Austin Shirey's Blog, page 2

Strange & Fantastic #21

Well, we made it. 2024 is coming to an end. And what a year it’s been! Speaking for myself, 2024 has been an incredible year.

As most of you know, my first-ever novella, City of Spores, released in February, and it seems to be a hit with readers, which is just nothing short of awesome. And it’s continuing to find new readers as we speak. As of this writing, City of Spores currently has 48 ratings on Goodreads, with 42 text reviews. It’s also been marked as To-Read by 87(!) people! (This is also your friendly reminder that if you HAVE read City of Spores, please consider leaving a review, or at least a rating, on Goodreads or Amazon, or both! It really does help.)

BIG THANKS to everyone who has grabbed a copy of City of Spores and given it a read, and a review. You have no idea how much that means to me! And THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has nominated City of Spores for various literary awards this year. I’m excited to see what’s next for this weird little “mushroom noir” of mine.

As for what’s next, work continues on the second draft of my dark fantasy novel, Black Coral. I’ve been basically rewriting a big chunk of the book, and progress has been a little slower than I’d like, but I’m chugging along, and feeling much better about the rewritten material—ultimately, I think this will make the novel much, much stronger. I’m hoping to have Draft 2 finished and off to my first readers sometime early 2025. We’re almost there, folks!

2024 Favorites

I’m a big fan of lists, and when it gets to the end of the year, I like to make lists of my favorite reads, listens, and watches of the year. Since I try to share reviews and recs in this newsletter, I figured I’d share those lists with you all. These lists are subjective, of course, and the only criteria is that the album, book, or film was released in 2024.

5 Favorite Albums of 2024:

Songs of a Lost World, The Cure

Dark Matter, Pearl Jam

The Last Will and Testament, Opeth

One More Time…Part 2, Blink-182

Muuntautuja, Oranssi Pazuzu

5 Favorite Books of 2024:

Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer

The Angel of Indian Lake, Stephen Graham Jones

Glass Stories, Ivy Grimes

The Devil by Name, Keith Rosson

The Dissonance, Shaun Hamill

5 Favorite Films of 2024:

Dune: Part Two

Longlegs

I Saw the TV Glow

Deadpool & Wolverine

Civil War

Monthly Serial: Mushrooms for Mirabelle

(Part 2)

Mirabelle made a watery stew with the squirrel she’d shot, but there was so little meat to the darn thing it ended up not much more than a mess of murky water flecked with bits of tough, stringy meat. Daddy spat most of his up and refused to finish his bowl; Henry spilt most of his on himself, rocking back and forth like he always did when he wasn’t asleep. Not long after she’d downed her portion of the stew and drunk the water she’d pumped from the well out behind the house, Mirabelle’s stomach was growling again. I could tell it was cramping too, the way she’d bend ever so slightly and place a hand over her stomach.

Still, Mirabelle was strong. She never stopped doing what had to be done.

She got Daddy and Henry all cleaned up and took them both upstairs to the room they shared, the room that had once been our daddy and mama’s bedroom. She got Daddy settled in his cot and put Henry in the corner of the room at the foot of his bed, just beneath the window he liked so much; he wrapped his arms around his knees and went back to rocking. Every now and then, he let out a little moan, but nothing loud. Not like Daddy did all through the nights, when his pain was worst. Mirabelle checked Henry’s ears to make sure he hadn’t been picking at his scars again, then closed the door and we went down the creaking stairs to the main level where she slept.

Like the rest of the house, the main level was dark, and mildewed something bad too. Most of the wood had gone rotten a long time ago, or was working its way there quick. Spiders and silverfish skittered all over the place; when I was alive, I hated creepy-crawlies, so it was a relief to know they couldn’t touch me anymore. Mold grew in the corners of the house, fed by dark and wet; there was some mold even growing in the back of the fireplace, where the rainwater that trickled down the broken chimney grew stagnant.

Seeing as I misted through everything I touched, I couldn’t stand or sit, so I just floated near the foot of the old mattress Mirabelle kept in the middle of the room that included our kitchen. She slumped down onto the mattress and pulled her tattered blanket over herself. Her stomach growled like tumbling rocks.

Want me to fetch you some mice? I asked.

“Uh-uh,” Mirabelle said. “Last time about killed me.”

I’d forgotten how sick the mice had made her. I scratched at my ghostly head. You thinking about that witch?

“Who says she a witch, anyway? What she done that’s so…witchy?”

She disappeared from the Wytchwood as soon as we run off, I said.

Mirabelle huffed. “How you know that?”

She weren’t there when I looked back.

“Listen to yourself, Judson. She a witch cause you lost sight of her while we was running home?”

Something ain’t right about her, Belle.

“But what? You ain’t said what ain’t right about her. Neither do folk in town. You all just say, she bad, and, she a witch. Well, so what? She got enough food to keep us living. What if we over here starving ‘cause of old wives’ tales and rumors?”

Besides telling her about the oily black shimmer I’d seen around Granny, there wasn’t anything I could say that Mirabelle would’ve taken as gospel.

I don’t rightly know, I said. The way I ain’t ever sensed her out in the ‘Wood… That scares me. Scares me bad. Nothing on God’s green Earth that quiet. Nothing but…

I gestured at myself.

Mirabelle said nothing for a while.

“We been all over the Wytchwood, ain’t we?” she asked finally.

Sure, I said.

“And we ain’t never find no healthy critters like them rabbits she found.”

Not ever.

“That full strange.”

Sure is.

“Still,” Mirabelle said. “What if she right? What if she know some place in the ‘Wood where we find good meat like that?”

What if she lying? I asked. What then?

“Don’t know,” Mirabelle said. Her eyes watered. “Alls I know, Judson, I ain’t survive another winter. Not like this. Not Daddy or Henry neither.”

I would’ve given anything to hug her right then.

We could speak to Mr. Grayson again.

Mirabelle laughed, a sound as tired and worn-out as she was. “You forgetting what he said last time.”

I thought for a moment, searching for the memory; since I’d been dead and buried, sometimes my head got all jumbled and things got lost.

Oh.

I winced. The memory came back: the pained look on the gray-haired man’s face, the way he kept looking at the floor when he said: “That house is Company property. Belongs to the Grangers. We’d be well within our rights evicting you, since your daddy and brother don’t work for us no more, and ain’t nobody paying us for that house. But we don’t do that, cause it ain’t Christ-like. We’ve more than shown our share of charity to your family, Ms. Crane. Now, please, don’t come back. For your daddy and brother’s sakes.”

Mirabelle was crying now.

Then hows ‘bout Mrs. Hodgkins? I asked. We only asked her that once…

“I ain’t never asking that wicked woman another thing. Not ever.”

Mirabelle squeezed her eyes shut; I wished I hadn’t suggested it.

“Your daddy or mammy must’ve done something unforgivable for God to hate your family like He does,” Mrs. Hodgkin’s pretty face had said. She’d said it loud enough that the seamstresses working in her store on Main Street could hear it clear. “Good Christian woman like myself is charged with staying far away from the likes of you Cranes, lest I soil my own soul. Bad company corrupteth good manners, saith the Word of the Lord. Please leave and do not come back. Not until the Lord has had His way with you.”

