Out now: VISIONS &
VOYAGES
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Each collection £4.50, $8 or 10 Euros incl. p&p ($, euros cash
only, please) each from
Chico Kidd, 113 Clyfford Road, Ruislip Gardens, Middx HA4 6PX, England
order by email
NEWS
I suffered from terrible writer’s block for more than five years...
And then, in September 2000, in the middle of a long Jamesian tale set
in Venice, which I had been writing for weeks if not months, something
happened. Or someone happened. A character barged in and took over the
story. His name was — is — Captain Luís da Silva. He
appeared whole, like Minerva, with a past and a personality and a lot
of baggage I’m sure I never invented. And since then I’ve been
writing as if a dam has burst. Which in a sense it has. I have to say
it’s an absolutely brilliant feeling!
Since then I’ve written sixteen longish short stories including that
first one, “Cats And Architecture” which appeared in issue #2
of SUPERNATURAL TALES and is currently
enjoying a second sight in MAMMOTH BEST NEW HORROR 13, as is one of the
tales from SECOND SIGHT, “Mark of the Beast”. Captain da Silva
even invaded the last Carnacki story I wrote, “Arkright’s Tale”,
which appears in No 472 CHEYNE WALK.There
are also, now, FOUR Da Silva novels: DEMON WEATHER, THE WEREWOLF OF LISBON,
RESURRECTION, and SINNED AGAINST... with a fifth in the pipeline. I'm
writing chapter 4 at the time of this update (October 2004).The
novels are currently with Baen*, who published PRINTER’S DEVIL, although
we are looking elsewhere.
SECOND SIGHT features the four tales that fall, chronologically, between
“Cats” and “Arkright”. THE VENGEANCE JAR features
three further instalments. Another later story is in SUPERNATURAL TALES
#4 and a further one in DARK TERRORS 6, and one in SUPERNATURAL TALES
#6. VISIONS & VOYAGES has one tale that occurs quite a long time before
“Cats” and one from around the middle of the existing canon.
(And two other tales.) These are quite unlike anything I’ve written
before, being, I suppose, fantasy adventures rather than ghost stories,
although there are LOTS of ghosts in them... and other things, or really
that ought to be Things, with a definite capital T. Thanks to Rick Kennett
for coining the term “Weird Noir”!
And that’s why these tales are by Chico, not AF. Printer’s Devil
was, nominally, but really it was by AF, the writer of Jamesian tales
and antiquarian manqué. Some of the later stories aren’t.
And these stories definitely aren’t.
read some readers’ comments...
Overview...
The Da Silva Tales begin with the short story “Cats and Architecture”
(Supernatural Tales #2, reprinted in “Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
#13”), though chronologically “Heart of Darkness” comes
first. The Captain’s appearance in “Cats” is framed by
the story of one of the his descendants. In it we meet Luís da
Silva for the first time and learn how he freed himself from the shackles
of his sorcerous employer and lost his eye in a fight with a demon, plus
a good deal of his back story. (This occurs in 1908, though for the most
part the precise year is not important.)
Subsequently, through a number of other short stories, the Captain learns
how to use his ghost-seeing and -speaking abilities. In “Second Sight”
he discovers the usefulness of holy water and meets the unconventional
Fr Pereira while dealing with a murderous duppy. Later, in “Past
Acquaintances”, he discovers how to raise the dead and renews his
acquaintance with an old adversary and maker of golems, the Russian witch
Tatiana. “Pandora’s Box” sees him learn how rare a talent
he has as he deals with a vampiric moth-spirit that seeks to possess his
wife Emilia. The next story in the chronology, “Mark of the Beast”,
introduces Harris the werewolf as da Silva and his son Zé fall
foul of lycanthropes in India. These 4 stories appear in Second Sight
& Other Stories, and “Mark of the Beast” was reprinted in
“Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #13”.
After this, in “The Vengeance Jar” da Silva deals with a legacy
left by his late employer, encountered briefly in “Cats and Architecture”
, and has a kind of showdown with him. “Unfinished Business”
(coming next year) also brings an encounter with someone from the pat.
