alto’s Garden.' Happy Harvesting!"

Andrew Bell on "Extreme Times, Extreme Measures":  "My story isn't about scarecrows, cornfields, or farmers with funny accents.  Autumn for me is the ending of an era, the death of a character to make room for a better, stronger more confident person.  Someone who isn't going to be the butt of all jokes any longer.  I used to know kids at school who would do almost anything to fit in, to be accepted no matter what; even push some poor, unsuspecting fellow pupil into the incoming traffic on a busy road -- I knew such kids.  We all did.  And sadly, I think this overwhelming desire drifts on into adulthood.  So I thought: how far would someone be willing to go to prove themselves?  I come from a small town on the northeast coast of England called Hartlepool.  It is a town heavily reliant upon industry; steelworks, factories, power plants...a very bleak place which never seems to shake off the dark cloud hanging over it.  And although the story is not set here, it is based upon it.  It is a story based upon coldness, paranoia, and confrontation.  Finality."

Jeremy Peterson on "The Truth":  "In 2011, a friend of mine asked me to submit a story for a horror anthology based on the civil war. I’m no history buff, but it sounded like fun so I decided to give it a shot. In my mind’s eye, I saw a cowardly soldier abandoning his unit during a battle and hiding in a cornfield. A decent start perhaps, but where was the horror? At a loss, I asked my fourteen-year-old son what kind of terror you might find in a cornfield. How about the devil, he said. Of course my son would suggest the devil, I thought, we did name him Damian after all! So I gave him a big hug and gently shoved him out of the room, ‘cause daddy had a story to write. That is how my story, ‘The Truth’, came to be. That first publishing house accepted the story but they folded before the anthology went to press. So I tucked it away, wondering what I would ever do with a civil war story. Then one morning I spotted a call for Scarlet Galleon Publications’ Dead Harvest and the rest is history. It’s no, ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’, or ‘The Man in the Black Suit’, but I enjoyed writing it and I hope you all enjoy reading it."

Aaron Gudmunson on "The Guest":  "At some point in grade school, I recall reading a story in which the Queen of England unexpectedly visits a peasant's cottage on the outskirts of a poor village (I can't recall the title of the story, but if anyone knows what I'm talking about I'd love to reread it!). I always wondered how that would translate in America and thus the idea behind ‘The Guest’ formed. The story has been percolating in my brain for years and I finally wrote it one autumn weekend before the last presidential election. Some readers have asked me if there is any hidden political message within the story and I always answer that there is if you want there to be. Really, though, it's simply a speculative story about the anonymity of modern America -- how literally anyone can be mistaken for someone else these days…even the most powerful man in the world."

Get WRAPPED IN BLACK!

Several years ago, I woke gasping for breaths that refused to come easily from a dream in which I, my late mother Diane, and my kid sister Lauren were cloistered inside my Grandmother Rachel's farmhouse on Foster's Pond, a magical, mysterious destination from my childhood that no longer exists in the real world.  In the dream, my grandmother was upstairs, trapped in a state between life and afterlife.  Outside, ominous storm clouds swirled directly over the house, and from those clouds a malevolent force descended, seeking to do my family harm.  We waited, eyes wide, as shadows passed by windows.  There was something dark and evil lurking just beyond the farmhouse's walls, and only my grandmother could stop it.

It was a vivid dream, complete with color and emotion, especially for my grandmother who once wrote for Highlights for Children and who has taught me some of the best lessons of my life as both a human being (my grandmother doesn't medicate, treats people with respect, wakes every morning with a smile) and a writer (she kept her ideas in a note card catalog that now sits in a place of honor in my Writing Room, didn't trust the human brain to remember everything, especially when the writer had multiple stories in progress). I wrote the story based upon the dream -- "Comes the Rain" -- and filed its longhand draft away, until I read the call for Sekhmet Press's latest call for manuscripts, Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult.  I pulled the draft out, edited it, and fired "Comes the Rain" off quickly (the deadline was fast approaching), and then on a memorable Tuesday night following my weekly writers' group meeting, I came home to a wonderful acceptance by editor Jennifer L. Greene. For a multitude of reasons, there's a special place in my heart for the story -- and also the anthology in which it is set to appear.

Many of my talented fellow authors shared the back-stories behind their Wrapped in Black stories.

Shenoa Carroll-Bradd on "She Makes My Skin Crawl": "My story started as an idle thought about the many forms domestic abuse can take, and how most people think they know what signs and behaviors to watch out for. That sparked some brainstorming on how a magic-user might take advantage of the general populaces' disbelief in the supernatural. Threatening to kill someone if they leave would certainly earn you a restraining order and police attention, but what if you could physically punish your partner in ways that left no mark, and would never be believed if reported? Luckily, I already had 'She Makes My Skin Crawl' on file in my folder of random titles, and the accidental pun fit too well to be ignored.  As much as I enjoyed writing this story, I know many people who have fallen into toxic relationships, and happily escaped one myself. There were a couple points where I had to step away from the keyboard, but I'm ultimately glad I powered through, and I hope readers enjoy my tale."

Eric Nash on "Pigeon":  "Social media: isn’t it great? Especially how it force-feeds our desire for attention. I’ve wanted to explore this idea for a year but hadn’t had the opportunity. Then Sekhmet Press sent out a call for witchcraft stories. Of course the words didn’t come immediately and for many an evening I sat in front of an idle cursor that flashed the hours away.  It wasn’t until a pigeon landed on the digital page and flapped its wings in a post-flight fidget that the creative cauldron started to brew. I should mention that it was simply a memory of a pigeon that had been inside my head since my school days and not a real one that would peck and splat all over my laptop. Nevertheless, the sweep of air its feathers produced disturbed Maddie, a frustrated and embittered young woman and the un-harnessed impetus of my story."

