SUNDAY SHORTS: Seanan McGuire Destroys Air Travel

The “Sunday Shorts” feature is dedicated to reviewing short stories and novellas, two forms I absolutely love.

My full-time job requires me to travel fairly frequently (anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on the month) and much of that travel is by air across the continental United States. I’m pretty comfortable with the process at this point (airport security and airplane seating being what they are), although I find that I’m likely to get motion sick if I try to read or watch anything during takeoff, landing or even slight turbulence. I’ve been in one (admittedly minor) emergency landing and experienced plenty of rough air and less-than-pleasant customer service on the ground. But I’m not afraid of any aspect of flying.

Even so, two recent short stories by Seanan McGuire, both posted on her Patreon, made me squirm uncomfortably. “Carry On” was first published last year (and is reprinted in this month’s Nightmare magazine) while “Emergency Landing” is this month’s Patreon story. Each turns a different aspect of air travel in an opportunity for emotional/psychological horror.

In our present day, airlines are charging more and more for “incidentals” (in-flight snacks and entertainment, extra leg-room, checked and carry-on luggage). “Carry On” is a brutal look at a possible future where the price of fuel justifies airlines charging passengers not just for the combined weight of their carry-on luggage, but also for the weight of the passenger and their clothing. Step on a scale with your bags, and be judged before entering security. Mary, the focal-point character, has saved for ages to be able to fly cross-country to see her sister and meet her new niece; but getting past the weigh-in without having to pay, in money and embarrassment, is not easy. McGuire really captures the indignities heaped, even now, upon travelers who are overweight. The tension of the wait, the bad weigh-in, the events that follow, the recognizable emotions Mary feels at the end, are all so real. Mary feels isolated even in a large terminal with hundreds of other people experience the same trauma she is. This is the second time I’ve read the story, and it once again made me cry for the main character.

“Emergency Landing” takes place almost entirely on a plane already in the air. The narrator describes her dash to make her connecting flight out of Atlanta, her initial impressions of her seat-mates, and then the plane takes off – just before the narrator sees missiles streak towards the airport they’ve just departed. The rest of the story is a tense game of “how much do we tell the passengers about what’s happening on the ground” and “what do we do about landing since our fuel can’t last forever.” The emotional stakes are just as high as in “Carry On,” but from a different direction. While Mary feels invisible among her fellow travelers, Caitlin feels too seen because of what they think she knows. The story moves fast as Caitlin’s fellow passengers move from anguish to fear to false bravado and Caitlin must decide whether sharing her knowledge will make things better or worse. It’s not often I describe stories or books as leaving me breathless, but this one did.  I also think that had this appeared in an anthology (it would have been perfect for Stephen King and Bev Vincent’s recent Flight or Fright), it would appear under Seanan’s Mira Grant name, given that the main character is an epidemiologist.

READING ROUND-UP: February 2019

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to:

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in ebook format as “books.” I read or listened to 18 books in February: 12 in print, 4 in ebook format, and 2 in audio. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #105 (February 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories and novellas. This month’s favorites for me were Carrie Vaughn’s “Marlowe and Harry and the Disinclined Laboratory,” Ashok K. Banker’s “Oath of a God,” KT Bryski’s “Ti-Jean’s Last Adventure, as told to Raccoon,” and Kat Howard’s “Hath No Fury.”

2.       The Thing: Liberty Legion, by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins, Don Heck, and others.  This hardcover collects stories from Marvel Premiere, The Invaders, Fantastic Four and Marvel Two-In-One to tell a time-hopping story involving some of my favorite tertiary-level Marvel characters. The art style varies greatly between the four main artists and that might be a turn-off for some folks (I personally miss both Frank Robbins and Don Heck’s work.) I still own all of the original monthly issues these stories appeared in, as well.

3.       The Terrifics Vol 1: Meet The Terrifics, by Ivan Reis, “Doc” Shaner, Jeff LeMire, and others. DC brings four unlikely characters together as a team: the long-existing Mr. Terrific, Plastic Man and Metamorpho and a new version of Phantom Girl, in a loving pastiche of that other fantastic foursome published by Marvel. The characterizations are solid and make me want to pick up the second volume when it comes out, but there’s a feeling towards the end of the volume like the story has taken a jump that never really gets explained.

4.       Check, Please! Year Three, by Ngozi Ukazu.  Bitty’s junior year on the Samwell hockey team is full of secrets, revelations, supportive friends and more than a little drama. I’ve enjoyed the three volumes of this so far, and might just have to catch up on Year Four on the webcomic rather than waiting for the next Kickstarter.  And I am way out of practice reading regularly-updated webcomics.

5.       Scrum by P.D. Singer. Picked this very short novella up because I’ve suddenly grown an interest in reading gay sport romances (see Check, Please! Above), it popped up as a free Kindle read and I’m not really familiar with the sport of rugby so a story told from the POV of a guy who also has no familiarity with the sport should have been an easy sell. I left the story feeling like I knew a little bit more about rugby, but the romance angle didn’t work for me. Too much “creepy-stalk the hot sports star” for me.

6.       Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake.  Another of Westlake’s more fun crime thrillers, this one involving the impending shut-down of a monastery in the middle of Manhattan thanks to a real-estate deal / land-grab that involves a theft from the monastery, family secrets, and one Brother going way outside his comfort zone to save the day. A fast, fun read.

7.       The Spark by David Drake. The first in a new “Arthurian SF saga,” recommended by a friend. The first half doesn’t feel particularly Arthurian but sets the stage and main characters well enough so that when the familiar Arthurian tropes do appear, it becomes obvious you’ve been reading about a futuristic Sir Percival/Parzival the whole time. (His name is Pal, so yes, that should have been a give-away right off….)  Really enjoyable read, but lots of hand-waving to explain the future tech and this world’s versions of the Mortal World, Faerie, and the spaces in-between.

8.       The City Beyond Play by Philip Jose Farmer and Danny Adams. A really wonderful SF novella about a small city-state that cuts itself off from modern times and lives “as the medieval times should have been lived.” There’s a bit of romance, a lot of derring-do and a ton of interesting world-building. You can find a longer review of this book if you page back through my blog to HERE.

9.       Isola, Chapter One, by Brendan Fletcher, Karl Kerschl and others.  A powerful queen has been cursed to live as a tiger, and her bodyguard must find a way to reverse the curse and get to the truth of what’s behind it all. Very solid world-building and character-building in this first trade collection. The art is a mix of manga and Chinese influences, I think, that give it a particular kind of beauty.

10.   Bedfellow, by Jeremy C. Shipp.  Shipp’s second novella from Tor.com is as eerie as his first (“The Atrocities”). A mix of physical and psychological horror that works on all levels and doesn’t necessarily provide easy answers.

