by Stephen Studach

Phantasy Moste Grotesk

by Felicity Dowker
Corpulent Insanity Press
39 (story) pages
$ 9.99 U.S.

A rusty stained scalpel, nestled on a bed of black velvet.

I have never met Felicity Dowker. However, in the imaginative realms, we have walked a few paths together.

In 2007 and the early part of last year, when I had the idea for the "New Blood" concept rising from the sludge in my head, I trawled around a little on the net for likely interview subjects. I found Felicity Dowker’s fledgling website. After a quick perusal Felicity seemed like a good subject for the prototype "New Blood" confabulation. I could only hope that her writing, unseen at that point, was of a good standard.

I contacted the lady by e-mail with my proposal. She agreed, with apparent minimal trepidation. She had not, at that stage, ever been interviewed. As requested she sent me some of her stories, so that I might be familiarised with her work, get a sense of the topography of her imagination. I read the stories. My hope was sustained. I asked for more. She sent, I read, my hope, and my initial instinct about Felicity Dowker, writer, was confirmed. Each set of tales was greedily received, much of it quality material still
dripping with imaginative glamour. I was eating that stuff up like absinthe candy.

We collaborated (for that is what the "New Blood's" are in essence) and had a blast. We were a good match writing-wise. In fact, at times, it was an almost psychic writing experience. Felicity maintained respect for the concept and brought her own storytelling integrity to it. This, from someone who had never collaborated before. (That interview, which is actually the first "New Blood" piece that was composed, will appear in Midnight Echo 3.)

Since then I have watched her considerable progress in a short span of time with great satisfaction, and have been given the honour of reading some of her further works to afford her some, hopefully constructive, feedback.

To an old-timer like me she is a good example of how the magic of e-mail and the net has changed the lot of writers. Back in the day, scribblers like Barry Radburn and myself lost months, even years, waiting on the processes of mail and editorial contact (which sometimes never arrived), at the mercy of the whims, egos, lack of professionalism, and plain laziness of those same editors. I once received a reply, informing me of the demise of the magazine I had submitted to, five years after I had sent the story off. Now, in just a few heartbeats, you can, literally at the click of a box, send a piece of work to a recipient on the other side of the world. I don’t know about you kids, but to me that’s magical. Yet, Dowker’s example points out another fact to me. That, in spite of all the benefits and negatives of cyber sorcery, one thing has not changed at all. The basic requirements of STORY. Which are pleasingly evident in many of the works of Felicity Dowker.

Currently she is on that very exciting stage of a good writer’s journey. She is like a peach-fuzz cheeked, precocious kid. Doin’ it, makin’ headway, lovin’ it! Whoops, "precocious," along with "unfortunately" are two, rather particular, words from the Dowker armoury. But that’s another story—two stories in fact.

Her tales demonstrate her competence as a first-rate storyteller and a significant talent. Her writing has a conciseness to it that is admirable. Concise in word and clear in intention.

It warms the shrivelled old black thing that I call a heart to read work by a newcomer that is of professional quality so early in a career. In the works of Felicity Dowker someone truly talented has emerged into the black light of speculative writing.

The short stories "Ill Conceived" and "Charlie" are classics and I am sure that they will be around for a long time. The former is a very potent piece of work. An experienced Doula, this writer has seen the eye of creation. I believe that this "inside information" helped make "Ill Conceived" the original piece that it is. She plugged directly into something dark there.

Whilst the extraordinary meeting the ordinary, the unpleasantness of the male species, as well as physical pain and suffering seem to be Felicity Dowker motifs, I think that emotional charge is one of the prime ingredients of her best work. I want to see her go to darker places, and find the soul there.

I do not doubt that she can obtain the further vision to find the heart and humanity in the blackest of destinations. To look to the venom and toxins of the world, and her own soul, to not turn away nor flinch at what scares her, what truly disturbs her, and why.

Her work ethic and writerly approach should be an inspiration for all ink slingers.

She just gets better and better, which is just how it should be.

