Media appearance and book news

Linda Addison and I will be part of the writers panel at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Seacausus, NJ on Sunday, June 22nd at 3:30.  Visit http://www.creationent.com/cal/fangocon/fangonj.htm for details.  We hear Sarah Langan and David Wellington will be there, among many others.

The weekend after that, on Saturday, June 28th, Linda and I will be doing Hour of the Wolf on wbai in NYC, reading and talking about our work.    Fortunately, if you're not in the mood to get up at 5 in the morning (!), the show will be archived online at:  http://www.hourwolf.com/toc.html  There are musical interludes during the show, so relax, be patient, we'll be there.  

Road From Hell was well-received in a review in Rue Morgue 76; here are a couple of quotes:

"One of the most underrated authors working in the genre today, Gerard Houarner blends beauty with violence on every page of his latest novel Road From Hell.  Houarner, whose style is heavier than a waterlogged corpse, weaves a wicked tale featuring his trademark floating nightclub, Painfreak, contract killer Max, the great god Kali, zombies and lots of anguish."

"Where Houarner's talent truly shines is in his ability to dissect human relationships.  His focus on the pain and suffering one can experience simply by caring for someone else easily outweighs his superb knack for describing the physical pain his characters either suffer or inflict."

So what are you waiting for?  Visit http://www.necropublications.com/titles/rfh.htm to buy directly from the publisher, or if you need amazon.com supersaver action, check out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1889186724?tag=necropublication&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1889186724&adid=1XF6JM4PVAJG044KABZT&
Or visit www.horror-mall.com

Coming soon to a bookstore near you (or the publisher, http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/), The Oz Suite, a collection of three novellas that bring a crazy edge to the Oz mythos.  This is not your Mama's Oz, folks.  The first story, "No We Love No One," was originally published in the out-of-print Damned: An Anthology of the Lost in 2004 and earned an Honorable Mention in St. Martins Press' Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.  The two originals, "Bring Me the Head of that Little Girl Dorothy" and "The Wizard Will See You Now," should give you an idea of where I'm going with this: surreal, psychological, supernatural, and yes, occasionally bloody.  The publisher is renowned for his beautiful production.  So keep an eye out for this book – I'll be following up with an announcement once the book comes out later this summer.

Necro Publications is working on a collection coming out next year, A Blood of Killers, featuring 25 stories – 13 reprints and 12 original – exploring the concept of that human monster inside all of us: the killer.   The stories will range from what drives average people to murder to why monsters may not always follow their appetites.   Yes, there will be a solid dose of Max, the supernatural assassin, but his stories will be about the period of time before the events of the Max triology, so those of you who have been reluctant to "jump in" in the middle of his story can get on board at the very beginning.  For those of you familiar with the character, there will be a 30,000 word novella, "Dancing With the Skeletons at the Feast of the Dead," full of Max action in a land steeped in supernatural Aztec lore.

Shroud Publishing has been kind to me lately.  They've bought "Devoured By Her Enigmatic Smile" for their Abominations anthology, available for pre-order at: http://lincolncrisler.com/?p=85  
They also bought "Temple" for Shroud Magazine.

"What Isn't There" is scheduled for Dark Discoveries issue 12, due late summer.

Cemetery Dance 58, the Charlie Grant tribute issue, is still out and available, and includes a story from me: "In the Faith of Our Fathers."

Www.Storytellersunplugged.com contributions from me have continued on the 4th of every month.  Since last we spoke, I've talked about "Folklore and Legends, Urban and Otherwise" in April (touching on my experience on panels at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City), and  "Filters" in May and "Frames" in June, which are offerings about approaching story telling through different perspectives.

Lastly, I've added some galleries to my flickr account, so if you're in the mood for pictures, go check them out – there's a group of Necon photos, as well as photos from trips and "around the way," in addition to the covers gallery.  The account is accessible through www.gerardhouarner.com under galleries.

