C.S.E. Cooney's Blog, page 5

December 17th at Brooklyn Books and Booze

News from the “Brooklyn Books and Booze” newsletter of the great Randee Dawn:

Book and booze with us at Barrow’s Intense Ginger Tasting Room this month with:

C.S.E Cooney
Mary G. Thompson
Matt Talucci
Richard Sparks

Date: December 17, 2024
7 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Location:

Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room: 86 34th Street, Brooklyn, NY

Subway: D, N, R train to 36th Avenue, then about a 4 minute walk.

(This venue is inside what’s known as Industry City, a series of former industrial workspaces turned into food, drink and shopping venues. See this mapfor assistance, as it can be confusing the first time you go.)

The evening is free, but you’re encouraged to purchase at least one drink (they have non-alcoholic options) and tip your bartender. Barrow’s also serves some food.

Meet your authors!

C. S. E. Cooney is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author for novel Saint Death’s Daughter and collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep.As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, and quite a few podcasts. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. She co-designed the GM-less TTRPG Negocios Infernales with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez, available from Outland Entertainment.

Mary G. Thompson is the author of The Word, Flicker and Mist, and other novels for children and young adults, as well as the forthcoming sci-fi novella A Small Universe. Her contemporary thriller Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee was a winner of the 2017 Westchester Fiction Award and a finalist for the 2018-2019 Missouri Gateway award. Her short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Dark Matter Magazine, and others. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children from The New School and lives in Washington, DC.

Matt Talucci was raised in South Jersey right outside Philadelphia. He’s had a lifelong obsession with fantasy literature, and published his novel The Sword and the Tree in April. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross as an English Major. He also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, and an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University in the Teaching of English. He is currently a High School English Teacher and lives in Bridgeport, CT with his wife, son, and dog, Otis.

Richard Sparks is an English-born comedy writer, lyricist, librettist, author and director now living in Los Angeles. He has written extensively for television, film, radio and the stage as well as theatre and the opera. His opera libretti include original works, mostly commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera, and translations/adaptations of Classic operas. Richard wrote the Schoolmaster sketch for Rowan Atkinson (The Secret Policeman’s Ball). He was also a staff writer on Not The Nine O’Clock News. He had previously written two Edinburgh Fringe Oxford Revues starring Mel Smith. Richard has now turned his hand to fantasy fiction after falling in love with RPGs. The first book of a five part series, New Rock, New Role, was published in 2023 and the second book, published in November. Richard is also the owner of Sporting Life Bar in Las Vegas, a multi-award winning Nevada tavern that has been named Sports Bar of the Year every year since it opened in 2014.

Host/curator  Randee Dawn  will not be hosting in December; instead, Amy Goldschlager will take up the reins.

Arrive early to secure a good seat. There are lots of comfy places to situate yourself, but the best go fast. Additionally, some authors may have books there to sell, so be prepared to take home some copies!

Are you an author who might want to read? Our 2025 sign-up sheet is now available here.

See you Tuesday the 17th! It’s gonna be INTENSE!

— Randee Dawn

Mythic Delirium’s 26th Anniversary Reading!

Dear friends of Speculative Fiction, Indie Presses, the Weird, the Wild, and the Wonderous, greetings!

It is the 26th Anniversary of Mythic Delirium Books, a micropress run by Mike and Anita Allen, that specializes in speculative fiction and poetry, with a penchant for writing that’s challenging to classify.

In the past, the imprint provided homes to Mythic Delirium, a digital journal of fiction and poetry, and Clockwork Phoenix, a critically-acclaimed anthology series that showcased stories that don’t easily fit within standard market boundaries.

Please join us! Free tickets available on Eventbrite for our Celebratory Zoom Reading! Free! Virtual! 2 years with an Indie Press specializing in the Beautiful and Strange!

Sign up at our Eventbrite page below to receive reminder emails and the Zoom link!

Register on Eventbrite

Guess who’s reading? Nah, JK. You don’t have to guess! I’ll just tell ya!

Mythic Delirium 26th Anniversary Author Bios!

Born and raised in upstate New York, Amy Aderman enjoys fairy tales, research, and tea. Her fantasy short stories have most recently appeared in the “From the Lockdown” contest by Rochester Speculative Literature Association, Mythic Delirium, and the anthology “Ain’t Superstitious.”

