Zilla Novikov's Blog, page 12

Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Comedy and science fiction—two great tastes that taste great together. Today, they come with a side of plumbing! Christopher George Quick is here to tell us about his space adventure novel, Citrus Bravo . Christopher, take us away!

Christopher: Citrus Bravo follows the misadventures of Arthur Bartlebee, a humble plumber aboard an aging space station named Citrus Bravo. Although Arthur would love more than anything to live out his simple days managing the pipes and drains of the station, he is quickly ripped away by a whirlwind of absurd events that place him smack dab in the center of an otherworldly conspiracy. Flanked by odd aliens and carefree cyborgs, Arthur is bewildered to find humanity’s destiny lies in his less-than-capable hands.

Sabitha : What inspired you to write this book?

Christopher: I was inspired to write this work because of a dream I had where the name “Citrus Bravo” was the name of a Martian base. I don’t remember any of the content of the dream, but the name basically haunted me until I decided to do something with it. The making of the main character into a plumber is because I’m a plumber and I always thought that Sci-Fi missed out on talking about the tales of the mundane. Everyone in Sci-Fi is some uber soldier or explorer extraordinaire, occasionally you get the unlikely hero trope, but they don’t ever seem to be regular working class stiffs, like our boy Arthur.

Sabitha : I love that—there’s a special place in my heart for working class science fiction stories. With such a fun set of characters, imagine you met them. What would you say?

Christopher: If I met one of my characters, I would say, “Hi, how are you?”

Sabitha : And the response? What would they say?

Christopher: If they ever ran into me they would say, “You son of a B!$ you’re going to pay for what you put me through!” as they throttled my neck.

Sabitha : How much research did you need to do for your book?

Christopher: Since I work in plumbing, there wasn’t much research needed for that aspect of the book, but for one of the scenes I did have to learn a lot about methane-eating bacteria to try and create a presentation for Arthur to give the rest of his crew-mates about space-faring waste management. It was riveting.

Sabitha : Waste management is criminally underrated. If your next book isn’t about space-faring methane-eating bacteria, what is it going to be about?

Christopher: Citrus Bravo is a pretty brief work, definitely in the novella range, so I think I would like to write a stand-alone sequel to it. Something with new characters but in the same literary universe. Maybe I’ll call it Cherry Alpha.

Sabitha : Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Christopher: You can order it here. You can see the other disappointing swill I’ve written on my Goodreads author page, and I have a fledgling Mastodon account that I will probably abandon later.

Wrong Genre Covers

The Hunger Games as a cookbook was suggested by Rob. Have a funny idea for a Wrong Genre Cover? Email us at nightbeatseu@gmail.com, and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make it in a future issue. Or @ us on basically any of the socials.

Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Fortune-telling combined with wide open spaces give us an open canvas for our imaginations to write fascinating stories. Eli Horowitz is here to tell us about his latest novel, The Final Days of Kobold Kody’s Frontier Exposition and Tonic Show , which is a fantasy inspired by the myths of the Wild West. Eli, can you tell us the blurb?

Eli: The end is near for Kobold Kody’s Frontier Exposition and Tonic Show, but Andra, the show’s fortune-teller, is the only one who knows. As the seams come undone and the curtain falls for the last time, it’s up to her to save as many of her friends as she can—and, if she can find a way, herself.

Sabitha : What inspired you to write this book?

Eli: This book was inspired by three main threads: the Wild West, trashy fantasy from the ’60s through the ’80s, and the antiwork movement. I was reading a bunch of pulp fantasy when I realized that the barbarian trope felt a lot like the colonialist idea that Native Americas were so-called “noble savages.” In both cases, the characters are thought to be fearsome warriors who obey a simpler, less refined, and somehow purer moral code. So I wanted to write a barbarian character whose real life and personality were less sensationalistic than his reputation in the dominant culture. And from there it just expanded: who would the gunslinger be? What could I do for a lion tamer? If the Wild West was when America colonized the breadth of the continent, how would that translate to a fantasy context? What would all of these familiar characters look like if we tried to let them define their own experience instead of seeing them through a growth-oriented, colonial-type lens?

Sabitha : How much research did you need to do for your book?

Eli: To help flesh out my world, I wanted to build a magic system that had a scientific flavor so that it connected in some way to nature. That way, we could see how all these different cultures use magic differently in light of their different beliefs and values. So I used a system of sympathetic magic based on the consumption of animal products (meat, organs, secretions, etc.). That was probably the most intensive part of the research, because it gave me an excuse to learn about both real and mythical creatures that have cool, unique abilities. I ended up referencing everything from the cockroach wasp and the kangaroo rat (made famous by Dune) to dragons and salamanders, so that was a lot of fun.

