Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 67
October 6, 2019
First Monday Free Fiction: The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock
Welcome to the October edition of First Monday Free Fiction. To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month. It will remain free to read on this blog for one month, then I’ll take it down and post another story.
[image error]Because October is a spooky month, what would fit better than a spooky story? And so this month’s free story is The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock, the first story in the Hallowind Cove series about a permanently fog-shrouded seaside town, where strange things happen.
The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock was originally written for a shared world which fell through. About a year later, I pulled out the story again, removed all links to the shared world setting and published it. And because I liked the quaint seaside town Hallowind Cove, also known as the harbour of the weird, I eventually wrote four more stories set there.
The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock introduces Paul MacQuarie, a newcomer to Hallowind Cove who moves to the town, when he inherits the house of a distant uncle. Alas, things are never quite as simple as they seem in Hallowind Cove and so Paul has inherited not just a crumbling mansion, but also a family curse and a vengeful zombie – pardon revenant – who wants to kill him.
So accompany Paul, as he faces…
The Revenant of Wrecker’s Dock
Paul pulled up the collar of his coat against the ever-present fog that enveloped the town of Hallowind Cove. His hair was damp, his skin clammy, every bone in his body ached and the cough he’d developed shortly after coming to Hallowind Cove was back, worse than ever.
One day, this town was gonna be the death of him.
He turned onto Wrecker’s Dock in Hallowind Cove harbour or what passed for it, cause these days, the docks were mostly deserted with only the occasional fishing boat moored at the quay.
The fog was even thicker here, rolling in from the sea in waves of white. Walking along the seafront probably wasn’t the best of ideas, considering that the fog was making him sick. But Paul did not care. He was headed for The Croaking Foghorn, a harbourside pub that offered beer and stronger drinks as well as some of the best and freshest seafood dishes Paul had ever seen.
A raven set perched on one of the tar-covered bollards along the quay, fixing Paul with unnerving eyes.
“Wa-atch out,” the raven croaked, “Wa-atch out!”
Or at least that’s what it sounded like. For of course birds couldn’t talk, even though this one gave a pretty good impression of it. Paul had seen the raven before, hanging around town and emitting croaks that sounded uncannily like words.
He’d once asked Ian, landlord of The Croaking Foghorn and the closest thing Paul had to a friend here in Hallowind Cove, about the raven.
“Oh, that’s just Hugo,” Ian had said, “Never mind him. He likes to pretend he’s a harbinger of doom, but he’s really quite harmless.”
“Wa-atch out,” Hugo croaked again, “Wa-atch out.”
“Shut up, Hugo,” Paul said good-naturedly, “I’m no longer a newbie. I won’t fall into the harbour basin.”
“Wa-arned you,” the raven croaked.
Paul shook his head. “I’m really going crazy,” he thought, “Hell, I’m talking to a bird.”
He held on steady towards the lights of The Croaking Foghorn, blurred by the dense fog. A dark figure stumbled towards him, emerging from the mist and gradually coalescing into a solid form. The figure was clad in a seaman’s oilskin jacket and sou’wester.
Probably a fisherman headed out to sea, Paul thought. He shouted a friendly greeting as he passed the stranger, but then his words caught in his throat, as he got a closer look at the dark figure.
For the dark figure’s oilskin jacket and sou’wester were encrusted with molluscs and draped with seaweed. Its skin had a pallid and faintly greenish cast, the sort of look that only the long dead should have. And where its eyes should be, there were only two black holes.
“Murrrderrr,” the figure moaned, its voice sounding as if it came straight from the bottom of the sea, “Deathhh. Deceit.”
The creature reached out for Paul and where its hand should be, there was only a hook, a rusty iron hook.
“The Mary Durban, lost with all hands on board,” the creature said and lurched towards Paul, hook raised. “Vengeance,” it moaned.
Paul screamed and ran along the dock, towards the lights of The Croaking Foghorn and the salvation they promised, the shambling, lurching figure hot in pursuit.
Panicked and panting, he reached the pub and crashed through the door, startling both Ian, the landlord, and Old Hank, a drunk who seemed to be a permanent fixture on the second barstool from the left.
“I… I…” Paul bent over, gasping for air. “I think I just saw a zombie.”
He turned the key in the lock and looked for something, anything, to bar the front door. Finally, he grabbed an old oar from the wall and placed it across the door. Only that it wouldn’t hold the door, not for long and certainly not without some nails for reinforcement.
Already, he could hear the zombie scratching on the door, looking for a way in.
“A hammer,” Paul blurted out, “I need a hammer. And nails.”
“Sit down and relax,” Ian said, entirely unperturbed. He drew a beer from the tap and put it down on the counter. “And would you kindly refrain from blocking the door. There’s few enough punters about in this weather as it is, so I really don’t need you locking out the few that might stumble in.”
“But there…” Paul was only gradually getting his breath back. “…there’s a zombie out there and it’s after me.”
Ian nodded. “So you said. And now sit down and drink your beer, before it gets warm.”
The beer stood on the counter, bubbling golden and foamy white, beckoning, inviting Paul to just take a sip and forget his panic. So he sat down and took a big gulp, savouring the bitter liquid running down his parched throat.
He could still hear the zombie outside, moaning and scratching at the door, but somehow it didn’t sound quite as bad as before. Or maybe that was just the beer talking.
Paul sat down the glass and narrowed his eyes at Ian. “You don’t seem overly surprised by this. I mean, I was just chased by a zombie, a freaking zombie.”
Ian shrugged. “This is Hallowind Cove. Weird crap happens here on a regular basis.”
“Even zombies?”
“Ah well, zombies are perhaps a bit weirder than usual.” He shrugged. “Still, this is Hallowind Cove.”
Paul turned to Old Hank who was currently nursing his third or fourth beer of the evening. “What about you, Hank? Have you ever seen zombies in Hallowind Cove before?”
“Sure,” Hank slurred, “Back in ’56, when that Haitian freighter came in, the entire crew were zombies. Glassy eyed, creepy, the living dead. Turned out the captain was an evil voodoo priest who’d enslaved them and…”
Paul cut him off. “No, not that kind of zombie.” Though Haitian voodoo zombies would be weird enough for any place that was not Hallowind Cove. “That other kind, the sort of hunts people and eats brains.”
“Oh, that kind.” Old Hank shook his head. “No, we ain’t never had that kind of zombie here.”
“Well, there is one now,” Paul insisted, “Waiting just outside the pub. And he threatened me, said something about murder, death and vengeance.”
It was still out there, too, moaning and wailing and trying to get in.
Ian narrowed his eyes. “And you’re sure you’re not just making it all up?” he asked, “After all, everybody knows that zombies don’t talk.”
“Well, this one did,” Paul said and took another gulp of beer, “He talked about murder and death and vengeance. Oh yes, and something else. Something about a… ship? Yes, I think it was a ship. The Mary… Mary something or other. Lost with all hands on board, at any rate.”
A shimmer of recognition lit up the barkeeper’s face and even Old Hank seemed to wake from his alcohol-induced stupor for a moment. “The Mary Durban?” Ian asked.
“Yes, that’s it. The Mary Durban. That’s exactly what the zombie said.” Paul shot Ian a sceptical glance. “Why? Ring any bells?”
“It does. It sure does,” Ian said, while Hank nodded sagely.
“So what is it?”
“You’d better have another drink…” Ian said and promptly drew a beer from the tap, “…cause it’s a long story.” Ian set the second beer down in front of Paul, though he hadn’t finished his first yet. “And by the way, that thing you saw wasn’t a zombie.”
“So you know what it was?”
Ian nodded. “It was the revenant,” he said, “Though I have no idea why it was bothering you.”
“Revenant, zombie, that’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Ian shook his head. “Oh no. Revenants are the dead risen from their graves to wreck revenge on the living…”
“Like I said, zombies.”
“…while zombies are the dead risen from their graves to eat the living and their brains.”
“So in short, ‘revenant’ is just a fancy word for ‘zombie’,” Paul concluded.
Ian rolled his eyes, while outside the zombie or revenant or whatever it was called was still scratching on the door with his horrible hook.
“So what’s the story of this zom… — err, revenant?” Paul wanted to know.
Ian lowered his voice to the kind of tone that suggested he was about to impart a great secret. “Do you know why this place is called Wrecker’s Dock?” he asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, do you know?”
“Not really,” Paul admitted, “Though I suspect it’s got something to do with shipwrecks off the coast. Or maybe that old ship scrap yard down the road…”
“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Ian said, “Cause Wrecker’s Dock is named for…” He lowered his voice even further. “…the wreckers.”
“You mean people who demolish ships?” Paul said, “I saw a documentary about that once. People in India breaking up decommissioned ships. Horrible working conditions, exploitation, child labour and all that.”
“Well, what used to go on here in Hallowind Cove was a bit like what’s happening in India right now, though without the child labour and bad working conditions. What is more, the people here didn’t always wait until the ships were decommissioned. Instead, they made their own wrecks.”
Paul had no idea what Ian was talking about, so he raised his glass — still his first glass — instead and took another gulp of beer.
Nonetheless, Ian must have sensed his confusion, because he continued, “Well, here’s a bit of history for you, my friend. You know what makes Hallowind Cove famous, do you?”
“Uhm, the fog,” Paul said.
“Exactly, the fog. And what does fog at sea mean?”
“Low visibility, difficult navigation, danger,” Paul rattled off.
“And wrecks, my friend. Lots of shipwrecks. Especially since we’re not just cursed with over three hundred days of fog a year, but also with dangerous cliffs, shoals and treacherous currents. So over time, a lot of ships got wrecked on this coast. And do you know what happens to the cargo, when a ship is wrecked?”
Paul shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s… recovered?”
“Salvaged is the word you’re looking for, my friend. And do you know to whom the cargo that’s salvaged belongs?”
“No idea. Does it matter?”
“It belongs to whoever salvages it. And with so many shipwrecks happening off the coast, the good people of Hallowind Cove were making a good living of the salvaged cargo. So good that some of them decided to create some wrecks of their own to salvage.”
Old Hank nodded emphatically. “Aye, they did,” he announced and raised his glass, while Paul took another gulp of his own.
“So on particularly misty nights…” Ian continued, “…the good people of Hallowind Cove shut down the lighthouse at Foghorn Point and set false lights on the cliff tops instead. And those false lights lured unsuspecting ships to their doom, until they stranded on the shoals or crashed against the cliffside…”
Ian executed a dramatic pause, complete with a theatrical shudder.
“Once a ship had run aground on the shoals or been smashed against the cliffs, the false lights were extinguished and the wreckers took over…”
“Aye, the did,” Hank declared and raised his glass.
“They snatched the cargo and whatever other valuables were to be found on board. And if there were any survivors left on the wrecked ship…”
Old Hank made a throat-slitting gesture, while the revenant emitted a matching wail outside.
“…they killed them, so they couldn’t dispute the wreckers’ claim to the salvaged cargo.”
“Aye, they did.”
Outside, the revenant’s wailing increased in pitch and volume.
“And because the good people of Hallowind Cove only went wrecking once in a while, it took the authorities some time to catch on. Wrecks happen and this coast is treacherous, after all, with the fog and the cliffs and the shoals…” Ian shrugged. “Once in a while, someone did catch on to what the good people of Hallowind Cove were doing and they captured, tried and hanged a few wreckers down on Gallows Square…”
Old Hank made a wrung neck gesture, complete with grisly sound effect. Outside, the revenant screeched.
“Then the wrecking stopped for a few years, but it always started up again. Until the ships became ever bigger and began to pass by our harbour and our coast.”
Hank and Ian both looked at Paul expectantly, awaiting a reaction. Even the monster outside the pub had fallen silent.
“Well, that’s a really cool horror story and all that,” Paul finally said, “But what’s all that got to do with the zombie — pardon, revenant — I just saw outside? The one that’s been scratching on the door these past couple of minutes”
“One of the ships the wreckers tricked with false lights…” Ian intoned, “…was a freighter called the Mary Durban. She ran aground on the shoals on a foggy November night in the year of the Lord 1873…”
“Aye, she did,” Hank confirmed and took another gulp of beer.
“The Mary Durban was carrying a cargo of brand new gold bars. Someone had tipped off the wreckers and so they were after the gold…”
“Aye, they were.”
“That night, a horrible storm raged along the coast and so the Mary Durban was already in trouble, her sails tattered and her mast broken, by the time she reached Hallowind Cove. When her crew spotted the beacon at Foghorn Point, the light must have seemed like salvation. But they were betrayed…”
“Aye, betrayed.”
“Because the Mary Durban was already damaged and battered by the storm, she broke apart as soon as she ran aground. Most of the crew were already drowned by the time the wreckers got there. But the captain was still alive, clinging to the planks of his shattered ship by sheer willpower. When he saw the wreckers approach, he thought he was saved. But then they murdered him…”
“Slit his throat, aye, they did,” Old Hank announced with the respective gesture.
“Actually, the way I know the story, they clubbed him to death,” Ian snapped.
“Does it matter?” Paul wanted to know, “Dead is dead, after all.”
He realised that his throat had gone dry and took a gulp of beer from the second glass Ian had handed him.
“So this zombie — err, revenant — is…?”
“Exactly, the captain of the wrecked Mary Durban,” Ian replied, “They say that in his very last moments on Earth, he vowed revenge on those who had wronged him, who had lured the Mary Durban to her doom and slain him and his crew…”
“Aye, he did.”
“And so on those nights when the fog was at its densest, the revenant rose from his watery grave to terrorise those responsible for the wrecking of the Mary Durban. Over the next few years, several of the former wreckers, now wealthy citizens of Hallowind Cove due to the salvaged gold bars, died under mysterious circumstances. They tumbled into the harbour basin and drowned, even though they’d lived here in Hallowind Cove all their lives. Or they dropped dead in the street right here at Wrecker’s Dock. Their hearts just stopped after they’d been chased down the dock by a nameless horror…”
“Aye, so it was.”
Outside, the revenant emitted a howl of agreement.
“Eventually, all of the original wreckers had died or fled Hallowind Cove in terror. But the revenant, he did not vanish, for his work was not yet done. Instead, he began to terrorise the descendants of the wreckers and then their descendants. Since the revenant only ever attacks people on Wrecker’s Dock and since he only strikes on nights when the fog is particularly dense, he’s easy enough to avoid…”
“Aye, he is.”
“Though the revenant does play hell with my business, because on extremely foggy nights few folks dare come to The Croaking Foghorn.” Ian shrugged. “Lots of people here in Hallowind Cove are descended from the wreckers.”
“But not you and Hank?”
Ian shook his head. “My great-great-grandpa was the sheriff of Hallowind Cove back in the day, so the wreckers kept him out of their schemes. And Hank’s family were carnie folks who got stranded here in the Thirties.”
“Well then, if this z… revenant only targets the descendants of those who murdered him, then why the hell is he bothering me? I’m not from Hallowind Cove, In fact, I’ve never been here before in my life.”
Ian frowned and stroked his beard. “That’s the big question.”
Hank nodded affirmatively. “Aye, it is.”
Outside, the revenant had started scratching and banging on the door again.
“Shut up and get lost,” Ian yelled at the locked and barred door, “You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Paul suddenly experienced an almost absurd sense of relief. “So you can hear him, too?”
Ian shrugged. “Sure I can. But in my experience, he tends to go away, when he’s ignored.”
“Aye, he does,” Hank declared.
Ian reached out across the bar and patted Paul on the shoulder. “And don’t worry yourself, he can’t get in here. Something in the rules of revenantism forbids him to enter any houses. All he can do is stalk the dock.”
“Well, that’s very comforting,” Paul said, taking a gulp of beer.
Ian narrowed his eyes. “Say, why did you come to Hallowind Cove again?” he wanted to know, “Some kind of inheritance issue, wasn’t it?”
Paul nodded. “A distant uncle I’d never even heard of suddenly decides to leave his house to me, for reasons best known to himself.”
“May he rest in peace,” Hank said sombrely and raised his glass in memory of a man he likely hadn’t known any better than Paul himself had.
“And that house, where would it be?” Ian asked.
“On — what’s it called again? — Gloomland Street. A ramshackle Victorian dump.”
“Gloomland Street, hmm.” Ian scratched his chin and gave Paul a speculative look. “Is that perchance Old Jim Bob’s place?”
Paul’s face lit up. “Yes, James Robert MacQuarie. That was my uncle’s name.”
