Black Moon

Black Moon is an illustrated collection of speculative flash fiction interspersed with prose poetry. It carries themes of love and war, life and the afterlife, hope and despair. It is a philosophical assortment that questions normalcy, embraces opposition, and takes a keen interest on peculiarity. It will appeal to curious lovers of literary dark fantasy and all places in between.

"You’ve heard these sharp, dark and evocative words of Eugen Bacon’s flash fiction—in your dreams or darker visions—but don’t know it until you read them, and find they gnaw at your subconscious, demanding to be recalled." —Craig Cormick, award-winning author of Years of the Wolf
 

"Dark, beautiful, chilling and surreal glimpses of life, love, death and beyond. Poetic and exquisite, these heart-searing fantastical tales will linger and haunt you long after you have put them down." —Steven Paulsen, award-winning author of Shadows on the Wall 
 

"Black Moon is not what you expect. The short fictions are bright as eyes glimpsed in an abandoned house, sharp as wounds, quivering with uncanny metamorphoses. Words and images conspire to imply narrative pathways, before tripping your helpless imagination into its darkest recesses. You turn around and there’s nothing there, but it is the nothing that has always followed you, invisible. Black Moon is not what you expect, but you feel its breath, clammy on your neck, and it’s much too late to go back now." —Oz Hardwick, award-winning poet and academic
 

"A treasure chest of dark imaginings destined to beguile, with words and illustrations that will hold you prisoner. Prepare to meet the sharp embrace of enchanted dreams, each a perfect alchemy of the uncanny and the real. Every piece of flash fiction in Black Moon displays a clarity of vision that skewers the everyday with the fearless thrust of ‘what if.’" —Clare E Rhoden, author of the Chronicles of the Pale series
 

"Here’s a collection of strange fragments that illuminate how realities shift from moment to moment, how different points of perspective transform the experience of the world. Anything goes: child as victim or adventurer; houses and men that shapeshift; the creepy dolls that are making their own plans. These flash fictions, and the evocative images that accompany them, shimmer with the awareness that we can never fully understand the world, never pin it down. Let yourself enter its space; know you will emerge changed." —Jen Webb, distinguished author, poet, and academic 
 

"Black Moon is a beguiling, evocatively illustrated combin-ation of flash fiction, speculative fiction and prose poetry, shaped by a weird, sometimes dark imagination and a pithy, explorative eloquence." —Paul Hetherington, award-winning Australian poet and academic
 

"This slim volume of dark speculative flash fiction shim-mers with unsettling and memorable images. Eugen Bacon’s words subtly subvert our expectations on every page, as Elena Betti’s illustrations blur rather than draw the line between fantasy and reality. Black Moon is a vivid, mysterious and magical space rooted in the detail of everyday life. It will resonate with the reader long after the book is set aside. Original and intense." —Dominique Hecq, award-winning poet, novelist, short story writer, and scholar

Eugen Bacon is African Australian, a computer scientist ment­ally re-engineered into creative writing. She’s the author of Claiming T-Mo by Meerkat Press and Writing Speculative Fiction by Red Globe Press, Macmillan. Eugen’s work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted, or com­mended in national and international awards, including the Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards, and Nommo Award for Speculative Fiction by Africans. Website: www.eugenbacon.com Twitter: @EugenBacon Elena Betti is an artist based in Italy.