The next story, “Arkright’s Tale” (“No.472 Cheyne
Walk”), gives an outsider’s view of the Captain as he tackles
a threat to his ship by a long-dead sorcerer. “Salvage” (coming
in December) is also set at sea and involves a mysterious derelict.“The
Dragon That Ate The Sun” (Supernatural Tales #6) takes him to France
to encounter a horrid river-beast, a dead witch, and the power of myth.
The action of “Demon Weather”, the first novel, takes place
a couple of months later. Da Silva comes up against a sorcerer bent on
taking revenge for events that occurred twenty years before, in the course
of which he gains new allies including Isaac Zacuto, the ghost of a scholar
murdered in the year 1508; Montague Pierce, and English-Brazilian antiquarian;
John Yeoh, who can move in and out of time; and, by the end, even his
enemy’s daughter, the sword-fighting Teresa Batista. Yeoh’s
other talent is seeing people’s souls: he says that da Silva has
a paladin’s soul, something that will give the Captain a lot of trouble
ever afterwards. And Emilia gains the power to read minds. Da Silva also
becomes re-acquainted with his father, estranged since he ran away to
sea at the age of fourteen. He also ends up with an enduring foe, a fragment
of one of the demons he killed, named Mouffi. As yet its powers are not
very great, but it more than makes up for that in malice and inventiveness.
This is one story arc that continues through at least the next three novels.
Another is the conception of a significant child called Susana.
Following this da Silva takes on an ancient Egyptian sorceress in “Handwriting
of the God” (Dark Terrors #6) while his son Zé — with
Harris’s help — becomes the protegé of a goddess (a mixed
blessing at best) in “Zé and the Amulet” (Supernatural
Tales #4).
A few months later the second novel, “The Werewolf of Lisbon”,
begins, introducing two significant story arcs, that of the Fisher King
and the various factions angling for da Silva’s services as their
champion. The demon-fragment Mouffi makes its first attempts at avenging
its ‘parent’, and da Silva’s father discovers that he can
make things happen by painting them. Including a woman named Alegria.
Other new semi-regular characters include a police inspector, Corvo, an
African shaman called Leão, and a girl, Sílvia, who becomes
Zé’s girlfriend. And Tatiana, the Russian witch from Past
Acquaintances, has a significant part to play, not least going to hell
to increase her powers and taking the Isabella and her crew on a voyage
out of the world’s oceans. The Big Bad of this story, an English
politician and sorcerer, Sir Robert Munro, is thwarted in his ambition
to become the new Fisher King, the land’s mystical ruler. Harris,
Leão, Tatiana, and Yeoh become the new guardians of the grail hallows.
And Harris acquires a familiar spirit called Bonzo.
Subsequently the short story “Possession” takes da Silva on
a transatlantic voyage dogged by a malevolent spirit out to possess his
passenger.
“Resurrection”, the third novel, takes place after this story.
It sees the return of the sorcerer Batista as a vampire bent on decimating
the city, who subsequently makes an unholy alliance with Mouffi. John
Yeoh’s wife is also raised from beneath the sea, bringing with her
the elemental power of water. And Batista,a witch named Phyllis Viera,
and two others are duped by an ancient god of war into trying to bring
it back from a binding which was loosened by the spell Batista tried to
work when he was alive. Zé learns he can control an elemental power
of air, and all four elements are need to banish the god again. In the
course of this the ghost Zacuto is destroyed, and the antiquarian Pierce
gains access to his knowledge. Pierce, too, begins to have feelings for
Teresa.
But first he has to be rescued from a mysterious organisation called the
Order of Chorazin in the short story “María Lisboa”,
the antiquarian’s first appearance outside the novels. Then Harris’s
tale is elaborated in the short story “Magnetic North”, and
the nature of his wolfhood revealed through an encounter with the trickster
Coyote.
“The Vengeance Jar”, “Possession”, and “Magnetic
North” all appear in The Vengeance Jar & Other Stories.
