Roadkill/Siren Beat

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Two novelettes – “Roadkill” by Robert Shearman and “Siren Beat” by Tansy Rayner Roberts – published in tête-bêche format form the first Twelfth Planet Press Double.

Cover Art by Dion Hamill and Cover Design by Amanda Rainey.

Roadkill by Robert Shearman

Roadkill is a squeamishly uncomfortable story with the kind of illicit weekend away that you never want to have. “Roadkill” offers a taste of the new full length collection by Robert Shearman, out in November.

“Do you want some music?” he said at last, “would some music be nice?” He fished around for a wad of CDs with his spare hand. “I think some music would be nice,” he said, “I’ll see if I can find Elton John.” And then she didn’t so much hear it as feel it, there was a thud, and a quick streak of something very solid against the windscreen. “Jesus,” he said. He didn’t drop the CDs, she noted, he put them back safely into the glove compartment. “Jesus, what was that?”

“Pull over,” she said. And he looked at her with bewilderment. “Pull over,” she said again, and he did so. The car stopped on the hard shoulder.

“Jesus,” he said again. “We hit something.”

You hit something, she thought.

Siren Beat by Tansy Rayner Roberts

“Siren Beat” is a paranormal romance sans vampires or werewolves but featuring a very sexy sea pony. A minor group of man-eating sirens on the docks of Hobart would not normally pose much of a challenge for Nancy, but she is distracted by the reappearance of Nick Cadmus, the man she blames for her sister’s death.

Sirens and mermaids tend to be bitter. You can’t blame them, really. Their tales don’t tend to have happy endings. Still and all. That doesn’t give them the right to come to my city, to seduce its children and dump them in the river. It should never have happened, and it’s my bloody fault. But I can stop them. If the push-push-push of the beat they play doesn’t get to me first.