Aliya Whiteley's Blog, page 17

Reading in 2018: Retreating and Regrouping

Happy new year! And happy new reading, too, with all the fresh new books that hopefully have come your way and are lined up in your future. I hope you find the time and space to read them all.

I have to admit I struggled to read as much as I wanted to in 2018, and part of that was a lack of enthusiasm that overtook me at times. I couldn’t seem to commit, reading or writing-wise, to more than a few pages at a time. I think that’s entirely my own lethargic fault as I let the news and real life invade, but I won’t feel too bad about it because it proved to me that really great books can cut through even the most slothful of states, and I was so grateful for each one that did. A heartfelt thank you to all the writers I read this year who managed to get me to commit to their worlds; it was no small feat.

Tade Thompson woke me up and badgered my imagination into taking part once more with both Rosewater and The Murders of Molly Southbourne. Both of those stories are electrically charged, passionate engagements with great big concepts. He’s a fearless and intelligent writer that I will continue to read whenever I get the chance.

Marian Womack’s short story collection Lost Objects looked hard at the future and found personal inroads into dangerous territory, holding the reader’s hand and leading them onwards. I’m going to return to these stories often, I think. They make kind and common sense to me as a way of dealing with the here and now.

I wasn’t expecting to fall back in love with hard-boiled detective thrillers, but Jeff Noon’s A Man of Shadows had such a beautiful precision to it, and an understanding of what we’re really dealing with when we investigate a crime, a time, a place and a personality. I’m saving the next book in the John Nyquist series for a time when I need it.

I was fortunate to have my latest novel launched alongside a new discovery that I loved – Peter Haynes’ The Willow By Your Side explored rural territory both familiar and frightening, and brought that world to life with delicacy and mournfulness. It’s a winding read that leads to revelations beyond the mystery as first presented, building and building to the final pages that held me fast.

Another writer that’s new to me (but no doubt not to practically everyone else) is Richard Brautigan. I came across The Hawkline Monster by chance in the library and couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before. It’s all Frankenstein and Magic and the Wild West and Ice Caves and, yes, everything deserves capital letters.

The graphic novel Rover Red Charlie (Garth Ennis/Michael DiPascale) surprised me in the best way. Once I found out that it examined a post-apocalyptic world through the eyes of a dog I was reluctant to get involved. I can’t bear dogs in books; they always end up dead, and I end up caring far more about that than about anything else that happens, for what it says about us as writers as much as about society. Killing the dog seems like such a cheap trick at times to me. But this was life-affirming and generous in its wonderful ending, rewarding the reader twice with its big-hearted decisions in the last pages.

And Lavie Tidhar’s The Violent Century was an imagining of superheroes in wartime that felt clammy and downbeat and perfect. I wouldn’t have changed a word of it.

I also leaned heavily on some of my long-term favourite authors to see me through the year:

I thought I’d read Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. It turned out I hadn’t. It was great, of course.

Iris Murdoch’s The Time of the Angels was a brooding Gothic tale of abuse that haunted my nights for a while.

Rupert Thomson’s Secrecy was created with his usual clear, beautiful style that I have come to cherish. I treated myself to another of his books for Christmas and will start it shortly; no doubt it’ll turn up amongst my favourite books for 2019. He’s reliably amazing.

The Quiet Woman by Christopher Priest was wonderfully slippery and strange while concerning itself with domestic and intimate events. How does he do that? I’ll keep reading everything he writes in the hope of working it out one day, but also because nothing entrances me quite like one of his novels.

I have loved Nevil Shute for years and when all else failed in 2018 I found one I hadn’t read before – In The Wet – and let him take me away to a 1953 vision of 1983. Visions of the future from the past become more and more revealing as we move both away and towards them. It reminds me of the dolly zoom (first used in Hitchcock’s Vertigo), both zooming in and tracking back simultaneously to produce a queasy feeling.

