Cold Mirrors

by C.J. Lines

Cold Mirrors collects the short stories of acclaimed author C.J. Lines for the first time. From the beauty regime of a Victorian drag queen to the dangers of conducting ritual magic on Twitter, these tales traverse the centuries and take a dark, slanted look at hidden realities that lurk beneath the surface of the mundane.

Alternately horrifying, heartbreaking and hilarious, Cold Mirrors is an extraordinary collection of stories that will haunt you long after the final page is turned.

234 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2011

About the author

CJ Lines lives in London. Throughout the 2000s, he wrote music and film reviews for many UK-based publications.

His first novel, Filth Kiss, was published in 2007, followed by Cold Mirrors - a collection of short stories - in 2011.

His publication credits also include stories in several publications, such as the award-winning Duplicity in Guy N. Smith’s Graveyard Rendezvous magazine. his story Emmeline appeared in Darkscribe’s Unspeakable Horror From The Shadows of the Closet which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology 2008 and was reprinted by Book of the Month Club in exclusive hardcover.

He now writes regularly for film websites, mostly on horror and martial arts films.

He also maintains a blog, Ninjas All The Way Down, focusing on ninjas in pop culture.

Reviews

[Clayton Littlewood · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was young I was fascinated by horror; Tales of the Unexpected and the Hammer House of Horror television series, Tales From the Crypt - they all made a big impact. They were full of sadistic shopkeepers with hidden pasts, murderous revenge, ghostly apparitions, witches, satanic rites, featuring plot twists and the intermingling of horror with the commonplace. Even the music appealed to me (so much so, that the first record I ever bought was the Hammer theme tune). Thus I learnt that nothing was what it appeared to be on the surface. If you scratched deep enough another world could be revealed. Looking back, maybe this fascination was partly due to the fact that I too had a secret world that I was attempting to hide. Whatever the reason, it was these programmes that came to mind as I delved deeper and deeper into the short stories of Cold Mirrors.

The first thing that caught my eye though was the dedication, to Sebastian Horsley. I thought, if this author 'gets' Sebastian, then this book would be for me. And it was. I was engrossed. Each story appealed to my interest in the horrific. As I read them, it crossed my mind (while smiling) that, how could someone think of such despicable acts? And what kind of sick mind must they have? Well luckily, a very sick one. But the author does more than just take the reader into a dark place, he shows us how a short story should be constructed. One story (just two pages long) called Clown Stations, stayed with me for a few days after. There's a whole film there in just 600 words.

C.J. Lines is a master short story teller. I know that sounds like a terrible cliché, but these really are Roald Dahl stories for adults. If ever Hammer is looking to revive their classic tv series, then they should tread carefully into the world of Cold Mirrors.

Oh, and Sebastian would definitely have approved.

[G.R. Yeates · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of speculative fiction with more than a touch of darkness to it.

In Cold Mirrors, C.J. Lines explores the theme of outsiders; how they are able to function, dysfunction and be created. The variety of stories used to explore this theme is impressive for a single author as black comedy rubs shoulders with pennydreadful drama, gore-soaked horror, reflective vignettes and old folktales translated into modern settings. To pick personal favourites from the collection, I will plump for two of the vignettes: Clown Stations and Gaijin.

The stories in this collection are exceptionally well-polished and presented.

A recommended read.

[Lorrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’d heard good things about CJ Lines’s Cold Mirrors collection: dark, short fiction that would capture my imagination and leave me thinking long after the last page was finished. The book has left me thinking, certainly, but sadly for Lines - clearly an enthusiastic and prolific writer of fiction - these thoughts are far from positive.

The cover of this self-published collection gives due warning to readers: a poor quality photograph of an attractive but slightly baffled-looking young, blonde woman with sequins stuck to her face, and a back cover quote reading, “Possibly the finest writer in the country.” Even were this the finest anthology that self-publishing had ever seen, a quote like that sets it up to disappoint, and disappoint it does - in a multitude of ways.

With 14 stories to choose from, Cold Mirrors isn’t stingy in its offerings; the problem comes when one realises that certain themes are doomed to recur, creeping in on the first pages and ultimately trampling the seeds of good ideas that some of these stories undoubtedly contain.

The dead wife/girlfriend/mother trope is done to…well, death, actually. Women in Lines’s stories drop like flies: they’re either dead already, providing a convenient motivation for the frequently heroic male protagonists (The Trending, Debut, Monkey House), or they’re murdered in the course of events, either as a handy plot driver or just as par for the course (Lambkin, Duplicity, Emerson’s Last Stand), on occasions by the male characters themselves, in a lazy Male Violence As Horror move.

