The Black Dreams - a darkly humorous short story anthology

Thrilled to share that Blackstaff Press have included my short story ‘The Tempering’ in their deeply atmospheric collection The Black Dreams.

I grew up steeped in the seanchaí tradition of my grandmother’s home, reading stories by legends like Frank O’Connor and Seán O’Faoláin. Short stories were my first love. When I was fourteen I wrote ‘The River’ - a short story based on an ambush my father and grandfather were caught up in as they cut turf on the bog. It won the WH Smith Young Writer of the Year award.

At the awards ceremony in London, a tall, compelling Englishman introduced himself as Ted Hughes. He told me I was one of the finest young writers he’d ever read. I’d no idea who this man was, but his words fuelled a fire in me.

I wrote short stories throughout my teens and into my early 20s. Then, in 1998, I was struck by autoimmune encephalitis. After that, writing my own name was a struggle, never mind a short story. Recovery has been the work of years. Recovery will only ever be partial. I am mostly OK with that.

But eventually I found myself writing short stories that were good enough to be published, and even win prizes. In 2005 my stories were included in The Barefoot Nuns of Barcelona - the first major anthology of female writers from the North of Ireland. And in 2006, The Stinging Fly published Double Tub - a short story that then lost the run of itself and became my debut novel Big Girl Small Town. But I’ve published no short stories since then.

That’s why I’m so thrilled that editor Reggie Chamberlain-King has included one of my stories in an unsettling anthology that includes contributions from Ian Sansom, Jo Baker, Moyra Donaldson, Bernie McGill, Jan Carson, Ian McDonald, Sam Thompson, Carlo Gébler, Reggie Chamberlain-King, John Patrick Higgins, Gerard McKeown, Aislínn Clarke and Emma Devlin.

If you’d like to hear from some of the authors and the editor Reggie Chamberlain-King in person on Oct 3rd, snap up a ticket for the Aspect’s Book Festival (there are just a few remaining).

My contribution to the Black Dreams - The Tempering - was written while I was participating in the #xBorders programme, run by @maria_mcmanus and @PatsyBlackstaff with the support of the Irish Writers Centre and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

If you can, please preorder a copy, or consider covering the publication, or recommending it to a friend or a library.

The Tempering

‘…week by week, bone by bone, we began to amass a skeleton in our Secret Den. When the dog dragged a sheep’s head into our yard, we watched her lap the festering brains from the skull before crowning our bone pile with it in lieu of our father’s head…