We are delighted to bring you only our second volume of poetry, Multiverse by Jan Siegel and guests.
Pat Cadigan, Helen Lederer, Clare Potts and Julian Bell all feature in this delightful collection that tours literature and SFF with original poems and a few homages.
Jan was on First Dates celebrity in October which is well worth a watch, but we at Fox Spirit are first and foremost fans of her writing. You can find Jan in our own Mouse and Minotaur and of course she is the author of the Devil’s Apprentice and Prospero’s Children among other titles. It is a real pleasure to be publishing her poetry collection.
The cover illustration is by John Howe while the design and layout are by Vincent Holland-Keen.
You can read Upon a Dark and Stormy Night in it’s entirety here, but for now I leave you with the opening lines to The Barman
‘Once upon a midnight dreary – when I fancied a daiquiri
After some launch far from cheery in a neighbourhood bookstore,
To the Groucho then I staggered with a visage pale and haggard
And I thrust aside each laggard
Lagging round the open door,
’Twas a fool and not a blackguard came between me and the door,
The Chamorro people of Guam have an interesting saying about our ancestral spirits. We say that they came before us, but they also wait ahead of us. It might seem contradictory in a way, but it makes sense in Chamorro cosmology, as exemplified by the most commonly used term that we use for the spirits of our ancestors, taotaomo’na.
The word taotaomo’na can refer to anything from malevolent spirits, to watchful ghosts, to demons, to magical animals and shape-changers. These spirits will haunt or frequent certain areas, usually the jungle, abandoned areas, cemeteries or even family homes. They are closely associated with the nunu or the banyan tree, which can look particularly menacing in the twilight. They can play tricks on hunters and fishermen and also steal children away from inattentive parents.
Despite the various forms that a taotaomo’na may take in the beliefs of Chamorros and others in contemporary Guam, what unites these variations is the notion that they are ultimately the spirits of the ancestors of the Chamorro people of before, and therefore they represent a force for balance, a memory for the land. There are stories of taotaomo’na tricking and cursing those who behave in loud or destructive ways in the jungle. They can also act as harbingers, warning omens of some tragedy that may soon befall a family. Because of this, even though there is a great deal of fear with regards to the taotaomo’na, there is also respect.
For example it is common in Guam today, that prior to entering the jungle you ask these spirits permission. A common version of this is “Guella yan Guello, kao siña yu’ maloffan gi tano’-miyu? Anggen måtto hamyo gi tano’-måmi siña maloffan ha’ sin mamaisen.” This translates to: “Grandmother and Grandfather, can I pass through your land? When you visit our land you can pass without asking.”
Guam jungle image from shutterstock.
The contradiction that contemporary people in Guam experience around the taotaomo’na can be tied the island’s history of colonialism. In the 17th century, Spanish missionaries came to Guam with the intent of forcing Catholicism on the Chamorro people. There was sporadic resistance for three decades, with tens of thousands of Chamorros dying from fighting and disease.
Chamorros at the time of Western contact, had a religion focused around ancestor veneration. In life each person carried an ånte or soul, but upon passing into death the soul transformed into an aniti, the term used for the spirit of an ancestor. The plural term for them was manganiti, and Chamorros believed the unseen world around was filled with the manganiti, who would protect them or punish them.
Chamorros would keep the skulls of revered relatives in their homes and the leg bones of great warriors would be carved into bones and daggers. The thinking being that when you went into battle, the spirit of your father would fight with you. The skulls were known, according to one account, as maranan uchan, which translates to “a miracle of rain.” It is because the skull acted as a spiritual anchor, and with it you could request of your ancestors that they protect the family, provide a good harvest or drive fish towards your nets.
Living a good life, acting honorably with your family, taking care of them, respecting your elders and being courageous in battle were all things that made the manganiti happy and encouraged them to bless a clan with protection and success. Behaving in cowardly, selfish and disrespectful ways would likely lead the manganiti to withhold their aid and letting tragedy upon tragedy befall the family.