Anita Allen is an enigma. She is a small Press publisher, editing books and short stories with her husband for Mythic Delirium books. She has a handful of writing publications. She is also an artist who has had her own shows and sold work internationally as well as done illustrations and cover art for several small press magazines. She is a semi retired competitive costume designer holding the rank of craftsman.

Given her druthers she would prefer to spend her days listened to rain on a tin roof or breezes through the pines,  painting, sculpting and creating things with fabric all while living in a stone cottage deep in the woods growing moss, studying philosophy, drinking tea and playing with her pets. Instead, she lives in a tiny house beneath giant oak trees in the heart of the city. Somehow managing all of the aforementioned things while occasionally filling in as an adjunct reader for various writing projects her beloved is working on. 

Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.

Marie Brennan is the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-nominated author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, the Onyx Court, other fantasy series, several poems, and over ninety short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s also written the Rook and Rose trilogy. Find her at swantower.com and on Patreon.

Edith Hope Bishop writes fiction, poetry, and music. She grew up in South Florida and spent several years in the Northeast, but her home for more than twenty years now has been the Pacific Northwest. She proudly holds degrees from both Harvard and Columbia Universities. She’s worked as a public school teacher, curriculum developer, and school volunteer. She’s mom to two teens and one schnoodle. With her partner, Edie publishes music as Foulweather Bluff. She loves to make elaborate costumes for her whole family and is fond of photography, beachcombing, gardening, and live theater. When she isn’t making art, volunteering in her community, or spending cherished time with family and friends, she can usually be found on, in, or near a body of salt water. Edie is currently hard at work to launch Songborne & Seabound Press in 2025.

Novelist, poet, and community organizer Leah Bobet works where climate fiction, the counterfactual, and food sovereignty meet. Her latest novel, An Inheritance of Ashes, won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Prix Aurora Awards and was an OLA Best Bets book; her short fiction is anthologized worldwide. Her poetry has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, and Canthius, and has shortlisted for the Prix Aurora Award and the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize. She edited poetry for the Utopia Award-winning 2021 issue of Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice, read for Grist’s Imagine 2200 contest, and is studying food security policy at Toronto Metropolitan University. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds grassroots infrastructure projects, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.

Beth Cato is the author of the Chefs of the Five Gods duology with 47North and The Clockwork Dagger series and the Blood of Earth trilogy with Harper Voyager. She was a 2015 Nebula Award finalist in the novella category. Her short stories and poetry can be found in hundreds of publications, including Fantasy Magazine, Escape Pod, Uncanny Magazine, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Beth hails from Hanford, California, but now resides in beautiful Red Wing, Minnesota, with her husband and two feline overlords. For more information about her writing and to explore hundreds of free, delicious recipes, visit www.bethcato.com.

C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep. Forthcoming in 2025 is Saint Death’s Herald, second in the Saint Death Series. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, and short fiction for podcasts like Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her music at Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.) Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios Infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”), co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez. Find her website and Substack newsetter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.

Francesca Forrest is the author of the novellas The Inconvenient God and Lagoonfire, both from Annorlunda Books, the novel Pen Pal, and a number of short stories—most recently “Semper Vivens,” from Andromeda Spaceways magazine. For many years she was a copy editor for the Mythic Delirium zine and helped out with proofreading a couple of Mythic Delirium’s Clockwork Phoenix anthologies. She was super honored when Mike asked her to write the intro to Yukimi Ogawa’s short story collection Like Smoke, Like Light, which Mythic Delirium published. Mike, Anita, and Mythic Delirium are the center of a great writing community!

Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the Athena Club trilogy of novels, including The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her other publications include short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, Snow White Learns Witchcraft, and The Collected Enchantments, as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She is currently a Master Lecturer in Rhetoric at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.

New York Times best-selling author Carlos Hernandez wrote the critically acclaimed short story collection The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium, 2016), the novel Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (Disney Hyperion, 2019), which won the 2020 Pura Belpré Award, and its sequel, Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe. He’s also written dozens of short stories, poems, and works of drama, usually in the SFF mode. Carlos is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches Composition, Creative Writing, Science Fiction, and other courses at BMCC. His work at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Program, where his academic interests have centered around game-based learning in postsecondary environments, has led him to work extensively game writing and game design. He has served as lead writer and a game designer on the CRPG Meriwether, as a writer and designer for the installation art of Mary Miss, and as literary curator on the Apple Arcade game Dear Reader, among other video games. As a co-founder of the CUNY Games Network and of the Board Game Designers Group of New York, he’s contributed to the development of many board and card games, both educational and commercial. Negocios Infernales, a GM-less roleplaying game designed by Hernandez and his wife, author C. S. E. Cooney, will be published by Outland Entertainment later this year. You can find him on socials at @writeteachplay.

