Shadows of the Apt

This is the story that appeared in Deathray a few months back, which they're happy for me to repost on here by now. I'm planning this to be the first in a sequence, but we'll see how that goes. There is a somewhat peculiar genesis for this particular story that centres on a live role-playing group that I and some friends […]

I'm delighted to bring you a new piece of fiction, set in the post-war Commonweal and focusing on Roach-kinden, amongst others, by new writer Grahame Jones. The story is here. Grahame writes, of himself: " Well, what can I say about me? Just the usual sort of fluff. In 1792 I was washed up on the shore of […]

So to another piece of first person perspective. First person stories have particular challenges, and there is a kind of continuüm that falls from the absolute purist first person, where what you get is exactly what the narrator would say or write, down to something that is basically a story like any other, with precious little concession […]

A new story introducing a different kind of Fly-kinden. Find it here. Adam writes: "I’m Adam. I write. I suppose I’m a kind of Caliban in this brave new world; I don’t write a blog. I’ve never really learnt the knack. I do a little bit for Yog-Sothoth (the Bookshelf, on Yog Radio – look for it in the audio downloads at […]

Another perspective on the Twelve-year War, starring the Roach-kinden Sfayot. This story has two influences: Conrad's Heart of Darkness (and Apocalypse Now that followed it) and the track "Mercutio's Death" from the 2^nd soundtrack volume (i.e. the primarily score volume rather than the song album) to Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which only goes to show how […]

This is a première for the Shadows of the Apt site: the very first guest writer's story. This month I give to you The Scent of Tears by Keris McDonald, who writes: "Keris McDonald is an established genre writer with 5 books to her name … Just not in this genre. And not her real-life name either, actually. She was […]

So, after confirming that I wouldn't be using major characters from the books in these, here's a story about Hokiak. Well, perhaps he's not a maincharacter, but he certainly is persistent. This story has nothing whatsoever to do with postmodernist twentieth century poetry, and most especially nothing to do with TS Eliot(1). However, Eliot exerts a strange fascination on […]

This is one of my favourites, of the kinden stories I've posted up here, although it is something of a change of pace. There are three people in particular I should acknowledge, on the road to Queen of the Night. The first is a Mr Mozart, of whom you may have heard, whose contribution to the story is, hopefully, […]

This month's story is a delve into the history of Collegium and the Beetle-kinden, taking place a generation before the events in Empire in Black and Gold. The world of Empire is the immediate product of the world shown in this story, from the advances of the Apt to Collegium's burgeoning conflict with the Ant-kinden of neighbouring […]

  The latest Shadows of the Apt short story is to be found here. A lot of this batch of stories are, as you may have noticed, taking place specifically up in the Commonweal during the Twelve-years War with the Empire, a conflict over before Empire in Black and Gold starts, and taking place in lands […]