Black Static Issue 59

Black Static

by Andy Cox (Editor), Kristi DeMeester (Contributor), Kirsten Kaschock (Contributor)

The July–August issue contains new dark stories by seven women authors: Kristi DeMeester, Kirsten Kaschock, Rosalie Parker, Damien Angelica Walters, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Sarah Read, and YZ Chin. The cover art is by Richard Wagner. Features: Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore; Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker; Case Notes by Peter Tennant (24 pages of reviews of books by women authors, including Freda Warrington's collection, 'Nights of Blood Wine', a duo from Joyce Carol Oates, and an in-depth interview with Gwendolyn Kiste); Blood Spectrum by Gary Couzens (film reviews).


The cover art is by Richard Wagner


Fiction:


When We Are Open Wide by Kristi DeMeester


The Body is Concentrated Ground by Kirsten Kaschock
illustrated by Richard Wagner


The Dreaming by Rosalie Parker


Here, Only Sorrow by Damien Angelica Walters


Ghost Town by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam


Endoskeletal by Sarah Read


To Dance is Feline by YZ Chin
illustrated by Richard Wagner


Columns:


Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker


Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore


Reviews:


Case Notes: Book Reviews by Peter Tennant


WEIRD WANDERINGS: GWENDOLYN KISTE
And Her Smile Will Untether The Universe
plus author interview


KAIJU REVISITED
Marta Martinez Saves the World by Victorya Chase
Home Birth by Jessica McHugh
Ghost in the Machine by K.H. Koehler
The Thing in the Ice by E. Catherine Tobler


JOYCE CAROL OATES: 13 STORIES IN 2 BOOKS
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror
Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense


GRAB ’EM WHILE THEY’RE YOUNG
Fir by Sharon Gosling
In the Dark, In the Woods by Eliza Wass


SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS: TWO TO GO
Nights of Blood Wine by Freda Warrington
Singing With All My Skin and Bone by Sunny Moraine


SIX NOVELS
Evil Games by Angela Marsons
Rawblood by Catriona Ward
Thin Air by Michelle Paver
The River at Night by Erica Ferencik
The Last One by Alexandra Oliva
Aletheia by J.S. Breukelaar


Blood Spectrum: DVD/Blu-ray/VOD Reviews by Gary Couzens
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Phenomena, Brain Damage, Prevenge, Raw, XX, Demon Hunter, Underworld: Blood Wars, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Elle, The Great Wall, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Madhouse, Wolf Guy, Dead Awake, Don't Hang Up, Taboo

Magazine

First published July 1, 2017

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

As usual, the graphics are much more interesting than the text. The Rosalie Parker story is inferior to most of the pieces in Old Knowledge. Handy for the reviews, though I'm not a big fan of Tennant's rambling style.

[Steven Dines · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this issue, alongside the columns, book and film reviews, and an in-depth interview with Gwendolyn Kiste, there are seven short stories by women. My top picks were 'When We Are Open Wide' by Kristi DeMeester and 'Endoskeletal' by Sarah Read.

[Sarah Budd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, as usual!

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

WHEN WE ARE OPEN WIDE by Kristi DeMeester

“An empty space. Like me. Filled up with a terrible blankness.”

A semi-nightmarishly poetic backstory with yet no front. A girl’s first view of her perioding, and of her mother’s own abruptions of new life, epochs sort of tied together across the emptiness into which new life goes when untenable, monsters inside, clawing, transmigrating between blood and flesh, between daughter and mother. This girl’s later casual affair with a boy, or at least casual to him, then her mother’s later, perhaps too late, attempts at love and new life. And then the monsters fructify each other to create, by some law of averages, at least one new female life as a new candidate for emptied perioding. However abrupt, however semi-nightmarish.
Always to be new female life, alway to be mothers and sisters and daughters of or by these coming backstories, it seems …perhaps only one Father to nurture if not to seed from outset … for such life to take root each time it is so disposed?
A free-wheeling interpretation of my experience of reading this intense story, and the prospect of reading the others in this Black Static.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[John W. Dennehy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.