David Nickle's Blog, page 8

Quite a week for Optimistic Bastards...

This has been quite a week indeed, yard-apes, for a lot of yard-related matters. Hard to know where to begin. There's been a lot of stuff going on around Rasputin's Bastards U.S. launch date, but as I think of it that was, for the most part, all according to schedule. So it's probably best to start with the happy surprise, that had to do with the other book, Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism.

On Monday night, I learned to my delight that the Sunburst Award jury had short-listed Eutopia, along with two other books by dear friends of mine, Caitlin Sweet (The Pattern Scars) and Michael Rowe (Enter Night) published by my dear friends at ChiZine Publications. The Sunbursts are a juried award handed out to novels of the fantastic, and young adult novels of the fantastic. It is announced in the fall, and there is a cash prize, which is no small thing. But it is an honor to be nominated, and to be nominated alongside my friends. Here's the link to the Sunburst site.

The launch of the new book in the U.S. happened this Tuesday, when it showed up in bookstores across the nation. So now it should be available in most Barnes and Noble stores in the U.S., and McNally-Robinson and Chapters-Indigo stores in Canada. And hopefully some independent booksellers too.

There have been some lovely reviews to have come out since last I blogged, from January Magazine's David Middleton, here, and Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, right here.

And I've been on what is known as a blog tour, guest-posting and answering interview questions, all over. The most recent is at the blog known as Jesse Resides Here, right here. There are also posts and interviews at the McNally Robinson blog, Cabin Goddess, My Bookish Ways, Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews, Civilian Reader, Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and I Read A Book Once. A few more are on their way.

Oh, and the launch at Rasputin's Vodka Bar was spectacular. The food was fantastic, the company enthusiastic, and the hour was late when we all left.

The Bastards are here...

This is a photo from the front of The World's Biggest Bookstore, just as you come in, in the New and Hot Fiction display. Rasputin's Bastards is right there, next to The Hypnotist.  I think it's fair to say we're off.

There have been a couple more reviews appear since last we spoke. The Crow's Caw's K.E. Bergdoll wrote a very kindly review here, writing, in part:

"A journey from the depths of the sea, the heart of Mother Russia, to the darkest corners of the soul, this book appeals to the reader’s intellectual curiosity, and engages the heart with surprising moments of emotionality."

 Library Journal's review of Rasputin's Bastards came out on Friday. It's a good review, but I can't link to it--they keep those things behind a paywall. Fortunately, Barnes and Noble has a deal to run LJ reviews on their website, so here's the bottom line of their review:

"Bram Stoker Award winner Nickle's (Eutopia) latest novel tells a complex story of supernatural horror and psychological suspense crafted with the somber foreboding of a Russian novel and the genre-breaking freedom of magical realism. VERDICT This novel is supernatural eeriness at its best, with intriguing characters, no clear heroes, and a dark passion at its heart. Horror aficionados and fans of Stephen King's larger novels should appreciate this macabre look at the aftermath of the Cold War. "

It's all a very good start. On Thursday June 21, those in Toronto should consider themselves invited to the official book launch. It's taking place at the Rasputin Vodka Lounge (seemed appropriate) at  780 Queen Street East. It all starts at 7 p.m. There will be books, and of course vodka, and some caviar on the menu. Spread the word far and wide.

The Bastards are coming...

In fact, they may already be here.

Rasputin's Bastards' official release date in Canada is coming up on Friday; in the U.S., it's a little later on the 27th. It looks as though the book's already on shelves (or at least in stores) in a number of Chapters-Indigo stores. And it's available for pre-order, obviously, at all the usual places.

There haven't been a ton of reviews out just yet, but Corey Redekop, author of Shelf Monkey and the soon-to-be-out Husk, has written a really jaw-droppingly kind assessment of Rasputin's Bastards and Eutopia, right here. And I am on what the cost-conscious kids these days are calling a blog tour. That means over the next little while, there will be interviews and guest posts at blogs all over the planet. Here are the first couple, at Wag The Fox, and at Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer. 

There will be more as the days progress. I'm told that Library Journal will have something to say on June 15. The Crow's Caw is putting something up soon. And that is just the beginning.

So watch the skies. And in the meantime,  because I haven't done this for awhile, here is another fiblet from Rasputin's Bastards, right at the very beginning.

