James Dorr's Blog, page 34

Angels, Last Girls Club “Devout” Issue 4 Received

The e-mail came yesterday, that LAST GIRLS CLUB (cf. December 23, et al.) had been delivered to my mailbox. Except it wasn’t there. But then, today, a similar message and, as I came home from the library and shopping, it was in my mailbox!

A miracle? Probably not, although dated as issue no. 4, Winter Solstice 2021, it is subtitled THE DEVOUT ISSUE. But then Editor Eda H. Obey explains: Well, if you’re still with us this far then you’ve figured out we aren’t pulling punches. It isn’t easy to confront who we fear as well as what we fear. And, yes I do fear the devout. Believing beyond all reasonable doubt is dangerous territory. . . . And these people need to be faced down. My country is devolving into a theocracy and I am not having it. Texas is turning into Gilead, conservative preachers are preaching sexual repression and misogyny from their pulpits, inspiring incels to gun down innocent women in massage parlors (Mar 16 2021 Atlanta, GA), the Supreme Court is tinkering with abortion rights. . . .

It goes on, with the issue containing eleven stories in all, all presumably concerning at least some aspect of religion or belief. Mine, eighth in the lineup, is “How Many Angels,” originally published in CREATIO EX NIHILO in July 1997, and involves the “Dancing Mania” — an actual phenomenon striking parts of Europe in the Middle Ages — and how, in this case, it helps right a wrong. Or at least maybe act as Divine retribution. And then beyond that there are eight some fact pieces, some but not all on Faith topics as well.

In all, it seems a quite full issue for its 48 pages. I don’t know if LAST GIRLS CLUB is available, though, in the usual places, Amazon et al., but ordering info can be found by pressing here.

Curiosities, First 2022 Publication Received in Computer Cave Mailbox

Well, technically it came out on December 22, still in 2021, and if given a date would most likely be the Winter issue, but as the year turns its arrival here was today, Tuesday, January 4 2022. So for purposes of this blog that makes it the first received in a brand new year.

It took half way to forever, at that, to even be published. The magazine is CURIOSITIES (cf. December 23, et al.) which accepted it way back on the first of May — in 2019! And the story older, appearing initially in 2012 in Untreed Reads’s YEAR’S END: 14 TALES OF HOLIDAY HORROR, but is a good story and one that I’m glad to see being reprinted. But also, as it turns out, for its new debut what better than an actual date at about Christmas time of a week or two later?

It is, after all, a New year’s story.

The call way back when, from CURIOUS GALLERY: Hello! This project is a comfortable two-headed beast at play in the curious and often dark corners of retropunk fiction. That means steampunk, dieselpunk, dreadpunk, bronzepunk, others too numerous to name punk . . . but not atompunk. Sorry, space fans, we draw our line at Sputnik. So in this case it’s “clockpunk” (although with a big clock that’s powered by steam), with the story titled “Appointment In Time,” about an Englishman taking part in an erstwhile colony’s time-honored — and at its heart primeval — turn-of-the-calendar ritual.

But see for yourself! For info or ordering one need but press here.

Casket Suite/Defenestrationism Flash Suite Contest Voting Open through January 15

Fan Voting
for
the 2022 FLASH SUITE Contest

You must vote for two (2) favorites,
or the poll will not accept your vote.

There are two prizes, after all.

Fan Voting is open until the stroke before midnight on
January 15th.

Thus the announcement: voting is open for two of seven Flash Suite Contest finalists, including my own (*ahem*) “Casket Suite” (cf. December 14, 10, et al.), a five-part saga starring New Orleans’ legendary Casket Girls, Aimée et les filles, who arrived in 1728 from France. And anyone can vote by pressing here. The only real rule, you must vote for two choices, the two you like best of which, hopefully, one will be mine.

If you haven’t read them yet, the site also has links to all of the contestants, and to biographies of the writers, plus pictures of sorts (we were asked, actually, for pictures of our favorite chairs, in which mine is already occupied by the Goth Cat Triana). And again you must remember to vote for two, and by January 15 — so ask your friends too. In any event the results will be made known on Martin Luther King Day, January 17.

