#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day16 #TheGrandchildren @meganjstaylor.bsky.social A wonderfully, terrifyingly bleak exposé of permissive parenting & the parasitism of offspring.
I don't think playing in a sandpit with my daughter, FLORA, will ever be the same again.
*Juice-Juice-Juice* 👀
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day15 #Topsoil Night shift. Turfmen. A Sisyphean struggle. The pitch is alive with the sound of torment. But what lurks in the soil? Sings? Infects? What thrives on the toxicity of Matchday? As above, so below. A visceral, extraordinary work of weird fiction.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day14 #WaterPeople Robin has a new school. His mum has a new job. They both have a waterworld opening beneath them. A moving, powerful allegory of trying to stay afloat while holding onto the precious things in an increasingly self-interested & hostile world.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day13 #DreamOfTheCactusGarden A dream of/in a garden. A mise en abîme of dream. A bibliophile. A toxicologist. A botanist. Corporeal decay and decaying opulence. Un aide-mémoire. A haunting, oneiric tale of the recovery of selfhood from a mindscape of images.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day12 #OnlyAnimalsCanMakeMeSmile In a house, in a city, a man withdraws from the world. Misanthropy. Misophonia. Therianthropy? A lost (Oth/Lov)er. (Mis)understanding between man & beast. A disturbing modern fairytale which takes you to the heart of darkness.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day11 #SnakeTale Myth-busting, myth-building. Pádraig: invader; usurper; Master Manipulator. Joyce's sen pea trick with his shamwork. A majestic, beautifully caustic deconstruction of religion, appropriation, oppression & the 1st colonisation of Ireland.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day10 #Fabrication @imogenreid.bsky.social A stuttering, guttering image. Zooming in, zooming out. Breathless mise en abîme. Literature consumes and assumes cinema in a dizzying, disorientating, dolly-zoom nightmare.
Experimental writing at its very best.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day9 #OldTutorNewTutor A Pinteresque interloper. Or perhaps Potter's do-badder Martin? A locked room. A lost boy. A battle between good and evil or descent into madness? A chilling, spiralling tale of paranoia and familial alienation with a hair-raising coda.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day8 #TheJunction
open.spotify.com/track/6r6CXC...
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day8 #TheJunction Failure to slow; thirst for sloe. Apron strings cut, one way or another. Broken biscuits, broken radio; a break-up. Beginning of a beautiful friendship? Another stellar, eerily wry yarn from a maestro of the uncanny. youtu.be/2wgFGUx-pXw?...
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day7 #Removals @iancritchley.bsky.social A stagnating adult orphan. Bleach & Mrs B's boxes. Grief. Longing also, though try not to long *too* much: your longing may well come true. But at what cost? A TheThe number? A superbly chilling tale of the unexpected.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day6 #Snowdrops A snatched glance. A damaged wave. Windows and apparitions before, beyond and within the glass. A creeping, Hadean nightmare of grief, denial and traumatic repetition. The mundane utterance, 'The Bolognese is ready', will now forever haunt me.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day5 #TheLittleGhost Hauntings. Uprootings. Spectral trees. Sanctuary in peril. To touch palms and palms held.
A beautifully-drawn, melancholic portrait of isolation & the complexity of fear. Because sometimes, a ghost is the only comfort you can count on.
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day4 #TheJudgment Buildings, conversions & trauma porn opportunism. Absences. And an absence of absolution? The Women. The Questions. The Game. A controlled, spine-tingling #folkhorror that'll have you checking the fusebox.
Not that it'll do you any good...
#The16DaysOf @nightjarpress.bsky.social #Day3 Reading signals for national security. (Mis)reading signals for personal security. Neigh/naybours. Books, covers. Sheds, shelters, trapdoors. Mr Dipper & Mr H. Model railways & simulacra.
A terrifying tale of a near miss in a rose-tinted, humdrum past.