I’m sorry, Belle, I said. Sorry I’m so bad at remembering.

Mirabelle shook her head and opened her mouth, but there was a loud thump on the front porch, just outside the door. She cried out and grasped her blanket to her chest.

I moved to the door and put my head through it. I reckon there’s not much in this world that’s as full-strange an experience as floating through solid objects; your brain screams you’re about to hurt yourself, collide with something solid, but you don’t.

A cloth-covered pot had been left on the porch, but the overgrown street in front of our house was empty except for the sound of insects and nightbirds. I popped my head back inside.

It’s just a pot of something, I told Mirabelle. Piece of paper on it, too.

“Nobody out there?”

Nuh-uh. No one.

Mirabelle got up from the mattress, opened the door and quickly brought the pot inside. She set it down on our kitchen table and took the torn strip of paper pinned to the cloth covering it. She hadn’t had much schooling, but she’d had enough.

What’s it say? I asked.

“Give me a chance, dearie,” Mirabelle read.

She uncovered the pot, and her eyes widened as a smile brightened her tired face.

“Roast rabbit!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Signing Off

That’s a wrap for 2024! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

As always, thanks so much for reading, and stay strange. I’ll see you in 2025.

—Austin

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe—you’ll get a free eBook of my short story, “Magus,” available EXCLUSIVELY for subscribers!

Subscribe now

I’d also love it if you considered checking out my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores, or my illustrated sci-fi thriller chapbook, Goodly Creatures.

Strange & Fantastic #20

*Heavy sigh*

Ugh. This has been just such a crappy and exhausting week, hasn’t it? I hope you all are taking care of yourselves, hugging your loved ones tight and making time to do the little things that bring you joy.

It feels weird sending out a newsletter focused on books and stories and all that stuff considering the current state of things, but I also don’t know what else to do at the moment, so I’m just trucking along (“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”).

Reading as Resistance

Like I said, I don’t really know what to do at the moment, so I figured I’d at least recommend two books I think are essential reads for the dark time we find ourselves in.

How Fascism WorksJason Stanley

Knowledge is power; we need to know how a thing works in order to truly dismantle it.

Why We Can’t WaitDr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s crazy (and crazy sad) how timely this book is, even though it was first published in 1963. I almost highlighted every line of this book, it’s so good, and speaks so clearly to today.

Some Other RecsFever House and The Devil By NameKeith Rosson

I couldn’t put these down. Very intense post-apocalyptic horror with crime thriller elements and full of cursed objects, shadowy government ops, and an ensemble cast of vivid, broken characters. Great stuff!

Glass StoriesIvy Grimes

A wonderful collection of beautifully strange, refractive, dreamy almost-fairy tales. I absolutely loved it! Honestly, each story in this collection is perfect, and I can’t wait to revisit them.

Songs of a Lost WorldThe Cure

A dark, brooding, yet lush and beautiful album, as only the Cure can create.

For Your Consideration

We’re getting into awards season, and my novella, City of Spores, is eligible for some of them! I’d be honored if you would consider nominating City of Spores for the awards below. Thank you for any and all consideration!

Indie Ink Awards 2024

City of Spores is eligible for this year’s Indie Ink Awards. These awards allow you to nominate a book in up to five (5) categories. Here are the categories I’m asking City of Spores be considered for:

Best Book Cover & Artist

Best Morally Gray Character

Best Setting

Side Character MVP

If you would like to nominate City of Spores for the Indie Ink Awards, you can do so HERE.

When you get to the page, click on the “Nominate City of Spores for Indie Ink Awards 2024!” banner. You will be asked to register with Indie Story Geek (just provide an email and create a Username) to make the nomination.

You can find more information on the Indie Ink Awards process here.

2025 Splatterpunk Awards

City of Spores is also eligible for the 2025 Splatterpunk Awards in the Best Novella category. You can email your nomination directly to splatterpunkawards@gmail.com.

All you need to do is say you’d like to nominate City of Spores by Austin Shirey, published by Madness Heart Press, in the Best Novella category. Simple as that.

Monthly Serial: Mushrooms for Mirabelle

I thought it’d be cool to share another story of mine with you, one called Mushrooms for Mirabelle. This one is a long one (it’s technically a novelette, I believe), so I figured I’d break it up into a monthly serial, something you’ll get at the end of each newsletter going forward for a few months.

Mushrooms for Mirabelle was first published as part of Eerie River Publishing’s shared-world anthology, Blood Sins, curated and edited by my incredible friend, Holley Cornetto. Holley created the town of Fyffe, West Virginia, and several of the characters therein, then invited myself and a few other writers (including my lovely and talented wife, Sarah!) to play in her sandbox

Mushrooms for Mirabelle is my contribution to Holley’s dark history of Fyffe, and my attempt at both a Southern Gothic ghost story AND zombie story. Those of you who have read City of Spores will also notice me playing around with some similar things here.

This synopsis from the anthology’s jacket copy provides all the background you need:

Hundreds of years ago, the people of Fyffe burned a woman at the stake for witchcraft. With her dying breath, she cursed the families who persecuted her.
From a woman who turns into a wolf, to a cult of snake handlers, the residents of Fyffe are anything but ordinary. When a young girl sets off a chain of events that awakens the witch, the families of Fyffe must come together and end the curse once and for all.

Enjoy!

Mushrooms for Mirabelle (Part 1)

First thing you need to know is, my name’s Judson Crane. I’ll be the one telling this story, since I reckon I’m the one that can tell it best. But this story ain’t about me; not really. It’s about my sister, Mirabelle.

Second thing you need to know is, I’m dead. But we’ll get to that part later.

Mirabelle’s story starts one afternoon in July of 1892, when she and I were hunting in the Wytchwood. The Wytchwood is the old forest that surrounds our hometown of Fyffe, West Virginia. That wood was full strange. It seemed to be in a constant tug of war with itself, between the areas that had turned black from the blight spreading from the nearby mountains and the other areas that were still hale and green.

Mirabelle often told me she thought the blight was winning. She could see me just fine and hear me in her head. “Like a pair of second thoughts,” she’d say. We tried our best to stick to the green parts of the wood, but sometimes we couldn’t help it—you had to go where the food was. By that time, though, it felt like there was less and less food to be found in the Wytchwood at all.

That hot and humid July day, I meandered out in the woods while Mirabelle waited under an old pine tree with Daddy’s .22 rifle. Since critters are more sensitive to haints than you’d think, I’d go out and try and spook them back toward Mirabelle, letting her know which way they were coming. It worked pretty well, I thought. So, I let her know the mangy, skinny squirrel I was spooking toward her was coming, and when it skittered across her line of sight, Mirabelle shot it. The sound rocked the wood like a tiny peal of thunder.

It was always a creepy sort of quiet out there; that’s not to say there were never any sounds at all, cause there were, just not much. Birds might chirp here and there, but not often, and when they did, it was short and hushed like they were afraid their song might wake something up.

Good shot, I said, hovering near Mirabelle as she bent over the dead squirrel and tied its feet together with the string she kept in her pocket. She looked terrible there in the sun, wearing a pair of our older brother Henry’s overalls, rifle slung over her shoulder; she was dirty, thin, and barefoot, eyes sunken deep into her face.