* * *
The steam carried the smell of Babushka’s death like a soaked sponge. It leaked between the wooden slats of the bath house’s door, and whipped and whirled from there in thin, hot tendrils to mingle with the ice fog that had enshrouded the village of New Pokrovskoye since the early days of March. March was an important month. It was the month that Babushka had first set down a schedule for her own death; the month the giant squid came to the harbour and presaged it all, by dying there itself.
The squid arrived sometime in the night. It thrashed and twisted underneath the translucent grey ice for hours before it died, its tentacles braiding and spreading—a woman’s long dark hair in a suicide bath. Suicide seemed the best explanation. The squid could have dived—gone back south, and deep, into the cool dark ocean where its brethren dwelled in unguessable numbers. But something stopped it; or it knew, somehow, that its time was up. Whatever the reason, it stayed there beneath the harbour ice of New Pokrovskoye, thrashing and twisting until finally it slowed—its giant form stretching under the grey-green sheet for fifteen metres, like a great, dark stroke of watercolour. Babushka wheeled herself out onto the ice in the predawn, breath making a contrail behind her as she huffed along to the squid’s remains. The ice creaked as she leaned forward in her wheelchair, propped on her walking stick, and glared down at the creature. The walking stick was old. It was said that it had been carried to St. Petersburg by a holy man a hundred years ago, and was cut many years before that—and it was hard as iron. She leaned over, hacking at the ice, eventually tumbling out of her chair and falling to her knees with the effort. By this time, someone had called the Koldun—the fishing village’s lodge wizard and healer, second only to Babushka herself in esteem and influence. He went out and joined her for a time. A growing crowd of villagers watched at the bank as he wheedled and cajoled and finally took hold of her arm. But she shook off his attempt angrily, and that was all it took. The Koldun had known Babushka for many years. But neither he nor anyone else dared confront her when she became like this. She glared down into the squid’s eye for a full minute—then finally, drew back, barked a harsh laugh, and spat in it. She turned to the Koldun and the rest, and that was when she said it, loud enough to carry through the whole, ice-bound village: “When this kraken is gone—I go too.” The Koldun and the others laughed, uncomfortably at first—and then, as she joined them, with more assurance. And because of that, the people of New Pokrovskoye concluded: Everything is fine. It’s just another of Babushka’s jokes.
But it was no joke.

What Is City 512?

It's a good question--such a good question that you won't likely find an answer here. Better to go visit WhatIsCity512 (Rasputinsbastards.com) the website launched today to offer some tidbits and morsels concerning my upcoming novel Rasputin's Bastards.

You've seen the cover on this blog before. The new website, which you can go straight to by clicking here--offers up video and documents and news clippings with an eye to if not answering then raising a lot of questions about the mysterious Russian city nestled somewhere in the Urals, where so far as anyone knows, nothing ever happened.

Yeah, of course stuff happened there. Bad stuff. But you won't find out about any of that by hanging around here. Go check out the site, which was put together by Laura Marshall, one of the many geniuses over at ChiZine Publications.

The book itself comes out at the end of June. Here's what it'll say on the back cover:

From a hidden city deep in the Ural mountains, they walked the world as the coldest of Cold Warriors, under the command of the Kremlin and under the power of their own expansive minds. They slipped into the minds of Russia’s enemies with diabolical ease, and drove their human puppets to murder, and worse. They moved as Gods. And as Gods, they might have remade the world. But like the mad holy man Rasputin, who destroyed Russia through his own powerful influence . . . in the end, the psychic spies for the Motherland were only in it for themselves.

It is the 1990s. The Cold War is long finished. In a remote Labrador fishing village, an old woman known only as Babushka foresees her ending through the harbour ice, in the giant eye of a dying kraken–and vows to have none of it. Beaten insensible and cast adrift in a life raft, ex-KGB agent Alexei Kilodovich is dragged to the deck of a ship full of criminals, and with them he will embark on a journey that will change everything he knows about himself. And from a suite in an unseen hotel in the heart of Manhattan, an old warrior named Kolyokov sets out with an open heart, to gather together the youngest members of his immense, and immensely talented, family. They are more beautiful, and more terrible, than any who came before them. They are Rasputin’s bastards. And they will remake the world.

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The 2012 Aurora Awards

Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, is up for an Aurora Award.

I've been waiting a couple of weeks to write that sentence. The organizers of the Prix Aurora Awards let me in on the fact that the novel was up for an award at the beginning of the month, then swore me to secrecy. And I was mostly good... just sitting still and working up a spit to crow a little and thank folks for nominating me and commending readers of this blog to the book.

