Night-time Stories is an anthology of short fiction edited by Yen-Yen Lu. Cover design by Emma Dai'an Wright.
'The bush next to me rustles. Two spots of yellow light reflect back. These stars creep closer, blink, then duck and hop over the boundary between us. A black cat, her fur seeming to shimmer as it breaks up the light from the lamppost, looks up towards me.Ancestral night trapped in a physical, adorable form. I offer her my hand. She regards it. Sniffs it. Pushes her face towards it. I ruffle her ears and she backs up a little, then moves towards me, touching my ankles gently as she walks past me, then swings back round and pushes her head yet again. Ruffle.
She purrs, and the dance is complete.' - from 'Even This Helps', by Zoë Wells
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Lately, I look out of the window at night and always see some girl just like me looking out in her pyjamas, fingers pressed to her cheek.THE GIRLS ARE PRETTY CROCODILES NOW BY ANGELA READMAN
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(@TheEmmaPress, 1 December 2022, e-book, 72 pages, #ARC from the publisher)
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I've read a lot of poetry from the publisher but none of their fiction so I was looking forward to Night-time Stories. I enjoyed this collection a lot and found something to recommend in every story. The authors were all new to me so this was a treat and has given me some new authors to read and obsess over. If anything I felt the collection was very short and I was sad when I read the final story as I wanted more. The stand out stories for me are Daylight Savings Time by Rebecca Rouillard, Kikimora by Sofija Ana Zovko and Even This Helps by Zoe Wells. I liked the fact the stories were all quite different even if they were similar in tone