That’s an odd note to end on – queasiness as an enjoyable side-effect from the reading experience – but it’s probably a good call for New Year’s Day, when the hangover from last year starts to dissipate and there’s a pause between pages. Here’s to feeling and thinking all kinds of things from the books you read next year.

 

2018: The Year of the Multicoloured Splat

This time last year* I wrote a blog post about being a duck in the mist. I had spent 2017 paddling furiously under the water while looking serene and unruffled to onlookers. Lots of writing projects had been completed but not released. 2018 was going to be the year of getting those writing projects out in the world.

And it was. In 2018 I stopped paddling, made it to dry land, and became the creator of multicoloured splats. I splatted in all sorts of directions and had loads of fun doing it. There were black horrific splats and green/purple swirly weird splats. There were novel, novella and short story length splats. It was messy. I really enjoyed it.

*

2018 saw the release of both The Beauty and The Arrival of Missives in the US/Canada. Titan Books came up with two stunning covers, and also asked me to write two new novelettes to accompany those publications so I wrote ‘Peace, Pipe’ and ‘The Last Voyage of the Smiling Henry’, both of which got stuck into genre concepts that I love – first contact with aliens, and getting shipwrecked on an island with terrifying creatures. A big thrill of the year for me was taking a trip to Canada and finding copies of The Beauty in the bookshops over there. Amazing.

The Arrival of Missives was also published in Italian by Carbonio Editore. L’Arrivo Delle Missive is doing well, I think.

On home territory The Loosening Skin was published by Unsung Stories, and that had a beautiful cover by Tara Bush and gorgeous design by Martin Cox/Vince Haig. A crime/SF novel about love and relationships, it represented a bit of a change in approach for me, playing with time in the same way that I usually tamper with perspective. It’s quite a personal book for me and I’m glad to see it finding readers.

And I was part of the Eden Book Society project, but I can’t tell you any more about that. Ssshhh.

[image error] The Beauty on the shelf of a Toronto bookshop.

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Short stories! I had eight of them published throughout the year in all sorts of genres.

A bit of classic body horror combined with rambling: Corwick Grows was published in The Dark magazine in March. It’s based on a true story. I’ll leave you to work out which bit is true.

It was a real thrill to see Uniquo (my story from the 2084 anthology) appear in NewCon Press’ Best of British Science Fiction 2017. An old rollercoaster in a future of fear.

I nearly melted during the month of July but luckily for me the launch party for Tales From the Shadow Booth Vol 2 was in a dank cellar in London, and I sipped on an ice-cold pint while reading my story Ear to Ear aloud. It was wonderful to be part of that collection, and also to be cool for a few hours. Ear to Ear is proper weird – a tale of a butcher’s daughter with a hole through her head – and is one of those stories that makes me wonder about the stuff I come up with sometimes.

Chekhov’s Gun appeared in Far Horizons in August. Chekhov’s writing advice is that if you place a shotgun above a mantelpiece in Act One somebody had better used it by Act Five. This inspired a fantasy story about a world with a very big gun, and the relationship of the people to that weapon. It’s about tension, I think, which is classic writing territory to explore.

Just the fact that I’ve ever been published in Interzone makes me incredibly proud, and this year my story Territory: Blank made an appearance there. Proper sci-fi future-tech disguised as Victorian exploration, it goes to prove that messing about with time might be something I do more often from now on.

New Fears 2 was published in October and I was so pleased to have a story in that. Pack Your Coat returns to my obsession with stories and the power they hold over us. Also it’s set in Devon. I can’t let a year pass without setting something in Devon.

November rolled around and This Dreaming Isle was released into the wild. An Unsung Stories anthology, it featured a fantastic line-up of authors and a wonderful idea – to write about Britain’s darker history. I set my ghost story, Dark Shells, in Lincolnshire.

And to finish up there was the reboot of the Drabblecast, my favourite weird fiction podcast, and the joy of hearing their version of my zombie-dog-air-freshener-story Day of the Dog. Ending the writing year on downright strange is so good.

