It's Dark Inside on Black Gate

My review for Karen Heard's story collection, It's Dark Inside, went up on Black Gate today. Let me know what you think.

Penpal on Black Gate

I posted a review of Dathan Auerbach's debut novel, Penpal, on Black Gate. Check it out.

The Book of Horrible Stories on Black Gate

My review for The Book of Horrible Stories by Sheila C. Johnson is up on Black Gate today. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The Last Red Sonja Post on Black Gate

It's titled, "Blue Sonja," for the blue fur outfit she briefly wore in the eighties instead of her iconic chain mail bikini. I share some final thoughts on the character and what went in to writing this series. It's been fun, but now it's time for me to move on to other things.

Land of Laughs review on Black Gate

I posted a review of Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs on Black Gate.  It's one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors.  If you check it out, let me know what you think.

Shadow Swans by Laura Thomas

OK, so odd couple stories are nothing new.  Holmes & Watson.  Oscar & Felix.  Burt & Ernie.  Mulder & Scully.  Gilgamesh & Enkidu (look it up).  There's something that resonates in these sorts of pairings, the idea that we often need to cooperate with people who are seemingly our polar opposites in order to discover new aspects of ourselves.  So on the surface, the tale of independently wealthy Ruby Cooper befriending homeless Credenza R doesn't seem like anything new.

But the best pairings of this sort occur when both members are odd, extreme in opposite directions.  Laura Thomas wisely casts Ruby not as a worldly-wise everywoman, but rather as a Howard Hughes-ian style recluse who spends her spare time in an otherwise abandoned building crafting hummingbirds from garbage.  It is, therefore, completely plausible that she would befriend a homeless woman.  Likewise, Credenza isn't some naïve runaway living off the streets, but a clever survivor belonging to a homeless community just as valid and complex as any society to which the average reader might relate.  While both women struggle with their own unique problems, we are never presented with a platitude about how one or the other lifestyle is the "right" way to live.

The story begins with a chance encounter between Ruby and Credenza on a subway platform.  Credenza has never left the tunnels beneath the New York subway system, due to a severe allergy to sunlight (which may or may not be psychosomatic), and so employs Ruby to make shopping trips for her.  After several such trips, Ruby finally dares to follow her friend back to a vast community of homeless people who live far beneath one of the wealthiest cities on Earth.  Perhaps inspired by Ruby's daring, Credenza finally works up the courage to take on a journey of her own.  However, her journey doesn't take her to the surface (as most readers might predict), but rather further into the tunnel systems, into a secret network of shelters whose ultimate purpose is disturbing to both women.

It's probably inaccurate to classify Credenza and the other subterraneans as homeless, since we see repeatedly that they have not only manufactured shelters with lighting and plumbing; but that their community has its own laws and means of enforcing them.  Each of the characters introduced has his or her own backstory and it would be easy to imagine Laura Thomas returning to this setting to tell further tales of Ben, Ghostface & Ali or Leopold the conspiracy nut.  The community she describes is based off the real-life communities existing beneath New York (which don't officially exist).

As a whole, I enjoyed this book, although there were elements which seemed to ring false (Ruby Cooper is a twenty-two year-old millionaire social network designer who shows no interest in computers or social networking).  The second half of the story presents an adventure setting normally reserved for post-apocalyptic fiction, but which is likely to actually exist in one form or another beneath the streets we walk.  This is the first novel by Laura Thomas and I will certainly be watching for future work by this promising new author.

You can order a copy of the book here and here or a copy of the e-book here and here.  You can also go the Shadow Swans website to learn more about the book and its author.

Scarce Resources by Brendan Detzner

Chicago author Brendan Detzner has a collection of short stories coming out in August and I managed to get one of the advanced "zero edition" copies two months early. Right place, right time (specifically, Top Shelf Books, June open mic night). The collection is called Scarce Resources and it's one of the few collections I've read where the term Weird Stories is correctly applied.

