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Clockwork Chaos Reviewed at SFRevu

Sam Tomaino has kindly reviewed Clockwork Chaos, edited by Neal Levin and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, over at SFRevu. It’s a nice, thorough, story-by-story review. About my tale, “Cat’s Cry in Pluto’s Kitchen,” he writes:

Morris Garvey, who made a fortune with his business, Steam Sweeps and Machinations Sundry, and Detective Daniel Matheson of the New Alexandria police force are trying to solve the crime of the theft of Brazilian virtuoso Felipe Sandeman’s violin in time for him to play it at the closing of the World Expo. The case gets stranger and stranger and involved the cult of Bast, the feline god of the Egyptians. We are led on a merry chase with lots of twists and turns in another great story in this book.

Sums it up nicely. This anthology is full of great writers so click over to the full review for his thoughts on the other stories. Or pick up a copy of the book on Amazon.

I’ve got one more Machinations Sundry story due for publication this year. I’m planning to write one more, and I suspect there’ll be another one after that. I do believe this Morris Garvey fellow, his home city of New Alexandria, and all his friends and enemies have become my new series.

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“The Flying Rock” Coming in May in Bad-Ass Faeries: It’s Elemental

Back in the summer of 2011 I wrote a story called “The Flying Rock.” It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.

It’s part pure fantasy, drawing on classic faerie lore and legend, on Ariel, the faerie queen of the winds, and her dark counterpart, the queen of storms. And it’s part portrait of a father struggling to help his children grow up while his family crumbles around him. And on a another level, it’s deeply personal story about the beauty of childhood and the price we all pay to grow up. I’ve been eager to see in print since I first sent it off to my editor almost three years ago.

Well, the wheels of publishing sometime move at a crawl, but move they do, and Bad-Ass Faeries: It’s Elemental, the fourth volume in the BAF series, will be published this May. I’m thrilled to be in another BAF book and grateful to my editors–Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jeff Lyman, L. Jagi Lamplighter, and Lee C. Hillman–for keeping the series going and letting me be a regular part of it. Dark Quest Books will be launching it this in May, with a fantastic line-up of stories from many talented authors. I hope to have an excerpt from “The Flying Rock” to post soon. In the meantime, here’s the cover and the final table of contents.

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Earth Elementals

Kimberley Long-Ewing — Spin, Weave, and Measure

Jagi Lamplighter — On Rocky Ground

Judi Fleming — Friends in Dark Places

Air Elementals

James Chambers — The Flying Rock

Danny Birt — To Thy Sylph Be True

Danielle Ackley-McPhail — Ride Like the Wind

Fire

DL Thurston — The Face of the Serpent

James Daniel Ross — The Legend of Buck Cooper and the Child of Fire

James R. Stratton — Ties That Bind

Water Elementals

Patrick Thomas — Looking a Gift Horse

NR Brown — Melia’s Best Wave

Bethany Herron — Fairyland Local 2413

Spirit Elementals

Jody Lynn Nye — Fifteen Percent

Keith R. A. DeCandido — Undine the Boardwalk

Lee C. Hillman — Bad Blood

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A Clockwork Chaos

Dark Quest Books has published my steampunk tale, “A Cat’s Cry in Pluto’s Kitchen,” in A Clockwork Chaos, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail and Neal Levin, available in print and ebook. Although this is the second story of Morris Garvey and Machinations Sundry to be published, it’s actually the first one I wrote. Mystery and danger surround a stolen violin when the Cult of Bast returns to New Alexandria, and Morris Garvey must uncover the true motive behind the theft. The first published Machinations Sundry tale, “House of Automatons,” appeared in In an Iron Cage. The third Machinations Sundry story, “In Wolf’s Clothing,” is due out in 2014, details to come. A Clockwork Chaos include stories by Jeff Young, CJ Henderson, Patrick Thomas, Angel Leigh McCoy, James Daniel Ross, Gail Gray, N.R. Brown, and many other fine writers.

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Dogs of War–Defending the Future, Volume VI

Catching up on some recent releases, my short story, “Father of War,” was published last month in Dogs of War, the sixth volume in the Defending the Future anthology series edited by Mike McPhail. This volume is dedicated to military working dogs, and my story, which features a team of cybernetically enhanced solider dogs, is a thematic sequel to and set in the same universe and conflict as “Mother of Peace,” my story in Defending the Future, Volume III, By Other Means. With the exception of DTF Volume IV, No Man’s Land, which spotlighted only women writers, my stories have appeared in every volume of DTF. The award-winning series is well worth a look if you like military science fiction.

