Most entries on this blog are fiction, about my fantasy city of Teleleli and its wider world. However some entries are about real world events. For example anything marked publishing is about my attempts to get my stories and poems published..
Just as our universe is said to be finite yet unbounded, I believe that Teleleli is bounded (by the city walls), but infinite. This seems the best explanation for its apparently inexhaustible variety.
‘Come to Elfland,’ the troll said.
The child thought for awhile. Other children had gone, and the elves always sent a changeling in their place, so that nobody quite missed them and nobody really knew. She thought awhile of the wonder and wildness of Elfland, and then of her own home.
‘N-no,’ said the child.
‘Why not?’ said the troll.
‘Mother made a jam roll this morning,’ said the child.
Lord Dunsany.
In a previous post I briefly discussed Haitian folklore about zombies (quite different to zombies in Western popular culture, which are largely based on the film Night of the Living Dead). In particular I mentioned Wade Davis’ theories that there’s some truth to the idea that Haitian bokors can turn people into zombies.
Anyway, I wanted to add that these ideas would be particularly useful for Carcosa, which tries to combine horror with a non-supernatural explanation for everything.
As I said before, this is a good introduction to the subject. But Wade Davis wrote two books about his investigations in Haiti: The Serpent and the Rainbow and Passage of Darkness. The Serpent and the Rainbow was adapted into a film, but the adaptation doesn’t seem to have kept much of the original book.
The website Horror Addicts has an interview with me, which is here. This is a bit of a milestone for me because, while I’ve had lots of interviews on the net, in this case they approached me rather than the other way round.
The inhabitants of this island are the size of humans, and look like humans, but they are flat silhouettes made of paper. All fire is forbidden on the island, even so much as a pipe. They are best-known for the boats they make, which are made from a single piece of paper, and can be folded up and carried in a pocket.
