31 October 2014

Wicked Women Out Now!

Just in time for Halloween, Wicked Women (edited by Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber) has landed!  Available in paperback or ebook formats from your local Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com.  Spooktacular!  (Sorry. I'm not sorry!)



From thieves and tyrants to witches and warriors, here are twelve tales of women who gleefully write their own rules, women who’ll bend or break the social norms, who'll skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave.

Contents:


Juliet E. McKenna - Win Some, Lose Some
Christine Morgan - The Shabti-Maker
Tom Johnstone - Kravolitz
 A. R. Aston -  No Place of Honour
Adrian Tchaikovsky - This Blessed Union
Sam Stone - The Book of the Gods
Chloë Yates - How to be the Perfect Housewife
Stephanie Burgis - Red Ribbons
Jonathan Ward - A Change in Leadership
Jaine Fenn - Down at the Lake
Zen Cho - The First Witch of Damansara
Gaie Sebold - A Change of Heart


Published by Fox Spirit Books 
 ISBN: 978-1-9093486-9-1

20 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: Tanith Lee interviewed

Author of “The Mermaid” in Urban Mythic 2, Tanith Lee answers a few questions!


Tell us a little about yourself and your writing. How long have you been writing and how did you get started?
I’ve been writing since the age of 9 – about 57 years. Being slightly dyslexic (something unrecognised in my childhood) the school couldn’t teach me how to read. My father stepped in and taught me in a few months. About a year later, by then reading as a locust feeds, I began – as if logically – to write.

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?
The story came from an idea a friend told me and said I might use. It was so straightforward – shocking.


You’ve written widely across a multitude of forms and genres including horror, SF, fantasy, historical, detective, contemporary-psychological, children’s and young adult; in novel, short story, radio play and TV script form: do you find yourself drawn to any one in particular? 
All and any, if they call to me. When the inspiration comes, I’m off.

Is there any genre or style of writing you haven’t tried yet but would like to?
Anything, probably, again if I get that alluring signal.

What do you think of the current state of the fantasy/sf/horror genre?
I don’t take a lot of notice of that. I read the ones I love, and now discover new loves. But I read mostly, and widely, outside the three main ‘fantasy’ areas. Always have.

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?
None. From wonderful epic ideas and phrases can come rubbish. And from (perhaps) limited or clichéd ones, gardens of Hell and Paradise may flower.

What are you up to next? (Published works/conventions/random fun stuff!)
Some (Main House) reprints of some of my past work, and some new, for the USA, are under discussion. I’m also putting together lots of Lee short story collections, all including new original unpublished tales. These for UK, Australia and the USA. Conventions – I love them, but right now, no time.

17 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: Chico Kidd interviewed

Author of “Blood*uckers” in Urban Mythic 2, Chico Kidd answers a few questions!

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?
I’ve always had a soft spot for werewolves. About a year or so ago I started trying out a new voice, an NYPD detective who didn’t just happen to be a werewolf but had joined the police because she was one. “They say the real reason so many weres are drawn to law enforcement is we still want to run in a pack. Though if you ask me I think it’s just ’cause we like chasing stuff.” I spent quite a long time nailing Taz’s voice, and also working on her world (in short, the weres are cops and the vampires are the Mob) and how it all worked and fit together. This story came out of that— in effect, it’s backstory before I’ve even completed the present-day narrative!

Alchemy Press have also published your novella The Komarovs – tell us about that and is it connected to any of your other works?
It’s just one in the long-running series I call the Da Silva Tales, which comprises so far about twenty long short stories/novellas (a goodly number of which have been anthologised) and four-and-a-half novels, the first of which, Demon Weather, has been published by Booktrope. David Longhorn summed up the milieu thusly: “One not-so-fine day Portuguese sea-captain, Luis da Silva, found himself in Venice under demonic attack. The result was to make him a ghost-seer and necromancer— one with the power to conjure up those who’ve died before their time.” Set in the early years of the 20th century, the Captain amasses a “Scooby Gang” which includes one of the protagonists of The Komarovs— Harris the werewolf. In fact its original title was Wolfbane!


You’ve travelled a great deal and had many interesting experiences – are there any adventures that particular stick out?  What places or activities have you not yet experienced that you want to?
No adventures as such, but I learnt to dive in the Maldives in the 80s, when the coral was fabulous. Nowadays much of it is dead and white, mostly due to a voracious beastie called the crown of thorns starfish. We travelled round the world about eight years ago, and that was fun. On a later trip to Hawaii I visited the newest lava flow. Mostly cooled, there was still one stream of lava falling into the sea. Two years before, people had been sunbathing on that beach. Before my other half became ill, we would go to the top of anything and everything— many years before 9/11 I remember standing on the top of one of the Twin Towers. The view was astonishing. I’d like to visit Vietnam because I am a great foodie and their cuisine looks amazing.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? 
Romance! And probably politics.