Well now the nominations are out, and looking at the whole list, it's a lot bigger than my bloody-minded little book about eugenics and monsters. First, there is the matter of ChiZine Publications, my publisher for that book and two others. ChiZine has really owned the nominations this time out. In a field of six nominees for best English-language novel, four are from ChiZine: Michael Rowe's Enter, Night, Derryl Murphy's Napier's Bones and Caitlin Sweet's The Pattern Scars.

Moving down the list of other categories, ChiZine products and people are well-represented. In the poetry category, Sandra Kasturi is nominated for "Ode to the Mongolian Death Worm," and Carolyn Clink is up for "Zombie Bees of Winnipeg," both of which appeared in the online magazine ChiZine's Supergod Mega-Issue (that's what they call it). ChiZine's cover artist Erik Mohr is once again up for the award he won last year, Best Artist--competing against Martin Springett for his interior artwork on The Pattern Scars.

It goes on. Helen Marshall and Sandra Kasturi are up there in the Best Fan Organizational category for chairing the Chiaroscuro Reading Series. And marine biologist, cat fancier, repeat-horrific-crisis-survivor and Hugo award winning science fiction author Peter Watts is up for an award in the Best Fan Other catogory, for his lecture "Reality: The Ultimate Mythology," delivered last year at the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium. Both of these events are organized by the CZP crowd, so they count.

That's a lot of loving for one middle-sized press that's run out of a modest house in west-end Toronto. But it's also an indication of the scope and talent of the extended family of artists, authors and good people that have gathered in orbit around Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi. I am really happy and gratified to have work nominated among them. I'm happier still just to be among them.

Rasputin's Bastards is available for pre-order...

It's the collectable hardcover, so it's expensive, but my Cold War novel Rasputin's Bastards is available for pre-order for those that like to collect. This edition will cost you - it's going for $50 - but it promises to be very beautiful.

You can find the details by clicking right here. And you can see if it's the kind of thing you'd like to buy right here at the Devil's Exercise Yard. Behold, the first fiblet from Rasputin's Bastards, not far from the beginning, wherein we are introduced to a primary tool of psychic spycraft, only somewhat re-purposed:

Fyodor Kolyokov hadn't needed the isolation tank for a long time: not since the early days when all needs Physick were safely defined by the razor-wire fences of City 512. But need and desire often mingle to the same effect, and so as soon as he found a way, Kolyokov moved the tank from Russia to America. Hang the risk, he told himself. The tank was as much a part of his life as his eyes and his lungs and his heart.   The tank was an early prototype, baffled against sound with a set of casings pressed inside one another like nested Russian dolls -- dolls made of iron and steel, concrete and horse-hair, ceramic and lead. Sealed inside the tiniest doll, it wasn't hard to imagine weathering a nearby nuclear detonation.
The Cyrillic notations stamped on the outermost doll indicated expectations falling just short of that. Kolyokov had at various times tried to fill those letters with different types of cement -- but the cold steel of the tank sucked moisture from the air like a thirsty whore, and Kolyokov's attempts at camouflage crumbled within days of their application. There was no making it into anything beyond what it was: an old KGB isolation tank made for sensory depravation, that to anyone but Kolyokov would stink like an open sewer.
To Kolyokov, who had first swum in its briny middle three decades ago, it merely smelled... comfortable.

For the last of those decades, the isolation tank had gathered dust in a large storage locker in New Jersey. During that time, Kolyokov never visited -- not in person. But he kept a watch on it all the same, in the manner of his training, and once a year, he would send a sleeper to see to matters of cleaning and maintenance in person. There would come a day, he was sure, when such things as this tank did not matter to the intelligence community and its existence would no longer need be secret.
In 1997, with the Soviet Union a half-decade in the grave, Russia in turmoil, and the old arsenal all but on the auction block, Kolyokov deemed that day to have arrived.
So now, the tank occupied most of the ensuite bath to Kolyokov's rooms on the Emissary's 19th floor. The bath had at one time contained an immense Jacuzzi tub set in pink marble. But that luxury, along with the bidet and the vanity, had been sacrificed to make room, so the tank had only to share the space with a low-flow toilet and a shower-stall.   The floor was a thick slab of concrete underneath the tile, but Kolyokov had wished to take no chances and so had constructed a second floor, just inches above the original. It was more of a platform, really, suspended by steel cable and specially-designed braces so as to distribute the tank's immense weight beyond its own dimensions.   The platform creaked as he placed a bare foot upon it now. Kolyokov was still groggy from shattered REM-sleep, but he had to piss something fierce. The pissing, he thought, was why the dream had gone so badly. The reason that it had turned nightmare on him, and driven him awake.
Kolyokov used to be able to piss in the tank without disturbing his dreaming. The tank had been fitted with an assembly from the old Soyuz spacecraft -- but the pump had failed years ago.   So Kolyokov hopped on one foot and the other, bladder twisting and wringing as he moved. He splashed body-temperature salt water all over the bathroom's two floors, as he made his way around the tank to the toilet. A thick stream of urine made a roar in the bowl that was deafening to Kolyokov's silence-calmed ear.