John Philip Johnson has published literary and spec poetry in numerous journals and reviews. In 2021 he won a Pushcart Prize for a spec poem he had dedicated to Mike Allen, who had inspired the poem in 2011. His comic book of graphic poetry, The Book of Fly, won an Elgin Award. He’s proud to report he’s still off drugs and out of jail. He hopes to live long enough to see people on Mars and would go there himself if he could, but only if his wife, Sue, went with him. 

David C. Kopaska-Merkel, a retired geologist, won the 2006 Rhysling award for best long poem (for a collaboration with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). He has edited Star*line, an issue of Eye To The Telescope, and several Rhysling anthologies, co-edited the 2023 Dwarf Stars anthology, has served as SFPA president, and is an SFPA Grandmaster. His poems have been published in Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and more than 200 other venues. Some Disassembly Required, a recent collection of dark speculative poetry, won the 2023 Elgin award. Unwelcome Guests (2024) is his latest book. Find his blog at https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/

Barbara Krasnoff has had over 40 short stories appear in a variety of publications. Her story “Sabbath Wine,” published in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 5, was a Nebula Award finalist, while “Baby Golem,” from the anthology Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora, was a finalist for the 2024 WSFA Small Press Award. She also has a mosaic novel, The History of Soul 2065, published by Mythic Delirium Books. A full list of publications can be found at BrooklynWriter.com. When not writing genre fiction or hanging out with her partner, WBAI radio host Jim Freund, Barbara earns a living as Reviews Editor for The Verge.

Rich Larson was born in Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Canada. He is the author of the novels Annex and Ymir, as well as collections Tomorrow Factory and The Sky Didn’t Load Today and Other Glitches. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.

Sandi Leibowitz writes fantasy fiction and poetry, often based on myths and fairy tales. Author of the poetry collections Eurydice Sings, Elgin-nominated The Bone-Joiner, and Ghost-Light, her speculative poems have garnered second- and third-place Dwarf Star awards and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. Her poems and stories for children appear in Cricket, Highlights, Ember, Spellbound, Orbit and other magazines; Her picture book for older children, Magotu and the Leopard, illustrated by Christiane Krömer, has been published by Library for All. A native New Yorker, Sandi also sings classical, folk, and cabaret music. Don’t ask her to dance for you, however, as a recent vigorous cha-cha ended with her breaking her wrist. If you ask nicely, she will say something to you in Gaelic. 

Virginia M. Mohlere was born on one solstice, and her sister was born on the other. Her chronic writing disorder stems from early childhood. Other than Mythic Delirium, Virginia has emerged infrequently from her fort built of yarn and fountain pens to publish works in venues such as Jabberwocky, Fireside Fiction, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Cicada, and Through the Gate. She was the 2019 winner of the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story, “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change,” which appeared in Luna Station Quarterly. 

Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo, where she writes in English but never speaks the language. She still wonders why it works that way. Her fiction can be found in such places as Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. Her debut collection, Like Smoke, Like Light, was selected as one of Publishers Weekly‘s best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror books of 2023.

Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers. Poetry. Hia stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, Apex, Bestiary of Blood horror anthology, and Clockwork Phoenix 5!!! Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, came out from Random House in August and his solarpunk noir novelette Ice Like Honey comes out in Lightspeed magazine in early 2025. 

Kenneth Schneyer’s short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Sturgeon awards, found its way into various Years Best anthologies, and been translated into five other languages. His second collection, Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices (featuring an introduction by Mike Allen!) received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal in 2020. His most recent stories are “Tamaza’s Future and Mine” (Asimov’s Science Fiction) and “Winding Sheets” (Lightspeed Magazine). By day, he is a professor of humanities and legal studies, teaching courses as varied as advanced Shakespeare, criminal procedure, and introductory logic. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with his spouse, occasionally his grown children, and something with fangs.

Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages and tells living stories. Her short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing In (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, A Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She lives with one of her husbands and both of her cats in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper Belt object.

Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR. 