Too often, writers seem to feel uncomfortable leaving elements of their work unexplained. Their compulsion to explain every event, opening every door and shining a light on all the nightmares, ruin what could otherwise have been some fine stories. Mr. Detzner shows an admirable resistance to this urge, revealing just enough in these strange fantasies to intrigue without ruining the mood with full disclosure.

It's like driving past a traffic accident. You see enough to realize something bad has happened. You can infer some details from glimpsing the wreckage. But soon you've driven past it. You've learned all you're going to learn about that story. You're compelled to go back and find out more; at the same time knowing it's probably for the best you don't have all the gory details.

Not to say that there are no gory details to be found in this collection. But just as often, there are stories that maintain an extremely brutal tone without needing to offer lengthy descriptions of violence. The actions of violent men are not half as horrifying as the reasons they give for committing them.

Like I said, I got hold of an advanced copy; but it was far from being the only one. If you want to own one of the zero-edition copies for yourself, check out the Kickstarter page that's been set up to provide promotional funds for the project. For ten dollars, you can get a signed copy of the book. If you're not sure these are the stories for you, there's a video of the author reading the first story in the collection, "The Black Plague". You can find links to four more of his short stories on his web-site, Brendan Detzner Online.

I've been truly fortunate to meet a number of excellent writers in Chicago (most of whom will probably find it odd that I refer to them by their last names on my blog posts). If you've seen me reading at an open mic event, chances are that you've also already heard some of Brendan Detzner's work as well. If you haven't, this collection is a wonderful introduction and well worth the money. Check it out.

Things I've written since last post: first draft of Footprints and first draft of The Haircut

Jack O' The Hills by C.S.E. Cooney

There are certain authors that, after you've heard them read, you'll forever after hear their voices in your head whenever you read their work. It was impossible for me to read C.S.E. Cooney's chapbook, Jack o' the Hills, without adding those sly little inflections and feeling the undercurrent of manic energy that accompany all of her performances. So I can recommend the book to anyone ... but only with the caveat that it still doesn't compare to hearing it read by the author herself.

The book collects two short stories, Stone Shoes and Oubliette's Egg, concerning a trickster named Jack Yap, his giant brother Pudding and the contents of a most unusual egg. It's high dark fantasy in which even the most grotesque and sinister of elements are rendered through words into something beautiful.

You can order the book in print or as an e-publication here. And if you need convincing, check out her story, Pale, and from a Sea-Wave Rising, at Apex Magazine. Or her poem, Dogstar Men, at the same site. And as far as live performances go, try Ride of the Robber Bride in the Spring 2011 issue of Goblin Fruit.

She's currently working on a novel and once it's published, this chapbook is going to be one of those rare collector's items that goes for big money on E-bay. Honestly, if you're looking for fresh voices in dark fantasy, you'll want a copy of this one.

Book Launch

My first two published stories will be appearing in print for the first time on Saturday, June 9 at the Printers Row Book Fair in Chicago. They'll be available for purchase at the Twilight Tales booth. Chances are good that I'll be at the booth as well.

"Parable of the Lazy Rooster" is a story about coping with death and the relative virtues of faith vs. knowledge. While the characters are fiction, the setting of the story is the very real Red Lion Pub, an English-style pub located in Chicago. The story appears in the second edition of Tales from the Red Lion, a collection of stories written about this landmark.

"Cold Comfort" is another story about coping with death and appears in the second edition of Book of Dead Things. I plan to go more in-depth about this story in a separate entry, but it basically originated with an observation that prostitutes are almost always killed in horror stories. In fact, there are a lot of stories in which the entire plot is how a prostitute is hired by someone who turns out to be a vampire/werewolf/serial killer that kills her. I wanted to read a story in which a woman who deals with strange and and dangerous customers on a daily basis would actually be able to survive such an encounter. So I wrote one.

If you want to know more about Twilight Tales, their book line, their weekly reading series (going for over 13 years) or special events tied to Tales from the Red Lion or Book of Dead Things, check out www.twilighttales.com.