The Spanish, after silencing all active resistance, sought to cement their political control, with ideological control as well. They sought for generations to break the connection that Chamorros had with their ancestral spirits. They tried to replace them, giving Chamorros a pantheon of saints, who could provide the same favors and protection as their ancestors. They tried to replace the strong matrilineal symbols of Chamorro culture, with an array of Mary figures. Over a century they slowly pushed the beliefs of Chamorros to the point where they began to see these ancestral spirits as malicious and malevolent beings, that would haunt, trick and curse.
If you turn to Chamorro dictionaries today, you’ll find the effect of the Catholic Church’s ideological onslaught in the entries for aniti, in the following terms: devil, Satan, hellish fiend, demon, evil spirit. The term has become heavily stigmatized, and so many Chamorros today refuse to use it because of the heavy negative connotations. But this does not mean that Chamorros lose their connection to their ancestral spirits, but there is a change in terminology. After more than a century of Spanish colonization, in the 19th century Chamorros start using the term taotaomo’na.
While Chamorros as a people eventually accepted Catholicism, the connection to their ancestors was not cut, but modified. Although Chamorros did begin to feel a greater distance from the taotaomo’na, they nonetheless retained a respect. They did not develop a zealous hatred for the spirits as the Catholic priests had wanted, but rather respected their place on the island, which was now largely relegated to the jungle and natural settings. This is why people on Guam continue to ask permission prior to entering the jungle, because so long as you act with appropriate decorum, not only will the taotaomo’na not trick or menace you, but you may receive their protection as well.
Returning to the opening thought for this article, the idea that Chamorro ancestors are both in front of us and behind us, we find this in the term taotaomo’na but also in this history of both colonization and resilience. The term first emerges to represent the epistemological and cultural break between Chamorros and their ancestors that the Spanish had in some ways accomplished. Chamorros began to refer to their ancestors as taotaomo’na or “the people of before,” meaning the people of before colonization and the civilizing of the Spanish. But in the contemporary moment, where Chamorros have been carrying out a decades-long cultural renaissance, where they are seeking to reconnect to their ancient ancestors, the other meaning of the term is becoming ascendant. This has manifested today in terms of dance and chant groups that are meant to reflect ancient motifs and be homages to Chamorro ancestors. It has also lead to efforts to preserve the Chamorro language, which has endured despite hundreds of years of colonization and attempts to eradicate it. You can also find it in how colonial heroes, explorers and missionaries celebrated during the Spanish era, are now being replaced by Chamorro resistance figures who fought Chamorro subjugation. In so many ways, the things that colonizers have sought to silence or erase from the island, are being embraced and celebrated again.
And it is because of this element that we can see the other meaning of the word taotaomo’na, namely “those who wait ahead of us. “ In this way my comic in the Pacific Monsters anthology represents another way in which Chamorros today are seeking to reconnect and establish a healthy and respectful relationship to the spirits of our ancestors. Centuries of colonization drove our people to see the spirits of our ancestors as agents of the Catholic devil, and in many ways disconnected us from the very land of our homeland. But with changes in our consciousness, they are no longer distantly behind us, but rather wait before us. They are no longer chained in negativity by Catholicism, but once again important guides who travel with us on life’s journey.
Now, I may be showing my age but I was partly raised by my elderly aunt and uncle, and in the 80s on rainy Saturday afternoons (there’s few other kinds in Yorkshire outside summer), it was TV time. After wrestling (Kendo Nagasaki was my favourite) and maybe the A Team if it was on, we’d get to the black and white films. My uncle loved the westerns, but they were never my thing. No, but give me a good Jason and the Argonauts, or even better, anything to do wit 19th century pirates and you couldn’t prize me away from that television for all the M.A.S.K. toys in the world.
I’ve thought a lot in the time since at why I loved those particular films since, and others set in what’s often called – if you’re being diplomatic – simpler times, and it always comes down to a unifying factor – the unknown. I grew up watching films and television programmes (think more Tin Tin than A-Team at this point) where there were still parts of the worlds considered unexplored, where a ‘Here Be Dragons’ scrawled on a map had to be taken seriously, because there’s might be a bloody dragon there.
And that’s why the modern world sucks. Because there are so few unknowns anymore. But one of those unknowns is the sea, and that’s why I jumped at the chance to contribute a story to Fox Spirit’s Pacific Monsters because it allowed me to tell a story about the kinds of monsters once thought to inhabit the less frequented corners of the world. Only, in this case, it just might.