2:33 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

New site, Cemetery Dance and WHC

Hi everybody -- just coming back from a major site revamp (thanks to Marcy Italiano, who did the actual construction), so check out the new place at http://www.gerardhouarner target="_blank">www.gerardhouarner.com

In publishing news, I have a story in the latest Cemetery Dance, 58, which of course is a thrill. 

And there’s my 4th-of-the-month entries at <a href=http://www.storytellersunpluuged.com target="_blank">Storytellersunplugged : In January, I talked about handling good and bad reactions to writing in Rejections, Reviews and Other Dubious Reactions;  February, I wrote about some of my experiences returning to service as Space and Time’s Fiction Editor under new publisher Hildy Silverman, in The Slushiness of Slush; and for March, I went on about The Business of Writing.

I’ve also been lured to other social networks - linked in and Facebook - so if you need more networking, come be my friend across the internet.  You’ll find the links on the my site’s menu bar.

Linda and I will be at WHC in Salt Lake City later this month, so if you’re coming I hope to see you and say hi.

On the homefront, a local nursing home is on strike and providing the street with 24/7 chants of SCAB, as well as a few other choice descriptors.  Having two thousand demonstrators visit was also a treat.  But hey, I’m a union guy, so there’s nothing much I can say.

Well, at some point soon I’m going to have to go back to writing stuff because,  you know, that’s what I like doing, so I’d better be off and get to imagining and scaring myself and putting it all down so somebody someday can read it....

7:17 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Holiday darkness

Happy holidays to all stopping by....

First off, quick time-sensitive announcement: Linda and I will be participating in the first Wordbridge festival in NYC, as part of Sheree Renée Thomas' "Aunt Dissy's Traveling Medicine Show." It'll take place at the Salomon Art Gallery, 83 Leonard Street (that would by NYC), 4^th floor, Saturday, December 8th. We'll be part of the 5PM readings, but check out the event because there are a lot of fascinating events/readings happening – http://www.wordbridgefair.org/ (And if you reached this too late, check out the site anyway!)

My latest contribution to the www.storytellersunplugged.com blog (the December 4^th entry) talks about the role of secrets in creating characters and stories.

Moving on, 'tis the season, as they say....

So if anyone's looking to give the gift of (dark)reading for the holidays, here are a few suggestions from a personal point of view:

Being Full of Light, Insubstantial, Bram Stoker Award winner Linda D. Addison's new poetry collection from Space and Time, is available for ordering right now for $10 plus $1.50 for shipping from Space and Time Books, 138 West 70^th Street (4B), NY, NY, 10023-4468. The book recently received a rave review at http://www.countgore.com/Tomb.htm If you prefer , the book is also available through http://www.amazon.com/Being-Light-Insubstantial-Linda-Addison/dp/0917053168/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196992879&sr=8-1

Webmistress and goth bubba (if there is such a thing) Natalia Lincoln's vampire novel, The Mirror, is also out:

A vampire glimpses his reflection in a mirror for the first time in eight hundred years... his victim, a young woman lost in the modern city, finds herself pulled into an ancient quest. Natalia Lincoln's epic tale of obsession, bloodlines, and an undying curse richly evokes medieval Eastern Europe and present-day New York City.

"A vivid dark world of punks, demons, and blood, of red velvet and black leather dusters. Driven by necessity, dread, and love, these characters carve their names on our hearts so we will never forget."
—Jeanne Cavelos, editor, The Many Faces of Van Helsing

"Natalia Lincoln is a new voice whispering along the corridors of shadows and light -- and it would do you well to listen."
—P.D. Cacek

Also available through Space and Time at the above address, for $19.99 plus $1.50 postage.

Tom Piccirilli's latest, The Midnight Road, a killer noir-thriller, is available from Bantam through amazon.com – check out the list of his latest work, and pre-order The Cold Spot if you've already sampled his work (because once you've read him, you'll want more):

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-0522970-2127364?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Tom+Piccirilli

Tom edited Midnight Premiere, available from www.cemeterydance.com as well as www.amazon.com – I have a story in there, and the book has received phenomenal reviews. If you haven't checked it out, you're missing a classic!

