Schlock has always relied on the hard work of willing collaborators to stay afloat. Running with no financial aid and operating from a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean – that’s Malta, for those of you who don’t know yet – we’re proud to say that we’ve come very far despite these obstacles.
It goes without saying that we’re proud to have persevered, but we’re also glad because it came with some – perhaps hard-won and slow-to-emerge – rewards. We’re glad to finally hit upon a slick web design that we’re happy with… but more than anything, we’re happy to have earned the respect of some notable writers and artists in the field – the ‘field’ being a broadly-defined approach to publishing genre-melding fiction with a ‘weird’ edge.
It’s with great satisfaction that we bring you this issue, a special one in many ways because it serves as something of a culmination of what we’ve aspired to achieve so far. In the spirit of collaboration – as well as working hand-in-hand with creatives striving to offer striking and original material – we end our temporary ‘partnership’ with Chômu Press this month with two stories by writers from their stable.
Having reviewed their respective short story collections in this month’s edition of Pop Culture Destruction we’re proud to host stories by Chômu-published authors Luke Geddes and Justin Isis – both different but equally striking pieces of unsettling literary reinvention, perfectly in line with Chômu’s editorial philosophy.
We can also boast of having Ken Liu’s short but (erm) sharp tale, ‘Cutting’ this month, wonderfully illustrated by Schlock core member Nel Pace.
Shading our brash palette this month is Elsa Fiott’s ‘Adrift’ – a tense, hard-hitting story about unpleasant family truths rising to the fore and T. R. Healy’s nostalgic piece ‘(Notes of a Fan of) King Kong Kingston’.
There’s more in there to explore. We’ll just leave you to it.
Cover by Daniela Attard.