Sabitha : Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers?

Eli: If anyone is looking for writing advice, I’d say two things. First, it’s important to realize that different people need different advice depending on their strengths, goals, and development as a writer. And then second, to go along with that, I’d strongly suggest finding people you can trust to listen to you and give you the advice that’s right for you. It can be really scary and even painful to ask other people for help or feedback, but it’s so incredibly important. Finding the right community, even if it’s just one person, will unlock a lot of doors.

Sabitha : Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Eli: You can find Kody here and my first novel, Bodied, here. I’m also on Mastodon, where I’m always eager to connect with other writers and help to build the Masto writing community.

Book Report Corner

by Zilla N.

“Better for a beautiful woman to be terrifying than terrorized, she decided.” In Mewing, those are the only options available, and everyone is beautiful.

I have a notoriously low tolerance for gore or body grossness, and I found myself squinting during reading this book, unwilling to look away despite the squelching of my gut. I think Margo would have approved of my body’s response, that strange mix of fascination and revulsion, beauty and horror, seduced and repelled in equal measure. I’m certain the thing in the basement would have approved.

Mewing‘s gender politics are as visceral as its characters. Beauty is a standard created by and for men, but women are the ones best at making each other bleed. There’s hardly a man in sight—I can’t recall a single line uttered by a human male character—as women destroy and reconstruct each other for fleeting moments of validation. Men may hold ultimate power, but it’s women who enforce it.

Steel your stomach, and read this book.

Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Rachel A. Rosen, Night Beats founder and writer extraordinare, has written another piece of literary glass to pierce my heart. Her newest short story “Do You Love the Colour of the Sky” can be found in the anthology The Dance.

The story starts with a poignant image–the protagonist circling the sky between a thumb and forefinger, trying to memorize the colour so it can be stored, temporarily, in memory rather than lost immediately. The story is about two characters who deeply love beauty dealing with its loss. The way I’ve made my own peace with loss is to say the transience itself is part of the beauty. But then, publishing a story about loss is a way of building permanence out of that feeling. How do you handle the space between permanence and transience within art?

Rachel: Everything I write will be forgotten.

There’s a strange contradiction where everything you say on the internet is forever, but the chances of any single thing you say being immortal is infinitesimally small. I am not Shakespeare, nor am I Nanni writing to Ea-nāṣir. This might bother me more if I were the sort of person who thought much about her legacy, but for the most part I’m not. If I can capture a fleeting emotion, put it down on paper, and shove it into someone else’s mind for however many minutes or hours they’re reading about it, that is cool and magical and good.

Zilla: The links between the Sunken Museum and the British Museum are obvious–the story reminds me of the debates about whether it’s best to keep stolen artworks “safe” in the the UK or return them to their war-torn homelands, with the British studiously avoiding the question of why those homelands are so war-torn in the first place. Curators are regularly confronted by the archivist’s conundrum. I assume you’re on the side of repatriation, but do you see any nuance in that question?

Rachel: I’m of course on the side of repatriation/rematriation—the Archivist’s arguments are intended to be understandable and sympathetic, but ultimately wrong—and it’s a theme that I often address in my day job as a teacher of both Visual Arts and Indigenous literatures. This story was inspired in part by a workshop I attended by Leslie McCue, an Anishinaabe arts educator who works with the Royal Ontario Museum on addressing some of the historical wrongs that the museum’s curatorial practice has perpetrated. She talked about some of the complexity in identifying poorly categorized objects and tracing ownership and belonging. I think there’s nuance in the how of returning cultural artifacts, art, and ancestors to their peoples and homelands, and that in itself is a fascinating discussion, but I don’t think there’s a lot of room for nuance when it comes to the should.

Zilla: Is it possible for a story like this one to have a happy ending?

Rachel: I think it is, though ultimately mine doesn’t have one. Besides memory and impermanence, this is a story about change—in order for the ending to be happy, the Archivist has to change in a manner that is in many ways a death. At least one of the alternate pathways suggests that this is something she’s capable of doing, and the choice that she ultimately makes isn’t by any means necessarily the end to her character arc. But ultimately, the story was inspired by melancholic works—in particular the works of Walter Benjamin—so a melancholic ending seemed most fitting.