A New Year happened...

... and I seem to have missed it. Seemed to, being the operative word. While all the other writers with blogs were busily tallying up their year-that-was post, I was in fact not absent at all - just quietly sitting back, playing Skyrim to wall-eyed distraction and breaking it up with a little ego surfing.

After which, I can report that Skyrim is slightly less addictive than cigarettes, slot machines and internet smut combined. And that the clock shifted from 2011 to 2012 with some very fine bits of news.

A number of people said some very kind things in year-end sum-ups, concerning the novel. Paul Goat Allen over at Barnes and Noble was kind enough to tag it as his number one horror read for 2011, right here. Nick Cato at Antibacterial Pope said pretty much the same thing, right here. And Alex Good, who reviewed the book for The National Post, listed it high up in his top four reads of the year, putting me in the company of Julian Barnes, Clark Blaise and David Hickey.

Feeding My Book Addiction liked the book not quite that much - it was sixth out of six year-end favourites. And The Hopeful Librarian dug it also, and said so right here. 

Earlier in the season, the audiobook version of Eutopia went live over at Audible.com. I have listened to a bunch of Oliver Wyman's sublime reading, and can report that he improves the thing considerably. For a little while, it was the Number Two best-seller in horror on the site.  It has slipped since then, but it's still nestled in among the Stephen King adaptations and Robert McCammon readings. I have yet to find a listener who likes it (the audible.com clientel have discerning ears) but there is time.

Andfinally -  today, I am able to make it known that Ellen Datlow, who once bought a story from me for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, came a-knocking to buy my story "Looker" for The Best Horror of The Year Number Four.  It is there a couple stories away from an excellent story by my pal Leah Bobet, and other fine writers of grim tidings. Here's the table of contents.

Rasputin's Bastards

I've been holding off on crowing about this one, but I find I can keep my peace no longer. There will be another book coming out from ChiZine Publications, by me, this spring, and this is it.

 Rasputin's Bastards is a big book - right now, it's clocking in at 186,000 words. It is a departure, in that it's less a horror novel than Eutopia is. But it is fantastical - Sandra Kasturi, my editor and pal at ChiZine Publications, thinks we should pitch it as Men Who Stare At Goats meets Declare. 

However we pitch it, this book about Russian remote viewing, giant squid and outdoor sporting equipment will be coming out this spring from ChiZine. And boy genius cover artist Erik Mohr has, I think, outdone even himself on this one.

Enter, Night

I remember when I first read Salem's Lot. I suspect that most of you do - at least those of you in your 40s, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and were immune to the not-so-subtle charms of disco, citizens band radios and pet rocks.

I picked up the paperback of Stephen King's early vampire novel in the lineup of a supermarket -- drawn in by its gloriously monochrome, sparkle-free, embossed cover depicting a little girl with a single black, drop of blood leaking out of her mouth. Diving into King's terrifying, humane, and ever-so-slightly flawed tale of blood suckers and small town living was a seminal reading experience for me. After finishing it, I remember walking the streets of Richmond Hill, Ontario, deliciously imagining how I would fight the vampire infestation in the same way that zombie hobbyists try to figure out how to cope with a world where the dead walk these days. 

Other vampire novels that followed didn't really do the job for me in the same way. Interview With A Vampire was more saddening than terrifying in its vampires'-eye view of the world; I Am Legend, which is sort of a vampire novel, was certainly relentless as anything that King set down, but Richard Matheson's tale didn't convey to me the richness of character and setting that let Salem's Lot so colonize my imagination. Stoker's novel came closest -- and yes, yes, I will concede it -- Dracula is formally superior to Salem's Lot. But there is something in King's rubbing of that old tombstone that enlarges the original.

All of this is a round-about way to start telling you about another vampire novel that is very definitely a loving tribute to the vampires and vampire hunters in Salem's Lot, and is also very much more than that.