Defending the Future, Volume VI. Cover art by McP Digital Graphics.

 
Defending the Future, Volume VI. Cover art by McP Digital Graphics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!”

They have fought for us for centuries, not because of the ideals of service to King and Country, but out of unwavering loyalty and devotion to their human Masters. The future, it would seem, is no better than the past, as some animals become expendable weapons, or augmented semi-machines, while others receive the honor and dignity of being treated as fellow soldiers.

In tribute, we bring you seventeen new stories of our animal comrades-in-arms.

Featuring: David Sherman, Bud Sparhawk, Brenda Cooper, James Chambers, Judi Fleming, CJ Henderson, Tony Ruggiero, Christopher M. Hiles, Janine K. Spendlove, Jeff Young, Patrick Thomas, Edward J. McFadden III, Vonnie Winslow Crist, Peter Prellwitz, Eric V. Hardenbrook, Robert E. Waters, and Danielle Ackley-McPhail.

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Dark Quest Books Author Interrogation

If you ever wondered what goes on inside the mind of a writer, what drives us to do the things we do, what compels us to make the sacrifices we make, and to live lives of nonstop action and romance (in our imaginations), then check out this interview with me from the crew at Dark Quest Books, in which trade secrets are revealed, trusts are betrayed, and Bigfoot is captured and taught to play the piano (remember, imagination!), and also I talk about some other stuff, including my new novella, Three Chords of Chaos, and make a desperate plea to write a Godzilla story. (Wait, is that a run-on sentence? Where’s my editor…?)

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The Books Are Free But Magic Has Its Price

“Gorge released note after blistering note, and the audience soaked up his music like a rain of razor blades. They danced, whirled, and smashed together; they bled magic that flowed across smoky air, shimmering red and yellow with flashing stage lights, to feed the hungry core inside him. He hadn’t felt magic this pure and vibrant since his days in the Kingdoms; how ironic, he thought, to find it among these nihilistic, rebellious, angry young mortals. His left hand throttled the guitar neck, fingertips gliding among the frets, tapping and pulling the strings to slash out biting riffs until he reached a crescendo—

—and then let it all come crashing down.”

So begins my new novella, Three Chords of Chaos, a faerie-punk love story about music, mortality, decadence, and dark forces.

Published by Dark Quest Books, it will officially be released on May 31—but if you can keep a secret, head on over to Amazon, where it’s already available for order. Or if you’re the kind of bare-knuckle reader who likes your books the old fashioned way—free!—then check out my giveaway contests over on Facebook and Goodreads. Three Chord of Chaos follows Gorge and his mortal lover Delilah as they navigate the smoky shadows of the Big Apple’s underground punk clubs and the kinky, drug-fueled parties of the music world’s elite. A blend of punk music, urban fantasy, and evil forces, Three Chords of Chaos explores the dangerous nexus of faerie and mortal worlds where Gorge lives life on the edge.

The first time I wrote about Gorge was in “The Way of the Bone” (Bad-Ass Faeries: Just Plain Bad), set in the present, when Gorge stood at the top of the music world, playing to arena crowds, and moving ever closer to the darkness he sought to send to his enemies in the realm of the sidhe. In “Faerie Ring Blues” (Bad-Ass Faeries: In All Their Glory), I went back to 1960, only a few years after Gorge’s exile when Gorge learned how to live in the mortal world. Now, in Three Chords of Chaos, the time is the early 1980s, the place is downtown NYC, and Gorge comes into his own as he begins to understand how much magic and power there is for the taking in the mortal world—but also how deadly and vicious mortals can be.

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EPIC Steampunk!

I just got word from editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail that the anthology In An Iron Cage: The Magic of Steampunk has been named a finalist for the 2013 EPIC Award for Best Anthology. Congratulations to all my fellow contributors, to editors Danielle and Neal Levin, and also to editor Alma Alexander, whose anthology, River, published by Dark Quest Books, was also nomintated. My story in In An Iron Cage, “House of Automatons,” is my first published piece of steampunk fiction, although  it’s not the first I’ve written. The first piece is due to be published sometime in the not terribly near but not too, too far future–more on that soon, I hope.