Or for more information in general, press here.

First 2022 First Sunday Brings Vampire Regret

As it happens I missed December’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose Reading and Open Mic” (see November 7, October 3, et al.). But today is the first Sunday of a new year and, while having had its own hiatus up to last fall, “First Sunday” remains as a still-in-person live program, at Morgenstern Books, with me back as well.

Both featured readers this outing were Writers Guild stalwarts, local poet Eric Rensberger and Guild Chair as well as First Sundays coordinator Joan Hawkins. Eric led off with one in a series of prose pieces centered on old books, many going back a century or more and of often a personal nature, in this case including notebooks and letters on, as he put it, “19th Century heterosexual relations culminating in marriage” (although not excluding period digressions, in this case one on the symptoms and attempted cures of “prairie itch,” a.k.a. “Texas mange,” “swamp itch,” and other assorted local and/or descriptive sobriquets). Joan followed with a creative essay — with “trigger warning” — about an autumn she’d spent in the course of a college program in Sweden, including intervening in a suicide attempt by one of her Swedish fellow students, but with other more uplifting aspects as well.

In all about fifteen people attended, remaining for the post-break open reading well. In this I was fourth of seven participants (the last in absentia for Tonia Matthew, read by Joan Hawkins) with a tale I’d initially planned for December, “Dead Winter,” about a vampiress’s losing her temper on Christmas Eve.

Black Infinity 8: Rocketships, Spacesuits Out

It looks like top billing for me this time, though of course that’s just due to the cover design and my name being shortest. Nor is it the first time. But the real point is that BLACK INFINITY 8 (cf. December 11, August 25, et al.), with its final subtitle ROCKETSHIPS AND SPACESUITS, is now out on Amazon.

For those familiar with this great, (somewhat) retro science fiction magazine, I probably need not say anything more. Nevertheless, to quote fellow author Vonnie Winslow Crist (her story in it, “Below the Surface”) via FaceBook: For classic sci-fi fans, it’s 232 pages (with lots of illustrations): 15 stories celebrating rocketships & spacesuits (including 3 rarely reprinted Ray Bradbury classics). Also stories by Gregory Norris, Kurt Newton, James Dorr, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Alan E. Nourse, Randall Garrett, and others (including me). There are photo-illustrated feature articles on DESTINATION MOON (by film historian Justin Humphreys, curator of the George Pal Estate) and SPACE:1999 (by Gregory L. Norris); Matt Cowan’s popular Threat Watch retro-movie column; a look at the history of rockets and spacesuits in 1950s and ’60s pop culture by Tom English (with a comprehensive list of films); an all new comics story featuring the Last Star Warden by Jason McCuiston, and a classic, rarely seen, “lost” comics story by the legendary Alex Toth. So ring in 2022 with a blast of spaceship goodness.

Technically actually out December 30 2021 by Amazon’s reckoning, my story in it was also my first sale for the year just passed. Titled “Hanging Vines,” it is itself a reprint, originally published in CONADIAN SOUVENIR BOOK for the 52nd World Science Convention in September 1994, and has to do with opening new worlds a bit on the cheap, and the perils that come when one’s landing vehicle is a used spaceship.

But see for yourself, with much much more, by pressing here.

Triana Calls for All To Have a Safe New Year’s Eve and a Healthy and Happy 2022

(Triana’s New Year’s resolution is to make sure to always get sufficient sleep)

The Goth Cat Triana Wishes To All a Very Happy Holiday Season

She’s making her list, checking it twice. . . .

.

(Illustration discovery courtesy of Lynn Gaeta)

Another Promise Kept: Angels, Last Girls Club Out for Winter Solstice

The email was from Editor Eda Obey: What a delicious clutch of horror and derision. It was a pleasure to pull it all together. Thank you for an incredible issue. Tuesday was a crazy day of 12 hours of formatting and publishing the issue. At the end of everything my brain was mush and eyes felt like curried marbles. But the thing was . . . the “Winter Solstice” issue of LAST GIRLS CLUB (see November 20, 15) has come out on time, an electronic copy landing in my eBox this afternoon.