Poem for Patty Templeton on Her Glorious 42nd

For my Patty, obviously—a bit of doggerel to make you laugh

you’re a rich bitch, book witch
archivist, punk artist
rebellion librarian
poet of this world

nineteen years we’ve lived as peers
though debt and doubt and drought and fears
riot, triumph, treason, tears
we chafe as sand to pearl

Don’t know ‘bout the vote tonight
what song to sing, what note to strike
my heart is shrieking like a shrike
impaled on my bones

but there you are, my desert star
my pattyhawk, my mollymawk
midst monster trucks and splattershock
to pacify our jones

Hyperbolize or idolize:
Your carny-core, your cat-lined eyes?
Your Halloween-embodied being?
You goofy scarecrow clown!

Gothic, mythic, goblin, sapphic
Rhythmic, scary, sexy, graphic
Miss America/na Murderfolk
O hag-rose of our town

When shall we two meet again?
In Malpais or New England?
The Zoom, the Meet, the Chat, DM?
The Street of Many Porches?

Wish I could be there some-way
En-nachoed, tacoed, low-key yay
Light candles for you on this day
That really should be torches

My Can*Con Schedule

Saturday

1-1:50 Penthouse, Advice to Aspiring Writers

4-4:50 Vendors Room, Signing

7-7:50 Executive Boardroom, INFERNAL SALON

Sunday

10-10:50 Salon C, Cross-Pollination Between Writing Forms

Gothic Novel Prompts

Everyone got a written prompt and a pictorial prompt (see the charts below).

We rolled a 6-sided die twice, counting first across, then down on the chart of Kathleen Jenning’s fairy tale art chart. Then we rolled a 20-sided dice for a sampling from Kathleen Jennings’ “Girls Running from Houses” prompts.

Use them together to make something. It doesn’t REALLY have to be a novel! >.>

Christa Carmen
6-sided die roll X2, 3 across, 6 down: Locked Book
20-side die roll: 4

“The house has been infested by libraries and moths. The girl, like the false bride, dances alone.”

Zig Zag Claybourne/Clarence Young
6-sided die roll X2, 3 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 6

“She discovers that the house collects trapdoors. But in addition, there is a legend of a brooding mannequin, who digs holes in the lawn and who slams doors.”

Dr. Kathleen Jennings
6-sided die roll X2, 5 across, 3 down:
20-side die roll: 8

“It’s all happening inevitably, just as she dreamed. One girl runs from the house; another arrives on a Tuesday, seeking peace and quiet.”

Jessica P. Wick
6-sided die roll X2, 4 across, 6 down:
20-side die roll: 15

“The girl was long ago contrary, and she will become sarcastic. She is goose-eyed; she is what the house dreaded.”

Mike Allen
6-sided die roll X2, 2 across, 3 down:
20-side die roll: 2

“In a thunderstorm, the girl is escaping the house. But the house longs.”

Kenesha Williams
6-sided die roll X2, 6 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 20

“The girl was recently restless, and she will become peculiarly gifted. An ancient tree curses fate in the garden.”

Juliette Wade
6-sided die roll X2, 2 across, 4 down:
20-side die roll: 5

“The house is beloved of death, and the housekeeper is lark-hearted, and the girl is star-tongued.”

Rob Cameron/Cameron Roberson
6–sided die roll X2, 5 across, 1 (stays):
20-side die roll: 14

“When she flees the house, she will wear the mark of the house. The girl, unlike the house, is hound-swift.”

Dr. Lisa L. Hannett
6-sided die roll X2, 4 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 16

The house labours to discover whether the girl is amenable. The girl was recently morbid, yet she will become stubborn. The feared translucent lady, who leaves ice on the counterpane, turns out to be the groundskeeper.

For You, The Chat
6-sided die roll X2, 5 across, 4 down:
20-side die roll: 18

“In the sickroom, the girl sings to herself. Even so, a beetle undulates in flashes of lightning. When the girl arrives, the house is beset by spiderwebs. Just before she leaves, it will be afflicted with mirrors.”

KATHLEEN JENNING’S ART CHART: FOUND ON REDBUBBLE!