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?
Chick-lit vampires! Buffy (and all who sailed in her) was genre-changing, but has sadly yielded to Twilight’s soppy bloodsuckers. That’s a great shame, IMHO. The Buffyverse also made humour and character integral to the action, which is what I aspire to do with the Captain and now with Taz.

What are you up to next?
The second Da Silva novel, The Werewolf of Lisbon, is due to come out this year, I hope, with the others to follow. To that end I need to finish volume five! I also have a story in Terror Tales of Yorkshire, out right about now. Plus I want to do more with Taz. I have this mad idea of writing the series backwards— first novel would be present-day, then go in reverse to the “thirteen years ago” of “Blood*uckers”. But I reckon that’s quite a long way off.

13 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: Sarah Ash interviewed

Author of “La Vouivre” in Urban Mythic 2, Sarah Ash answers a few questions!

Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
I love stories. When I was a child, I used to scribble after ‘lights out’ by the street lamp outside my window, filling little notebooks with barely legible scrawl in different coloured crayons. Growing up in Bath, I used to wonder about all the lives lived out from pre-Roman times till the present day and how what happened back then gradually became transmuted into local legend as it was told and re-told through the ages. Which is why what I like to explore in my own writing what would happen, for example, if a rational, enlightened eighteenth century soldier-prince encountered real, raw magic when waging war on the neighbouring country (The Tears of Artamon). I was trained as a musician and taught music for many years and my stories frequently feature musicians struggling with their craft. Kaito, the main protagonist of The Flood Dragon’s Sacrifice plays the flute – and an old song of his clan takes on a special significance as the story develops.

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?
A summer holiday in the Jura a few years ago brought us into Courbet country. Frustratingly, the new Courbet museum in Ornans was still being finished then, but we were able to visit a few of the places he depicted in his paintings. It’s atmospheric, tranquil, unspoilt countryside where time seems to stand still. As for La Vouivre, this isn’t her first appearance in my writing! I’m still working on a longer novel in which she is one of the protagonists … but set several hundred years earlier.


What attracts you to anime and manga, and have you ever considered writing in this form?
How long have you got? Well, first of all, there’s a distinctive attitude to story-telling and character interaction that I don’t find in other graphic novels or Western animation. For example: in a shounen (boys’) manga or anime like Naruto, characters get hurt and die, even when they have supernatural powers. It might be fantasy (with ninjas) but it feels real. You won’t find that kind of emotional realism in the animated shows churned out (mostly) by the US for YA audiences – and it’s why you won’t find much anime (unless it’s been heavily sanitised) on kids’ TV in the UK.

Secondly, I love the way that certain mangaka-like CLAMP (the celebrated four women team) weave Japanese mythology into their work; xxxHolic is still one of my favourite manga, with gorgeous Art Nouveau-style graphics and twisted tales that stretch the imagination of the reader.

Thirdly, a great deal of care and attention goes into the soundtracks for anime series; the work of gifted composers such as Yoko Kanno, Kenji Kawai, and Yuki Kajiura add so much to the whole experience with their imaginative and memorable scores.
Lastly, I’d really love to write in this form if a mangaka expressed interested in working with me (hint, hint…). And I’d be insanely happy if a Japanese publisher ever offered to publish any of my novels and – a frequent bonus in Japanese light novels – add illustrations.

If you could have dinner with any writer in your field (past or present) who would it be and why?
Alexandre Dumas the elder would make a wonderful dinner companion; given his colourful life and appreciation of all things gastronomique – he might even prepare some of the dishes himself!

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? 
It’s not so much a single subject as when unexpected events in ‘real life’ suddenly – and horribly – come close to a significant episode in the story that I’m working on (tidal wave/tsunami being a recent case in point) I find it almost impossible to continue.

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?
The teenage kick-ass heroine who is a ruthless assassin but also a brilliant and sensitive musician, looks good in a silk gown on the dance floor at the palace ball (make up Mary Sue-style shopping list of character assets as desired…). First person present tense with these young ladies is also becoming a little stale. (Was that two clichés?)

What are you up to next?
I’ve recently brought out my first original e-book, The Flood Dragon’s Sacrifice which is the first of a two-part Japanese fantasy, so I’m (desperately) trying to finish the second part. I’m also working on the sequel to Scent of Lilies a historical ghost story set in the Byzantine empire

10 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: James Brogden interviewed

Author of "How to Get Ahead in Avatising" in Urban Mythic 2, James Brogden answers a few questions!

Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
I love writing stories because I’m basically a control freak and for a short time I get to be god of my own little fantasy world. I also teach English, and my students will probably tell you much the same thing. I’m a naturalised Brummie, born in the north and raised in Australia. I loathe all forms of competitive sport, which is why I was deported from Oz, though I do like to get out into the mountains whenever I can to lose my head in something vast. When I moved to the UK as a teenager I very quickly fell in love with the weight of history which is layered into the landscape of the British Isles, though I wonder how much of that comes from having made Tolkien and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence part of my own internal landscape as a child. My grandmother, who lived back in the UK, made sure to send me and my brothers books which she considered to be quintessentially English; so as well as reading Aussie kids’ classics like The Magic Pudding, I grew up with Billy Bunter, Just William, and Biggles. When I moved here, it all sort of clicked, and it’s kept on clicking ever since.

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?
The idea of Jungian mythological archetypes in the collective unconscious – the psychological roots of all our myths – with a bit of tweaking to suggest that the archetypes aren’t just passive parts of our psyches which we tap into occasionally, but that they actively want to be incarnated as living human beings to act out their mythological life stories. And, of course, the inevitable political and media corruption of all this. Disclosure warning here: it’s a bit of a spin-off from my latest novel, Tourmaline, and the sequel which I’ve just finished, called The Realt.


Which of your previous works are you most proud of, and are there any that you would like to forget about?
I’m most proud of my story ‘If Street’, in the previous Urban Mythic collection. I wrote it on a long plane flight back from my brother’s wedding in New Zealand – which was the first time all of my immediate family had been together for about 10 years – and so it’s got a lot of my own feelings about the ambivalence of looking back on your life and wondering about the ‘road less travelled’, which I think crystallised reasonably well. I’m also a huge fan of Robert Holdstock, and I wanted to write something which riffed on the idea of the two brothers at the start of Mythago Wood. That weight of history thing again, and what happens when it falls on a person rather than a place.

If you could kill off any character from any other book, who would you choose and how would they die?
Maxim DeWinter, from Rebecca. His second wife should have learned something from the tale of his first wife, channelled some of her fiery spirit, grown a spine and offed him once she realised what a misogynistic bastard he was. Ideally, this would have been by pushing him out of an upstairs window so that he died surrounded by Rebecca’s rhododendrons, then dragged him into the house before Mrs Danvers set fire to it, disposing of the body.

Tell us about Project Tezlar – what’s it all about, and will you be doing any similar projects?
Project Tezlar happened because I wanted to build something physical based on a thing I’d written about (plus maybe a bit of work avoidance). It’s a model of a tezlar gun – a weapon used by some of my characters in Tourmaline to exorcise dreamers from our world who pop up in theirs and cause mayhem. It’s basically a big static electricity zap gun. I bought a nerf pistol from my local toy shop, tricked it out steampunk-style with a brass-and-copper paintjob and stuck all kinds of random cogs and switches all over it, the crowning glory being a plasma ball I put in which lights up when you pull the trigger. I also built a battery pack and had a leather holster custom made for it. If you want to see it, go to my blog. The next project is to make a PV detector to accompany it – but if you want to know what one of those is you’re just going to have to read Tourmaline.

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?
Vampire romance love triangles. Can we please put to rest once and for all the ridiculous notion that to these creatures we are anything other than food?

What are you up to next?
I’m putting the finishing touches to The Realt, which will hopefully be with Snowbooks soon after Urban Mythic 2 comes out. Assuming that [a] they like it, and [b] the timing all works out I’ll be launching it next summer at London Film and Comic Con 2015. The project after that is going to be more out-and-out supernatural; kind of a homage to Picnic At Hanging Rock, about a group of school kids on a geography field trip who disappear and end up somewhere … strange. Until then it’s back to the day job.

08 October 2014

Wicked Women: Warm Up!

Due verrrrry soon from the ever fabulous Fox Spirit Books, the one, the only, Wicked Women! (Edited, of course, by Jan Edwards and me!)


Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

From thieves and tyrants to witches and warriors, here are twelve tales of women who gleefully write their own rules, women who’ll bend or break the social norms, who’ll skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave.

Contents:
Juliet E. McKenna – Win Some, Lose Some
Christine Morgan – The Shabti-Maker
Tom Johnstone – Kravolitz
A. R. Aston –  No Place of Honour
Adrian Tchaikovsky – This Blessed Union
Sam Stone – The Book of the Gods
Chloë Yates – How to be the Perfect Housewife
Stephanie Burgis – Red Ribbons
Jonathan Ward – A Change in Leadership
Jaine Fenn – Down at the Lake
Zen Cho – The First Witch of Damansara
Gaie Sebold – A Change of Heart

06 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: Marion Pitman

Author of "The Cupboard of Winds” in Urban Mythic 2, Marion Pitman answers a few questions!