In ten years time, five years, she will be capable of some amazing things.

Late last year I noted that Felicity had posted the first small opener for a story on her website ‘Here There Be Tygers’ that she wanted to round robin with her "voyeurs." I sent her a brief e-mail: Wanna make your blog tale truly worthy?
                              Get back to me and I’ll tell you my idea.

She did. Once again Felicity agreed, with some uncertain reservations, but with more glee than fear. Thus—the "Nameless" project. But that’s another (unfinished) story.

She has written small masterpieces like "Ill Conceived" and "Charlie" and is never anything less than good. In my opinion she is one of the most interesting female Speculative Fiction writers to have come along since I discovered Kaaron Warren when nobody else was paying much attention.

Felicity is up for anything and she takes great joy (and suffers also) in the whole adventure of writing. That’s why she opens the "Nameless" project. That’s why she is a true Gun Crow.

To the chapbook at hand.

Corpulent Insanity Press brings us Dowker’s most significant publication to date in the form of a signed and numbered print run of 26 copies of a novelette entitled "Phantasy Moste Grotesk."

It opens nicely with the traditional knock at the door by night. Instead of an expected pizza delivery, a black eyed boy stands there, wanting in.

Thus, the lid is lifted on this macabre pizza that the author has created for us. To a hiss that sounds like "Seth" (now doesn’t that seem like a word that a scalpel would whisper, if a scalpel could speak?) we take in the smell of this concoction, the scents of circus, popcorn, fairy floss, sawdust . . . and blood. Our eyes widen at sight of the glimpsed ingredients baked into the base. And even as we stare, eager to partake, we start to pay, the curl of our hair, the shine in our eyes, the softness of our skin, is taken . . .

The writer has used several figures from myth and legend and added them to her own recipe.

Therein you’ll go with our two protagonists, Josh and Erin, to the Long Chat Place, a mundane location of sweet reminiscence, where, of course, the extramundane awaits. There you will enter a circus tent with this couple, "Salioso’s House of Monsters, Moste Grotesk and Phantastique," a place of otherworldly sacredness, lair of the Hidebehind, the pitiful Ferris, and lascivious Doppelgangers. Yes, circus tent attractions are such fun, and one of the old standards in the fantasist’s prop options and settings. Dowker here parts the canvas for us on an interesting addition to the canon.

A professional grade story, I’d expect to see this in the Year’s Best listings. It certainly warrants more than 26 copies, though CIP have a solid, steady strategy there. I suspect more printings will be required.

"The moon was a pale, bloated corpse, drifting above them in the fetid waters of the starless sky. A heavy breeze soughed through the twisted branches of the guardian trees and gusted about the open field, bringing with it the stench of something spoiled and oozing."

Here’s a writer not listening to voices that discourage metaphor. A writer not afraid to try the occasional Neo Gothic approach.

"Nothing could be ugly tonight. Not with Erin by his side, here in this sacred and mundane place. The Big Feelings nibbled on the insides of his mind, whispering to be let out, but he repressed them, too."

That’s a key to this writer’s take on matters. The exposure of things startlingly other-worldly and sacred in the most mundane of locations. The uncanny manifests itself and the rest is directed by how the human aspect interacts with the unearthly. Like much of  the best horror fiction, her stories are not negligent in their humanity, her characters deal with the Big Feelings.

No story is perfect. Negatives? Only one here. Endings are often where writers can stumble, amateurs, semi-pros and fully fledged professionals. This writer has not stumbled, but she has had to adjust her grip on that ink and blood drenched implement at the end and, in doing so, the smooth, terrible stroke of the narrative has wavered just a touch. In the next tune up I would like the ending reworked from page 37 (of 39 pages). Less words and less blood to obscure the tragedy.

But this is a minor aspect, and, if you like gore with your tragedy or vice versa, Felicity Dowker delivers here.

Felicity Dowker is a wordsmith who explores both sides of the page. She has made her own hole there and through it she brings us dark gifts. She will, I’ll wager, do so for a long, long time to come.