Kathleen Jennings’ fairy tale art chart! “Girls Running from Houses,” developed by Kathleen Jennings

Song for Caitlyn

(I started this in June 2023, around the same time I was starting to think of Hags of the Thorn. Which meant I was thinking of Ballads from a Distant Star. Which meant I was thinking of Caitlyn Paxson. I don’t have a tune for it, but nor did I think it should just repine in my journal forever…)

Caitlyn, it’s been a long time
Since the mines
Since the days all of silver and ore
My hair has gone gray
And my hips lost their sway
But you’ll still find me dancing
On festival days

How have you been since that dawn
In the dim
When you stood in your black cotton dress?
Saying “Clara, I loathe
All this labor and load
I’m longing to wander
Our unquiet roads”

Caitlyn, you vanished from mountain
And glen
When you shook off the dust and the grime
Like a knight on a hill
Standing tall and so still
And the mists rose to take you
O wither they willed

Caitlyn, we’ve changed since that day
That you left
Our walls are of good solid stone
The roads are all paved
We’re no longer enslaved
We don’t speak of silver
Still less of the ways

Wherever you wander, O knight
of the storms
On your horse made of fog and of rain
I’ve poured you an ale
And stored many a tale
And my door is ajar
Should you ride through the veil

Should you ever return to your town
And your friend
With your banner of green and your sword
Though you’ve passed into lore
I remain, evermore
Your Clara, who loves you
From shore to the shore
For shore to the silvery shore

I am NOT on Bluesky

Someone has been impersonating me on the BSKY app for months now. I just learned about it.

It’s under “CSE_Cooney,” with my face, my LinkTree, even the GoFundMe I ran for a friend in mourning.

But it is not me. I can’t report it because I’m not on the app, but several friends just did. Please don’t follow, and report if you can. It feels so gross.

HallowEEK! Sale

I’m still trying to navigate between what I write here and what I write on my Substack newsletter.

For now, I wrote a HUGE newsletter called “Read, See, Hear, Know: A Week and a Half of Awesome Things I Absolutely Need You to Know.”

So if you’re curious about that, it’s here: https://csecooney.substack.com/p/read-see-hear-know

Not in that newsletter, but something I did yesterday: I received and completed my copyedits for my story “Moons Over Sea” in the forthcoming Tanith Lee tribute anthology: Storyteller.

I LOVED WRITING THIS STORY. I love my demon Embrae, her four beautiful human brothers, their Fish Mother, and their Bread Mother. I love that thing about wishing wells. And that other bit about mills. I love the end especially. I CANNOT WAIT TO HAWK THIS ANTHO FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE. Embrae made me LAUGH OUT LOUD TO WRITE HER!

You can pre-order it here: https://tanith-lee-tribute.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

At the bottom of that newsletter, I talked about this sale at Solaris Books, but I’ll just post it here as a piece of good housekeeping: https://rebellionpublishing.com/sale/

The sale goes from today till November 4th! Saint Death’s Daughter is only $0.99, but look at all the other ones that are on sale.

I can PERSONALLY RECOMMEND: The Witness for the Dead, and The Grief of Stones, by Katherine Addison: set in her Goblin Emperor world. The third book is releasing soon! SO NOW IS THE TIME TO READ THESE INCREDIBLE FANTASY MYSTERY NOVELLAS!!! AAUGGH I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

Here was my blurb for The Witness for the Dead:

“Is there anything greater than discovering a genius in our midst? Granted, I’m last to the Katherine Addison party, but this band is so swinging, I’m just glad to be here. I adored The Goblin Emperor, and Witness for the Dead—also set amongst the elves, airmen, goblins, and ghouls of that world—packs another lightning-fisted literary wallop. High fantasy, murder investigation, ghosts, gods, and the opera: it rocks all my hot spots. Addison lavishes her ardent readers with adventure, new friendships, invisible enemies, and rewards us with her uncommon depths, subtleties, and kindnesses.”

If you’re in the mood for a haunted house novel, there’s A Theory of Haunting. And if you’re in the mood for a haunted HAMLET novel, read The Death I Gave Him, which I got to blurb!

Welcome to Elsinore Labs, where talking to your murdered father’s ghost is the least weird thing a death-obsessed young man might do before embarking on a night of violence and mystery. For anyone who loves Shakespeare, a haunted-house escape room, and a plot full of tenderness, philosophy, brazenness, and terror—as well as the unexpectedly erotic—Em X. Liu’s The Death I Gave Him is the book you never knew you’ve always wanted.

I’ve not gotten to read A Broken Darkness or Beneath the Rising yet, but they’re both by Premee Mohamed, so I WILL. I mean. She’s just. I mean. Phew. I DID read her Siege at Burning Grass, not on offer here, but snatch it up anyway, would you? Here was my blurb for Siege, so you know I’m serious:

“I plunged into The Siege of Burning Grass knowing nothing except that Premee Mohamed wrote it. What more did I need? And yet, it astonished me. A colossal work of fiction and philosophy, Siege is something like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind meets The Things They Carried by way of The Brothers Karamazov. I loved Alefret, Mohamed’s monstrous man of peace, instantly and wholly. I feared for him, I suffered with him, I raged alongside him, all against a backdrop of gorgeous and lonely immensity. I wanted nothing for days but to be reading this book.”

