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    Horn
    Horn
    Horn
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    Horn

    By Peter M. Ball

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A dead girl in a dumpster and a unicorn on the loose – no-one knows how bad that combination can get better than Miriam Aster. A consulting job for city homicide quickly becomes a tangled knot of unexpected questions, and the link between the dead girl and the unicorn will draw Aster back into the world of the exiled fey she thought she’d left behind ten years ago, and she isn’t happy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTwelfth Planet Press
    Release dateOct 14, 2009
    ISBN9780980484144
    Horn
    Author

    Peter M. Ball

    Peter M Ball is the author of more than fifty short stories and six novellas, along with essays, RPG material, articles, and poetry. His short stories and non-fiction have appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Dragon Magazine, Writing Queensland, and Apex Magazine, and has been included in several Year’s Best anthologies. He’s previously taught creative writing at Griffith University and the Queensland Writers Centre, spent five years as the manager of the Australian Writers Marketplace, and convenes the biennial GenreCon writing conference in Brisbane, Australia.

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    Reviews for Horn

    3.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is a book comprised of two novelettes, Siren Beat by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Roadkill by Robert Shearman. I liked the way the book itself was put together. One novelette's cover is on the front cover and the story begins in the front of the book, but instead of the second story beginning halfway through the book and a plain old back cover, you discover something a little different! When you flip the book over in two different directions, both backwards and upside down, instead of a back cover you discover the other novella's front cover, and directly inside is the beginning of that story! No back cover at all! The endings of the stories meet in the middle of the book, and the story you are not reading appears upside down and backwards! It is unique! I won this book in a First Reads Contest on Goodreads.com.In Siren Beat, Nancy Napoleon is the guardian of the harbor town of Hobart, protecting its human inhabitants from the creatures of the sea, like sirens, cecaelia, and kraken. She used to share her territory and the guardian duties with her sister, Sylvie, but Sylvie is now gone. Called in by the local police to help them rid Hobart of a siren infestation, Nancy reluctantly accepts the aid of Cadmus, a selkie who was Sylvie's lover. What follows is a fascinating romp through the nightclubs and underbelly of Hobart, where Nancy ends up fighting more than a pair of sirens intent on mayhem and destruction.I really enjoyed this story but felt that it really could have been fleshed out more and made into a full-length book and stand on its own. I kept asking myself questions that could easily have led to further character development, additional action and intrigue scenes, and even more steamy sexual tableaux. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Rayner Roberts' work in the future.I give Siren Beat 3 starsIn Roadkill, a mismatched weekend office affair between an older woman whose marriage is nothing but a shell and a younger man whose bumbling romantic endeavors leave much to be desired turns into an even more harrowing experience on their way back home when he accidentally runs something over with his car. Stopping to see what it was that was hit, they discover a creature unlike anything the world has ever seen before and have to decide what to do with it.Following along in the woman's thoughts throughout the story, witnessing through her eyes the travesty of the entire weekend encounter, I was both intrigued and repulsed with the unfolding drama. This is not my normal type of reading material at all, yet I still found it compelling, imaginative, and well-written. Mr. Shearman is obviously a very talented writer, although personally not my style of author. I give Roadkill 2 and a half stars.
    • 4/5
      A fast paced, well written noir detective mystery with paranormal elements.The sassy lead Miriam Aster is an ex-cop who is reluctantly called in to consult on cases which involve fey influence, such as a murdered child covered in fairy glitter. Be warned, however, this is no children's fairy tale.I enjoyed this tale from Peter M Ball and the skilful way the paranormal elements were blended with noir ambience.I look forward to reading others in the series.

    Book preview

    Horn - Peter M. Ball

    What others are saying about HORN, by Peter M Ball…

    I was continually impressed by Ball’s economy of expression, blending of genres, and his ability (in the close quarters of a novella) to not just layer in information about the characters but also about character motivation. The ambition in Horn may exist mostly at the level of scene and character without too much additional complexity of plot or situation, and it may veer toward the sensationalistic once or twice, but overall the book is a promising, strong debut by a new Australian author.

    Jeff Vandermeer, Ecstatic Days

    … [Horn] involves unicorns, rape, snuff movies, and more or less undead lesbian detectives. Peter M Ball has got it right. This book is smart, funny, nasty, and wicked as hell. He gets the noir-ish tone spot on, delivers with action a-plenty, kick-ass characters, intelligent plotting, and good, clean evocative writing. Best of all, he takes a turgidly overused fantasy trope out behind the backyard toilet and puts a dum-dum bullet through its brain, after which he whips out his tackle and pisses all over the steaming corpse.