Allison M. Dickson on "Number One Angel":  "Lasso and Cappuccino. Those were the two words picked for a casual writing challenge between two friends. We were to write a short story that somehow incorporated those words, and then share the results. Each of us wrote vastly different stories, ranging from pulpy mystery to dark suspense. After going for broke, this is more or less what I came up with. I wrote it in about a half hour, fueled by little more than my desire to use 'lasso' as a verb, and after some fleshing out I had something slightly resembling what you see here. I eventually expanded it more over time, and have plans to include the events of this story, as well as my short stories 'Devil Riders' and 'The Last Wedding in the Midnight Chapel' in an overarching opus of sorts that has the tentative title Saints & Sinners. I look forward to meeting up with Phelan again, and I hope you do as well."

Aaron Gudmunson on "Pig Roast":  "While shopping at an old-school food market in another town, I rounded the corner and discovered a wall of mustard. Literally half an aisle had been devoted to the spicy golden condiment. Until that day, I had no idea so many varieties existed and realized at once I had the ingredients for a story. During my perusal of the vast selection, the tale took shape: I saw a boorish man who loved mustard-slathered meat more than anything—including his family—and asked myself what would happen if he was invited to dinner by a gourmet chef whose specialty happened to be homemade mustard…and witchcraft? When I finished, I had a story with a bit of acerbic bite. Not unlike, say, a nice Dijon."

Gordon White on "Hair Shirt Drag":  "Stories come to me like knots.  At a glance, I can see the general shape and guess at the size, texture, consistency—even a potential beginning and/or an end.  But to untangle that into an actual narrative requires pulling at one loop or whorl to see what comes next and what comes off.  Here, I started with the idea that hair, especially pelts and scalps, is a common (magical) fetish.  In knot-form, I thought this story involved a sect of rural witches using a totemic Bigfoot costume for their magical rituals, cloaked under an assimilationist guise of Christianity (Biblical references to sasquatch are…debatable).  Worrying those filaments, I pulled out the first sentence and the general setting, but Bigfoot and overt religion were dead ends.  So I cut them, and instead started unraveling the main character.  After pages and pages of non-canonical first-person musings and ranting, I finally heard the narrator’s cadence and digressive storytelling.  However, I couldn’t completely untangle that wounded outsider’s obsession with words vs. meaning.  Until, that is, I found a place where hair and fetishes and costumes and wounded outsiders thrive.  So, in RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season Six…"

Rose Blackthorn on "Beautiful, Broken Things":  "The initial idea for this story was not a particular character, or even a simple plot. It was a place. I saw a street at night, lit by arc sodium lamps and neon. The pavement was dirty, the sidewalks crowded with people. But this wasn’t a fun, bright scene. There was darkness everywhere, people trying to hide their pain, people lost with no idea of how to find their way. Across the street, an expanse of curtained window with oddities displayed. No garish advertising here, no way really to even tell what the shop inside sold. Just a hand-painted sign above the mirrored-glass door—a large black crow holding a human eyeball in one clawed foot. From that strange street-view, and an atmosphere of frenetically hidden despair, came ‘Beautiful, Broken Things’. Even in this spare and unforgiving future world there is magic to be found, although it might be dark."

James Glass on "The Rising Son":  "When kicking around the idea for ‘Rising Son’, one thing was certain: motivation. I already knew how the story ended up, but I never quite knew why it ended up there in the first place. Much like Cal, I have known heartache and jealousy—I think everyone knows those emotions and everyone has acted in a desperate way at least once as a result of those feelings. In ‘Rising Son’, I took it a step further and then leaped into one hell of a chasm. By taking that leap, I stared into Cal’s eyes and understood the last facets of his personality, which had not been present in later stories wherein he is featured. Here he was, this desperate and jealous man who sought absolute power not to subjugate the masses, but to win the heart of a hooker, and possibly impress his father in the process. He was suddenly so human and flawed that I felt for him for the first time, realizing his efforts were focused and with the intent to impress me."

Michael G. Williams on "Stories I Tell to Girls":  "I wrote this story to make a trilogy out of my entry in this anthology and my pieces in Wrapped in Red and Wrapped in White. I also really wanted to visit again with the character of Auntie Ann, who first appeared in a couple of scenes of my novel Tooth & Nail. She is based on a real aunt with whom I spent time as a child. Aunt Mary told amazing stories of growing up in the remotest parts of the Appalachian Mountains and of the pervasive belief in and practice of magic she saw in her childhood. She told me about real witches and about the time the Devil got under the church her father built, describing a setting in which magic was right there for the taking, and I sopped all that stuff up over a small number of long visits. I was raised in the Appalachians, too, just a little ways down the mountain and with a bunch more now around. Some of what Aunt Mary told me about magic was news, but I’ll say this: not all of it."

Mike Lester on "Not This Time":  "I have no memory of how this story came to be. I was sitting in a coffee shop, alone at a table. All around me people were buzzing on their phones and laptops. I had a yellow legal pad and a pen. Soon my hand was moving across the paper and approximately one hour later I had thirteen furiously scribbled pages. This is all I know, all I can remember. I don’t try to dig any deeper. The muses would not be happy."

Patrick C. Greene on "Unto the Earth":  "In the U.S, most of the magical traditions have borne the burden of misinformation, and outright slander, since the settlers. But while Native American and European disciplines are beginning to gain some grudging tolerance, Voodoo remains mysterious and largely taboo. I wanted to explore this fascinating system of belief from the viewpoint of the average American who is still immersed in the concept that it's a quaint, even comical superstition that no self-respecting educated person could take seriously. It's this arrogant assumption that so often causes our suffering, isn't it?"