*

When it comes to non-fiction, my big news this year was signing up to write a regular column for Interzone. (See general excitement about Interzone above to give you some idea of how I feel about this.) Following in the footsteps of the marvellous Nina Allan is daunting, no doubt about it, but I’ve written two columns so far and I hope I’m beginning to find my way.

And I popped up at my favourite film & TV site, Den of Geek, reviewing a few things such as Sharp Objects and A Discovery of Witches. I also wrote a series for them on the subject of Noir SF Detectives and their Addictions, in which I got to namedrop a few of my favourite books of the year. I’ll do a proper blog post about that in the new year, though, because I’m hoping to read some more brilliant books over the Christmas period and I’d hate to leave them out.

*

Phew. That was a lot of splatting. I have to admit I didn’t get quite as much writing done as I’d like – no novella or novel this year – but that means I’m determined to get some big project done in 2019. Roll on January. But there will be quite a few new things published in 2019 anyway, thanks to all that frantic paddling last year. I can think of three short stories that will be coming up shortly. I think they’re all horror, which is quite exciting; I seem to have written a fair bit of horror this year.

My novel of gender roles and storytelling, Skein Island, will be republished by Titan in both the UK and the US next year, and we’ll continue the trend of putting a new novelette with that. I’m working on that right now.

But I’ll finish up with a bit of news. It’s already been announced that Unsung Stories will publish my new and very weird SF novel next year. I’m allowed to tell you the title now. It’s Greensmith. Yep. Bring it on.

Have a great Christmas, and I’ll see you in 2019.

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* well, a little closer to the end of the year than this but I don’t think I’m going to get an opportunity to do this later, so please forgive the early ‘end of year’ post…

 

 

 

 

 

Fearful dreaming and a date

Come to London! Maybe not right now, but in January. When all the seasonal madness is out of the way.

To be specific: come to London on Tuesday January 15th for the official launch of This Dreaming Isle. I’ll be there to read, answer questions and sign books, and I’ll be in the company of fellow writers Robert Shearman, Catriona Ward, Kirsty Logan, Gareth E. Rees, James Miller and Gary Budden. Amazing. If you want to get a copy and get it signed by lots of the authors involved this will be the place to do it.

Wait, I forgot to mention the actual place. It will be at The Star of Kings from 7-9pm. Here’s the meetup page with more details.

I’m already looking forward to 2019 for another reason; the line-up for NewCon Press’ Best British Horror 2019 was announced yesterday and my story from New Fears 2 is among them. Here’s the full list:

CAVE VENUS ET STELLA – Anna Vaught

WORMCASTS – Thana Niveau

THEY TELL ME – Carly Holmes

DISAGREEABLY HITCHED – Gary Fry

PACK YOUR COAT – Aliya Whiteley

VOICES IN THE NIGHT – Lisa Tuttle

THE FULLNESS OF HER BELLY – Cate Gardner

MAW – Priya Sharma

TEUFELSBERG – Madhvi Ramani

THE OTHER TIGER – Helen Marshall

SENTINEL – Catriona Ward

THE WORM – Samantha Lee

THE ADJOINING ROOM – AK Benedict

THE GOLDEN HOUR – Rosanne Rabinowitz

THE PERFECT DAY TO BE AT SEA – Kayleigh Marie Edwards

THE HARDER IT GETS THE SOFTER WE SING – Steven Dines

THE DEMON L – Carly Holmes

BY SEVERN’S FLOOD – Jane Jakeman

FISH HOOKS – Kit Power

OLD TRASH – Jenn Ashworth

BOBBO – Robert Shearman

A huge thank you to Johnny Mains for choosing Pack Your Coat as one of the stories, and also to Mark Morris for putting it in New Fears 2 to begin with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day of the Dog and a Deadline

This is a bit wonderful. I’ve always been a fan of the Drabblecast (they’ve done a great job of a few of my other stories in the past) but they took a break from the world of podcasting over the last few years, and I missed them. But now they are back, and I’m just so pleased that one of their first returning stories is one of mine.