“Well, that explains things then,” Ian said, while Hank nodded sagely.
“Aye, it does.”
“The fact that my uncle left me a house on Gloomland Street explains why I was attacked by a zombie?”
“It certainly does, if you know that old Jim Bob MacQuarie was a direct descendant of Jedediah MacQuarie, leader of the wreckers on the night the Mary Durban sank.”
“And besides, it’s no zombie, it’s a revenant,” Old Hank piped in.
“So this zom — errr, revenant — is bothering me, because some distant ancestor of mine was involved in killing him?”
Ian beamed at him. “Now you got it, lad.”
Paul wasn’t nearly so sanguine about the revelation. After all, here was a zombie or revenant or whatever the hell that thing was and it wanted to kill Paul because of something that the ancestor of a distant uncle he’d never even heard of may or may not have done more the a hundred years ago.
“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Don’t go down to the docks on nights when the fog is particularly dense,” Ian said with a shrug, “Of course, this also means that we’ll have to miss your esteemed company here at The Croaking Foghorn, but then we’re missing half the bloody town here on foggy nights, cause the revenant scares them away…”
“Aye, we do,” Hank announced.
“And you’ve been no fun tonight either,” Ian said, “Barely touched your second beer and didn’t even glance at the lovely fresh mussels I’ve got on the menu tonight.”
“Well, you can hardly expect me to eat mussels, when there’s a zom… — revenant — outside trying to kill me,” Paul replied testily.
Ian just shrugged. “What else are you gonna do? Especially since you can’t go home either.”
“Oh God!” Paul pressed a hand to his forehead. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Lucky for you that I did,” Ian said, “Cause the revenant knows no mercy. And ‘I’m new in town and don’t know nothing’ ain’t an excuse he accepts.”
“Nay, he doesn’t,” Hank piped in.
Now Paul did take a gulp of his second beer, though it did little to calm his agitated nerves.
“So what do I do now?”
In response, Ian picked up a glass and wiped it with a dishcloth, though to Paul’s eyes it didn’t look like it needed cleaning.
“Simple. First of all, you stay here for the night, cause the revenant’s power fades once the day breaks. I’ve got a spare guestroom and we’ll find a toothbrush for you somewhere…”
Paul let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Ian. You’re a true lifesaver.”
“You won’t say so when you see the bill.”
“Given there’s a bloodthirsty zombie after me, I can’t afford to be miserly.”
“Are you sure you don’t want any mussels? I mean, since you’re stuck here and everything…”
Paul sighed and took a draft of beer. “Okay. Might as well eat, since it seems I’ll be spending the night here anyway.”
With a zombie just outside the door, howling for Paul’s blood, oh joy of joys!
“Anyway…” Ian put down the glass he’d been wiping and promptly picked up another. “…that’s just the short-term solution to your immediate problem.”
“Aye, it is,” Hank said and took a gulp of what had to be his umpteenth beer
“Medium term…” Ian continued, “…you keep the hell away from the docks after dark on nights when the fog is particularly dense. Of course, that also means I’ll be missing my favourite customer, but that’s life in Hallowind Cove for you.”
“And long term?” Paul wanted to know.
“Long term…” Ian put down the glass and picked up the next. “…you sell that house on Gloomland Street and get the hell out of Hallowind Cove.”
“Aye, get the hell out,” Hank echoed.
“Sell the house”, Paul said and downed the rest of his beer, “Sure, that would be nice. Now I just need someone stupid enough to buy it.”
“Oh, someone will buy it,” Ian said, brimming with confidence, “A nice young couple. He’s an investment banker or a lawyer, she works in advertising or the media. They’ve got more money than they know what to do with and now they’re tired of city life and want to enjoy the peace and calm of the seaside.”
“Peace and calm?” Paul emitted a bitter laugh. “In Hallowind Cove?”
Ian leant across the bar, until he was eye to eye with Paul. “But our young couple doesn’t know that, do they? And by the time they find out, it’s too late.”
“Aye, it will be,” Hank said forebodingly.
“So this has happened before?”
“Aye, many times.”
Ian nodded in agreement. “You may have noticed that Hallowind Cove can be quite charming when the sun is shining and the fog recedes…”
“Which happens how often? Two weeks a year?”
“That’s beside the point,” Ian said, “It happens.”
Hank nodded emphatically. “Aye, it does.”
“And when the weather’s nice, that’s when the tourists and the daytrippers come. And some of ‘em, god bless them, inevitably fall in love with the town and buy up all the empty real estate.”
“So they do,” Hank added.
“And once they figure out what’s really going on?” Paul wanted to know.
“Most of them last two months, maybe three, then they flee back to wherever they came from,” Ian said, “But that’s not your problem, cause you’ll be long gone by then. With a hefty cheque in your pocket.”
He eyed Paul’s empty glass. “Another drink?”
Paul glanced at his watch and sighed. It was going to be a long night. “Might as well.”
“Same as before?”
Paul shook his head. “I think I need something stronger.”
“Aye, you do,” Hank agreed.
“What you need…” Ian said, “…is a good hot mug of grog.”
“Grog? The cliché pirates’ drink?”
“Nope, grog, the traditional sailors’ drink. Best thing to keep you warm on a cold and foggy night.” Ian poured some water into an electric kettle and pressed the “on” button.
“Aye, it’ll keep you warm and keep the revenant away,” Hank echoed.
As if on cue, the revenant hammered his hook into the wooden door and wailed something about death and deceit and murder and vengeance.
Paul shot Hank a sideways look. “I thought the revenant couldn’t enter this establishment.”
“Nay, he can’t,” Hank said.
“But a good hot grog will make you forget he’s even out there,” Ian added. As if to prove his point, he poured a generous helping of rum into a hula girl tiki mug and added a lump of rock sugar and a dash of lime juice.
“Actually, that’s something I’d rather not forget,” Paul said, “After all, I don’t want to end up like the revenant’s other victims.”
“Oh, don’t worry yourself,” Ian said briskly, “After all, the good people of Hallowind Cove have managed to avoid the revenant just fine these past one hundred and forty years.”
“Somehow that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Paul said.
“You’re not being fair,” Ian began.
At just this moment, the kettle buzzed. Ian filled up the hula girl mug with hot water and handed it to Paul. He poured himself a shot of rum without the extras and raised his glass.
“To Hallowind Cove, the best little town to live in.”
“Aye,” Hank added, raising his own glass.
Paul raised his drink as well, enjoying the heat of the grog as it radiated through the walls of the hula girl mug.
“To Hallowind Cove, harbour of the weird.”
The End
***
That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new story will be posted.
Check back next month, when there will be a new story available.
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September 29, 2019
Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for September 2019
It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.
So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some August books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.
Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have epic fantasy, urban fantasy, military fantasy, dark fantasy, Arthurian fantasy, Asian fantasy, Wuxia, paranormal mystery, space opera, military science fiction, time travel romance, Steampunk, LitRPG, horror, ghosts, fae, pirates, space marines, conscientious objectors, traffickers, trailblazers, time travel, crime-busting witches, crime-busting werewolves, literary characters come to life, Arthur and Merlin, defiant empires and much more.
Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.
As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.
And now on to the books without further ado:
Courting Darkness by L.R. Braden:
Deeper into the shadows. . .
The paranatural community isn’t done with Alex. She’s been summoned to the fae court, and she’s got her hands full trying to prepare. But her date with the fae will have to wait. There’s been a death at the gallery, and the man she hoped would be a part of her future is the prime suspect.
Bitter enemies pull her into the middle of a paranatural war for territory that has her dodging police, swords, teeth, and claws—not to mention the truth. The deeper she digs, the more secrets she uncovers, and the less certain she is about the innocence of the one man she wanted to trust.
She thought she was done with murder and monsters, but she’ll have to enter the belly of the beast if she hopes to save her friend.
[image error] Conscientious Objector by Jonathan P. Brazee:
Capernica is invaded.
Locals are conscripted into the militia.
How can a conscientious objector carry a rifle and still uphold his convictions?
Capernica has welcomed the Taymon family, refugees who follow the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. First and foremost is that Assisians will not take another life.
When the planet is invaded, Harris Taymon is conscripted into the planetary militia against his will. He knows he owes a deep sense of loyalty to the planet, but can he bear arms against the enemy with intent to kill?
And if he doesn’t, can he survive his own side where desertion and cowardice are punished by execution?
Download this novella and read how he deals with this internal conflict.
How to Hex a Halo by Elena Bryce:
Being a witch can make friendships rather fraught!
One best friend attacked by a werewolf and now howling at the moon, while the other has joined a cult and thinks she’s an angel.
Except she actually might be…
When Verity suddenly gets powers and starts targeting paranormals, I know it’s only a matter of time before she figures out that I’m more supernatural than super normal.
I need to stop her before she hurts anyone else. Or worse, before something retaliates. Divine intervention I’m not, and my help is more hex than heavenly, but sometimes a witch has got to wade in before things get hotter than spell.
[image error] Gate Quest by Lindsay Buroker:
Roboticist extraordinaire Casmir Dabrowski has a new nemesis: astroshaman leader Kyla Moonrazor.
She’s stolen the ancient wormhole gate the king ordered Casmir to retrieve, and she’s entrenched in an underwater base on a forsaken moon. Moonrazor is more educated and more experienced than Casmir, and she has legions of killer robots and cyborg defenders on her side. Casmir has his friends and… a submarine named the Waddler.
As if his task wasn’t daunting enough, his old competitor, mercenary Captain Tenebris Rache, is on the same quest, and he’ll do anything to keep the Kingdom from getting that gate.
If Casmir can’t find a way to defeat them, the king will never let him return to his home, his family, and the career he loves.
Between the Teeth by Jeff C. Carter:
Between the Teeth collects 16 tales of horror and science fiction from author Jeff C. Carter that will sink their fangs into you and won’t let go.
– A serial killer ends up in an emergency room, but a heart attack may be the least of his problems.
– A researcher hunts a rare spider in the jungles of Myanmar.
– A greedy dentist gets the most interesting client of his life.
Witness soldiers trapped in a crocodile infested swamp, a preacher hunting demon outlaws, and karma catching up to a Bangkok body snatcher. Whatever flavor of the macabre you crave, you will find it Between the Teeth. Buy it now!
[image error] Engines of Empire by Max Carver:
In the future, humanity has colonized hundreds of star systems. The upstart colony Carthage has conquered most of the human-settled worlds–including Earth itself–with fleets of autonomous, AI-driven warships and armies of robotic infantry. Freedom from their empire is found only in rough outer worlds on the distant fringes of settled space.
On Galapagos, a free world, newly elected Minister-General Reginald Ellison had hoped he’d seen the end of war. He spent his youth fighting in battles across his planet’s vast oceans and small islands, and his later years working to build a coalition of peace among the world’s fragmented nations. Now the arrival of an unnerving android ambassador from the distant imperial planet of Carthage threatens his world’s hopes for a free and peaceful future.
On Earth, the machines patrol the post-apocalyptic ruins of bombed-out megacities, left over from Earth’s war with Carthage. In the fallen megalopolis of Chicago, a young scavenger makes a discovery that could empower Earthlings to finally fight back, but could also endanger everyone he loves.
On Carthage, the rulers of humanity enjoy extreme wealth and luxury, while machines carry out all forms of labor and provide for their every whim. Audrey Caracala, daughter of Carthage’s top political leader, has led a protected existence, groomed to help her family rule the known galaxy. Now her family’s enemies hunt her as she searches for her missing brother in the dangerous, unfamiliar territory of the Carthaginian underworld, where she begins to face hard truths about the machines and about her own family’s legacy.
Three people, on three very different worlds, must confront alternate faces of the ever-evolving machines, which spin their own designs beyond the vision of their human masters, forging a new kind of empire that will be ruled by no man.
Amythea: Rise of Wingtar by Aaron Coates:
Once in every thousand years, a hero is born who is destined to save the world.
The inhabitants of Almytheans, are forced to act as slaves, mining rare refractive crystals for the malevolent Lost One. The Almytheans are comprised of both humanoid and non-humanoid species, many having been brought to Almythea by the Lost One’s reptilian, thug-like armies of Latchers. They live simple, oppressed lives as most have had their memories wiped before commencing their enslaved existence. However, they still possess an abiding belief that their prophesized savior, known as The Astra, will one day rescue them.
Banished from the community for a crime he did not commit, as Little Hawk approaches his twenty-first birthday a mysterious shaman warrior, Grey Paw, rescues him from depression, self-doubt and the deadly addictive bittercups in the Badlands before preparing him for a secret tournament. The winner will be named The Astra and sent on a quest to find the fabled Arrow of Truth, the only weapon capable of ending the Lost One’s rule. All Almytheans expect the self-serving and duplicitous Gyeder to be named The Astra. This honor and responsibility includes the hand of a headstrong, capable young woman (and last of the pure blood Accipitridae race) named Broken Arrows, the woman Little Hawk has secretly loved.
It’s a race against time. Little Hawk feels the weight of his destiny to destroy the Lost One, his reptilian Latcher army and his curiously beautiful yet sinister lieutenant Raven Weaver, before they destroy him. With the help of Grey Paw, his best friend, the wise-cracking Laughing Eyes, and a curious pixie-like, mess-up creature called a fleaf, Little Hawk must not only save Almythea but also rescue Broken Arrows from a terrible fate.
Otherworld evil is loose in the real world. Bram Farrell, Private Investigator, must track it down and destroy it before it destroys him.
Bram Farrell has starred in twenty bestselling novels by writer—and witch—Calista Amberson. Her fans love the tall, dark, and handsome PI who vanquishes supernatural bad guys using his magical powers. So, when Calista uses her magic to pull Bram from his fictional world into real-world, modern-day Detroit, she rocks both worlds.
Every supernatural being on Earth felt his arrival in this dimension. They don’t trust Calie’s intentions and Bram doesn’t either. When the supernatural community hands him the job of discovering who killed the beings in the real world that match those he killed in each volume of The Raven Tales, he takes on the task. It’s a job he’s done in twenty books—he’s up to the familiar challenge.
Bram’s investigation turns up a lot of suspicious characters grouchy bar-owning trolls, a thirsty vampire godfather, a couple of murderous x-cage fighters, a suspicious minister¬¬—and the Devil himself. Things are getting dicey: Bram could use some help with this job—but whom can he trust?
Fans of Jim Butcher will fall hard for Bram and Raven’s Moon.
J.B. Dane is a recovering romance writer with over two dozen titles under her belt. So when “Bram Farrell” walked into her office, she hired him on the spot. Together they kick Otherworlders’, er, nether regions, and write the second book in the Raven Tales series.
Equip new adventurers. Send them out to find their way in Everternia. Sally’s purpose had always been clear.
Newly awakened from that repetitive existence, she now sees her world from a new perspective. Life has become a puzzle, and there’s nothing she loves more than a good puzzle.
The two people responsible for her awakening are as fascinated by Sally as she is with Everternia. She’s not sure why that is, but she’s giving the pair the benefit of the doubt, for now. Their foreign ways can be confounding, but with time, she’ll figure out what makes them tick.
She has so much to learn about Everternia and about herself that she barely knows where to start. She wants to do it all, immediately, with great enthusiasm, and maybe even while wearing a pair of really nice pants. Her new curiosity and sense of adventure are growing by the minute, like cogs fitting together to transmit torque.
With nothing but her bravery, two natural-born adventurers, and her unusual skills as a streetmonger, her future is anything but certain.
That’s okay. She’s ready to leave behind her old life and certainty to out what she’s made of. She’s got her goggles, so she’ll be looking at what everything else is made of, too.
She’ll be a brand-new type of adventurer, like nothing Everternia has ever seen.
Troubled Waters by Rachel Ford:
No good deed goes unpunished.
Kay Ellis is looking forward to returning from a six-month supply run. She’s looking forward to being back in the safety of Union space. And she’s looking forward to her wedding with Captain Magdalene Landon.
But when the Black Flag receives a distress signal from a scuttled alien transport, their return is temporarily postponed. The mission of mercy enters troubled waters as a mysterious pursuer appears.
The longer the new guests stay onboard, the more Kay begins to question their hard luck story. And the more she wonders if the Black Flag will survive to see Union space again.
[image error] Mila’s Shift by Danielle Forrest:
Nothing’s as Deadly as a Secret…
Mila has suffered frigid winters, starvation, and soul-crushing loneliness, but she’s safe and free. The government would have stolen that from her if she’d stayed, all for an accident of birth.
