Streetlight Magic: The Sleepless Man

The Sleepless Man is the first story in the Streetlight Magic series: Ed Quill, a government contractor in cases of the supernatural, gets called to a man who hasn’t been sleeping. In fact if he sleeps, he’ll die. The only clue about why is a jacket made from still living seal-skin. Suddenly, Ed and his friend Max find themselves hip deep in a twenty year old tale of rape and imprisonment.

Streetlight Magic is an urban fantasy series that gets out of London and explores the rest of the country. Just as urban fantasy America tends to be either viewed as Chicago or Kansas (or maybe New Orleans,) urban fantasy Britain is basically… London. That’s it. Not even London and Birmingham. If you read UK based urban fantasy, all the weird shit happens somewhere within the M25.

We start in the M25, but we commute. This is a word where Merrows court North Sea fisherman, Kobolds lurk in the ruins of WW2 internment camps and Yeth Hounds chase down travellers on the West-Country moors. Where humanity are just a tribe of technologically advanced monkeys huddling around our new, electrical campfire. Step out into the dark and all the old horrors are waiting.

Yet, the government have no special Supernatural Defence Force. There is no ‘Department X’ to protect us from evil. Having a force would involve admitting that the problem existed, and we cannot admit the problem exists. Such things would lead to war; and we would not win because if we used our weapons against the monsters in the shadows, they would use theirs. For all our deadly warheads and artificial fire, we would come to nothing.

There are more of them than us, and they are more powerful. We rule the light because they are happier in the darkness.

However, there are times when even the governments of men must protect someone from the monsters, when there is a price too high for the peace of turning a blind eye. On those occasions the government turns to private contractors hired through an obscure club in Jermyn Street. When money changes hands it is invoiced only as ‘Streetlight Magic.’