On Scratch Maps and Map Scraps

My friend Doc is reading The Twice-Drowned Saint. This is thrilling. I AM THRILLED whenever anybody reads ANYTHING of mine, and doubly thrilled if it’s one of those books that I uneasily think is “not for everyone.” (That’s pretty much all of my books.) (Not that ANY book is for EVERYONE.)

Don’t get me wrong. I adore The Twice-Drowned Saint. It’s the book about which my editor, Mike Allen, taught me one of my most useful phrases: “I stand by the work.” That’s hard to say. Harder to do. So many doubts. SO MANY DOUBTS. But I know… I know that I learned so much writing it.

Our gorgeous cover by artist Lasse Paldanius!

I know that it was, at the date it was written, one of my most ambitious structures. A novella that grew to be too big for its britches, but nonetheless still felt like a novella rather than a novel at 65,000 words. That liminal, boundary-defying darling. I know that I did so much research for it–about building with salt structures, about ice, about alpine rescue; I even interviewed someone who used to do it! Robert Peterson! The absolute darling! He read over the work and let me know what I needed to tweak.

My friend Magill, who knows everything about movies and the history of movies and about filmmaking helped me with some of the cinematic stuff. I structured every chapter as different shots of a camera, since the main character thinks in movies.

But I also think the work is dense. And maybe I let some threads fall? I don’t even know! Every time I read it I’m pleasantly surprised it’s not the mess it was just two drafts before. That’s the thing about final drafts. They’re not the ones that LIVE IN MY HEAD.

I am rambling. What I meant to say is: Doc is reading The Twice-Drowned Saint, and was interested in making a map of Gelethel. He asked me if I had one. I mean… I HAD one. I could almost remember it. The trouble is… which notebook is it in?

Thankfully, I’d digitized that one. So after a search for “Twice-Drowned Saint Notes and Cuts,” I found it, copied and pasted into that document! Thank you, past Claire.

The most glorious Phoebe Ashcroft’s fan art of Alizar the Eleven-Eyed from The Twice-Drowned Saint.

But in the search for that map, I found several others.

You all probably know by now that most of my stories, short and long, take place on the same world Athe. But depending on where you are on the world, and when you are in its time line, it’s going to have different rules, different gods, different ways of operating. If one whole continent, and the different countries on it, shares certain magical or religious beliefs, even with variations, it will operate more cohesively than a continent of scattered city-states that worship vastly different deities. Like, say, a city that, for example, is run by angels who went and murdered their god. (Ahem, The Twice-Drowned Saint.)

I didn’t intentionally do this when I started writing short stories. I just thought it was funny. Little secret giggles for myself. I didn’t think, twenty years later, there’d be interconnected novel worlds that I’d then have to justify to CLOSE READERS. Sorry, mi enjambre. I’m just not that awesome a tactician. More of a practical joker, but mostly playing jokes on myself.

Anyhow, I thought I’d share these bad maps with you. Because they’re hilarious.

Rough map of Gelethel

Yeah, I don’t know why I wrote “S” when I meant “E” for east, but that’s my scrap maps for you.

The city of Gelethel is diamond-shaped, but I made a square because that was easier on grid paper. I just turned it slightly so the top of the square was North.

And what is that shape in the middle? Is that the salt palace? What was I thinking? I probably made the map during an early draft anyway. Maybe things changed.

Map of Seafall, Drowned Lirhu, Doornwald, Amandale, etc… from Bone Swans, Dark Breakers, The Witch in the Almond Tree, my WIP Fiddle, and my short story in Uncanny Magazine: “From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins, an Account.”

See Kywit’s Grove on there?

See the Six Realms in the Northeast corner? I don’t know that I ever call them the Six Realms in the Saint Death book, maybe because I kept thinking I’d SURELY come up with a better name if I tried, but then it didn’t become important because they’re not, at present in the Saint Death books, unified at all, but that’s where Liriat, Rook, Quadiíb, Damahrash, Leech, and Skakmaht all are.