11.   The Voyage of Argo, by Apollonius of Rhodes, translation by E.V. Reiu.  I’m almost ashamed that I never realized there was an actual epic poem that served as the basis for the Jason and the Argonauts movies and stories I loved so much, until I tripped across this. The classic 60s movie took a lot of liberties with the sequence of events from this original and was the more exciting for it. Reiu’s translation is interesting as source material, but kinda lifeless in many ways.

12.   Legion Vs. Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World, by Myke Cole. My first non-fiction read (as opposed to listen) of the year was way outside my wheel-house. I’m not a student of the military or military history, and most of what I remember about the Greeks, Romans, and associated empires is thanks to mythology. But Cole’s intent with this book was to make the discussion understandable to people like me, and he did a great job. I still can’t quote times and names to you, but I could probably give you a decent idea of the differences between a legion, a phalanx, and who Cole thinks the clear winner is.

13.   The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg, by Mark Twain.  Another classic I don’t think I’d ever read before but have thanks to my subscription to Melville House’s series “The Art of the Novella.” And I loved it, as I love so much of Twain’s work. There’s snarky humor, of course, but also social commentary that is as pertinent today as it was when the novella was written. And I love the fact that we never really find out who the aggrieved man is who manages to corrupt and incorruptible town.

14.   Scratchman (A Doctor Who novel), by Tom Baker. What a fun, nostalgic read. Apparently this is adapted from a movie script Baker co-wrote. The first half feels absolutely like ClassicWho; the second half feels very meta and drops a few comments about the Doctor’s “future” (for him, anyway). I think there was even a little Clara Oswald cameo (tying to her “Impossible Girl” status from NewWho). And listening to Baker read it was an extra treat. He’s a great storyteller.

15.   Diaries: The Python Years 1969-1979, by Michael Palin. Interesting to hear Palin read, unexpurgated and emotionally raw, his diary entries from Python’s heyday. A very different feel from the Idle and Cleese memoirs I read late last year.

16.   Section Zero Volume 0, by Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett, and others.  It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of 50s-60s-era “adventure team” comics: give me the Time Masters, the Sea Devils, the Challengers of the Unknown, Cave Carson’s crew, the original Secret Six, and I’m all in. Kesel and Grummett hooked me from page one with this mysterious “group-of-usually-four” that ages in real time and has a lot of backstory to be revealed. Grummett is also one of my favorite comic artists. I love his clean, open, expressive style.

17.   The Problem of Susan and Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell, Scott Hampton, Paul Chadwick, Lovern Kindzierski and others. Dark Horse Comics continues to publish Russell’s adaptations of Gaiman stories and books, although this time the artist has some help. The title story, drawn by Russell, is Gaiman’s rumination on what happened to Susan after the Narnia books and it’s quite good, but I was also happy to see how well “October in the Chair” converts to graphic form.

18.   At Home in the Dark, edited by Lawrence Block. A great anthology of very dark short stories – mostly crime but a few sf/fantasy/western to keep the reader on their toes. A longer review will be forthcoming in about a week or so on this site, but for now the individual stories are listed below, and I can easily call out the Joe Hill, Joe R. Lansdale, Elaine Kagan and James Reasoner stories as favorites.

So eighteen books in February, which Goodreads told me was a few ahead of goal for the month/year.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “Life Sentence” by Matthew Baker, from Lightspeed Magazine #105 (February 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Okay, Glory” by Elizabeth Bear

3.       “The Incursus By Asimov-NN#71” by Gord Sellar

4.       “Marlowe and Harry and the Disinclined Laboratory” by Carrie Vaughn

5.       “The Perpetual Day” by Crystal Koo

6.       “Ti-Jean’s Last Adventure, As Told To Raccoon” by KT Bryski

7.       “Oath of a God” by Ashok K. Banker

8.       “Healing Benjamin” by Dennis Danvers

9.       “Hath No Fury” by Kat Howard

10.   “On The Side” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

11.   “Hot Pants” by Elaine Kagan, from the anthology At Home in the Dark, edited by Lawrence Block

12.   “The Eve of Infamy” by Jim Fusili

13.   “Night Rounds” by James Reasoner

14.   “The Flagellant” by Joyce Carol Oates

15.   “The Things I’d Do” by Ed Park

16.   “Favored to Death” by N.J. Ayres

17.   “Rough Mix” by Warren Moore

18.   “This Strange Bargain” by Laura Benedict

19.   “The Senior Girls Bayonet Team” by Joe R. Lansdale

20.   “If Only You Would Leave Me” by Nancy Pickard

21.   “Giant’s Despair” by Duane Swierczynski

22.   “Whistling in the Dark” by Richard Chizmar

23.   “O, Swear Not by the Moon” by Jill D. Block

24.   “Nightbound” by Wallace Stroby

25.   “The Cucuzza Curse” by Thomas Pluck

26.   “Cold Comfort” by Hilary Davidson

27.   “Faun” by Joe Hill

So that’s 27 short stories in February, leaving me still slightly behind for the year so far. (February 28th was the 59th day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 0 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  27 read; YTD: 52 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 6 read; TYD: 10 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 18 read; YTD: 29 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 02; YTD: 02 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 of 10 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 0 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

2019 Reading Challenges

In January, I posted my list of planned reads for RoofbeamReader’s 2019 “TBR Challenge.” But I always set myself more than one reading challenge per year. Some carry over from year to year, and some are new. Some are broad and some are themed. And in many cases, books read will help me meet more than one challenge.

365 SHORT STORIES CHALLENGE

Every year, I challenge myself to read one short story per day. Some years I keep the pace pretty well, and some years I fall behind and then scramble to catch up (and some years, I catch up and fall behind again). I used to post thoughts on each individual story over on my now-largely-defunct Livejournal; this year I plan to review a story or two in-depth each Sunday and then do a monthly “round-up” of all stories read that month. I’m defining “short story” as anything from flash fiction to novella-length. If a story/novella is published as a stand-alone book (ebook or otherwise), that story will also count towards my annual Goodreads “Books Read” Challenge.

GOODREADS CHALLENGE

Goodreads allows members to set a challenge. In 2018 I set a 125-book challenge. I blew past that in mid-fall and decided to increase it to 150 and managed more than that. For 2019, I’m going to start out planning on 125 books again and see where we go. Goodreads also counts magazines and individually-published short stories as “books,” so I count them for this challenge as well. Of course, any book read for the TBR Challenge, or the challenges mentioned in this post count towards this one.

GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE

I own far more graphic novels and trade paperback collections of classic comics than I’ve read. In 2017 I started trying to turn that around, and I’m again setting a goal in 2019 of reading one graphic novel per week. I may start a separate post tracking these, or I may just continue to include them in the monthly Reading Round-Up Posts.