Then after ten years on the run, an old friend calls. Now, her friend is dead, and she’s taken her place as pilot of a decrepit space ship. But the ones who murdered her friend think she’s still alive, and now they’re gunning for Mila.
She escapes each attack by the skin of her teeth, her life and secrets on the line. But with a Captain increasingly suspicious, security dogging her every move, and a shape-shifting assassin lurking somewhere on board, will she survive long enough to discover why someone killed her friend?
Gripping and action-packed, Mila’s Shift is a story of loyalty and friendship that crosses all boundaries, including the law, to uphold what’s right.
Ghostly Fears by Lily Harper Hart:
Ten years ago, Harper Harlow lost a classmate. Jennifer Jessup was sweet, nice, and seemingly aimless in life. She came from a good family, lived on an island, and was spoiled with every material gift that could possibly be bestowed upon her.She was still unhappy.Now, a decade later, her father Byron Jessup has approached Harper with a business opportunity. He wants her – and the rest of her operation, of course – to spend a long weekend on his island. Other psychics and ghost hunters will be there, as will his family. The goal? To find out what happened to Jennifer.Harper feels weighed down with guilt, enough so that she can’t see straight. She feels bad about not reaching out to Jennifer when she was still alive and even worse about not looking for her once she went missing.Harper is out of her element. The other psychics are driving her crazy … and making her nervous. She can’t even decide if she believes Jennifer is missing or dead. When another woman on the island disappears, Harper is left with nothing but endless questions.She’s determined to find the answers, even if she has to delve into the past to do it. Someone doesn’t want her getting those answers, however, and it’s going to be a fight to the death to see who comes out the other side.
His future will be her past, three days at a time…
Once every nine years, Chase Matthews and Patricia Wellesley find themselves compelled to step out of their normal lives and into each other’s for three days of passion, desire, and curiosity at the strange phenomenon that binds them together. Outside of those three days, each has a normal life: a career, a family, love, loss, trials and triumphs, yet the universe seems determined to conceal them from one another.
Neither understands what is happening, only that as one of them moves forward through time, growing nine years older, the other moves backward, somehow becoming nine years younger, forcing them to question the potential pitfalls of revealing each other’s futures–futures that might not be set in stone, but could potentially cause the collapse of reality itself if the unknown rules they are bound by are broken.
[image error] Rare Birds by L.S. Johnson:
From 2017 World Fantasy Award finalist L.S. Johnson, the eight short stories in this collection look at the ties that bind and the transformations they provoke. Whether bound by love, blood, or violent circumstance, the characters in these tales are fundamentally altered by those closest to them … and not always for the better.
Two mothers become entwined in revenge against a violent man, with unexpected consequences. A roving gang of sirens finds themselves challenged from without and within. In a last, desperate act of love, a young surgeon goes under the knife. And in a distant territory, a mother and daughter struggle to survive—but the aid they summon is far more dangerous.
At turns brutal and tender, subtle and shocking, these stories blend realism, fantasy, and horror to create an unsettling—and unforgettable—experience.
[image error] The School for Humans by Vanessa Kittle:
Our epic journey begins in Bronze Age Ireland.
Ellene is a servant to one of the great Calean leaders.
The Caleans are opening a school for the young from Ellene’s village, but not all of the Caleans want to teach the humans.
Some have much darker plans, and the school may be the last chance for peace between the two peoples.
No Crones About It by Amanda M. Lee:
Scout Randall is settling in with the northern Lower Michigan branch of Spell’s Angels. She’s feeling bold, brash … and just a little bit flirty thanks to her burgeoning relationship with Gunner Stratton, a shifter whose father happens to serve as the chief of police in Hawthorne Hollow.
Things are going well … until they’re not.
A group of shifters who used to live in the area have returned and they’re up to something. Right from the start, Scout is suspicious but she can’t quite explain why. Then, when a local homeless man is found dead – with Scout’s name literally carved into him – she starts to believe that she’s being set up to take a fall.
Gunner is determined to help. His history with the shifters in question makes things difficult, though. On top of everything else, it becomes apparent that the dead guy’s ties to Scout run deep … like genetically deep. He’s related to her, and for a woman who was abandoned as a child, it’s a hard blow to absorb.
Gunner is determined to stick close as the warring wolves close ranks and start issuing threats. It’s going to take everybody working together to find the answers Scout desperately needs, including uncovering the secret of her past. When one of their own is taken, Scout has no choice but to put her full cache of magic on display.
It’s going to be a fight to the finish, rival gangs going at one another, and only one side will be victorious.
Which one will it be?
Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin:
In the modern world, qi is money.
The days of traveling martial artists and mountaintop masters are over. Power is controlled by corporations, modernized martial arts sects, and governments. Those at the bottom of society struggle as second class citizens in a world in which power is a commodity.
Rick is a young fighter in this world. He doesn’t dream of immortality or becoming the strongest, just of building a better life for himself and his sister, who suffers from a spiritual illness. Unfortunately, life isn’t that easy…
The Pale White by Chad Lutzke:
After being held against their will in a house used for trafficking, three girls plan their escape.
Alex: A hardened goth-punk who’s convinced she’s a vampire with a penchant for blood.
Stacia: A seventeen-year-old raised by an alcoholic mother, her fellow captives the only family she’s ever truly had.
Kammie: The youngest of the three—a mute who finds solace in a houseplant.
But does life outside the house offer the freedom they’d envisioned? Or is it too late, the scars too deep?
A coming-of-age tale of revenge and survival that explores a friendship and the desperate measures taken to ensure they stay united, held together by the scars that bind them.
This contemporary Suspense Thriller / Horror novella with an all-female cast is the perfect read for fans of Robert R. McCammon, Stephen King, and Jack Ketchum.
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
[image error] Shields in Shadow by Andy Peloquin:
Burdened with legend. Hardened by battle scars. Hellbent on bloody revenge.
As the son of a famous general, Aravon is proud to captain his own company against his people’s enemy. But the experienced veteran’s march toward glory dissolves into pain as ruthless barbarians massacre every last one of his soldiers. Burning for vengeance, he leaps at the chance to spearhead a specially-trained company and pay back his tragic defeat with blood.
Desperate to not repeat his tragic past, Aravon trains his new warriors relentlessly. But the captain fears that all the tactical drills in the world may not matter when they’re forced to defend a helpless village against overwhelming odds. As his quick raids sow chaos amongst the enemy, the bloodthirsty savages threaten to make Aravon’s nightmarish history repeat itself…
Can the captain take command of his fighting spirit before the kingdom falls to barbarous invaders?
Shields in Shadow is the first book in the action-packed Silent Champions military fantasy series. If you like square-jawed heroes, well-oiled military action, and epic world-building, then you’ll love Andy Peloquin’s gripping novel.
Choices of Honor by Joyce Reynolds-Ward:
SOMETIMES VENGEANCE BECOMES MORE COMPLICATED THAN EXPECTED.
Avenging the death of co-Leader Inharise of the Two Nations appears straightforward at first for Katerin Leader and Rekaré Kinslayer. The curse that killed her points directly to the Witches Council of Waykemin. Therefore, they’re responsible. But as Katerin and Rekaré lead a small avenging force to Waykemin’s capital city of Formis, they discover that things are not quite as they seem.
At the same time, Waykemin’s overseas ally, Chatain, Emperor of Daran, sends an invading force that Katerin’s daughter Witmara must counter. But is Chatain’s sortie a distraction from the attack on Waykemin, or does it serve a deeper purpose? Katerin must choose between her daughter and the challenge that Waykemin presents—and hope she made the right choice.
Sword in the Throne by Helen Savore:
Merlin knew Arthur would return, but at what cost?
Jamie, a med school drop out, discovers his hallucinations are fae spirits stealing life. His childhood friend has spent her life in a quest to summon the Phoenix in order to banish the fae. He joins her, but along the way accidentally unlocks a traitor’s healing ability, who in turn uses it as a sign to prove he is King Arthur returned.
In order to oppose this false Arthur, and still hunting the Phoenix, they ally with a sect of Faerie Smiths. Amid navigating an unfamiliar world of new creatures and capabilities Jamie must learn to craft his own healing magic into a weapon. But can they stop the impostor Arthur’s crusade when the one thing they need most to stop the fae is the most sure sign of Arthur’s return itself… to draw the Sword from the Throne.
Not all fates are created equal…
Kenji’s only dream in life is to become a great rebirther like his father. But with no talent for the mystic arts, the age-old tradition of cultivating essence by returning things to their newborn state, to grow a second and third time, is far beyond his grasp.
Worse still, he is yet to be rebirthed himself and stands a dullard of a giant among his diminutive peers. Relegated to working the orchards as a common laborer, Kenji settles into a life of lowered expectations; with no chance for advancement and no chance of pursuing the woman he loves.
But when a mystic warrior from a distant land enters his village, pursued by a powerful demon, Kenji discovers a truth about himself that will not only question who he is, but perhaps everything he can become.
With a chance to make his dreams come true, Kenji must choose between following the fate laid out before him…or defying the heavens to forge his own path.
Doing so will mean finding a way to cultivate and fighting powerful enemies to protect the ones he loves, but failure could mean the very fall of the heavens themselves.
Join Kenji as he uncovers the fate of the Sundered Soul…
[image error] Imperium Defiant by Glynn Stewart:
The enemy promises conflict and annihilation
Their allies threaten betrayal and devastation
A daughter of Earth raises the call of defiance
And the Imperium has never knelt!
When the Taljzi’s genocidal invasion brought promises of aid from the oldest and greatest of the Core Powers, humanity and the Imperium looked to the Mesharom for salvation. But that salvation turns to ash as the Mesharom demand the surrender of the very weapons that saved the Imperium.
Defiance leaves the Imperium facing the Taljzi without the aide of the galaxy’s wisest race, but with their old enemies the Kanzi at their side, they have no choice but to end this war at any cost.
But Mesharom and Taljzi alike have scattered fire and death across the stars. The Imperial forces under Fleet Lord Harriet Tanaka will need every scrap of firepower and cleverness not only to defeat their enemies…but to find them in the first place.
Betrayal by James David Victor:
Just when you thought you could trust your enemies.
Jack and Sam have again found themselves with their backs against the wall with enemies on every side. With the alliance with the Devex crumbles, they find themselves alone and unsure of who to trust. And that’s before an enemy from within returns to exact her revenge on Jack. Can Jack escape from the belly of the beast that seeks to destroy all of humanity or will he be the next in a long line of vanquished humans?
Betrayal is the fifth book in the Jack Forge, Lost Marine series. If you like fast-paced military science fiction, you will love watching Jack fight for the freedom of all.
[image error] 100 Word Horrors Book 3: An Anthology of Horror Drabbles, edited by Brandy Yassa:
Book 3 of the 100 Word Horrors Series
Over 100 drabbles by some of the finest horror authors writing today.
Edited by Brandy Yassa
T.O.C.
Andrew Lennon – Enter Night
P. Mattern – The Fungus Among Us
RJ Meldrum – Invasion
RJ Meldrum – One Night Stand
C.A. Verstraete – A Mother’s Love
Valerie Lioudis – Too Many
Steve Stred – Click
Steve Stred – Cursed
D.E. McCluskey – Work
Mark Matthews – A Vampire and Her Jar Full of Leeches
Dennis Mombauer – The Rusted Island
Theresa Jacobs – The Muse
Michael D. Davis – June Bug
Michael D. Davis – The Doctor’s Hobbies
Chad Lutzke – Nothing
J.C. Michael – True Potential
DS Ullery – Number Thirteen
Scott Paul Hallam – The Crate
Anthony Giordano – La Lamentación
Kevin Cathy – The Tree
Kevin Cathy – Narrative
Kevin Cathy – Admitted
Ellen A. Easton – Into the Woods
Sheldon Woodbury – The Altar of Bones
Sheldon Woodbury – Halloween Ride
Sheldon Woodbury – The Midnight Circus
P.J. Blakey-Novis – Stray
Chris Hall – The Evacuation
Larry Hinkle – Three Wishes
J.C. Michael – The Dead that Lived
Joe X. Young – Black Light
Terry Miller – Dollface
Evans Light – That’ll Show Her
C.S. Anderson – The Difference
Alyson Faye – The Necklace
RJ Roles – Tits to Die for
RJ Roles – Passing the Torch
RJ Roles – Delicious
RJ Meldrum – The Apocalypse Will Be Televised
Kerry E.B. Black – Blood and Ashes
Ron Davis – Crimson and Clover
Rhys Hughes – The Special Day
Tristan Drue Rogers – Flightless
John Boden – A Fleeting Thing
John Boden – After
Ryan Colley – Masks
Ryan Colley – Operation
Kerry E.B. Black – Flames
Kerry E.B. Black – As He Was
Toneye Eyenot – Sleep, My Darling
David Owain Hughes – The Rich Get Richer
Simon Cluett – Bait
Toneye Eyenot – Dirt Nap
John T. M. Herres – A Place I Know
Ryan Woods – The Room Upstairs
Howard Carlyle – Painting the Walls
James Matthew Byers – A Penny’s Penance
Andrew Lennon – Possessed
Terry Miller – Death Rattles
Dean M. King – Too Late
Terry Miller – Dead Girl Speak
Jason M. Light – Gun Control
Justin M. Woodward – Gravemakers and Gunslingers
Aron Beauregard – Hot Car
Matthew Cash – My God Lives on the Mountain Top
David Owain Hughes – Tribal Beard
Hazel Lennon – Picnic
Martin P. Fuller – Die, Die, Dead
Howard Carlyle – The Tools of His Trade
Duncan Thompson – A Bedtime Story
Jim Goforth – Hack
Stuart Conover – Be Careful What You Wish For
S P Oldham – Noisy Neighbours
Ron Davis – Machines of War
Becky Narron – Mistaken Identity
Chris Miller – The Thing Beyond the Veil
Norbert Góra – Houston, I Have a Circus Here
Leigha Desmond – The Call
Patrick Winters – The Dolmen of Austburg
Paul Wennersberg-Løvholen – The Dead Don’t Die
Paul Wennersberg-Løvholen – 158 Days Later
Andrew Lennon – Honey, I’m Home
C.M. Saunders – Naughty Step
Zoey Xolton – The Arena
Theresa Derwin – Used Parts
Martin Zeigler – Blackout
Andrew Lennon – Dreams
Robin Braid – Loch
Robin Braid – Next Door
Suzanne Fox – Sweet Dreams
Essel Pratt – Somniphobia
Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason – Wooden Suit
Veronica Smith – Post Halloween
Cindar Harrell – Sea Foam Blood
Justin Hunter – Mine
Michael Anthony Lee – The Lost Ones
G. Allen Wilbanks – Webs
Amber M. Simpson – Show Time
Kevin J. Kennedy – Karma Monsters
Kevin J. Kennedy – The Apocalypse Bar
Eric J. Guignard – Three O’Clock a.m.
Julian J. Guignard – Dog Lover Doom
Josh Darling – The Sword Swallower
Brandy Yassa – Happy Birthday
Ryan Colley – Masks
Ryan Colley – Operation
Send to Kindle
September 28, 2019
Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for September 2019
Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.
So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some August books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.
Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have noir, harboiled mysteries, cozy mysteries, small town mysteries, animal mysteries, culinary mysteries, historical mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, action thrillers, horror thrillers, police procedurals, private investigators, amateur sleuths, forensic specialists, FBI agents, reporters, stalkers, serial killers, human trafficking, organised crime, cold cases, crime-busting witches, crime-busting werewolves, crime-busting dogs, kidnapped teens, missing mothers, murdered techies, murders in small towns and big cities, in New Zealand, Minnesota, Las Vegas, Boston, Florida, India and much more.
Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.
As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.
And now on to the books without further ado:
[image error] A Missing Mom and Mutt Munchies by Aleksa Baxter:
Maggie May Carver is done with murder. She’s sworn that if she finds another dead body she’s just going to step right over it and continue on her merry little way. But when a little boy with sad eyes and freckles shows up asking her to find his mom, she just can’t say no.
Once more Maggie is in the thick of things, this time trying to find a little boy’s mom in time for his birthday with the help of her cranky grandpa, the handsome local cop, and his charming but criminally-inclined brother. Oh, and of course, her incorrigible Newfoundland, Miss Fancypants.
[image error] Chestnuts, Camping and Culprits by Cindy Bell:
Kerri was looking forward to camping with her grandfather. Too bad their campsite just became a crime scene.
