Warren Rochelle's Blog, page 23

Mark Allan Gunnells Asks Me Some Questions about Writing and ....

Mark Allan Gunnells asked me some questions about writing and science fiction and fantasy and the creative process and a few other things.

http://markgunnells.livejournal.com/1...

Interviewed by Sylvia Kelso on her blog, February 24, 2014

I was interviewed by Australian fantasist, Sylvia Kelso the other day and I wanted to share a link to the interview. We talked about writing, fantasy, audience, the process, and fairy tales and various things:



http://www.sylviakelso.com

Other Views: Guest Blogger Mark Allan Gunnells, Master of the Macabre

Other Voices: Mark Allan Gunnells, Master of the Macabre
by: Warren Rochell

I would like to introduce my friend, Mark Allan Gunnells, author of Tales from the Midnight Shift, The Summer of Winters, Asylum, among others which can be found via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Allan-Gunn... . Mark lives with his partner, Craig Metcalf, in Greer, SC.

For a sample short story, click on this link: http://sideshowpressonline.com/?p=104

For more about Mark and his work, please visit his blog, at http://markgunnells.livejournal.com/

1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?

I tend to work mostly in the horror and fantasy genres. I do branch out from those from time to time, but I keep coming back to horror and fantasy. For whatever reason, those are the genres that call to me. As for the audience I’m writing to/for, hokey as it may sound, I think that would be me. I want my stories to be read and enjoyed by others, but when I’m actually in the process of creating a tale, I’m writing for myself. I’m writing the stories I’d want to read, stories that entertain and interest me.

2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?

I think Stephen King is a master storyteller, creating believable characters you get invested in and grounding his tales, no matter how fantastical, in a realism that makes suspension of disbelief a snap. Joe R. Lansdale is another storyteller I admire greatly; he writes some of the most natural, authentic sounding dialogue around. I’m a huge fan of Clive Barker’s short story work. He creates tales that are bold and original, and as someone who loves the short form, I have to give props to any writer that initially came to prominence through short stories. Lastly, I’ll mention Robert McCammon, because I respect his choice to step away from Big House publishing and turn to the small press in order to keep true to the stories he wanted to tell.

3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?

I have two new books on the horizon for 2014. A short story collection titled Welcome to the Graveyard with Evil Jester Press that will offer 21 pieces of short fiction. I tried to choose tales that would show a range of tone, subject, and even genre. Also, I’ll have a novel out in the summer from JournalStone called Outcast. It will be part of their Double Down series, my novel and a novella from author John R. Little in one volume. We did something interesting here, we both started with an identical prologue, then without discussing it we both came up with stories based off that prologue. I’m also toying with self-publishing two previously published novellas, Whisonant and Creatures of the Light, in a digital edition.

4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?

Just write, and write what you love. Don’t try to write like someone else, don’t try to write what is popular at the moment. In fact, for me personally, I find it’s best not to even think about publication during the creating process. That’s for later, after the work is done. Just find a story that excites you and tell it. That way, whether you publish or not, you will always have the joy of creating the tale, and that can’t be taken from you.

5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?

I guess I wouldn’t mind being asked what my current writing projects might be. Why, I’m glad you asked. Ha ha. Right now I’m collaborating with James Newman on a coming-of-age horror novella titled Dog Days O’ Summer. I’m having a lot of fun with this one, and working with James is a pleasure. I admire him as a writer, and our minds seem to run along the same wavelength. Once that is complete I’m planning to do a zombie novella called Fort. It will be a semi-sequel to my earlier zombie novella Asylum and will be set at my alma mater, Limestone College, where I seem to set a lot of my stories. Call it my own Castle Rock.

6. Anything else you would like to say or comment on?

I just want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me, and I want to thank anyone out there who takes a shot on my work.

Also check out Mark on Goodreads:
Mark Allan Gunnells

Some of Mark's titles include:

Ghosts in the AtticThe Exchange StudentGhosts in the AtticAsylumDancing in the DarkThe Summer of WintersThe QuarryWhisonant / Creatures of the Light

A Review of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey into the Feline Heart, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you are an ailurophile, then this is a book for you. Part memoir of life with his own pride (5 cats), part animal behavioral research, part love story, Masson draws upon literature and history and "the wonderful true stories of cat experts and cat lovers around the world, Jeffrey Masson vividly explores the delights and mysteries of the feline heart."