NON-FICTION CHALLENGE

As with graphic novels, I tend to get intrigued by and purchase far more non-fiction books than I actually end up reading. In an effort to clear some shelf-space, justify the money spent, and increase my knowledge a bit, I’m setting myself a new challenge this year to read two (2) non-fiction books per month, or 24 for the year. I may start a separate post tracking these as well, but it’s more likely I’ll just continue to include them in the monthly Reading Round-Up Posts.

READ THE BOOK / WATCH THE MOVIE CHALLENGE

I have so many books in my collection that are the basis for classic (and sometimes not-so-classic) movies that I thought it might be time to read some of them and then see how the movies compare. I actually unofficially started this last year, when I read Grace Zaring Stone’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen and then watched the movie adaptation directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbary Stanwyck. So this year, I’m committing myself to at least reading/watching the rest of the Vantage Movie Classics (listed below) and possibly more.

COMPLETE THE SERIES CHALLENGE

In previous years I’ve challenged myself to come “up to date” on series I’d started but fallen behind on. Last year, I challenged myself to also read one series that I own but have not read. Titles that I have read in each series are indicated with (read). Last year, I blew this almost completely, so I’m setting fewer “complete the series” challenges for 2019.  I plan to come back to this post and add “date completed” for each book individually and for each series as a whole. I’ll give links to reviews where appropriate.

THE VELVETEEN SERIES by Seanan McGuire

1.       Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super-Patriots

2.       Velveteen Vs. The Multiverse

3.       Velveteen Vs. The Seasons

VANTAGE BOOKS MOVIE CLASSICS (Themed Set by PenguinRandomHouse, 2014-2015)

1.       Showboat by Edna Ferber (read in 2017)

2.       Cimarron by Edna Ferber

3.       Back Street by Fannie Hurst

4.       Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

5.       The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick

6.       The Bad Seed by William March

7.       Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds

8.       The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring Stone (read in 2018)

9.       Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson

10.   The Night of the Hunter by David Grubb

THE AFRICA TRILOGY BY CHINA ACHEBE

1.       Things Fall Apart (read in 2018)

2.       Arrow of God

3. No Longer At Ease

2019 To Be Read Challenge

Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Some of us, to be honest, have “to be read” bookcases.  This year, book blogger RoofbeamReader is once again running his To Be Read Challenge.

You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end, and there’s less than a day left to do it (because I’m signing up ridiculously late this year): https://roofbeamreader.com/2018/12/19/announcing-the-2019-tbr-pile-challenge-tbr2019rbr/ but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are:

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Specifics:

1.       Each of these 12 books must have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2018 or later (any book published in the year 2017 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile). Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the “can’t get through” pile.

2.       Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable, as long as you have never read the book before and it was published before 2018!

*Note: You can read the books on your list in any order; they do not need to be read in the order you have them listed. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Poetry collections? Essay collections? All good!  As you complete a book – review it, go to your original list and turn that title into a link to the review.

ANTHONY’S 2019 TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:

1. Back Street by Fannie Hurst (published 1931, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

2. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick (1947, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

3. The Bad Seed by William March (1954, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

4. Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (1967, re-released by VMC 2014)

5. The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb (1953, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

6. Cimarron by Edna Ferber (1929, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

7. Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds (1936, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

8. Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington (1921, re-released by Vantage Movie Classics 2014)

9. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (1964)

10. We Have Always Lived in The Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) - Read March 2019

11. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (2013) - Read March 2019

12. Iraq + 100: The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged From Iraq, edited by Hassan Blasim (2016)

Alternates

1. Under the Sunset by Bram Stoker (1881) - Read May 2019

2. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993)

As I complete each book, I’ll come back to this post, italicize the title, and add a “read date” and a link to the review.

I have a few other reading challenges that I’m setting myself for 2019 that will overlap partially with this, including “Read The Book, Watch The Movie” and “Complete The Series” Challenges that include the first 8 books listed above. I’ll be posting about those soon.

Sunday Shorts, Tuesday Edition: Christmas

The Legion of Santas, 2017 Edition, only one of whom is reading....

It’s no secret that I love the stories and music of the Christmas season. I mean, I wrote and self-published (and will re-self-publish in 2018)  a short children’s book, THE FIRFLAKE, about the first snowflake of winter and how the elves met Santa; and I wrote, but haven’t published, a YA Christmas story about a young boy dealing with the unexpected death of his older brother and whether ghosts really do visit us on Christmas Eve; and yet a third story idea is percolating in the back of my brain. And every year I send an original holiday poem to my family and friends and anyone else who wants one.

Every year I re-read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and always get some new enjoyment out of it. But my shelf is full of Christmas books: kids books, novels, factual tomes, short story collections… so this year I decided to choose a couple of stories from as many different anthologies as I could and supplement them with never ebook and online holiday tales, spanning genres from science fiction to fantasy to mystery to romance.  And now, as the month draws to a close, I’m sharing that list with you!

·         “Dolph” by ‘Nathan Burgione (available in Just Another Winter’s Tale or at the author’s website https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/dolph/), a queer retelling of Rudolph.

·         “Frost” by ‘Nathan Burgoine (available in Wilde Stories 2017 or at https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/frost/), a queer retelling of Frosty.

·         “Reflection” by ‘Nathan Burgoine) (available at https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/reflection/)

·         “A Christmas Hex” by Jordan L. Hawk, a fun, sexy entry in her alt-history,  witches-and-familiars “Hexworld” series

·         “How The Supervillian Stole Christmas” by Charles Payseur (e-book), hey, even supervillains need love.

·         THE TWELVE WAYS OF CHRISTMAS by Sanda M. Odell. I read one story a day for 12 days before Christmas, each one themed for a part of the song:

o   “Home For Christmas”

o   “Tourterelle Des Bois”

o   “A Free-Range Panic at Alanda Farms”

o   “To Speak of Metal Men and Birds of War”

o   “T’is the Season”

o   “Good for the Gander”

o   “But Calm, White Calm, was Born into a Swan”

o   “A Milk of Human Kindness”

o   “Oh, How She Danced”

o   “Git Along Little Dogies”

o   “Re: Pete”

o   “Nor Tap in Time at School”

·         “The Kwanzaa Kid” by Maurice Broaddus, in the anthology “Naughty or Nice”

·         “He Knows When You’re Awake” by Cat Rambo, in “Naughty or Nice”

·         “The Toymaker’s Joy” by Lucy A. Snyder, in “Naughty or Nice” (This one definitely is NOT for kids!)

·         “On The Hills and Everywhere” by Manly Wade Wellman, in “A Cosmic Christmas”

·         “Angels in Flight” by Sarah A. Hoyt, a story about not belonging in “A Cosmic Christmas”

·         “Roads” by Seabury Quinn, in “A Cosmic Christmas” (HOW HAVE I NEVER READ THIS BEFORE?)

