They Do the Same Things Different There (46 page)

It’s hard enough to know whom to thank when you’ve just written a single story. It’s nigh on impossible with a book like this one, where the oldest story dates back nearly a decade. (I see photographs of that younger me sometimes. He looks weird. I suppose that accounts for a lot.)

So, let me start at the beginning, by thanking my family. Dennis (my father) and Vicky (my sister) have put up with my sense of humour for years—and the best jokes I’ve stolen from them.

I’m very proud to be a ChiZine writer. I stumbled across their books at a horror convention a few years ago, and I was so struck by their beauty I had to buy them all. Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi, thanks for making me part of the family. We had fun with the first book, didn’t we? Here we go again! Erik Mohr, your covers are both terrifying and gorgeous, thank you. Thanks to my editor, Andrew Wilmot, who pored over these stories, the old and the new, and showed me fresh things in all of them. And to all my editors of the past who’ve tackled these stories beforehand, but especially Xanna Eve Chown, who worked on three entire books of mine and managed to preserve her sanity.

Many of these stories were written whilst enjoying a year’s residency at Edinburgh Napier University, attached to the Creative Writing MA course. I was inspired by the work of the hardest working students I’ve ever known, and by the extraordinary staff: Sam and Stuart Kelly, and David Bishop. I began a project there to write one hundred stories, and one hundred foolhardy people volunteered to let me use their names for characters in any way I saw fit—thanks then, to Julia Loecherbach, Madalyn Morgan, Raphael Klein, Karen Davison, Lizbeth Myles, David Allan, Sieglinde von Zieten, Lucy Zinkiewicz, Ian Mond, Matthew Bell, Richard Marklew, Matthew Tozer, Nathalie Gallagher, Paul Hiscock, and Ian Wheeler. I have plans for what to do with all hundred of these stories; watch this space.

One of those hundred, but one in a million, is Helen Marshall. Helen is the greatest of friends and the greatest of writers. So many of these stories started life as the two of us swapped crazy ideas back and forth in art galleries and pubs. Her own work makes me want to be a better writer. Thanks also to her wonderful sister Laura, who has been like a sister to me too.

Suzanne Milligan is not just my agent, she’s my pal. Unfailingly supportive, she’s encouraged me whenever I’ve needed it, and made me feel I can take on the world. Apologies to her, though, for all the icky stuff in this book that makes her flesh crawl. I can’t help it. Sometimes the stories just come out that way.

And lastly, as always, thanks to my wife Janie. Now, I’m not the easiest of writers to live with. Some days the words don’t come out right, so I get grumpy. Other days the words come out just fine, so I get smug. Still other days I’m lazy and don’t write at all and make the house dirty and get under her feet. In a very real sense, the fact these stories exist is down to her. She’s patient and kind, and knows when to ignore me, and when to flatter. And at any point during the last twenty years she could have killed me in my sleep, and she didn’t. It wouldn’t have taken much. Just a pillow over the face, I wouldn’t have known a thing. She could still do it too. Sometimes she gets that look in her eyes. She could do it whenever she pleases.

Robert Shearman has worked as writer for television, radio and the stage. He was appointed resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter and has received several international awards for his theatrical work, including the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in Association with the Royal National Theatre. His plays have been regularly produced by Alan Ayckbourn, and on BBC Radio by Martin Jarvis. His three series of
The Chain Gang
, an interactive short story and drama project for BBC Radio, has won two Sony Awards. A selection of his plays have been collected in book form as Caustic Comedies.

However, he is probably best known as a writer for
Doctor Who
, reintroducing the Daleks for its BAFTA-winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. He has also written many popular audio dramas for Big Finish.

His first collection of short stories,
Tiny Deaths
, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Fantasy Award for best collection, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. “No Looking Back” was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign.

His second collection,
Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical
, was published by Big Finish in 2009. It won the British Fantasy Award for best collection, the Edge Hill Short Story Readers Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award, celebrating outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. His third collection,
Everyone’s Just So So Special
, won the British Fantasy Award, and his story “History Becomes You” was nominated for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award.

Most recently, his best dark fiction was collected in
Remember Why You Fear Me
by ChiZine Publications; the collection won the British Fantasy Award, was shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, and received nominations for Best Novella and Best Collection at the World Fantasy Awards.

They Do the Same Things Different There
© 2014 by Robert Shearman
Cover artwork © 2014 by Erik Mohr
Cover and interior design by © 2014 by Samantha Beiko

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

EPub Edition AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-301-8

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]

Edited by Andrew Wilmot
Proofread by Stephen Michell

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

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