Clan Destine Press Blog

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...

We're happy to have Gabiann Marin's story for Clamour and Mischief, titled "Quoth the Raven," Gabiann reads from her tale on our YouTube channel. What is the most unexpected tidbit you learned while researching your story? The most interesting bit of information I gathered was just how big a role ravens, corvids and crows play in the inspiration of written works. Not just as subjects, but how often they feature in some way in the lives of the writers themselves. I knew before writing the story that Edgar Allen Poe had been inspired to write the poem The Raven by meeting...

We're delighted to have George Ivanoff's "Murder of Crows" in our Clamour and Mischief anthology, and hope you head to our YouTube channel to listen to George reading from his story. What is the most unexpected tidbit you learned while researching your story? I’ve always associated certain collective nouns with particular birds, like murder with crows and parliament with owls. I never realised that so many birds actually had multiple collective nouns. As well as a murder, crows can be a mob, a horde, a cawcus, a clan, a brood, or a number of other terms depending on which part...

Jason Franks joins our Clamour and Mischief anthology with his short story "The Language of Birds," which you can enjoy him reading a snippet of on our YouTube channel. What is the most unexpected titbit you learned while researching your story? Well, there was a lot of stuff as I took a deep dive into the various King Solomon apocrypha, looking for some kind of coherent narrative (spoiler: there isn't) but probably the thing I enjoyed the most was reading about the Doll House (aka the Doll's House, aka The Dollhouse), a roadhouse that was around the corner from the...