Jason Franks's Blog, page 3

Clamour and Mischief

Hello scary friends! I have a horror short story coming out in this new anthology from Clan Destine Press, edited by the magnificent Narrelle Harris. It’s called CLAMOUR AND MISCHIEF and it features a raft of amazing talent.

My story, “the Language of Birds”, is set around a Johannesburg Hebrew school in 1985. It’s supposed to read a bit like the Coen brothers doing an Alan Moore story. I hope you creeps and killers like it.

Clamour and Mischief

Edited by Narrelle M Harris

A clamour of rooks. A mischief of magpies. A storytelling of crows.

All the corvids – the rooks and ravens, the jays and jackdaws, the crows and magpies – have the best collective nouns. A parliament and a party. Tidings and titterings, bands and trains. An unkindness.

Clamour and Mischief brings a veritable storytelling of crows to the corvidae, the bird family known for intelligence and cunning and for their connection with folklore and urban legends. These storytellers come from around the world and include award-winning and -shortlisted authors as well as emerging writers and fledgling authors in their professional debut.

This anthology’s sixteen striking stories are imbued with all the humour, darkness, wisdom, artfulness, vengefulness and magic of the birds that inspired them. Take them as a jest, a guide, or a warning – but don’t, whatever you do, ignore them!

Narrelle M Harris and Clan Destine Press are proud to announce the Table of Contents for Clamour and Mischief, due for release in the last quarter of 2022.

“Once upon a Midnight” by Raymond Gates
· “All That Glitters” by GV Pearce
· “Sleuthing for a Cause” by Eugen Bacon
· “The Past is not a Present” by Geneve Flynn
· “Watchers” by Alex Marchant
· “The Song of Crows” by Jack Fennell
· “Kūpara and Tekoteko” by Lee Murray
· “Build Another Nest for Phantom Feathers” by RJK Lee
· “Branwen and the Three Ravens” by Dannye Chase
· “Seven for a Secret” by Narrelle M Harris
· “The Girl and the Crow” by R.D. White
· “The Jackdaw Maiden” by Katya de Becerra
· “The Language of Birds” by Jason Franks
· “Murder of Crows” by George Ivanoff
· “The Devil’s Teeth” by Tamara M Bailey
· “Quoth the Raven” by Gabiann Marin

Cover Reveal for X-Dimensional Assassin Zai

I’ve been an admirer of Daniele Serra‘s work for many years now and I am beyond thrilled to have his art covering my new book, X-Dimensional Assassin Zai Through the Unfolded Earth (say that five times fast), coming later this year from the excellent IFWG Australia.

Feat your eyes:

X-Dimensional Assassin Zai Through the Unfolded Earth cover art and design by Daniele Serra

The book is a travel-loving assassin’s grand tour through different speculative fiction genres, from hard SF to faerie romance, with stops in alternate, adjacent, and auxiliary realities, undersea kingdoms, dirigible city-states, and, uh, Tokyo.

Publishing details coming soon!

— Jason

Faerie Apocalypse – Four Years On

I saw a lot of renewed interest in my novel Faerie Apocalypse at Supanova last weekend and, while it’s been out a while now, I realize that this is the first time I’ve actually taken it to a show. So I figure I should talk about it a bit and, you know, get people to buy it.

Since I first learned to read, I’ve always loved portal fantasy stories, where a character from our world goes off to have adventures in some impossible place. Magic Faraway Tree, and so on.

I’m not a child anymore, and thinking about those stories with an adult protagonist makes them seem… psychotic. That was the initial seed of it. If you’ve read Stardust (I have, multiple times), this is kind of the Satanic version of that. (Not literally, but kind of…)

I reread a bunch of fairy land stories, from Lord Dunsany onwards, and another thing that I found lacking was consent. So the story is about that also.

A series of damaged adults from roughly the present era (1970s through near future) go a-questing in the Faerie Realms, which begin to crumble under the postmodern pressures they exert upon it. The result is in the title.

The story is built on careful logic. I worked hard to established ground rules for how the Realms work, which the protagonists directly attack or indirectly erode. Those rules are based on storytelling conventions, not physics or “a magic system”.

It was tough to write. The protagonists are generally speaking the villains and some are less relatable than others. The story does not unfold in a linear way and that was difficult to balance. A lot of what I thought was good material, cut.