Kerri Gale is excited to be going camping with her grandfather, George, and her cute Yorkshire Terrier, Cashew. She is looking forward to a relaxing break and is leaving her nut shop, Nuts about Nuts, in the capable hands of her best friend and employee, Natalie. But when there are protesters and loggers at loggerheads in the Cascade Grove State Park, their idyllic camping trip isn’t as drama free as she had hoped.
Then things go from bad to worse when someone is found murdered on the mountain. Foul play is suspected, and her grandfather is one of the main suspects. With George having many secrets he can’t reveal and his nemesis, Detective Colleen Carver, on the case, Kerri knows that she must do everything she can to keep her grandfather out of jail. But when the murderer has their eyes on another victim, George and Kerri know that there is far more at stake than George’s freedom.
Will Kerri find the murderer before her grandfather lands up behind bars? Or there is another victim?
Recipe included: Ginger Chestnut Cookies
Someone is going to great lengths to destroy Alex Mercer’s life.
On the surface, the Mercers are finally settling into a comfortable routine—Alex’s job is going great, he’s accepted his unusual family dynamics, and they’re even planning a dream vacation. Things couldn’t be better.
Or could they?
Dig a little deeper, and the problems are growing out of control. Someone is threatening to ruin Alex, his wife is harboring a shocking secret, and their daughter is hiding a dangerous new relationship.
If Alex’s cyber-stalker doesn’t get him first, his family could implode on its own. If he can’t unravel the tangled mess in time, he might lose everything—and everyone—he holds dear.
Is John Milton on the path to redemption or the road to revenge?
John Milton has done some bad things in his life. Very bad things. Now he’s looking for ways to make amends. But trouble always seems to be looking for him.
Heading from San Francisco to Las Vegas, Milton’s solo road trip takes an unexpected turn when he picks up Jessica Russo, a young woman in distress at the side of the road. She urgently needs a ride and he’s happy to help her out.
But what starts out as a simple favour quickly becomes something more sinister. Once they get to their destination, it’s clear something isn’t right. Working for the Vegas casinos has got Jessica’s father wrapped up with the wrong people. A mistake that could prove fatal for him and his family.
This is just the beginning of a dangerous journey that will take Milton from Sin City to Siena and beyond. As Milton goes deeper into a world of violence, ruthlessness and revenge, will he finally put his demons to rest? Or is he about to awaken the devil he’s been trying to smother for so long?
Ghostly Fears by Lily Harper Hart:
Ten years ago, Harper Harlow lost a classmate. Jennifer Jessup was sweet, nice, and seemingly aimless in life. She came from a good family, lived on an island, and was spoiled with every material gift that could possibly be bestowed upon her.She was still unhappy.Now, a decade later, her father Byron Jessup has approached Harper with a business opportunity. He wants her – and the rest of her operation, of course – to spend a long weekend on his island. Other psychics and ghost hunters will be there, as will his family. The goal? To find out what happened to Jennifer.Harper feels weighed down with guilt, enough so that she can’t see straight. She feels bad about not reaching out to Jennifer when she was still alive and even worse about not looking for her once she went missing.Harper is out of her element. The other psychics are driving her crazy … and making her nervous. She can’t even decide if she believes Jennifer is missing or dead. When another woman on the island disappears, Harper is left with nothing but endless questions.She’s determined to find the answers, even if she has to delve into the past to do it. Someone doesn’t want her getting those answers, however, and it’s going to be a fight to the death to see who comes out the other side.
The Mystery of a Techie’s Murder by Vijay Kerji:
Priya, a software engineer, is found dead in her apartment when her flatmate Julia is away on a weekend. Detective Mayur finds a Pizza Hut cap with the strand of hair in it at the crime scene along with a cigarette butt and shoe prints. Krishna Raj, Priya’s manager, says Priya became close to her colleague, Praful, who has been sacked by his previous employer because of the sexual harassment charges. Mayur also learns that Priya’s fiance loves someone else and is forced to marry Priya by his parents. He also comes across Priya’s ex-friend and her uncle, who were also interested in Priya. He finds that her younger sister has a motive to become a sole proprietor of their father’s assets. Will Detective Mayur find the murderer in spite of hitting the dead end?
Oracles and Obituaries by Amanda M. Lee:
Halloween is Avery Shaw’s favorite time of year. What’s not to love? Slasher movies, hot chocolate and corn mazes. She’s addicted to them all.
During a visit to one of those mazes, she runs across several men trying to kidnap a teenage girl. In true Avery fashion, she intervenes … resulting in a severe injury. While she’s on the mend, she starts tracking information on a group of people working in the area.
Avery can’t decide if she’s on to something or imagining things. The attack leaves her weaker than she would like, something she refuses to acknowledge, and questioning her investigative mind.
Eliot Kane, her live-in love, decides to help. As much as he wants her safe, he understands she needs to take control. Together, they’re going to dig until they find the information they need. Unfortunately for both of them, the deeper they get, the more they start to wonder just how big of an operation they’re dealing with.
Information pours in, leading to questions about missing girls from years before … and an odd woman serving as an oracle for the Halloween fans in the present. She’s keeping a secret, too, and Avery is determined to figure out what it is.
As she’s proven her entire life, Avery won’t quit until she wins. This time, however, the battle is going to be long, dark and deadly.
She won’t ever give up … even if the search for the truth ultimately kills her.
No Crones About It by Amanda M. Lee:
Scout Randall is settling in with the northern Lower Michigan branch of Spell’s Angels. She’s feeling bold, brash … and just a little bit flirty thanks to her burgeoning relationship with Gunner Stratton, a shifter whose father happens to serve as the chief of police in Hawthorne Hollow.
Things are going well … until they’re not.
A group of shifters who used to live in the area have returned and they’re up to something. Right from the start, Scout is suspicious but she can’t quite explain why. Then, when a local homeless man is found dead – with Scout’s name literally carved into him – she starts to believe that she’s being set up to take a fall.
Gunner is determined to help. His history with the shifters in question makes things difficult, though. On top of everything else, it becomes apparent that the dead guy’s ties to Scout run deep … like genetically deep. He’s related to her, and for a woman who was abandoned as a child, it’s a hard blow to absorb.
Gunner is determined to stick close as the warring wolves close ranks and start issuing threats. It’s going to take everybody working together to find the answers Scout desperately needs, including uncovering the secret of her past. When one of their own is taken, Scout has no choice but to put her full cache of magic on display.
It’s going to be a fight to the finish, rival gangs going at one another, and only one side will be victorious.
Which one will it be?
The Pale White by Chad Lutzke:
After being held against their will in a house used for trafficking, three girls plan their escape.
Alex: A hardened goth-punk who’s convinced she’s a vampire with a penchant for blood.
Stacia: A seventeen-year-old raised by an alcoholic mother, her fellow captives the only family she’s ever truly had.
Kammie: The youngest of the three—a mute who finds solace in a houseplant.
But does life outside the house offer the freedom they’d envisioned? Or is it too late, the scars too deep?
A coming-of-age tale of revenge and survival that explores a friendship and the desperate measures taken to ensure they stay united, held together by the scars that bind them.
This contemporary Suspense Thriller / Horror novella with an all-female cast is the perfect read for fans of Robert R. McCammon, Stephen King, and Jack Ketchum.
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
It started as a simple case . . . then the bodies started piling up.
Elizabeth Barlow hires private investigator Drew Patrick to gather evidence of her husband’s affair. But the truth is even more devastating. Nevin Barlow is entangled with some of Boston’s most dangerous figures, and Drew’s investigation leads deep into a shadowy world of money-laundering and murder.
When an informant is run down in the streets of Boston, Drew realizes just how far Nevin Barlow and his associates will go to keep their secrets from coming to light. But in a world of lies and deception, nothing stays secret forever. A surprise twist will either help Drew prove his case or get him killed.
Witty and tough hard-boiled detective Drew Patrick returns in this gripping crime thriller novel that keeps the pages turning.
Say You Love Me by Willow Rose:
Former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas is back and embedded in a true nightmare reaching deep into her own family.
What would you do if your brother was accused of a horrible crime, and you were certain he didn’t do it?
Life is not done throwing Eva Rae Thomas curveballs.
A phone call turns her life upside down – once again. The call is from her father, the man she hasn’t seen in thirty-six years, not since he kidnapped her sister in a supermarket.
Now, he is back in Florida, and he needs her help. Her younger brother – who she didn’t know existed – has been arrested on Amelia Island. The boy is in a coma after being shot by an officer during the incident. But his father doesn’t believe the police, and he asks for Eva Rae’s help to prove it.
At the same time, a serial killer is planning one of the most horrific mass killings in history.
Will Eva Rae find it in her heart to help her father after what he did to her? Will facing him again set her free or pull her under?
Dead Cat Bounce by Robert White:
Old Mrs Bello lived above the family grocery store all her life, she worked hard, was frugal and lived an ordinary life. There was one thing that people knew about Mrs B though – she absolutely didn’t trust banks.
When she died at the age of 88 there was only one question on everyone’s lips – what happened to the family money?
Despite frantic searching from her surviving relatives, not a single cent was ever found and the missing family fortune passed into local legend.
Butchie Parmenter doesn’t believe in legends.
Experience has taught Butchie not to believe in anything except himself, so when good fortune unexpectedly lands at his feet he grabs the opportunity with both hands, determined not to let go. No matter what.
Butchie should have figured that nothing worth having ever comes easy and if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
[image error] A Dark and Painful Mystery by Wendy M. Wilson:
NEW ZEALAND, 1878: Has the missing man been murdered in the dense bush, or has he simply abandoned his wife and children for another woman?
Sergeant Frank Hardy and his new wife Mette attempt to solve two real mysteries from nineteenth century New Zealand: the whereabouts of Peter Kane, who left his home to look for work and did not return, and the brutal murder of an accommodation house owner who was splitting palings in the bush. Were they connected? If so, how?
As one newspaper said at the time about the Peter Kane disappearance:
“…the fate of the poor fellow may be cleared up, and the state of horrible suspense in which his unfortunate wife has been kept in for months brought to an end; and we would ask not only the people of Woodville, but of the other districts he may have visited, to take all possible steps to throw light upon what at present appears to be a dark and painful mystery.” The Manawatu Times, Volume III, Issue 81, 20 July 1878
This engaging novella is perfect for readers who have enjoyed the other three Sergeant Frank Mysteries. For readers who have not read the series already, the novella includes a backstory/history of the two main characters.
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September 25, 2019
Steampunk in East Frisia: Steamfest Papenburg 2019
Papenburg is an East Frisian town of about 38000 people near the Dutch border, which is probably best known these days as the home of the Meyer Werft , where many of the giant cruise ships carrying tourists across the world’s oceans are built here, complicated by the fact that Papenburg is located about 40 kilometres inland along the rather narrow river Ems, which makes getting the newly built cruise liners to the North Sea something of a challenge. If you’ve ever been on a cruise in the past twenty years or so, chances are pretty good that the cruise ship was built in Papenburg.
Steampunk is not exactly something you would associate with Papenburg, even though the steamship MV Liemba a.k.a. Graf Goetzen, which starred in The African Queen as the German gunboat Königin Luise, was built here in 1913. Therefore, I was very surprised to learn that Papenburg not only has an active Steampunk community, but also hosts Steamfest, a Steampunk festival which took place for the second time in 2019. And since Papenburg is only about 114 kilometres away, I of course decided to pay Steamfest a visit.
Steamfest took place on the grounds of Gut Altenkamp, an 18th century manor house with a historical garden a little outside the town. The venue is absolutely perfect for the purpose, because it feels almost as if you’d somehow stumbled into the mansion of an eccentric inventor.
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The Gut Altenkamp mansion, built in 1728 by architect Peter Pictorius.
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The entrance of Gut Altenkamp with the crests of the von Velen and Ascheberg zu Botzlar families.
The aristocratic owners of Gut Altenkamp have long been washed away by the tides of history. These days, the mansion is owned by the city of Papenburg and serves as an art gallery and venue for cultural events. It’s still an imposing building, even if most of the original decorations and furnishing are gone, so here are some photos of the mansion’s interior:
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The former kitchen of Gut Altenkamp with its vaulted brick ceilings.
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One room in the mansion still has its original 18th century murals of Rococo people pretending to be shepherd (it was a thing back then) and enjoying the simple life
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Gut Altenkamp also has beautiful chandeliers like this Venetian glass chandelier.
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Another beautiful chandelier, this one made from brass. Because this room was better lit, you can also get a good look at the stucco decorated ceiling.
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The altar triptych as well as the statues are from the house chapel of Gut Altenkamp, but after WWI they were relocated to a small public chapel next to a war memorial just outside the gates.
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And here is the war memorial just outside Gut Altenkamp with the chapel in the background.
A few stalls and exhibits were inside the mansion, but most of Steamfest took place outside in the extensive park of Gut Altenkamp with its 200 year old yew hedges.
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A look across Steamfest Papenburg viewed from a second story window of the Gut Altenkamp mansion.
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The sign above this gate says “Step inside” and welcomes you to Steamfest
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A look across the grounds of Steamfest.
All in all, there were more than 3000 people at Steamfest, which is a lot for a town of 38000 people in a sparsely populated rural border region. A lot of the visitors were mundanes, often families with children, but I also saw a whole group of bikers from a local motorcycle club. There also was a sizeable number of people in Steampunk outfits, including a fellow dressed up as the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. There was also a surprising number of pirates, which isn’t that surprising, considering that East Frisia has a proud history of piracy and was home and refuge of the legendary pirate Klaus Störtebeker. I also saw an amazing Jack Sparrow cosplayer who looked just like the real thing. Many of both visitors and exhibitors came from the nearby Netherlands, which has a big Steampunk scene. As for myself, I did dress up a bit with a long skirt, a Belle Epoque style blouse and Steampunk jewellery, which makes me a fair weather Steampunker, I guess.
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Vintage bicycles and motorbikes steampunked up.
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A replica of the Time Machine from George Pal’s eponymous 1960 movie, which is definitely proto-Steampunk, as well as a Steampunk mini-car.
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This vehicle looks as if it has escaped from a Frank R. Paul cover for a 1920s edition of Amazing Stories.
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A Steampunk R2D2 on display at Steamfest
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A wood-carved Yoda observes Steamfest.
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Wood carvings on display at Steamfest. In the background, the carver just puts the finishing touches to Groot.
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A fire and water fountain on display at Steamfest Papenburg
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We have found the dark secret of Gut Altenkamp. Who may this poor soul have been? An inconvenient wife, a spurned rival, an unfortunate chamber maid… The chalkboard next to the skeleton reads, “Do not disturb the excavation site! Fine: 1 crate of beer”, by the way.
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The mad woman in the attic of Gut Altenkamp has been let out to enjoy the festivities.
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A selection of exhibits, including a Lovecraftian horror bursting forth from a vintage radio.
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We have found Donovan’s brain and it is now wired to a computer answering trivia questions. I’m not sure whether the candies on the right are for the inventor and the brain.
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Donovan’s brain even has a girlfriend (the brain in a jar from “Totalled”, maybe?) nicknamed Frau Professor.
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This is not a custom-built Steampunk device, but a vintage TELEX machine. Still in working order, too.
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The classic Volkswagen Beetle is Dieselpunk rather than Steampunk anyway and this overgrown rusty carcass of a Beetle looks positively post-apocalyptic.
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Again Dieselpunk rather than Steampunk, the volunteer fire brigade of Aschendorf presented some of its vintage vehicles.
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More vintage vehicles courtesy of the Volunteer Fire Brigade Aschendorf
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The Nautilus One-Man Band from the Netherlands performs at Steamfest. There were also two or three other bands performing on the main stage in the evenings.
Part of the grounds had been turned into a mini fun fair with various vintage rides, much to the enjoyment of the younger visitors.
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This very small vintage Ferris wheel was clearly the favourite of the many children at Steamfest.
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A vintage carousel at Steamfest.
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A vintagte swing boat ride at Steamfest
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A Dad and his daughter try the Test Your Strength machine at Steamfest.
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Steam and coal can be used for more than just powering machinery, as this spit roasted whole pig at Steamfest proves.
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This pirate ship at Steamfest is a stall selling drinks, including some delicious Belgian cherry lambik.
All in all, Steamfest in Papenburg was a highly enjoyable event in a beautiful venue. I went with a friend who’s not a Steampunker and he’s now a fan as well. According to a paywalled article from the local paper, Steamfest will take place again next year and I’ll certainly be there.