Day of the Dog is odd, and I have a real soft spot for it. It’s a weird mixture of things, including zombie movies, unrequited love, and the beliefs we hold that we just can’t shake, no matter what happens in our lives. I gave it a listen this morning and I think Norm Sherman did a great job of editing and narrating this, and I also love the artwork by Toeken. A huge thank you to them.

Also – I have a hatred of stories that set you up to love a dog and then bump off that dog, so I don’t think I’m ruining anyone’s enjoyment by saying that doesn’t happen here and the story isn’t really about dogs at all.

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And deadlines! There are only two days to go in the Kickstarter for the Storgy Shallow Creek anthology, and my creepy and horrible story that made me want to wash while I was writing it, called The Alteration, is the last stretch goal. It’s £350 away at the time of writing this – here’s the link! There are some great authors involved in this so it’ll be well worth contributing, I think.

Launch ahead

I think The Loosening Skin is pretty much available as from now but the coolest place to get a copy of the book will undoubtedly be the actual launch party, which will be at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road (London, of course) on Tuesday 27th November. The best bit is that there will also be the opportunity to buy a copy of other Unsung books, including my launch-buddy Peter Haynes’ The Willow by Your Side.  There will be readings, there will be questions, there might be coherent answers, there will definitely be wine.

A huge thank you to those people who have read the book already and let me know how much they’ve enjoyed it, particularly The Middle Shelf blog and The Eloquent Page blog.

Just to be super-clear, here are the details once more in bold so it looks really official:

Book Launch

The Loosening Skin and The Willow by Your Side

Waterstones TCR

Tuesday 27th November from 6.30pm to 8.30pm

You can RSVP here. 

Touring and Stretching

The Arrival of Missives blog tour has been going swimmingly so I thought I’d just put up the relevant links here – I’ll continue to update this post every day with the interviews, reviews and articles related to the tour. So far we’ve got:

Five Old British Ways to Predict the Future at Civilian Reader

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of November 2018 on B&N blog

Five Weird Books of the English West Country at The Bibliosanctum

The Arrival of Missives reviewed at The Frumious Consortium

An interview with Paul Semel (also about The Loosening Skin)

A review and an extract of Missives at Book Referees

 

Meanwhile, back on dry land, I’m thinking about visiting a little place known as Shallow Creek. I hear it’s the destination of choice for all the cool writers this year. Shallow Creek is a fictional town of dark tales created by Storgy and they are currently kickstarting an anthology based on the place and the townsfolk, following on from a competition they ran recently. My story (if I get to write it) will be a reward for hitting a certain stretch goal. I’ve never been a stretch goal reward before. Thank heavens I’ve been doing all that yoga.

There’s a bit more info about Shallow Creek here, and there are lots of great writers attached to this project including Sarah Lotz, Dan Carpenter, Richard Thomas, and Ian Steadman (who wrote a Postman Pat-themed story here that I think about more often than I probably should).

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Missives on Blogs

The Arrival of Missives will be published in the US tomorrow! This version includes a short story called ‘The Last Voyage of the Smiling Henry’ that was loads of fun to write, and I’m so pleased to think of the book being out there, hopefully reaching new people.  It’s not a missive so much as a great big long list of questions that I often ask myself about life and love and science fiction and fate, and I hope it makes others think, too.

In order to help it do just that Titan Books have set up a blog tour that takes place over the next two weeks. There’ll be interviews, articles, reviews and all sorts (including the occasional mention for The Loosening Skin and other books along the way) in a number of places. A huge thank you in advance to all the bloggers who are taking part, starting with Civilian Reader. My post about old ways to predict the future can be found over there as from today.

