Johann Carlisle's Portfolio

Like Smoke

2010-08-07T22:11:00.001+01:00

Rigor Amortis
Edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt.
Absolute XPress.
October 1, 2010.

I wrote this flash fiction piece in response to a call on Twitter for an anthology of romantic or erotic fiction involving zombies. It would be easy to be tasteless, even easier to be lazy, but I don't think that's what the editors were looking for. I look forward to reading the rest of the collection, and I'm delighted to have made the cut.

An Ethnographer's Record (reprint)

2009-04-12T20:51:00.003+01:00

Sein und Werden
3.4, Spring 2009 "Cinematique"
http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/3_4/page23.html

Never entirely satisfied with what was always a rather experimental piece, I've been tinkering with this story in the couple years since it was accepted by Black Petals. I won't try to claim that it's a different story--it really isn't--but it is somewhat rewritten. Still not perfect: I've just spotted another reference to sound in what's supposed to be a silent movie. But okay. (I should really spend this much effort on the novel, shouldn't I?)

Hey, Sein und Werden is a *very* exciting magazine to be published by!

An Ethnographer's Record

2007-07-21T04:40:00.000+01:00

Black Petals
Issue 40 (Summer 2007), pp. 46-8

My short story An Ethnographer's Record, a slightly unreal tale of celluloid and shamanism, was published in Black Petals. Slightly cramped between a cluster of poems, but preceeded by a full-page, custom illustration. I like. It's a classy magazine, and they've handled it well. Thanks.

Alone in the World

2007-03-02T23:58:00.000Z

The Harrow
Vol 10, No 3 (March 2007)
http://theharrow.com/journal/index.php/journal/article/view/1980/553

This story, a ghostly tale about loneliness and alienation, has been published by the very prestigious magazine The Harrow, about which I'm hugely chuffed! They asked me to change the title, which was orginally 'World Full of Ghosts', because they felt it rather gave the game away. I struggled for a while with that thought, mainly because I couldn't think of anything else that caught quite the tone I thought the original did, but I think 'Alone in the World' actually does it. (Thanks also to the readers of the BSFA Orbiter group for invaluable advice on this story.)

Carlisle, Johann. "Alone in the World" The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror [Online], 10 28 Feb 2007

Haiku: medicine

2006-12-14T23:02:00.000Z

The wise woman stirs
Herbs to heal my wife—or does
The witch brew poison?

Overnight

2006-10-15T15:01:00.001+01:00

Sinister Tales
Volume 1 Issue 2 (October 2006), p. 38.

My short story 'Overnight'—a tragic, nightmarish piece set in the same world as my post-apocalyptic detective novel Ghost Town—appeared in Sinister Tales vol 1 issue 2. They managed to fit this 1250-word story on a single page, which was surprising, but I guess they had a lot to fit between the covers. (No illustration to share for this one.)

Haiku: dragon

2006-08-26T10:32:00.000+01:00

A huge green dragon
With a nipple as its tongue
Coiled around her chest

Couple of reviews

2005-12-27T12:49:00.000Z

So, 2005 wasn't quite the comeback year I was planning (too much else going on, as always). If I didn't just *know* it would doom me from the off I'd make a new year's resolution to do better in '06. But anyway, I've joined a BSFA orbiter which is cool both because it gets me valuable feedback, and a useful encouragement to actually *finish* stuff I've started. In addition to the Wolf story, this year I have at least published a couple of reviews: the first in futureFire on Tim Lees' The Life to Come, and the second in Matrix on the movie of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (The only fiction submission I ventured in '05, a new cyberpunk piece, has been rejected...)

The Wolf Behind the Sun

2005-01-05T07:00:00.000Z

The Future Fire
Issue 2005.01, January 2005
http://futurefire.net/2005.01/fiction/wolf.html

My "comeback" story, after many years not writing because I was "too busy" doing other things. (Mostly writing!) This story started life as a dense, surreal, experimental piece with multiple first-person narratives that switched from one to the other without any flags. Thanks to some helpful readers over the years (including Kate Pullinger, and now the FF fiction editors), it is now much more readable.

The Curse of the Hunter

1992-05-06T13:45:00.000+01:00

The Velvet Vampire fanzine
Issue XVI, Spring 1992

This story was the intro to a longer piece about the vampire Juge LeBonne and his witch sister Katryn. It had a Western setting, with undertones of Near Dark-esque PunkVamp. In a series of rewrites over the years, the two protagonists have switched places, narrative roles, and even genders.

A version of the same piece was also used as the intro to my AI novel Death of a Head (unpublished).

Lovepain of Eternal Night

1991-12-14T06:33:00.000Z

The Velvet Vampire fanzine
Issue XV, Winter 1991

My first publication (as far as I can remember) was a short poem about a vampire who loved mortal women but refused to save them beyond the span of their natural lives. Probably quite adolescent--given my age at the time!

Lions, Lions, Run Away!

1978-03-17T11:58:00.008Z