Beryl Gore is a lonely orphan living and working at the Palace Theater in London. Night after night, the company performs tales of guts and glory to an audience of drunken louts while young Beryl cranks the artificial wave machine, entranced by the drama. The plays color Beryl’s otherwise humdrum life amongst the slaughterhouses and cobbled alleys of the city. In her attic room, she pens her own melodrama, a bloody yarn of pirates and damsels where goodness is always rewarded. When Beryl shyly shows her work to Mister Perry, the Theater Manager, he shoos the child away.

As Beryl enters adulthood, the theater ages with her, becoming shabbier and emptier with each passing season. As theater-goers turn to fresh spectacles elsewhere, Beryl realizes her theatrical world is in trouble. If the Palace is to be saved, it will need a bold new playwright.

Verity Holloway was born in Gibraltar in 1986 and spent her childhood following her Navy family around the world. Always on the move, dealing with the effects of her connective tissue disorder, Marfan syndrome, she found friendly territory in fantasy, history, and Fortean oddities. She is author of the novels Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, Pseudotooth, and The Others of Edenwell, as well as The Mighty Healer, a biography of her quack doctor ancestor. She lives in East Anglia where she edits CloisterFox Zine in a house crammed with Victorian medical antiques.

Ivo de Jager is a self-taught artist and writer. He graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with an MFA in Writing for Performance and is well-versed in writing for the stage, screen, and radio.