I wanted a dense and writerly style, but also I tried to keep it pacy and fast-moving. I wanted Cormac McCarthy meets Roger Zelazny and maaaybe I got in the ballpark. It’s a short book, but a lot happens. You might be disgusted but you won’t be bored.

It was a Ditmar finalist and I’m really proud of it. If you think it sounds good, please, you know, buy one, or ask your library to get one in. Please and thanks.

Cheers!

Jewish Australian Speculative Fiction

Hi!

As I mentioned back in November, I did a panel a couple months ago with Gillian Polack, Jack Dann and Rivqa Rafael about Jewish Australian speculative fiction for some cool cats at Heinrich Heine University (in Dusseldorf) and they were kind enough to record it. Click on through to the other side:

It was an immense pleasure to be live on the air with these amazing writers. Big thanks to Lucas and Bettina for arranging the whole shebang!

As I alluded a little while ago, I have been thinking some thoughts about how being Jewish has affected my work over the last few years, so I guess you can expect to hear a bit more from me on this topic in the next year or so. I’m still formulating a blog post about it but I have definitely been trying to bring it a bit more into focus in my work already. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Cheers,

— Jason

Lanegan

Mark Lanegan died this week.

I’m not generally someone who gets upset about dead celebrities, even those whose work has meant a lot to me. I remember when Kurt Cobain died. I think there’s little argument that Kurt was the voice of my generation, or at least my segment of Generation X, and the ripples from his suicide caused lasting damage to a part of culture that I still hold dear. But at the time, I wasn’t particularly upset. It was a shock, but not in any way a surprise, given that he had only recently survived an illness, an overdose and a suicide attempt. It was sad to see him go but I didn’t think about it too much.

I remember when Layne Staley died. I didn’t know his music as well as the other big grunge bands, because for some reason they got less radio play here. But even so, not especially unexpected. Scott Weiland, almost 20 years later… well, I think everyone knew he was on borrowed time.

I was upset when Chris Cornell died five years ago. Soundgarden had always been my favourite of the big grunge bands and more than any of the others, I really felt their music. Outshined, Burden in the Hand, and Limo Wreck really felt like a part of the soundtrack of my own life. Cornell, I believed, was healthy and well-adjusted and, if anything, a bit too proud to go out the way that he did, so that was a nasty surprise.

But Mark Lanegan on the crow road, here in 2022? That has really shaken me.

I came to like Lanegan’s music slowly. The Screaming Trees received zero radio play in Australia, that I can recall, but for a brief time we had cable TV in my house and the Trees’ song, All I know was on high rotation on Channel V. It quickly became a favourite. I heard and enjoyed Nearly Lost You a few times also, but it was from their previous album and I’d skipped the movie Singles, on whose soundtrack it appeared.

A few years later, after the band had busted up, I picked up a copy of Dust, and was surprised to find that, I grew to like the quieter songs better than the songs I’d bought it for. Dying Days, Traveler, Dime Western. Those songs stayed with me. A few years later, when iTunes was a thing, I saw Lanegan had some new solo work out. I picked up the song Skeletal History first, and then the rest of Here Comes that Weird Chill EP. Those songs were like those Trees songs I enjoyed best, but darker and bluesier and more personal. Less produced-sounding, and dripping with pain and sorrow. I snaffled up Bubblegum immediately, and then its predecessor, Field Songs.

Grunge was important to me when I was a teenager and through my early twenties, when I was angry and young and directionless and frustrated. But I was a bit older now. I was far from home, lonely and disappointed and, if not defeated, I’d taken some body blows and was reeling on my feet. Unhappy, drinking more than ever before (or since), and, I think, finally starting to understand a bit about how the world worked. I grew out of grunge slowly, but I grew into Mark Lanegan’s work.

This concert poster hangs in my office. It was a gift from someone I didn’t know very well, but I think who knew me better than I did myself.

I didn’t go to the show in question–I saw Lanegan perform only once or twice. The first was with the Queens of the Stone Age in, I think 2001, and then in 2016 when he toured Australia with his own band. Solo, he was every bit as strange and intense as I could have hoped. An amazing singer but with no apparent desire to be a frontman, we was all business on stage–no banter, just the music.

Lanegan published a volume of autobiography in 2020, Sing Backwards and Weep. I’m not a huge one for drug memoirs but I devoured it. What struck me was how strong he was. No matter the punishment he put himself through, he got up again and went for another round. The volume ends with him finally getting clean. He dropped another volume last year, which I haven’t read yet called Devil in a Coma, about how he almost died from Covid. After surviving that, I thought he was unkillable. But I guess not.

