Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "speculative-fiction"
New e-book
The English-only version of “Goodbye, Padania” is now out!! It costs less than a cup of coffee, from: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Please take a look (you can download a sample), and if you like it, please “like” it, maybe buy it and certainly recommend it to friends. Thanks!
Please take a look (you can download a sample), and if you like it, please “like” it, maybe buy it and certainly recommend it to friends. Thanks!
Blog Hop
We are hopping our way through some great reads. For those who aren’t familiar with a blog hop…it’s a lot like a treasure hunt — once you find something on one blog, hop over to the next blog link for more treasure. In this case, the treasure is a wealth of new and exciting books. Some are still being written, some are just being released. Either way, for fiction lovers…it’s a treasure, and I’d like to thank my friend Delinda McCann for asking me to take part.
You can find Delinda here: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
Here are the questions Delinda asked me, and my answers.
1) What is the working title of your book?
“Goodbye, Padania”.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My protagonist, Daria, was a minor character in an earlier story, also set in Padania. I wanted to flesh out her personality and look into her mind.
Italy has often had small states within its territory. Venice, Genoa, even Pisa have all been independent. Today, only San Marino and the Vatican State remain. Some people are pushing to carve a new one, called Padania, out of the north Italian lowlands, to be a haven of wealth and racism. I want to suggest that wealth and racism are incompatible in today’s Europe.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a kind of noir thriller set in the future, so I’d label it “speculative fiction”.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For Daria, I’d want authenticity. I’d cast among southern Italians for someone short, dark and capable of glaring razor-sharp daggers. I’d go to Hollywood or Cinecittà for Mercurio. Di Caprio or Raoul Bova might do. A gaggle of the latest pretty boys for Daria’s disciples who become her lovers. A real priest for Father Francesco, and a hologram of Charles Bronson for the villain in the final showdown.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Amid the death agonies of a pariah state, a young woman tries to escape the role that fate has apparently designed for her: killer.
6) Is your book self-published, published or represented by an agency?
For an anarchist like me, it has to be self-published.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote it as a series of short stories over four years. I ran them together in a week.
8) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The rise of racism in the country in which I was living.
9) What else about your book might pique the readers’ interest?
The psychology of Daria, I hope. The paradox of an ordinary girl who loves shopping and overeating, yet is a highly successful, cold-blooded killer.
10) What other books in your genre would you compare this to?
Nicoletta Vallorani’s “Eva” is a whodunnit set in a future, dystopian Milan. Irene Dische examines the banal mind of a contract killer in “The Job”. Harold Pinter often featured ordinary-seeming people who may or may not be killers. And Phil Zimbardo deals extensively with the psychological aspect in “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”. They go beyond a single genre, but I hope that “Goodbye, Padania” does, too.
Continue on the blog hop by checking out these other wonderful authors!
Rosemary Adkins: http://www.extraordinaryireland.blogs...
Dan O’Brien: http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.i...
Steven Nedelton: http://www.snedelton.com
Maggie Tideswell: http://maggiestorm.blogspot.com/
Delinda McCann: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
You can find Delinda here: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
Here are the questions Delinda asked me, and my answers.
1) What is the working title of your book?
“Goodbye, Padania”.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My protagonist, Daria, was a minor character in an earlier story, also set in Padania. I wanted to flesh out her personality and look into her mind.
Italy has often had small states within its territory. Venice, Genoa, even Pisa have all been independent. Today, only San Marino and the Vatican State remain. Some people are pushing to carve a new one, called Padania, out of the north Italian lowlands, to be a haven of wealth and racism. I want to suggest that wealth and racism are incompatible in today’s Europe.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a kind of noir thriller set in the future, so I’d label it “speculative fiction”.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For Daria, I’d want authenticity. I’d cast among southern Italians for someone short, dark and capable of glaring razor-sharp daggers. I’d go to Hollywood or Cinecittà for Mercurio. Di Caprio or Raoul Bova might do. A gaggle of the latest pretty boys for Daria’s disciples who become her lovers. A real priest for Father Francesco, and a hologram of Charles Bronson for the villain in the final showdown.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Amid the death agonies of a pariah state, a young woman tries to escape the role that fate has apparently designed for her: killer.
6) Is your book self-published, published or represented by an agency?
For an anarchist like me, it has to be self-published.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote it as a series of short stories over four years. I ran them together in a week.
8) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The rise of racism in the country in which I was living.
9) What else about your book might pique the readers’ interest?
The psychology of Daria, I hope. The paradox of an ordinary girl who loves shopping and overeating, yet is a highly successful, cold-blooded killer.
