The Weight of Words

Another new story of mine appears in "The Weight of Words", edited by Dave McKean and William Schafer, and published by Subterranean Press.

Quoting from the publisher's description:

The consummate artistry of Dave McKean has permeated popular culture for more than thirty years. His images, at once bizarre, beautiful, and instantly recognizable, have graced an impressive array of books, CDs, graphic novels, and films. In The Weight of Words, ten of our finest contemporary storytellers, among them the artist himself, have created a series of varied, compelling narratives, each inspired by one of McKean’s extraordinary paintings. The result is a unique collaborative effort in which words and pictures enhance and illuminate each other on page after page.

Like the other authors, I was sent a portfolio of Dave McKean's phenomenal and unsettling images to examine and hopefully be inspired by, and one in particular leapt out at me and immediately suggested both a story and a setting. My piece, Belladonna Nights, is set in the same distant future as House of Suns, and also features Campion from that novel. For me it was deeply enjoyable to re-immerse myself in that universe and explore some of the more arcane traditions of the Lines.

Here's a short excerpt:

I had been thinking about Campion long before I caught him leaving the flowers at my door.

It was the custom of Mimosa Line to admit witnesses to our reunions. Across the thousand nights of our celebration a few dozen guests would mingle with us, sharing in the uploading of our consensus memories, the individual experiences gathered during our two-hundred thousand year circuits of the galaxy.

They had arrived from deepest space, their ships sharing the same crowded orbits as our own nine hundred and ninety nine vessels. Some were members of other Lines—there were Jurtinas, Marcellins and Torquatas—while others were representatives of some of the more established planetary and stellar cultures. There were ambassadors of the Centaurs, Redeemers and the Canopus Sodality. There were also Machine People in attendance, ours being one of the few Lines that maintained cordial ties with the robots of the Monoceros Ring.

And there was Campion, sole representative of Gentian Line, one of the oldest in the Commonality. Gentian Line went all the way back to the Golden Hour, back to the first thousand years of the human spacefaring era. Campion was a popular guest, always on someone or other’s arm. It helped that he was naturally at ease among strangers, with a ready smile and an easy, affable manner—full of his own stories, but equally willing to lean back and listen to ours, nodding and laughing in all the right places. He had adopted a slight, unassuming anatomy, with an open, friendly face and a head of tight curls that lent him a guileless, boyish appearance. His clothes and tastes were never ostentatious, and he mingled as effortlessly with the other guests as he did with the members of our Line. He seemed infinitely approachable, ready to talk to anyone.

Except me.

The book (as far as I can tell, only the trade edition has not already sold out) may be ordered from Subterranean Press:

http://subterraneanpress.com/mckean-the-weight-of-words

Or PS Publishing:

http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-weight-of-words-preorder-by-dave-mckean-and-william-schafer-eds-4123-p.asp