Harris is still resisting the implications of his discovery a few months
later when “Sinned Against”, the fourth novel, begins, but that
is the least of anyone’s worries in a state of affairs where everything
is in flux. During the course of this tale most of the characters are
harshly tested, da Silva’s humanity is at risk, Harris has to confront
the oldest evil of all, Zé’s bond with the goddess battles
with his feelings for Sílvia, Emilia is wrenched out of time, Pierce
and Teresa’s feeling for each other endanger their friends, and Mouffi
instigates the summoning of seven demons whose appearance could trigger
Armageddon. Which, as the fifth novel begins juat after the Great War
has broken out, could still be on the cards...
“Heart of Darkness” is one of the most recent stories I wrote,
though it deals with a time some years prior to “Cats”. It may
be the Captain’s first encounter with the supernatural. Then again,
it may not...
“Heart of Darkness” and “María Lisboa” appear
in VISIONS & VOYAGES.
SECOND
SIGHT Stories: “Second Sight”, “Past Acquaintances”,
“Pandora’s Box”, “Mark of the Beast” 70pp
THE VENGEANCE JAR Stories: “The Vengeance
Jar”, “Possession”, “Magnetic North” 68pp
VISIONS & VOYAGES Stories: “Heart of
Darkness”, “How Hope Came Back”, “The Absence of Dragons”,
“María Lisboa” 76pp
*When I say “with
Baen”, it’s in a very literal sense. My editor has had Demon
Weather since May 2001, and the other two when they were completed. When
asked all she will say is “We are working on them”, whatever
that means. I’m currently trying to explore other avenues. Watch
this space. But not holding your breath!
read an extract from RESURRECTION
Supernatural
Tales
Details from David Longhorn, 291 Eastbourne Avenue, Gateshead NE8 4NN
check it out!
comments
on the Da Silva Tales...
“These are high-quality, literate, dramatic tales - exciting, scary
at times and witty.”
“Captain da Silva is a truly memorable character. What characters!
Even the ghosts are three dimensional and fully developed!”
“I like your Captain da Silva and his determination to stay under
sail. His character is well-rounded and has depth.”
“I read the first story and my initial reaction was ‘I want
more!’”
“I look forward to reading more tales of the redoubtable Captain.”
“A rollicking, rip roaring, good read.”
“Brilliant”
THE VENGEANCE JAR Review
by Jim Rockhill from ALL HALLOWS 32: The Journal of the Ghost Story Society
Feb 2003
This is the second collection devoted to the adventures of Captain Luís
da Silva, the Portuguese mariner, ghost-seer, and necromancer Chico Kidd
introduced in 'Cats and Architecture' (Supernatural Tales #2, 2001). The
first collection. Second Sight, contained four novellas, and this booklet
collects another three. Several other tales have appeared, or are scheduled
to appear, in a variety of magazines and anthologies. The author--known
as A. F. Kidd to the readers of Ghosts & Scholars, her fine collection
Summoning Knells, and the series of Carnacki pastiches she has written
with Rick Kennett--has written three novels featuring Captain da Silva
and is more than halfway through the fourth. As of this writing, none
of these novels have found a publisher.
This is a pity, because these shorter tales are enjoyable romps through
the dying days of sail in the first decades of the twentieth century,
full of convincing nautical lore, spicy dialogue, interesting characters,
and supernatural incidents. As fair play to the reader new to the series
the repetition of similar background material concerning how the captain
lost his eye, gained his supernatural abilities, acquired his second mate,
and despises anything to do with slavery is unavoidable, and offers a
reader the sense that the captain is narrating these adventures in the
first-person instead of merely writing them down for later consumption
by a wider audience. This is also made clear by the great number of asides
accompanying the captain's statements. Nonetheless, encountering such
repetitive background material thrice in the same booklet did become a
little distracting, and I began to yearn for a longer narrative where
such information could be introduced once and then taken for granted.
Thankfully, once the rules behind certain supernatural phenomena and tools
have been established in one tale they are not explained again at length
in another. Such explanation as is required in later tales is kept at
a minimum and delivered piecemeal where relevant. For example, once the
nature and efficacy of the captain's silvered blade have been described.
Captain da Silva subsequently shows the device in action and only alludes
to why this is so. As a man of action, he would rather show than tell,
and has no patience with those too obtuse not to 'get it' the first time.