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?
There was a terrific writer called Paul Jennings, who had a column in The Observer from 1949 to the 1960s. The columns were collected into books, which is where I discovered them as a child. They are very clever, and very funny, but also often rather mystical. In one piece he writes about modern local deities, and mentions a cupboard from which draughts blow, and speculates that if you opened the door suddenly you’d see all the winds sitting inside. So I stole the idea and expanded it. I tried various ways of doing it until it finally came out like this.

How would you describe the kinds of stories you usually write and does this Urban Mythic story depart from that?
Well I write quite a lot of ghost stories, but I also write some fantasy and SF, and odd bits in other genres, sometimes humorous, so I’m not sure there’s any usual to depart from, really.


What are you currently reading?
China Miéville’s Railsea, Zoë Marriott’s The Night Itselfboth brilliant – and Stella Gibbons’ Conference at Cold Comfort Farm – not a patch on the first book but still amusing.

If you could have dinner with any writer in your field (past or present) who would it be and why?
As to the present, too many to choose from, but from the past, I think I’d narrow it down to G.K. Chesterton or Charles Williams. GKC should be very good company, but I think I’d take Williams – his books are fascinating, take a bit of effort but are well worth it; he sounds an interesting person, and I don’t know much about him. And there would always be the possibility of some gossip about the other Inklings!

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?
Difficult. I rather wish downbeat endings weren’t quite so much de rigueur. I’m old fashioned, I like the decent people either to triumph or to be avenged. I feel down if the villains don’t get their come-uppance.

What are you up to next?
Publishing wise, got a story due out next year in The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Vatican Vaults from Constable and Robinson, and if all goes well, next year also I should have a collection coming out from Alchemy Press. And hopefully watch some cricket before the season ends.

02 October 2014

Urban Mythic 2: K T Davies Interviewed

Author of “For the Memory of Jane” in Urban Mythic 2, K.T. Davies answers a few questions!


Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.

My high school English teacher, Mr Tempest, told me that I wanted to be a writer before I realised I wanted to be a writer. He also told me that I wrote like James Joyce which I think had more to do with my inability to punctuate rather than content. I was ‘home schooled’ for a goodly chunk of my early childhood which amounted to running wild, exploring derelict buildings and feeding cake to feral cats. I think my, somewhat unconventional, childhood influenced my writing in many ways.

What is at the root of your Urban Mythic story?

Bradford has a long and grim and bloody history that really does include Vikings. For this story I pillaged anecdotes that I heard growing up. I think the ancestors would approve.

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

It was from Robin Hobb at a reading/signing she did in Huddersfield (I think), many moons ago. My eldest child was a toddler and I was struggling to square the life/writing circle. In short and to paraphrase, it was along the lines of ‘don’t sweat the housework, write’.


What do you like to do when you’re not writing, and does it come in useful for your stories?

I like to paint and read and play games, which does indeed come in useful but then I find that everything does. I’m a bit of a magpie and file everything interesting away for later use.

How did you get into a knife fight and has the experience slipped into your fiction?

It’s not as exciting as it sounds but yes, a practical knowledge of arms and armour does help when writing ye olde fight scenes. I used to re-enact and had just arrived on site for a weekend of 17th century frolics when a friend and I tried out some new stabbers. The main-gauche (parrying dagger) I was using had rather flamboyant and somewhat pointless, as it turns out, quillons. I thought I’d caught my sparring partner’s blade on said quillons and stepped in, ready to administer the coup de grace.

Or so I thought.

His blade slipped free, and sheathed itself in my thigh. Voila! I won a scar, a ruined pair of jogging bottoms, and an anecdote.

Room 101 time: what one genre cliché would you get rid of?

I’d just consign lazy writing to room 101.

What are you up to next?

By the time this is posted I’d participated on some panels about all things nerdy at Loncon 3, the World SF Convention. I then attended FantasyCon in York where two of my favourite publishers were up for awards and where Urban Mythic 2 and my new novel Breed were both launched.

I’m currently trying to finish Breed 2 and the follow up to my first novel (The Red Knight), which is called The Golden Hart. I’m also editing an edition of the BSFA Focus magazine which will be about writing for computer games and comics, two of my other loves. I’ve also got another short story coming out later this year in Fox Spirit’s Mouse and Minotaur anthology.

Find out more about K.T Davies on her website here!