The Devil's Exercise Yard

Rasputin's Bastards is available for pre-order...

2012-01-12T11:12:00.001-05:00

It's the collectable hardcover, so it's expensive, but my Cold War novel Rasputin's Bastards is available for pre-order for those that like to collect. This edition will cost you - it's going for $50 - but it promises to be very beautiful.

You can find the details by clicking right here. And you can see if it's the kind of thing you'd like to buy right here at the Devil's Exercise Yard. Behold, the first fiblet from Rasputin's Bastards, not far from the beginning, wherein we are introduced to a primary tool of psychic spycraft, only somewhat re-purposed:

Fyodor Kolyokov hadn't needed the isolation tank for a long time: not since the early days when all needs Physick were safely defined by the razor-wire fences of City 512. But need and desire often mingle to the same effect, and so as soon as he found a way, Kolyokov moved the tank from Russia to America. Hang the risk, he told himself. The tank was as much a part of his life as his eyes and his lungs and his heart.

The tank was an early prototype, baffled against sound with a set of casings pressed inside one another like nested Russian dolls -- dolls made of iron and steel, concrete and horse-hair, ceramic and lead. Sealed inside the tiniest doll, it wasn't hard to imagine weathering a nearby nuclear detonation.

The Cyrillic notations stamped on the outermost doll indicated expectations falling just short of that. Kolyokov had at various times tried to fill those letters with different types of cement -- but the cold steel of the tank sucked moisture from the air like a thirsty whore, and Kolyokov's attempts at camouflage crumbled within days of their application. There was no making it into anything beyond what it was: an old KGB isolation tank made for sensory depravation, that to anyone but Kolyokov would stink like an open sewer.

To Kolyokov, who had first swum in its briny middle three decades ago, it merely smelled... comfortable.

For the last of those decades, the isolation tank had gathered dust in a large storage locker in New Jersey. During that time, Kolyokov never visited -- not in person. But he kept a watch on it all the same, in the manner of his training, and once a year, he would send a sleeper to see to matters of cleaning and maintenance in person. There would come a day, he was sure, when such things as this tank did not matter to the intelligence community and its existence would no longer need be secret.

In 1997, with the Soviet Union a half-decade in the grave, Russia in turmoil, and the old arsenal all but on the auction block, Kolyokov deemed that day to have arrived.

So now, the tank occupied most of the ensuite bath to Kolyokov's rooms on the Emissary's 19th floor. The bath had at one time contained an immense Jacuzzi tub set in pink marble. But that luxury, along with the bidet and the vanity, had been sacrificed to make room, so the tank had only to share the space with a low-flow toilet and a shower-stall.

The floor was a thick slab of concrete underneath the tile, but Kolyokov had wished to take no chances and so had constructed a second floor, just inches above the original. It was more of a platform, really, suspended by steel cable and specially-designed braces so as to distribute the tank's immense weight beyond its own dimensions.

The platform creaked as he placed a bare foot upon it now. Kolyokov was still groggy from shattered REM-sleep, but he had to piss something fierce. The pissing, he thought, was why the dream had gone so badly. The reason that it had turned nightmare on him, and driven him awake.

Kolyokov used to be able to piss in the tank without disturbing his dreaming. The tank had been fitted with an assembly from the old Soyuz spacecraft -- but the pump had failed years ago.

So Kolyokov hopped on one foot and the other, bladder twisting and wringing as he moved. He splashed body-temperature salt water all over the bathroom's two floors, as he made his way around the tank to the toilet. A thick stream of urine made a roar in the bowl that was deafening to Kolyokov's silence-calmed ear.

A New Year happened...

2012-01-04T19:36:00.002-05:00

... and I seem to have missed it. Seemed to, being the operative word. While all the other writers with blogs were busily tallying up their year-that-was post, I was in fact not absent at all - just quietly sitting back, playing Skyrim to wall-eyed distraction and breaking it up with a little ego surfing.

After which, I can report that Skyrim is slightly less addictive than cigarettes, slot machines and internet smut combined. And that the clock shifted from 2011 to 2012 with some very fine bits of news.

A number of people said some very kind things in year-end sum-ups, concerning the novel. Paul Goat Allen over at Barnes and Noble was kind enough to tag it as his number one horror read for 2011, right here. Nick Cato at Antibacterial Pope said pretty much the same thing, right here. And Alex Good, who reviewed the book for The National Post, listed it high up in his top four reads of the year, putting me in the company of Julian Barnes, Clark Blaise and David Hickey.

Feeding My Book Addiction liked the book not quite that much - it was sixth out of six year-end favourites. And The Hopeful Librarian dug it also, and said so right here.

Earlier in the season, the audiobook version of Eutopia went live over at Audible.com. I have listened to a bunch of Oliver Wyman's sublime reading, and can report that he improves the thing considerably. For a little while, it was the Number Two best-seller in horror on the site. It has slipped since then, but it's still nestled in among the Stephen King adaptations and Robert McCammon readings. I have yet to find a listener who likes it (the audible.com clientel have discerning ears) but there is time.

And finally - today, I am able to make it known that Ellen Datlow, who once bought a story from me for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, came a-knocking to buy my story "Looker" for The Best Horror of The Year Number Four. It is there a couple stories away from an excellent story by my pal Leah Bobet, and other fine writers of grim tidings. Here's the table of contents.

Rasputin's Bastards

2011-12-16T18:37:00.000-05:00

I've been holding off on crowing about this one, but I find I can keep my peace no longer. There will be another book coming out from ChiZine Publications, by me, this spring, and this is it.