For anyone who follows these things, more and more information about our oceans is being discovered. One those facts which keeps rearing its head is the ‘we know less about our oceans than we do about the moon’ and I love that. But that’s all oceans. What about the least-visited ocean? What percentage of that is explored?
The story the ningen hits all my interest points. Tales have been told about their (it’s, there?) existence for well over a century, there’s some (dodgy… yeah, let’s admit it, dodgy) photographic evidence (stop laughing, I said it was dodgy), and, best of all, it’s every so slightly and tantalisingly – maybe – plausible.
Dodgy Photo (mostly they lead to even dodgier youtube footage.
When I went to write ‘Grind’ for the collection I went a bit beyond my usual scope of research (IE, watching youtube videos and shouting “cool!” at the screen) and found one of those weird-arse conspiracy theory channels which in this case linked everything to the bible. While I’m sure these channels are filled with the kind of people who not only think fluoride has mind control properties, but also makes your skin glow, this one channels did link a particular bible passage to the potential existence of the ningen, and made a good enough linke between the two that I couldn’t help but include it in Grind. I won’t say what ti is, that, dear reader, is for you to discover and decide yourself.
And on that note – Pacific Monsters is out from November 30th at all good book shops and some dodgy ones too.
The ocean is a dangerous place, and despite our touristic reputation as some sort of paradise, the seas around Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina (the Hawaiian Islands) are no different. Sometimes when you are bobbing around on the surface of the ocean, whether surfing or swimming, you get the eery feeling that something is there in the dark depths, that you are still part of the food chain.
And it’s true. Manō, or sharks, actually abound in our waters. If you ever want to lose sleep, take a look at the tiger shark tracking website and see how many are swimming around, and those are just the ones that have been tagged. The spot I surf at has had two attacks and multiple sightings in the last month alone. It makes us cautious, but it doesn’t keep most of us out of the water. For Hawaiians, the call of the ocean is too strong, and we have a long history with sharks.
Tiger shark image from http://www.pacioos.hawaii.edu/projects/sharks/ where you can also see distribution maps
Some of our more well-known moʻolelo (story/history/account) regarding manō feature sharks who can become men, and those men often wear cloaks or capes of leaves or feathers to hide the shark jaw that is between their shoulder blades. One famous shark would meet travelers along the path to the sea and then warn them that the ocean there is particularly shark-infested, and if they did not heed his warning, he would take a shortcut to the beach and devour them once they went into the water.
The Hawaiian-language newspapers of the nineteenth century have accounts of Hawaiian sailors returning to shore holding onto the fins of sharks. There are also accounts of fisherman and divers fighting off aggressive sharks with the Hawaiian martial art known as lua. There is even the story of a dog jumping in the water and biting a shark. And before you begin to think that the Hawaiian sharks are just more laid back, the newspapers have traditional accounts of people being killed by sharks as well. An elder I used to hang out with from Niʻihau even said that when they would catch sharks to dry for food, you could always tell the maneaters because their meat would melt in the sun and not be good eating. Recounting all of this is merely to say that sharks are a common part of Hawaiian culture, both contemporarily and traditionally.
But luckily, according to our traditional moʻolelo, the people of Oʻahu, the island I live on, are protected from man-eating manō by the shark goddess Kaʻahupāhau and her brother Kahiʻukā who live in Puʻuloa, the area some know as Pearl Harbor today. This protection came about after Kaʻahupāhau killed a haughty chiefess named Papio in a fit of rage after Papio mistreated one of Kaʻahupāhau’s family attendants over the tribute of a lei being prepared for the goddess. The chiefess’s blood still stains the sands of Keoneʻula in ʻEwa until this day, but after killing her Kaʻahupāhau felt remorse for her hasty act and declared that everyone would be safe in her waters from that day forward.