Mark Lanegan made a lot of great music over and above that. His duets with Isobelle Campbell, his third of the Queens of the Stone Age vox, hius work with Greg Dulli. But the more I learned about him, the more obvious it became that he was a solitary person, and I like his solo work best. I still listen to it regularly. On headphones, when I get some alone time. I always prefer to be alone with that voice.

Field Song is one of my favourite of his songs: a weary rural idyll, a final acceptance of life and love–completed by a guitar freak-out that chills me every time. I can’t think of a better farewell.

Outland Entertainment Acquires Bloody Waters and Shadowmancy

Hello!

A big news day for me and Jason Fischer and our Argonautica Press publishing imprint. Outland Entertainment have acquired all four of our currently available novels (Quiver, Go to Hell, Bloody Waters and Shadowmancy) and they will be publishing and distributing new editions of the books in North America. You can read about it here, on their site: https://outlandentertainment.com/outland-entertainment-acquires-four-novels-from-argonautica-press/

This means a great deal to us. Fisch and I started this line because we believe in these books and want to see them done right in the market, but it’s hard for a pair of writers based in Australia to take them to the international stage. The lovely folks at Outland are based in the US and have much better reach into the biggest market in the world than we can manage. We are absolutely delighted to be working with them to give the stories the life they deserve. The pair of us have been rowing the Argos as hard as we can, but Outland will put wind in the sails.

The publishing schedule is coming soon, but in the meantime you can be sure we’re holding the oars.

Cheers!

— Jason

One Genre at a Time: Horror

Hello friends!

I am teaching a new course for Comics Mastermind, in addition to my usual Mechanics of Visual Storytelling workshop.

Mastermind’s new program on genre has a different genre every week, and I am teaching the Horror module. If you’re interested in making horror comics, you can sign up at the link below. Even if you can’t make the live webinar you can still get access to the recording.

ONE GENRE AT A TIME: Series 1 – Exploring, Writing and Illustrating for the Superhero, Slice of Life, Fantasy and Horror Comics Genres

Once you’ve spent 90 minutes listening to my hideous nerd-voice you will know true horror.

— Jason

Omicron I can’t believe it, I’ve never been so done with 2021

Hello, my creeps and killers,

Well, look at that. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.

I don’t need to tell you that 2021 has not been the year anybody wanted or expected. The global whatever-the-hell aside, it’s been another transitional year for me. Last year was about finishing my Masters degree. This year, it was moving house. We finally made it into our new place just a week before the holidays began. Selling and buying through four lockdowns, in a ridiculous housing market, was not something I’d care to repeat… and with the amount of new debt I now have, is not something I’m going to be able to afford to do ever again. (Don’t worry, I will continue to check my PO box in case that huge cheque from Hollywood shows up.)

I published only one story this year: Heart of Iron, in The Only One in the World anthology. The book was gratifyingly well received, but it feels like a pretty small output. I have a couple of comics projects just about ready, but without a convention circuit I figured it was better to hold onto them for the time being.

It has been a fallow few years with my studies, so no surprise that there wasn’t much to harvest this year. But I have been increasingly productive and next year will be different. I addition to those comics, I have a handful of commissioned short stories that should be coming out and also my fourth novel, X-Dimensional Assassin Zai through the Unfolded Earth.

I finished a new novel this year: Blackened Skies, the sequel to Bloody Waters. I started the year intending to complete a different project, but when I sat down at the keyboard this was the one that demanded my attention. The other book… my attempt to write a commercial fantasy trilogy… is something I still want to do and will probably return to next year. But this year I needed to navigate a genuine biblical rock’n’roll apocalypse with Clarice and Johnny and I think, if you enjoyed the first book, you’ll enjoy this one just as much. Expect to see it in 2023.

The rock’n’roll apocalypse isn’t until 2023 but you can start celebrating now if you want.

I did other stuff. I was a judge for two comic-based awards. I taught two more Mechanics of Visual Storytelling workshops for Comics Mastermind, and will be teaching a new unit on writing horror comics next year. While I didn’t go to any conventions, I did really enjoy doing a panel on Jewish Australian speculative fiction with Jack Dann, Gillian Polack and Rivqa Rafael for Heinrich Heine University. The talk was recorded and I will post a link once it’s publicly available. In the meantime, please do take a good look at their Speculative Australia project on twitter and Youtube.