·         “Dyke The Halls” by Michael Thomas Ford, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” by Gene Hult, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Snowflake Time: A Christmas Tale” by Laura Lippman, this year’s free chapbook from Otto Penzler to customers at The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC

·         “Klacky the Christmas Dragon” by Paul Magrs, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Pawprints in the Snow” by Roy Gill, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “By Chance, in the Dark” by Matthew Bright, a queer retelling of Scrooge, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “The Moving Wallpaper” by Nicholas M. Campbell, in “Just Another Winter’s Tale”

·         “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” by Damon Runyon, in “Murder For Christmas” (GUYS AND DOLLS, PEOPLE!)

·         “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Calm and Clear” by Ken Scholes, in “Seasons of Wonder” (what future holidays and versions of the Santa legend might be celebrated?)

·         “Dulce Domum” by Ellen Kushner in “Seasons of Wonder” (Not everyone wants to go home again)

·         “As Dark As Christmas Gets” by Lawrence Block, in “Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop” (a perennial fave, Chip Harrison and Leo Haig investigate the theft of a Cornell Woolrich manuscript)

·         “Cold Reading” by Charles Ardai, in “Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop” (what is it with the Bookshop and found manuscripts?)

·         “Sock It To Me, Santa” by Madison Parker (e-book), a cute high school Secret-Santa-coming-out tale

·         “A Very Merry Blue Christmas” by Linda Poitevin, a short romantic holiday interlude in her “Ever After” romance series

2018 TO BE READ CHALLENGE

Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet.  Some of us have “to be read” bookcases.  This year, book blogger RoofbeamReader  is re-instituting his To Be Read Challenge after a two year hiatus. (The first year RBR didn’t run the challenge, I challenged myself and succeeded; in 2016, not so much.)

You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end: https://roofbeamreader.com/2017/11/07/announcing-the-official-2018-tbr-pile-challenge/  but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are:

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Specifics:

1.       Each of these 12 books must have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means the book cannot have a publication date of 1/1/2017 or later (any book published in the year 2016 or earlier qualifies, as long as it has been on your TBR pile). Caveat: Two (2) alternates are allowed, just in case one or two of the books end up in the “can’t get through” pile.

2.       Crossovers from other challenges are totally acceptable, as long as you have never read the book before and it was published before 2017!

*Note: You can read the books on your list in any order; they do not need to be read in the order you have them listed. Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Poetry collections? Essay collections? All good!  As you complete a book – review it, go to your original list and turn that title into a link to the review. This will keep the comments section here from getting ridiculously cluttered. For an example of what I mean, Click Here.

MY 2018 TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:

1.       THE LADY OF THE SHROUD, Bram Stoker     (1909)

2.       THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, Lawrence Block    (1965, reissued 2011)

3.       IRONCASTLE, Philip Jose Farmer and JH Rosny   (1976)

4.       GIOVANNI’S ROOM, James Baldwin    (1956)

5.       WHO FEARS DEATH, Nnedi Okorafor  (2010)

6.       THINGS FALL APART, Chinua Achebe    (1958)

7.       SOLACERS, Arion Gokmakani    (2012)

8.       THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, Grace Zaring Stone    (1932, reissued 2014)

9.       BECOMING NICOLE, Amy Ellis Nutt     (2016)

10.   THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Junot Diaz    (2008)

11.   SOFT APOCALYPSES, Lucy A. Snyder    (2014)

12.   INVISIBLE PLANETS, translated/edited by Ken Liu   (2016)

ALTERNATES:

A.      REVENGE: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa (Stephen Snyder, translator) (2013)

B.      BUTCHER ROAD, Lee Thomas     (2014)

I have a few other reading challenges that I’m setting myself for 2018 that will overlap partially with this. I’ll be posting about those over the next few weeks.

FEBRUARY 2017 READINGS

A few days ago I posted about my writing accomplishments in February. Today’s post is about my reading.

I set myself several reading challenges each year, (and at some point I’ll write about this year’s unique challenges in an upcoming post. For now, here’s a look at the two I do every year, and how I’m progressing as the second month of the year has come to an end:

BOOKS

I set myself an annual goal over on Goodreads of 100 books. I track books the same way GR does, so self-published short stories in ebook format count, as do magazines if I read the entire issue and not just a story or two. January’s books read were:

1. Black Knight: The Fall of Dane Whitman Volume 1, by Frank Tieri, Luca Pizzari and Kev Walker.  I’ve always been a huge fan of Marvel Comics’ Black Knight character, but this latest graphic novel collection felt like it just repeated story beats for the character we’ve already seen when he was an active member of The Avengers and Excalibur.
2. Lightspeed Magazine #81 (February, 2017), edited by John Joseph Adams. Another fine selection of original and reprint SF and fantasy shorts. This month’s favorites for me were A. Merc Rustad’s “Later, Let’s Tear Up The Inner Sanctum,” Seanan McGuire’s “Lady Antheia’s Guide to Horticultural Warfare,” Brian Stableford’s “The Elixir of Youth,” and Ashok Banker’s “The Six-Gun Vixen and the Dead Coon Trashgang.”
3. Full of Briars, by Seanan McGuire. Another novella in McGuire’s October Daye urban fantasy series, this one narrated by Quentin Sollys, Toby’s squire, who harbors a few secrets of his own. I loved that this was a quiet, “day in the life” type story, something rare in the Daye-verse, and I loved Quentin’s voice — totally his own but with hints of Toby’s influence.
4. Ghost Girl in the Corner (A Shadowshaper novella), by Daniel Jose Older.  Focusing on a few of the supporting characters from the Shadowshaper novel, Older gives us a missing girl / dead girl pair of mysteries (with satisfactory “fair play” solutions) and further insight into how the Shadowshaper world works.
5. Sinner Man, by Lawrence Block. Block’s first crime novel, long out of print since it was first published under a pseudonym, is classic noir Block: the main characters may be unlikeable, but you have to find out how it all comes out. (Reviewed Here on my Blog)
6. Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Latin@ Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Matthew David Goodwin.  An excellent collection of genre stories by writers of Latin descent or from Latin American countries, including Daniel Jose Older, Junot Diaz, and Sabrina Vourvoulias. (Reviewed Here on my Blog)
7. Locke and Key Volume 2: Head Games, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. The second installment of the graphic novel series expands the mythology and ups the stakes for the characters in intriguing and disturbing ways.
8. Undertow, by Jordan L. Hawk. This novella set in Hawk’s “Whyborne and Griffin” Lovecraftian universe shifts the focus to two supporting characters: secretary Maggie Parkhurst and Whyborne’s Ketoi twin sister. Still the same fun adventure, Lovecraftian worldbuilding and same-sex romance Hawk always expertly delivers.
9. Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman solidly and smoothly retells the Norse myths that influenced him, often with the voice one would expect to hear if the tale were being told around a campfire on a cold winter’s night.
10. The Prisoner of Hell Gate, by Dana I. Wolff.  I picked this up because as a kid born in Queens NY and growing up just north, the Hell Gate bridge scared the hell out of me, and the idea of that part of the river combined with the story of Typhoid Mary into a kind of literary slasher-flick intrigued me. It didn’t really work for me though, despite some interesting character moments and the tying-in of other East River tragedies.