Zilla: Are you prepared to share the story behind the title? Or is that an Easter egg that if you know, you know?

Rachel: It’s an Easter egg for a subset of extremely online depressed Millennials who spent too much time on Tumblr. Years ago, there was a meme entitled that, featuring a comically long image gradient of the sky throughout a 24-hour cycle. Its popularity points to the Dadaist humour that Tumblr is absolutely fantastic at, but I also see something tender in it, about the meditative pause that it enforces while doomscrolling. Of course, it refers more literally to the Archivist’s habit of mentally “preserving” the sky (also a habit I had as a child that I of course have grown out of and never find myself doing) but thematically, it’s about the desire to capture something transient by its nature.

Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Rachel: They can get The Dance here, and all my social links are here.

High tea paired with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Fiction To Sink Your Teeth Into is usually a feature from author and chef Rohan O’Duill, but this month, Rachel A. Rosen is hijacking it.

I was obsessed with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass before I could even read, and paired with my love of baking shows, I have been dying to do a Mad Hatter Tea Party for ages. It’s complicated by the lack of cooperation from the small woodland creatures in my vicinity, plus the fact that I’m vegan. I made several recipes for this, with varying degrees, and I’ll share the most successful ones here.

Vegan Strawberry Scones

Beetroot Hummus Roasted Chickpea Avocado Sandwich

Tiny Mushroom Tarts

For the crust:
(Adapted from Nora Cooks)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour spooned and leveled1 teaspoon sugar1/4 teaspoon salt1/4 cup vegan butter, cold and cut into cubes1/4 cup vegetable shortening, cold and into a few pieces3-4 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:
(Adapted from Full of Plants)

Cashew Cream1/4 cup raw cashews soaked overnight1/4 cup water1 tbsp nutritional yeast1/4 tsp white vinegar1/8 tsp saltMushroom Filling1 tbsp vegan butter5 cloves of garlic minced3 cups sliced mushrooms1/4 tsp soy sauceSpices (I used rosemary salt and thyme)1/4 tsp ground black pepperDill (for garnish)

Crust Instructions:

Make sure your vegan butter and shortening are very cold before starting. Refrigerate along with the shortening for at least 30 minutes. Add flour, sugar and salt to food processor with the “S” blade. Pulse a few times to combine.Add cold vegan butter and shortening. Process for about 10 seconds, until it looks like a coarse meal.Now while the food processor is running, drizzle in 3 tablespoons of ice cold water. When it begins to clump together, stop. You may need to add 1 more tablespoon ice water for it to come together. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into a ball. Don’t use your hands too much or it will warm the dough, which will make your pie crust less flaky and light. Press dough into 12 greased mini pie molds, prick the base with a fork, and set aside.

Filling Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 355°F (180°C).Drain the soaked cashews and add them to a blender. Add the water, nutritional yeast, white vinegar, and salt.Blend on high speed for 15-30 seconds or until smooth. You will end up with a liquid cream. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.Sauté the garlic for about a minute, add mushrooms, add the spices, and cook for about 3-5 minutes.Remove from heat and mix with the cream.Spoon into prepared pie shells and bake for 35-40 minutes.Let cool and garnish with dill.Serve with Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew, or whatever tea you like.

Incidentally, the answer to the riddle is “Poe wrote on both.”

Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Chloe Spencer shows us the true horrors of influencers in her novella Mewing. Can you tell us about your story, Chloe?

Chloe: Mewing is a body-horror novella which centers on a small-time Instagram model named Vix who joins a co-op of influencers led by a mysterious and charismatic supermodel, Margo. After Margo takes Vix under her wing—and into her bed—Vixen’s success comes hard and fast, but the glitz and glamor comes with a price that may cost her her sanity… and her life.

Sabitha : What inspired you to write this book?

Chloe: Oh gosh! A lot of things inspired me to write this book. My thesis film for my MFA program, a body horror film entitled Serotonin, explored concepts of influencer worship and body dysmorphia, and I wanted to expand on it. I’m also inspired by Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and Eric LaRocca’s Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. I have body dysmorphia, so some of my own experiences influenced the book as well.

Sabitha : Do you have a playlist for your book?

Chloe: I actually do! As a sapphic story, Mewing is inspired by a lot of sapphic icons and popstars. Given that it’s also grounded in a toxic romance, there’re a lot of songs that tug at your heartstrings. I’ve included Chappell Roan’s Casual and FLETCHER’s Bitter. I’ve also included songs about influencer culture and stardom, such as Allie X’s Girl of the Year.