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September 23, 2019
A no longer quite so new Thurvok story available: The Night Court
Before we get back to photos, con reports and genre commentary, here is a not quite new release announcement. Because I just realised that I never officially announced the latest Thurvok story, which came out just before I left for WorldCon.
Like most of the previous Thurvok stories, The Night Court was written during the July Short Story Challenge, where the aim is to write a story per day during the month of July. And in fact, The Night Court is the first 2019 July Short Story Challenge stories to be published.
Like many July short story challenge stories, The Night Court was inspired by fantasy art. The initial inspiration was this piece by Nele Diel. So I started writing the first scene, where Meldom walks through the city by night, only to be attacked and taken. However, I had no idea what would happened next. And so looked through my folder of inspirational images again and came upon this piece by Joseph Vargo. This image of a dungeon, complete with unfortunate prisoners and a grim looking inquisitioner, sparked an idea. What if whoever had captured Meldom was not a kidnapper, bandit or old enemy, but the law or what passes for it? Especially since the law has plenty of reasons to be after Meldom, given his past. And so the Night Court was born.
The titular Night Court is loosely based upon the Vehmic courts of medieval Germany or rather the legends surrounding said courts. Now I had long planned to write a story about someone innocently accused by a Vehmic Court someday, though I had intended it to be a historical along the lines of The Kiss of the Executioner’s Blade or Hangman’s Wages (and indeed, I may still write that story someday).
The roots for that particular idea go back to being made to read Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s historical drama Götz von Berlichingen in high school. Nowadays, the play Götz von Berlichingen is mainly famous for one rather rude line, which regularly causes giggles in high school classes. Otherwise, Götz von Berlichingen is yet another classic German play about a man (the titular Götz) who is so determined to defend his principles (usually something about liberty and autonomy) that he doesn’t care who gets hurt by his obstinate behaviour. There were a lot of plays like that, all dating from the late 18th century and all written by a group of male authors who all knew each other, which we were made to read in high school. And the teachers inevitably expected us to side with the obstinate jerk protagonist and were always very surprised when we didn’t. “Nope, Wilhelm Tell having weird hang-ups about greeting a hat does not give him the right to endanger his kid, no matter how good an archer he is. Just greet the damn hat, no matter how silly the whole thing is.” – “Nope, Odoardo Galotti being pissed off at the aristocracy in general and this one Prince in particular does not give him the right to honour-kill his daughter. What the hell is wrong with that guy?”
Götz von Berlichingen at least offers plenty of excitement, as Götz’s obstinate behaviour comes back to bite him in the arse and the bishop he pissed off sends an army of killers after him. It also has more female characters than usual. Two of them are the loyal wife/girlfriend/sister type who only exists to support our hero in being obstinate, but the third, Adelheid von Walldorf, a Milady de Winter prototype, who seduces and poison men on behalf of the main antagonist, is much more interesting. And in the final act, there is a scene of a Vehmic Court with masked judges who sentence Adelheid to death for her crimes and then dispatch an executioner to kill her. This short scene is a complete non sequitur, it just pops up in the middle of a bunch of scenes of various male characters of the play dying, while maintaining their principles. Nor does Goethe ever follow up on the scene again. Does the executioner ever catch up with Adelheid? Goethe doesn’t tell us. Much to the frustration of my high school German teacher, I was not at all satisfied with that and kept asking what had happened to Adelheid, whether she’d been killed or escaped, and what was the matter with that spooky court with masked judges anyway, cause that story was obviously a lot more interesting than Götz and his principles.
That one scene with the Vehmic Court stuck in my head, as did the vague idea that someone should write that much more exciting story that Goethe failed to tell. And that someone might just as well be me. In the end, the Vehmic Court idea languished with all the other half-baked ideas for historical adventure stories somewhere at the edge of my consciousness. But while I was writing The Night Court, I thought, “What if Meldom hasn’t been captured by an official court after all, but by his world’s equivalent of a Vehmic Court?” The rest of the story largely told itself.
Now the Thurvok stories are credited to Richard Blakemore, hardworking pulp writer by day and masked crimefighter by night, who is the hero of my Silencer series. And though I wasn’t aware of it when I was writing the story, there are certain parallels between The Night Court and the Silencer story Countdown to Death, because in both stories, the protagonist finds himself accused, convicted and almost executed. And though both the Silencer and Meldom may be guilty of many other things (and compared to the pulp vigilantes from the actual 1930s, the Silencer is remarkably restrained and only rarely kills someone), they are innocent of this particular crime. So did Richard Blakemore’s experience in Countdown to Death influence his sword and sorcery story The Night Court, via me who was actually typing the story? Or do I simply keep returning to certain tropes and themes.
Whenever you have a court – even one of such dubious legality as the Night Court – you of course also have courtroom scenes. And so I have half-jokingly referred to The Night Court as a sword and sorcery courtroom drama, which it absolutely is.
So prepare to accompany Meldom, Thurvok, Sharenna and Lysha, as they face…
The Night Court
[image error]The city of Vanadur suffers under the thumb of the Night Court, whose bailiffs snatch random people off the streets and whose masked judges know only one verdict: guilty.
Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, is one of those who are snatched off the streets and put on trial by the Night Court. The accusation: murder. But while Meldom may have done many questionable things in the past, he knows that he did not commit this particular murder.
However, the Night Court is not inclined to believe him and so it’s up to Thurvok, Sharenna and Lysha to save him from the gallows.
This is a short story of 7100 words or 25 print pages in the Thurvok sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.
More information.
Length: 7100 words
List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Playster, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, e-Sentral, 24symbols and XinXii.
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September 21, 2019
WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 2: The Hugos
The contents of the Hugo finalist/accepter packet given out at WorldCon 77. The certificates as well as one finalist pin have since been mailed to Gideon and Janice Marcus of Galactic Journey. The second pin remains with me and now lives on my favourite jacket together with a poppy and a badger pin.
In my last post, I talked about my general experiences at WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Ireland. Now here comes the long awaited Hugo commentary, even though everybody knows by now who the winners are and discussion has largely died down. Though this year’s Hugo commentary is a little different than usual, because this time around I was not only watching the Hugos via livestream – no, I was directly in the auditorium a few metres from the stage, since I was the designated accepter for best fanzine finalist Galactic Journey.
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Brandon O’Brien of FIYAH at the Hugo rehearsal
In order to prevent unfortunate mishaps during the Hugo ceremony such as Dana International stumbling and dropping the Eurovision trophy at the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest, there was a rehearsal a few hours before the ceremony, where the finalists and accepters were told how to go on stage, how to hold the Hugo trophy (“Like a baby”), where to stand and where the timer for the 90 second acceptance speech time limit would be. Dublin’s Hugo Awards (of which I don’t seem to have a photo) were beautiful, but also very heavy, 4.5 kilograms. Because the rehearsal was running late, I had a nice chat about dystopias that make no sense with Greg Hullender and Eric Wong of fellow best fanzine finalist Rocket Stack Rank and the accepter for best graphic story finalist (and eventual winner) Monstress, whose name I have forgotten.
This rehearsal was also the closest I ever got to a Hugo Award and the stage, because – as you probably know by now – Galactic Journey did not win, though we finished in a good fourth place. Meanwhile, the well deserved winner of the 2019 Hugo for Best fanzine was Lady Business. This also meant that I never got to use the acceptance speech I had prepared in cooperation with our editor Gideon Marcus. I do like to think it wouldn’t have been the worst speech of the night.
After the Hugo rehearsal, I headed back to the hotel to wash my hair and get ready for the ceremony. During the rehearsal, I asked one of the volunteers if there’d be someone on hand to help with make-up, etc… (something I’ve never been very good at, since I hardly ever wear make-up) as in San José last year, and was told “Nope, sorry, you’ll have to do it yourself.” Of course, I later learned that there was someone helping with make-up and hair after all, though I suspect the volunteer did not know that. As it was, my plus one Jo Van had to help to fasten my tiara in the lobby of the CCD.
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Me and my plus one Jo Van at the Hugo reception. This is the only photo I have of myself at the Hugos. I like to think we look pretty good.
Before the Hugo ceremony proper, there was the Hugo reception with nibbles and drinks for Hugo finalists, accepters, presenters and other important genre folks. There were a lot of people at the reception – 200 to 250 at least. I ended up sitting at the same table as best novella finalists and eventual winner Martha Wells, chatted with this year’s Lodestar finalist Holly Black and last year’s Lodestar finalist Sarah Rees Brennan, several of the Journey Planet people as well as fan guest of honour Bill Burns, admired best novel finalist Catherynne M. Valente’s gown, helped out the accepter (sorry, I’ve forgotten the name) for Charles Payseur and Quick Sip Reviews who’d forgotten the photography schedule and met fan artist finalist Spring Schoenhuth who had created the rocketship necklace I was wearing at the ceremony (which I’d purchased the day before at the art show). The reception was also where the official photos of the finalists and accepters were taken, though those photos haven’t yet surfaced anywhere.
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At the Hugo reception at WorldCon 77
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At the Hugo reception.
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At the bar at the Hugo reception.
You can see more of my Hugo reception photos at File 770, where the posters also identify several of the people in the photos whom I don’t know.
After the reception, it was time to head up to the auditorium for the ceremony. Because Team Journey Planet wanted to sit together and we didn’t want to climb over George R.R. Martin or ask him to get up, we ended up sitting on two free seats next to a seat with a sign “Reserved for presenter”. A bit later a volunteer showed up and asked us to make sure that the seat remained free, because it was needed for one of the presenters. And who was that presenter? None other than Dr. Jeanette Epps, NASA astronaut and WorldCon 77 guest of honour. So yes, I got to sit next to and chat with a real bonafide astronaut, which was definitely the highlight of the evening for me (sorry, Hugos). Sitting on the other side of us was Tor.com editor Lee Harris BTW.
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The auditorium at the CCD just before the Hugo ceremony.
So let’s get to the Hugos itself. These past few years, I have usually watched the ceremony via livestream, so I knew what to expect. But watching it live in the auditorium, only a few metres away from the stage, was something different entirely. For starters, while it’s perfectly fine to yell or squee at a computer screen, the range of expression in the auditorium is limited to clapping and the occasional cheer, especially since we were sitting directly where all the Hugo winners had to walk past.
Sitting so close to the stage, we also got a front-row view of this year’s Hugo ceremony’s big screw-up, namely the close captioning via automatic speech recognition, which could not cope with anything that was not pre-planned and turned “dogmatists” into “dog magicians” and “1984, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones” into “1984, Bored of the Rings and Cream of Thrones”, much to the confusion of Ada Palmer, who presented the Campbell Award and had no idea why people were laughing. I saw after the ceremony and told her, “Sorry, we were not laughing at you, but at the mess the speech recognition system made of your words.” The speech recognition system made a couple of more unintentionally hilarious mistakes and then completely gave up, when best fan arist winner Mia Sereno a.k.a. Likhain started saying something in Tagalog. And yes, it’s a shame that people in Ireland, which is after all officially a bilingual country, did not take into account that languages other than English might be spoken on the Hugo stage.
Other issues during the ceremony included that the presenters had problems pronouncing the names of some of the finalists and accidentally skipped over one finalist in the best graphic story category. Now mispronounced names are an exceptionally common problem that happens everywhere from the Oscars via the annual 9/11 memorial (where German businessman Heinrich Ackermann, who was aboard one of the doomed planes, has his name mispronounced every single year) to school roll calls, which doesn’t make it any less annoying. Not that I have never mispronounced names myself – Spring Schoenhuth was quite amused when I pronounced her surname the German way – but I do try to make an effort, especially in settings like the Hugo ceremony. For example, the acceptance speech which I never got to hold would have credited all the contributors to Galactic Journey and I made sure to ask beforehand how to pronounce the names I wasn’t sure of.
Traditionally, the Campbell Award for best new writer (and I will continue to call it by its old name here, because that’s how the award was called at the time. From next year on, I will use the new name) is presented first and this year’s winner was Jeannette Ng. I have to admit that I did not expect Jeannette Ng to win, since last year she finished behind other finalists who were still eligible this year and unlike some other finalists, she didn’t have any new work out since her debut novel Under the Pendulum Sun except for a single short story in a small press anthology. However, Jeannette Ng lives in the UK, her novel was published by a UK publisher and shortlisted for a couple of UK awards. And with WorldCon in Dublin, there were a lot British and Irish fans, which may have contributed to Jeannette Ng’s win.
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Jeannette Ng steps up to the podium after having just won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Jeannette Ng also promptly caused the most controversial moment of the evening, when she denounced John W. Campbell as a fascist in her acceptance speech who formed the genre in his image (“white, male, sterile”) and would have tried to keep writers like her out, before she went on to express her support for the protesters in Hongkong. That speech has caused quite a stir and eventually led to both Campbell Awards in existence, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (which Jeannette Ng won) and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel to be renamed. The Campbell Award for Best New Writer will henceforth be known as Astounding Award; the new name of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award has not been announced yet. File 770 reports about the controversy here.
Now I have absolutely no issue with changing the name of the Campbell Award, because 48 years after his death, John W. Campbell is much less relevant than he once was and his relevance to the genre had already massively declined by the time of his death (try reading a 1960s or early 1970s issue of Analog some time). And it’s no secret that Campbell had highly problematic views with regard to race, genre, LGBTQ people, science and pretty much everything else, which became even more problematic over time and that he was widely viewed as a reactionary crank by the time he died. Though John W. Campbell was also a more complex person than the caricature version of him as a far right crank who was into pseudoscience and wrote barely readable editorials for Analog which inevitably were on the wrong side of whatever issue he decided to tackle that month. In fact, in my series of posts about the Retro Hugo finalists and the so-called Golden Age in general (and since), I’ve quite frequently come across stories which were published by Campbell in Astounding or Unknown and yet do not match the stereotype of Campbellian science fiction at all. The impact of John W. Campbell on the genre and whether he still matters today or not deserves its own post and I may well write it eventually. But in short, it was probably time for a change and besides, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer is a great name for the award, which still ties back to the magazine Campbell edited (though I grumble a bit at the omission of Unknown), but without the baggage of the man himself.
Nonetheless, I was quite surprised at the impact Jeannette Ng’s speech had, especially since John W. Campbell has been criticised for years, including by other Campbell Award winners, and in fact, the definitive work about Campbell and his writers – Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee – was a Hugo finalist in the best related work category this year and lost in what must be one of the great injustices of Hugo history. However, I strongly suspect that quite a few Hugo voters never got around to reading Astounding and don’t much care for the history of the genre in general, so the fact that Campbell was a problematic person was new to them. Coincidentally, Alec Nevala-Lee also argued that it might be time to change the name of the Campbell Award almost a year ago.
Furthermore, the version of that is circulating online is not what she actually said. And the actual speech delivered (which you can see in a video here) had more swearing, several major errors and also seemed to overrun the ninety second limit. And while there was cheering in the auditorium, when she called John W. Campbell a fascist, down where I was sitting the mood was mostly polite clapping and quiet cringing and a few whispers of “Well, she’s not wrong, but…” I guess this is one of those examples where actually being present at an event is very different from experiencing it secondhand.
The various fan awards were announced next. Mia Sereno a.k.a. Likhain won a highly deserved Hugo for best fan artist. Foz Meadows won Best Fanwriter, a highly deserved win for a writer who has been short- and longlisted several times already. Our Opinions Are Correct by Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz won Best Fancast right out of the gate, but then it is a very good podcast. When Best Fancast was called, I put away my phone and beaded evening bag, grabbed my prepared acceptance speech and prepared to get up, should it be necessary. And then Lady Business were announced as the winner for best fanzine and I could relax and fully enjoy the rest of the night. And for the record, I’m happy for Lady Business to win, since they are a great site, even though I was obviously rooting for Galactic Journey.
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Lady Business wins the Hugo for Best Fanzine
Uncanny won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine for the fourth year running. Much as I like Uncanny, I wouldn’t mind if someone else won in this category once in a while. The two editor awards went to Navah Wolfe and the late Gardner Dozois (accepted by his son) respectively, both highly deserved. Monstress won best graphic story for the third year in a row. Charles Vess became the evening’s only double winner, when he won both the Hugo for Best Professional Artist and the one-off special Hugo for Best Art Book for the illustrated edition of Ursula K. le Guin’s Tales of Earthsea. Again, both awards are highly deserved, though announcing them right after another was not a great idea, because Charles Vess hadn’t even made it back to his seat when he had to go on stage again.
