“Ah, Lungbarrow!” cried the artist. “What a name… Lungbarrow, Lungbarrow, Lungbarrow! Such an exquisite sound!”
​
He repeated the word thrice more before Quences struck the checkerboard floor with his cane, and snapped:

“Silence, painter, and be at it! We do not pay you forty-five hundred coronets to chatter.”

The artist shrank. There was a hardness to the deep-set blue eyes and the gaunt, angled face; even the neatly-trimmed moustache, which might have looked avuncular in isolation, contributed a terse, military edge. The artist stared at that moustache, enticed by the thought of growing one just like it, until the old man arched an eyebrow; then he ducked behind the work-in-progress.

He was working, of course, in three dimensions—an intricate mechanism of spinning crystals surrounded the frame, generating space. But his would be no Ancestral Portrait, imbued with biodata; merely a vanity pursuit. 

All forty-five Cousins—a family portrait. Such things were rarely attempted. Oldbloods’ disinterest in artwork was one reason; but another, the artist now realised, was the difficulty involved in making two scores of Superiors stand together at close quarters without triggering a brawl. He had, of course, begun the work in his own Chapterhouse, filling the cellar with dummies dressed in borrowed fineries, but even so, reaching a consensus on the composition had been the work of years; every time he thought he had it, some loomling’s ego ached once more, and they would demand to be moved, or to be given grander clothing. One Lungbarrovian in grey-green robes had managed to gain a whole new body while he worked—thinner, in a wholly different style. 

Still, he relished this chance. Even on his eleventh body, he was a boy, with little glory to his name; only a few personal portraits here and there, some of people in this room. So he worked, silently, with renewed fervour—until at last, every Cousin, from Glospin to Vyrdlequith, had been perfectly captured in droplets of hovering paint, every angle a masterpiece of design. 

He announced his achievement, and, with sudden violence, they broke from their poses, swarming around him, rushing to preen and criticise. 

“—not bad—”

“—Cantobel, one can hardly see me—”

“—hardly my fault, Arkhew—”

“—captured my chin—”

Finally Quences parted the crowd, an old woman behind him. Kithriarch and Housekeeper exchanged glances, then pivoted mechanically to face the anxious artist. Satthralope nodded, once, stiff as clockwork.

“It will do,” she declared. 

There was a moment of silence; then the artist remembered to breathe, and reached down to unclasp the ornate wooden frame from the mechanism, locking the image into shape as the surface hardened into glass. With swelling pride, he handed it to the crone, who accepted it in the manner of a sacrament, and shuffled away to find a place to hang it. One by one, the Cousins followed in her wake, until only Quences was left. 

The artist tugged at the lapels of his crimson vestment.

“…Well!” he blurted out at last, “I’m honoured to have been of service, Ordinal-General.”

“Mmh… Serviceable, yes,” Quences grunted absently; he was staring at his distorted reflection on the hull of the crystal machine, with an air of melancholy.

“If I might be so bold,” the younger man tried again, “your family are captivating subjects for an artist like myself. I should be—ahem—greatly honoured to expand your collections further, if you saw any need.”

“…I see none,” Quences muttered, then rubbed at one eye with two fingers. “I agreed to this frivolity for one reason only—because a son of Lungbarrow calls you his friend.” The old man’s gaze grew distant again. “Poor, peculiar boy. Such brilliance. But those rituals of his, those theories… I should have…” His wandering gaze landed on the artist again, and sharpened. “In any case, our collections are exhaustive. All forefathers accounted for. Besides this… family tableau, what else could you give us?”

At this, the young man’s eyes glinted; he steepled his fingers together. “My Lord, there is one ancestor of your illustrious line whose likeness is not represented.”

“Impossible—”

“There is,” he interrupted, pressing his advantage. “Your House’s oldest ancestor, the Grandfather of you all. The Forgotten Founder… the Alterity… the other.”
Quences froze. 