He explores nine emotional states of being or behaviors, ranging from narcissim to love to contentment to curiosity (which does not kill them) to anger and playfulness. Masson both confirms and debunks what people believe they know about cats. For example," are cats selfish?" Are they really narcissists? Self-centered? Reminding the reader that to think so is to interpret a non-human by human standards of behavior, the answer is, of course, no. "Cats may appear self-centered, but they watch us all the time, taking us in They see us; they notice us--a far cry from vanity."

As I write this, I have a cat in my lap. He wants to be there; he want to rub noses, and came in the room, fussing to get my attention (I know, that is my interpretation!) He wants to be petted. He wants to be be with me. As Masson points out, over and over, they want to be with us--just on their terms. In a while, Festus will want to get down and I will let him--until the next time he wants to be with me.

Does he need me, as Masson asks? I want to think so . Masson argues that as cats are happy to be themselves, maybe not. But they do love us and like being with us.

Catlovers, read this book for its "surprises and insights" that offer a new perspective on the deep connection between humans and their feline friends," written in clear and lucid and often beautiful prose.


Recommended.



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A Review of My Grandfather's Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen

My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging by Rachel Naomi Remen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am quite certain that the reviews of this beautifully written book have been copious and enthusiastic--so certain, in fact, that I almost decided that one more review would be superfluous. Maybe so. But these short true stories and accounts of Rachel Naomi Remen's work with cancer patients in all stages of the disease--remission to days from death, and of her work with doctors to help them remember they are humans working with humans moved me in a very profound way. They are stories of "strength, refuge, and belonging." She is indeed a "healer of the heart," and a master storyteller. She knows on a very deep level that we can and do "bless one another without knowing it," and that life is a blessing and a mystery and death is part of life. "We all matter and so do our blessings."

If that is corny, so be it. But why do we make light of our feelings? Perhaps we fear how naked and vulnerable it makes us to admit we have them. I wonder, as I write this, if my reaction comes, in part, from having gone through my mother's death back in 2006, being there as she took her last breath? And that my father's last end time is here. Yes, I think so.

Be that as it may, I urge you to read this book.



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A Review of Gossip from the Forest, by Sara Maitland

a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..." style="float: left; padding-right: 20px">Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales by Sara Maitland

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book. Beautifully written, well-researched, and an engaging and compelling voice kept me reading as Maitland travels through British forests through different seasons as she explores "the forest's role as the source of [Britain's] earliest and most vital cultural forms, the fairytale." Yes, these are British fairytales and these are British forests, yet, they are ours, too--these are universal stories and they are the stories many of our ancestors brought to American from Britain, with the memories of those forests. Her retellings of such stories as "Thubling," Hansel and Gretel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and others are magical. I wanted to walk these forest paths with her.

I stumbled upon this book whilst browsing in Blackwell's in Oxford, thinking I could read it on the plane home. What a fortunate stumble that was.

Highly recommended.



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A Review of The Geomancer's Compass, by Melissa Hardy

The Geomancer's Compass by Melissa Hardy

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The year is 2021 and Miranda Liu has an internship at Canboard, that has involved her with the rapidly developing new technology of Augmented Reality: all high tech and cutting edge. Then she is called home to her grandmother's deathbed and receives a family heirloom, a geomancer's compass and a mission: with her annoying and dyslexic cousin, Brian, find a way to lift the old curse on their Chinese-Canadian family. If not: disaster. Can they lift the curse, using the compass and old Chinese magic and the new technology of Augmented and Virtual Reality in time to save their family? I liked this sometimes funny and clever YA adult mystery/adventure/coming of age novel.



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Other Voices: Interviews with Guest Bloggers: Sylvia Kelso

Other Voices: Interviews with Guest Bloggers: Sylvia Kelso
January 15, 2014 at 10:05am

I would like to introduce my friend, Sylvia Kelso, Aurealis Award nominee, and author of Everran's Bane, The Moving Water, The Red Country, The Seagull, Amberlight, Riversend, Source, the Blackston Gold series, and her latest novella, “Spring in Geneva,” all of which are available via Amazon.