See the bottom right–Southeast–that says “Eastern Bellisaar”? That’s where “Godmother Lizard” (Black Gate Magazine), “Life on the Sun” (Bone Swans), and The Twice-Drowned Saint take place. It’s also where, if I ever write it, Zilch: A Tale of Nea the Nephilim will take place. (Or was it “Nea the Knighter”? All I know is that the main title is called Zilch, and it’s about Nea, who makes a brief but important appearance in The Twice-Drowned Saint.

Speaking of the so-called “Six Realms” see below. (Dang it. Now I HAVE to think of a better name for that continent. Once it’s unified. I wonder when THAT happens in its long history? Does it ever become a democratic republic, do you think? Or a meritocracy, like Quadiíb?)

…But, look. I can read my own map (sort of). If you count Kalestis and Umrys-by-the-Sea, as well as LOWER Quadiíb, it’s more like NINE realms anyway. DO I ever count Kalestis? (I remember using Kalestis for SOMETHING, but maybe that was in a former draft, or a WIP. I shall have to do a search.)

In the Saint Death books, Damahrash is still sort of a Rookish satellite anyway. It would be considered part of Rook? Maybe Kalestis is formed later? And Quadiíb is thought of as just Quadiíb, at least by the Lirians, even though Higher and Lower Quadiíb are very different entities, governmentally speaking.

So I suppose it COULD HAVE BEEN six, and later in the timeline becomes nine. Or vice versa.

Why even, fantasy novel?

I don’t really sit here answering questions about the world until a certain stage in a given draft.

Except books are… cumulative. And one’s oeuvre becomes this great spiraling accretion disk, with yours truly as the black hole at its center.

At some point, for Saint Death’s Herald, I had to figure out how far the character could travel in a day, and what each square of the grid represented, mileage-wise. Then I had to answer the following questions: “How fast does an undead flying tiger rug fly?” “How fast does a dragon fly?” “How fast does a sky house fly?” LOL.

And, obviously (it’s just becoming obvious to me now), between the Bone Swans/Dark Breakers continent and the Saint Death continent, there’s not just those weird squiggle mountains, but also “The Glistring Sea.” It must be so, because I’ve written it in.

Seriously, smalls, don’t take these maps to heart. Like the pirate says, it’s “more what you’d call ‘guidelines.'”

But I’ll leave you with ONE LAST ONE. I didn’t end up using this one as much. It was EARLY Saint Death’s Herald draft for Witch Queen’s City, in Leech. In fact, my research led me to model it off Castellfollit de la Roca in Catalonia, but here’s the map before the research:

Early ideas for Witch Queen’s City, in Leech (now called “Taquathura” to be respectful to the skinchangers who live there).

Anyway. That’s all. I just wanted to share it with you. It’s funny… looking at them all together like that. These are scraps from ACROSS THE YEARS. I am very haphazard about this sort of thing. And only when someone like Anthony John Woo approaches me about adapting my world for his 5e D&D campaign, or Doc wants me to make me AN ACTUAL MAP do I start considering the notebooks and notebooks full of this stuff.

So there. Have a present.

Spooky Reading! October 29th! Virtual!

Dear friends,

WE ARE DOING IT! WE ARE DOING OUR SPOOKY READING! NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT! 8:45 PM-10:30 PM EDT! Put it in your calendars, friends!

We are doing it on Twitch TV. You don’t even need a subscription to stream it! You can dip in whilst doing dishes and folding laundry! Wahoo!

Alas, I couldn’t come up with a better title than just “Spooky Reading” but, you know… VIBES.

Gregory A. Wilson is hosting us on his wonderful Twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/arvaneleron.

Carlos and I will be introducing the authors, reading your their bios (with FLARE!), and telling you about the awesome stuff they’ve got going on.

At the end of each reading, we’re going to roll some dice, and use Kathleen Jennings’s amazing GOTHIC ART CHART and a list I created from her “Girls Running from Houses” gothic bot to give each author their own unique GOTHIC NOVEL GRAB BAG! That is: a visual prompt and a written prompt that they can leave with… just in case they need to go off right away and write (another?) gothic novel.

At the end of the night, we are going to give the CHAT their very own visual/written prompt as well.

THAT WAY WE CAN ALL GO HOME AND WRITE GOTHIC NOVELS TO OUR HEART’S CONTENT!

All of which to say… it’s time to MEET THE AUTHORS!