“Naturally,” said the artist, still smiling, as he began to amble through the Hall, “it would have to be an artist’s vision—inspiration, not history—why, I might make them look like you, or your heir presumptive…”

Suddenly Quences was upon him, gripping his collar, pulling him close with incredible strength and speed. 

“How do you know this!?” he hissed. 

“I do read—”

“No one knows this. Do not speak this!”

“Oh, come, Lord Quences—” he chuckled fearfully. “—we’re all family here…”

“What?” He dropped his captive in outrage, then pointed at him with the cane. “You’re no Childe of Lungbarrow’s Loom, you Cliffside brat!”

“But the other has touched many Looms,” the artist protested. “Every cycle, there are more of us who carry their blessings, as you do, as all your House does. Sequence their chronogenetics if you doubt me! Why else should the City now crawl with Interventionists? Take dear old Ferain, as he now calls himself—old powers are returning, Kithriarch. At your will, when they rise, they shall bear Lungbarrow’s crest. Be ready!”

“This—this is nonsense!” the old man roared, and he ran for the stairs, stopping on a landing. “Witch-talk and nonsense—blasphemy upon the Founders! Out—out! Drudges, to me! A madman—I—I—”

Then Quences collapsed with a final cry, clutching at his chest. Within moments, wooden hands had seized the painter, and thrown him across the threshold. He lay in the dirt a moment, then made to limp home, the tools of his trade forsaken. 

* * *

The attack had not killed the Kithriarch. But he lay there for some hours; it was Innocet who found him in the night, and sounded the alarm. When he woke, much weakened, he would not speak of what had occurred, not to any living soul. 

And neither would Glospin, who’d lingered in the other room. 

In the blistering heat by the slopes of Mount Lung, Cousin Owis was looking for mushrooms. He swept his long greying hair from his eyes, and trudged on. His basket was empty.

The haytime air was thick and cloying. Things were always warmer this side of the fifth Temporal Age. It was rare for him to venture near the deserted ruins of his former home. He hated that haunted wreck, but it had been a particularly arid season. The makeshift fungatorium in the Family’s shed had failed to provide any crops. Soon he would need new produce for the market stall he operated with old Cousin Rynde. Scrambling over the dunes, he longed for the neon lights and cool air of the underground village where he lived with the other survivors of Lungbarrow.

But he had a Family to support. He’d never give up on them. There was his partner and children, old Cousins and little second Cousins. They’d all need supper. The outcasts of Lungbarrow had blossomed, the Family growing in the long years since their curse was lifted. And yet they had nothing—no House or voice in the world. They preferred it that way. Owis remembered the tortuous years he’d been trapped in the House, he’d grown up buried under the soil of Mount Lung, never knowing the open sky. By comparison, he loved his frugal life— migrating with the weather to the sheds, stables and mountain-caves. It was so much less stifling than the pomp and ceremonies that some of the older Cousins had grown nostalgic for in their centuries of isolation.
 
He knew he’d get a stern talking to should he let it slip he’d returned to the ruins, as Kinkeeper Innocet outright forbade it on the occasions she tagged along for a foraging trip. But he couldn’t deny the richest and most succulent mushrooms grew in the deep valley where the House had fallen from its perch.

There was a strange feeling in the air as he approached the dip where the ruins lay, the sort of thing Innocet would call ‘a bad omen’. Owis stopped, the dunes dropped off at a sheer point, plummeting down to the misty valleys from which the bole of Mount Lung rose. He tried to assemble his thoughts. In the sand he spotted track-prints, the silhouettes of heavy footfall. Someone was intruding on Lungbarrow’s grave. Owis wracked his brains, trying to remember if he’d seen anyone else heading this way. He’d departed his home in the shed at rush hour, avoiding the roving Hedge-guards and House-County commuters on his way through the dunes. A flash of movement rendered his musings redundant. Something tiny was inching its way down Mount Lung. Owis peered as close as he could, it looked ant-sized in the distance, but it was definitely a person. They were abseiling into the mist that acted as a shroud for Lungbarrow’s unsightly remains. Owis stared in disbelief, and tried to focus on the mad tomb-raider. He looked closer, and saw it. A shock of blond hair, a garish fruit-print shirt. He only needed a glance to recognise that strange and panicked man dangling into the abyss. He was Chris Cwej; that alien chap who’d been the squire to the Family’s runaway heir. He’d only met Cwej once, on the day the old House fell. He’d waited with the surviving Cousins during that warm night on the mountainside. Cwej had pointed out each emerging star to Owis, and held him as he wept at seeing the evening sky for the first time in his life. Owis shook the memory from his head, heaving himself down to an outcrop that faced the mountain’s foot. He called out to Chris.