Other anthologies I'm in include High Seas Cthulu, with a piece called "The Stars, In Their Dreaming," available from http://www.eldersignspress.com/ for $15.95

And there's Sails and Sorcery: Tales of Nautical Fantasy, with my story "The Sea In Silence" (I know, I know - stories written some time apart with titles that echo one another – if this were a story, I'd edit it out, but this is life, so there we have it). Available for the direct price of $18.40 from http://www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/SAILS.php

Necro Publications has all kinds of Houarner stuff at www.necropublications.com – we got some Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show still available, and we got yer Road From Hell, the long-awaited conclusion to the Max series that has appeared in various small press and commercial editions, hot off the presses.

Special Max offers available elsewhere include, from the Horror Mall, signed editions of the first two Max books (The Beast That Was Max and Road to Hell) at https://www.horror-mall.com/store/search.php?mode=search&page=1&keep_https=yes

and www.camelotbooks.com will also have signed editions of the first two books, as well as the third, for sale.

And last, but not least, Space and Time, The Magazine of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction is back thanks to new publisher Hildy Silverman! For $5.00 plus $1.50 shipping, or a subscription -- 2 for $10, 4 for $20 -- you get the current issue (101) with stories from Jack Ketchum, Holly Phillips, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Andersen Prunty, Kiel Stewart, Monte Davis, Corey Brown, John Phillips, as well as poetry from Rebecca George, Marge Simon, Todd French, Lorraine Schein, Darrell Schweitzer and a collaboration of nine poets (a gang, a veritable posse of poets!). Look for the magazine at bookstores and Barnes and Nobles, or just send Hildy the money at Space and Time, 1308 Centennial Ave, Ste.101, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, and she'll get a copy to ya!

So if you can't find anything above for the darkness lover you love, man, I can't help ya!

Have a good one, all, and to all, merry darkness in the light.

7:34 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Hell, Weird Tales, a Dead Cat sale-- you know, the usual stuff

November

Just in time for the holidays (if you like your holidays from Hell), Necro Publications has announced it is taking orders for Road From Hell, the final installment of the Max triology which started in The Beast That Was Max and continued in Road to Hell. Here's what a few fine folks have said already about the book:

"A non-stop rampage of exquisite horror. Houarner sets off a powder keg of awl-sharp imagery, occult intellect, and bad-to-the-bone supernaturalism to further evolve one of the most terrifying character-lines the genre has seen. An irresistible thriller, horror, and fantasy novel wrapped up as one, by an author who writes like Thomas Pynchon possessed by demons."

--Edward Lee, author of HOUSE INFERNAL and FLESH GOTHIC

"A fascinating and thought-provoking dark fantasy that displays Gerard Houarner's top of the line literary craftsmanship, ROAD FROM HELL is the perfect finale to the Max trilogy. Steeped in mythology and the bizarre wonders of the supernatural, the novel crosses genre borders as Max battles ghosts and demons from the very pit of oblivion. Houarner's prose is tight, the imagery shocking, and the scenes haunting and diabolically terrifying."--Tom Piccirilli, author of THE MIDNIGHT ROAD and THE DEAD LETTERS


"With his latest opus in the Max saga, Gerard Houarner conjures up some of the most exotic, ferocious depictions of evil and retribution you're ever likely to encounter. There's a genuine sense of malice and bad intentions here, yet it's unleashed in the service of a tale of love, sacrifice, and even something like redemption. The Road From Hell not only brings Max's current path to a fitting sense of closure, but also resets the stage for something fresh and new … whenever Houarner chooses to go down that road."

