Overview

This volume, Tales From Southern Europe, turns its attention towards the Mediterranean and its hinterlands, towards Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Albania, Slovenia, and Croatia, as well as the wider southern weave that includes islands and coasts, peninsulas and mountain valleys, border towns and sea-gates. These places are not a neat box on a map. They are a mesh of sea-roads and caravans, empires and city-states, pilgrim routes and pirate routes, monasteries copying texts by lamplight and fishermen trading gossip at dawn. Here, stories travel because people travel, and people travel because power, hunger, faith, and opportunity keep moving the world on. If there is a deep root to southern European tradition, it is the way old, serious literature sits beside stubborn oral life, each feeding the other. Greece carries the long echo of epic and hymn, together with the later worlds of saints' lives, local marvels, and river-spirits that never quite left. Italy offers courtly romance and street tale alike, from the polished to the earthy, with a taste for wit, trickery, and the sharp turn of fate. Across the Adriatic and down through the Balkans, you meet songs and legends that remember frontier pressures, honour codes, blood debts, and the uncanny sitting right inside the everyday. And through it all, the sea is not a backdrop. It is a character, generous one week, murderous the next, and always asking us to pay the price. The Iberian peninsula brings its own texture, shaped by long centuries of contact and contest, and by the fact that stories there often carry more than one language inside them. In Spain and Portugal, ballads and wonder tales sit alongside legends of saints, outlaws, enchanted moors, clever peasants, and bargains made in dry places under a hard sun. These are landscapes where honour can be both shield and trap, where pride can ruin a house, and where the miraculous is never far away. Across Italy, the stories often feel close to the hearth and the marketplace. You find sharp-tongued devils, saints who behave like folk heroes, ogres that look suspiciously like local tyrants, and young women who survive through nerve and wit rather than luck. In Greece, the supernatural can be bright and dangerous, nymphs and water-things, curses that cling to families, and vows that behave like iron shackles. In Albania and along the Adriatic cultures of Croatia and Slovenia, you meet tales where the bond of a promise can raise the dead, where a mountain can keep a secret, where a community survives by its codes, and where love and duty do not always fit together cleanly.

Full Product Details

9781915081803

Table of Contents

Reviews

I have edited Clive Gilson's books for over a decade now - he's prolific and can turn his hand to many genres. poetry, short fiction, contemporary novels, folklore, and science fiction - and the common theme is that none of them ever fails to take my breath away. There's something in each story that is either memorably poignant, hauntingly unnerving, or sidesplittingly funny - Lorna Howarth, The Write Factor Ragged A Ruffian reviewed on Amazon in the United Kingdom on 27 January 2021 - A truly heartwarming, interesting, story with a wonderful narrative. Unquestionably a splendid read A Solitude of Stars: With deft turns of phrase and an imagination that would make Philip K. Dick jealous, Gilson foresees a dystopian future, the seeds of which are definitely being sown right now. The story is a chilling glimpse of what may come to pass, warmed by a thread of love that raises the narrative beyond despair. I found the stories disturbing and breath-taking in equal measure. The Apparat and Dirigiste tribes are ranging across our solar system seeking peace by waging war, raising the question; is humanity actually capable of peace? A riveting read. - Rob Swan, The Write Factor Songs of Bliss gripped me from the start - I had to read right to the end. Loved the humour. Impressed by the surprising empathy that I felt for rather - on the face of it - unlikeable characters. Look forward to seeing it in print. - Maighdean-Mhara, commenting on Authonomy I just wanted to thank you once more for your help acquiring this beautiful collection. It's found a new home at the top of my library. I've already stumbled onto some wonderful stories in a couple of the collections, and I can't wait to get more. Have a wonderful holiday and a great new year... - Richer Daniel Laporte, California, December 2021 Melodies In Black Ink: A collection of darkly captivating short tales, each inspired by the melodies that move us, the lyrics that linger, and the stories hidden between the notes. Gilson (editor of the international Fireside Stories series) offers a dark, poignant collection of genre-crossing stories, all inspired by songs, that explore the fragile intersections of love, loss, resilience, and the shadows we carry. Ranging from children with superpowers to accounts of blossoming love, abusive relationships, unexpected pregnancies, and the isolating rhythm of a machine-driven society, Gilson's stories capture raw textures of the human experience in a key suggested by their musical inspirations, which include lushly brooding tracks from Kate Bush, This Mortal Coil, Angel Olsen, The Cure, and Youssou N'Dour (the sublime ""7 Seconds,"" a duet with Neneh Cherry.) Gilson has a gift for moment-to-moment storytelling that grips and then lingers, like Gorilla Glue stuck to one's fingertips, resisting even the harshest solvents of reason. Adding a unique dimension, each story concludes with a toast to the song and artist that inspired it, an invitation to experience these briskly potent stories on another sensory level, with a soundtrack tying words to melody, emotion to rhythm. Melodies in Black Ink is not light reading, but it is deeply moving, with haunting emotional rewards. Searing, surprising stories of urgent feeling, inspired by beloved songs.

Author Information

Clive Gilson was born in 1962 into a household steeped in sport and rhythm. His father was a senior amateur and lower-league professional footballer, while his mother, equally formidable, was an award-winning ballroom dancer. Their spirited household didn't just hum with ambition, it danced to it.After earning a degree in History from Leeds University, Clive took an unexpected turn into the then-nascent world of information technology in the late 1980s. Yet, the call of story and stage never left him. Alongside a thriving tech career, he freelanced as a journalist and book reviewer, earning one small by-line in the national press, and also spent over a decade performing in village halls and professional theatres across the south of England.A true inheritor of his family's sporting zeal, Clive later pivoted into live sports broadcasting. In the 1990s, he became a trusted rugby 'stato' for the BBC, ITV, EuroSport, and TVNZ, bringing insight and analysis to major tournaments including the Heineken Cup, Six Nations, World Sevens, and Rugby World Cups.As a writer, Clive has made his mark across genres. His debut novel, Songs of Bliss, was published in 2017, followed by A Solitude of Stars in 2019. Since then, he has released three acclaimed short story collections, The Mechanic's Curse, The Insomniac Booth, and, in 2025, Melodies in Black Ink.He is also an award-winning poet and the author of a biography detailing the life of a former professional footballer, namely his father. Since 2018, Clive has served as Managing Editor of the Firesides Tales Project, a global storytelling initiative that has published over 30 collections of folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends from around the world.Today, Clive continues to write fiction rich in folklore, memory, and quiet transformation, combining his deep love of narrative with a lifelong fascination with the human spirit.For more about his work, visit clivegilson.com, where stories are always waiting to be found.

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