Egaeus Press have just announced publication of a new anthology, Insidious Mechanisms, Tales of Cursed Clockwork and Cyclical Anomalies, “presenting fifteen previously unpublished short stories, set against the ticks and whirs of unfathomable devices, synchronised, in apparent mockery of the true cycles of nature and human desire.” Contributors include Charles Wilkinson, D.P. Watt, R. Ostermeier, John Gale and Colin Insole.
My own story, ‘Seven Clocks and a Music Box’ was inspired by a music box I bought in a curio shop in Holt, Norfolk, whose proprietor said he could not identify the tune, though it seemed familiar. I like the idea of just such an elusive melody. Then, in the back streets of a Westmorland town, I chanced upon a closed clock museum, and in a nearby antiques shop, what looked like some of its discarded books. These things began to mesh, and I then recalled I had used a clock-worker character before, in two Connoisseur stories, who could make a return. She and the narrator encounter a gallery of strange and singular clocks and discover the secret of the music box.
(Mark Valentine)
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