Mirabelle sniffled, wiping away the sweat dripping down her blond curls and into her eyes. “Nothing good about it.”

You gotta eat, Belle, I said. She didn’t much like killing things, even to eat.

“Don’t mean I gotta like it. And it ain’t like it’ll be enough for me and Daddy and Henry, neither.”

It’ll have to do.

“Easy for you to say,” Mirabelle said.

“Who’re you talking to, child?”

Mirabelle went still as a beanpole; I could see the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, like lightning was about to strike from on high. The voice scared me too. It wasn’t a voice we recognized. And when you lived like us, cast out like lepers, well, you tend not to trust nobody, especially strangers.

My sister turned and pulled the rifle from her shoulder; I peered out from behind her. An old woman stood just a few yards yonder. She had her frazzled, white hair up in a bun, but stray strands shot off in every direction like little forks of lightning. She wore a knitted brown shawl over a dirty dress. She was only a few inches taller than Mirabelle with her back bent like it was, and her spotted skin was as wrinkled as her dress. Her icy-blue eyes hovered like crescent moons above a yellow smile.

A pair of newly killed rabbits dangled from a length of frayed rope she held; they looked too healthy for any critter found here in the Wytchwood.

The old woman looked right at me.

“Oh,” she said.

My belly felt sick; well, not my belly, I guess, me being a haint and all, but I had that bad feeling, like something was terribly wrong. There was this black, oily shimmer around the old lady, which was mighty strange, seeing as most living folk had a faint white shimmer around them.

I ain’t never heard her out there, I said to Mirabelle. That was mighty strange too, since I heard most everything. Ain’t never heard her come up on us neither.

But Mirabelle wasn’t listening to me.

“You’re her,” Mirabelle said, “Old Lady—”

“Granny Bigelow,” the woman said.

Old Lady Bigelow or Granny Bigelow, it didn’t much matter what name she went by: she was bad people. Least ways, that’s what everyone said around town.

Belle, I said, trying to get her attention.

Granny Bigelow glanced at me again, and if my heart hadn’t already been stopped, I’m sure it would’ve stopped right then and there.

“Ain’t none of it true, dearie,” Granny said.

“What ain’t?” Mirabelle asked.

“Well, all of it,” Granny said. “All them things they says about me. I ain’t no witch. Just a lonely old woman, thought poorly of, trying to survive without the kindness of neighbors. Same as you.”

“How’s that?”

“I hear them things they says about you. About your family. The sad, bad things that done happened to you and yours.”

Mirabelle looked away and chewed her lip. I tried to grab her hand to pull her away, but my hand just went through hers like it always has since I’ve been dead. No matter how many times I tried, I was always forgetting I couldn’t touch nothing.

“I know ain’t none of it your fault, neither,” Granny said.

Belle, I said, something’s not—

“Where you find them?” Mirabelle asked, pointing to the rabbits.

“Out here, same as you. Just gotta know where to look, is all.”

But she come from the blight, I said. We’d never found any critter as healthy-looking as those rabbits out that way.

Mirabelle nodded, finally hearing me. “But you coming from the blight.”

“Ain’t all blight out that way,” Granny said.

I don’t trust her, I said. We shouldn’t trust her.

“I don’t—” but Mirabelle caught herself before agreeing out loud with me.

Granny cocked her head. “What, now, child?”

“I didn’t know that,” Mirabelle said. “About the blight. Thought it was all bad.”

“Aw, honey, ain’t nothing all bad. Most times, it's a bit of both.”

C’mon, Belle. We should get on home…

“Gotta head home,” Mirabelle said. She nodded to the old woman and turned away. We started back the way we’d come, back toward the other side of town. Toward home.

“Not much of a meal,” Granny called after us. “Why don’t you come by my place? I’ll fix you a proper meal.”

Please, Belle, let’s just go, I said. She ain’t safe.

We sprinted through the woods, trying to get as far from the old woman as we could.

I did look over my shoulder as we ran, just once, but the old crone had already melted back among the trees.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Signing Off

Well, folks, that’s it for now. Hang in there. You’re not alone.

As always, thanks so much for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe—you’ll get a free eBook of my short story, “Magus,” available EXCLUSIVELY for subscribers!

Subscribe now

I’d also love it if you considered checking out my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores, or my illustrated sci-fi thriller chapbook, Goodly Creatures.

Strange & Fantastic #19

It’s a sunny Sunday morning as I write this. I’m fighting off a cold, as is my five-year-old daughter who seems to have brought it home with her from school, so it’s been a somewhat somber weekend here at the Shirey household. Lots of TV and tea and over-the-counter cold medicine and taking it easy. Except for the moments where my wife and I are having to referee between her and our three-year-old, that is. But I digress…

Anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot about J.R.R. Tolkien of late, no doubt due to my wife and I watching the second season of Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power. As most of you probably know, I love Tolkien. I regularly re-read The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, and have read great chunks of Christopher Tolkien’s massive History of Middle-Earth project. I’ve been slowly re-reading The Lord of the Rings as well—I first read the trilogy as a high schooler, and had a hard time with it due to my struggles with ADHD, but have returned to it in the past few years (I re-read The Fellowship of the Ring in 2019, and The Two Towers in 2023; I’ll be starting Return of the King here soon) and have gotten so much more out of it as an adult. I also love the The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, and even bits and pieces of The Hobbit movie trilogy (God, what I would give to have gotten The Hobbit directed by Guillermo del Toro, as originally planned…). I say all that to say, yes, there are some things about The Rings of Power that annoy me, but overall, I love the show. And this second season, especially, has been great—I’ve loved watching Sauron-as-Annatar and Celebrimbor. *Chef’s kiss.* I’ve also just started reading The Fall of Numenor, a compilation of pieces of Tolkien’s legendarium compiled by editor Brian Selby and arranged in chronological order according to “The Tale of Years” outline Tolkien included in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings; I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

So, what does this have to do with being sick? Well, comfort, actually. When we’re sick and miserable, we need comfort. Whether that’s a warm cup of tea to soothe the throat, or wrapping up in a warm blanket on the couch and watching a favorite movie or TV show, comfort helps us weather the storm of illness. And I’ve been realizing the past few days, Tolkien is a comfort for me. And always has been. Something about his limitless imagination and creativity, the way he strings words together, and the way his work explores the light and the darkness of life, is extremely comforting to me.

I assume it has something to do with the fact that The Hobbit is the book that, for me, more than any other, defines my childhood. As I’ve mentioned many times before, my dad read the book to me and my sister before bed as kids, and it ignited my imagination like nothing else, except, maybe, Star Wars and Dune. Whenever I’m asked what my favorite book of all time is, I always say the same thing: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a book I can’t wait to read out loud to my own daughters—and they’re almost at the age I can do that, which makes me so happy. I can directly trace my desire to be a writer back to having The Hobbit read to me. I can also directly trace my love of horror back to The Hobbit—the scenes with Bilbo and the dwarves in Mirkwood with the elves there are nightmarish, as is Bilbo’s journey beneath the mountain where he encounters Gollum and first discovers the One Ring. The fear those scenes induced in me was exhilarating, and the imagination on display in the book was intoxicating. I’ve been chasing those things ever since, in every book I read, every book I write.

