Author Archives: kvtaylor

 The cover to our Winter issue during Vol II was painted, acrylic on canvas, in a style akin to the Timurid-Persian style by Carrie Cuinn. This goes so beautifully with Mari Ness’s cover story, “In the Pits of Isfhan”. The story is a deep one, its significance as multi-layered as its hero and many secondaries.

It’s one of our absolute favorite historical fantasies–Ah, but talking about it can’t really do it justice. An excerpt would make more sense:

The fight seems to last for hours, although we are no judges of time. At last, the griffin frees its beak from the man’s shoulders, gives a final shriek, and soars up in the sky, although it is bleeding from every leg, and we can almost feel the strain upon its shoulders. The man is in no better shape, but as the griffin rises, he manages to swing his sword up and into the griffin’s neck before cutting through to its heart. Their fall is sudden, harsh. The griffin lands upon the man, its glittering feathers spraying everywhere in a dizzying fashion.

The crowd is silent.

This is how it works, in the markets of Isfhan: The purchaser must rise, alone, unassisted. Once this is done, they approach, with chilled rose or lemon water and fruit, and bow. The purchaser drinks, and eats, and then displays money and jewels. We are expensive, their prisoners, most expensive. The price is handed over, with another bow.

You are honored, they tell us, so honored. For what other women would be worth such a battle, such a victory, such a triumph?

I stare at the griffin, at its glittering glorious wings. An honor, an honor.

Volume II, Issue 2 contains stories by R.A. Keenan, T.J. McIntyre, Jan Stinchcomb, Samantha Boyette, and Sylvia Hiven. Sea brides and rebellious shadows, Victorian magicians and goblins–even a nod to an old favorite. Something for every pulp taste, as usual.

 For our first anniversary issue, we were lucky enough to have two returning artists grace our cover: Courtney Bernard, who not only provided the cover for VI #1, but also did our signature portrait of Magdala Twistleton, and William Vitka, who penned the cover story, “Janitors of the Cosmos”.

It may seem like a simple urban fantasy escape, but like everything Vitka pens, “Janitors” is more complicated than it looks on the surface, scraping through such issues as econoslavery, employment, and, well, the family issues represented by Jack and Caleb, our heroes, are many and varied.

And who could resist the little energy-collector “Cthulittle” squids? Like our real cover boy, to whom Caleb has to play second fiddle on Courtney’s cover.

Jack used Ripper bullets almost exclusively on assassination missions. They were self-aware, and they loved their job.

Jack said, “Mark sighted.”

There was a hushed whisper as the Ripper left the barrel of Jack’s gun.

It announced itself and Caleb could hear all of it:

“Hello! I am a bullet! In a moment, part of me will separate into three sections. Each section will be a spinning blade. The other part of me will lodge itself in you and then explode. Isn’t that neat? Jack had the forethought to aim for your brain. You’ll be dead real soon. Hooray!”

The thing posing as a human outside the bar exploded from the neck up. Its tight pants stood for a moment, soaked in blood and matter. The lower half of it tried to walk. Took a step. Then fell.

Screams.

In a flash the soul shitter was gone, and in another, back — loaded with Litostian juice.

“Test run was good?” Jack asked. “The Cthulittle did … whatever?”

Caleb stared, somewhat astounded. “Yeah, good quick job.”

The little squid thing in front of him chirped. An automated containment bin rolled toward it. The creature hiked up its hindquarters and crapped energy into it.

It started to purr, and then burped as Caleb hoisted it in his arms. He tickled what he thought might be its chin. “Did you half digest a soul or what?” Caleb asked as the Cthulittle stretched, exhausted.

So cute, for a little soul-sucker, amiright?

Volume II, Issue 1 contains stories by S.J. Hirons, Ash Krafton, Mark Rossmore, and Sara Kate Ellis on our usual delicious variety of pulpy topics.

The cover for Volume I, Issue 4 of RPP was done by Laura Tolton. It’s just gorgeous enough to be based on Jessica Reisman’s “Flowertongue”, a poetic, weird, and yes, gorgeous tale that revolves around a very particular passion: orchids.  At least, on the surface.

Appropriately enough, it opens with a quote from Charles Darwin, then spins a narrative made up of intimate scenes and correspondence. When I first read it, it dragged me back in time… and then into a decidedly weirder and more wonderful place  inhabited by Gia, a girl with white hair and an orchid-collecting father.

“…The ropes that tie the queen become roots, and the queen herself becomes a flower that lives on rain and air and light, sheltered by the curupay, able to propagate herself by any method she desires.”

“And she desired to propagate through humans, yes,” Quillon’s voice startled Ames, somewhat, “that’s the tale. Remarkable, really. Of course you know it.”

“Yes.” Something in her tone, in the one word, had gone far away from them.

“There was something else about the tale,” Quillon tapped his lips, then his gaze lit on Gia and a blush coloured his already ruddy cheeks.

“The queen was known among her people as The Pearl,” Gia said. “Her hair, though she was not old, was white as pearls, or sea foam, they said.” Then she laughed, gently dispelling Quillon’s embarrassment.

He turned back to his orchids.

“Here we are, now this lepanthis is from Colombia. See where the lip ruffles . . .”