“Oi, Cwej! Don’t go down there. Innocet says the ghosts’ll kill you!”

Chris didn’t seem to hear him. The suns were beating down on the dunes and mountains with a harsher intensity. Owis tried waving, but Chris had already gone.
The heat reached a crescendo, and then Owis felt the temperature drop by precisely one degree. He didn’t know how, but he felt it deep in the weft of his being. The world was a degree cooler, and there was no Cwej in sight.

A groan echoed from the gullet of the valley below; the ghosts of Lungbarrow weren’t happy at all.

A gust of wind kicked up thick plumes of dust, and Owis wheezed and choked. The gale stopped after a moment. Owis rubbed his eyes. Had he eaten a bad mushroom? He looked down to the valley, deep into the crater where the ruins once lay, and there was nothing. The ruins had gone… Vanished. He almost threw up his breakfast, his hearts beating in terror. But as he climbed up the crook of the dune, a newfound easiness came over him. A weight was lifting from his shoulders, as if some great burden had been relieved. Cousin Owis took a deep breath, and wandered home to the shack on Lungbarrow’s common. He’d go to Innocet and tell her about what he’d witnessed. She’d probably felt it too, and Owis wondered if she’d be sad. He thought of Cwej, and whispered a silent prayer for him. Innocet would want to discuss all this funny business, and knowing her, over a game of cards. As the suns set, Owis decided a day without mushrooms was a worthy price to pay for the exorcism of the Family’s old haunts. 

Time’s roses grow heavy with the scent of memory here at Arcbeatle Press, as we prepare for Chris Cwej to venture into the House of Lungbarrow, that fatal pile woven of ancient wood and even more ancient stories, for the first time in the almost thirty years since the intrepid Adjudicator first ventured into the House as a very different man, in a very different world. Much has happened in the interim, both in the world of Doctor Who and our own, and Lungbarrow has, over that time, accrued a status as something of an esoteric relic—a whispered ghost story of a novel, often invoked but rarely understood or, indeed, read. 

This little primer exists to dispel the mists of rumor and controversy surrounding the novel, and to hopefully allow a deeper understanding of this fascinating, strange little book which has gripped the Doctor Who fandom for almost three decades before you dive into it, its sequel, or indeed both! If you haven’t the foggiest what a “Lungbarrow” is going in, don’t worry! This guide is written to familiarize you with just that, and will hopefully provide a little trivia for even the most hardened Doctor Who EU veteran in addition. With our purpose and context in mind, let us begin; so that when the time comes, we may be lost in the Loomlight with a little more of our own light to lead the way…

Though the book was published in 1997, at the height of the “Wilderness Years” that saw Doctor Who go off the air—with a brief interregnum following the release of a made for television movie starring Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor in 1996—from 1989 to 2005, the story of the book really begins back when the original show, the so-called Classic Series, was still airing. By the time that Lungbarrow’s writer, Marc Platt, entered the scene, the show had already been running for over two decades, and had seen seven actors step into the titular role as the mysterious Time Lord known only as the Doctor. At the time, the current Doctor was the seventh, played by Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy, who had entered the role during a very fraught period in the show’s history. Though cancellation was only a few years away, the series was actually enjoying something of a creative renaissance under script editor Andrew Cartmel, who had set about infusing a new air of mystery and drama into the program. It was from within that context that Marc Platt began writing his original treatment for Lungbarrow.