I'm talking here about Michael Rowe's new novel, just out - Enter, Night. As a caveat: Michael and I go back a long way, and it does all start with vampires. In the late 1990s, he commissioned a story from me for an anthology of queer-themed vampire stories, and encouraged me to write stories for his ground-breaking queer horror anthologies, Queer Fear. In 2009, he penned a gracious introduction to my story collection Monstrous Affections.

Enter, Night is also out from my own publisher, Toronto's ChiZine Press. Like all of ChiZine's novels and collections, it is very beautifully put together.

So with all that: you might think that I would be predisposed to rave, on the basis of both friendship and brand loyalty. Fair enough. But please, please, don't let your skepticism get in the way of picking up Enter, Night. Because in addition to all those caveats, the other one is that Michael has written the vampire novel that I have been waiting for. There is no sparkle in his vampires. They are monstrous -- more fearsome, even, than the feral creatures in The Passage, because these vampires aren't just predators. They're appropriately diabolical. They are Evil..

But let's not get too tied up with how the vampires live and feel and think. That, I'd say, has been one of the great failings of vampire literature in the last part of the 20th century. The great strength of King's novel, and Rowe's rethinking, is that the real characters that we ought to be concerned about are the humans who haven't yet fallen under the vampires' sway.

In Enter, Night those humans live in and around the small northern Ontario mining town of Parr's Landing, in the early 1970s. The town is built on both a rich vein of silver, and of bloody history: prior to the miners, the area was a draw for Jesuits, and is the site of an abandoned Jesuit mission, now reduced to an archeological site, and a resting place of a Dracula-calibre vampire who's been waiting for the right moment...

Michael gives the vampires their due, but the novel is really about the people. There are a lot of points of view to juggle, but the core of the novel is the Parr family, and the return of Christina Parr, the widow of the family's favourite son, her daughter Morgan, and Jeremy Parr, the homosexual second son. They're dead broke, and that is the only reason they're back, to live in the mansion of Adeline, the far-from-sweet matriarch of the family, and the town.  There are others of note:  Elliot, closeted police officer with whom Jeremy has unfinished business; Finnigan, a sweet, nerdy boy who comes by his vampire lore from old Tomb of Dracula comics; and Billy Lightning, an aboriginal university professor who comes to Parr's Landing to investigate his adopted father's murder and ultimately charm Christina.

Michael writes these characters from the heart, and they're like a vampire's gaze: once you meet them it's impossible to look away. The long-game strategy of focussing on the living rather than the undead means that when the vampires show up, we as readers feel every bite. The conclusion, when it comes, delivers an emotional payoff that's quite wrenching and very satisfying. If I were to deliver any criticism, it would be to say that the emotional finish overshadows the business of the plot. But because it's so effective, I'm more than willing to call feature rather than bug on this one.

Right before diving into Enter, Night, I had occasion to reread Salem's Lot, aloud. And on that recent reading, the novel's bugs are more apparent. The characters there spend a very long time shuffling their feet and expositing strategy at one another. King writes from the heart too, but sometimes a bit too near to it: in particular, Ben Mears, his prodigal vampire hunter, falls precipitously near Mary-Sue territory. Michael is, to my mind, tugging heart-strings with far greater maturity and discipline, and at points, much deeper resonance.

This is Michael Rowe's first novel. He is now at work on a ghost story. I am intensely curious to see what he does with that. But I'll pass the time waiting pressing Enter, Night into as many hands as I can.



Enter, Night by Michael Rowe

Something Fishy...

Hey Yard-Apes... please don't be offended, but my first blog post in many weeks is not here, but over at Tor.com, for Monster Mash week: Swimming with the Fishes. I hold forth on the pallid charms of creatures beneath the sea for quite some time, skimming the surface, as it were, on such subjects as the Cthulhu Mythos, Jaws, and the extraordinary work of Catalan author Albert Sanchez Pinol in his novel Cold Skin.

If I haven't commended you to this guy's work, let me do so now. Cold Skin is a short novel, about an encounter just past the turn of the last century, between a depressive north-European and a race of Lovecraftian mer-people, on the beaches of an island near Antarctica. It is a bleakly beautiful novel of isolation, obsession and perversion. It goes where H.P. Lovecraft hinted, but dared not venture. It sets up Pinol's second novel, Pandora In The Congo, magnificently.

You should please go read it, before the movie adaptation comes out.