See more including sample chapters on http://www.sylviakelso.com/

1. How would you characterize your fiction? Are you writing to/for a particular audience or audiences?

Once I could have said, I think of my work as moral swords-and-sorcery – more emphasis on the ethics of using magic and might than on the tin-clashing. But though that fits even the unpublished Everran novels, the Amberlight series is more of an sf/fantasy genre straddler, and its focus is gender politics. And the Blackston Gold books you’d could only call fantasy crossed with time romance, adding a streak of mystery and police procedural, while “Spring in Geneva” is unabashed swash-and-buckle, with a dash of steampunk. Though like its close ancestor Frankenstein, it is concerned with the morality of science. Similarly, I suppose Blackston Gold is concerned with ecological morality. So maybe a concern with morality is the overall attribute. In my eyes, at least.

Once I used to try to write to an ideal fantasy reader who would get all the allusions and follow all the smart bits. Now, after a bunch of books and some very kind work-in- progress readers, I find myself concerned less with the target audience and more with anticipating clarity. Is this or that going to give a reader the correct meaning at first and perhaps only glance?

2. What writers have been major influences in your work and why?

In fantasy, Tolkien above all others, for the world-building detail, and the way LotR in particular conveys not only a living and loved landscape, but a sense of its long history.

Overall, Mary Renault, who could make dialogue mean more, and leave out more superfluous explanation, than almost any other novelist I ever read. But of course, writers collect something from everyone they read. It’s like spores off plants and flowers on your clothes as you walk past.

3. You have had some/or have some forthcoming work. Tell us about those and what your readers can expect. Continuing stories? New territories?

For already-out, 2013 was a good year for me, in short fiction. Two longer short stories written in 2012 both came out in 2013, along with “Spring in Geneva.” I was very happy especially because, unusually for me, all three were written not only in another time, but in settings I’ve never personally seen. I dislike generic settings of any sort, urban OR rural, so when I write anything set in “our” world, I like to visit the place: see the colour ranges, get a sense of the light as well as the layout.

With “The Honour of the Ferrocarril,” however, the Black Gang, or Creative Crew, decided we would write a steampunk vampire story set in the land of real vampires, ie. South America, and I ended up doing big research on the astounding 19th century railways of Peru, a place I have still never been. With “The Price of Kush” the same thing happened, only this time the setting was Africa, around 1500 BC. I was quite happy with the even larger amount of research, but more uncomfortable with second hand sources for the light values and the landscape, alas.

And for “Spring in Geneva,” which is set in 1818 and has the swash-and-buckle’s suitable amount of street chases, duels, and horseback road-hunts, I found myself working out streets in the Old Town of Geneva on Google, and hunting up Net images of the town. Thank goodness FOR Google, but all the same, I wd. have preferred to use my own eyes.

In oncoming work, in December I signed a contract for the 4th Amberlight book, Dragonfly, with Jupiter Gardens Press, who published its forerunner, Source. I was delighted because Dragonfly is in many ways the Amberlight novel nearest to my heart. Firstly, it’s a daughter-of, second generation story, so it fulfills one of my favourite writing itches, finding out What Happened After the Ending.

In Dragonfly’s case, it was 4 years after Source before the Black Gang had an answer to that. And said answer pushes the envelope for romantic relationships in a way still not much mentioned or accepted, even in these days of race, gender and sexuality awareness. That is, a relationship, as in Lolita, possibly too far across the age barrier.

It proved almost so for at least three of my work-in-progress readers, and I did quite a bit of micro-revision to keep the age difference but make it palatable before I sent off the ms to anyone. So for both those reasons I was very happy to have a contract for this one!

In current works-in-progress, I have two stalled novellas on the blocks, and now an invite to contribute a story to an anthology on “Cranky Ladies in History;” which has led to revising an entire old historical novel, that I think I’d now like to get published in its own right, at least after tinkering. But I’m very little further forward with the short story, alas. It may well prove to be new territory, if I only knew where.