Gia and Ames followed slowly, letting Quillon get some way ahead of them, his running monologue a gentle murmur. Watery light fell on the fantastic, deliriously coloured heads of orchids. Gia’s white dress glowed in the heavy air. Ames heard his heart beating for a moment, felt it in the ache in his thigh. The sweat running down his sides under civilised layers recalled places far from there.

Ah, now that’s pretty.

Volume I, Issue 4 features stories from Jocelyn Adams, Louise Bohmer, John Medaille, C.E. Hyun, and Sarah Hans. All over the pulpy map, as usual.

Megan Eckman’s beautiful pen-and-ink cover for Volume I, Issue 3 of The Red Penny Papers was based on “The Spade Man” by Alan Gillespie. Of course we couldn’t call ourselves a pulp  magazine without a certain measure of Victorian grave-robbing on the menu. That would be a disgrace.

Dark and delicious, featuring a wholly unsavory narrator like few before, this one definitely does the tradition proud.

In the moonlight, sprawled out, she was pitiful. Her fine velvet dress was torn and blackened, the silk lining frayed, limbs spread at unflattering angles. Her blonde hair was matted with oily dirt. Panels of skin, pale like ivory, shone up at us. Willis stepped forward – I thought for a moment he was going to touch her – and then back again.

I checked her over, rolling and manoeuvring the deadweight with my foot.

‘Damn’, I said.

‘Whit?’

‘She’s wearing a necklace. Gold. And a brooch.’

Willis puckered his brow, teeth like big axeheads in that dark face. ‘Uh’ll keep um safe fur her. Aye, so uh wull.’

‘We can’t take them, you stupid bugger. Body-snatching’s just a misdemeanour; take her valuables and it’s theft, a hangman’s noose. They’ll need to go back.’

Nasty, right? Mmm we thought so too.

Volume I, Issue 3 contains pulpy goodness from Andrew Findlay, Milo James Fowler, Tim Ford, Natalie L. Sin, and Alexandra Seidel.

And as a bonus, here’s a picture of Megan’s original pen-and-ink drawing, framed above my desk. I have her cover for The Darkest Shade of Grey, too. (but I’m moving soon so it’s not currently up.) I do love to collect.

Rachel Midgley’s cover for The Red Penny Papers, Volume I, Issue 2, is simply adorable, yes. It was based on The Vampire Duke”, Amanda Pillar’s regency-era tale of a bluestocking called Robin who saw and heard too much of a certain forbidding Duke’s personal business for her own good.

Or so it would seem. The Duke of Grafton isn’t precisely what she expects–and Robin most certainly is not what she is expected to be, herself. Bit of a troublemaker, that girl…

Blue eyes narrowed at her. “You were staring at the Duke again, weren’t you?”

“No.” A pause. “Maybe.”

Meredith began tapping her elbow with her fan. Her gaze turned to slits. “People will start to notice.”

Robin’s chin went up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh that poor girl,” Meredith’s voice was scarily like Aunt Margaret’s, “to have set her cap for the Duke of Grafton. He is so dashing and handsome and well-heeled that he’d never consider poor, gingery Robin. It’s so embarrassing for the family; she’s been trailing after him like a lovesick puppy.”

Robin felt the blood drain from her face. “She has not said that.”

Meredith opened her fan in one quick movement and began to lazily flick it through the air. “No, not yet.”

“There’s just something wrong with him.” Robin went to fold her arms across her chest, but remembered where she was. She picked at the strings on her reticule instead.

Meredith frowned for a split second before her face smoothed back into the perfect mask. “You said that before, but nothing is wrong with him.”

Robin opened her mouth then shut it with a snap. How did one go about accusing a duke of being a vampire? Lord, Merry would probably call her a Bedlamite.

Ah, yes, everyone loves a light-hearted Regency romp, right? And one with vampires? Even better.

Check out Volume I, Issue 2, featuring stories from William Vitka, Barry Napier, T.J. McIntyre, A. Merc Rustad, and Edward Morris–of so many different flavors.

For our first hiatus story spotlight, we’re hopping in the wayback machine to our first ever quarterly issue and our first ever serial. The first episode of Aaron Polson’s Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos was included in vin1, which is why Abraham Reaver was C. Bernard’s cover boy. Er, man. Big, scary dude.

Black Medicine Thunder was the beginning to Aaron Polson’s wild west living dead extravaganza, later continued in The Sons of Chaos and the Desert Dead. Here’s a small excerpt from the first episode that ran in our first quarterly:

Isherwood’s horse whinnied, and he tightened his grip on the reins. “What? Buffalo? Those big, God-damned things? Got trainloads of fellas from back East looking for a herd to take a shot at, but most of ‘em head up North anymore. How the hell’s a buffalo gonna do something like this? Why would a buffalo do this?”

The stage lay on its side, and the upturned flank had been battered to splinters. Wheels sat at odd angles with broken spokes and axles. The driver—easily identified by his clothing despite the missing eyes and marred face—still clutched a Winchester in his dead hands.

“I didn’t say they did. But they’ve been here. At least ten, by the count of those tracks.” Lawton ran his hand along the battered edge of the stage coach, fingered the caved-in door. “Something’s got them spooked. Something’s not right. Bad magic.”

Oh, Lawton. You have no idea, my friend. No idea at all.

Hop on in the wayback machine with us and have a look at good old Volume I, Issue 1 of The Red Penny Papers. With stories by N.K. Kingston, Cate Gardner, and John Cash (before he worked here!).