The story? An older one by me, conceived when I attended a Writers of the Future prize winners’ conference back in the earlyish 1990s, and published, finally, in CREATIO EX NIHILO in July 1997. The theme of the issue (LAST GIRLS CLUB, that is): DEVOUT: Martyrs, Cults, and Madness. What do you find frightening about deeply religious people and social movements? What does it feel like to be “possessed” by a god or goddess? What is it like to commit acts you would never believe possible?­ And so the story, about the Dancing Mania that manifested itself at various times in the Middle Ages, and a wronged young woman caught up in the madness, “How Many Angels?”

So, from the blurb for the issue itself: Feeling chilly? Need to get your blood pumping to warm your bones? Curl up with us. We’ll get your heart racing. Get your copy of the Winter Solstice edition of THE LAST GIRLS CLUB, the Devout Issue. Let our moon priestess reveal your destiny, tour our featured cemetery, debate death and god with our columnists, and enjoy a creepy slice of international terror. Buy it if you have the guts.

For which one can press here.

Curiosities 9, Appointment In Time Released; Also New Untreed Reads Sale Via Smashwords

Speaking of steampunk, let us recall just two posts back “Appointment in Time” (cf. December 16, et al.), my tale of clockwork and celebration originally published in YEAR’S END: 14 TALES OF HOLIDAY HORROR (Untreed Reads, 2012). As they say, “It’s B-a-a-a-ack!,” in this case in CURIOSITIES #9, having made its hoped for release date before this year’s end with about a week and a half to spare.

Quoting the blurb: Ten tales of horror and dark fantasy, each with the retro-vintage flair readers have come to appreciate from the CURIOSITIES anthology series. A poet makes a passage with death. A solitary monster meets another. Nazi war experiments run amuck on the Eastern Front. Unsettling sounds follow you through the New England woods. A sea captain takes in a mermaid, though it may be his doom. One very monstrous clock. And more. From the gothic to the grotesque, these exhibits will have you trading your steampunk browns for gothic blacks, and back again. “Appointment in Time” is the one about clocks, in final fiction spot in the contents, with more to be found, including ordering, by pressing here.

Then second, coincidence on coincidence, Untreed Reads has announced a new 50-percent off sale through the end of the year with my part in the mix “Appointment in Time,” this time as the lead off in, yes, YEAR’S END: 14 TALES OF HOLIDAY HORROR. The vendor in this case is Smashwords, more on which may be found by pressing here.

Death and Steampunk: Murder and Machinery Arrives at Computer Cave Mailbox

This is a bit of a late entry for the Black Beacon Books dark mystery anthology, MURDER AND MACHINERY: TALES OF TECHNOLOGICAL TERROR AND MECHANICAL MADNESS (see April 3, January 26, et al.), arriving earlier last week in my mailbox, albeit some time after publication. Per its back-cover blurb: MURDER AND MACHINERY is an anthology of suspense, science fiction, and steampunk showcasing the imagination of authors who know how to play on the reader’s fear of technology.

This is one I’ve been looking forward to, my part in it an opus called “Vanitas,” originally published in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, January 1996 (also reprinted in my first collection, STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE, Dark Regions, 2001). For a bit more of flavor, quoting from an Amazon review by “RJPetyo” (which, yes, includes a mention of my story too): ­Some of my favorites were “A Whole New World,” by K. G. McAbee, which points out that technological improvements sometimes leave the “little guy” behind.

“Don,” by Steve DuBois, is a timely tale about energy producing windmills that sometimes seem to have a life of their own.

“Vanitas,” by James Dorr, tells of a church getting a new high-tech organ.

“Tenterhooks,” by Cameron Trost, is a particularly gruesome one. Maybe the less said about it, the better. Just make sure you’re comfortable and well fed when you read it.

“A Little Kindness Goes a Long Way,” by Christo Healy, deals with a super advanced “Alexa.” Considering the title of this anthology, you can guess how things go.

Finally, “Lenora,” by Danielle Birch, is a little more mellow story about a woman seeking love on the English coastline. She meets a mysterious British Lord and things get very, very interesting. This one is a moody Poe-like piece that I really enjoyed.

If interested and/or for ordering info) press here.