10) What other books in your genre would you compare this to?
Nicoletta Vallorani’s “Eva” is a whodunnit set in a future, dystopian Milan. Irene Dische examines the banal mind of a contract killer in “The Job”. Harold Pinter often featured ordinary-seeming people who may or may not be killers. And Phil Zimbardo deals extensively with the psychological aspect in “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”. They go beyond a single genre, but I hope that “Goodbye, Padania” does, too.
Continue on the blog hop by checking out these other wonderful authors!
Rosemary Adkins: http://www.extraordinaryireland.blogs...
Dan O’Brien: http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.i...
Steven Nedelton: http://www.snedelton.com
Maggie Tideswell: http://maggiestorm.blogspot.com/
Delinda McCann: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
Heresy
Heresy hits the Internet! Please go here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... and take a look at my new speculative fiction e-book. It is short, free and thought-provoking. I hope you will download a copy, read it and, if you like it, “like” it and recommend it both by word of mouth and by word of mouse.
NOW OUT: Madeleine’s Drug
Madeleine’s Drug is free and terribly addictive. Get inoculated here: http://bit.ly/19HeUAo
The music of the future
When you write science fiction, you tend to extrapolate current trends to picture the future. If you write social science fiction, you will look keenly at cultural trends. Last night, the BBC (which is watchable because they are prevented by statute from bombarding you into submission with commercials every few minutes) provided a neat juxtaposition of one aspect of culture, popular music, 50 years ago and today. What struck me most was the change in the clothing of the musicians. The men in “Sounds of the Sixties” were seen as alpha males at the time, but they'd only dress so flamboyantly these days if they were striving for recognition as gay icons. And almost every part of their body was clothed. On next was the Reading Festival, where the headliners were all stripped to the waist. So how about 2066? Will the disrobing have continued, perhaps to the point of musicians of all sexes appearing starkers except for high-tech tattoos, the shyer ones preserving their modesty with hologram pixelation? Or will a reaction have set in, with performers only appearing as holograms, perhaps not even of themselves but of depersonalised avatars?
Fine Fruit On The Nettle Tree
I'm very pleased to host this stage of The Nettle Tree's blog tour. You can find the book here: http://shop.claytonbye
The editors have asked me to comment on one of the stories that I found particularly striking. The Nettle Tree is an anthology that re-defines a genre – the Western – and does so largely by grafting elements of fantasy and science fiction on to it. Perhaps because I am a writer and fan of science fiction, I was most intrigued by John Rosenman's story, “State of the Art”, which, set in the future, looks at facets of our present and our past with humour and deep philosophical concern. Rosenman uses the tropes of the Western to subvert themselves, as technology from the future intrudes and overturns the apple-cart. He leads us to question what we expect from a Western, and why, and also to ponder whether “artificial intelligence” is a contradiction in terms. He achieves this with a splendidly light touch, and gives us the pleasure of seeing the new-style baddies get their old-style come-uppance.
Here are the book's details:
Title: The Nettle Tree
Publisher: Chase Enterprises Publishing
Editors: Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye
ISBN (print): 978-1- 927915-10- 3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1- 927915-11- 0
Format: Trade paperback and e-book
Pages: 166
Genre: Speculative Western
Price: $17.95 (print) $3.95 (e-book)
The book and pdf e-book can be purchased at: http://shop.claytonbye
It is also available on Amazon in print form and on Smashwords for all e-book formats.
The editors have asked me to comment on one of the stories that I found particularly striking. The Nettle Tree is an anthology that re-defines a genre – the Western – and does so largely by grafting elements of fantasy and science fiction on to it. Perhaps because I am a writer and fan of science fiction, I was most intrigued by John Rosenman's story, “State of the Art”, which, set in the future, looks at facets of our present and our past with humour and deep philosophical concern. Rosenman uses the tropes of the Western to subvert themselves, as technology from the future intrudes and overturns the apple-cart. He leads us to question what we expect from a Western, and why, and also to ponder whether “artificial intelligence” is a contradiction in terms. He achieves this with a splendidly light touch, and gives us the pleasure of seeing the new-style baddies get their old-style come-uppance.
Here are the book's details:
Title: The Nettle Tree
Publisher: Chase Enterprises Publishing
Editors: Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye
ISBN (print): 978-1- 927915-10- 3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1- 927915-11- 0
Format: Trade paperback and e-book
Pages: 166
Genre: Speculative Western
Price: $17.95 (print) $3.95 (e-book)
The book and pdf e-book can be purchased at: http://shop.claytonbye
It is also available on Amazon in print form and on Smashwords for all e-book formats.