UPDATE: To celebrate the In An Iron Cage’s EPIC Award nomination, the editors and Dark Quest Books are sponsoring a giveaway of three copies of the anthology on Goodreads. The contest runs through November 27.

 

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Corpse Fauna, Volume One, On Sale Now

The Dead Bear Witness front cover
Art by Glen Ostrander; Design by Christopher Mills

I’m excited to announce that my zombie novella, The Dead Bear Witness, is now available from Dullahan Press, an imprint of Dark Quest Books!

This is volume one of the four-volume Corpse Fauna series, which will complete a story cycle which I began writing in 1997. Although some of the Corpse Fauna stories were previously published, these new editions will present them in revised and greatly expanded versions with new stories to be published for the first time.

“The Dead Bear Witness” was the first to see print, in the 2004 anthology The Dead Walk published by Die Monster Die Books. It has been expanded to more than double its orignal length with a considerably richer story and deeper characterization. Also include in Volume One is the new story “Birch’s Refugees,” a 13,000-word piece that sheds new light one two of Corpse Fauna’s most important characters, Birch and the Red Man.

My intent with Corpse Fauna is to finally fulfill the potential I saw when I first wrote about Cornell and Della and a world where the dead come back to life.

A chronicle of survival in a world of the living dead. There is no Heaven or Hell; there is only blood and the dust of flesh.

True, it seems like zombie books (and movies, and television shows, and comics…) are a dime a dozen these days. But Corpse Fauna brings something unique to the genre in its characters, settings, social commentary, and the horrifying nature of its walking dead. A bullet to the head isn’t enough to stop the Corpse Fauna dead, and these corpses possess a strange and terrifying feature hinted at on the cover.

For more information, visit the Corpse Fauna page. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more about the series, including story excerpts and updates on the next volumes.

 

 

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More Love for the Dragon!

Editors are like dragons.

They’re sometimes wise, often grumpy, and they covet gold in the form of good writing. They like to sleep a lot too, under mountains of manuscripts, but once you get them going, they’ll torch villages to make sure every last mixed metaphor, split infinitive, and threadbare cliche is scorched to ash. Therefore it strikes me as most appropriate that the editors of Dragon’s Lure have garnered a nomination for Best Anthology at the 2012 EPIC Awards. My story, “He Who Burns,” appears in the book, introducting Max Toth, forensic alchemist of New Alexandria. And here’s the official announcement:

Dark Quest Books and Editors Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Jennifer Ross, and Jeffrey Lyman are proud to announce that Dragon’s Lure has been selected as a finalist for the 2012 EPIC Award for Best Anthology. Dragon’s Lure is a multi-author anthology with contributions by:  John Grant, Vonnie Winslow Crist, Patrick Thomas, James Chambers, Misty Massey, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Mike Penncavage, CE Murphy, Hildy Silverman, Bernie Mojzes, Randy Farran, CJ Henderson, Claire Stephens McMurray, Robert E. Waters, DC Wilson, Jean Marie Ward, Keith RA DeCandido, Anna Yardney, Jeffrey Lyman, James Daniel Ross, and David B. Coe.

This is not the first recognition bestowed on this collection. Recently the Washington Science Fiction Association announced the finalists for the 2011 WSFA Small Press Award,Jean Marie Ward was among those short-listed for the honor, for her short story “Lord Bai’s Discovery,” which is one of the stories in Dragon’s Lure. In addition, Vonnie Winslow Crist was among the top ten finalists in this year’s Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll for her story Weathermaker. To learn more about the book, please visit www.sidhenadaire.com/books/DL.htm.
Congratulations go out to our contributors and all the other authors honored by the committee with finalist status in their categories.

 

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Dragon’s Lure Review

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My story, “He Who Burns,” appeared in the anthology, Dragon’s Lure.  It was one of a number of stories I’ve written where I’ve managed to surprise myself. A dragon story wasn’t on the horizon for me in any form until I was asked to contribute to this anthology. What I came up with was a definite change of pace for me, one I enjoyed writing, and one that seems to have gone over very well with readers. Most recently Dragon’s Lure garnered some kind words from the You Gotta Read Reviews blog, which said, “…each of these tales were a delight which isn’t often the case in anthologies.” My story features Max Toth, forensic alchemist in New Alexandria, a city with a salamander problem.