That declaration was tested, however, by other man-eating sharks who came from the other islands to fight Kaʻahaupāhau and Kahiʻukā. Kepanilā was the most daunting maneater; his name meant Sun Blocker because he was so large that if he swam above you, you would only see darkness. If he had taken part in the war, Kaʻahupāhau’s side may not have been victorious because of his strength and ferocity, but he was so large that he ran aground in the channel between the islands and could not make it to the battle on Oʻahu. But even without Kepanilā, it was a terrible battle, and sharks switched between different forms to get the best advantage, but Kaʻahupāhau became an unbreakable net, ensnaring the maneaters and tossing them upon the shore to be killed by her human allies.
Kaʻahupāhau ended up victorious and defeated the maneaters, ensuring that her proclamation of safety in the waters around Oʻahu remained in force. Some say that that proclamation came to an end, however, in 1913 with the collapse of the Pearl Harbor drydock. The stated reason is underground pressure, but there are many accounts aserting that when construction was taking place, the elderly kahu (attendant/guardian) of Kaʻahupāhau warned the Navy to stop construction because they were building on the home of Kaʻahupāhau. They laughed him off. Some say that after the drydock collapsed, a large stone-lined cave was found below with the remains of a large shark inside of it.
If you have been to Hawaiʻi, you can feel the power of our moʻolelo written on the land. Our winds and rains still bear the names that they have for hundreds of years. Our place names tell stories of our ancestors and our gods, and it is likely that Kaʻahupāhau and the sharks from our old moʻolelo still roam the seas around Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina and transform into human form to waylay unwary travelers. There is a lot of power in our old moʻolelo, but we are creating new moʻolelo all the time. And remember, every time you are floating in the dark depths of the vast ocean, what we call Moananuiākea, and you get the eerie feeling that a shadow made up of teeth and speed is swimming below you, stalking you from just out of your sight, be comforted that this is your chance to take part in a brand new shark story.
Walking on dragon backs and swimming in their tears is a large part of my history.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in the Marlborough Sounds at the top of the South Island of New Zealand, a series of waterways stretching between Cloudy Bay and Tasman Bay. My grandfather was a builder, and during weekends and holidays I’d often join him on his rounds on his boat, or as a family we’d stay in a bach (holiday home) belonging to one of his clients.
Swimming, fishing, being on the water, golden sunshine; all taken for granted. In my child’s imagination, the water valleys weren’t created by plate tectonics – the Alpine fault that stretches along the back of Te Waipounamu (the South Island) terminates off the northeast coast – but sleeping dragons, the humps of hills their backs, the peninsulas of the bays their snouts dipping into the water. The small earthquakes I experienced living in that area was them rolling over and grumbling in their sleep. The Māori mythology I absorbed, imbued with taniwha and Papatūānuku (the earth goddess), strengthened my fantasies.
The South Island, image via www.niwa.co.nz
I am Pākehā, New Zealand European, white. I recognize my colonizing roots, and that I walk on stolen land and benefit from its fruits. I recognize the weight my voice has been given in telling a story with Māori mythological roots, and hope to do my best by the people this land belongs to. As a white writer, it is my duty to understand and interrogate how colonial interference has changed the structures of mythology. If I have failed anyone in any way, I accept this criticism and will work to better myself. In my story, the figures of Papatūānuku, Ranginui, and Rūamoko are all part of Māori earthquake mythology while the character/dragon E is purely fictional.
I did not intend earthquake themes to become such a large part of my writing, but the events of February 22, 2011 came only 18 months after I began my writing journey. Brought up in an earthquake prone area (Marlborough), living right on top of the large Alpine Fault, the geography of the area and earthquake drills were an integral part of my schooling.
When the big one of my generation happened, it wasn’t the overdue Alpine Fault. Previously unknown faults broke to the west and south of Christchurch, 6.3 in magnitude. 18 months of aftershocks followed, including at least half a dozen of equal and larger magnitude.
The Alpine Fault eventually did move. Arterial offshoots to the west of the island’s back caused a 7.8 on November 14, 2016, badly damaging the coastal Kaikoura area, uplifting seabed by over a metre, and disrupting major road and rail arterial routes.
I have lived in Christchurch for 20 years, and 6 of those has been disaster and post-disaster conditions. Of course, this would work its way out through my writing.