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Charles Vess just won the Hugo for Best Art Book.
The execrable The Good Place won Best Dramatic Presentation Short – again. I still fail to see what so many Hugo voters see in this dreadful show and indeed, this is one of two Hugo winners this year that I absolutely disagree with (though my first choice only won in two categories). Even some people who like The Good Place feel that it shouldn’t have won two years in a row. The consolation is that the show will end after season 4, so they have two more years at most. And while no one was present to accept the award on behalf of The Good Place, since the show is shooting at the moment, they did send over a nice thank you video featuring two of the actors, which was a nice touch.
Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse won Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, which surprised the hell out of me. Not because it’s not a good movie – it is – but because I and pretty much everybody else expected Black Panther to win. The award was accepted on behalf of the film team by two very nice young ladies from Sony UK, who were genuinely enthusiastic.
And now we come to the other 2019 Hugo Award winner that I sorely disagree with, namely Archive of Our Own winning in the Best Related Work category. Now I’ve stated before that I believe that AO3, to use the abbreviation the archive’s users prefer, was misclassified in the Best Related Work category, which has traditionally been for non-fiction works related to the genre, though it has been watered down in recent years and occasionally included finalists which I feel were misclassified. AO3 is not even the first misclassified finalist to win in this category – the podcast Writing Excuses won a couple of years ago. Nor was it the only misclassified Best Related Work finalist this year – The Hobbit documentary, while certainly a worthy work, would have fit better in Dramatic Presentation and the Mexicanx Initiative, while a wonderful project, was definitely an edge case.
However, AO3’s win is problematic, due to the irritating behaviour of a noisy minority of its users (displayed in this thread on the AO3 site and in the comments to this and this File 770 post). In short, a few AO3 users have taken to calling themselves Hugo winners (and called themselves Hugo finalists before that) and at least two even tried to make related merchandise, which is a violation of trademark rights and a huge no-no. And when it was pointed out to them that the Hugo winner was the Archive itself and its infrastructure, not the individual users, that noisy minority doubled down and engaged in some truly pretzelly logic why they were winners after all. I think my favourite is “We’re a collective”, which makes AO3 sound like the Borg, which I suspect was not the intention. Furthermore, the explanations by various AO3 users why they believed every AO3 user was a winner also confirm that the Archive was completely misclassified in the Best Related Work category.
Now as you know, I attended the Hugo ceremony this year as the designated accepter for the Best Fanzine finalist Galactic Journey. However, the fact that I contributed to a Hugo-nominated fanzine (which I’m very proud of) does not make me personally a Hugo finalist. The finalist was Galactic Journey. And if we’d won, all contributors would have been credited in the acceptance speech, but I personally wouldn’t have been a Hugo winner, and the shiny trophy would have been mailed to our editor Gideon Marcus. Nor am I personally a Nobel Peace Prize winner, though I am a citizen of the EU, nor Time Person of the Year and I’m not Pope either nor have I won several football championships. As it is, I didn’t even attach the Hugo finalist ribbon, which came in the Hugo finalist/accepter packet, to my badge, because I wasn’t the finalist and I wasn’t sure what the etiquette in such cases is. And you know what? Being a contributor to a Hugo-nominated project is awesome and a reason to celebrate. But claiming that you’re a finalist/winner, when you’re not, is not cool and doubling down, when asked to knock it off, is even less cool.
Not that I suspect anybody will listen, since the noisy minority of AO3 users has spent 16 pages of comments at File 770 not listening and recently some of them have escalated to insults and threats. I also suspect that they have no idea how pissed off many WorldCon members are at them right now. Even directly after the ceremony, there was a lot of grumbling about AO3’s Hugo win among pretty much everybody who wasn’t a member of that particular community. And no, it’s not because WorldCon members secretly hate fanfiction (some likely do, but most – including me – have a neutral to positive view of fanfiction) nor is it an old guard versus new young upstarts conflict, as some people are trying to paint this and pretty much any other conflict related to the 2019 Hugo Awards, because people of all ages are unhappy with AO3, just as people of all ages post at AO3. It’s because the bad behaviour of a small minority is about to squander what good will AO3 had garnered.
So let’s get on to more pleasant things and talk about the winners in the fiction categories. The new Lodestar Award for Best YA novel went to Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. In retrospect, this win shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, since Children of Blood and Bone got a lot of buzz and was hugely popular. But I honestly had no idea who would win in this category. The almost as new Best Series Hugo went to Becky Chambers for her Wayfarers series. It’s a lovely series and I’m happy it won, though I cannot help feeling a bit sorry for Yoon Ha Lee who never got to take home a Hugo for the Machineries of Empire trilogy/Hexarchate series in spite of several nominations (for all three novels, the series and one novelette), largely due to being up against the juggernaut of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series with the first two books.
Alix E. Harrow won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies”. It’s a highly deserved win for a lovely story and coincidentally also one of only three categories where my first choice won. The Hugo Award for Best Novelette went to Zen Cho for “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again”. This is not a win I expected, but then the novelette category was extremely difficult to call this year, because all stories were very close together in quality and either of them would have been a most worthy winner.
Martha Wells won her second Best Novella Hugo in a row for Artificial Condition and gave what was probably my favourite acceptance speech of the evening, when she accepted the award on behalf of Murderbot and the Arsehole Research Transport. Coincidentally, the other two eligible Murderbot novellas both had enough votes to make the ballot, though Martha Wells withdrew them. And while we’re on the subject of Murderbot, someone should introduce them to AO3. Since I strongly suspect that Murderbot would love it.
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Mary Robinette Kowal wins the Hugo Award for Best Novel, presented by Dr. Jeanette Epps.
The Hugo for Best Novel, finally, went to Mary Robinette Kowal for The Calculating Stars. This wasn’t exactly a surprise, since the novel was hugely popular, though I didn’t particularly care for it. But then, the majority of Hugo voters rarely share my tastes in the novel category, since the last time my first choice won was in 2014.
There are some complaints from the usual suspects that the Hugo winners in the fiction categories were all women for the third year in a row, which is apparently a sign of the impending apocalypse and the expulsion of men, particularly straight white men, from the genre. Instead of responding to these complaints again, I’ll just direct you to this blogpost from 2016, which addresses the relevant points. Also, if there is a novel or story by a male writer you feel should have been on the ballot and wasn’t, check out the longlist for the respective category and you’ll very likely find it there.
After the ceremony was over, the winners had to stay for the official photographs, while everybody else stormed the bathrooms, since it was a long ceremony. And since Galactic Journey was now a Hugo loser that meant that as their representative I could go to the Hugo Losers Party that George R.R. Martin created in 1976 and revived in 2015. This year’s Hugo Losers Party took place at the Guinness Storehouse, a former brewery turned museum cum events space.
The Guinness Storehouse is a fascinating building, which was designed by the famous Scottish engineer Sir William Arrol who designed the Tower Bridge in London, the Forth Bridge in Scotland and the Harland & Wolff gantry crane which was used to build the Titanic and Olympic. And because I’m weird and take photos of the architecture, while at the coolest party in town, here are some photos of the Guinness Storehouse interior.
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A look at Sir William Arrol’s steel girder construction at the Guinness Storehouse.
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A look down the atrium at the Guinness Storehouse.
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A tank, pipes and valves at the Guinness Storehouse. The steampunky vibes of the place certainly made it a fitting venue for a science fictional party.
The Guinness Storehouse was quite a bit away from the CCD, though there was supposed to be a shuttle service. However, when we exited the CCD, there was no bus in sight. It was also quite chilly that night and since I was wearing an evening gown, I was shivering. We stood around on the steps of the CCD and chatted for a few minutes and because it was cold, we decided not to wait for the bus, but split a taxi between three people.
We arrived at the Guinness Storehouse a little after eleven. Someone checked my invitation at the entrance and checked my name off a list, then we went in. I had my photo taken (though those photos haven’t yet surfaced anywhere either), was given a Hugo Loser ribbon and a nice gift courtesy of CoNZealand, the 2020 WorldCon. There was music – a weird mix of SFF related songs, oldies and traditional Irish songs – and there were free drinks and various foods – shrimp cocktail with Marie Rose sauce, sausage rolls, salads, Irish stew, little dessert tarts, etc…
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At the Hugo Losers Party around half past eleven.
When we arrived, the party wasn’t particularly busy yet, so we found a seat, got food and drinks and settled down to peruse the Hugo results in the official WorldCon 77 newsletter and – as soon as they were available – the full voting and nomination data. This was also when I learned that I had made the Hugo longlist in the Best Fanwriter category again. Many thanks to the 33 people who nominated me.
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What do you do at the coolest party in town? Check out the Hugo voting and nomination statistics, of course.
Around midnight, our host George R.R. Martin took the stage to talk a bit about the history of the Hugo Losers Party and to present this year’s Alfie Awards to two worthy, but overlooked editors. At the end of his speech, George R.R. Martin also said that the venue had reached its maximum capacity and that apparently a few people were still waiting outside to get in, but that no one should feel compelled to leave because of that.
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George R.R. Martin on stage at the Hugo Losers Party.
At around this time, I checked Twitter and was greeted by several disappointed and outright angry tweets by various people who hadn’t been able to get into the Hugo Losers Party, which was the first indication I got that the problem was bigger than just a few people not being able to get in. Though I did see some of the people who’d tweeted about not being able to get in at the party later on, so they did get in after all.
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The Hugo Losers Party has spilled out onto the mezzanine of the Guinness Storehouse.
By now, there are two versions of what happened at the Hugo Losers Party. One version, elaborated in this statement at File 770 by George R.R. Martin himself, is that the whole thing was a regrettable mess-up, because the organisers of the party underestimated the number of Hugo finalists and losers as well as the fact that the attendance limit for the venue was firm and not flexible due to strict Irish fire safety laws (which are a result of this terrible 1981 fire which happened not ten kilometres from the Guinness Storehouse and claimed the lives of 48 young people), which left a number of people with invitations, including several Hugo losers, unable to get in. The other version is that George R.R. Martin wanted to party with his friends from the “old guard” of science fiction and deliberately snubbed this year’s Hugo losers, particularly the relative nobodies from the fan categories, who were left standing outside in the cold.
Speaking as someone who actually was at the party, my observations suggest that the problems with the Hugo Losers Party were a (preventable) mess-up and not a deliberate snub. Why was the mess-up preventable? Because the Hugo finalists have been known for months, so it shouldn’t be difficult to calculate how many finalists and accepters there will be. Is it frustrating to be left standing outside the hottest party in town, even though you have an invitation? Of course, it is and it should not have happened. However, mess-ups and mistakes happen and not everything is attributable to malice.
As for some of the claims I’ve seen online, invitations were checked at the entrance and people weren’t allowed to take more than the allotted plus one with them. In my experience, it was a matter of pure dumb luck whether you arrived early enough to get in or had to wait outside. If we’d waited for the bus rather than take a taxi, we’d likely have been among those waiting outside. Were fan category finalists and newer finalists snubbed in favour of some mythical “old guard”? Again, not in my experience. For starters, I am a relative nobody who was an accepter for a finalist in a fan category and I got in, even though at least one person on Twitter implied that I shouldn’t have been let in, because I was “just” an accepter. At the party, I also talked to representatives of three other fanzine finalists, one fancast and saw one fanwriter and one fanartist finalist. I also saw a couple of other newer and first time finalists at the party. And since I’m not a regular con goer, there are a lot of people I simply don’t recognise.
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This must be the “old guard partying” that we’ve heard so much about.
Regarding claims that there were a lot of people at the party who weren’t current year finalists, for starters, George R.R. Martin himself has said that the Hugo Losers Party is for everybody who has ever lost a Hugo and not just for current year finalists, which I for one didn’t know. And this could really have been communicated better. Were there people at the party (and at the Hugo reception for that matter) who were not current year finalists? Yes. But a lot of these people were accepters for someone else or plus ones or part of the organisational staff. Without actually asking them, there is no way of knowing if this big name author or that well known editor wasn’t an accepter or plus one for someone. Of all the people I talked to at the party, there were only two who were neither finalists nor accepters nor plus ones. One was Nicholas Whyte, the 2019 Hugo administrator. And if anybody has a right to go to that party, it’s him. The other person was a writer with whom I’d been on a panel earlier. So when we bumped into each other at the party, we chatted and I asked them if they were an accepter or a plus one, whereupon the writer told me that they’d received an invitation to the party. And for the record, this writer isn’t a member of some mythical “old guard” of science fiction and actually writes in a different genre.
One thing that I find troubling is that certain people try to turn every conflict loosely associated with WorldCon 77 into a battle between the entrenches “old guard of fandom” and beleaguered young and coming people whom the old guard is trying to keep out. This “young versus old” conflict is evoked everywhere, in the debate about the Campbell/Astounding Award, in the debate about the nomination and win of AO3 and in the debate about the problems at the Hugo Losers Party. And do you know what? It’s bullshit. There is no old versus young conflict, no matter how hard some people try to stir it up.
In my post about WorldCon 75, I wrote that the thing I enjoyed most about WorldCon was how inclusive it was and how everybody, whether a world famous author or a first time member, whether a baby at its mother’s breast or someone in their eighties and nineties who had attended some of the earliest WorldCons, was part of the community. Again this is just my experience, but I talked to a lot of people at WorldCon ranging in age from children and teenagers to older longtime fans. Almost all of those interactions were pleasant and I met a lot of lovely people. And the few interactions that were not pleasant, the handful of people who made it clear that they believed I didn’t belong were not the so-called “old guard” – in fact, the few big name fans and industry professionals I talked to were all perfectly pleasant, even though I am pretty much a nobody – but younger, newer folks who’ve come up in the past few years. Such as a writer whose book I’d promoted at the Speculative Fiction Showcase and who subsequently told me that I didn’t belong at the Hugo Losers Party. Or the folks who when I politely corrected some statements about the Hugo Losers Party accused me of a lack of solidarity and of cozying up to the big names, even though I’m pretty sure George R.R. Martin has zero idea who I am. Or the folks who call everybody who has an issue with AO3’s nomination or criticises the behaviour of some of their users an old white cishet dude who should just die off.
WorldCon 77 and the Hugos were a great experience, but this artificial “old versus young” conflict has soured some of it for me. We’re all fans, damn it.
Comments are off. If you want to complain, go elsewhere.
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September 9, 2019
WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 1: The Good…
Yes, I know that my WorldCon and TitanCon report as well as detailed Huog commentary has been much delayed, but then I’ve been ill, first with a cold acquired at WorldCon and then with a stomach bug acquired from a dodgy poke bowl at Amsterdam airport. However, here is the long awaited WorldCon 77 report, complete with photos.
After my problems getting to Dublin, chronicled in this post, Amsterdam Schiphol airport decided to give me a very Irish farewell, complete with a rainbow over the airfield.
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A rainbow over Amsterdam Schiphol airport.
In Dublin, I was staying at the Gibson Hotel, a very modern, very nice, music-themed hotel, cause it’s “Gibson” as in the legendary guitar manufacturer. The music theme of the Gibson manifested itself in the decor, both in the form of a huge Bono mural in the atrium and a vintage Volkswagen Beetle (well, not quite as vintage as the one my parents had in the 1970s – this is newer Mexico Beetle) turned flower-pot in the lobby. With so much rock paraphernalia, a few SFF fans (and it seemed to me as if most guests at the Gibson were WorldCon members, though there were a handful of very confused looking businessman types, too) certainly fit right in.
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The lobby of the Gibson Hotel with illuminated escalators and a vintage Volkswagen Beetle doubling as a flower pot.
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The Bono mural at the Gibson Hotel
The Gibson Hotel also happened to be right next door to one of the two sites where WorldCon 77 took place, namely the Point Square, a recently completed and still largely empty shopping and entertainment complex (the only tennants were a Starbucks, a Freshii deli and an Odeon multiplex cinema), where some panels and signings as well as the entire arts and crafts portion of the con took place.
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The Gibson Hotel and Point Square
The first WorldCon related thing I did in Dublin was picking up my badge as well as my programme participant packet and the Hugo accepter packet for Galactic Journey. I also informed the nice people at registration that my Mom wouldn’t be able to attend due to being in hospital in Amsterdam and that we wanted to donate her membership, as we’d discussed beforehand. Because WorldCon 77 had closed down membership sales two weeks before the convention started, memberships were in high demand and I hope that some fan somewhere got to have great time at WorldCon with my Mom’s membership.