Tonia Ransom

Tonia Ransom is a writer and World Fantasy Award-winning creator of horror podcasts NIGHTLIGHT and Afflicted. Tonia has been scaring people since the second grade, when she wrote her first story based on Michael Myers. You can follow Tonia @missdefying on all the socials. Risen is her debut book.

Check out the NIGHTLIGHT podcast at nightlightpod.com/listen and the Afflicted podcast at afflictedaudio.com/listen, and buy Risen, a horror thriller novella here: bit.ly/getrisen

Mike Allen

Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.

Check out his new horror collections Slow Burn at https://mythicdelirium.com/slow-burn#Burn, and his new short story “Service Sector” here: https://kaleidotrope.net/autumn-2024/service-sector-by-mike-allen/

Celebrate his forthcoming novel series The Stormblight Symphony: https://ruadanbooks.com/wordpress/press-release-17-september-2024/

Kenesha Williams

Kenesha Williams is an author, screenwriter, speaker, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag a speculative fiction literary magazine. She has been a panelist and speaker at StokerCon, the Horror Writers of America convention; Boskone, the longest-running science fiction & fantasy convention in New England; ECBACC, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention; and BSAM, the Black Speculative Arts Movement convention. As an, essayist she has written for, Time Magazine’s millennial imprint, Motto, Fireside Fiction, and I Am Black Sci-Fi, among other publications. Kenesha is also a screenwriter who is in pre-production on a horror web series and a short horror film.

Dr. Kathleen Jennings

Kathleen Jennings lives in Brisbane and writes Australian Gothic fiction and fairy tales and illustrates other people’s books.

Check out her short story collection, Kindling, at Small Beer Press, her Redbubble page at tanaudel.redbubble.com, and this beautiful crowdfunder she contributed to as an artist: Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s Great Oak Feasting Table. 

Cassandra Khaw

Cassandra Khaw is the USA Today bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth and the Bram Stoker Award-winner, Breakable Things. Other notable works of theirs are Bells Hells: What Doesn’t Break with Critical Role, The Salt Grows Heavy and British Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist, Hammers on Bone. Khaw’s work can be found in places like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Reactor. Khaw is also the co-author of The Dead Take the A Train, co-written with bestselling author Richard Kadrey.

Juliette Wade

Juliette Wade is a novelist who never outgrew of the habit of asking “why” about everything. This path led her to study foreign languages and to complete degrees in both anthropology and linguistics. Combining these with a fascination for worldbuilding and psychology, she creates multifaceted science fiction that holds a mirror to our own society. She is the author of The Broken Trust books: Mazes of Power, Transgressions of Power, and Inheritors of Power, as well as short fiction found in magazines such as Analog, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her Aussie husband and her two sons, who support and inspire her.

Dr. Lisa L. Hannett

Lisa L. Hannett is an award-winning author of over 80 weird and whimsical short stories, five collections, and a mosaic novel. She’s an Associate Professor Creative Writing at Flinders University in Adelaide, where she writes and obsesses about Vikings, dreams about fantasy food, and dresses up in costumes.

Check out her latest: Fortunate Isles, nominated in the Best Collection category for the World Fantasy Award this year (and available in a beautiful hardcover edition!) as well as Viking Women: Life and Lore, available in bookshops everywhere in Australia, but only in ebook internationally.

Jessica P. Wick

Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR. 

Rob Cameron/Cameron Roberson

Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and writer. He has poetry, stories, and essays, in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, New Modality, Solarpunk Magazine, Clockwork Phoenix Five, and others. 

Daydreamer is his debut middle grade novel. Rob is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and executive producer of Kaleidocast.nyc.

Christa Carmen

Christa Carmen is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, “Through the Looking Glass and Straight Into Hell,” & the forthcoming Beneath the Poet’s House. Find her at www.christacarmen.com. 

Zig Zag Claybourne/Clarence Young

Named as one of Book Riot’s “6 of the best Black indie scifi writers you should be reading” (Jan 2021), Zig Zag Claybourne is the author of the newly released fantasy Breath, Warmth, and Dream. Other works include: The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan and its sequel Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe; By All Our Violent Guides; Neon Lights; and Conversations with Idras.

His stories and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex, Realm (formerly Serial Box), Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotosaurus, Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, and others. In addition to being a Kresge Foundation Literary Fellow, Zig is a frequent speaker at libraries, conventions, and other learning institutions. zzclaybourne.com

Check out his new fantasy Breath, Warmth & Dream, featuring wraiths, witches, and beasts!