Stand down or show down, baby let's get this done

Okay! So I've been swamped with house guests/travel/signing/etc. for the last week or two, and things have piled up while my attention was elsewhere. For one thing, I'm way behind on my word metrics; for another, I've been skimping on the Maplecroft news.

People are talking! Here are some highlights!


Maplecroft at Literary Escapism - "The debut novel of Priest’s new Borden Dispatches series is a departure from the post apocalyptic steampunk realm we have come to know her for. Taking off with the infamous Lizzie Borden, Priest creates an amazingly well-written story which takes heavy influence from Lovecraft. Priest captures an eerie reality which Lovecraft fans will adore."

Maplecroft At Bookish Dark - "This was an all-around excellent RIP read!"

Maplecroft at Dab of Darkness - "What I Liked: Everything!; the personal nature of the narration through letters and journals; the main characters know a little and have a vast mystery to sort out; the side romance with a homosexual character; the bioscience built into the story; the excellent use of suspense."

Maplecroft at StellarFour.com - "The whole setting felt claustrophobic as everything came pressing down. Tense, at times heartbreaking, I really fell in love with the mythology here, the historical twist."

Maplecroft at Geek Nerdery - "The cosmic horror is done well and set up nicely, the tension of the various relationships throughout play off nicely, and it definitely was something I was compelled to read in one sitting as the suspense built up. And come on, it's about Lizzie Borden hunting and killing fish people."

Maplecroft at The Paper Rose - [This review is one of my personal aw-shucks favorites, fwiw.] "Cherie Priest clearly understands what it is that made Lovecraft's initial short stories, despite their execrable writing and subsequent bastardizations, catch hold of people's imaginations in the first place: the unshakable belief in the accuracy and reliability of our perceptions despite clear evidence to the contrary; the absolute terror at the thought of that sanctity being violated by outside influences we literally cannot conceive of; the universal fear that those forces might not be external at all, but exist in the form of our own unconscious, only metaphorically represented by the depths of the ocean."

Maplecroft at the Ferrett's place - "The fascinating thing about this book is that it is simultaneously predictable and compelling, which is one of the hardest tricks to pull off..."

If any of these very kind readers/reviewers have piqued your interest, well then, allow me to make it that much easier for you to pick up a copy for yourself:


Maplecroft at Amazon
Maplecroft on Kindle
Maplecroft at iTunes
Maplecroft at B&N (Nook and trade paperback)
Maplecroft at your local bookseller via IndieBound
Maplecroft at Goodreads
And in OTHER book news, Publishers Weekly has weighed in on Jacaranda! And I, for one, am relieved/delighted/squeeful. Here's what they had to say:


This gripping postscript to Priest’s Clockwork Century series (which officially concluded with Fiddlehead) takes readers to the titular Galveston, Tex., haunted hotel, in an alternate 1895 seasoned with ghosts and gears. Father Rios is a former gunslinger cursed with second sight and a dark past. When Sister Eileen contacts him about the dozens who have died in the hotel, he visits ahead of an impending hurricane and soon witnesses the horrors firsthand. The hotel’s guests all have dark secrets, and the violence with which the hotel disposes of them is all the more horrifying as it takes place off-page, leaving only the aftermath for the characters to discover. Priest is hardly covering new ground, but the American steampunk setting gives the classic evil haunted house a nice new coat of paint. Rios is a great protagonist, full of conflicts and doubts, and he drives the tale well. While the story stands on its own, it also provides some melancholy closure for fans of Priest’s earlier books.

Click the awesome cover below to visit Subterranean Press for the pre-order info. Because it's more fun to click covers, than to click mere links. In my ridiculous opinion, anyway...






Here's recent progress on my modern gothic ghost story about a salvage crew trapped in a doomed southern mansion - now with a crunchy murder ballad center and Bonus! clandestine cemetery where the stones don't match the bodies (and were never meant to). As inspired by a (semi)true local legend:
Project: The Family Plot
Deadline: January 15, 2015
New words written: 1717
Present total word count: 44,123



Things accomplished in fiction: Found some awesome silver casket hardware; argued with cousin; took a break for lunch.

Things accomplished in real life: Neighborhood jaunt with dog; house work; laundry; Walgreens.

Other: I'm starting to think I'm just not quite ready to scare up that third pitch for yet another project ... maybe I should run with the two I've got, and start sample content for one of those instead. I mean, like I'd already planned. But um...failed to get underway.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 195,504
Greysongram.