Dearly Departed: Sephera Giron and Andrew Robertson collect their "favourite frights" and "gravest hits"

10 Nov 2022.

by Drew Rowsome -

Dearly Departed's co-authors Sephera Giron and Andrew Robertson are familiar from previous anthologies that have graced this blog, specifically Dark Rainbow, Group Hex Vol 1 and Group Hex Vol 2.with Robertson also contributing to A Tribute Anthology to Deadworld. Dearly Departed is not an anthology, but rather what Giron and Robertson refer as a collection of their "favourite frights" and "gravest hits." It's a strong collection with the two authors alternating and complementing each other. Robertson begins with "Hamburger Lady" which I first read in the first Unbreakable Ink anthology from the publisher Indomitable Ink. "Hamburger Lady" is a sci-fi future-set meditation on disease, cosmetic surgery, sex work and, love and marriage. And it is truly creepy despite the new plague covid having supplanted the explicit AIDS metaphor. Robertson continues the medical horror with "Sick is the New Black," which also adds in the sickness of social media and influencers. The central concept of using self-induced illness for hits and likes is a nasty, and sadly apt, one. Robertson's satirical scalpel reveals and revels in excruciating, nauseating descriptions and a poetically apt ending.

Social media also gets bashed in the less successful "The Exit Interview" (a prequel to "Sick is the New Black") and the apocalyptic "Tinderbox." "Tinderbox" functions on two levels, both as a gripping end of the world/monsters attack saga, and as a vicious critique of the usefulness, and our overdependence on, social media and dating apps for human connection. Despite my concern for the protagonist's plight, a passage on accepting a hook-up and then preparing for their arrival, made me laugh out loud. A very basic gay experience pushed beyond the extreme but with similar mundane horndog stakes. "Small Town Gay Bar" is as much fun as the first time I read it, zombie drag queens and gay men's inhumanity to other gay men is a potent combination. "The Erastes Poultice" infuses a Lovecraftian tale with explicit m/m gothic romance, again with comic effect. Half-parody, half-gay fan fic, the ending hints at a cliffhanger and I would eagerly continue the adventure into a world of gay eldritch mystery.

My unabashed enthusiasm and desire for gay characters and gay sensibility in horror literature, made Robertson's stories standouts. But Giron's work is suffused with a quirky dark sexuality that reads as emphatically queer and casually feminist. "The Blood Countess" is an explicitly lesbian riff on Lady Bathory voiced by a corrupted innocent. While the tale is an effective horror saga full of blood, violence and sexuality, it filled my brain with nightmares by introducing me to the concept of 'immurement' which I am delighted/disgusted to have googled. "Rock and Roll All Night" also toys with sapphic desire, tempered with goth's glamourous attitude and the title's inferred guitar hero worship. But the central contribution by Giron is a trilogy of tales - "The Next Big Thing," "Looking for Mrs Peepers," and "'Twas Brillig" - following the striving of a woman searching for literal magic. A femme fatale of the Barbara Stanwyck ilk, she joins forces with a street magician and proceeds to absorb and enhance his talents. 

"The Next Big Thing" is the most non-genre story and also the creepiest, partially structurally and partially because of one inventive twist. The illusionists contend with Ouija boards, ventriloquist dolls, and eventually monsters of kaiju proportions. While each story contains creepy charm, there is a sense that Giron is working on something larger,  that linking and filling in the blanks would create an epic saga that would dig deeper into the characters. That is the one weakness of Dearly Departed: many of the stories were originally published in themed anthologies. Robertson's "Her Royal Counsel" and Giron's "Running with the Jackalopes" both suffer from being out of context, though "Running with the Jackalopes" has a delicious dark sensuality that is literally bestial. "The Next Big Thing" was written for an anthology of Ouija board stories while "Looking for Mrs Peepers" was for the more vaguely themed Abandon: 13 Tales of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender and Withdrawl. "'Twas Billig" is new for Dearly Departed. My fervent wish is that the protagonist of the three tales, has sunk her manicured nails as deeply into Giron's imagination as she has into my curiosity. A novel, or even another story, is something I eagerly anticipate. With or without Mr Peepers.

Perhaps that is the function of collections and anthologies. To introduce authors that are new to the reader and to whet the appetite for more of their work. Many times anthologies have been gateways to new authors and Dearly Departed certainly makes my veins itch for more from these two familiars.