Strange & Fantastic #20
Some recs, Awards Eligibility, and Mushrooms for Mirabelle.
*Heavy sigh*
Ugh. This has been just such a crappy and exhausting week, hasn’t it? I hope you all are taking care of yourselves, hugging your loved ones tight and making time to do the little things that bring you joy.
It feels weird sending out a newsletter focused on books and stories and all that stuff considering the current state of things, but I also don’t know what else to do at the moment, so I’m just trucking along (“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”).
Reading as Resistance
Like I said, I don’t really know what to do at the moment, so I figured I’d at least recommend two books I think are essential reads for the dark time we find ourselves in.
How Fascism Works
Jason Stanley
Knowledge is power; we need to know how a thing works in order to truly dismantle it.
Why We Can’t Wait
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s crazy (and crazy sad) how timely this book is, even though it was first published in 1963. I almost highlighted every line of this book, it’s so good, and speaks so clearly to today.
Some Other Recs
Fever House and The Devil By Name
Keith Rosson
I couldn’t put these down. Very intense post-apocalyptic horror with crime thriller elements and full of cursed objects, shadowy government ops, and an ensemble cast of vivid, broken characters. Great stuff!
Glass Stories
Ivy Grimes
A wonderful collection of beautifully strange, refractive, dreamy almost-fairy tales. I absolutely loved it! Honestly, each story in this collection is perfect, and I can’t wait to revisit them.
Songs of a Lost World
The Cure
A dark, brooding, yet lush and beautiful album, as only the Cure can create.
For Your Consideration
We’re getting into awards season, and my novella, City of Spores, is eligible for some of them! I’d be honored if you would consider nominating City of Spores for the awards below. Thank you for any and all consideration!
Indie Ink Awards 2024
City of Spores is eligible for this year’s Indie Ink Awards. These awards allow you to nominate a book in up to five (5) categories. Here are the categories I’m asking City of Spores be considered for:
Best Book Cover & Artist
Best Morally Gray Character
Best Setting
Side Character MVP
If you would like to nominate City of Spores for the Indie Ink Awards, you can do so HERE.
When you get to the page, click on the “Nominate City of Spores for Indie Ink Awards 2024!” banner. You will be asked to register with Indie Story Geek (just provide an email and create a Username) to make the nomination.
You can find more information on the Indie Ink Awards process here.
2025 Splatterpunk Awards
City of Spores is also eligible for the 2025 Splatterpunk Awards in the Best Novella category. You can email your nomination directly to splatterpunkawards@gmail.com.
All you need to do is say you’d like to nominate City of Spores by Austin Shirey, published by Madness Heart Press, in the Best Novella category. Simple as that.
Monthly Serial: Mushrooms for Mirabelle
I thought it’d be cool to share another story of mine with you, one called Mushrooms for Mirabelle. This one is a long one (it’s technically a novelette, I believe), so I figured I’d break it up into a monthly serial, something you’ll get at the end of each newsletter going forward for a few months.
Mushrooms for Mirabelle was first published as part of Eerie River Publishing’s shared-world anthology, Blood Sins, curated and edited by my incredible friend, Holley Cornetto. Holley created the town of Fyffe, West Virginia, and several of the characters therein, then invited myself and a few other writers (including my lovely and talented wife, Sarah!) to play in her sandbox
Mushrooms for Mirabelle is my contribution to Holley’s dark history of Fyffe, and my attempt at both a Southern Gothic ghost story AND zombie story. Those of you who have read City of Spores will also notice me playing around with some similar things here.
This synopsis from the anthology’s jacket copy provides all the background you need:
Hundreds of years ago, the people of Fyffe burned a woman at the stake for witchcraft. With her dying breath, she cursed the families who persecuted her.
From a woman who turns into a wolf, to a cult of snake handlers, the residents of Fyffe are anything but ordinary. When a young girl sets off a chain of events that awakens the witch, the families of Fyffe must come together and end the curse once and for all.
Enjoy!
Mushrooms for Mirabelle
(Part 1)
First thing you need to know is, my name’s Judson Crane. I’ll be the one telling this story, since I reckon I’m the one that can tell it best. But this story ain’t about me; not really. It’s about my sister, Mirabelle.
Second thing you need to know is, I’m dead. But we’ll get to that part later.
Mirabelle’s story starts one afternoon in July of 1892, when she and I were hunting in the Wytchwood. The Wytchwood is the old forest that surrounds our hometown of Fyffe, West Virginia. That wood was full strange. It seemed to be in a constant tug of war with itself, between the areas that had turned black from the blight spreading from the nearby mountains and the other areas that were still hale and green.
Mirabelle often told me she thought the blight was winning. She could see me just fine and hear me in her head. “Like a pair of second thoughts,” she’d say. We tried our best to stick to the green parts of the wood, but sometimes we couldn’t help it—you had to go where the food was. By that time, though, it felt like there was less and less food to be found in the Wytchwood at all.