Platt had actually been writing pitches for the show since the 70s, with his first pitch, Fires of the Starmind, providing an early indication that Platt had a particular interest in exploring the history and setting of the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey; this first idea was responded to favorably by Who luminary Robert Holmes, but ultimately dropped due to its conflict with the then yet to air serial The Deadly Assassin, the first episode of the show to feature Gallifrey as a main setting written by Holmes himself. Platt continued to submit proposals for years to come, many of which ended up being adapted or incorporated into later stories of his, but it was ultimately his pitch Cat’s Cradle that caught the eye of Andrew Cartmel, who asked for another proposal from Platt. After the favorably received but ultimately unproduced Shrine, Platt was set to the task of creating an episode in the same slot as Shrine for the show’s 26th season. Thus, Lungbarrow was born.

Thanks to a recovered scene breakdown of Platt’s original proposal, we actually know a good deal about this version of Lungbarrow. This was a story that was always to be about certain things—the Doctor’s past, his relationship to his family, and the House he was raised in, all bundled up in something of a series of revelations regarding himself and his home planet. All of these were quite bold subjects for 1980s Doctor Who, where the notion that the Doctor even had a family worth referencing was a matter of some dispute. Here in the original pitch, the story roughly resembles its novel form—the Doctor lands in the foreboding and gothic House Lungbarrow, which we learn has sunk due to some unfortunate event in its past, and is still occupied by remnants of his family, where he must undergo journeys into his past and face ghosts of old memories along with his companion—here the punk explosives expert Ace—before his journey amongst the stars can continue.

Most everything regarding Gallifrey is revealed to be rather odd in Platt’s telling, with Gallifreyans not being people with mothers and fathers but rather a set of so-called Cousins, all literally woven out of biological stuff in the life-creating machines known as looms, and raised in living, thinking dwellings known as Houses. This set up would be bold and provocative for any sci-fi series, and was all the more so for one with such a marked tendency towards the staid and the formulaic as Doctor Who at this stage in its lifespan. Already, therefore, we see how ambitious the story is, and indeed much of the structure that is set to recur in later iterations of the story; Lungbarrow is a knotted, iterative thing, but it is ultimately a very stable core story in all versions, all informed by a very maverick take on a particular sci-fi franchise, and even deeper in its core by being something of a gothic, haunted house tale.

This particular version, however, was not to be. Platt did still create a serial for the 26th season, writing the baroque and obscure Ghost Light as the last filmed episode of the classic show (though, confusingly enough, not the last to be aired; that honor went to the episode Survival). Though one can see some traces of Platt’s Gallifreyan Gothic in Ghost Light—an ancient and surreal house, high concept and fantastical elements, the general themes of the past catching up with the present, though this time mostly for Ace rather than the Doctor—the two are ultimately not very similar, and Lungbarrow remained on the shelf even as the show was ultimately cancelled in 1989.

Fast forward a few years, and Marc Platt has found himself writing for Doctor Who again. Beginning in 1991, the publisher Virgin Books acquired the rights to publish original Doctor Who novels, picking up right where the series had left off in 1989 with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Billed as a more adult, more complex take on the teatime sci-fi series, it seemed just the perfect place for Platt’s fantastical and dark take on the show. And so it was that Marc Platt produced his first work for the line, 1992’s Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible. As the title suggests, the novel was an adaptation of sorts of Platt’s old Cat’s Cradle proposal, sharing the adaptation of an abandoned TV script theme in common with its future successor. The book is complex and has a plot whose details are not terribly important to recount here, but it, importantly, allowed Platt to set his pen to writing his ideas into official Doctor Who material. Looms, Houses, and many new elements make appearances, and afterwards Platt departed the line for some years, having now put his stamp onto the franchise twice over, but with no version of Lungbarrow yet to be actually released.

