Craig Laurance Gidney's Blog, page 9

New story at Broken Eye Books Patreon; Cool Black History Month Library ad!

New story up on Broken Eye Books—Patreon-Locked

My Brazilian fantasy story “Sacred She-Devil” will be printed in the forthcoming Broken Eye Books anthology Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird.

Patreon subscriptions of Broken Eye Books can read the story now!

Sturgis Library put A SPECTRAL HUE in such august company!

Celebrating Black History Month

Happy Black History Month! Many years ago I wrote my Harlem Renaissance story, “Conjuring Shadows,” to celebrate the movement and shine a light on the queer subculture surrounding that surrounded it. It’s still free to read at Expanded Horizons!

Illustration by Richard Bruce Nugent, who inspired “Conjuring Shadows.”

Storm Constantine (October 12, 1956 – January 14, 2021). Queer Speculative Fiction Trailblazer.

I first came across Storm Constantine’s work in the early 90s, at the local gay bookstore. Her Wraeththu novels were post-apocalyptic fantasy that featured androgynous post-humans who all looked like a cross between David Bowie and members of an 80s goth band. The novels featured a fairly explicit sex-based magic(k) system that was groundbreaking to me. As much as I enjoyed the Wraeththu novels, it was her stand-alone novels that really grabbed me. Novels like Calenture, A Sign for the Sacred, and Hermetech were full of gorgeous prose, homoerotic imagery and dream-logic plots. They were New Weird before New Weird was a thing. 

We got in contact when Storm started publishing Tanith Lee novels through the publishing house she founded, Immanion Press. In addition to bonded over Lee’s later work, Storm also let me write blog posts and blurbs for the reprinted collections, ultimately letting me write the introduction to Love in A Time of Dragons & Other Rare Tales.

Storm Constantine was a trailblazer in Queer Speculative Fiction and neo-Gothic/neo-Decadent fantasy. Her work explored eroticism, gender and ultimately, found family. She will be missed.

Author Event on February 23rd

February Zoom Author Event, with myself and P. Djeli Clark arranged by @CoreyFarrenkopf of Sturgis Library. Come one, come all. (More info at the Sturgis Library site)!

Forthcoming Fiction

I have a couple of stories in anthologies you can pre-order now

“Coalrose” will be reprinted in Spoonknife 5: Liminal (Neuroqueer Books/Autonomous Press) 

“The Sacred She-Devil” will appear in Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird (Broken Eye Books)

New Issue of Baffling Magazine is out!

The new issue of BAFFLING MAGAZINE, the online magazine of queer speculative fiction edited by dave ring and myself, is now out!

BOOK REVIEW: The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller

One of the great things about Speculative Fiction is that an author can personify and give literal breath to a concept. Metaphors walk in the pages alongside the characters an author summons. Miller’s new book turns Gentrification into actual characters. 

The depressed, Rust-Belt city of Hudson NY is the setting of the novel. Back in previous centuries, whaling—the hunting and apportioning of humpback whales—was its primary industry before turning into a manufacturing hub. The city is given new life as an influx of economic opportunists transform the town into an area filled with antique stores and artisanal coffee shops.  The internet billionaire Jark Trowse not only makes Hudson the base of his many financial operations, he is also running for Mayor. This transformation causes the displacement of many of the long-time residents of the city as Hudson attracts a younger, hipper demographic.

The edgy photographer Ronan Szepessy returns to his hometown in the middle of  arevitalizing campaign to take care of some business with his estranged, dementia-addled father. Ronan is a damaged individual—a meth addict who still is wounded by his Hudson upbringing which included the suicide of his mother and nasty homophobic bullies. (In many ways, he reminds me of Liz Hand’s character Cass Neary—another wounded bird addict compelled to create disturbing photographic tableaux). Like Neary, Ronan is self-destructive and seems to thrive on negative energy. In spite of his less than adoring attachment to his hometown, he immediately doesn’t like the way the city has become a sort of trendy outpost for Brooklyn, frequented by quirkily dressed hipsters. Miller has Ronan tell his own story in the first person and he’s an intriguing if not always likeable anti-hero. His return is the catalyst for the action.

The Blade Between also has a scattering of other points of view, mainly from Ronan’s ex-boyfriend, the police officer Dom and Dom’s social worker wife Attalah. Dom’s narrative has him exploring the sudden rash of often violent resistance against the town’s ‘invaders,’ while Attalah and Ronan secretly conspire to challenge the mayoral campaign.  Just in the ‘corner of the eye,’ there’s some lowkey supernatural occurrences that add to the mayhem.

The supernatural intrusion is the tangible manifestation of the rage and nihilism of the dispossessed.  Miller gives the reader the satisfying taste of revenge, and also the bitter aftertaste of extremism. This is not a simple morality tale; everyone from both sides of the divide is imperfect in one way or another. Miller actually makes Trowse (a sort of Bezos (Amazon) meets Dorsey (Twitter) figure) approachable and charming, even as he is visiting economic devastation on Hudson. And the supernatural actors are monstrously immune from empathy in their zeal.

Miller manages to artfully display the various issues of gentrification. Change is inexorable and cities change character with great frequency. The Washington, DC neighborhood where I live has been home to members of the Harlem Renaissance artists (Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes lived nearby); the site of race riots in the 60s; my block was full of literal crackhouses in the 80s and 90s; and now has become a corridor full of artisanal shops and hipsters. Long term residents have been displaced, and new neighborhood traditions have sprung up. The Blade Between captures the ambiguous complexities that surround these issues, and never becomes a simple issue-based novel.

Carl Brandon Parallax Award Honor List

A SPECTRAL HUE is on the honors list of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award! Congratulations to the Parallax and Kindred Award winners and honorees!

HAIRSBREADTH: Chapter 3: “The See-Through Girl”

The third chapter of my serialized weird fiction fairytale novel HAIRSBREADTH is now up at the Broken Eye Books/ Eyedolon Patreon.

The book is set in the fictional town of Shimmer, Maryland, which is surrounded by haunted wetlands . The elevator pitch of the novel: a cross between the fairytale Rapunzel and Toni Morrison’s Sula. It’s my twist on the Black Girl Magic fiction, full of folklore and dark weird magic.

NOT the cover. Just me playing around in Canva.

Awards Eligibility

“Desiccant,” in Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire

“Myth & Moor” in Evil in Technicolor

“Spyder Threads” in Come Join Us by the Fire, Season 2