So: ten books read in February, and Goodreads tells me I’m still on track for the year.

SHORT STORIES

I also set myself a goal each year of reading 365 short stories: 1 per day, theoretically, although it doesn’t always work out quite that way. (366 in leap years, of course)

I didn’t quite hit the “one per day” goal in January, but I more than made up for it in February. here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too (with some short notes for stories that really stood out to me). If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1. “Optimistic People” by Chris Drangle, from One Story magazine for December 31, 2016. Two teens get caught up with a drifter when they rescue him from being buried alive. Really great character work.
2. “We Blazed” by David Farland, from an ebook perk via a Kickstarter reward. Cool world-building mixes fantasy and SF.
3. “Starship Day” by Ian R. MacLeod, from Lightspeed Magazine #31. Hearbreaking.
4. “Later, Let’s Tear Up The Inner Sanctum” by A. Merc Rustad. Fantastic super-hero world-building.
5. “Lady Antheia’s Guide To Horitcultural Warfare” by Seanan McGuire. Disturbing and Victorian and also a bit funny.
6. “The Last Garden” by Jack Skillingstead
7. “Probably Still The Chosen One” by Kelly Barnhill
8. “The Memorial Page” by K.J. Bishop
9. “Six-Gun Vixen and the Dead Coon Trashgang” by Ashok Banker. Violent and creative mix of SF, westerns and bible-thumping.
10. “The Elixir of Youth” by Brian Stableford. A retelling of The Prodigal Son takes a very dark turn.
11. “Taklamakan” by Bruce Sterling.
12. “Mortensen’s Muse” by Orrin Grey, from Children of Lovecraft.
13. “Oblivion Mode” by Laird Barron, from Children of Lovecraft.
14. “The Devil’s Apprentice” by Premee Mohamed, from No Shit, There I Was!
15. “Blush Response” by E. Catherine Tobler, from No Shit, There I Was! Loved the noir-ish world-building of this story of enforcers and “shine girls.”
16.  “Full of Briars” by Seanan McGuire. The above-reviewed Quentin Sollys novella.
17. “Ghost Girl in the Corner” by Daniel Jose Older. The above-reviewed Shadowshaper novella.
18. “The Road to Nyer” by Kathleen Alcala, from Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Latin@ Speculative Fiction. A wonderful, ethereal, haunting ghost story.
19. “Code 51” by Pablo Brescia.
20. “Uninformed” by Pedro Zagitt.
21. “Circular Photography” by Pedro Zagitt. Amazing detail that stayed with me long after this bit of flash fiction was over.
22. “Sin Embargo” by Sabrina Vourvoulias. Words, and translations, mean everything.
23. “Accursed Lineage” by Daina Chaviano.
24. “Coconauts in Space” by Adal.
25. “Cowboy Medium” by Ana Castillo.
26. “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails” by Ernest Hogan. Music-infused prose.
27. “Monstro” by Junot Diaz.
28. “Room For Rent” by Richie Narvaez.
29. “Artificial” by Edmundo Paz Soldan.
30. “Through the Right Ventricle” by Steve Castro.
31. “Two Unique Souls” by Steve Castro
32. “Caridad” by Alex Hernandez
33. “Difficult At Parties” by Carmen Maria Machado. Hearbreaking.
34. “Death of a Businessman” by Giannina Braschi
35. “Burial of the Sardine” by Giannina Braschi
36. “Entanglements” by Carlos Hernandez
37. “The Drain” by Alejandra Sanchez.
38. “Red Feather and Bone” by Daniel Jose Older
39. “A Science Fiction” by Carl Marcum
40. “Scifi-Kill” by Carl Marcum
41. “Traditions” by Marcos S. Gonsalez
42. “An Oral History of the Next Battle of the Sexes” by Lucas Schaefer, from One Story magazine for February 21, 2017. Told entirely in quoted interviews from those who saw or were part of the title boxing match between a stellar woman boxer and an obvious male patsy.

So: forty-two short stories for February, which was more than one-per-day and which put me ahead of target (February 28th was the 59th day of the year).

JANUARY 2017 READING

Yesterday I posted about my writing accomplishments in January. Today’s post is about my reading.

I set myself several reading challenges each year, and I’ll write about this year’s challenges in an upcoming post. (I also need to write up a post about how I did with my reading challenges for 2016, but first I have to find the word doc in which I crunched all those numbers…) For now, here’s a look at the two I do every year, and how I’m progressing:

BOOKS

I set myself an annual goal over on Goodreads of 100 books. I track books the same way GR does, so self-published short stories in ebook format count, as do magazines if I read the entire issue and not just a story or two. January’s books read were:

1. Locke and Key Vol 1.: Welcome To Lovecraft, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. I’ve been meaning to read this series for a while, and finally got around to it because my nephew Brandon forced it into my hands during a December visit. I’m glad he did. Really enjoyed the set-up, and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series soon.
2. Battle Hill Bolero (Bone Street Rhumba #3) by Daniel Jose Older.  I love urban fantasy. If you love urban fantasy, and you’re not reading Older’s NYC-set story of ghosts, magic, and political machinations … well, why not? This third book closes out the Rhumba series, but I’m sure Older isn’t done with these characters or this world. And his writing has a musicality to it I can’t remember feeling with anything else I’ve read.
3. Lily, by Michael Thomas Ford, with illustrations by Staven Andersen.  Classic fairy-tale tropes (Baba Yaga, hidden villages, a girl with a power she doesn’t understand, adults who try to suppress that power) come together in a modern setting. Some types of stories stay true no matter when they’re set, and Ford does a great job of balancing the fantastical with modern realities. And Andersen’s illustrations are disturbing and beautiful at the same time.
4. Heaps of Pearls by Seanan McGuire. McGuire publishes a lot of stand-alone short stories from her various fictional series worlds on her website and her Patreon page. This one details how two secondary characters from the October Daye series, Patrick and Dianda, first met. It takes place prior to book one of the series but is probably best read after book 9. And what a meet-cute it is.
5. Lightspeed Magazine #80 (January, 2017), edited by John Joseph Adams. I’m the proofreader for the Kindle ebook edition of Lightspeed, so it’s the one magazine I read front-to-back every month. The eight stories and one novella in each issue also account for 9 of the short stories I read every month. (See below for brief thoughts on those.)
6. Lumberjanes Volume 5: Band Together, by Shannon Waters, Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen and Carolyn Nowak.  My good friends Kay Holt and Bart Leib introduced me to the Lumberjanes collected volumes on a visit to Boston last year, and I’ve eagerly awaited each new volume (since I don’t buy individual monthly comics anymore for a variety of reasons). I love the characters, the mystery, and the pacing. I have to admit that the change to the art in the run of issues collected here didn’t quite work for me: some of the characters barely looked like themselves for me. The art’s not bad, it just took some getting used to. But the story is a lot of fun.
7. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire. Another short story in McGuire’s October Daye universe, this time telling a tale of romance and secrets involving everyone’s favorite sea-witch, The Luideag. I know, I know: “romance” and “the Luideag” are not words one expects to hear in the same sentence. Best read after book five of the October Daye series.
8. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire. A new novella from McGuire that doesn’t seem to connect to any of her other existing series (although I can see it connecting to her novel Sparrow Hill Road in some ways). There’s some great world-building around a main character whose voice clicked with me right away, making me want to know more about her and the characters around her. A very satisfying “done in one” story.