Here’s the official list of those taking part:

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Down and Up with Noir, Launches and Space Novels

FantasyCon 2018 was so good that I’ve needed these past few days to recover from it. I signed loads of books at the launches of both New Fears 2 and This Dreaming Isle, and shared space with some wonderful writers. My only regret is that I had to leave before the awards ceremony, so I missed my publisher swearing at the entire room when Unsung Stories won Best Independent Press. Dammit. Still, I had a little cry of happiness on the train on the way home for him. Possibly the crying was also brought on by Con exhaustion, but I’m sure most of it was joy-and-pride related.

Now the release of The Loosening Skin really is imminent (we sort of launched it at FantasyCon too but it’s not really properly out there yet – the actual date is 5th November) I’ve been over at Den of Geek writing about the addictions we find in SF Noir. It’s a huge topic, but I managed to squeeze in a lot of my favourite drugs and detectives to the three parts, including Jessica Jones, Dark City, and Oliver Langmead’s Dark Star and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater. The Loosening Skin has a touch of noir to it, and certainly a very important addictive drug is crucial; it’ll be interesting to see if readers feel it’s a noir story or something else again. I’m not sure myself.

And space novels! Yep, I wrote a space novel and Unsung Stories will be publishing it next year. It doesn’t quite have a title yet, but here’s a little bit of information about it:

‘The fourth of Aliya’s books with Unsung is full of Whiteley’s trademark skill, wit, and unpredictability. Think a vibrant science fiction adventure for fans of Douglas Adams, inter-dimensional travel and big ideas presented accessibly.’

The whole Adams thing gives me the collywobbles, but heck to it. I decided a while back to get out of the way of my writing brain and let it do what it wants, and it wanted this. There is simply no point in repeating what I’ve done before, even though all my usual themes and interests always reappear despite my belief that it’s all new every time (is writing a straight line or a circle?). I’m delighted that Unsung will be publishing it (did I mention that they won the Best Independent Press award?) Brains go up and down and round and round. Enough.

Wearing a fantastic skin

This weekend (Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday) I’ll be in Chester attending FantasyCon, and I’m really looking forward to being part of the launch parties for two books: Titan’s New Fears 2  – which I’m currently reading as well as feeling grateful that I have a story in it – and Unsung Stories’ The Loosening Skin (which I’m just grateful to have finished and out of my head – phew). The Unsung launch will also include This Dreaming Isle, and Peter Haynes’ The Willow by Your Side. I’ll be buying my own copy of that; I read the first chapter recently and can’t wait to read the rest.

There are loads of interesting panels and events on as well, so hopefully I’ll get to watch some of those as well as being sociable, probably in a bar sort of area. Here are the times for the launches:

Saturday 4pm for Titan Books

Sunday 11am for Unsung Stories

With the contracts all signed, I’ll just add that Titan Books will also be publishing my novel Skein Island in 2019; it found an excellent first home with Dog Horn Publishing for a few years but the time has come to move on, and it’ll be great to see that book available in more places across the UK and US. So I’ll be celebrating this news at FantasyCon – come say hello and celebrate with me.

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Words and Fears

[image error]New Fears 2 was published yesterday, so that means my story ‘Pack Your Coat’ is out in the world, hopefully scaring people, along with all the other stories in that collection by some of the best writers around.

I like looking at the contents page just to see my name in there amongst them. A huge thank you to editor Mark Morris for including me.

Issue number 277 of Interzone is available now, and my Star Trek-inspired story ‘Territory: Blank’ is all present and correct; I explain what Star Trek and false memories have to do with it all in the editorial, right at the beginning of the magazine. Within the editorial I also mention the fact that, as from Interzone 278, I’ll be writing a regular column for the magazine about stories and other mind-blowing things, which is both nerve-wracking and amazing. I’ve long loved Interzone, and the chance to be a contributor in this manner is an honour. Thanks to Andy Cox. Here goes.

Before we get to issue 278, however, there are a few big events coming up, including the UK and US release of some books, and the attending of FantasyCon at the end of October. And some writing, so I’d better get on with it.