Major writing news

It’s been an incredibly hectic couple of weeks. As you can see, Black Static #53 is out and includes a comprehensive review of Storylandia 15, as well as a load of great looking reading. Peter Tennant comparies the collection to the likes of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood as well as Clive Barker, and highly recommends it. Illustrious company indeed! Many thanks to Peter for taking the time to do this. I so often operate in a vacuum, it’s extremely interesting and helpful to get an idea of what other people think of what I do. Do I need this kind of validation? As much as anyone else does – I yo-yo between brimming confidence and wild self-doubt, and I was a bit concerned that some of what I now write is just simply inaccessible to the rest of the world.

Following on from the review, I’ve been interviewed by Peter for Case Notes on the TTA Press website. He asked some good questions and I gave some very honest answers. When I first began writing, one of my ultimate goals was to be interviewed. Twenty-three years later, it’s actually happened! (as a writer – I’ve been interviewed as a musician and as a political activist). Of course, what I really meant was that I needed to be heard and taken seriously and the writing provides its own voice. The interview will either get people very interested in what I do or will send them running for the hills.

Andy Martin’s anthology, Fast-Clean-Cheap, is now at the proof-reading stage and is due to be published in September this year by Lulu. It’s likely to be an eclectic collection, with my two pieces probably the only ones inthe horror/dark fantasy vein. Expect the unexpected from Andy!

Finally, I’m very happy to announce that Wapshott Press have asked me to do a second short story collection, for release around the end of 2017. I’ve two or three stories already completed for it, plus a few tricks up my sleeve regarding some older (almost unseen by anyone else) work and two or three new stories to write for it in the next year. The working title for the collection is We Are All Falling Towards The Centre Of The Earth, and I have some thoughts for the book’s cover, too. Once again I have to thank Ginger Mayerson and all at Wapshott Press for such amazing support and faith.

All text ©Julie Travis

Meet me on a desertshore

When I began this blog, it was with the intention of being ‘findable’ for anyone interested in my writing. However, after much thought and after browsing a few other writers’ websites (in the main that of Priya Sharma – with apologies/thanks for somewhat borrowing her format) it seems a good idea to expand a little and add a few story excerpts for casual passers-by, so I’m going to be adding an excerpts page as a permanent feature, that will be updated to eventually include most of my published work. A piece of non-fiction (The Cornish Witch) has been available for some time but the link to Cross Bound, which appeared in a webzine, has been removed in lieu of it being available in physical form next year.

Some very kind words for Storylandia 15: Collected Stories By Julie Travis from Utherben, who is an excellent psychogeographic photographer from New York City, on her website:

Face The Strange: All She Had Was The Blood On Her Hand

Earlier this month Wapshott Press released Storylandia 15; the featured author this time around is the phantasmagorically fabulous Julie Travis, with five tales of atmospheric, vibrant and thought-provoking slipstream horror. Her work is terrific, in that it’s both well-crafted and inspires absolute terror. She’s been included in in various anthologies, and she’s done some self-publishing, but as far as I know this is the first literary journal issue specifically dedicated to her work…and I’m seriously fucking proud of her. Rock on, Julie!

Thanks, Utherben. While I’m on the review trail, I’ll add here an excerpt of a review by Peter Tennant of the 2008 Pigasus Press anthology Premonitions: Causes For Alarm which appeared in Black Static #9:

…‘Darkworlds’ by Julie Travis was my favourite story. It brings to mind both Barker’s Cenobites and the King/Straub collaborations in a tale of creatures from other realms entering our own and defeating the plan of a bureaucrat to take their dimensions as lebensraum. It’s clever, with good characterisation and a gratifying pair of monsters in the Torquis and Yellow Jack. Travis knows how to pitch a telling phrase at the reader and she doesn’t shirk from describing the more horrific aspects of the story, while back of it all is the sense that there is a lot more mileage to be got from this scenario and these characters. I hope Travis follows up.

This is relevant because it was mainly because of this review that ideas for a second part (of sorts) of the story began to take shape, and emerged a few years later as Theophany, which is included in SL 15. Thanks to Peter for his encouragement over the years.

Pig Iron is now in its third draft. The story, over 9000 words long, has taken a stupidly short amount of time to write and I expect to finish it soon. Then I’ll be in a position to return to The Hidden (which has taken a stupidly long time to write) and make the final changes that it needs. Leaving stories alone for a while can be the best thing you can do in order to to gain perspective.

At the beginning good fortune, at the end disorder

I recently saw the galley proofs of Storylandia issue 7, (and a sample of the issue is now available from the website) so all appears to be on schedule as far as publication goes (which may still be up to two months away). I’ve been very impressed with the professionalism of the magazine and am really looking forward to getting hold of a copy. As the autumn storms rage here in Mount’s Bay, early but no less fierce for it, I’ve been tidying up Theophany/Darkworlds Part Two. For a 14,300 odd word opus that practically fell out of my head and onto the page, it’s appearing to need a lot of tidying up but remarkably little rewriting. Thanks are due to Peter Tennant, writer and Black Static reviewer/columnist, who publicly encouraged me to write a sequel to the original Darkworlds. Ten years down the line, living a very different life to when the original was penned, it’s been amazingly easy to get close to the same headspace, although I think my change in environment and “born-again Paganism” (to quote a wise man) is clear in the second instalment (which is possible to read without having to be familiar with the original, I think) I’m at a bit of a loss as to where to send it: I’m not arrogant enough to assume Pigasus Press (who published the original in their Premonitions: Causes For Alarm anthology) would be interested, if they’re even still publishing new work. However, that’s a minor concern. The work is what really matters. With Pieces awaiting consideration for another anthology and The Ferocious Night hopefully appearing towards the end of September, the question is: what next? Perhaps a re-write of a very old story called Angel Wing, which I had a read through recently. The general story is good enough although it needs some work, but it was the last paragraph that made me sit up and want to see the piece realise its full potential.

Three pieces of music(k) have been accompanying my every written word and nearly my every move over the last months: King Creosote/Jon Hopkins’ John Taylor’s Month Away (a melancholic Scottish folk song), Fougou’s Further From The Centre of Disturbance (a very dark, otherworldly, ambient album somewhat reminiscent of Lustmord and Coil, very emotional in places, in a beautiful art package with the field recordings made at sacred sites in West Cornwall) and Cyclobe’s Wounded Galaxies Tap At The Window (more dark ambience; Cyclobe’s claim to be drawing water from the same well as Coil is well justified).