In my story “From the Womb of the Land, Our Bones Entwined,” I wanted to examine the cowardice that sometimes erupts in the face of trauma. Often, heroic stories are about strength, physical and mental. But what do the heroes look like who walk away, who take time to find their way through, often in unconventional ways?
Sometimes that journey is a no win situation, as my character Hine discovers. It’s merely a negotiation with your monster, finding level footing, to stop the ground from moving under you for a while so that win is simply a little bit of peace, a place to breathe. Unfortunately, your monster will come back to haunt you, bigger, nastier, more powerful, unless you find a way to rein it in or come to terms with it. Sometimes your monster needs love, a little feeding, some recognition. If one is stuck with your monster, one should make the best of it, even if in the strangest ways.
The story also examines themes of found family and queer identity in a post-colonial society. Our indigenous people have strong connections to whanau (whether biological family or the wider community) and the land. The way our colonial society has sought to mould people to the white ideal is to breach these connections, often violently. This can be seen in Hine’s disconnection from her language and mythology, her fear of her aunty’s mental health, and her distaste for a power she feels doesn’t belong to her and an anger she doesn’t believe she is allowed.
The earthquake monster E took the form of a sinuous dragon, it’s long body the spine of Te Waipounamu and the great fault, the arterial faults that fan out to the coast like whiskers, tendrils, or grabbing fingers. I chose a dragon-like form because of the ouroboros relationship I have with them. I am in equal measure fascinated by their myriad mythology, rehabilitating their violent and adversarial nature in modern fantasy, and also creating new mythology for them.
And with E in particular, I come back to my original childhood vision of the dragon backs as the spine of the world, a full circle imagining, a completed journey or telling. Hopefully the dragon lies at peace for some time to come.
Welcome to Pacific Monsters. Editor Margret has again risen to the challenge, researching and inviting authors who really understand the horrors of the Pacific Region, covering New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands. The great joy of this series is of course that exploration of a regions own monsters and the way some horrors are both universal and extremely local.
Today is the launch of the 4th Volume of Monsters, a collection of short stories, graphic stories and art. We hope you enjoy it and the blog posts from some of the authors that started yesterday and will continue for the next week.
The Dark Canvas of the Imagination
or
Let’s All Stop Pretending We Aren’t Afraid Of The Dark
by Kirstie Olley
It’s the middle of the night, you wake up throat dry and just know you aren’t going back to sleep until you’ve had a drink of water. The only problem is your bedstand doesn’t have the usual glass of water on it. Sure, you’ve lived in this house for five years now, you can travel the path in the dark without stubbing any toes or smashing any shins. And you’re thirty now, too old for this heart-flip moment.
Your husband’s sleeping soundly beside you and the baby’s in the cot at the end of the bed – you haven’t slipped off into some empty other world with no life in it. But in a way you have. Here in the dark is where your imagination does some of its finest work, whether you’re a writer of horror or not. The dark is a tapestry for your creative side, and if your creative side is anything like mine it can be a vindictive little asshole. That lump of laundry that didn’t quite make it into the hamper? Well that’s a serial killer crouching, hoping you won’t notice him and leave the room so he can murder your family.
What’s that, standing by the TV, silhouetted weakly by moonlight through the window? It’s not the speaker tower which your oldest threw their pyjama shirt over in a final defiance of bedtime, no, it’s a small skinny creature science has yet to identify which has a penchant for the delightful flavour of human blood.
And what lies behind the door leading into the kitchen? You can’t even see it yet! Damn it you just wanted a drink. Something scapes on the linoleum floor and you just know it’s something with sharp, hooked claws that will pierce your skin. And you’re right. You just had the size and fluffiness wrong. It’s your cat.
You’ve made it to the sink now at least, and relieve your dry throat. While Sockies rubs on your leg, asking for one last serve of wet cat food you try to remind yourself you’re an adult now. Only kids are afraid of the dark.
Thirst quenched and cat fed, you make the return journey. You’re almost to the bedroom door when a shuffling noise catches your attention. From the further dark of the hall something charges at you. Before you know it, something has latched around you. Your mind vanishes into a moment of black and white static and hiss like a TV channel when the antenna’s off-kilter. Then you realise it’s your oldest, come from their bedroom, freshly woken-up from a nightmare. They cling to you, shaking. With care you scoop them up in the cradle of your arms and bring them to bed with you. After all, it would be too cruel to leave them alone in the dark with all that canvas for their imagination to paint on.