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My WorldCon 77 badge with ribbons and buttons, including the coveted “File 770 – That Wrecthed Hive of Scum and Villainy” button I got from Daniel Dern.
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The contents of the Hugo finalist/accepter packet given out at WorldCon 77. The certificates as well as one finalist pin have since been mailed to Gideon and Janice Marcus of Galactic Journey. The second pin remains with me and now lives on my favourite jacket together with a poppy and a badger pin.
Regarding the “File 770 – That Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy” there is also this somewhat blurry photo Daniel Dern took of both of us, when he gave me the button:
On Wednesday, the day before WorldCon officially started, I helped with move in and set-up at Point Square. This involved carrying boxes, assembling shelves for the staff lounge and crafting area, taping down table cloths and helping to set up the Raksura Colony Tree model. This was my first time volunteering at a WorldCon and it was a great experience. Not only do you get to help to make a great project like WorldCon happen, no, you also get to meet a lot of lovely people while volunteering. Especially if you’re new to WorldCon and don’t know anybody yet, I recommend volunteering as a way to meet people and make friends. What is more, I also got a handful of groats (which I used to buy a very pretty necklace in the dealers room) and a cool t-shirt.
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The Point Square Warehouse during set-up. The tables and chairs in front belong to the crafting area and in the back you can see where the art show will be.
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The Raksura Colony Tree model before any contributions have been added.
Now some people complain that WorldCon 77 was split between two locations approximately 800 metres or one tram stop apart, but in my view it was the right decision to rent extra space at the Point, both to alleviate the overcrowding problem (which was bad enough already) and because it meant that Dublin had a great art and crafting space, particularly compared to Helsinki, which sqashed the art show into a dark corner of the dealers room and fan space. The only problem was that the Warehouse area, where the art show and craft displays were, had no air conditioning, because it was literally an empty warehouse where appliances were still being installed on Wednesday, while we were setting up. The Odeon, where some panels took place, theoretically had air conditioning, but practically it often wasn’t working. It also seems as if quite a few people decided not to attend panels at the Odeon, because the one panel I had at the Odeon (on international comics) was more than half empty, while panels at the CCD were always full.
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A Lego display of a plant monster attacking a city. In the background, you can see part of the art show.
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A Lego castle with an army gathering outside the gates on display at WorldCon 77.
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The rebel base on Hoth recreated in Logo, on display at WorldCon 77.
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The interior of the rebel base on Hoth, recreated in Lego.
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A recreation of the Bayeux tapestry with bonus TARDIS at WorldCon 77. Created by Janet Clark.
I wound up spending quite a bit of time at Point Square, partly because it was right next door to where I was staying and partly because I was involved in the Raksura Colony Tree project. I also did one of the speedcrafting workshops in the crafting area and of course took a stroll through the art show, where I purchased a beautiful rocketship necklace by best fan artist Hugo finalist Spring Schoenhuth.
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Hard at work crafting the Raksura Colony Tree
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More folks hard at work crafting the Raksura Colony Tree
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The finished Raksura Colony Tree model
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A closer look at the Rakura Colony Tree model
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The Raksura Colony Tree with some of the many crafters who contributed to the project.
You can find some more of my Raksura Colony Tree photos at File 770, where they will find a bigger audience than it my little blog. You can also find plenty of photos, including some taken by the official convention photographers, at the Raksura Colony Tree blog. There also are some photos of Martha Wells, author of the Books of Raksura, which were the inspiration for the project, posing with the tree. Sadly, I was never there when Martha Wells dropped by the Raksura Colony Tree model, though I did get to meet her at the Hugo reception.
However, the main part of WorldCon 77 took place at the Convention Centre Dublin (CCD). The CCD, which opened its doors in 2010, is a spectacular building, designed by Pritzger Prize winning architect Eamon Kevin Roche.
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The CCD by day
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The CCD by night
The CCD is a very science fictional building. A very young (approx. five or six years old) fan liked it to a toppled tower and he is not wrong. The curved glass front, which you can see in the photos above, stretches along the entire front of the building and creates an open space above the lobby crisscrossed by escalators, which are the main way of getting to the five upper floors.
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A look at the lobby of the CCD from the first floor mezzanine.
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View down at the lobby of the CCD from the second floor.
The view from the escalators and upper floors were amazing and provided a great look at the river Liffey and the Dublin docklands and particularly the Samuel Beckett Bridge (and how awesome is it that Dublin names its bridges after writers?), which was designed by another star architect, Santiago Calatrava.
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A look at the river Liffey and the Samuel Beckett Bridge from an upper floor of the CCD
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Spencer Dock and the Samuel Beckett Bridge with bonus Irish flag, as seen from the first floor mezzanine of the CCD.
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A look at the Samuel Beckett Bridge by day from the first floor mezzanine of the CCD.
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A look at the Samuel Beckett Bridge by night from the first floor mezzanine of the CCD.
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And just for fun, a ground level view of the Samuel Beckett Bridge by night.
Like many spectacular buildings, the CCD isn’t particularly practical. The curved glass front is stunning, but it also causes the interior to heat up, which can be a huge problem in August, and the air conditioning couldn’t always compensate. The escalators quickly became a bottleneck, especially when many people were leaving panels and going to the next one at the same time. They are not great for people who have issues with heights either. And the huge glass front and the escalators reduced floor space, which became a problem both when queueing for a panel and when just looking for a space to sit down for a while. Add to that that fire safety laws are very strict in Ireland, likely due to the devastating Stardust discoteque fire of 1981, which claimed the lives of 48 young people. As a result, queueing was one of the defining features of WorldCon 77, just as in Helsinki two years before.
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Fans queueing for panels in the CCD at WorldCon 77.
In the past few days, there have been complaints, usually from US-based fans and professionals, about how horrible the crowd and queuing problems at WorldCon 77 were. Of course, everybody has their own view of events, but the most recent European WorldCons have been bigger than the most recent US WorldCons and I feel that queues for certain high in demand events are not unreasonable. Besides, the con com made sure that disabled folks and people with access issues had somewhere to sit down, while queueing. Besides, it seems to me as if a WorldCon exerts unusual pressure on convention facilities, because for most other events you either need the big function spaces or the smaller meeting rooms but not both at the same time. Furthermore, people at e.g. a medical congress are unlikely to queue for a talk about kidney stones, but WorldCon attendants will queue for a panel featuring a beloved author or an astronaut or other celebrities.
Also, as I’ve said at File 770, while all WorldCons have their share of issues and problems, it seems to me as if problems at European WorldCons, both actual problems (queues, not enough space to sit down) and imagined problems (“Oh my God, they expect us to use public transportation!”) receive more scrutiny than problems at US WorldCons. And the impression this gives to European fans, whether intended or not, is, “Your capital cities with beautiful convention centres built by Pritzger-Prize winning architects are not good enough for us, but e.g. a smallish US city without an international airport and with a wildfire problem (which to be fair isn’t their fault) like Spokane gets a free pass in spite of many problems.”
Queuing was not a problem at the CCD, when you actually were on a panel and the green room on the top floor of the CCD was IMO much nicer than the one in Helsinki. You could have coffee (the fancy kind from a machine), a selection of softdrinks and even alcohol, if you felt like it. There were also pastries and nibbles, though they ran out quickly.
I was on three panels and a crafting workshop at WorldCon 77 plus another panel at TitanCon in Belfast the weekend after. All my panels in Dublin as well as the workshop went well and we got some good discussion going. The TitanCon panel also went well, though we had some issues with the microphones in the panel room not working. There were also two panelists added at the last minute, which I at least didn’t learn about until in the green room fifteen minutes before the panel was due to start (and I was the moderator). In spite of this, I think we did well.
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The panelists of the international television panel posing in the green room in Dublin. From left to right: Cora Buhlert, Harun Siljak, Claudia Fusco, Lionel Davoust and J. Sharpe.
My first panel in Dublin was the international television panel where we sang the praises of arte and discussed that while Stranger Things was set in some kind of fantasy version of the 1980s, Dark showed the 1980s as at least I had experienced them. I also won over some new viewers for Raumpatrouille Orion.
My second panel was the speedcrafting workshop where I introduced several participants including a very talented young fan named Izzy to the basics of crochet. My third panel in Dublin was the SFF romance panel, which I moderated as well. This was my second time moderating a WorldCon panel and I think it went really well, but then I had great panelists in Darlene Marshall, Jeffe Kennedy and D.A. Lascelles. Several audience members later told me how much they enjoyed the panel, so I think it was a success. My final panel was the international comics panel at the Point, which sadly was half empty. A pity because I learned a lot of interesting stuff e.g. about African comics, which were not on my radar at all.
Apart from panels and crafting, I also took a stroll through the dealers’ room, which was much bigger than Helsinki’s and had a lot more stalls selling books in English – to my joy and the doom of my wallet. There were also a lot of fan tables for various upcoming WorldCon and EuroCon bids. Even the Royal Manticorean Navy had sent two representatives (and a teddy bear) to sign up new recruits (Daniel Dern got a pic of them). I suspect the poor folks didn’t have much success, considering how notoriously difficult Baen Books, publisher of the Honor Harrington series, are to find in Europe. Though the wonderful Dublin bookstore Hodges Figgis, which is not only mentioned in Ulysses by James Joyce (in the context of picking up women in bookstores – some things never change) but also had a table at WorldCon 77, does carry some Baen Books.
Marty McFly and Doc Brown dropped by as well and parked their DeLorean in the middle of the dealers’ room. But then time travellers can park wherever they want. The actual DeLorean car, though a very American brand (it took me years to realise that DeLorean was a real car manufacturer and not just something invented or Back to the Future), was built in Ireland, by the way, so this one had come home.
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Marty McFly and Doc Brown parked their DeLorean in the dealers room at WorldCon 77, while taking a stroll through the con.
Furthermore, as mentioned in a previous post, I was interviewed for the German podcast Steamtinkerers Klönschnack. The interview is now online and you can listen to it here.
Of course, I also attended the two File 770 meet-ups at WorldCon 77. I forogt to take photos at the meet-ups, but you can see me in Eric Wong’s photos of the Thursday meet-up as well as in the photo below taken by Chris M. Barkley:
One aspect of the WorldCon experience I missed in Helsinki two years ago was parties. The reason was largely that I was with my Mom who prefers sit-down dinners in nice restaurants to drinks and nibbles in crowded convention centre function rooms. However, since I was on my own this time around, I decided to check out the parties and tagged along when some people from the File 770 meet-up headed to the Memphis in 2023 bid party.
Now if you’ve been following the list of upcoming WorldCon bids, you’ll probably think, “Memphis? Since when is Memphis bidding?” Well, it turns out that the Memphis bid for 2023 was announced during WorldCon 77 two days before the bid party I attended. Memphis is bidding against Nice in France and Chengdu in China.
There were four parties going on at the same time in adjacent rooms: In addition to the Memphis in 2023 party, there was the CoNZealand party, the Chicago in 2022 party and the Glasgow in 2024 party. I drifted from room to room, enjoyed various types of food and drinks, though I stuck to water, because most of the alcoholic drinks on offer involved whisky, which is so not my thing. I had a lot of fun, met a bunch of people from the Nice WorldCon bid who were checking out the competition and also ran into the assembled German SMOFdom (yes, there is such a thing) as well as Alex Weidemann, a reporter of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is very genre-friendly for a quality newspaper.
Alex Weidemann’s article is now online, though like much of the interesting arts and culture content of the FAZ, it is behind a paywall.
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At the Memphis 2023 bid party: Bid chair Kate Secor is being interviewed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
And then there was the biggest event at WorldCon 77, the Hugo ceremony. But that’s a story for another post…
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September 2, 2019
First Monday Free Fiction: The Bleak Heath
Welcome to a somewhat belated September edition of First Monday Free Fiction. To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month. It will remain free to read on this blog for one month, then I’ll take it down and post another story.
[image error]This month’s free story is The Bleak Heath, a novelette in my Thurvok sword and sorcery series. As for why this particular story, I like to pick stories which are somehow related to the season. And at the moment, the Lüneburg Heath nature park is in bloom, an event I sadly missed due to being away for WorldCon and EuroCon. However, last year I wrote a story inspired by my annual hiking trip to the Lüneburg Heath, a story I eventually published as The Bleak Heath.
The Thurvok series is unique among my fiction, since it is credited to Richard Blakemore, the 1930s pulp writer protagonist of my Silencer series. In one story, Richard outs himself as a Weird Tales reader and sword and sorcery fan. He also muses that he would like to take a stab at writing something like that one day. This throwaway scene got me thinking, “What if Richard actually did write a sword and sorcery series in the 1930s?”
Fast forward a couple of years, when I found myself writing a couple of old school sword and sorcery stories for the annual July short story challenge and thought, “What if this is Richard Blakemore’s lost sword and sorcery series?” And so the decision was born to pass off the Thurvok stories as a forgotten sword and sorcery series from the 1930s with myself as the editor who rediscovered them.
So prepared to accompany Thurvok the sellsword and his companions Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasionaly assassin, the sorceress Sharenna and Lysha, Meldom’s childhood sweetheart whom our heroes only just saved from the gallows, as they brave the dangers of…
The Bleak Heath
East of the city of Greyvault, there was a plain that stretched all the way to the Desolate Peaks. Few things grew here and even fewer people lived here, for the soil was poor and white as ash.
One of the few things that did grow on this plain was the hardy heather plant and so the entire plain was blanketed with patches of heather, crisscrossed by paths of white sand and dotted with juniper bushes and stunted birch trees and rocks that looked as if they had been randomly deposited here by a giant’s hand.
For a few weeks in late summer, when the heather was in bloom, the entire plain shimmered purple. The rest of the year it was brown and bleak. And so the people of Greyvault called it the Bleak Heath and did not go there, unless it was absolutely necessary. For the good people of Greyvault believed that the heath was cursed and haunted by ghosts and monsters born of sorcery and black magic.
But nonetheless, some travellers did cross the Bleak Heath, out of necessity or desperation. Four such travellers, two men and two women, were marching across the heath on foot, their forms outlined sharply against the slate grey sky.
One of the men was tall and muscular, with black hair and bronzed skin that was rarely found so far up north, where the winters were long and the sun was weak. He was clad all in leather, a great sword hanging on his hip. This was Thurvok, the sellsword.
The second man was shorter and more slightly built, lithe and wiry rather than muscular. His skin was pale, his hair dark and his eyes as grey as the skies above the heath. He was clad all in black, the only relief a silver amulet glittering at his neck and a silver dagger gleaming at his waist. This was Meldom, thief, cutpurse and occasional assassin, though he had recently sworn off killing except when absolutely necessary.
One of the women was tall, almost as tall as Thurvok. Her statuesque form was swathed in a moss green cloak. Strands of long hair the colour of flame fell from underneath the hood of her cloak. This was Sharenna, the sorceress.
The second woman was slight and clad in a gown of plain white linen of the sort worn by penitents and prisoners condemned to die on the scaffold. Her bare feet were wrapped only in rags, that offered scant protection against the prickly heather plants that sprouted from the path here and there. The harsh wind blew her long dark hair into her face and made her shiver in her thin gown. This was Lysha, daughter of a merchant from Greyvault and Meldom’s childhood sweetheart whom the other three had recently saved from the gallows.
Lysha did not complain about the cold and the harsh wind. In fact, she barely spoke at all. Nonetheless, Meldom noticed that she freezing and so he took off his own cloak and wrapped it around Lysha.
Lysha flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you. But won’t you be cold?”
Meldom shook his head. “No, it’s fine,” he lied through his chattering teeth, “I’m used to it.”
As they continued on their way across the Bleak Heath, Sharenna moved closer to Meldom.
“Maybe we should stop and make camp for the night,” she said, keeping her voice low, so none of the others would hear, “Your girl is in a bad condition and you are not much better off.”
Meldom had his teeth clenched, so they wouldn’t chatter in the cold. But nonetheless, he shook his head. “No, we have to go on. It’s not safe here.”
“But why?” Sharenna wanted to know, “There’s no sign of any pursuit. And besides, I think that after the chaos we caused, the Rhagur rulers of Greyvault have bigger problems than us to worry about.”
Thurvok, slowed down his mighty strides, allowing the others to catch up.