So: eight books read in January, and Goodreads tells me that means I’m “on track” for my yearly goal.

SHORT STORIES

I also set myself a goal each year of reading 365 short stories: 1 per day, theoretically, although it doesn’t always work out quite that way. (366 in leap years, of course)

I didn’t quite hit the “one per day” goal in January, but here’s what I did read and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too:

The first 9 stories come from the January 2017 issue of Lightspeed Magazine. The first 8 are available to read for free on the magazine’s website, while the 9th story is only available as part of the ebook edition.

1. Rate of Change by James S.A. Corey. A look at a future where brain/spinal transplants have become the norm — how does that affect our basic humanity.
2. The Whole Crew Hates Me by Adam-Troy Castro. First person narrative about why the title of the story may be true. As soon as I finished reading it, I thought “man, this would make a fantastic acting monologue!” Great, is-he-paranoid-or-not voice.
3. Tracker by Mary Rosenblum. Intriguing future (?) world where seeming gods control the weather, population, etc., and the title character is trapped in the middle of a power struggle.
4. Nine-Tenths of the Law by Molly Tanzer. What happens when your husband is replaced by an alien intelligence just as you’re getting ready to divorce him. There’s a bit of comedy and tragedy mixed together here.
5. Seven Salt Tears by Kat Howard. Another moving, very personal story from Howard, this one about how childhood stories involving the ocean impact a woman’s life.
6. Daddy Long-Legs of the Evening by Jeffrey Ford. I read this one years ago, was completely creeped out by it, and am happy to say the reread was just as creepy. Urban legend about a boy whose brain is infested by a spider.
7. The West Topeka Triangle by Jeremiah Tolbert. This one really brought back middle school memories, even though I didn’t grow up anywhere near Kansas nor in any urban setting. I love that lingering question as to whether anything supernatural is really happening, a tone Tolbert expertly keeps up throughout the story.
8. Nine by Kima Jones. Fantasy trappings on a real-world setting: Tanner, Jessie and Flo run a motel for blacks moving west after the Civil War, but even the three proprietors are running from something that seems destined to catch up with them. Heart-breaking and full of love at the same time.
9. Awakening by Judith Berman. Aleya wakes in a dungeon full of corpses, unsure how she got there. This story takes more twists than a D&D campaign, and each one is layered brilliantly onto the previous. It kept me guessing throughout as to how it would end.
10. Heaps of Pearls by Seanan McGuire. (self-pubbed on the author’s website). As mentioned above, a really cute story about how Patrick and Dianda met. It has the feel of a screwball rom-com.
11. Stage of Fools by Seanan McGuire. (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page) A story of Tybalt, the King of Cats, during his days in London, long before Toby Daye was even born. The first of three connected stories about how Tybalt re-opened his court after a long period of being alone.
12. The Voice of Lions by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page) The second connected story about Tybalt reopening his court in London, with some interesting political intrigue thrown in.
13. Lunching with the Sphinxes by Richard Bowes. (from Grendelsong magazine, issue #2). A story set in Bowes’ Big Arena (NYC) future-history. Political intrigue from the perspective of a person who never thought she’d be a politician. I’d not read this when it first came out, but it seems a bit prescient in light of recent political events here in the US.
14. Singing Wings by Keffy R.M. Kehrli. (from Fireside magazine #27). Aduaa is about to go through her species’ natural transformation, which means saying goodbye to those she’ll no longer be able to interact with. Kehrli really sucker-punches you with a depth of emotion we all recognize when life forces us to move on.
15. Bones at the Door by John Wiswell (from Fireside magazine #27). Mandy starts discovering animal bones left at her front door, which leads to life changes she never could have expected. Eerie and disturbing.
16. The Closest Thing To Animals by Sofia Samatar (from Fireside magazine #27). The narrator discloses a history ofher failing relationships in a city closed off from the rest of the world due to a plague that doesn’t kill. Great world-building, interesting story structure.
17. The Acts of Hares by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s Patreon page). The third of the connected Tybalt stories, this one about how he finally finds that last reason to re-open his court to other cats, putting him further on the road to being the Tybalt we know in the current Toby Daye books.
18. Beks and the Second Note by Bruce Arthurs. (from the December 2016 issue of Alfred Hitchcock magazine). Appearances are deceiving and not every case is as simple as it seems, as Detective Beks discovers investing a case of a good gun-carrying citizen killing a bank robber.
19. Whatever It Takes by Lawrence Block (from the December 2016 issue of Alfred Hitchcock magazine)  An old, previously-unpublished Block tale of a group of cops trying to get a man to turn informant against a big time, almost-untouchable gangster, and the lengths to which they’ll go. The dialogue-heavy story structure makes it an even more fun read.
20. Through This House by Seanan McGuire (from the anthology Home Improvement: Undead Edition). Another story set in McGuire’s Toby Daye universe, but in modern times compared to the others read this month. Toby, May, Quentin and Danny must figure out how to reopen the sealed fairie Knowe of Goldengreen before it kills them. It’sbit of a haunted house adventure, with all the creeping shadows and jump-scares one would expect.
21. In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire (self-pubbed on the author’s website). As mentioned above, this one is set prior to the first novel of the Toby Daye series and doesn’t involve Toby herself. But it’s a great love story, slowly and carefully told.

So: 21 stories read in January, which means I’m 10 stories behind on my “read 365 stories this year” goal. But I suspect I’ll be catching up soon. One of my problems is I keep buying short story anthologies and then setting them aside for when I have time to read “the whole thing.” Which rarely seems to happen. So I’m making a sub-challenge for myself that each time I buy a new anthology, I will read at least one story the day I buy it. That might help with this a bit.