Now, reading The Fall of Numenor, I’m feeling that same comfort again. And not just comfort in terms of feeling sick, but comfort in general. The worries I have about this crazy world, the worries I have for my children, for my wife, for our future, the worries I have about, well, everything—they all melt away, at least for a little bit, in the pleasant, familiar light of Tolkien’s words and world.

So, my question to you, dear reader, is this: Have you returned to some book or movie or song or whatever that brings you comfort?

Maybe it’s time you should.

***

What I’m Reading: The Fall of Numenor by J.R.R. Tolkien & edited by Brian Selby; Glass Stories by Ivy Grimes (It’s EXCELLENT!) ; All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of Nazi Screams by John Baltisberger (Unlike ANYTHING I’ve ever read—it’s crazy!).

What I’m Watching: Watching one horror (or horror-adjacent) movie a night for Halloween month; here’s what I’ve watched so far - The Fly (1986); Beetlejuice; Talk to Me; Longlegs; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974); Us; In a Violent Nature; Oddity; Late Night with the Devil; Death Becomes Her. Also watching Nobody Wants This (Netflix) with my wife—it’s SO good!

What I’m Listening To: Disintegration by The Cure; Alien: Isolation soundtrack by The Flight & Christian Henson; Aliens soundtrack by James Horner; “Blind Side Sonny” by Coheed & Cambria.

Signing Off

Well, folks, that’s it for now. I hope everyone has a great month!

As always, thanks so much for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe—you’ll get a free eBook of my short story, “Magus,” available EXCLUSIVELY for subscribers!

Subscribed

I’d also love it if you considered checking out my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores, or my illustrated sci-fi thriller chapbook, Goodly Creatures.

Strange & Fantastic #18

Chipping Away

September is here already, and I’m currently working my way through revisions on my novel, Black Coral. Using the excellent craft book Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell as a guide for the process, I’ve finished my re-read of the first draft, as well as outlining what the novel is in its current, unpolished, rough-and-tumble state. The reasoning behind this is that I will take this outline of the first draft and begin revising it into an outline for the second draft, which will then serve as my guide for rewrites and revisions. Basically, I’m taking a top-down snapshot of the first draft of the novel, then chiseling away at that until it looks more like the book it’s supposed to be. It’s an interesting way to navigate this whole writing-a-book-thing, but so far it’s been incredibly helpful. (Thanks Matt!)

Upcoming Events

On top of working on Black Coral, I’ll also be participating in not one but TWO book festivals this month!

On Saturday, September 21st, from 10am to 5pm, I will be taking part in the Shepherdstown Book Festival in West Virginia! We’ll be in the War Memorial Building on 102 E German St, Shepherdstown, WV 25443, on the first and second floors. If you’re around the area, please stop by and say hi—I’ll have copies of City of Spores and Goodly Creatures available, and will be happy to sign any copies you purchase or bring with you.

Then, on the following Saturday, September 28th, from 4pm to 7pm, I’ll once again have a table at the Blend Book Festival at Blend Coffee Bar, 43170 Southern Walk Plaza #120 Ashburn, VA 20148! I took part in the festival last year, and it was an absolute blast, so I’m so excited to get to be a part of it again this year. This year, I’ll be there along with a whopping 25 other local authors, as well as a comic book shop! So if you’re around that evening, and in the area, please stop on by. I’ll have copies of my books, and would love to sign any copies you purchase or bring with you. It’s going to be great!

Podcasts

In the past few months, City of Spores has been the focus of two great podcasts, and if you don’t follow me on social media (I’m here on Instagram, X/Twitter, and Facebook), you may not have gotten a chance to check them out, so I figured I’d provide them below.

HUGE thanks to Joey Powell for having me on Creatives Getting Coffee, and to Lilly and Sara for discussing City of Spores on Fiction Fans! Do yourselves a favor and subscribe to both podcasts on whatever service you use for your listening needs—they’re great shows run by great people!

Exploring Social Themes in Strange Worlds with Austin Shirey (Creatives Getting Coffee, 5/31/2024)

City of Spores by Austin Shirey (Fiction Fans, 8/28/2024)

The Best of MetaStellar: Year Three

Finally, my short story “A Susurrus of Plastic Wings” was chosen to be included in The Best of MetaStellar: Year Three anthology! MetaStellar originally published the story back in 2022—my first-ever professional-rate story sale—so it means the world to me they liked the story so much they decided to include it in their anthology. They’ve put together a great-looking book filled with other incredible stories by a host of talented authors, so if you’re looking for a new anthology of speculative fiction to dive into, please give this a look.

You can order an eBook copy of The Best of MetaStellar: Year Three here and here. (Paperbacks will also be available soon via Barnes & Noble.)

Signing Off

Well, folks, that’s it for now. I hope everyone has a great month, and hopefully I’ll get to see some of you at the book festivals I mentioned above.

As always, thanks so much for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please subscribe—you’ll get a free eBook of my short story, “Magus,” available EXCLUSIVELY for subscribers!

Subscribe now

I’d also love it if you considered checking out my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores, or my illustrated sci-fi thriller chapbook, Goodly Creatures.

Strange & Fantastic #17

Well, here we are: another month (almost) in the books. This month seemed to go by especially fast, at least for me.

Why, you may ask? BECAUSE I FINALLY FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY VERY FIRST NOVEL!

That’s right—the first draft of Black Coral is FINISHED! It took a year and 72,000 words, but I did it. I couldn’t be happier. I started out my writing journey thinking I’d probably just be a short story writer, maybe dabbling in a novella here or there. I honestly didn’t know if I could actually pull off a novel. But I DID!

The first draft is a MESS, but that’s OK—I’ve got a foundation to build on, which is what matters. I’m taking a break to refill my creative tank and put some space between me and the story, but once I’m ready (probably sooner rather than later), I’ll be diving headfirst into the revision process, which is honestly my favorite part of writing since I get to start shaping the mess of the first draft into something more closely resembling the story I’ve had in my head and heart.

So yeah, finishing the first draft of Black Coral took up the first chunk of July, but since then, like I said, I’ve been taking a writing break. That means lots of reading and watching movies. Here’s some things I’ve loved:

Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan

I devoured Good Neighbors in a couple days, it’s so freaking good. It’s about a neighborhood that’s torn apart as one family turns on another, just as a giant sinkhole opens up across the street. It’s terrifying in its depiction of banal, purely human horror. No monsters here—unless you count the human beings, which just might be worse than any malevolent creature we could dream up.

Deadpool & Wolverine

This one was a blast! A comic book movie that KNOWS it’s a comic book movie and doesn’t shy away from the inherent silliness of that. It’s also an unabashed love letter to X-Men fans (comics AND movies), and the most fun Marvel movie since Thor: Ragnarok.

And speaking of X-Men…

X-Men: The Krakoan Era

I’ve been on a massive X-Men comic kick since finishing the EXCELLENT X-Men ‘97 animated series on Disney+ (seriously, give it a watch if you haven’t already), so I’ve been catching up on the most recent slate of X-Men comics, nicknamed the “Krakoan Era,” and it’s been a blast.

