David Nickle's Blog, page 11

Eutopia special edition is going, going....

... gone, on Friday. That's the last chance anyone has to order this special edition from the Horror Mall. It's a $50 signed limited edition, and it's the only place you'll be able to purchase and see illustrations by Canadian landscape painter Lawrence Nickle (my dad). The illustrations are fantastic, and worth the price by themselves, you want to ask me.

I've put up some of those illustrations in previous posts. But as there are only two days left to place the order, I thought I'd put up a another couple to whet your appetite.

Here it is, then: the illustration for Chapter Two - A Damn Germ..
 

Jason Thistledown's mama was tall and beautiful and strong; stronger of arm than many a man and more powerful of spirit than any two. Yet in the end it was not a man nor two nor even a gang of them, but a damn germ that killed her.

If you want to pre-order the hardcover.... click here.

An early review of Eutopia

Actually, I believe it's the first review of my novel, posted at The Landing Dock Reviews site, right here.

It's a very good review by author Jim Cherry. He concludes:

The horror is more implicit than explicit, there's no big 'reveal' scene where a monstrous nightmare vision is thrown at the reader for shock or a visceral reaction. Nickle sets the tone at early 20th century creepy. The tone is more of a pins under your skin feeling, or the feeling of a spider walking across your hand, that keeps you in a state of ecstatic uncomfortableness. The closer I got towards the end, the more it kept me reading to see how this could possibly be resolved. What higher praise or expectations can you have for a book?

I'm delighted.

Eutopia in hand

Perhaps the most indulgent post I've made about Eutopia so far, but not, I suspect, the most indulgent one I'll make: photos, of one of my author copies of my novel Eutopia. Brett got review copies back from the printer's last week, and set aside a few for the author. So just to prove it's real, and not just a figment of my optimism, here's a small photo gallery.

Optimism sells at the Horror Mall

Just got word that Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, had a pretty good first month on pre-order at The Horror Mall this December. The limited edition hardcover is #8 on The Horror Mall's pre-order best-seller list.

It's a premium option for yard-apes that want to pick up the book - a tale of eugenics, mis-applied utopianism, and a monster - but there are reasons to go ahead and shell out the $50 U.S.

In the first place, ChiZine Publications does very nice collectible hardcovers. The book, in a limited print-run of 150, will be signed by me, cover artist Erik Mohr, and Lawrence Nickle - the Canadian landscape painter who's doing illustrations that will only appear in the special edition, and who is also my father, and the second reason to spend big on my book.

This is the first time that dad's ever done anything like this, having late in life discovered his inner Edward Gorey (as you can see by the portion of this dire rendering to the right). He claims he will never do anything like this again (this being family work), but appears to have been enjoying his walk on the dark side nonetheless.

If you're tempted, go have a look, right here. The collector's edition is available  through the early spring, while  supplies last.

Black Gate is optimistic about Eutopia....

It's some months still before Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism hits shelves and mailboxes around the world. But Sue Granquist over at Black Gate is already anticipating its release in a very kind way, right here.

Sue also singles out my pal Claude Lalumiere's The Door To Lost Pages, which is coming out around the same time from ChiZine Publications.

The Feeger Sisters Dance Up A Storm

Regular yard-apes may recall a post or so ago, I let on that my dad, Canadian Landscape painter Lawrence Nickle, would soon be illustrating the special signed, limited edition hardcover of my novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism.

Well, now that the snow's set in at the North Pole (a.k.a. Burk's Falls, Ontario), dad's started in on the work, and fast as he can sketch them, his friend Bill has been scanning it and interwebbing the exquisite drawings south, to me.

To whet your appetite, I've included above, Illustration #4 - an illustration depicting the Feeger Sisters, and their improvisational dance of supplication to the Old Man, a mysterious fellow who dwells somewhere deep in Trout Lake, Idaho.

There are many more illustrations, but the only way to see 'em all is to go order the special collector's edition of Eutopia. You can do it here, at The Horror Mall.

Eutopia - available for pre-order

It has only been a couple of days since we finished the proof-reading of Eutopia, my novel about eugenics and gunfighters and monsters. But already, it's up for pre-order here, at The Horror Mall, in it's high-end, $50 collectable hard-cover edition.

