Sixteenth Time
A good week.
After pulling together a final version of the story for submission to Gaslight Grotesque (now entitled The Hand Delivered Letter, by the way), I sent it to Charles Prepolec and Jeff Campbell and then sat back to wait. Thankfully, Charles and Jeff had time to read it fairly quickly and let me know within a couple of days that they liked the story and that they’re talking it for inclusion in the anthology! Hurrah! Full details of Gaslight Grotesque aren’t available yet, but the book is available on Amazon.com for pre-order here:
Looks good, doesn’t it? Charles and Jeff will presumably have some line edits to suggest, so my story may yet need some tweaks, but a good result all round I think. My critical circle, in particular, deserve some thanks for this one, for acting above and beyond the call of duty and getting me comments back under a tight (and entirely self-imposed!) timeframe. So, Messrs Duffy, Thorley, Worgan, Hadley, Marsh and Ms Inger-Monk, many thanks!
And talking of tight timeframes… My plan after submitting The Hand Delivered Letter was to spend a couple of weeks writing and redrafting my planned for submission for Danel Olsen’s Exotic Gothic 3 but, as ever, the best laid plans gang aft aglay, as it were. Danel got in touch to say that, due to circumstances beyond his control, the deadline for submissions had been brought forward. To this Monday.
Monday.
I have never written so much so fast! The story (still with a working title of Copperbelt, incidentally) was completed across the following 6 days, written mostly in the evening or early morning. It’s out for comment with the critical circle as I write this, so as long as they don’t pick it apart completely, I can do final edits on Monday morning and get it to Danel before the deadline. I might have news on this next week – fingers crossed…
Creature Feature - June 1st approaches!
Next on the agenda is sorting out the final edits of the stories for Strange Gateways, which I’ll have done by the end of the week. And don’t forget, Creature Feature is now available for pre-order! One of my friends has definitely ordered himself a copy, so what are the rest of you waiting for?
Reviews: Finally! At last! The long-awaited review of Joseph D’Lacey’s Garbage Man. And I’m sure the question you asked yourself right about now is, has it been worth the wait? Well, i don’t know about the review, but the answer about the book is an unequivocal ‘Yes’. Garbage Man is a well written, smart horror story about waste and wastage. D’Lacey sets up a vast, complex story and manages (for the most part) to control his characters well, giving them realistic and well-defined characters and although the central message (that mankind’s time on this planet may be nearing an end, and that we’re likely to in some way author our own demise) is a well-trodden one, it is delivered with enough style and panache to be original and engaging. D’Lacey doesn’t shy away from some genuinely shocking imagery (the stuff with the baby, in particular, is upsettingly grim). Essentially, this is the story of Mason Brand and some very, very irritable garbage, and it is to D’Lacey’s credit that what could have come across as silly never seems to be anything other than deadly serious and mostly believable. It’s not without its problems, though: there’s a shift in gear towards the end, leading to an apocalyptical climax, comes a little out of the blue, and then disappears just as quickly (which is a shame, as the scenes as the town under siege were among my favourite in the novel and I could have cheerfully read more). The actual end of the book does make sense, and is impressively bleak, but it does seem to happen very fast and seems almost an afterthought, which is a shame given the strength of what had come before. Plus, I hated the term Necrolith for the main garbage beast, as it felt just a little too author-smart for me, but that could just be a personal opinion! Overall, highly recommended.
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