*** Kirstie Olley writes horror and fantasy and her overactive imagination enjoys painting the canvas of the darkness full of all manner of things. She still expects, every time she throws the garage door open to put the bins out the night before pickup, that she will be greeted with a shambling crowd of zombies. She’s still undecided whether she’ll be excited or terrified when it actually happens. You can read her latest horror story “Mudgerwokee” in Pacific Monsters, or if you can’t wait that long (or want to join her in obsessing over the Bush-Stone Curlew (screaming woman bird)) check out her website: www.storybookperfect.com
You may have noticed we have been doing some work on the website. Well we are mostly done now and all the big changes are complete.
If you link to any of our books or authors you may find the links have changed so please do check.
Additionally with all the changes it’s possible we broke something and missed it, so if you find a broken link please let me know.
But what’s new?
Well, under ‘About Fox Spirit’ you will find ‘publication dates’ and ‘forthcoming titles’. The first is dates we released titles, for quick and easy checking, forthcoming titles is, as you would expect, the books we have committed to, getting added as things get firmed up, and the year we intend to release them.
You may also have noticed we have made it easier for you to keep up with what’s going on over here at the blog by included recent posts on the front page.
Authors are now found under the main page, with anthology breakdowns on the sub page ‘anthology authors’. You will also find the long list, our list of regulars ‘Often Found Skulking’ and the gallery on the main Author pages.
We have given up trying to define books by genre, it’s never been a perfect solution for us, so they are now defined by being novels or collections etc, or part of a special line. Click the main books page to see everything, presented easily by cover and with filters.
The book pages are all getting a button that takes you direct to the purchasing information on the ‘Buy Links’ page, which has also been made easier to use.
We will continue to update and tinker with individual pages, but please have a look around. We may have shifted the furniture around but the coffee, cake and hospitality are the same as ever.
It’s only just over a week away now, so we wanted to remind you we will be having a launch at this years Sledge.Lit.
The book officially being brought out in style is Tracy Fahey’s ‘The Girl in the Fort’, but we will also be bringing copies of some of this years other new titles, fantasy novels Hobgoblin’s Herald and Into the Blight along with our Halloween release Got Ghosts, will all be making their event debut in Derby.
We are pleased to say that in addition to the traditional wine and nibbles there will also be Fox cookies made by the fabulous Motherfudger.
Please come along and say hi, even if you don’t buy.
We have had an incredible busy year and launched a wonderful range of titles but we are not done yet!
Coming up before the end of the year we have the Sledge.Lit launch of The Girl in the Fort by Tracy Fahey, we will also be bringing some of this year’s other new titles for a public viewing. If you can’t make Sledge but would like Tracy to sign your copy of Girl, we have done some simple foxy bookplates so let us know.
We have some free fiction to add to our collection which I am looking forward to sharing with you all, from new to us writers.
Of course we also have three more titles to launch.
As you know every Christmas we release our newest Monster title and this year it is Pacific Monsters, which an incredible selection of stories and art as ever. Margret Helgadottir has once again worked hard to link up with writers from the region to tell their monsters their way.
We are also delighted to say that the multi award winning Daniele Serra will be staying on as cover artist to complete the series.
We also have a poetry collection by the fabulous Jan Siegel who was pure skulk recently on First Date celebrity edition. Jan has guest poems in this collection from people better known in other creative arts including Pat Cadigan and Helen Lederer, who all demonstrate their adaptability here. Multiverse is a wonderful collection, dark, funny, reflective and including cake.
Approach with Caution! The second volume of the Pseudopod Tapes is almost here! A new collection of outro essays from Alasdair Stuart, one of the UK’s best genre voices and author of our own Not the Fox News column. Whether you are a listener or not the host of the world renowned horror story podcast once again offers a collection of essays on genre and life that are more than worth the price of entry.
We would also like to remind you, if you join your kids up for the Fennec Kit’s Club they get a Christmas card and goodies from Aunty Fox and Kit, so let us know, there are limited places this close to Christmas.
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