There's a more affordable trade paperback that will be available at the same time (mid-April, 2011). But the hardcover is a limited edition of 150 copies, and having just negotiated it today, I can pre-announce that the hardcover will include illustrations by Lawrence Nickle - a Canadian landscape painter of great regard, who is also, by no coincidence, my dad.

The illustrations won't be in the trade paperback - that's going to just be text with a couple of clever graphics. So if you want to get a book with Lawrence Nickle illustrations, and you have $50 in your pocket - there's only one way to do it, and that's to pre-order Eutopia from The Horror Mall.


It won't be the first time that Nickle artwork has illustrated a Nickle story - the paintings below have been illustrating my story The Pit Heads since 2007.

Tesseracts Is Coming To Town

This weekend, I believe the Santa Claus Parade will be kicking up heel in downtown Toronto. Well too bad for Santa. This weekend is also a big celebration for Tesseracts and Edge, at once here in Toronto and Alberta. Tesseracts is, of course, the long-running sf/f anthology series that began when Judith Merrill edited what would have been Tesseracts One if she'd only had the foresight.

I make a little joke. Judith had all kinds of foresight. And in editing that anthology, she effectively gave birth to Canadian speculative fiction, by giving it a venue. Before On Spec, before TransVersions, before Northern Frights and Queer Fear and countless other Canadian sf anthologies... there was Tesseracts.

There are fourteen volumes to the series. Some were published by Tesseracts Books, an imprint run by Candas Jane Dorsey, and some time ago taken over by EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing, Brian Hades' imprint.

Well on Friday, at SFContario, we're going to be launching #14 - edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory, and hosted by me. My story, Basements, is in the collection. It is (let me count...) my seventh Tesseracts story. 

But this is more than the launch. Old-timers like me will be on hand to read from older Tesseracts stories. We'll reminisce. We'll argue over chronologies. It will be like the Legion for SF/F, only without the cheap beer.

It all starts Friday night at eight, in the consuite of SFContario.

The Care And Feeding of Horror

For those of you who missed CZP's Speculative Fiction Colloquium last month - here is some video, of my entire talk: The Care and Feeding of Horror: How a Very Unpleasant Emotion Became a Very Unstable Genre.





This video has been made available by CZP and the Chiaroscuro Reading Series. For more information on next year's Colloquium or to donate, visit http://specfic-colloquium.com.

Miles Nickle Fernandez - 2006-2010

A moment of silence, for Miles - the four-year-old black tabby who carved a groove on my shoulder and an deep, infected gouge in my heart. As you can see by the picture above, he was an agile, merciless little familiar of a cat - named for Miles Davis, so as to make a matched set with his lifelong house-mate Dizzy.  Miles was never a picture of health - he spent the first few months of his life locked in a room while he worked the ringworm out of his system. He never did get rid of the feline herpes, so endured a life-long bout of the sniffles that, while endearingly cute, would have driven any lesser cat insane.

Miles was not insane. What he was, was deeply and persistently affectionate. He liked shoulders best, but he was also fond of waking up his humans with a relentless kneading-of-the-bladder, or a damp, snotty head-butt. He ate head-phone wires like licorice, and refused to pay for the replacements. But no one complained. Everybody loved Miles. Miles loved everybody.

He died Friday night, after a week in the tender and competent care of The Animal Clinic in Toronto.  There was something with his kidneys - to the end, no one could figure out precisely what. But whatever it was, it wore him down, and wore him out, and by dinner time Friday, it was time.

He was cuddled by the people who loved him most for hours before that time came.  A whole day. Then the results of his last blood test came, showing that there was only really one course.

The veterinarian warned us about various indignities we might witness: he might twitch, or yowl, or void his bladder when the anaesthetic overdose took effect. 

He was quiet. He was still. And having thoughtfully insisted on using his litter box just minutes before the veterinarian returned, he was dry.  He finished his life with immense dignity, in the loving arms of his humans. And that's something.

Miles Nickle Fernandez.  Four years old is too damn young.