Velvet Tarantula literary magazine is based in Leicester, UK. It seeks to publish outstanding new short fiction that is dark and strange.
Editor: Gus Gresham
I’m a Leicester writer whose short stories have appeared in literary magazines and online. Many of those stories are collected in my book, Angel Reach.
I’m also author of the novel Kyiv Trance and author of the young adult novels Earthrise and Marmalade Skies.
Very happily married with two children, I’ve travelled widely and worked as a mechanical engineer, fruit picker, construction worker, environmental activist, writer, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal skills facilitator, building surveyor, mature student (MA creative writing; MSc building surveying).
How did the writing begin? I think it was the travelling that got me started. Fresh from ditching an engineering career in the early 1980s, I found my road guru lying stoned and unconscious at the edge of a vineyard in the afternoon sun, an empty Beaujolais bottle in the grass and a Jack Kerouac novel spread-eagled on his chest.
We picked grapes in the same picturesque French villages; laboured in olive groves on Crete and pumpkin paddocks in New South Wales; sought enlightenment in India and did the Auf Wiedersehen Pet bit on building sites in Germany. We followed seasonal work doing pretty much everything from thousand-acre wheat harvests to beachcombing. We slept in cornfields and woke up at dawn to wash our faces in the morning dew and start hitchhiking …
Tom Waits once sang about living on “dreams and train smoke”.
BOOKS by Gus Gresham
KYIV TRANCE.
Love. Loss. Betrayal. Revenge. Revolution.
Haunted by the mysterious, tragic death of his girlfriend 5 years earlier, university tutor Richard Farr escapes his spiralling life in London by travelling to Ukraine to teach English.
It is the winter of 2004 / 05, the midst of the Orange Revolution. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets to protest election-result rigging. Richard's arrival coincides with the first of a series of murders in the capital. Then he meets Nadya, who may turn out to be the love of his life or a femme fatale, or both. As they grow closer, her own tragic history is revealed. Ultimately, Richard will tread a dangerous, obsessive path, seeking happiness against the odds – as his life, the reign of the serial killer, and the political unrest in Kyiv all lead towards a shattering, interconnected climax.
MARMALADE SKIES. By turns entertaining, quirky, thrilling, dark and comic. Younger readers: discover how growing up in the 1970s was strikingly familiar but deliciously different. Adult readers: enter a pop-culture time-capsule that is part tribute, part polemic.
Vonnie is struggling to find her true self in a time when society does not favour strong, sassy females. Matt may be the closest she has to a friend, but Matt has problems with honesty and loyalty, and he is obsessed with another girl. Soon after starting at secondary school, Matt and Vonnie plan to run away from Blackthorn – Matt to escape the bullying gang-culture of school life, Vonnie to escape the dysfunctional domestic hell created by her “scaredy-cat mam and nutter of a stepdad”. And then their lives begin to get really challenging …
ANGEL REACH explores the human condition through flawed characters whose vital, often strange journeys may bring them happiness or ruin.
A few of the stories …
‘Falling in a Straight Line Around the Sun’. In Ireland, a bully finds personal and perhaps universal truth.
‘Angel of the North’. A visit from a tall man who smells of rust could be the antidote for Emily’s reclusiveness. But how can you trust somebody if you’ve never seen their eyes?
‘Woofers & Tweeters’. Finn, who lives in a Manhattan attic, may be a prophet or lunatic. In parallel, Tabbie takes on social injustice wherever she encounters it. While neither have much regard for their own safety, they inevitably affect the lives of others. What will become of Tabbie and Finn? And what will happen when their paths cross?
‘The Stonemason’s Daughter’. In an imagined Slavic folktale, Agata faces unimaginable challenges as she searches for the key to her life.
‘Hallucinating Andromeda’. An astronaut is locked in an illuminating battle for survival on an exo-planet.
EARTHRISE. Can one 14-year-old girl infiltrate the nerve-centre of an all-powerful corporation in time to avert eco-Armageddon? Fasten seat-belts for mystery, suspense, twists and dark fantasy.
Erin is haunted by thoughts of our fragile blue world floating in the infinite blackness of space, and she doesn't want the environment to be trashed. With the help of her friends from the rock band – Nisha, Kane, Josh, Logan – she aims to raise awareness and lobby politicians and business leaders into action before it’s too late. But then Erin uncovers evidence of a terrifying supernatural conspiracy that can only be stopped by risking everything in a parallel dimension known as Chthonia, a place usually only glimpsed by humans during nightmares or psychosis ...