One of the most admirable aspects of these tales is the character of da
Silva himself. He is a mass of contradictions, a jaundiced Romantic modelled
somewhat in the mould of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: idealist and
satirist, a man of few illusions who still clings to the way of the sailing
vessel long after the age of steam has displaced it, a Catholic with no
respect for institutionalised religion, a reluctant ghost-seer, a necromancer
who despises the notion of slavery or of anyone forced under the will
of another, a passionate man who has learned to regret his own violent
past, but is compelled to respond to it. Other traces of Chandler, to
whom Kidd acknowledges a debt in the introduction, also include the flashes
of bitter insight ('Headstones are small enough things to be the only
marker for one's life'), the ironic twist given a figure of speech ('(He)
looked at me down his patrician nose as if I were some kind of repulsive
offering brought in by the cat'), and the aptly ironic character description
('The first one had a bald head and a bushy beard which made him look
as if his head was on upside-down'). Not that these hints of Chandler
in any way suggest slavish imitation.
The elegance-amid-mire that characterises Chandler's prose is replaced
here by the salty, choppy diction of the seaman, Marlowe's tendency towards
ethical ruminations are almost completely absent from da Silva's personality
(if we except his scruples over resorting to necromancy), and the captain
shows no compunction against violence, resorting to it in an instant when
he deems it necessary: Since Luís da Silva is no underdog, he is
also less prone to make wisecracks, preferring to comment ironically on
what he says by flanking spoken statements with asides. The man, his actions,
his statements, and how he presents them to us seem natural outgrowths
of each other.
As to the tales in the present booklet, each works more or less independently,
but gains resonance from the other stories in the series. The opening
tale, 'The Vengeance Jar', set in Lisbon and Venice, presents an interesting
conceit involving captured souls stored for use as a weapon against those
responsible for their death. The author handles the image of ghosts walking
unaware of their state and what happens when this state is altered with
great finesse; however, although this is a very good tale with an effective
development and denouement, it is the one tale in the book in which the
introduction of background material from earlier tales in the series is
most distracting. Sometimes the details reintroduced from 'Cats and Architecture1,
and I suspect other sources, clarify the action, but sometimes they create
a welter of cross-references that can be difficult to follow, as if we
are plunged into the middle of a novel with enough knowledge to guess
at everything that is happening, but not enough to be certain we may not
be missing something. This was my favourite tale in the collection, but
I could not escape the sense that it was part of a greater whole, the
full resonance of which could only be captured in a longer work. I imagine
this tale would work better when placed in sequence, so that the references
to the prior tales could be reworked and made to fit more naturally.
'Possession', set on the captain's barque the Isabella^ again refers to
earlier tales in the series, but is less dependent upon them and is thus
better able to stand alone. Kidd does an excellent job of keeping us guessing
as to the nature of the possession and how all of the supernatural phenomena
surrounding them are related.
The first tale had featured da Silva alone, the second both the captain
and his theriomorphic second mate, Harris. 'Magnetic North', set in and
around Boston, is as much about Harris as it is about his captain, and
as a result the narrative structure is less straightforward than in the
other tales. Da Silva narrates most of the tale, but we view those scenes
taking place in his absence from a third-person viewpoint with some access
to Harris's thoughts. This shift works during the course of the tale,
but nagging questions arose after I had finished reading as to how either
da Silva could have been privy to this information or this other narrator
had made an appearance. Amid a plot involving goons attempting to collect
on Harris's past debts, the appearance of Harris's father to warn that
his mother is in peril from the trickster god Coyote, a Native American
shaman named Grey Wolf, a journey into the forest primeval, and the difficulty
of navigating in an enchanted place, Harris's two familiars make an appearance.
The tale is full of effective scenes and imaginative descriptions of otherworldly
events, but those familiars bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the sidekicks
in a Disney film.
As with virtually all weird fiction following the adventures of one character,
theseare adventure tales first and supernatural tales second. Therefore
the reader should recognise that as thrilling and enthralling as the events
described in this book may be, there is very little terror in them, because
our sympathy is focused almost exclusively on the narrator, whose survival
is obvious, even those manifestations which defeat him will be codified
and countered appropriately the next time he encounters them, and--contra
Sitwell and Aickman--in the end it is not the mystery, but the solution
that remains. For every mystery there is a solution, but sometimes we
are offered more than that. It is interesting to note that as late as
'Magnetic North' da Silva is still discovering the full implications of
what occurred the day he gained his powers.
