Aliya Whiteley's Blog, page 11

Neck and Neck

Lots of From the Neck Up: It’s great to think that the collection is out in the world as from today. Forgive me if I show off my starred Publishers Weekly review one last time with a link here.

Huge thank you to Titan Books for publishing five of my books, all with wonderful matching covers by Julia Lloyd. Here they are:

That is one good-looking set of books.

Thanks to everyone who has read or reviewed any of these, and if you’re thinking of reading From the Neck Up – I hope you enjoy it!

Lesser spotted things

Look! It’s the last of the Eden Book Society novellas, out now in the wild:

I loved being part of the Eden Book Society project, recreating the horrors of the 1970s. If you’ve missed it so far, you can find out about it here. And there were even audio versions with an introduction by Charlie Higson, too.

Speaking of spotting things, I wrote an article for Literary Hub about fly agarics and Christmas cards and caterpillars. It’s lovely to think of my fungal book out in the US, erupting in bookshops.

There’s less than a week to go until the launch of From the Neck Up, although I have seen it pop up in a few places already so if you pre-ordered you might well already have a copy. The opening novella, Brushwork, contains a lot of fruit, so here’s a small picture of fruit to pre-celebrate its release. I know, I’m early. But I’m excited.

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And I’ve been thrilled to see reviews and critiques of La Muta (the Italian version of The Loosening Skin) appearing. Here’s a link to a great review in BooksSpecial that mentions both JG Ballard and The Silence of the Lambs in relation to my skin-shedding story. Very cool. Thanks to everyone who’s reading and reviewing things.

September rundown

September! Hopefully the season of being able to get some writing done. But it’s also the season for new posts and podcasts and interviews and reviews to try to get the word out there about my latest publications, starting with the US release of The Secret Life of Fungi today.

I will be on radio talk show KERA Think – talking about fungal stuff – today! 6pm UK time.

If you can’t wait that long or you’re more of a fiction fan, I recently chatted to Intermultiversal about my short story collection From the Neck Up (released in a week or two) and my desert island Vincent Price movies. I was meant to choose five and ended up with a whole pile of them, including a lot of Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe. There’s another part to that interview that should be available shortly, dealing more with the collection and my Angela Carter vibes, amongst other things.

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And the first copies of Out of the Darkness, an Unsung Stories anthology featuring speculative takes on anxiety and depression (all proceeds to a mental health charity), have been arriving on doormats. I’ve got a story in this called ‘The Chorus’ that I’m pretty proud of. If you backed it, I hope you enjoy it, and all the stories found within.

La Muta, the Italian translation of The Loosening Skin, was published a few days ago, and I did an interview with Convenzionali about the inspiration behind the story, and how I feel about love and literature. You know, really easy questions to answer.

I’ll be popping up in other places throughout the month and I’ll put links up on the blog as I go. Right. Writing.

Visit the inn and the ice age

I’m very excited and quite nervous about tonight, when at 8pm UK time I’ll be making my debut in Second Life as a giant skull-headed flower in order to chat about the books and take questions from the audience. Come along! Or if you’re not on Second Life you can follow along on YouTube right here.

I have to say a huge thank you to Draxtor and his team who created a space station for me to visit, and then a recreation of Skyward Inn itself inside the space station. I had a quick wander around yesterday and it was an eerie experience, right down to the dartboard and the jarrowbrew.

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From the Neck Up (the short story collection arriving in September) is now on NetGalley UK and US if any reviewers out there want to request a copy. Ice ages! Singalongs! Monsters, aliens, and clowns! Gardens and glass sculptures and caves and other stuff! I’m still very pleased with the starred review from Publishers Weekly. Forgive me for showing it off again. Please do request the book if you’re interested.

Time to prepare for my evening in Skyward Inn! If I’m not back by morning maybe check the cellar.

Growth

At last! My brain has woken up a bit and I’ve been chucking ideas around for some new projects. It must be summertime. New things start to sprout. Meanwhile, the old projects are out there growing with a sneaky stealth that makes me even more proud of them.

Like this happiness spurt – a starred review for From the Neck Up in Publishers Weekly, along with a short interview about the new short story collection that’s being published in September 2021.

This collection is close to my heart. I first wrote the lead novella in it (Brushwork) to be part of a trilogy of novellas about youth, middle age and old age, with The Arrival of Missives and Peace, Pipe. Missives was published separately by Unsung Stories, and Peace Pipe found a home in the back of Titan’s US release of The Beauty. Brushwork made an appearance online but hasn’t been in print before. I’m really looking forward to getting my own copies of the book to see it.

It’s great to think people are taking trips to Skyward Inn. It has recently been recommended as a summer read for 2021 by James Lovegrove in the Financial Times. A huge thank you to James. Also, I had a chance to listen to the audio version of the book and thought it was stunning. What a sensitive and characterful reading of it. A strange experience, to hear it read aloud that way.

There are cover reveals for two new translations coming soon: The Beauty in Spanish (by Dilatando Mentes Editorial) and The Loosening Skin in Italian (from Carbonio Editore). Go, books, go! Keep growing…

Mining and pineapple

The plants are growing and before I know it new things will be in the world. At least two of them will be books of mine, including the US edition of The Secret Life of Fungi and my short story collection From the Neck Up. Those are both due in September, so I’m watching them sprout into action alongside my tomatoes and courgettes right now.