Clearly, between books and stories this has been a Seanan McGuire heavy month. She is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve been working towards finally reading all of the stories connected to her main novel series. So there’ll be another batch of McGuire reviews in the wrap-up post for February’s reading as well.

LINDA POITEVIN "SINS OF THE LOST" - Interview

It’s always a pleasure to welcome Linda Poitevin back to the site to talk about her latest. This time out, we’re discussing SINS OF THE LOST, the third book in her four-part series The Grigori Legacy. Linda is also the author of the contemporary romance GWYNNETH EVER AFTER. You can read all of my previous interviews with Linda, and get a sense of how The Grigori Legacy series has developed, by clicking HERE.

ANTHONY: SINS OF THE LOST, book three of The Grigori Legacy, comes out this month. Now that you’re several books into the series, what roadblocks or character moments did you hit while writing the new book that caught you by surprise in comparison to the earlier books?

LINDA:  I was actually surprised at how difficult the entire book was to write, to be honest…probably because I had to do so many awful things to my characters. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from the trauma, lol!

ANTHONY: There’s been a bit of a gap from the publication of book two, SINS OF THE SON, to book three. You published GWYNNETH EVER AFTER, a stand-alone romance, in between.  What caused the long break from TGL?

LINDA: There were a number of reasons for the gap: (1) it took a while to settle on a contract with my publisher; (2) when I’m not under a fixed deadline, I tend to drag my heels on writing; (3) this really was a tough story to write; and (4) I met with a dog-walking accident (hint: one should not have the leash of a 127-pound dog wrapped around an index finger) that put me out of commission for almost a month with a bad sprain.

ANTHONY: OUCH! How much time has passed for the characters, and where do we find them at the start of the new book? (And can you answer this question without major spoilers, haha?)

LINDA: Very little time passes between the books; Sins of the Lost picks up a scant two weeks after Sins of the Son left off. Alex and Seth are back in Toronto, struggling to make a go of their fledgling relationship in the aftermath of the events in Vancouver, and Alex is just returning to her job.

ANTHONY: Assuming we will be spending plenty of time with Alex, Aramael, Seth, Lucifer and the rest … are there any new characters we should be excited for / wary of?

LINDA: One very important new character is hinted at in Sins of the Lost, but you won’t actually get to meet her until the fourth and final book. Apart from that, there’s a return of an old enemy and more of the Archangel Michael…who really is one of my favorites. 

The Grigori Legacy, Book Three

ANTHONY: Color me intrigued! SINS OF THE LOST is only out in e-book format, right? Why the change from the print versions we got for books one and two?

LINDA: Sins of the Lost is what my publisher is calling “digital first” — which essentially means that there’s a possibility of print, but no guarantee (it will depend on sales figures). The change occurred because sales on book 2 slumped a little, as second books often do, apparently. But, while that slump generally spells death for a series, my publisher (and my amazing editor) really likes the series and wanted to give it another chance. Talk about a vote of confidence! 

ANTHONY: That is a great vote of confidence. Please thank the publisher for giving it another go. So many fun urban fantasy series do seem to fail with book two. Now, the cover art is also a bit different. It seems that Alexandra Jarvis is not on the cover for the first time. Does this bode unwell for our heroine?

LINDA: LOL…Alex is safe, Anthony, I promise. Horribly tortured, perhaps, but safe. The change in art was made because of the switch to digital-first. Too much detail doesn’t show up well on the widgets you see online, so we needed to simplify the design a bit. We also wanted to place more emphasis on the angel aspect of the story.

ANTHONY: Which makes sense, given the events of the book.  And not that I’m rushing you, but what will book four be called and when will it be done? No, like, seriously. When? 

LINDA: This book is going much faster than the last one, lol. It’s tentatively entitled Sins of the Warrior (expect a lot more Michael in this one), and I plan to have the first draft done by the end of March. No word yet on publication, however…sorry! 

ANTHONY: Well, you know, if you need a beta-reader for it, you have my email address.   Instead of my usual “what’s your favorite book” question, which I think you’ve answered several times, tell us what your resource on Angels and their mythology has been most helpful/influential on you in creating the Grigori series.

LINDA: Google was my best friend when it came to research for this series. Because I knew I would be twisting angel mythology to fit with my own nefarious purposes, I didn’t need accuracy as much as I did inspiration—and the Internet is rifewith sources for that. I read extensively on Bible study, Catholic, and new age sites, taking bits and pieces from all over in order to construct my own world for the series. The diversity in the takes on angel lore was utterly fascinating and made for great fodder…and I barely even scratched the surface of what’s out there.

J.M. LOFFICIER - Author

I’ve been a fan of publishers J.M. and Randy Lofficier’s writing for decades now, and I was honored in 2013 to become one of the authors published by Black Coat Press, their small press focused on new and reprinted adventures of classic French pulp magazine characters such as Harry Dickson, Judex, Rouletabille, the Black Coats and more.  I conducted this interview with J.M., about Black Coats’ history and mission, months ago and owe him an apology for how long it’s taken to post this.  Read along as we discuss French pulp characters, Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton concept, and the overlap between the two, among other subjects:

ANTHONY: How long has Black Coat Press been in existence, and where does the company name come from? What was the company’s first published title?

JM: We started Black Coat Press in the Summer of 2003, just in time to be able to release our first book — Arnould Galopin’s DOCTOR OMEGA — for the San Diego Comicon of that year. The name “Black Coat” was taken from Paul Féval’s ground-breaking criminal saga which we intended to translate and publish at some point. I’m pleased to say that, thanks to Brian Stableford’s industriousness, we were able to release all seven volumes (plus a few related titles). The last one was released in 2011, so it did take about eight years!

ANTHONY: Where did you love for the pulps in general, and French pulps in particular, start?

JM: Like most of us, during my childhood and teen years. There is one major difference, however, which is that most English-language “classics” were readily available to me in the same paperback imprints as their French counterparts. For example, the Livre de poche imprint released editions of Holmes and Lupin, Fantomas and the Saint, Poirot and Rouletabille. Marabout published the Black Coats and Rocambole next to the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Savage next to Bob Morane. So the “universe” of pulp literature to which I had access was vastly greater than the ones accessible in the US or the UK.

ANTHONY: It seems, in the US at least, we’re experiencing a “pulp resurgence,” with publishers like Meteor House, Dynamite, Moonstone and others bringing back every 1880s to 1940s adventure character they can get their hands on. What is the attraction for modern readers to these classic, and sometimes campy, pulp characters?

JM: Some of it is nostalgia, of course. But I think there is a perennial aspect to the best pulps that transcends time and changing fashions. Sherlock Holmes, The Three Musketeers, Tarzan, The Count of Monte-Cristo, The Shadow, Arsene Lupin (to name but a few) have survived the test of time and will likely be remembered forever; their modern-day descendants are to be found on television. The TV series, especially today with its complex plots, character arcs, etc. is the inheritor of Alexandre Dumas and Paul Feval. The same people who rushed to the New York harbor to get their next installment of Monte-Cristo in the French papers (at a time when a lot of educated Americans knew foreign languages) are the same today eagerly waiting for the next episode of LOST or MAD MEN.