That hot and humid July day, I meandered out in the woods while Mirabelle waited under an old pine tree with Daddy’s .22 rifle. Since critters are more sensitive to haints than you’d think, I’d go out and try and spook them back toward Mirabelle, letting her know which way they were coming. It worked pretty well, I thought. So, I let her know the mangy, skinny squirrel I was spooking toward her was coming, and when it skittered across her line of sight, Mirabelle shot it. The sound rocked the wood like a tiny peal of thunder.
It was always a creepy sort of quiet out there; that’s not to say there were never any sounds at all, cause there were, just not much. Birds might chirp here and there, but not often, and when they did, it was short and hushed like they were afraid their song might wake something up.
Good shot, I said, hovering near Mirabelle as she bent over the dead squirrel and tied its feet together with the string she kept in her pocket. She looked terrible there in the sun, wearing a pair of our older brother Henry’s overalls, rifle slung over her shoulder; she was dirty, thin, and barefoot, eyes sunken deep into her face.
Mirabelle sniffled, wiping away the sweat dripping down her blond curls and into her eyes. “Nothing good about it.”
You gotta eat, Belle, I said. She didn’t much like killing things, even to eat.
“Don’t mean I gotta like it. And it ain’t like it’ll be enough for me and Daddy and Henry, neither.”
It’ll have to do.
“Easy for you to say,” Mirabelle said.
“Who’re you talking to, child?”
Mirabelle went still as a beanpole; I could see the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, like lightning was about to strike from on high. The voice scared me too. It wasn’t a voice we recognized. And when you lived like us, cast out like lepers, well, you tend not to trust nobody, especially strangers.
My sister turned and pulled the rifle from her shoulder; I peered out from behind her. An old woman stood just a few yards yonder. She had her frazzled, white hair up in a bun, but stray strands shot off in every direction like little forks of lightning. She wore a knitted brown shawl over a dirty dress. She was only a few inches taller than Mirabelle with her back bent like it was, and her spotted skin was as wrinkled as her dress. Her icy-blue eyes hovered like crescent moons above a yellow smile.
A pair of newly killed rabbits dangled from a length of frayed rope she held; they looked too healthy for any critter found here in the Wytchwood.
The old woman looked right at me.
“Oh,” she said.
My belly felt sick; well, not my belly, I guess, me being a haint and all, but I had that bad feeling, like something was terribly wrong. There was this black, oily shimmer around the old lady, which was mighty strange, seeing as most living folk had a faint white shimmer around them.
I ain’t never heard her out there, I said to Mirabelle. That was mighty strange too, since I heard most everything. Ain’t never heard her come up on us neither.
But Mirabelle wasn’t listening to me.
“You’re her,” Mirabelle said, “Old Lady—”
“Granny Bigelow,” the woman said.
Old Lady Bigelow or Granny Bigelow, it didn’t much matter what name she went by: she was bad people. Least ways, that’s what everyone said around town.
Belle, I said, trying to get her attention.
Granny Bigelow glanced at me again, and if my heart hadn’t already been stopped, I’m sure it would’ve stopped right then and there.
“Ain’t none of it true, dearie,” Granny said.
“What ain’t?” Mirabelle asked.
“Well, all of it,” Granny said. “All them things they says about me. I ain’t no witch. Just a lonely old woman, thought poorly of, trying to survive without the kindness of neighbors. Same as you.”
“How’s that?”
“I hear them things they says about you. About your family. The sad, bad things that done happened to you and yours.”
Mirabelle looked away and chewed her lip. I tried to grab her hand to pull her away, but my hand just went through hers like it always has since I’ve been dead. No matter how many times I tried, I was always forgetting I couldn’t touch nothing.
“I know ain’t none of it your fault, neither,” Granny said.
Belle, I said, something’s not—
“Where you find them?” Mirabelle asked, pointing to the rabbits.
“Out here, same as you. Just gotta know where to look, is all.”
But she come from the blight, I said. We’d never found any critter as healthy-looking as those rabbits out that way.
Mirabelle nodded, finally hearing me. “But you coming from the blight.”
“Ain’t all blight out that way,” Granny said.
I don’t trust her, I said. We shouldn’t trust her.
“I don’t—” but Mirabelle caught herself before agreeing out loud with me.
Granny cocked her head. “What, now, child?”
“I didn’t know that,” Mirabelle said. “About the blight. Thought it was all bad.”
“Aw, honey, ain’t nothing all bad. Most times, it's a bit of both.”
C’mon, Belle. We should get on home…
“Gotta head home,” Mirabelle said. She nodded to the old woman and turned away. We started back the way we’d come, back toward the other side of town. Toward home.
“Not much of a meal,” Granny called after us. “Why don’t you come by my place? I’ll fix you a proper meal.”
Please, Belle, let’s just go, I said. She ain’t safe.
We sprinted through the woods, trying to get as far from the old woman as we could.
I did look over my shoulder as we ran, just once, but the old crone had already melted back among the trees.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Signing Off
Well, folks, that’s it for now. Hang in there. You’re not alone.
As always, thanks so much for reading, and stay strange.
—Austin
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe—you’ll get a free eBook of my short story, “Magus,” available EXCLUSIVELY for subscribers!
I’d also love it if you considered checking out my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores, or my illustrated sci-fi thriller chapbook, Goodly Creatures.
