A Sinister Quartet: An All Authors-Signed Giveaway, with 4 Original Postcards by Paula Arwen Owen
We, the authors of The Sinister Quartet, have done it all this year!
We’ve done ZOOM readings! We’ve made up playlists, recipes, cocktails (and mocktails!) to go with our dark-hearted stories! We’ve done a Reddit AMA, and The Big Idea over at Scalzi’s blog!
Lately, we did that GINORMOUS interview with Zig Zag Claybourne here at Black Gate magazine!
And now, we’ve got PRESENTS! For YOU!
We’re doing a GIVEAWAY here at Black Gate magazine!
HERE’S HOW IT WORKS.
In the comments, or in an email to mythicdelirium @ gmail dot com, quote your favorite line from a dark fantasy or horror book.
For example, I have a friend who got: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed,” tattooed across her ribs, and if she were playing I’d bet she’d be posting that in the comments.
We will keep the contest open till midnight on Sunday October 25th, and announce the winners on Monday October 26th. We will choose four winners, and each will receive:
One copy of The Sinister Quartet, signed by all the authors–Mike Allen, C. S. E. Cooney, Amanda J. McGee, and Jessica P. Wick, as well as cover artist Jason Wren, and layout artist Brett Massé.
Plus!
Because we think Black Gate readers (and SFF and Horror fans in general) are SPIFFY!
We have MORE PRESENTS!
With your SIGNED BOOK, you will get four postcards of original art by Paula Arwen Owen (Etsy, Facebook, Insta), each postcard designed for one of the stories in our book!
Hope to see your favorite quotes in the comments — and to send you LUCKY FOUR these treasures soon!
All entries become the property of Mythic Delirium. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. The judge’s decision (capricious as it may be) is final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables.
“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”
– Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
“As I stared into the fire, it seemed more possible than I would have liked to believe that someday, perhaps after a blow on the head, perhaps for no discernable cause, my imagination and my reason might reverse their places—just as two friends who come every day to the same seats in some public garden might at last decide for novelty’s sake to exchange them.”
– Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor
“You can, if you find yourself in a strange world, ignore the intuition of your friend who devoured his twin in the womb and is seeing the world with one of her eyes. You would probably be foolish to do so, but I suppose it’s an option that you do have.” – T. Kingfisher, THE HOLLOW PLACES, 2020
These are all marvelous!
I love Ray Bradbury: he taught me about adjectives. “Snow-pale-death-shimmering.” I hadn’t known people could WRITE like that!
I’d read Haunting of Hill House a while ago–loved it, though not as much as We Have Always Lived in the Castle–and recently listened to it on audiobook. Oh, it was deliciously disturbing!
And there is my Gene! That makes me want to re-read Sword of the Lictor.
T. Kingfisher has been coming up in my recs ALL OVER THE PLACE. This is certainly spurring me towards my first ever read!
“I couldn’t comprehend what had happened to her in the time it took for two songs to play on a turntable.
Blood and spit dripped from needle-like teeth that filled the monster’s mouth.”
~ Kenesha Williams, Blood Debt
“ Shut me up in a dark closet and I will observe after a while, that some places in it are darker than others.”
Henry James, The Ghostly Rental
Ooh! I must read that Kenesha Williams! What little work I’ve read of hers, I’ve loved!
And I’ve not read James’s Ghostly Rental either! To check out!
Well I am not much of a horror reader usually, but I loved these four stories and would love to win this package! (May I just say, Paula Arwen Owen’s art looks great on Black Gates layout!)
Choosing is impossible! Even from EACH STORY it’s impossible. But here is a quote from each
from THE TWICE-DROWNED SAINT: “He was like a cricket some kid had poured diatomite over. He was a murderer. A fanatic for the angels. Worse, a teenager.”
from AN UNKINDNESS: “I lurked. I am quite good at lurking at balls.”
from VIRIDIAN: “Claire, the first wife, laughs a bitter laugh. It is the sound of the world coming undone.”
from THE COMFORTER: “The hole her body peels apart to reveal extends outside the room, the house, the world, and it’s filled with screaming multitudes”
OH, THANK YOU, ASAKIYUME!
(That line about diatomite cracked me up at the time. I was a sister of 5 teenaged brothers at a certain time in my life…)
“The lilies I always associate with him; that are white. And stain you.” –Angela Carter, “The Bloody Chamber”
That makes me want to reread that. Haven’t since I was a child. I recently read a few of Carter’s screenplays and radio plays, which was fascinating.
“As I adjusted to the light, the Crawler kept changing at a lightning pace, as if to mock my ability to comprehend it. It was a figure within a series of refracted panes of glass. It was a series of layers in the shape of an archway. It was a great sluglike monster ringed by satellites of even odder creatures. It was a glistening star. My eyes kept glancing off of it as if an optic nerve was not enough.”
— Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Oh, I loved the creepy dank greening of Annihilation! I still remember it like some kind of dream I was having.