Fast forward five years, and things are once again not looking good for Doctor Who. The attempted revival of the show in 1996 has failed, and Virgin Books is on the brink of losing its license to produce Doctor Who media to BBC Books. With that loss still somewhat on the horizon, the decision is made to produce a finale of sorts for the Seventh Doctor and the range, now firmly in the past due to his onscreen transformation into Paul McGann’s iteration of the character, so that new books could be made featuring the new Doctor, or the range ultimately retired after this one last triumphal note.

Enter Lungbarrow.    

Now meant to serve as a Doctor’s final full story, with a new companion in novel-exclusive Chris Cwej and a drastically longer run time than a 90 minute television serial, the novel is a rather different beast to what pieces of the original television pitch we have, but is also quite similar. Ace is still here, albeit in a new role, all of the original Lungbarrow Cousins from the original TV treatment return—though the maid characters of Grim and Grimmer are absent, replaced by the giant wooden figures known as Drudges—and much of the plot is retained. Really what changes the most is the scope, with whole new sections outside the House dealing in even more lore for Gallifrey as a planet, and much more emphasis being placed on the Doctor’s relation to a mysterious figure of the planet’s past known only as the Other. This element in particular was an adaptation of sorts (to continue the theme) of concepts tossed around during the Cartmel era; indeed, Lungbarrow is meant as a culmination of a great many things from that era and the six year long run of the Virgin line—the end of multiple eras, in a very, very real sense.

Coming as it does at the very end of its range (only one more book featuring the Eighth Doctor would be published with the official full Doctor Who license under Virgin, as well as the earlier in continuity but much delayed So Vile A Sin) and at the end of an entire era for the series, much as its original TV version would have done in all likelihood, and bolstered by its many lore reveals, the book was already quickly becoming legend soon after it hit stands in 1997. This, however, was not the end for the iterative journey of Lungbarrow, nor of its transitional journey into more of a legend than a read book.

This transitional and iterative journey continued in part for a very practical reason—copies of the book were becoming damn expensive. For reasons a little too complex to list here, Lungbarrow received no second printing, and copies of it soon became rather rare. In addition, the lack of licensing agreements on Virgin’s part made a future second printing increasingly unlikely as well. With the book harder to read than ever, Platt ultimately released a second edition of the book as an ebook with BBCi in 2003, thus meaning that the book had now technically been released by both main publishers of Doctor Who fiction. 

This second edition boasted a new cover, an introduction and extensive author’s notes from Platt, which give a glimpse into the process and background behind all iterations of the story (both of these being prime sources for this very article), a variety of mostly minor tweaks and changes to the novel itself, and a set of new illustrations from Daryl Joyce. Available as an ebook from BBCi on the official Doctor Who website for seven years, this edition eventually became unavailable in 2010.

With the lapse of the ebook, and the ever-dwindling availability of the original 1997 edition, Lungbarrow passed further into legend. It became the Lore Book, the Holy Grail, the awesome and perverse light at the end of the Doctor Who EU tunnel. It became, in effect, a myth, just as the subject of its title had. Nowadays, online copies of the book are relatively easy to come by, and information on the TARDIS Wiki, in existing editions of the second edition, and from the recovered scene treatments of the original TV pitch mean that it has never been easier to learn about all the various versions of Lungbarrow. Nonetheless, many still view the novel much as the characters within it view the titular House—forbidding, creepy, and perhaps even a little dangerous.

I hope this little primer has shown that is not the case. Lungbarrow is a legend, and justly so, but it is primarily a smashing good yarn, like all good legends are, with a real and definite history that we can track. I hope this piece has encouraged you to pick it up (or perhaps re-read it, who knows!) and that even if it hasn’t, it may encourage you to come along with us, very soon. For legends never stay buried forever, and the House of Lungbarrow is a legend indeed…



​

La Kraw el Sol, orbiting about 200 miles above Heaven, Sheol
 
It was with increasing frequency that Kwol would barge in on their designated partner Larles, during her so-called “Kwol-free” time in their ship’s library. This was why, today, Kwol made up their mind that they would knock before entering.
 
