CRAIG LAURANCE GIDNEY is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories and Skin Deep Magic, the Young Adult novel Bereft, and The Nectar of Nightmares. His work has been nominated for the Lambda Literary and Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, and he has won both the Bronze Moonbeam and Silver Independent Publishers Book Awards. He lives in his native Washington, DC.

The Nectar of Nightmares by Craig Laurance Gidney

Craig Laurance Gidney is a magician. His stories are dazzling and transformative. His illusions shame reality for its fragility. He dares you to take a card—any card—and gives you back your watch, your wallet, your sanity.

The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.

There is.

Craig Laurance Gidney is a magician. His stories are dazzling and transformative. His illusions shame reality for its fragility. He dares you to take a card—any card—and gives you back your watch, your wallet, your sanity.

The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.

There is.

Craig Laurance Gidney is a magician. His stories are dazzling and transformative. His illusions shame reality for its fragility. He dares you to take a card—any card—and gives you back your watch, your wallet, your sanity.

The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.

There is.

Craig Laurance Gidney is a magician. His stories are dazzling and transformative. His illusions shame reality for its fragility. He dares you to take a card—any card—and gives you back your watch, your wallet, your sanity.

The stories in The Nectar of Nightmares weave and remix myths, legends, and identities. Ranging from retold folktales to diverse settings like the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary drag ball scene to phantasmagoric secondary worlds, this is a horror collection for those who have descended so far into the deep, there's nothing left to fear.

There is.

CURATOR'S NOTE

•Weirdness can be found in every setting and human endeavor, though we might not always know where to look for it. Fortunately, Gidney has taken it upon himself to serve as our personal guide through some of the more wondrous nooks and crannies of our diverse world. The stories in this landmark set will transport you to a drag ball, a dance studio, the Harlem Renaissance, and other startling ports of call. Along the way, Gidney will immerse you in ideas, incidents, and language so memorably weird and unforgettable, you will feel forever changed. You will want to rush to your favorite purveyor of fiction and read everything this author has ever written, because no one has ever taken you to exactly the same amazing places in exactly the same way. Gidney is unique and unpredictable, a force of nature, and I have no doubt in my mind that he will send you on a journey like none other you've ever experienced. – Robert Jeschonek

 

REVIEWS

  • "Sublime in the purest sense of the word, Craig Gidney's gorgeous stories evoke beauty, terror, and wonder, often—usually—on the same page. He uses words the way a master artist employs paint, creating lush, hallucinatory worlds as beautiful as they are treacherous. A beautiful, heartfelt collection."

    – Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss and Hokuloa Road

  • "The Nectar of Nightmares is a haunting collection of stories, filled with retellings and reimaginings, transgressive versions of familiar tales from our youth. It's important work that's being done here, visceral and unsettling, paired with humor and hope. This is an author to keep an eye on, for sure."

    – Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion

  • "The Nectar of Nightmares is an incredible and breathtaking achievement. There's a sublime magic in these stories as well as a lingering danger, one that lurks at the edges of every page, waiting to draw you nearer. No one else out there is writing weird and wondrous fiction like Craig Laurance Gidney. Prepare to be dazzled and bewitched."

    – Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The Swan Girl first came to Tori when she was ten years old.

At the time, she'd been taking ballet classes at the Petrochenkov Dance Studio. She was a star pupil, full of grace and flexibility. She could stretch her small body into any shape, and glissé, pilé, and grand jeté with ease. It was as if her bones were made of rubber. The various forms and poses of ballet were like a second, secret language made of movement. She loved it all: the music, the outfits, and most of all, the moment when the routine became effortless muscle memory.

Her instructor, Mademoiselle du Plessis, (also known as The Mad Lady) called her "my little Leda." The nickname sounded so intriguing.

"Who is Leda?" she asked the Mad Lady one time after class. The other students called her the Mad Lady, both because she was so harsh and the word "mademoiselle" was kind of hard to say. But Tori had a girl-crush on her. The Mad Lady looked like a living statue. You could see the fine architecture of her bones, so long and thin, beneath her olive skin and gauzy dresses. She had a high fore- head and sunken eyes that gave her an alien quality.

"You know nothing of Leda and the Swan? Read your mythology," was all she said. The Mad Lady had no patience for the American education system, where everything was sanitized. So, Tori did read the myth of Leda, after being directed to the appropriate book by the kind school librarian. And she was promptly horrified. The story was about a woman who had sex with a swan, got pregnant by him, and laid a couple of eggs. There was no part of the story that wasn't disgusting. Even worse, there was a whole series of paintings of this improbable union, all of them featuring a naked lady with a swan nestled between her legs.

After one class, Tori told her that she'd read the myth, and still didn't understand why she'd earned the nickname Leda. "The woman laid eggs," Tori said, expecting her ballet instructor to be as re- pulsed as she had been.

Mme du Plessis had (illegally) lit a cigarette. Dirty blue smoke cascaded from her nostrils. She was clearly annoyed.

"You misunderstand, child," the Mad Lady finally said, "You have been blessed with the grace of a swan. You are the swan's child. Eggs have nothing to do with it."

She waved Tori's apparent stupidity away, along with the smoke.

"Oh," said Tori, though she really didn't understand at all. To her, the myth was borderline perverse. Did Leda even want to mate with a swan? Tori's grasp on bedroom activities was tenuous at best, but wouldn't sex with a swan be painful? Or even, possible? She forgot the nickname and the myth; it was just one more Grown-Up thing she didn't get. (And maybe Mme. du Plessis actually was a mad lady).

There the whole incident stayed buried until the recital. Swan Lake was a staple of ballet companies, a rite of passage, and the Petrochenkov School elected to perform an abbreviated version of the perennial classic. There were to be auditions, mostly to assuage anxious parents, but everyone knew that Tori would be cast as Odette, the Swan Queen. It was a given.

During the announcement of the recital, the Mad Lady said, "Ballet is not just about movement. A ballet is a story told through the medium of dance. It is vital that you understand the story be- hind Swan Lake. You Americans always tone things down."

She then told the plot of the legend the ballet was based upon. It was a savage, tragic story, one that Tori didn't like at all. It was even worse than the Leda story.