Douglas Smith | Writer of Fantasy & Science Fiction

I’m pleased to announce that Impossibilia, my first collection of short fiction, is available now from the award-winning UK press, PS Publishing, as part of their "Showcase" series highlighting "genre fiction's best up-and-coming writers." The collection is available in both jacketed hardcover and hardcover signed editions. Check out the cover at the right.

With an introduction by award-winning UK fantasy and mystery writer, Chaz Brenchley, Impossibilia contains two brand new novelettes, "A Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh" and "Going Down to Lucky Town," plus a reprint of my award-winning novelette, "Spirit Dance," the story on which my first novel is based.

From Chaz's introduction:

"There are three stories in this collection, and they reach from van Gogh's rural France to the classic travelling fair to the far lost forest, and from timeshift to shapeshift to the activity of luck. That's range, or at least a glimpse of range, in the grand manner that harks back to Bradbury and Sturgeon and Ellison; that's the freedom that the short form allows, the humming-bird's brief attention at this flower and at this one and at that...

However it dresses, literature has its great themes – love and death, largely – and its lesser themes, and they mirror the natural concerns of life. Which is why, whatever the setting and whatever the mood, Doug Smith's stories turn inward, on their characters. Not always in a kindly way – fiction is necessarily ruthless, or else it degrades into sentimentality – but these are none the less stories that treat with hope, and will not in the end deny it. Dues are paid, and life goes on: reaching, purposeful, intent."

From the cover flap:

We all have things we hide away inside—secrets, fears, aspects of ourselves we keep locked away. Or try to.

In that respect, the characters we meet in Douglas Smith's Impossibilia are like any of us. They have things inside them too. Only their things are a little... different.

A dead wife that won't leave. A wolf. The secret to being the luckiest man alive.

In 'Bouquet of Flowers in Vase, by van Gogh', remote viewing drives a search through the past for lost masterpieces. An ex-CIA agent, haunted by the presence of his dead wife, falls in love with a beautiful remote viewer with her own secret. But can viewing the past change the present?

Cree Indian legends, a love triangle, a covert government agency, and shape shifters collide in the award-winning 'Spirit Dance', described in Challenging Destiny as "...a vivid and wonderfully written tale about Native Canadian spirits, in the vein of Thomas King."

In 'Going Down to Lucky Town', an itinerant gambler chases a streak of luck across the country, while trying to win back the love of his daughter. The secret he finds forces him into an ultimate gamble for the highest stakes of all: his daughter's life.

And through all the stories, these characters share one more thing beyond what they hold inside. In the decisions they face, in the choices they make, they do what they do out of love. Lost love, found love, the love of a child. But love.

So maybe they aren't that different from us after all...

Jacketed Hardcover Edition
Hardcover Edition

If you like, you can sample the openings of all three stories. Just click on a link below.

"A Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh"
"Spirit Dance" (Aurora Award winner)
"Going Down to Lucky Town"

About PS Publishing

PS Publishing is an award-winning, UK-based, independent publisher of science fiction, fantasy, horror and crime novellas, novels and short fiction collections. They also publish non-fiction and a quarterly short fiction digest magazine, Postscripts. PS and its publications has won the British Fantasy Award over twenty times, as well as the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Sidewise Award, the Prix Lumiere, and others.

"A Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh"
"Spirit Dance" (Aurora Award winner)
"Going Down to Lucky Town"

The painting screams Laure’s name at Maroch. He stares at it in disbelief, choking back his own scream.

It is a still life by van Gogh. This gallery in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is devoted to Vincent. Beneath the painting, a still life now herself, Laure lies dead.

You should have known she would come here, my love, says a voice inside Maroch’s head. It is a woman’s voice, but not Laure’s.

I should have known a lot of things, he answers silently.

Don’t look at her, says the voice.

I can’t help it.

The scrub team works on Laure. Maroch had sent for them when the museum’s Director called him. He still has some pull at the Company.

Don’t look.

Maroch pulls his eyes away as the team lifts Laure’s slim corpse onto the body bag. Instead, he stares at the painting, which is like Laure in two very particular ways: it is beautiful--and it is impossible.

Beautiful. Against a dark blue background, an explosion of flowers overwhelms a white vase. Overwhelms the viewer, too. The flowers, mostly white and yellow chrysanthemums, seem ready to burst from the canvas, run wild over the frame, spill onto the gallery floor. Spill, like Laure lies spilled.

Impossible. This painting can’t exist. But her body gives lie to that. He reads the plaque beside the painting:

"Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase: This still life is not mentioned in van Gogh’s letters and has puzzled scholars as to its place in his artistic production. Most certainly a late work and possibly the Museum’s first painting from his Auvers period (May-July 1890)"

Yes, most certainly a late work, he thinks. Very late.
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Vera made a warding sign as I entered the store, my hound Gelert trailing behind me. She pretended to wipe her hands on her faded blue apron, but I caught the dance of her fingers.

“Hello, Vera. It’s been a while,” I said.

“Yes, yes it has, Mr. Blaidd,” she said too quickly, not returning my smile. Turning from where she’d been refilling a food bin, she addressed her husband. “I gotta check something in the back, Ed.” Almost running, she slipped behind the long wooden counter and into the storeroom at the rear of the store.

Edward Two Rivers leaned on the counter beside the cash register, a newspaper spread in front of him, his long gray hair spilling onto the pages. He watched her leave then smiled at me.

“Ouch,” I said.

“You still spook her,” he chuckled.

“Are you going to run and hide too?” I asked, grinning.

The black eyes narrowed, but his smile remained. “Vera's a white woman. My people have told legends of the Herok’a for generations, Grey Legs. I grew up with those stories. I've known others of your kind...and I think I still know you.”
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If the friends and enemies of Charles Tobias Perlman could agree on one thing, it was this--you never bet against Charlie the Pearl.

Ever.

And if his enemies numbered higher than his friends, well, Charlie just put it down to the life he had lived. A life that did not appear, at that particular moment, as if it would be lived much longer.

He lay in the dirt behind the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto on a beautiful August evening of 1967. His mouth was bleeding and his head throbbing from the beating just delivered by Eddie Fenton, his former partner-in-crime who was now taking out a gun.

Reaching down, Eddie pulled the big pearl stickpin from Charlie’s tie. He polished it with a couple of rubs on his paisley shirt, then stuck it in the lapel of his dirty denim jacket.

Charlie looked up at him, licking blood from his lips. “That,” he commented, “looks ridiculous.”

"Shaddup.” Eddie aimed the revolver at Charlie’s head. “Payback time, old man. Looks like my lucky day.”

Recent events ran through Charlie’s head faster than a drugged filly. He spat out a broken tooth and chuckled. “Kid, you know absolutely nothing about luck.”

Eddie laughed. “And you do? Lying bleeding in the dirt and about to eat a bullet?” He pulled back the hammer with a click that sounded like two dice knocking together. “You got nothing left to teach me, pops.”

With an amazing degree of detachment, Charlie watched Eddie’s finger tighten on the trigger. “Trust me, kid,” Charlie said quietly, “I'm about to give you one last lesson.”

It had all started four weeks ago.
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