Tales of the Shadowmen includes a short story by Anthony R. Cardno

ANTHONY: The idea of having classic characters meet up is not a new one in world literature, although in the modern day I think Philip Jose Farmer deserves a lot of the credit, through his Wold-Newton Family concept, for making such crossovers more than just fun mash-ups. In your TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthologies, you encourage writers to cross the French pulp characters who are your forte with just about everything else in the pop culture canon.  What criteria do you follow for those stories?  Is any “crossover” concept just too out there?

JM: Jess Nevins wrote authoritatively in his intro to Win Eckert’s CROSSOVERS about the history of “crossovers”, going back to Jason and the Argonauts, the Round Table tales, etc. So yes it is hardly a new phenomenon, although I think Maurice Leblanc’s bold initiative of having Lupin cross swords with Holmes deserves a lot of credit. Regarding TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN, my only two criteria are: (1) there has to be a character from French fiction (being Black Coat Press, this comes with the territory) and (2) the story has to be in continuity and respectful of the original materials. No funny ha-ha pastiches, no killing off heroes, no dark reinterpretations. That’s all. Other than that, I welcome any crossover, the more outré, the better. To quote but a few of the more unexpected crossovers, we had stories featuring The Little Prince and Doc Savage, Zorro and Jean Valjean, The Wizard of Oz and Richard Matheson’s Born of Man and Woman, Jerry Cornelius, Pere Ubu and the movie Alphaville… This year, for example, we have a story that conflates Boulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Jean Ray’s Malpertuis and Marie Nizet’s Captain Vampire… As you can see, we roam pretty far and wide.

ANTHONY: What’s the weirdest crossover you’ve seen submitted to you, the type of thing that made you think ‘this can’t possibly work’ but then it did?

JM: The ones I mentioned above all fit the bill. I myself wrote the one mixing The Wizard of Oz with Richard Matheson’s horror tale Born of Man and Woman because someone challenged me to do it. I have another one mixing Enid Blyton’s Famous Five with the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, but I haven’t written it yet.

ANTHONY: I’m sort of excited but disturbed by that concept. Did you intend TotS to be an annual anthology event when you put the first volume out?

JM: Yes, I always did, which is why I put a #1 on the spine of the first book!  That’s a clue.  Since then, we’ve also released some character-themed anthologies that include about 50% of already published stories (usually from TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN) and 50% new stories. We’ve had anthos dedicated to Arsene Lupin, Dr. Omega, the Nyctalope and Judex, and I’m preparing one on Harry Dickson.

ANTHONY: The 10th volume came out a few months ago. Has your process for choosing stories or putting the book together changed at all?

JM: Not in the least.

ANTHONY: Do you have any plans to bring the TotS books out in ebook format in the near future?

JM: Yes, I have been slowly making our catalog available as ebooks, but it is a slow process. I still have the Black Coats series to do and then I’ll tackle the Shadowmen. I’m also working on converting our huge library of comics (in French) for Comixology, and that is a long and time consuming process, and there are only so many hours in the day — and I’m basically the only person doing all this.

ANTHONY: I really need to get a tablet I can read comics on. Right now I just have the Nook Simple Touch (I’ve been slow to move to e-readers) and it’s not really good for comics. I want to circle back to the Wold-Newton concept for a moment. Farmer created a pretty distinct family tree and linked them to a particular event, the crash of the meteor at Wold-Newton.  People have referred to Black Coats’ output as “The French Wold-Newton Universe.”  Have you ever posited an event similar to the WN meteor to explain what Farmer would call “a supernova of genetic splendor” in France?

JM: No, not at all. At best, I piggybacked on Farmer’s concept; he already had ancestors of Arsene Lupin and Monsieur Lecoq at Wold Newton, because there were the two French characters he knew best. So I merely suggested a few more, a notion that has since been coopted by a few other authors. I also added some French historical content (as it were) by suggesting that the French characters at Wold Newton had a political agenda, which resulted first in the French Revolution, then, later, the ascent of Napoleon. That notion was first put forward by Alexandre Dumas, so it is not mine, entirely, but it blended rather well with Farmer’s. You can read it in greater detail here:
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/wnu7.htm

ANTHONY: In addition to “new pulp” books like the TotS series, you also publish a large number of translations of French pulps into English (the Harry Dickson and Madame Atomos books, most notably, but too many others to list here).  How do you decide what to translate and what authors to use to do the translating (when, that is, you don’t do the translating yourself)?

As far as deciding what deserves to be translated (or in some cases retranslated), obviously, I use my own judgment of what is really important. If you were doing it the other way, you would translate Doc Savage, but perhaps not Jim Anthony. So I think characters like Mme Atomos, Lupin, Fantomas, Harry Dickson, Doctor Omega, Sar Dubnotal, Rouletabille, etc. deserve to have at least a reasonable sampling of their adventures made available in English. I’d like to do Jean-Claude Carriere’s six remarkable Frankenstein novels but they’re not in the public domain and the rights aren’t available. Rocambole is something I’d like to do too, but someone else already put out a good series of abridged / condensed versions that pretty much cover it. I rely on Brian Stableford, Michael Shreve and a few more hand-picked folks to help me with the translations. The great majority of the books we publish ARE important; they all contain some ground-breaking idea, some new stylistic inventions… Whether we’re talking vampires or space travel, mystic heroes or cloaked avengers, criminal conspiracies or super-detectives, French popular literature contains a huge number of truly wonderful works which deserved to be made accessible to the English-speaking audience.

ANTHONY: What is upcoming from BCP in the near future?

JM: We tend to plan ahead, so for what’s coming up, you can check this link:
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/catalog.htm#SOON

Pulp-wise, in 2014, we’ll have all 18 MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR CORNELIUS novels released in a big, fat trilogy of books; hopefully the last two never published before in English FANTOMAS novels; the last two DOC ARDAN stories (a French young Doc Savage-type hero), the end of the MADAME ATOMOS saga; a new FU MANCHU novel; a series of books from the early 1900s about DR. CARESCO and PROFESSOR TORNADA, two mad scientists and another early Martian saga.

ANTHONY: I think the sound we hear in the background is my bank account collapsing. So let’s go to my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who has not read it to convince them that they should?

 JM: If you’re a pulp mystery fan, the BLACK COATS (INVISIBLE WEAPON would be my recommendation) or JOHN DEVIL by Paul Feval; if you’re more sf-minded, anything by Maurice Renard is really quite good — he wasn’t nicknamed the French HG Wells for nothing.