— Brian Hodge, author of Mad Dogs and World of Hurt

Order your copy now from: http://www.necropublications.com/titles/rfh.htm

My story, "The Sea in Silence" appears in Sails and Sorcery: Tales of Nautical Fantasy, published by Fantasist Enterprises: http://www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/SAILS.php

If you're wondering about what you get, here's the sales pitch from the publisher:

So how do you sell a trade paperback for $23.00, when most run in the $13.00 - $15.00 range? Well, SAILS is a good deal longer than most trade paperbacks, and it's packed with content. For example, it contains 42 illustrations, while most books do not contain any. Trade paperback history books that contain pictures or illustrations often run in the mid-to-high twenties. And when you do the math, at $23.00, it comes to less than $0.83 per story.

See? You can't beat that deal with a stick. The art is terrific, and I'm very proud to be a part of this anthology (never mind stunned that a landlubber like me could get into a sailing anthology).

The 20^th volume of St. Martins Press Year's Best Fantasy and Horror was released and included some of my stories on the Honorable Mention list, including a couple from Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show: "Topsy the Elephant" and "Hellbound Kid." "The Alchemy From the Towers of Silence," from Damned Nation, and "The Chrysalis King," from Inhuman 3 also made the list.

Congratulations to Jeffrey Thomas and Trey Barker, whose stories from the Medicine Show also made the Honorable Mentions list!

Weird Tales: The 21^st Century, Volume 1 has been released, and includes my story "Spider Comes Home" from Weird Tales 344. You can order it at:

http://www.darkfantasy.org/weirdtales/2007/10/new-in-paperback.html

The complete table of contents:

Introduction by Stephen H. Segal
"The Man Who Carved Skulls" by Richard Parks
"Six Scents" by Lisa Mantchev
"Working Out Our Salvation" by Trent Hergenrader
"Bob Bodey's Body Parts" by William Markly O'Neal
"Ravenous" by Phil Brucato
"Spider Comes Home" by Gerard Houarner
"The Past Never Dies" by Holly Phillips
"For Fear of Dragons" by Carrie Vaughn
"What Happened When Tammy Brookmeyer Sold Her House" by Paul E. Martens
"The Drain" by Peadar O Guilin
"The Furious Host" by Barth Anderson
"The Release" by Kurt Newton

Have a Dead Cat Christmas....

Nothing says Happy Holidays like Dead Cat throwing out his one-liners (because he always says what he needs to say in one-line) from Santa's bag. The new Horror Mall founded by the publishers Bloodletting Press and Delirium are offering Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show at a discounted price, so if you've been holding off on buying that extra special chunk of Dead Cat goodness, now's the time to pounce: https://www.horror-mall.com/store/product.php?productid=16226&cat=0&page=1

Storytellersunplugged has a new look and the same 30 thirty writers offering their hard-earned experience in the trenches to all interested parties, and particularly new writers, at www.storytellersunplugged.com My post, November 4^th, offers a few more thoughts on revisions. Go forth and check it out.

And finally, Alexa deMonterice from the NYC writers group CITH has earned her first NY Times byline: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/nyregionopinions/04CI-opart-id.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

In typical fashion for publishers, she's the writer and she gets second billing behind the illustrator. No disrespect to the artist but, seriously, did does it ever come down to Tales of Mystery and Madness, Gris Grimbly and Edgar Allan Poe? I'm just saying....

12:03 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Road From Hell pre-order available

Road from Hell, the resolution to the story of Max the assassin, is up for pre-order at --> -->-- www.necropublications.com/titles/rfh.htm --> -->

"A fascinating and thought- provoking dark fantasy that displays Gerard Houarner's top of the line literary craftsmanship, Road From Hell is the perfect finale to the Max trilogy. Steeped in mythology and the bizarre wonders of the supernatural, the novel crosses genre borders as Max battles ghosts and demons from the very pit of oblivion. Houarner's prose is tight, the imagery shocking, and the scenes haunting and diabolically terrifying."


