Ariadne, I Love You

Jude is dragged out of Alt Country obscurity, out of the dismal loop of booze and sadness baths and the boundless, insatiable loneliness, to scrub up and fly to Australia for a last, desperate comeback tour. Hardly worth getting out of bed for—and he wouldn’t, if it weren’t for Coreen. But Coreen is dead. And, worse than that, she’s married. Jude’s swan-song tour becomes instead a terminal descent, into the sordid past, into the meaning hidden in forgotten songs, into Coreen’s madness diary, there to waken something far worse than her ghost. “Ashley-Smith (The Attic Tragedy) uses this eerie, ambiguous ghost story to explore the fraught relationship between artist and muse and the thin line between love and obsession… The result is multilayered, atmospheric, and thought-provoking.” – Publishers Weekly “Sensual and deadly, enticingly sinister.” – Aurealis Magazine, #141 “Ariadne, I Love You, by J. Ashley-Smith, is my favorite kind of horror story: intimate, whip-smart, and relentless... More stories like this, please.” – Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell “This is the kind of oblique, unsettling fiction I’m always looking for and too rarely find; I highly recommend it.” – Lynda E. Rucker, award-winning author of The Moon Will Look Strange and You’ll Know When You Get There “J. Ashley-Smith deftly blurs the lines between real and nightmare, love and obsession, in this haunting novella of aged rock stars, unrequited devotion, and the unassailable power that the past has over us.” – Simon Strantzas, author of Nothing is Everything “A nuanced and numinous rock ’n’ roll Gothic.” – J.S. Breukelaar, author of The Bridge Keith Rosson, author of Folk Songs For Trauma Surgeons and The Mercy of the Tide – “Ashley-Smith understands that ghost stories are, most importantly and at their core, about people, and with Ariadne, I Love You, he’s crafted a haunting, ambiguous, confident and ghastly tale of eternal love.”