Moonshine Express

by Poppet

102 pages

For June Dubois, it was disconcerting enough to be sent an exclusive invitation for a journey in the alien luxury environment of what she assumes is the famous Royal Scotsman train – but as the gleaming blood-coloured carriages pull away from the rainy platform into the night to the strain of formal bagpipes, what she finds is far stranger.  The Moonshine Express is a train between reality and elsewhere, through a warped past and present – a train of ghosts and horrors, dilemmas and history and tricks of contract.  A train of dead man's bones and crying souls.   As June struggles to work out just who she is and what this train and its occupants want with her, this is also a journey through the melting reality of her own mind, and the darkness that lurks beyond the train window is not the normal impenetrable railway darkness . . .

Poppet’s writing style is filled with the strange and the brashly humorous mixed with the violent and visceral – with a good dose of dark romance and glamour thrown in as well.  It’s a heady and pungent blend that comes like a slap in the face in the dark, leaving you unsure whether to love or to fight back in panic – or both.  Moonshine Express is her first appearance between hard covers.

Please take a look at Rustblind's accompanying anthology Rustblind and Silverbright here.

Poppet started her journey into fiction by telling horror stories to her friends before any of them hit puberty, and is still remembered fondly by her cousin for scaring the pants off all of them as little children. She was born to the terrible two, Vlad the barbarian and Narciscyst the vain, in circa Saturday Night Fever. Thus it's of no great surprise that Poppet is wary and talks to people by staring at their feet (she will always notice your shoes first. You have been warned.)

Describing herself as more tenacious than the herpes virus or a virulent strain of syphilis, it would appear that no amount of antivenin, antibiotics, Armageddon, doomsday end of the world prophecies, or rejection letters from publishers, can dissuade this woman from writing.

She has spent a large portion of her years since she could 'walk again' (she wasn't born again, don't worry, put the smoke canister down, it's safe to answer the door), writing paranormal romance and romance horror, taking the odd detour down fairytale lane and diabolical alley (which was a cul-de-sac ending with two floating eggs in formaldehyde).

Her latest muse has been Eibonvale editor and head cannibal David Rix, because he introduced Poppet to thundereggs - which have made an appearance in her newest PNR The Valhalla series. Her weaknesses are: an addiction to jelly beans, and a reverse psychology crush on Cupid (well his big brother Eros if we're splitting hairs). She likes to drool at black Lamborghini Gallardos, emulate the Valkyries, and read with all the lights off.

She has forty novels to her credit ranging from the theologically challenging - to botany for beginners; is signed to three publishers, and likes to self publish too. Her greatest shame is the first time she was published in New York it was for her poetry. It's hard to be a cool cat with that dogging her reputation. Perhaps her greatest achievement is counting wall tiles every time she uses a new bathroom.