Clan Destine Press Blog — Clamour and Mischief authors

Andrea L Farley is an life-long artist who recently took up creating book covers – including the cover for Clamour and Mischief. Here Andrea shares some thoughts on covers and corvids! An unexpected tidbit: I had always been vaguely aware of the fact that there are a lot of birds in the family Corvidae, but I was so surprised to learn just how many that actually is! I had thought to include all of them, but ended up selecting just a few simply because there was no way to include them all. My favorite thing about making the cover: As...

We welcome Raymond, here to talk with us about his story for Clamour and Mischief titled "The Girl and the Crow." The most unexpected thing I learnt while researching for “The Girl and the Crow” was that dogs eat birds sometimes. (Although I didn't end up using the information, it was really surprising.) My favourite thing about being part of Clamour and Mischief was the opportunity to share my writing with the world and explore a new genre that I hadn't really stepped foot in. My favourite corvid has to be the crow, because they are really fascinating and are...

Narrelle M Harris is not only the editor of this anthology, her love of all things corvid of course means she's written a story as well. Here Narrelle talks about her tale for Clamour and Mischief called "Seven for a Secret." What is the most unexpected tidbit you learned while researching your story?  Actually, my whole story is based on things I learned prior to writing it, the most surprising of which was that Australian magpies are not members of the corvid family. Europeans came and saw black and white birds that looked like magpies, so the name stuck.  However,...

We're here with Raymond Gates, who talks with us about his Clamour and Mischief tale titled "Once Upon a Midnight." What is the most unexpected tidbit you learned while researching your story? The high level of intelligence ravens possess. Their capacity for learning has been equated to adult great apes and they have been known to have a greater vocabulary than some parrots. They can plot and scheme: for example, ravens can imitate wolf howls and other predators to call them to a carcass they cannot break open, and when the predator is done eating, can feast on the remains....

RJK Lee joins us to talk about his  Clamour and Mischief story called "Build Another Nest for Phantom Feathers," a snippet of which you can hear RJK read here. What is the most unexpected tidbit you learned while researching your story? I found the nesting strategies of azure-winged magpies and magpies in Japan rather interesting. Azure-winged magpies apparently nest within the territories of predatory birds like sparrowhawks to avoid foxes and other mammals. Tokyo researchers stated that only 2% of nests within 20 meters of a sparrowhawk nest were lost to predators. This is an aspect I wanted to insert...