They forgot to do that, and would, for the hour after being made aware of it, profusely apologize to Larles, who didn’t actually care but pretended to in order that she could hold it as a dagger over Kwol’s head if she needed something.
 
Larles herself was reading an anthology edited by one Hunter O’Connell, who according to her intensive research did not exist anywhere in the Totality. How odd. “Hello Kwol,” she said, her nose still in the book. “Where did we end up getting this one?”
 
“Chris is in his room.” Kwol did not seem to register that Larles had asked a non-rhetorical question, which caused her to close her book with a sigh.
 
“Yes. He lives there. He tends to be in his place of residence. Our nomadic lifestyle of hopping from planet to planet is, I have been told, uncommon.”
 
“Yes, but he’s talking in his sleep-pod.”
 
“You talk in your sleep too. I imagine many people do.”
 
“Yeah, sure, but he’s talking like… he’s having a conversation with someone. I caught some of it. A mirror. A place called Lungbarrow. A canvas.”
 
“…Lungbarrow? Can you use it in a sentence?”
 
Kwol leaned their weight on a bookshelf, which Larles took to mean they were unenthused. “Look, I think he’s having a bad dream or something. And the last time he had a bad dream he had to have his memory cut out of his head by that Suala whatsername.”
 
“So you’re suggesting we watch him while he’s sleeping?”
 
“No, I’m suggesting we prepare to listen if he wants to get into the grimy details.”
 
She considered for a beat, then prodded, “Why did you come here just to tell me to listen to Cwej? I listen to him more often and with more intensity than you.”
 
“Nuh-uh!”
 
“Oh, so this will be a very easy follow-up question. What did he say yesterday? He said it directly to you. I only overheard it, and I can remember exactly what it was.”
 
Kwol stammered through at least three dozen “um”s before landing on the expected answer. “I dunno.”
 
Larles exhaled something between a chuckle and a cough. “Right. Anyways, about this book, do you know who edited this?”
 
Kwol glanced at the cover. “Doesn’t ring a bell, no. But how important can they be? Not like they’re involved with you or me in any way, so why worry?”

This April Fools Day is going to look a little different here at Arcbeatle Press. As many of you may be aware, Lungbarrow by Loomlight is on the horizon! So, instead of a anthology of humorous tales from our talented pool of writers, this year we're bringing you three vignettes, of varying hilarity, to tease this highly anticipated release. 
First up is The Fall of Lungbarrow by James Hornby. Stay tuned for further releases throughout the day. 

A violent breeze whipped about the valley. Dionus pulled his long robes tight around him, wishing he’d have dressed a little more sensibly for the trek across the wilderness. As always, his people’s tradition carried more weight across the ages than common sense.  

In the far distance, beyond the fields of emerald-petaled flowers, Mount Lung dominated the skyline, its three peaks beckoning him towards it like a taloned hand, despite his best intentions.  

He’d always found the place ominous, an omen of darker times to come. Indeed, he recalled his own journey to its Plutarch peak, where the Kingmaker imparted her own cryptic prophecy to him on the night he was granted his timeship. The memory made him shiver, and he swore then he would never return.  

And return he would not. He averted his gaze from the triune colossus, reminding himself of his reason for traversing this desolate place, and how long a journey he still had ahead of him.  

Though as he tried to alter his path towards the Inland Sea, the mountain found another way of drawing him back. 

The wind picked up, even harder now. The blast came so hard that the skin on his cheeks began to ripple. Curiosity got the better of him, and he turned his head back to the jagged blot of white on the horizon.  

But it wasn’t all white. Something large and black was sliding down the mountainside, kicking up a trail of grey in its wake. Dionus could only stare in disbelief. The object plummeted at a rate of knots, before it crashed into the base of the mountain, leaving little more than a pile of rubble. 