—Tom Piccirilli, author of
The Midnight Road and The Dead Letters


"A non-stop rampage of exquisite horror. Houarner sets off a powder keg of awl-sharp imagery, occult intellect, and bad-to-the-bone super- naturalism to further evolve one of the most terrifying character-lines the genre has seen. An irresistible thriller, horror, and fantasy novel wrapped up as one, by an author who writes like Thomas Pynchon possessed by demons."

—Edward Lee, author of
House Infernal and Flesh Gothic


And there's some chewy Dead Cat goodness, as well....

In Ellen Datlow's latest edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, pieces from Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show by Jeffrey Thomas and Trey Barker, as well as a couple of my stories, earned Honorable Mentions. She also noted the anthology series has "surprisingly turned into an entertaining anthology series." The book features a ton of art from GAK (if course) as well as work by Alan M. Clark, Chad Savage, and Erik Wilson. For those interested, it's available at --> -->-->www.necropublications.com/titles/dc2.htm --> -->

11:37 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Space and Time, then Garden State Horror Writers

I guess it's a good thing when there's so much news it doesn't all fit in the brain....

Space and Time, The Magazine of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction 101 is out thanks to new publisher Hildy Silverman! For $5.00 plus $1.50 shipping, or a subscription -- 2 for $10, 4 for $20 -- you get this issue with stories from Jack Ketchum, Holly Phillips, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Andersen Prunty, Kiel Stewart, Monte Davis, Corey Brown, John Phillips, as well as poetry from Rebecca George, Marge Simon, Todd French, Lorraine Schein, Darrell Schweitzer and a collaboration of nine poets (a gang, a veritable posse of poets!). Oh, yeah, I'm the fiction editor, Linda's the poetry editor. So look for the magazine at bookstores, or just send Hildy the money at Space and Time, 1308 Centennial Ave, Ste.101, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, and she'll get a copy to ya!

And if you're in the neighborhood, don't forget I'll be a guest speaker at the Garden State Horror Writers meeting Saturday, October 13th, at the Monmouth County Library. For details and directions, go to http://www.gshw.net.

Don't forget to play with the monsters on Halloween....they get so so lonely during the year.

7:44 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Halloween Horrors

An extraordinarily kind review of my story "They Play in the Palace of My Dreaming" from Heliotrpe 2 is up at tangetonline: http://www.tangentonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1156&Itemid=266

If you haven't read the story, check it out (it's free!!!)

http://www.heliotropemag.com/

Eibonvale Press will be publishing a 30,000 word collection of three long stories I call the Oz Suite. Some of you may be familiar with the reprint to be included, "No We Love No One," from Necro's Damned (out of print at the publisher).

Paula Guran, from her Darkecho site in September, 2004, called the piece "one of the weirdest "invasion" and/or Wizard of Oz-inspired stories you will ever read."

And Tim Pratt, in his Locus 532 review of Damned, An Anthology of the Lost, said, "Gerard Houarner's "No We Love No One" provides some of the most haunting imagery, as delicate spiral shells descend from the sky, each holding a baby, one for every adult on Earth; the resulting upheaval poses serious questions about what it means to be human."

I was fascinated by the possibilites in the Oz "mythos" and was inspired to follow-up the piece with "Bring Me The Head of that Little Girl Dorothy" and "The Wizard Will See You Now." Of course, I didn't know where to send such stories until I ran into Eibonvale Press, Publishers of Horror, Magic Realism and the Surreal.

Their line-up includes the recently published The Smell of Telescopes, an enormous collection of fiction by Rhys Hughes, as well as What the Giants Were Saying,a novella by David Rix and A thread of truth by Nina Allan

For those of you who may not familiar with this press, it is, as usual with small presses, a one-man operation run by a maniacally dedicated individual propelled by vision and powered by a great deal of enthusiasm and energy. He's already had a number of successful projects – see http://www.eibonvalepress.co.uk/

Needless to say, I'm thrilled to be a part of the Eibonvale line-up and look forward to a beautiful book.