With each new tale, the world in which this intriguing mariner lives and
moves becomes both more elaborate and ever more clear. There is even the
hint of a subtext. Am I alone in seeing a slender thread of melancholy
underlying the series which hints that just as new supernatural mysteries
present themselves for solution, the world slips closer to the chaos of
a great engulfing war destined to change this way of life forever?
Surely by now some enterprising publisher has had sufficient time and
sense to seize upon the opportunity of publishing the novels in this series.
The shorter tales offer ample demonstration of Captain Luís da
Silva's skill and charm; I look forward to seeing what the captain is
capable of achieving when given sufficient room to swagger.
VISIONS & VOYAGES Review by Peter Bell from
ALL HALLOWS 36: The Journal of the Ghost Story Society June 2004
Chico (A. F.) Kidd needs no introduction to All Hallows readers, who will
be familiar with her numerous ‘Jamesian’ tales and her marvellous
evocations of campanology as a setting for the supernatural (collected
in 2000 in the Ash Tree Press volume Summoning Knells and Other Inventions);
and, more latterly, for her creation of that remarkable personality, the
Portuguese Captain Luís da Silva, who is able to perceive ghosts
after losing one eye in an encounter with a demon. Both the character
of da Silva and his confrontations with the supernatural have been widely
praised as an original and witty contribution to the genre; he has been
described as ‘a jaundiced Romantic modelled somewhat in the mould
of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe’ (Jim Rockhill, All Hallows
32). For those unfamiliar with Chico Kidd’s fascinating da Silva
tales, available also in the booklets Second Sight and The Vengeance Jar,
it is difficult to offer an adequate description of such an unusual character;
the best advice is to read the stories. Her latest publication will please
existing fans, and offer a useful, economically priced introduction to
others, as it includes two new adventures of the redoubtable Luís
da Silva, ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘María Lisboa’,
which, as Kidd explains in her introduction, come from ‘two quite
different stages in his journey’, and in which we learn that there
are two further stories in the making. Visions & Voyages also includes
two other tales, best described as fantasy, which mark a new venture for
Kidd; she herself states ‘You could, if you stretched the term a
bit, call them fairy stories.’
There is always a danger in the creation of genre characters like da Silva,
who become vehicles for repeat performances on more or less familiar stages,
that they can get rapidly overworked, clichéd, and lead ultimately
to tedious, formulaic plots, and one thinks here, for example, of Seabury
Quinn’s occult detective Jules de Grandin. On the other hand, there
are some writers who transcend these limitations, the most obvious, of
course, being Conan Doyle. Some characters, such as the Prichards’
Flaxman Low, Margery Lawrence’s Miles Pennoyer, and William Hope
Hodgson’s Carnacki may well be best remembered precisely because
they inhabit a relatively limited range of stories, even though they leave
us wishing there were many more. Among current writers, Mark Valentine
and John Howard’s anonymous ‘Connoisseur’ thus far continues
to whet the appetite for more, and to show that variations on a theme,
if well executed, are certainly no bad thing. It is interesting to note
that Chico Kidd, together with Rick Kennett, has successfully perpetuated
Hodgson’s Carnacki in Ash Tree Press’s No. 472 Cheyne Walk;
Carnacki: the Untold Stories (2002); in its own way as effective as David
Rowlands’ re-creation of E. G. Swain’s Mr Batchel. It may be
too soon to deliver a verdict on da Silva, but to judge from the two exploits
recounted here, there is much life left yet in the idiosyncratic captain,
while Kidd’s prolific output, breadth of imagination, and story-telling
skills still seem to have no bounds.