I won’t give anything away, but I will say I think this is the best X-Men comics have been since the Astonishing X-Men/House of M/Messiah Complex/Second Coming era of the mid-2000s. (I also think that Krakoan Era-Cyclops might be the best Cyclops has been since Chris Claremont was writing Uncanny X-Men.) It’s brimming with big ideas and character moments that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of Claremont’s hallowed run, pushing the X-Men ever forward while also honoring what’s come before. It’s not perfect, but it takes big swings, and most of the time, hits it out of the park.

That being said, the Krakoan Era was a HUGE multi-title initiative, and not everything was worth reading. If you’re interested, here’s the roadmap I used, which I cobbled together from various Reddit posts, focusing on the main storylines set up in Jonathan Hickman’s superb House of X/Powers of X miniseries that kicked everything off (you can find these on Hoopla or via Marvel Unlimited):

House of X/Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman & Various Artists

X-Men Vols. 1-3 by Hickman, et al.

Inferno by Hickman, et al.

X-Men Vol. 1 by Gerry Duggan & Various Artists

Immortal X-Men Vol. 1 by Kieron Gillen & Various Artists

X-Men Vol. 2 by Duggan, et al.

Immortal X-Men Vol. 2 by Gillen, et al.

X-Men Vol. 3 by Duggan, et al.

Sins of Sinister by Gillen, Si Spurrier, Al Ewing, & Various Artists

Immortal X-Men Vol. 3 by Gillen, et al.

X-Men Vol. 4 by Duggan, et al.

Immortal X-Men Vol. 4 by Gillen, et al.

X-Men Vol. 5 by Duggan, et al.

Immortal X-Men Vol. 5 by Gillen, et al.

X-Men Vol. 6 by Duggan, et al.

Fall of the House of X/Rise of the Powers of X by Duggan, Gillen, et al.

Signing Off

Okay, that’s it for July 2024, folks! Hope you have a wonderful August.

Thanks again for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin

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A Quick Update

Hey all! I hope everyone has been able to stay cool during this ridiculously hot June. Always fun to feel like you’re (a) being cooked alive when you step outside, or (b) breathing through a wet blanket, or (c) both. Curse you, Virginia humidity, and you, climate change! *Shakes fist at sky*

Elmo gets it. (Also, maybe a relevant visual metaphor for the messy first draft of my novel?) © Whoever created the image—you’re my hero.

Anyways, as you can probably tell, given the date this newsletter is going out, June kinda got away from me. As such, this month’s newsletter is going to be (mercifully) short.

But there’s a good reason for that, I promise.

I’ve been working away at the first draft of my first-ever novel, Black Coral—and I’m almost done.

Yes, I should be wrapping up the first draft sometime here in July—a year after I started. The draft is currently up to about 66,000 words at the moment, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being around 70,000 words total when all is said and done.

It’s been a journey, for sure, and a massive learning experience—one I’ll probably devote a whole newsletter to at some point in the future.

But for now, the work continues.

Here’s what I’ve been up to when I haven’t been working on Black Coral, or spending time with my family:

What I’m Reading: Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman; Immortal X-Men; X-Men Red; various Wolverine comics.

What I’m Watching: I Saw the TV Glow (Vudu); Godzilla Minus One (Netflix); Twister (DVD re-watch); The Acolyte (Disney+); Shoresy Season 3 (Hulu).

What I’m Listening To: Been a podcast kick of late, so Last Podcast on the Left; Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra; Things Fell Apart with Jon Ronson. Also listening to albums by indie god Alex G (Trick and God Save the Animals) and obsessing over Finnish psychedelic black metal masters Oranssi Pazuzu (Mestarin kynsi and Varahtelija). Oh, and the new Ghost song, “The Future is a Foreign Land,” is SO FREAKING CATCHY, it’s great!

Okay, well, that’s it for June 2024. Back to working on Black Coral!

Thanks for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin

Kafka and the Castle

Hey there! This month has completely gotten away from me; I can’t believe we’re already on the last day of May, and that June starts tomorrow. JUNE.

What even is time?

Anyways, this month, I decided it’d be fun to take a break from updates and recommendations/reviews and just give you guys another short story of mine. I’ve been (randomly) thinking about Franz Kafka a lot lately—he’s such an interesting person and writer!—so I figured I’d share my story “Kafka and the Castle,” which was originally published in All Worlds Wayfarer way back in 2020.

The man, the myth, the legend.

A few years ago, while I was familiarizing myself with the surreal and absurd work of Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, and Jorge Luis Borges, I had an idea that made me laugh: What if Kafka and some pals got stuck in a weird, reality-warping castle? The idea stuck, so I continued to mess around with it, and the rest, they say, is history.

I hope you enjoy.

Kafka and the Castle

Franz Kafka stopped his car on the side of a country road as torrential rain smacked against the windshield like it was trying to break in and assault him. He grasped the steering wheel and peered through the passenger window. Lightning revealed a castle looming darkly a couple hundred yards away, tall and wide, and crowned with pointed spires and crenellations. Thunder boomed. A violent wind swept through the trees on either side of the road.

Kafka sighed. This would have to do. A pang of guilt blossomed in his chest as he thought of Felice, worrying and waiting for him to come home. He wondered if she might believe he was truly deterred this time, or if he’d already wrung that particular excuse for all it was worth. Images of the evening’s indiscretions with Grete—sweet, succulent Grete—swirled through his mind. He could still taste her on his lips.

He shook himself from his thoughts and grabbed his coat from the backseat. He threw open the door, holding his coat above his head, and hopped over the guardrail. He ran through a field of tall, wet grass and in moments he was soaked, his coat useless.

Lightning bloomed in the sky and a cannon-blast of thunder shook the teeth in his skull as he approached the castle’s front steps. The flash of brightness revealed a black, stony exterior covered in snaking vines. Two great wooden doors bulked over him, each studded with a grotesque knocker in the center of the door. Kafka leaned forward for a closer look, wiping rain from his eyes. The knockers were monstrous black beetles, their antennae moving as if they were alive.

Kafka shuddered as he watched the knockers, then attacked the doors with his fists. No-one answered. He pounded again and again, then waited. Cold rain seeped into his bones.

Nothing.

“Of course,” he said, turning away.

The castle’s doors creaked open behind him.

Kafka spun around to find a man standing in the doorway, silhouetted by a nectarine aura of fire- and candle-light. In a flash of lightning, Kafka saw the man was very old: time had carved its name in his face; a long white beard trailed down to his dirty slippers; his teeth were crooked and yellow. Once the lightning passed and the old man was a silhouette again, Kafka realized he hadn’t seen the man’s nose.

“Yes?” the old man asked, speaking over the thunder.

“Um, hello,” said Kafka. “My name is Franz. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but the main road has flooded, and it’s completely impassable. I’m going to sleep the night in my car, but I was wondering if I could use your telephone to call home. I can pay, if that would help.”

The old man peered over Kafka’s shoulder at the car, idling behind him in the road. Another burst of lightning gleamed in his rheumy eyes.

“Yes,” the old man said. “Come in.”

“Oh, thank you, Mister—”

“Gogol.”

“Thank you, Mister Gogol, thank you!”

Kafka stepped into the castle. The sitting room was enormous, and warmed by a large, central fireplace. A crystal chandelier twinkled from the ceiling high above, casting shadows across the stones.

