Beneath Ceaseless Skies January 28, 2021 issue features The Guadalupe Witch from Josh Rountree (twitter and website) and Her Black Coal Heart a Diamond in My Hand from R.K.Duncan (twitter and website).

The Guadalupe Witch is short, punchy, and cuts straight at the heart of sacrifice, desperation, and the prices we are willing to pay for loved ones and for magic. It’s got a wonderful weird-west setting and vibe that is subtle but effective, and there’s a sedate but inexorable pace to the story that keeps building tension to the climax. It’s a fast read and absolutely worth your time.

Her Black Coal Heart a Diamond in My Hand paints a bleak picture of a world where ghosts are the materiel for a artist’s mad art installation. He endeavors to shed light on the exploitation and desperation of lower classes while defining the gulf between the stories of those spirits displayed in the exhibit, and those doing the viewing. As R.K.Duncan takes us on this journey, we are presented with a window into how making art can shed light on plight, and how shedding that light might affect the artist. We are asked what the cost of telling stories that might not be ours to tell might be (costs to the teller, and to those whose stories are plundered). And, along the way we experience a story told with visceral and surreal language with magic that is numinous and always drifting just outside our grasp, unable to be clearly defined, yet full of concrete details that pin it in place. R.K.Duncan asks a lot of the reader in this story, but rewards us in doing so.