    Dirk Flinthart, Cool Shite

    Peter M Ball was shortlisted for the Best New Talent award in the 2009 Ditmar Awards.

    Horn

    by Peter M. Ball

    First published in Australia in June 2009

    by Twelfth Planet Press

    Also available to purchase in print from http://www.twelfthplanetpress.wordpress.com

    Smashwords Edition 2009

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This novella © 2009 Peter M. Ball

    Cover illustration by Dion Hamill

    Design and layout by Tehani Wessely and Amanda Rainey

    All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

    National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

    Author: Ball, Peter M.

    Title: Horn / Peter M. Ball ; editor, Alisa Krasnostein.

    Edition: 1st ed.

    ISBN: 9780980484144 (pbk.)

    Series: Twelfth Planet Press novella series ; 2.

    Other Authors/Contributors:

    Krasnostein, Alisa.

    Dewey Number: A823.4

    Special thanks to Lyn Battersby and J.J. Irwin for pushing me, Lee Battersby for the unicorn physics, and to Angela Slatter for the encouragement and comments on drafts. Further thanks go out to my family for putting up with me, and to the students and tutors of Clarion South 2007 who offered me sage advice on an early version of this story.

    The Editor would like to thank Amanda Rainey, Patty Jansen, Joanne Anderton, Kaia, Sue Isle and Tansy Rayner Roberts for their help in producing this book.

    Very special thanks to Tehani Wessely for both her work in producing this book and for her support and advice along the way.

    The phone call came at three am, about a half-hour after the body arrived at the morgue. It didn’t wake me. I don’t sleep well, not anymore. I used to work Homicide back when my life made sense and insomnia’s one of those bad habits I picked up on the job, right up there with the cigarettes and the tendency towards one glass of gin too many. It’s just another little twitch to remind me that my body doesn’t pay attention to the lies I tell myself about the past.

    My name’s Miriam Aster. Ask most of the cops I used to work with and they’ll tell you that now I’m a freelance detective, an ice-hearted bitch, or a fucked-up lush who killed her own career. Pick one, they’re all right. I was busy feeling sorry for myself when the call came through. The phone went to voicemail and I ignored the insistent beep that told me they’d left a message. They rang back. Twice.

    I watched my phone vibrate along with the ringtone, rattling across the bedside table. It should’ve been a relief to hear it — a three am call meant a desperate client, and I knew the kind of money the desperate threw around. I spent two minutes pretending I didn’t care about paying rent before I rewarded their persistence and flipped the receiver open.

    Aster? It was a man’s voice, surly and brusque; familiar enough for me to figure it for Tim Kesey. A bad feeling twisted into my stomach and stuck there like a fishhook. Kesey hasn’t exactly approved of me since I was booted off the Force. He hasn’t actually liked me since I slept with his sister, but you know the old saying: some mistakes you regret, some mistakes you celebrate.

    Tim? My voice snarled, anger seeping through.

    Aster, we need you. Kesey sounded older, a little more worn around the edges and wary about talking to me. I double checked the caller ID to be sure it was him. Listen Aster, I know it’s late, but Heath’s insisting. We need to bring you in, off the books, as a consultant. You up for it?

    I groped for the rumpled soft pack of Camels by my bed, then realised my lighter had fallen off the bedside table. I sighed, letting the weariness creep into my voice. It’s still early by my watch. Intrigue me.

    We’ve got a body. A kid. I could hear the buzz of a crowd filtering in from his side of the call, the momentary chirp of a police siren as a car pulled in. Heath says we need you on it. Wake the fuck up.

    I’m awake, I said, and I was. The old instincts still triggered when someone mentioned a body, even if it’d been a decade since corpses were a part of my daily business. How old’s the kid?

    "Ask Heath when you see him. If you’re on the job." My searching fingers found a glass instead of the lighter. There was a shallow mouthful of gin settled in the base. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and drank instead, a precaution against the way Kesey’s tone was setting my teeth on edge. He was the kind of cop who was big on protocol but it wasn’t like him to be evasive. Half the reason he avoided calling me in was his dislike of ambiguity on his paperwork —

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