Eibonvale doesn't do pre-orders. The book will come out in a relatively affordable edition, so check their site. The book will be released in 2008, probably early. I will, of course, make further announcements....

And, to my shock, the Wound of Her Making, originally published in Delirium's Dark Testament anthology – now out of print and out of reach of most pocketbooks – will be reprinted in the already legendary Holy Terrors. The TOC is mind-boggling with over 200,000 words of fiction - search for it on Shocklines, but briefly the book will includes Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Gary Braunbeck, Tom Piccirilli, Brian Hodge, and quite literally a host of others! More announcements to come about this immense project.

Weird Tales will be reprinting "Spider Comes Home" in a Best Of anthology coming out for the holiday season – more news to follow!

In my contribution to www.Storytellersunplugged.com for October 4^th, I do my bit in trying to maintain the "scary story" October tradition with "On the Importance of Revising" - a horror story for writers. Please drop by, check out the writers, leave comments.

While investigating the mysteries of Lake Tahoe, I ran into another fun site well worth exploring for the bizarre and unusual: http://www.cryptomundo.com/

7:09 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Arrrrrr, Cthulu!

Hi all

If you're going back to school or work after vacation, my condolences.  If you're just hanging out waiting the weekend, thanks for dropping by!  Here's what's going in my literary mote drifting through the ether...

The anthology High Seas Cthulu: Swashbuckling Adventure Meets the Mythos (in case you needed a clue) edited by William Jones is out!

Well, at least I've received my contributor's copy.

It's available right now at the Elder Signs Press site - http://www.eldersignspress.com/ and according to Amazon and BN.com, the book is up at their sites for pre-order.

I have a story in the book, "The Stars, In Their Dreaming," and oddly enough it's not the only tale dealing with the slave trade in the context of the Mythos, though the stories are very different. If you're curious about the contributions, many of the authors – including myself – have posted commentaries on the editor's blog, which you can check out at:

http://williamsramblings.blogspot.com/2007/08/high-seas-cthulhu-below-decks.html

Contributors include Alan Dean Foster, John Shirley, Darrell Schweitzer, Stephen Mark Rainey, Michael Penncavage, Paul Melniczek, John Shire, William Meikle, Tim Curran, Stewart Sternberg, Lee Clark Zumpe, Chris Donahue, Linda L. Donahue, Charles P. Zaglanis, Ferrel Moore, C.J. Henderson, Michael McBride, Matthew Baugh, Heather Hatch, Gerard Houarner, William Jones.

The book store links are:

http://www.amazon.com/High-Seas-Cthulhu-Swashbuckling-Adventure/dp/1934501026

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781934501023&itm=3

In other publishing news, my story from the Night Land site, "The Voice of the Lacuna," has been reprinted in the collection William Hope Hodgson's Night Lands Volume II: Nightmares of the Fall, edited by Andy Robertson. The book is available at http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightbuyanthos.htmlvol2

If you'd like to check out the stories and Hodgson's Night Land world in general, start with: http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightfic2.html

For anyone following my contributions to the Storytellersunplugged.com blog, my September 4^th piece dealt with Perspectives. Inspired by lists reflecting the world view of college-bound kids, I talk about the importance of considering historical and cultural frames of reference for your characters. I don't think it's as boring as that last sentence made it sound – but if in doubt, check out the blog's other writers as you scroll down to September 4^th – as of this writing, that includes Brian Hodge, Elizabeth Bear, John Skipp, George Guthridge, Mort Castle with a funny and devastating "perfect" story (as in a perfect storm of errors). For you writers just starting out, this stuff is gold and it's free.

Dead Cat gets another cool review on MySpace at:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=167749258  

The Garden State Horror Writers have invited me to be a guest speaker on Saturday, October 12th, at the Monmouth County Library, Manalapan NJ.