Where women aren’t literally murdered, they might as well be, being either completely absent (Stop Press, Emmeline, The Monkey House) or reduced to lazy and offensive stereotypes - Lambkin’s “desperate” and “annoying” female housemate who is unable to find a job, is jealous and possessive of the comparatively successful main protagonist (being secretly in love with him as she is - he concludes), and is ultimately murdered in a gruesome fashion while providing childcare to a friend. Or, from the same story, the landlord’s daughter - an unnamed “young brunette”; - whose only role is to serve the main character’s food and inform him of local legends as she sits opposite him “brazenly” before being called out of the scene by her father who wants her to go and cook more pies.

In the realms of extras, prostitutes and unfortunate women appear, to be groped or helped by male characters; other women are characterised as bitchy, gossipy harridans, and are frequently referred to as “girls”.

The only female characters with any agency (let’s say Katie from Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be, Maria and Diana from Come Die With Me, and Sue from Patrick O’Hare: King of the Freaks) are egregiously treated: Katie, in her mid-thirties, is a wretched failure with no relationship, no friends and a career in which she has been promoted as “an act of mercy to soften the embarrassment” of being at least 10 years older than her female colleagues - the “admin girls”.

In Come Die With Me, we encounter “young” and “slim” Maria, who is used to distract victims by wearing a short skirt and a schoolgirl outfit, and Diana, a “much older” and “voluptuous lady” who finds pleasure in masturbating while killing.

Sue, the 12-year-old female protagonist of Patrick O’Hare: King of the Freaks, is characterised as cowardly and afraid; she is, in turn, mocked and comforted by the two main male characters as she encounters the women and people of colour who populate the eponymous freak show. Ultimately, she is rewarded for her compassion to one of the unfortunate exhibits by being kidnapped and mutilated to become part of the show.

In the entire collection of short stories, there are only two female protagonists, both of whom meet grisly ends. Two is also the number of explicitly non-white characters in the book: Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be features a Chinese male character who speaks with simplified, broken English, runs a mystical herb shop and bows at the main character when she visits his stall, in what one assumes is a convenient generic Eastern gesture of servitude. Patrick O’Hare: King of the Freaks fares even worse, choosing as it does to have a Black man of small stature - imaginatively named “Congo” - eating raw meat in a cage as white people look on.

Let it not be said that there is no room for racist, misogynist and otherwise bigoted characters: there absolutely is, and perhaps especially in fiction designed to frighten, disturb and discomfit, as Cold Mirrors is. However, to encounter a collection of stories with such deeply entrenched white male privilege, right across the board, is an unfortunate and dismaying thing. Not one of the stories escapes these tendencies, and it renders the reader less than generous when confronted with other less-than-perfect moments: excessive alliteration and excruciating attempts at regional accents in Debut; an overly didactic exposition style throughout, in which the reader is force-fed pertinent details rather than being invited to nibble at them; and embarrassingly classless moments that unsuspend even the tiniest bit of disbelief - a conversation about sexually frustrated lesbian ewes in one story, a temptress black leather miniskirt in another.

In all, this is a deeply unfortunate collection of stories that left a sour taste in my mouth and a singing gap in my wallet where the money I paid for it used to be. I find myself wishing that I’d listened more carefully to the message that is transmitted loud and clear by the anonymous blonde woman on the cover: this is men’s work, but women are jolly handy for putting a pretty - or sometimes ugly - face on things.

[Ollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first collection of short stories by British author C.J. Lines, bringing together pieces he has published in the past ten years in a variety of places, from magazines to anthologies. These stories vary between short vignettes to long horror tales, mixing the modern macabre with creepy Victoriana.

C.J. Lines is better known for his first novel, Filth Kiss, which was a sort of horror roller coaster ride set in a middle England town. The qualities in that novel that I loved so much - the attention to detail to what it's like to live in England today, from the banality of work and family relationships to the small-mindedness of provincial life - can be found in these collection of stories and are, in my opinion, its triumph. People who enjoy ghost stories from the Victorian age, and that style of writing, will also love some of the stories gathered here, in particular Debut. My favourite stories were The Trending, about the dead coming back to life with the help of Twitter, and Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be, for bringing together the weird with 80s New Wave music.

A collection to keep you company for the long winter nights ahead.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are absorbing and unsettling. I read them in two sittings (only stopping because it was time to get off the train!), and was left with the very satisfied yet uneasy feeling I get every year with the New Year's Twilight Zone marathon on TV. That's just about the best compliment I can give any anthology :).

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and with some great twists. (I only figured out the ending in one of the stories!) I wish there were more books by this author - I've read the two he has published so far, and enjoyed them both very much.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book of short stories that can be gruesome, creepy, funny, tragic or horrifying or any of the above. Well written, definitely worth a read.

[Jason Brawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody brilliant. A great writer and truly scary.