To summarise the plots of the two latest da Silva stories would take away
much of the pleasure of reading them, as so much depends on the unexpected
twists and turns of the narrative and the captain’s reactions. Suffice
it to say that they convey the surrealistic and macabre, yet amusing and
slightly crazy world we have come to expect, and that they are utterly
original. Kidd’s deft command of ‘Jamesian’ techniques
and themes is on display in one of the tales, as shown in the following
description of a sinister statue in ‘María Lisboa’:
“There was nothing about it [the statue] that would encourage anyone
to want to linger, the time-damaged figure of a man wearing old-fashioned
clerical garb. His hair curled down to the kind of high collar with bands
seen in old paintings, but the thinning crown and lines on his face suggested
early middle age, though not maturity. There was something disturbing
about its expression, about the way its blind eyes gazed upwards as if
at something no-one else could see and its mouth gaped open in a kind
of welcoming awe or dawning comprehension. It was lipless and revealed
a row of broken jagged teeth that looked capable of crunching bones without
trouble. The lichen encrusting the stone resembled some foul disease or
rash.”
M. R. James is also evoked in the demonic theme: pursuit by things unpleasant
and references to an order based on that ill-omened place, Chorazin, which
features in ‘Count Magnus’. As ever, though, Kidd’s voice
is wholly original, never mere pastiche; and it is clever the way the
‘Jamesian’ motif is incorporated into the world of da Silva.
The story is interestingly and effectively structured in two parallel,
overlapping narratives, further testimony to the author’s versatility
of style.
In the aptly titled ‘Heart of Darkness’, we read of the captain’s
adventures with witches, zombies, magic, and mutilation in the Dark Continent,
in a quest to find Prester John’s ‘Panoptikos’, which allegedly
enabled him to see all that was going on in his kingdom. It is refreshing
in these days of a misplaced post-colonial political correctness still
to be able to read a good yarn set in the white man’s graveyard of
tropical Africa, to re-enter the darkly mysterious world of Conrad, or
Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. Kidd skilfully mines this
lost vein of weird writing and comes up with gold; as one of the men in
the story says, Ex Africa, semper aliquid novi. An early tale, ‘something
that happened before I lost my left eye’ and before ‘I started
seeing ghosts, let alone talking to the damn things’, it illustrates
the author’s flexibility in the deployment of her protagonist. Her
ability to combine the grotesque and the comic, and something of da Silva’s
earthy mode of expression, which is one of his charms, is evident in the
following description of his feelings on witnessing the vision of a native
boy’s head hovering above a brazier:
“I’ve weathered the worst storms the wind and ocean can throw
at me, there’ve been times when I’ve been convinced I won’t
come out of it alive, let alone my ship. Not to mention some pretty hairy
fights. But those things, mostly, are exhilarating as well as frightening.
This, though—it wasn’t just ball-shrinking. I thought they were
trying to crawl back inside. Though it looked quite alive, the eyes laminated,
lashes blinking, mouth mobile, the head appeared to have been neatly severed.
Sitting on the floor I could almost make out the cut tissues of the neck,
the white glint of bone. If I’d wanted to. I didn’t. Dead severed
heads are bad enough, thank you.”
The two other pieces making up this booklet, ‘How Hope Came Back’
and ‘The Absence of Dragons’, are interesting for the author’s
exploration of a new field, and in them we enter a world of spells, sphinxes,
mermaids, dragons, and magic queens, relayed in Kidd’s characteristic
prose style. They may not be to the taste of readers preferring the more
conventional supernatural fare they have come to expect from her writing,
or the racy adventures of da Silva; and they are inevitably overshadowed
here by the da Silva tales, alongside which they appear unremarkable.
Nevertheless, they do repay the reading, offering the lyrical passages
and mild philosophy one expects of a fairy tale; and Kidd presents her
material in a way that stands good comparison with more established fantasy
writers, though they are not employed in the serious allegorical manner
of, say, Angela Carter. Like the da Silva stories themselves in a way,
the impact is of fairly light-hearted, good-natured entertainment, where
the purpose is not so much to shock, disturb, and terrify as to indulge
the reader in the many possibilities of the fantastic, the weird, and
the supernatural as a subject of enjoyable excitement. In any case, the
booklet is well worth it for the da Silva tales alone, and I am sure they
will leave fans anxious for the imminent appearance of work in progress.
The booklet is attractively presented in blue card with a drawing on the
front by Kidd.