Featherbones

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Aamer Hussein and Rebecca Smith, for incubating this story throughout its various drafts and for helping it to hatch.

Thanks also to Poppy Z. Brite, for saving me from the dark, and to Patty, for the introductions – and so much more. Wormwood forever has a place beneath my pillow.

Inspirations: Brite’s ‘Missing’ and Lost Souls. Philip Hoare’s Leviathan, and his many moving talks on Southampton. The city itself, my home away from home. Kate MccGwire and her haunting sculptures. Aronof-sky’s ‘Black Swan’. Thomas Ligotti, Angela Carter and Clive Barker, whom I admire so much.

Thanks to Anna and the Sparkling Books team for continuing to make my writing dreams a reality.

Finally, thank you to Gill and Brian for always being there.

All my love.

Thomas Brown

June 2015

Oxfordshire, UK

@TJBrown89

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or moun-tainous; that ocean is not silent.”

H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The White Ship’