Channel The Dark

Welcome, my dear darklings. It’s your non-local, multi-dimensional, shapeshifting Gatekeeper again. It has been far too long since Channel The Dark Vol. 1. I had never intended to leave you to your musings for such a time. You know how you humans get when left alone. And look at the mess you’ve made, finding yourselves in the middle of a resource-grab as world powers look to carve up the Earth and redefine the map. Megalomaniacs doing everything they can to pit you against each other and divert your attention from their endgame – power, money, and control. It’s the oldest game in the book, and I should know – I wrote it! Ah, memories.

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For those who don’t know what CTD is, the answer is simple – with so much darkness abound, we wish to encourage its ‘channelling’ into something productive, creative, cathartic, redemptive. In this context, writing is our way of shaping dark thoughts, worries, and fears into tangible expressions of our quest for understanding, belonging, and enduring. For while the universe all around us is wondrous and awe-inspiring, it can often be difficult to find our way in a world shaped by others, into which we are born and into which we grow to find layers of responsibility and obligation thrust upon us. We face trial and hardship, loss and pain, insult and mockery; and yet we encounter where we can friendship, loyalty, love, passion, and the transcendent nature of artistic expression through which we can articulate all of the above, and more.

 

By ‘channelling the dark’, we can direct our lives towards the positive, for often it is our outlook alone that sustains us and helps us repel borders against all that would seek to bring us down. At our first Channel The Dark event, in May 2023, we heard contributing and guest authors speak of how their writing helped them to navigate this sometimes troubling world. We will do the same for the release of this volume.

 

So, on to Volume 2, and do we have an eclectic collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for you? The answer, darklings, is yes (for those of who unfamiliar with the rhetorical).

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As our format went before, so too it goes here, but with a slight tweak to bring it into line with our new SFI (Speculative Fiction Ireland) project: Part 1 features SFI members; while Part 2 features both original works from our Temple Dark Books authors (some written for this volume) as well as extracts from their recently published and upcoming novels.

 

Joining us in this volume in Part 1, all the way from Canada via…uh…e-mail, is Spencer Sekulin, a man of many talents and faces, paramedic by day (and probably night, when you people go nuts), Voiceover Artist, Writer, and General Creator by whatever hours are left. Check out his work on spencersekulin.net. In CTD Vol. 2, Spencer has kindly offered Deathless, a substantial dark fantasy tale that will leave you wanting more from its truly versatile creator.

 

Recently fled to Canada (possibly to track down Spencer Sekulin), one of our Irish SFI members, Eoin Hill, treats us to his literary feast, The Sparrow; before we cross the border (legally and with an unprovocative colour to our faces) into the U.S.A. with Peace Treaty from Robbie Sheerin. From our neck of the woods (here in Ireland, that is), we are delighted to have from Axel Kelly his fierce Sci-Fi actioner Gazing Into The Abyss; from Anthony Brophy the enigmatic strangeness of Lost Ballad of the Plastic Swans; from Cork horror writer David O’Mahony we creep through Weighed Down until we find the light (check out David’s other works in our SFI Store); Luke O’Connell takes us into the skin-crawling darkness with Skitter; and Bradshaw is a claustrophobic sci-fi mystery from Sean Richardson.

 

Part 2 will introduce you to our most recent release, Lichtenberg by Tom O’Connell, but Tom has also given us Problem Child, the submission that put him on our radar. Our Aussie Master of Sci-Fi, Ishmael A. Soledad offers Erasure, which follows an extract from his upcoming release, Death, the second volume of his stunning hexalogy Descent. If you haven’t yet read Book 1, Diathesis, find it now! My alter-ego, Ronald A. Geobey, has another epic poem for you, in the form of The Dark Horseman, set in the American south (but not South America), which follows an extract from Tears of The Dragon, Book 4 of his game-changing SFF epic, Kiranis. We’ll then bring you to a near-future America in Welsh author David Smith’s Nematodes, in which an orchestrated global pandemic means that every adult has become a flesh-eating ghoul, while every child faces the same in the wake of puberty. This one is lots of fun and has been described as Lord of The Flies meets Romero’s The Crazies.

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Until we meet again, darklings, I, your eminent Gatekeeper, who stands between you and that sweet, sweet madness that you all crave, bid you a good life. For it is one worth having.

 

PROCEEDS

 

I trust that you will find plenty in this volume to satisfy your taste for darkness, safe in the knowledge that its mission is to accentuate at all times our struggle for the light. All proceeds for this volume will go to the suicide prevention and mental health awareness service, SOSAD (Save our Sons and Daughters), whose passionate and caring staff rely fully on charitable donations and personal and private support. Find out more (and please donate if you can) on sosadireland.ie. Thank you for your support.

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Ronald A. Geobey, AKA The Gatekeeper