KRIS ASHTON

I was walking to the train station one morning when I began to think about cannibalism and wondered if a small community could actually survive on nothing else but human meat. Under the truly dreadful working title of ‘Self-Sufficient in Lower Myrtle Town’ I started to explore the idea.

 

Over the next two years, I sent ‘Trouble with the Locals’ off to several markets in a much longer and more flowery form with no success. Then one reader offered some feedback that proved nigh on a revelation. I hacked nearly 2,000 words out of the story and set about finding a new market for it. When I read the ‘rural horror’ theme of 1018 Press’ Back Roads, it almost seemed preordained that I should send it there. Two days later I got the good news.