In the meantime, I answered a few questions over at Wottaread about writing and books and doodling. Also pizza. Go have a read.

Tiny Toxic Christmas

I couldn’t turn down a recent opportunity to write a bit of flash fiction based on the prompt ‘Toxic’, provided by Nico and Ben of The Tiny Bookcase podcast. We all wrote stories for the prompt and took turns reading them, then did a bit of critical discussion about our masterpieces that included chatting about James Bond torture scenes, dystopias, and George’s Marvellous Medicine.

You can give it a listen here. Many thanks for asking me, Nico and Ben! I had so much fun, and felt I got back into the swing of writing a little bit, too.

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And, in the spirit of my rediscovered toxic groove, I’m busy writing a seasonal short story for a new SF/F magazine called ParSec, which already has a phenomenal line-up of authors for its first and second issues. You can find all the details here, including a special offer for the first 1000 subscribers.

When I say seasonal, I mean the Christmas thing, so I’m currently trying to put my head into snow and gifts and Santas. I might be the only person listening to a Christmas Crooner playlist right now. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, and so on. Have yourself a merry one. See you in late spring on the other side of this story.

Short and long term home-talking

Today you can ask me, and nearly all of Unsung Stories, anything over at Reddit. r/Fantasy will be hosting us all day (well, from 12pm), and in the absence of being able to all stand in a large room together yet, I’m very pleased to do this as the next best thing. If only there were drinks and nibbles… hang on, I’m at home, I’ll provide my own drinks and nibbles. Mine, all mine.

You can find r/Fantasy here.

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Then more spending online time with brilliant people! I’m taking part in Cymera, Scotland’s annual festival of science fiction, fantasy and horror writing, so that’s how I can be certain that on Sunday June 6 at 2pm I’ll be talking to Caroline Hardaker and Cat Hellisen about the idea that there’s no place like home. Hmmmmm. Thinking hard about that in the wake of the last year. I might get some ruby slippers.

I think Cymera passes are available now, and having seen the weekend schedule, I’m geared up for a lot of very interesting stuff taking place. Have a look.

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But back to today… Reddit! AMA! Or AUA (Ask Us Anything) since the editors, designer and nearly all the authors will be there! Go go go!

Beyond the infinite

I made magnificently sticky easter-egg embedded blondies this Easter, and now, on the other side of the sugar rush, I’ll just give the blog a quick update on a few cool things:

The new issue of Shoreline of Infinity contains a SF not-first-but-last contact story of mine called More Sea Creatures to See. It’s got a lot of my favourite things in it, including theme parks and miscommunication. My first published short story of the year! It’s great to have found it such a good home.

Another piece of short story news, this time in horror: Beyond the Veil is an anthology edited by Mark Morris that will be published by Flame Tree Press in October 2021. Some of the writers involved in this are really incredible – if you’re a horror fan, you’ll be delighted with this line-up. Click on the link and have a look. My story, Soapstone, is hopefully one of those seemingly mundane tales that ends up giving you the shivers. I’ve worked with Mark before and he’s a wonderful editor and compiler of the sort of stories that you can’t forget. I’m looking forward to reading the other stories in this unthemed collection.

Aaaaaaaand more short story stuff… thank you to Lavie Tidhar for giving From the Neck Up, being published by Titan Books later in the year, a mention in a round-up of short story collections for 2021. It’s in the Washington Post! This is very cool.

Finally, if you’re interested in cover design, you’ll enjoy this piece in Spine magazine about the Dominic Forbes’ design process for Skyward Inn. The final cover is stunning, and this look through other variations and ideas explored is fascinating. Fonts and colours abound.

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What next? Maybe I’ll make some more blondies. I’m not quite ready for Easter to be over.

A skyward week

What a week.

Here’s a collection of links to reviews, articles and so on relating to Skyward Inn (If you haven’t read it yet and want to avoid spoilers, I’d recommend not clicking on the reviews just yet, just to be on the safe side):

Noah Berlatsky’s review in the LA Times: In the beautiful gross-out sci-fi novel ‘Skyward Inn,’ we are all aliens.

Wah. It’s the SF Book of the Month in The Times, reviewed by Simon Ings.

Lisa Tuttle, writing for The Guardian, calls it ‘an instant classic of the genre’ (insert incredulous noise of delight here).

A genre round up in the Financial Times features Skyward Inn as ‘wonderfully surreal’.

Fantasy Hive featured a great review written by Jonathan Thornton.

The British Fantasy Society review, written by Ian Green, can be found here.

Does Skyward Inn pass the page 69 test? Find out.

I chatted to Gareth Jelley of Intermultiversal Space about the book and writing and lots of other things. Thanks Gareth.

And I wrote a guest piece at SciFiNow about first contact books and films that I love, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roadside Picnic, and Mars Attacks!

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Next Monday I’ll be in conversation with MR Carey and Brian Nisbet about Skyward Inn and The Fall of Koli (a great end to a trilogy I’ve loved, so I’m excited to get to talk about it!). There are still a few tickets left for this online event, I think, so hope to see you, or at least sense your electronic presence, there.

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