4. What advice do you have for new and aspiring writers?

As I’ve said before, don’t quit your day job till your advance offer tops $500,000, and never say about a requested revision, It can’t be done.

5. Is there a question you wish you would be asked and if so, what is the question and what might your answer?

One I’ve been asked elsewhere, always helpful to writers, is:

Give me one thing you want readers to remember after they finish this blog?

To which my answer would be:
The names of those latest works? “Spring in Geneva” now, and, I hope, sometime in 2014, Dragonfly.

Sylvia Kelso

Tricks and Treats:Twenty Tales of Gay Terror and Romance, by Michael G. Cornelius

Tricks and Treats Twenty: Tales of Gay Terror and Romance by Michael G. Cornelius

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Yes, as Michael Cornelius reminds us in the introduction to this collection, we have all been afraid, and "we are going to be afraid again, at some point in our lives." For some of us, those fears will be "scary shadows, stormy nights, the creaking of a rusty iron gate. Loud voices. Sirens . . . Fear is perhaps the great universal experience" (1). As for romance in a crazy world--is he right, there are "few things scarier than falling in love" (3)? Think of how it felt to fall in love for the first time--and think of all the insane, crazy, things you did--and that you "happily [did] them--and would do them again . . . Love is, after all, greedy and beautiful and needy and all-encompassing. It makes us better than who we are, which for most humans, is truly a terrifying thing" (4).

And, when one adds in the complications of being gay in a society that taught so many of us for so long that we were other than human, and not worthy of love or loving, and that homophobia and bigotry are valid responses, well, that just ratchets up the terror, doesn't it? Yes, falling in love, loving, can be truly terrifying and this terror and this love is what Cornelius is exploring in these twenty well-written tales.

In "Clay," Cornelius explores these themes of terror and romance through the reimagining of the myth of the golem, this time told in a small Southern town that has no special festivals and apparently, no excitement--except Bulk Trash Pick-Up Day. Yes, that bad, and don't look for this date on your calendar. As Billy explains it, this is "just the day when folks in [his] town take all their big, hulking, useless pieces of kay-rap that they have been hanging on to for the past year or so--some cases, for decades ..." (20), and put them out on the curb. Billy is one of the town outcasts: abandoned by his dad, a drunk mother, and a screw-up. After "borrowing the principal's car and "bumping" into one of the town's only school buses, he was given the choice of juvie or the military. He chose the military--only to be caught there having sex with another soldier.

Now Billy is the "town faggot," and in the junk business, and to avoid competition, he picks up trash from the local synagogue--trash left out a day later than the Christians. This gets really interesting one year, when in the synagogue trash, Billy finds a "statue of a man, bigger than life-sized and an impressive sight to behold [and] brown the color of old clay and solidly built" (25). The golem. Things change for Billy after that. He has strange dreams, dreams of wild sex with his golem, and once he figures out the magic that animates this clay man, the dreams become real. Clay, aptly named, becomes Billy's lover, and his defender. The gay bashers who hurt Billy get bashed and the redneck bar gets trashed. Revenge is sweet. And Billy, he lives happily ever after, with his golem.

"Apocalypse. Now?" is both a dark and dangerous tale, and funny as well--and that Cornelius can combine these seemingly disparate elements in one story so successfully is an amazing gift. Jorge has been trapped in Bandleburg, Kentucky since he was twenty-seven. He is the town sissy. "Safe in the confines of the town's only beauty salon, Jorge was a dishy, swishy, sissy who could charm the old ladies" (43) and by being a predictable stereotype he could survive in a town where they liked the obvious and predictable. Jorge has humored the old ladies and survived, but he is lonely: he wants to find love. But now the zombies are out there and they know that live, edible people are inside the salon and they want in to feed.

Then, Evan, the UPS man shows up, "Manly, strong, handsome Evan, gentle Evan, who with his cocoa-colored skin was as much of an outcast as Jorge" (48). He had escaped the zombies but came back--for Jorge. Now he can confess his true love. And now Jorge has something to fight for.

