by Joe Vaz

Firstly let me apologise for the lengthy silence. Things have come to pass in Something Wicked Land that we were hoping to avoid and have spent a good deal of the last 7 weeks trying to come up with alternatives, which, I think, we have.
Issue 20 will be available for sale as an e-Magazine eventually, as it is not actually finished yet. We will be releasing it slowly over the next few months, starting with the already mentioned “The Time Hangs Heavy”, by Angel Propps, on May 1st, followed by CS Fuqua’s “Demons”, Taylor Hanton’s “Lanchester Square” and Grey Freeman’s exquisite ghost story, “Promises”.
We also have an interview with Alastair Reynolds and review of his latest book, Blue Remembered Earth, which, as above, will be published in due time.
All of this and more, still coming, I just don’t know when.

Issue 20 (Apr 2012)
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by Vianne Venter

In my hometown there was an apocalypse. The mills all closed, the work moved elsewhere. People lost their jobs, their homes. Neighborhoods that had once been filled with working families became centers of poverty and drug abuse. People took jobs making less money than they had ever made, (and they were the lucky ones), many more went on public assistance and pride, both personal and civic, crumbled. The neighborhood I described is the neighborhood in which I grew up..

Issue 20 (Apr 2012)
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by Angel Propps

Lou Williams stood in front of the huge window that dominated most of his living room. One hand twitched at the curtains he had moved aside just enough to peek through. The other rested on the butt of the old revolver he had taken down from its box in the back of the closet. A dreamlike expression rode his wrinkled old face as he stood there, caught between wondering if that window could indeed act like a magnifying glass and burn right through him, and the vivid memory of bringing his wife Sally home to that house for the first time.

Issue 20 (Apr 2012)
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Cover Art by Pierre Smit

Pierre Smit

one of my personal favourites, i always felt, were my drawings for "The Block," back in um..SW#03..or the one for "Deadfellas" in SW#09.. but now it probably has to be 'ANNA NIEMAND" (to cite someone else's title for it), i did for the cover of SW#12..
i think she came out damn sexy.. (it's all her though, not me..:)

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interview by Vianne Venter

This story came out of a love of Lovecraft and Arthur Machen -- especially Machen, in this case. Machen's stories and novels are some of the most wonderful and terrifying out there, I think, but one thing that bothers me in some of them is a sense of female characters as both victims and objects of horror. I wanted to write a story that both paid homage to everything I love about Machen and addressed or turned the tables on this issue a bit. The story also came out of a lot of broader thinking I'd been doing about love and relationships.

Issue 19 (Mar 2012)
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