“There is covered garage behind castle,” Gogol said. He stood unmoving in the doorway, staring out into the storm at the idling car, his back to his guest. A gust of wind blew through the door, drenching him with rain; he did not move. “You may wait out storm there; I move car while you warming up.”

“No, that’s alright. I’m troubling you enough as it is.”

“No trouble. Good to stretch legs, breathe fresh air. When dry, you find telephone in first room just up stairs. I only be moment.”

“I really can’t thank you enough,” Kafka said.

“Is nothing,” Gogol said, and then he ventured into the rain, shutting the doors behind him with a thunderclap.

***

After warming himself to the point that his bones no longer remembered the wet cold that had earlier infused them, Kafka made his way up to the room for the telephone. The stairs ascended steeply to a second-floor hallway lit by ensconced lanterns. It seemed to stretch on into eternity, broken up only by the wooden doors that dotted the length of the corridor, a honeycomb made of wood and stone.

He entered the first room, the one the old man had indicated, at the very top of the stairs: a beautiful, candlelit room with two blue-curtained windows and a big, inviting bed. There were shelves built into the stone walls, filled with dusty books and old candles and other knickknacks, and the closet was bursting with clothes. But there was no sign of a telephone.

“Odd,” Kafka muttered. He was sure Gogol had said the first room up the stairs. He sighed, and made his way to the door, stopping to take one last look at the room.

A telephone sat on the nightstand by the bed.

It hadn’t been there just a moment before...had it?

He moved to the nightstand, picked up the telephone and dialed the switchboard.

“Operator,” a cheery voice answered.

“Yes,” said Kafka, “could you connect me to—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but the storm’s knocked out the switchboard.”

“Oh. Um, I suppose I’ll try again in the morning, then.”

“Very good, sir! Goodnight, sir!”

Click!

After a few moments of hesitation, Kafka replaced the telephone back in its cradle. He wasn’t sure what to make of his interaction with the operator: if the storm had “knocked out” the switchboard, how was the operator even answering? Why wasn’t the line just...dead?

His thoughts returned to Felice. She’d be beside herself now, the poor thing. And she’d have realized he was having an affair with Grete, despite all his protestations to the contrary. She was anything but stupid—perhaps a bit naïve, and quick to trust, but not stupid. If he’d really gone to visit Max as he’d said he was, he wouldn’t have gotten waylaid halfway between their home in Josefov and Grete’s apartment in Berlin; Max was only about an hour outside of Josefov, after all.

Kafka wandered toward the door, lost in his thoughts. What was it that he wanted, really? He loved Felice; they were to be married within the year. And yet...the feel of Grete’s body, the scent of her salty skin in the afterglow of love, awoke something in him, something verboten, something that—

He stopped on the threshold of the bedroom. Something was wrong.

The hallway had...changed.

The stairs were gone, and the corridor was completely dark. An eerie wind blew past him, moaning down the hall, and he felt very alone. Somewhat dizzy, even.

Kafka stepped back into the bedroom and shut the door. Was he ill? Could the cold and the wet have gotten to him so quickly?

He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again. After taking a few deep breaths, he decided to take one of the candles with him, then opened the door—

To find the hallway changing before his eyes.

The stones twisted and folded in on themselves at impossible angles, and an intense wave of vertigo slammed into Kafka, nearly knocking him flat. He reached out an arm to grab the doorframe, steadying himself on shaky legs and fighting back nausea as he watched the hallway change into a cavernous ballroom lined with row after row of pillars. Torches crawled down them, creeping metal insects on innumerable legs, setting themselves into their assigned places about halfway down each column and flooding the chamber with light.

When the sensation of the floor moving beneath him had passed, Kafka noticed a red door at the other end of the ballroom.

He hesitated. Should he shut the door to the bedroom again? If he did that, what were the chances he’d open the door onto the first hallway—the one he actually wanted? Would the castle keep rearranging itself every time he opened this door?

He looked across the vast chamber at the red door on the other side. It seemed so very small from this distance. What if he got to it, and it remained the same size it was now? He’d never fit through. Unless he got smaller as he walked toward it…

Kafka’s stomach revolted and he vomited upon the cold flagstones at his feet.

He had to get a grip on himself. He just had to keep a level head, and he’d be all right. Taking several deep breaths, Kafka gathered his courage and moved toward the red door. It was better than constantly opening and closing this door and praying that he got the right hallway—at least this way he was doing something.

He walked forward, the candle shaking in his hands. Time seemed strange, seemed to

expand and contract around him. He felt as if he were passing through thick, oily spiderwebs, and then suddenly he was at the other end of the chamber, standing at the door. It towered over him like a bloody, gaping mouth. Kafka steeled himself and opened it.

A roaring wind of screaming voices enveloped him, snuffing out the candle in his hand, sucking him forward through the doorway. He saw nothing below him but a swirling, abyssal darkness.

At the last moment, he grasped for the doorframe—and missed.

Kafka screamed, his voice drowned out by the harrowing cries howling around him, and he tumbled into nothingness.

His last thought was of Grete.

***

When Kafka awoke sometime later, in another room of the castle, very much alive, his first thought was of Felice.

***

He could not say for certain how long he wandered the castle. Time was an abstract thought in this place. No sun shone through any windows he found, and neither moon nor stars.

The castle seemed to stretch on into infinity, filled with thousands of doors and windows that all led nowhere. Every window he looked out, and every door he opened, revealed that same cliff he’d found behind the red door, dropping off into that same unending darkness; and if it didn’t reveal the abyss, it revealed another room or hallway.

There were rooms containing vast libraries where Kafka spent lifetimes reading books that had never been published; chambers where he himself changed shape as he passed through them—vague, dream-images impressed upon his memory were all that remained of his time as a giant vermin, a plush reading chair with a high, golden back, even a book of census data.

His back bent with age, and his beard grew into a curly, white blanket that hung past his knees. He supported himself with a a pearl-handled cane he’d found at some point in his long imprisonment.

And always, his thoughts hovered around Felice. Though he had moments—bursts of memory—of his passionate infidelity with Grete, lust was soon replaced with an overwhelming weight of loss and sorrow as he fought to remember every detail of Felice’s face.

Kafka resigned himself to the fact that he would never be free of this infernal, infinite castle. He’d given up on death, on dying of the hunger and thirst that seemed to shrivel him up like a wet towel wrung free of water. He’d tried to end his miserable existence several times on his own: slit his wrists with the glimmering shard of a broken mirror; hung himself with his clothes; cut his own throat with a knife he’d found wandering through a kitchen that contained no trace of food; set himself on fire; impaled himself on candelabras; swallowed broken glass; broken his neck throwing himself down spiraling stairways; even tossed himself into the screaming abyss a few more times when he’d chanced across it again.

But it never took. He’d only open his eyes again in another room of the castle, completely intact, as if nothing had ever happened.

And so he wandered about, waiting for the castle to be done with him, hoping it was soon, knowing that that day would probably never come. He knew, deep down, that he deserved this fate, this unending cycle of punishment, unending life, unending death.

His only regret was that he could not beg Felice her forgiveness.