“Such as the fact that their current governor was strangled by the murdered corpse of their previous governor,” he said with a grin, for the sight of a murderer getting his just comeuppance at the hands of his victim was a source of rare amusement to him, “And this time, the Rhagur can’t even blame the people of Greyvault, for it’s all too clear what really happened.”
“The Bleak Heath still isn’t safe”, Meldom insisted, “Or why do you think most travellers approach Greyvault via the Forest of the Hanged? Hint, it’s not because the route is so scenic and the smell of rotting corpses so intoxicating. It’s because awful as the Forest of the Hanged is, the Bleak Heath is worse.”
Thurvok looked around, scanning for hidden dangers, but all he saw were purplish blooming heather, jutting juniper bushes and scattered rocks.
“Doesn’t look very dangerous to me,” he remarked.
“But trust me, it is,” Meldom insisted, “There are… things here. Men turning to stone, rocks coming to life, creatures emerging from the night’s mists to snatch unwary travellers until not a trace is left…”
Thurvok emitted a roaring laugh. Sharenna shot him a warning glance, but Thurvok ignored her.
“Oh, come on. You know I don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
“Normally, I don’t believe in that sort of thing either,” Meldom replied, more than a little testy, “But this is different. I grew up in Greyvault. I’ve heard the stories all my life, stories about travellers gone missing on the heath, never to be seen again…”
“Stories, sure,” Thurvok countered, “Doesn’t mean they’re true.”
Before they could come to blows, Sharenna intervened. “Could we maybe just agree that whether the stories are true or not, this is no place to be abroad by night?”
She nodded at the sky, which was turning from pink to violet to deep indigo.
“So I’d suggest we find shelter and make camp.” She turned to Meldom. “Is there a village around here or an inn or a cave or some other place where we could rest?”
Meldom shook his head. “There’s nothing. Just heath and rocks. And the rocks are cursed.”
“Maybe we should find shelter among a cluster of rocks or behind a particularly large one then,” Sharenna suggested.
“Didn’t you listen to me?” Meldom snapped, “The rocks are cursed. Some say that they used to be men who tried to cross the heath and were turned to stone for their troubles.”
“You don’t believe in that, do you?” Thurvok asked, his eyes wide with incredulity.
“I don’t know what to believe, all right? All I know is that people have been vanishing and rocks randomly appearing on the Bleak Heath since before I was born.”
“Whether the rocks are cursed or not, we need to find shelter for the night,” Sharenna said, ever the peacemaker, “And personally, I think that even cursed rocks are safer than sleeping out in the open and risk freezing to death.”
Thurvok was about to agree to her plan, because it made sense. But before he could, he was interrupted by Lysha, who had trudged onwards, while the other three were arguing.
“Look,” she exclaimed and pointed into the distance, where the unrelenting bleakness of the heath was interrupted by a light on the horizon.
Thurvok turned to Meldom. “I thought you said no one lived here.”
Meldom nodded. “I did. Because no one does.”
“Well, where does that light come from then?”
***
This story was available for free on this blog for one month only, but you can still read it in The Bleak Heath. And if you click on the First Monday Free Fiction tag, you can read this month’s free story.
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September 1, 2019
The 2019 Dragon Awards successfully manage to evade full respectability for another year
You’ll have to wait a bit longer for my WorldCon and Hugos post-mortem, because DragonCon, a big convention in Atlanta, Georgia, that is a curious mix between massive media con, inclusive cosplay con and conservative con for wargamers and military SF fans, took place this weekend. DragonCon is also the home of the Dragon Awards, whose development I’ve been chronicling since the beginning. So I feel duty-bound to report about this year’s Dragon Award winners, too.
But let’s start with the other fiction award given out tonight at Dragon Con, namely the 2019 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. The winner was “When We Were Starless”, a lovely novelette by fellow German Simone Heller, which was also a Hugo finalist this year. A highly deserved win.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Dragon Awards proper. To recap, the Dragon Awards have had a short but rather eventful history. Supposedly conceived as an award to reward the sort of widely popular works that are often overlooked by other SFF awards, they became basically consolation prizes for Sad and Rabid Puppy affiliated authors during their first year, struggled with withdrawals by big name finalists during their second year and were invaded by popular self-published authors and Kindle Unlimited content mills during their third year. Compared to previous years, the announcement of the finalists for the fourth year of the Dragon Award seemed to point at increased mainstream respectability. There were lots of big names books and authors among the finalists, which suggested that the Dragon Awards would maybe finally do what they had set out to do, namely reward broadly popular mainstream works. Credit for this largely goes to the Red Panda Fraction, a group of Atlanta area fans and DragonCon attendees, who created a handy eligibility spreadsheet to make nominating easier.
However, compared to the finalists, the actual winners this year seem like a step backwards. So let’s take a look at the individual categories:
A Star-Wheeled Sky by Brad Torgersen wins best science fiction novel in what must be one of the most baffling Dragon Awards wins since the first year. Why baffling? Because if the Dragon Awards are supposed to honour popular, you’d expect the most popular books to win. However, according to admittedly flawed criteria like Amazon, Goodreads and LibraryThing ranks and ratings, A Star-Wheeled Sky is at the lower end of the popularity scale among the finalists in this category, as Contrarius explains in the comments to this post on Camestros Felapton’s blog. Meanwhile, the most popular finalist in this category by a wide margin is Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey, followed by Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers, which was also my choice. Of course, Brad Torgersen has been actively promoting the Dragon Awards and asks his fans to vote. And while Torgersen is mainly associated with the Sad Puppy disaster of 2015 in wider fandom these days, he is popular with the Baen and Analog crowd and Baen is traditionally strongly represented at DragonCon, plus A Star-Wheeled Sky is a Baen book. However, Tiamat’s Wrath has the advantage of being connected to the hugely popular The Expanse TV series and DragonCon is a multi-media con. Though Brad Torgersen has finally won an award, which should make him happy, while Becky Chambers got to take home a Hugo this year and Daniel Abrahama and Ty Franck are crying all the way to the bank.
The winner in the best fantasy novel category is another Baen book and another name that will be familiar from the Sad Puppy fiasco, namely House of Assassins by Larry Correia. Nonetheless, this is a less surprising win than Torgersen’s, because Larry Correia does have a big and very engaged fanbase and is also very active in promoting the Dragon Awards, though he supposedly asked his fans not to nominate him this year. That said, I’m sure he’ll be devastated at his third Dragon Award win in this category in four years. My own vote was for The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, BTW.
The Dragon Award for best young adult novel goes to Bloodwitch by Susan Dennard. No real surprise here, it’s a popular novel by a popular author. And indeed, the YA category is where the Dragon Awards come closest to doing what they set out to do, namely rewarding highly popular works. My own vote was for Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand, BTW.
The winner in the best military SFF category is Uncompormising Honor, the latest Honor Harrington tome by David Weber. Again, this is not a huge surprise, because both David Weber and the Honor Harrington series are extremely popular, though apparently quite a few fans were disappointed with Uncompromising Honor. David Weber is also a frequent guest at Dragon Con and has won in this category three times to date. However, Uncompromising Honor likely also profited from the fact that the other finalists in this category were several indie published books which – while popular – may not be all that well known outside the Kindle Unlimited eco-system. And while the other traditionally published finalist in this category, The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley, is a great book (and was my personal pick), it’s also very much not what habitual readers of military science fiction are looking for and in fact, many military SF fans actively hate this book. For example, here is a review which claims that Kameron Hurley hates the military science fiction genre and is out to destroy it.
The winner in the best media tie-in category is Thrawn: Alliances, a Star Wars novel by Timothy Zahn. This is one win that’s not at all surprising, because the Thrawn character is hugely popular among Star Wars fans, particularly old school Star Wars fans, though personally I never saw the appeal, not even back when I read Heir to the Empire, when it first came out. Of the characters Timothy Zahn added to the Star Wars canon, I’ve always liked Mara Jade a lot, but never much cared about Thrawn. Still, lots of Star Wars fans obviously disagree. My own vote was for The Way to the Stars, a Star Trek Discovery novel by Una McCormack BTW.
The Dragon Award for best horror novel goes to Little Darlings by Melanie Golding. It’s a very popular novel, though more psychological thriller than horror novel. But considering that the readership for psychological thrillers is a lot bigger than the horror readership, I’m not surprised that it won. My own vote was for We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix BTW.
The winner in the best alternate history category, finally, is Black Chamber by S.M. Stirling. Now Stirling obviously is popular with the Dragon Awards crowd, since he has had several nominations in various categories so far. Nonetheless, I’m surprised that he managed to beat what is by far the most popular book on the ballot, which also won the Hugo and Nebula Award for best novel, namely The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. Of course, the war gamer contingent is strong at DragonCon and Black Chamber is very likely more to their taste than The Calculating Stars. Or maybe The Calculating Stars had too many girl cooties. Meanwhile, what was probably the most mainstream finalist on the whole Dragon Award ballot, Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, lost out as well, so the Dragons have successfully fended off the Booker Prize crowd. Now I have to admit that I was secetly rooting for Machines Like Me, even though I voted for Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar, if only because Ian McEwan’s reaction to DragonCon and the Dragon Awards would have been so worth it.
The film and TV categories offer no real surprises. Avengers: Endgame wins best film – after all, it is officially the highest grossing movie of all time – and the hyper-popular (and lovely) Good Omens wins best TV series. My own votes were for Captain Marvel and Star Trek Discovery respectively.
The comic and graphic novel categories offer no real surprises either. The hyper-popular Saga wins best comic book with its latest tear-jerking arc. Coincidentally, Saga was also my pick in this category. X-Men: Grand Design – Second Genesis by Ed Piskor wins best graphic novel, which again isn’t very surprising, for even though the X-Men are no longer as popular as during their heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, they’re still one of Marvel’s bigger guns. My own vote was for On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden.
I never vote in the gaming categories in the Dragon Awards, because I’m not much of a gamer. This year’s winners are Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, a Pokemon Go type augmented reality game, which likely also profited from the continuing popularity of Harry Potter, Red Dead Redemption 2, a western themed PC/console game so popular that even I have heard of it, the board game Betrayal: Legacy and the Call of Cthulhu: Masks of Nyarlathotep Slipcase Set role-playing game. None of these winners strike me in any way as unexpected or unusual.
In general, it’s notable that while indie published authors or author collectives can get Dragon Award nominations, they don’t win. For example, Chris Kennedy’s publishing outfit had four finalists on the ballot this year and also made a strong showing in 2017 and 2018, but so far they haven’t won. Ditto for other indie authors. Meanwhile, Baen continues to do well at the Dragons. This year, all of the three Baen books on the ballot won in their respective categories, but then Baen is very active in DragonCon’s literature track and apparently, they do have a sizeable fanbase at DragonCon. It’s also notable that in two categories, best fantasy novel and best military SFF novel, the same author (Larry Correia and David Weber respectively) won three out of four years. Yes, I know that both Weber and Correia have big fanbases at DragonCon, but a bit more diversity would be nice.
As with the nominations, the Dragon Award winners continue to be heavily male dominated. Of seven winners in the novel categories, only two are women. If you include the non-novel categories, you get another female winner with Fiona Staples in best comic book. The winners are also overwhelmingly white, though Larry Correia identifies as Latino as fas as I know. Besides, as Camestros Felapton points out in his post here, to date all ten winners in the two headline categories, best science fiction novel and best fantasy novel, have been men. Somehow, I doubt that those who wring their hands that the winners in the fiction categories at the Hugos and Nebulas were all women in the past three years, will be at all bothered by this.
According to the Dragon Awards’ official rules and regulations, the administrators have the right to pick winners and finalists without taking the will of the voters into account, though there is no evidence either way that they are exercising that right. And indeed, we have nothing in the way of voting and nomination data for the Dragon Awards, which makes the results difficult to analyze.
But once again – and I know I say this every year – the Dragon Awards have to decide what they want to be. Do they want to be the award for broadly popular SFF that they set out to be? Do they want to be an award for conservative leaning SFF? Do they want to be the best Baen book award? Do they want to be the best indie published SFF book award? None of these options are necessarily bad, though it would help if Dragon Con were to settle on one of them. This year, however, the finalists pointed at option A, while the winners seem to point at options B and C.
On the other hand, the odd inconsistency of the Dragon Awards may also be linked to the inconsistent nature of DragonCon itself. Cause from what I’ve heard – I’ve never been there myself – DragonCon is a huge multi-media convention, which has a big contingent of young, diverse and overwhelmingly left-leaning media fans and cosplayer, but also a conservative leaning literature track catering to older military SFF fans and wargamers. In many ways, the Dragon Award results reflect this split.
So after an encouraging step forward in the 2019 nominations, coupled with a step back in the actual winners, the question is where will the Dragon Awards go in 2020?
Comments are closed. Awards posts inevitably bring out the trolls.
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Two Plugs: A New Anthology and a Podcast Appearance
Yes, my WorldCon, TitanCon and Hugo write-up is coming, but it may take a bit more time, because in addition to the cold I caught at WorldCon, I also picked up a stomach bug from a dodgy poke bowl at Amsterdam airport, which took me out of commission for a couple of days. So Hugo and WorldCon post-mortems will have to wait for now.
Besides, I have two other announcements to make. For starters, an anthology to which I contributed came out yesterday. The anthology in question is Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958 – 1963), edited by Gideon Marcus of Galactic Journey with a foreword by Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha. Now I’m obviously not a forgotten woman writer from the Silver Age of science fiction. However, I provided the introduction to one of the fourteen stories in the anthology, “Of All Possible Worlds” by Rosel George Brown.
Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958 – 1963):
Fourteeen uncut Silver Age science fiction stories by women
Fourteen introductions providing historical, biographical, and literary context
One foreword by Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha
One introductory essay by Gideon Marcus
From the team that produces the Hugo-nominated Galactic Journey:
The Silver Age of Science Fiction saw a wealth of compelling speculative tales — and women authors wrote some of the best of the best. Yet the stories of this era, especially those by women, have been largely unreprinted, unrepresented, and unremembered.
Until Now.
Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963) features fourteen selections of the best science fiction of the Silver Age by the unsung women authors of yesteryear, introduced by today’s rising stars:
Unhuman Sacrifice (1958) by Katherine MacLean, introduced by Natalie Devitt
Wish Upon a Star (1958) by Judith Merril, introduced by Erica Frank
A Matter of Proportion (1959) by Anne Walker, introduced by Erica Friedman
The White Pony (1960) by Jane Rice, introduced by T.D. Cloud
Step IV (1960) by Rosel George Brown, introduced by Andi Dukleth
Of All Possible Worlds (1961) by Rosel George Brown, introduced by Cora Buhlert
Satisfaction Guaranteed (1961) by Joy Leache, introduced by A.J. Howells
The Deer Park (1962) by Maria Russell, introduced by Claire Weaver
To Lift a Ship (1962) by Kit Reed, introduced by Gideon Marcus
The Putnam Tradition (1963) by Sonya Hess Dorman, introduced by Lorelei Marcus
The Pleiades (1963) by Otis Kidwell Burger, introduced by Gwyn Conaway
No Trading Voyage (1963) by Doris Pitkin Buck, introduced by Marie Vibbert
Cornie on the Walls (1963) by Sydney van Scyoc, introduced by Rosemary Benton
Unwillingly to School (1958) by Pauline Ashwell, introduced by Janice Marcus
“Female authors wrote stories about coming of age…cautionary tales…stories set beyond our universe…You’ll find these themes and more in this anthology. I hope that as you read their stories you don’t try to ‘feminine’ versus ‘masculine’ elements. What you are about to read is really good science fiction, plain and simple.” -from the foreword by Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha
Rediscovery is a great anthology, which proves that there was and is life far beyond the confines of Campbellian science fiction. If you’re at all interested in the history of science fiction and how we got to where we are now, you should absolutely read it. You don’t just have to take my word for it either. James Davis Nicoll pretty much agrees in his review.
Get your copy at Amazon or the Journey Press website.
***
To get back to WorldCon 77, one of the best things about WorldCons and other cons is that you inevitably run into a lot of interesting people. And one of the people I met at WorldCon 77 was Mirco from the German podcast Steamtinkerer’s Klönschnack. And so I wound up getting interviewed for the podcast.
The episode is now online and you can listen to it here. Mirco also shares his impressions of WorldCon 77 in this blogpost. Only in German, alas.
As promised, my own WorldCon 77 and Hugo post-mortem is coming, though I’ll probably take a break for the Dragon Award winners, who will be announced tonight, first.
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