LIVING IN THE SHADOWS

Some nice results from the intersection of my world and that of the Shadowed Realms folks this week.

Firstly, the Shadow Box anthology has been released, and it's a bloody screamer. 70 stories, artwork, sound files, interactive little thingamabobbies that technoluddites like me can look at but not describe, and frankly, it's the most beautiful package I've seen in a long time. It's insultingly cheap ($5 for a CD or $3 for an email download) and you only need Adobe Acrobat v6 or thereabouts to play it. There will be no better deal in SF in your lifetime, I tells 'ee! All the money goes to charity, so you get to polish your karma into the bargain.

And it is the first ever appearance of Luscious and myself in the same work as self-submitting authors, so it's a piece of history to boot!

Really, seriously, you should buy this one.

To complement such good news, a couple of very positive reviews have appeared in the wake of Decimated appearing in Shadowed Realms #8 recently, to whit:

From Horroscope:

DECIMATED, by Lee Battersby, is a serial look at torture. These types of stories are always uncomfortable and Lee does a fine job of it. Like previous stories in Shadowed Realms, it has a kind of futuristic fatalism. Our main guy has been ‘chosen’ to undertake a ritual involving scalpels and insects. The sentences - especially toward the conclusion – are disturbing, so it fits nice and snug in a horror anthology. Be sure to read his biography; it’s impressive. A fine line for me was: My tongue flaps about my cavernous maw . . .

(I'm pretty sure they mean the line is in the story, not my biography... :) )

And from Tangent Online:

"Decimated" by Lee Battersby is more like it, a skin-crawling visceral horror story, designed to make you flinch and grit your teeth. Battersby maintains the pace cleverly, placing backstory and setting effortlessly, and leaving the reader wanting to know more. A good example of flash fiction, and a great example of how to make a reader cringe. A must read for this issue, and another great effort from this talented Aussie.

"Talented Aussie". Maaaaaaaaaaattttteeeee. I'll take that :)