***

At some point, as Kafka passed along a serpentine corridor intersected by another hallway that ended at a pair of heavy black doors, his tired mind was roused awake by the sound of frantic, panicked knocking.

Could it be? Or was this one more trick of the castle, meant only to torment him?

Kafka hesitated only a moment: when Felice’s cherubic face blossomed in his mind, a flower of memory brighter than it ever had been during his stay in this stone-walled prison, his choice was made for him.

He hobbled as quickly as he could to the black doors, his pearl-handled cane tap-tap-tapping along the stone floor, echoing like laughter in his hairy ears.

When he reached them, he threw his cane down with a crack and pushed the doors open.

Rain blew into the castle, pelting him with cold pinpricks. The air, so fresh, so alive, smelling of wet pine and electricity. He stood for a moment, sucking in the freshness, the cold, the life.

A well-dressed man shivered in the rain on the front steps, his slick, dark hair thrown back from his face by the wind.

“Disculpe, senor,” the man said in a thick accent Kafka could not place, almost shouting over a cracking peal of thunder, “mi nombre es Jorge Luis Borges; la tormenta inundo el camino y debo capeare la noche en auto. Puedo entrar y usar tu telefono?”

Kafka looked over the man’s shoulder: his car idled in the road.

The man followed Kafka’s gaze, then pointed at the car and nodded, gesturing to indicate the storm overhead. He mimed holding a telephone to his ear.

“Of course,” Kafka said, welcoming the man into the castle with a flourish of his gnarled hands and a yellow smile. “Please, do come in!”

Signing Off

Well folks, that’s it for May 2024. Thanks again for stopping by and reading.

Take care, and stay strange!

—Austin

Three Recs

Hello there! Welcome to another month of Strange & Fantastic!

This month’s newsletter is going to be focused on three recommendations: one album, one book, and one film.

Before we jump right in, I wanted to say thank you again to those of you who have picked up a copy of my weird fantasy noir novella, City of Spores. It’s currently up to 32 reviews and 38 ratings on Goodreads, sitting at an average score of 4.13 stars! So thank you to those of you who have read the book and left reviews - and if you haven’t left a review yet, please do! If anyone hasn’t grabbed a copy of the book yet, you can get it here.

Also, this Saturday, April 27, is Independent Bookstore Day! I’ll be celebrating at Birch Tree Bookstore in Leesburg, Virginia, and taking part in their Local Author Showcase from 12-3pm. If you’re in the area, please stop on by! I’ll be signing copies of City of Spores and Goodly Creatures.

Image created by my bestie, B.C. Lienesch.

And last but not least, an update on Black Coral: I’m currently sitting at around 54K words. Progress has been a little slow because I’m trying to hammer out the ending; I’ve always had an idea for the ending, but it’s never been clear, which, for me at least, I need it to be clear in order to write it. So I’m writing in fits and starts at the moment, and brainstorming. I’m trying to give myself room to breathe so I don’t burn myself out or force myself against a wall; this is a marathon, not a sprint. But don’t worry, it’s coming. The end is in sight.

Alright, updates are out of the way, and now we get to what you came for: Three recommendations. Here they are.

Album Rec: Dark Matter by Pearl Jam

I’m loving this album.

As a whole, it captures the catchiness, punch, and energy of the band’s iconic first albums (Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy), and the ballads here harken back to the ballads on those albums, which is a big plus for me: I’ve found most of their slower songs post-90s have been insufferably boring.

I’ve been listening nonstop to this album front-to-back since it dropped this past Friday, and each time I listen I like it more. Dark Matter finds Pearl Jam firing on all cylinders, proving they’re just as relevant and important today as they were in their heyday.

Stand-out tracks: “Dark Matter”; “Wreckage”; “Waiting for Stevie”; “React, Respond”; “Won’t Tell”; “Scared of Fear”; “Setting Sun”.

Book Rec: Weaveworld by Clive Barker

I came to Clive Barker pretty late, as in the last two years or so. Based on what limited knowledge I had of his work (read: I knew he was the creator of Hellraiser, and that was about it), I assumed he mostly wrote extreme horror and splatterpunk, which I’ve never had an interest in.

Eventually I was introduced to Barker through the original Candyman film—he wrote short story that inspired it, “The Forbidden”—and I began to take a deeper look at his other stuff. I was pleasantly surprised to find that while yes, some of Barker’s work does fall within the extreme horror/splatterpunk genre, he mostly wrote dark fantasy—emphasis on the fantasy part: Strange creatures, whole other worlds, all of that good stuff. I loved his short novel Cabal, which was a great mix of horror and fantasy, which lead me to one of his best known books: Weaveworld. 

Weaveworld tells the story of a young man who stumbles into a world of magic and horror when he comes across a rug that secretly conceals an otherworldly realm peopled with incredible creatures called the Seerkind who just so happen to be hiding from a genocidal angel.

Yeah. It’s as crazy as it sounds. Crazy awesome.

To put it in no simple terms, I’m completely in awe of Barker now. I’m a fan. I want to read everything he’s written (except the extreme/splatterpunk stuff; it’s just not my jam). He writes the kind of phantasmagoric fantasy I myself yearn to write.

Weaveworld’s heady mix of fantasy and horror captured my imagination in a way few books have. It’s a truly wonderful book—as in, it’s a book filled with wonders: it’s epic, weird, horrific, beautiful, bizarre, and spiritual, all at once. 

I honestly can’t wait to read it again.

Film Rec: Chungking Express by Wong Kar Wai

Y’all, this film.

This film!

It’s beautifully shot, beautifully written, beautifully acted, and just…beautiful. It’s all about human connection, and the ways we can be so close to each other yet so far away, and vice versa. And what a soundtrack!

The story is actually split into two parts, both following police officers reeling from break-ups in Hong Kong: One officer crosses paths with an enigmatic woman involved in the local underworld and finds a moment of connection with her; the other officer eventually is pulled from his post break-up loneliness by the shy, quirky waitress at a midnight food stand he frequents.

It’s not action packed, or anything like your typical rom com, yet it’s undeniably enjoyable, and truly achingly romantic. There are a few scenes where a character is addressing the dish towels and stuffed animals in his apartment that are some of the most wonderfully human moments I’ve ever seen.

If ever a film could be called pure poetry, it’s Chungking Express.

Signing Off

Well folks, that’s it for April 2024. I hope you’ll give one or all of these recommendations a try, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. Please let me know what you think!

Thanks again for stopping by and reading.

Take care, and stay strange!

—Austin

How You Dune?

Hello, friends! I hope you all are doing well as March 2024 draws to a close.

I can’t believe City of Spores has already been out for a WHOLE MONTH already! It’s crazy to me. I’m so thankful for each and every one of you who have grabbed a copy of my weird fantasy noir novella! The review count on Goodreads, especially, is growing, and I can’t tell you how exciting that is to me—it’s really helpful in terms of getting more eyes on the book. So if you have read City of Spores, but haven’t left a review or rating on Goodreads or Amazon, please do! Every review helps.

And if you haven’t already picked up a copy of City of Spores, you can find links to a couple different purchase options here.