“Lungbarrow…” Dionus whispered, as the wind whipped the word from his lips, and carried back across the valley to the Time City. He felt his heart sink. The fall of a House was no small affair. 

Whatever happened there was significant, and on this planet little that happened was significant. He was lucky to have seen it, as the events would no doubt be shrouded in mystery once the authorities arrived. He recalled the same happening to the House of Marnal after its Kirthriarch went missing, its Loomlings absorbed into higher House without a further word spoken.  

“Change is definitely on its way,” Dionus said with a sigh. 

"You’re just imagining it," said his mother, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. He nuzzled against it, soaking in her warmth as if for the first time in centuries. All the while, his eyes lay fixed upon Lungbarrow, shattered at the base of the mountain. 

“Should we go and help them?” Dionus asked. He knew what his instincts were telling him, but the decision wasn’t his to make. 

His mother shook her head. “I’m sure there are far more important players than ourselves involved in what’s happening there. Now come on, Casmus won’t be happy if we don’t return by Sunsbreak tomorrow. You remember what happened last time you disappointed him…” 

Dionus winced at the memory, and spared a thought for Lungbarrow’s own Kithriarch, hoping they weren’t caught up in the House’s fall. 
​
Reluctantly, Dionus followed his mother away from the fallen House. As they went, he uttered a silent prayer for Lungbarrow, hoping one day it would get its chance to rise from ruin.

​The late David McIntee was a great help in forming Arcbeatle Press into what it is today, with an instrumental addition to SIGNET’s cast, and allowing the use of the villainous Koschei in Cwej: The Series. Now, his wife Lesley McIntee, along with Arcbeatle’s own Hunter O’Connell, have created “I’ll Think of a Title Honest”, a new anthology featuring original stories inspired by David’s life and times. 

“‘I’ll think of a title, honest!’ was an often-repeated answer to David’s publishers asking him for a title to his many works, as it was typically the last thing handed in,” says Hunter O’Connell, who helped edit all contributions. “We named this book as such because it encapsulates the true brilliance and humor of David.”

Included in the stories is Andy Lane’s “The Midnight Fish Market”, a sequel to David’s wonderful Doctor Who novel “White Darkness”. Also included are transcriptions of David’s fencing YouTube videos and speeches, short stories by close friends and colleagues alike, and a deeply personal story about David’s final days written by Lesley McIntee, “The Dark Corridor”.

“I’ll Think of a Title Honest” marks the first release of joint-published anthologies by Arcbeatle Press and Lesley’s new imprint, Strawberry Leopard Press. Talks are ongoing regarding yearly almanacs to be released in a similar format, including some old and forgotten stories from non-English speaking cultures, released in English for the first time. Alongside this will be new short stories by Strawberry Leopard’s diverse talents.

“This project was in Lesley’s mind immediately following the announcement of David’s passing,” says Hunter. “It is a great honor to help bring her dreams to life, and celebrate David McIntee in a way he would surely love.”

“It was the end but the moment was prepared for,” says editor Lesley McIntee. “David A McIntee was a man of many words and worlds, a man of honor and a man of truth. So in his name; Here be monsters. Beautiful monsters and bold concepts, myths and magic and martial arts and voices new and old. With this collection I give you, his fans, his legacy. Use it well.”

“David McIntee was an incredible man. A wonderful author and a friend to many who will be dearly missed. Outspoken against all forms of bigotry and a helping hand to up-and-coming creatives everywhere, he sadly passed away on December 15th, 2024.

These stories serve as a heartfelt memorial to David McIntee’s legacy. Written by science-fiction authors who felt lucky to be his friends, or students of his storied fencing career. In collaboration with his wife Lesley, we bring you contributions that honor his memory, now carried on by those who knew him in life.”

All profits from “I’ll Think of a Title Honest” will be donated to The Siamese Cat Welfare Trust, on Lesley’s request. The anthology releases today, March 11th, 2026, and will be available for sale at Eastercon 2026 in Birmingham, from April 3rd through the 6th.