Sabitha : If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Chloe: To Margo, I would say, “Shame on you!” and to Vix, I wouldn’t say anything, I’d give her a big hug.

Sabitha : How much research did you need to do for your book?

Chloe: A ton! Despite the fact that Mewing is approximately 100 pages, it was research intensive. It’s meant to touch on a variety of issues related to body image disorders and influencer culture, but honestly, only scratches at the surface. I had to research things related to how managers/agents work, modeling history, and medical stuff.

Sabitha : What’s your next writing project?

Chloe: My next book, Haunting Melody, releases October 2024, actually! It’s a spooky fantasy YA about a ghost hunter that teams up with a ghost girl in order to solve a grisly mystery in a small island town. It’s got some scares, but mostly just Halloweentown vibes: cozy and cute!

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Chloe: You can find out more about me at my website. I’m also available on Instagram and TikTok @heyitschloespencer, and on Twitter as @chloespencerdev.

Wrong Genre Covers

The Jungle Book as cyberpunk was suggested by Emma Berglund. Have a funny idea for a Wrong Genre Cover? Email us at nightbeatseu@gmail.com, and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make it in a future issue. Or @ us on basically any of the socials.

Two Old Farts Talk (Queer) Sci-Fi

Queer SFFH (Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror) has been with us for a very long time. One of the first English-language science fiction novels is Frankenstein, 1818, and it was written by bisexual author Mary Shelley. And representation has recently reached new heights, in both how many queer creators there are, but also the number of queer characters appearing in SFFH, in books and media, but also in the quality and impact they have in storylines.

Rachel A. Rosen joins Troy and David, to discuss the topic on their podcast, Two Old Farts Talk Sci-Fi. Listen here!

Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

abitha: We’re delighted to have Will Gibson here (not William!) to talk about his science fiction novel The Unravelling .  Will, want to start with an introduction to your book?

Will: In the year 2038, a disillusioned English boy’s audacious plan to save his beloved Asian pop star collides with a weary New York cop’s pursuit of an unfathomable global conspiracy, as humanity balances on the razor’s edge between AI-governed order and lawless urban chaos. As unprecedented system failures plunge the world into turmoil, Joe Jones races against time to unravel the deceit behind apocalyptic threats and protect those he loves, revealing the delicate intersection of human vulnerability and technological dominance.

Sabitha : What inspired you to write this book?

Will: Boredom! Haha. But seriously, I get a lot of down time in my work in the telecom industry. I regularly travel over 200,000 air miles, so that’s a lot of time in airports and on planes. Only so many moves you can watch! So I started writing this in 2018 on my iPhone, got half of it done, then COVID hit and sent the world in a spin, and that prompted me to pick it back up again in 2022 and really make a dash to get it finished. I’m delighted with the end result and hope to be an inspiration to my two little children.

Sabitha : Do you have a playlist for your book? 

Will: Oh absolutely! Firmly Radiohead and especially their 1997 album OK Computer. Even though its now 26 years old it still feels futuristic, and could easily be set in the year 2038! I listen to that and other Radiohead stuff while I’m working and writing/editing, as well as Morrissey, The Cure and The Arctic Monkeys. Music is a huge part of my life.

Sabitha : If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Will: Well, for starters I’d tell Monica not to be so uptight, I’d tell Joe to believe in himself and I’d tell Suki to run a mile from Kelly hahahaha.

Sabitha : Do you have a “fan-cast” — do you have actors you’d cast as your main characters?

Will: Of course! My protagonist is Joe, just an ordinary New York cop, and he’d for sure be Pedro Pascal! A man of few words and quite reserved, he’d be perfect! His wife Monica would be played by Alexandra Daddario, a raven-haired beauty for sure. Suki is hard to cast as she’s a figment of my imagination, but she could easily be Shioli Kutsuna who was amazing in Invasion on Apple TV recently. Dylan is hard to cast as he’s so young, so would probably be an up-and-coming young Brit.

Sabitha : What book do you tell all your friends to read? 

Will: I’m big into science fiction, sports biographies and espionage thrillers. I’ve read every single one of Andy McNab’s Nick Stone series and always find them really good reads. My favourite of all-time is my namesake William Gibson, of Neuromancer fame, and I’ve read everything he’s ever done.

Sabitha: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?

Will: They can find me on my website, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or X. My book is on Amazon USA and Amazon UK.