Love is the theme of the collection's concluding tale (and one of my personal favorites), "Faeries in the Wood," a sweet coming out tale of college love, and faeries--a counterpoint to the darkness that is a continual thread in this collection. Four college boys are on a road trip, a quest as it were, to do field research for a folklore assignment exploring faerie legends in New England. For Ben, this is a dream come true: to be one of the guys, hanging out, doing guy things. He has always been the outsider: the skinny Chinese kid, "string bean, weirdo," or worse, "chink, gook." He is desperate to belong and when Scotty and Clark and Wally take him into their group, he is both dumbfounded and overjoyed, especially since Scotty is one of the campus golden boys. Ben doesn't quite believe that Scotty wants to be friends with him, hang out with him. Ben has "always wondered if it was all some colossal practical joke, and if someday soon, he'd just be the geeky gook stuffed back into yet another smelly, cramped locker" (324).

Now Ben is on a road trip, a quest, to find evidence of faeries. Faeries, it turns out, "are forever observers of human kind . . . They hate humans who act irresponsibly, or irreverently to them." Humans who have offended them will be "[bedeviled] . . . [with] loud knocks and noises, [stolen] possessions . . . spiders in their beds . . . Fairies also dislike humans . . . any human who is not true to himself" (324, 325). Ben is tested on this trip, especially when the boys pitch their tents out in the woods. Things happen. Loud knocks, noises, nettles, and spiders, which absolutely terrify Ben. "[H]is dream come true"--camping out with friends, hanging out, is a disaster . . . "everything sucked. Everything kept going wrong" (337). And he is also haunted by a constant mental refrain, even as he finds himself more and more drawn to Scotty: you don't fit in with them. You don't belong with them. When he finds out Wally and Clark are longtime lovers and that golden Scotty is gay as well, the refrain gets louder. Clearly the faeries were on his case. That golden Scotty is gay is unbelievable. All of which brings Ben to finally face his own truth: he's gay and he is in love with Scotty. This story has a happy ending. Ben achieves his quest: the grail of being true to his self, and the hand of the prince.

Not all of seventeen other tales in this collection do end with happily ever after, but then love, straight or gay, doesn't always work out or win. Sometimes the good guys lose. There are monsters out there, including giant flying squids and creatures that look like humans but aren't and eat bone marrow as a steady diet. Zombies, lots of zombies. Some of us want to be monsters; some of us are. We don't always get what we want; sometimes we do.

In this collection of gay tales of terror and romance, Cornelius explores the mysteries of the human heart in tales that are light and dark, tales of monsters and the all-too-human. You won't be disappointed.

Recommended.



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The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge

This summer I had the good fortune to spend 6 weeks in England--5 in Bath, where I was teaching summer school for the Advanced Studies in England program, which offers summer, semester, and year-long courses of studies to American students. I taught a course on Tolkien and Lewis and their influences on Anglo-American fantasy to a class of 15, 10 from my home school, the University of Mary Washington. The course included a study trip, which took us to both Tolkien and Lewis's graves, and Lewis's home, The Kilns, among other like places. In addition to teaching, I read, wrote, and explored. One time I found myself poking around St. Michael's, an Anglican church not far from the Royal Mail. Outside was a sign advertising their coffeehouse and their bookstore, Aslan's

Aslan's Bookstore: I HAD to go in and that's where I found The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, the author of a children's book I have long loved, Linnets & Valerians. On the cover: "I absolutely adored The Little White Horse," J.K.Rowling.

I bought a latte and the book: I had to.

I read the book on the flight home. In many ways The Little White Horse was quite similiar to Linnets & Valerians: a displaced child (or children), sent out to the country to eccentric relatives, odd occurrences and long, long-held secrets and mysteries, and the hint of magic. The displaced child becomes the agent of solving the mysteries, uncovering the secrets, reuniting long-separated lovers, and in the end she--Maria in The Little White Horse, and they--the four Linnets--help things become as they once were, as they should be, in a sweet rural England. She--and they--marry who they were meant to, and there is a happily ever after.

Predictable? Yes, but sweet, lovely, and magical, and just the book for an 8-hour plane ride.