For those of you who've never heard of GSHW, here's more information on their organization:

The Garden State Horror Writers is a group dedicated to helping writers of all types of fiction perfect their skills. It meets on the second Saturday at the Monmouth County Library on Symmes Dr., off Route 9 (NJ). Business meetings begin at 11 a.m. and guest speakers at noon. Guests, new members, and press are always welcome. For more information, call (973)237-1770 or visit the Web site, http://www.gshw.net.

They're also on MySpace at:   http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=157101696

And just in case you missed it last month, my story "Night Service" is up at Horror Literature Quarterly 2 – http://horrorfictionnews.com/index.php Tim Lebbon also has a short story available on the site starting this month, which you can download after registering – it's a Lebbon story, folks! And it's free!

And finally, while wandering the net I ran into a wonderful death-oriented site that seems to be building a valuable resource library: http://www.deardeath.com/ which is a part of http://www.monstrous.com/ and part of the same crew at http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Have a great and creative day, and if you read this far, you've got stamina!

7:58 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Coffee, black, no sugar. Like life.

I picked six at Heidi Ruby Miller's livejournal:

http://ambasadora.livejournal.com/136296.html

(Leave a comment if you're inclined....)

Look for Fantasist Enterprises' anthology Sails and Sorcery: Tales of Nautical Fantasy, coming soon!

2:33 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Dead Cat reviews and calendar

On the Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show front: Gak and I put together a little 2008 calendar card featuring a picture of ole DC and a brief promotional message on the back for the anthology as well as my upcoming novel, Road From Hell. A bunch of the cards were given out at Necon, and Dave at Necro Publications will be sending them out with his orders over the course of the coming year. Shocklines will also have a supply, as well as bookstores distributing Necro or Bedlam titles.

A couple of "Circus" reviews also came out recently. Bookgasm had a sort of love/hate relationship with the project:

http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/dead-cat-traveling-circus/

Rod Lott did peg it as "...one of the strangest books you will ever read. As in ever."

He rightly singled out Gary Braunbeck and Garrett Peck's contributions, as well as Gak's art, and ended the review "not for everyone's tastes."

I concur - either you get it or you don't. The Dead Cat "thing" definitely starts on, for lack of a better reference, the edgier fringes of Invader Zim territory and goes quite a ways beyond, even visiting Ren and Stimpy. I'd challenge the assertion that the rest of the material is comprised of "sketches" – I based my contributions on a fable, work by Saki and Damon Runyon, the routines of Lord Buckley. The reprinted "Dead Cat's Lick" earned an Honorable Mention in the last edition of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, so Ellen Datlow thought it was a story. Quite a number of the other tales used traditional storytelling structure, though authors were asked to be "brief" and given a word limit so we could fit all the other "bits" and leave lots of room for the art. They were also asked to be as wild, crazy and experimental as they wanted to be, in keeping with the central character's nature: a dead, talking cat thousands of years old.

So Rod is right in that not all the contributions were full-fledged "stories" (Jack Haringa did an "academic paper," which was one of my personal favorites) – we weren't looking for back-to-back traditionally structured tales. That would have been taking the premise a little too seriously for our tastes and the tastes we're trying to appeal to.

And in particular, the pieces at the end – the Miracle Medicine Show section – are not stories at all, but riffs on traditional circus barks and gags, performed and illustrated with that extra special "Dead Cat flava."

And Gak's art gets its richly deserved rave: "Exhibiting a warped, manic energy, they don't just illustrate the stories – they make them better."

That's right!!

So I'll gratefully take and accept bookgasm's judgement on the book - it was great to be out on such a high profile review venue, and I appreciated Rod drawing the line for his own tastes but leaving readers to judge and draw the line for themselves. Thanks!

Now if you look up the book on Amazon.com, you'll see a new review posted in June from someone who has some unconditional love for ole Dead Cat.

So there you have it -- more Dead Cat goodness than you can handle!

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