There’s also some stuff that I can’t announce yet which I hope will be game-changing for me. Despite the fact I began the year in a creative slump, my friends and colleagues brought work to me and at one point I found myself in the situation where I had to turn down an opportunity that I had applied for, and really wanted, because something better had come my way. 2022 is going to be a big one.

Huge thanks to my compadres Jason Fischer, Christopher Sequeira, Narrelle Harris, Gillian Polack and Emmet O’Cuana for all of their support through this year.

Even huger thanks to my parents David and Rhoda Franks for their unending kindness and generosity through the endless house moving process and beyond.And of course biggest thanks of

And as always, the biggest thanks goes to my ever-patient wife, who had to deal with home schooling our spawn, work and a series of terrible house moves on top of my stupid nonsense.

Happy new year, my friends. See you in 2022!

— Jason

Australian Jewish Speculative Fiction Panel

Hello, killers! I will be taking part in this panel about Australian Jewish speculative fiction writing, alongside the excellent Jack Dann, Gillian Polack and Rivqa Rafael this Wednesday. The event is being run by Heinrich Heine university as part of a research project, but it’s free and open to all. Please email australianprojectnrw@googlemail.com (as per the poster) to register. See you there!

Bloody Waters/ Blackened Skies

I now have a complete draft of BLACKENED SKIES, a full length sequel to my first novel, BLOODY WATERS.

I’m well aware that it’s been a long time since that book came out, but you have to understand, when I was working on Bloody Waters it was never my intention to write a sequel. When I finished the first novel I knew what happened next, and I thought I might come back and write some new short stories about Clarice and Johnny, but I didn’t intend to write another book.

I already had two of those shorts mostly done before Bloody Waters was published, and Possible Press released them direct to Kindle not long after the novel dropped: “Hellhound on My Trail”, featuring the bluesman Bad Jack Saunders, and “The Martyr and the Qarin”, which shows the first ti,e that Clarice has to deal with a supernatural menace by herself without assistance from her warlock boyfriend. When we decided to do these shorts we acquired three pieces of artwork to serve as covers, so I thought I would do a third short to round it all out. But I was busy with other stuff, and a few years passed, and Posslble fell apart in the meantime.

I don’t remember exactly why I decided to write that third piece, “The Depths of Humanity”, when I did. It’s another solo Clarice story, in which she runs afoul of some cultists while under cover on a Heavy Metal cruise. This one grew to novelette length and by the time I was done with it I wanted nothing more than to spend more time with the characters. This is more or less the way the first book took shape: I thought I would do some connected short stories about them and by the time I had 3 I knew I wanted to write a book. This time I knew it had to be different, though. Bloody Waters is about the rise the band, and the price they pay for success. In Blackened Skies they are starting at the top, and that means the trajectory of the story goes the other way. And because it’s a rock’n’roll book, it goes all the way.

Blackened Skies goes all the way to the apocalypse.

My friend Gillian Polack pointed out to me that this something I’ve already done. My second novel has the word Apocalypse in the title, and my next novel (X-Dimensional Assassin Zai Through the Unfolded Earth, due out next year) features something of the sort as well. But in Blackened Skies I wanted it to go bigger. A biblical apocalypse, from which there is no return. A rock’n’roll apocalypse.

There’s more I want to talk about–some other ideas that Gillian catalyzed which helped to shape the book–but I’m still organizing my thoughts, so that will be another post. (Two posts in a quarter? Believe it when you see it, folks.) But anyway.

In addition to the end of the world, Blackened Skies contains more of all the stuff you enjoyed in Bloody Waters, and more: music industry hijinks and demons and flying kicks and TV talent shows and black magic and celebrity feuds, but the tone shifts as it goes and I think it will surprise you a couple of times. It’s a first draft still, so there’s a fair bit of work yet to do, but I expect it will be out early in 2023. Stay tuned for some more definite announcements on that front.

Neither “Hellhound” nor “Martyr” are currently available. At this stage I haven’t decided if “Martyr” will have in Blackened Skies, but it’s looking unlikely. Eventually I’d like to do a collection of occult rock’n’roll short stories set in this universe, which would also include “Butcher’s Hook” and some new work. But first things first. The end of the world is nigh.

Bonus: Here’s the last piece of artwork: a stock image by Sergey Nivens which was intended to be the basis of the cover for “Depths of Humanity”.

Unused cover art for “Depths of Humanity”

Keep on rocking ion the free world,

— Jason