I’m slowly making progress on the first draft of my dark fantasy novel, Black Coral. As of this newsletter, I’ve passed the 50,000 word mark, so I’m officially in Novel territory! This is a BIG milestone for me, as it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written (so far), and I’m super excited about it. I probably have another 5,000 to 15,000 words to go before the draft will be finished.

In other news, I participated in a local author showcase at Blend Coffee Bar in Ashburn, Virginia on March 7th, which was a lot of fun! I got to be part of a round table discussion with local authors Susan Quilty, J. Denison Reed, and my bestie, B.C. Lienesch; we talked about our writing habits and gave some insight into the creation of our books.

Speaking of author events—I’ve got another one coming up! For those of you in the Northern Virginia area, McKay’s Used Books in Manassas is hosting me for a signing/meet & greet on Saturday, April 6th, 2024, from 11am to 3pm. If you’re in the area, please drop on by—I’d love to see you! I’ll have paperback copies of City of Spores and Goodly Creatures available for purchase, and will be more than happy to sign them for you, too. Hope to see you there

So, have any of you seen Dune: Part Two yet? I’ve seen it twice already, and it’s a genuine MASTERPIECE, in my opinion—and I say that as a MASSIVE fan of the Frank Herbert novel (Dune and its sequel, Dune Messiah, were formative texts for me both as a reader and a writer, so they hold a very special place in my heart).

© Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures

Part Two was hands down the best theater experience I think I’ve ever had—just a perfect mix of sound and vision. I highly recommend catching it in the theater if you can, especially an IMAX screening. It absolutely blew me away, both from a technical standpoint and a story standpoint.

Speaking of story…

I’m about to get into spoilers, so if you haven’t seen Dune: Part Two yet (or if you haven’t read the Dune books), please SKIP past the SPOILER ZONE marked below.

***SPOILER ZONE BEGINS***

Dune: Part Two is one of those rare film adaptations that actually IMPROVES upon the book it is based on. What do I mean by this?

Well, with Dune the novel, Frank Herbert famously intended Paul Atreides’ story to be a warning against messianic figures and religious fanaticism, but anyone who has read Dune knows he missed the mark a bit. Yes, the themes are there for sure, but they are somewhat obscured by the fun space fantasy adventure of it all, and as such, a little easy to miss. Herbert himself admitted this: He’s on record as saying that he wrote Dune Messiah, the direct sequel to Dune, to make his points clearer to those who missed what he was trying to say with the original book. (My personal experience actually mirrors this: When I first read Dune as a teenager, I fell in love with it for its incredible world-building and the thrilling adventure; the deeper themes went over my head. It wasn’t until I read the incredible Dune Messiah, and then during my re-reads of Dune as I grew older, that I was able to fully pick up what Herbert was putting down.)

Denis Villeneuve, the masterful writer/director of Dune: Part One and Part Two, uses this knowledge of Herbert’s intentions and Herbert’s dismay with the reception of his own novel to craft something that, while streamlining the book for a cinematic adaptation, actually fulfills Herbert’s original intent. Thus, Part Two improves upon Herbert’s book by reworking some elements of the story for the film (and drawing on elements from Messiah) to dismantle the “white savior” tropes of the original book and to make it VERY clear that Paul is NOT that—by the end of the film, as Paul’s transformed into the messianic Lisan al Gaib, he’s taken his first steps not as a savior, but as a full-blown religious tyrant, a false messiah, igniting a universe-spanning holy war in his name. The way Villeneuve captures this on screen—and the way Timothee Chalamet depicts it—is absolutely CHILLING.

So as someone for whom Dune was—and is—such an important part of my journey as a reader and writer, I could not be happier. I’m honestly in awe of this film. It’s that good.

***SPOILER ZONE ENDS***

Anyways, yeah, get thee to a movie theater and see Dune: Part Two!

What I’m Reading: God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert; The Art and Soul of Dune by Tanya Lapointe.

What I’m Watching: Invincible Season 2 (Prime); X-Men ‘97 Season 1 (Disney+); The Office (Peacock); Toast of London (BritBox).

What I’m Listening To: Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way to Blue; Mastodon - Emperor of Sand and Hushed & Grim; Hans Zimmer - Dune: Part Two (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).

Signing Off

Well folks, that’s it for March 2024. Thanks again for stopping by and reading.

Take care, and stay strange!

—Austin

CITY OF SPORES Available Now!

Today’s the day, friends—my weird fantasy/fungal noir novella, City of Spores, is

You can grab a copy from any one of these links:

Madness Heart Press

Godless

Amazon

If you’ve already got your copy and want to track your reading or leave a review, or if you just want to add the book to your TBR, you can find City of Spores on Goodreads here.

Here’s some advance praise the book has received from some amazing authors who were gracious enough to give it a read:

Austin Shirey’s City of Spores is unlike anything I've ever read! An incisive, whip-smart, edge-of-your-seat, hard-boiled mystery that deftly tackles themes of corruption, colonization, social stratification, racism, and revolution. Each page draws you deeper into the fungal folds of Madripol, exposing rot and ruin, but also, perhaps a chance for redemption. —Tiffany Michelle Brown, author of How Lovely To Be a Woman, and co-host of the Horror in the Margins podcast

Austin Shirey's novella about a private investigator in a town overrun with fungi is absorbing and utterly imaginative. The setting is poetry written in mushroom spores, a world fit for fans of Jeff VanderMeer. The story maintains the smoky noir atmosphere, quick pace, and puzzling clues of everyone's favorite detective novels. Wonderfully contagious weird fiction! —Ivy Grimes, author of Star Shapes

While following in the footsteps of noir gone before, Shirey blazes his own trail with this speculative story of violence, revenge, and grace. City of Spores is an intersection of the old and the new—in more ways than one—suggesting hope for the future can sometimes be found thriving in the remains of the past. As if that weren't enough, it's also a rollicking good read, brimming with imagination and curiosity. Shelve this one between VanderMeer and Miéville, but keep your Chandler and Hammett close. —TJ Price, author of The Disappearance of Tom Nero

Like the spores found throughout his novella, Austin Shirey's writing can't help but grow on you. This is a fierce and fearless book, dedicated to showcasing the darkest sides of corruption and fascism, but also the power of hope and resilience. With a spectacular cast and tense, suspenseful writing, City of Spores is an absolute must-read. —Zachary Rosenberg, author of The Long Shalom

A relentless descent into corruption and decay, Shirey’s fungal noir ruptures the city's ecosystem, revealing rot itself might be the sign of something new and vital —Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold

Subversive fungal noir is the genre blend I didn’t realize I was missing until now! Two-fisted, fast-paced, and pulpier than a portobello, City of Spores delivers hard-boiled P.I. thrills with a few mycologically mind-bending twists. —Gordon B. White, Bram Stoker Award finalist

I want to give a BIG shout-out to my publisher, Madness Heart Press, for the amazing job they’ve done on City of Spores. It’s really been a dream come true working with such a passionate, professional, and all-around goodhearted group of people!

Most of all, thank YOU, dear reader, for taking the time to check out City of Spores—this book means the world to me, and it is my sincerest hope that each and every one of you who gives it a read enjoys it.

And if you do enjoy it, please be sure to tell your friends! Even in this day and age of rampant technology, word of mouth is still the #1 best way for a book to find new readers.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and stay strange.

—Austin