Marked to Die

I've got a story in Marked to Die: A Tribute to Mark Samuels. Don't worry, Mark's not dead, it's just that editor Justin Isis got tired of waiting for Mark to die of natural causes and it turns out that murder is illegal so Justin just went ahead and did the book now.

Lots of topnotch authors in the anthology; award winners and bestselling novelists including Reggie Oliver, Thana Niveau, John Lllewellyn Probert, Adam Nevill, and Simon Clark.

My story, 'The Carnivore of Monsters' is a bonkers piece of cosmic horror. Here's a quick sample:

She takes a book from her satchel, an ancient tome with stiff covers of faded leather and an arthritic spine that cracks and groans as she opens the book and lays it on the pavement. I'm guessing she used her position at the British Library to procure this arcane volume. As she stands the book levitates, floating up level with her head. Brittle pages turn, crumbling in the chill evening air, fragments fluttering away on the breeze, curling up like autumn leaves before vanishing in the gloom. As each page disintegrates words form in the air, glowing white against the darkness, an illuminated manuscript.

The universe is information. Quarks pass signals to leptons, leptons pass signals to bosons. And so the universe takes shape. Liquids flow, gases drift, solids cohere. Patterns form, motifs recur; a structure is revealed, no matter how haphazard or obscure. Reality follows a narrative. information distorts, signal becomes noise meaning lost pattern ruinedruinedruined

More words appear.

The universe is gravity. It meshes with space and time, curving them, bending and shaping to its dictates. There is a density to gravity but also a hollowness, a swirling vortex of solid emptiness that tears at reality seeking to reclaim what is lost, and in doing so it creates a bright hell, a dark heaven.