Rasputin's Bastards is a big book - right now, it's clocking in at 186,000 words. It is a departure, in that it's less a horror novel than Eutopia is. But it is fantastical - Sandra Kasturi, my editor and pal at ChiZine Publications, thinks we should pitch it as Men Who Stare At Goats meets Declare.

However we pitch it, this book about Russian remote viewing, giant squid and outdoor sporting equipment will be coming out this spring from ChiZine. And boy genius cover artist Erik Mohr has, I think, outdone even himself on this one.

Enter, Night

2011-11-11T08:21:00.003-05:00

I remember when I first read Salem's Lot. I suspect that most of you do - at least those of you in your 40s, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and were immune to the not-so-subtle charms of disco, citizens band radios and pet rocks.

I picked up the paperback of Stephen King's early vampire novel in the lineup of a supermarket -- drawn in by its gloriously monochrome, sparkle-free, embossed cover depicting a little girl with a single red drop of blood leaking out of her mouth. Diving into King's terrifying, humane, and ever-so-slightly flawed tale of blood suckers and small town living was a seminal reading experience for me. After finishing it, I remember walking the streets of Richmond Hill, Ontario, deliciously imagining how I would fight the vampire infestation in the same way that zombie hobbyists these days try to figure out how to cope with a world where the dead walk.

Other vampire novels read subsequently didn't really do the job for me in the same way. Interview With A Vampire was more saddening than terrifying in its vampires'-eye view of the world; I Am Legend, which is sort of a vampire novel, was certainly relentless as anything that King set down, but Richard Matheson's tale didn't convey to me the richness of character and setting that let Salem's Lot so colonize my imagination. Stoker's novel came closest -- and yes, yes, I will concede it -- Dracula is formally superior to Salem's Lot. But there is something in King's rubbing of that old tombstone that enlarges the original.

All of this is a round-about way to start telling you about another vampire novel that is very definitely a loving tribute to the vampires and vampire hunters in Salem's Lot, and is also very much more than that.

I'm talking here about Michael Rowe's new novel, just out - Enter, Night. As a caveat: Michael and I go back a long way, and it does all start with vampires. In the late 1990s, he commissioned a story from me for an anthology of queer-themed vampire stories, and encouraged me to write stories for his ground-breaking queer horror anthologies, Queer Fear. In 2009, he penned a gracious introduction to my story collection Monstrous Affections.

Enter, Night is also out from my own publisher, Toronto's ChiZine Publications. Like all of ChiZine's novels and collections, it is very beautifully put together.

So with all that: you might think that I would be predisposed to rave, on the basis of both friendship and brand loyalty. Fair enough. But please, please, don't let your skepticism get in the way of picking up Enter, Night. Because in addition to all those caveats, the other one is that Michael has written the vampire novel that I have been waiting for. There is no sparkle in his vampires. They are monstrous -- more fearsome, even, than the feral creatures in The Passage, because these vampires aren't just predators. They're appropriately diabolical. They are Evil with a capital E.

But let's not get too tied up with how the vampires live and feel and think. That, I'd say, has been one of the great mis-steps of vampire literature in the last part of the 20th century. The great strength of King's novel, and Rowe's rethinking, is that the real characters that we ought to be concerned about are the humans who haven't yet fallen under the vampires' sway.

In Enter, Night those humans live in and around the small northern Ontario mining town of Parr's Landing, in the early 1970s. The town is built on both a rich vein of silver, and of bloody history: prior to the miners, the area was a draw for Jesuits, and is the site of an abandoned Jesuit mission, now reduced to an archeological site, and a resting place of a Dracula-calibre vampire who's been waiting for the right moment...

Michael gives the vampires their due, but the novel is really about the people. There are a lot of points of view to juggle, but the core of the novel is the Parr family, and how it morphs with the return of Christina Parr, the widow of the family's favourite son, her daughter Morgan, and Jeremy Parr, the homosexual second son. They're dead broke, and that is the only reason they're back, to live in the mansion of Adeline, the far-from-sweet matriarch of the family, and the town. There are others of note: Elliot, closeted police officer with whom Jeremy has unfinished business; Finnigan, a sweet, nerdy boy who comes by his vampire lore from old Tomb of Dracula comics; and Billy Lightning, an aboriginal university professor who comes to Parr's Landing to investigate his adopted father's murder and ultimately charm Christina.

Michael writes these characters from the heart, and they're like a vampire's gaze: once you meet them it's impossible to look away. The long-game strategy of focusing on the living rather than the undead means that when the vampires show up, we as readers feel every bite. The conclusion, when it comes, delivers an emotional payoff that's quite wrenching and very satisfying. If I were to deliver any criticism, it would be to say that the emotional finish overshadows the business of the plot. But because it's so effective, I'm more than willing to call feature rather than bug on this one.

Right before diving into Enter, Night, I had occasion to reread Salem's Lot, aloud. And on that recent reading, the novel's bugs are more apparent. The characters there spend a very long time shuffling their feet and expositing strategy at one another. King writes from the heart too, but sometimes a bit too near to it: in particular, Ben Mears, his prodigal vampire hunter, falls precipitously near Mary-Sue territory. Michael is, to my mind, tugging heart-strings with far greater maturity and discipline, and at points, much deeper resonance.

This is Michael Rowe's first novel. He is now at work on a ghost story. I am intensely curious to see what he does with that. But I'll pass the time waiting, pressing Enter, Night into as many hands as I can.

Enter, Night by Michael Rowe

Something Fishy...

2011-10-27T15:32:00.002-05:00

Hey Yard-Apes... please don't be offended, but my first blog post in many weeks is not here, but over at Tor.com, for Monster Mash week: Swimming with the Fishes. I hold forth on the pallid charms of creatures beneath the sea for quite some time, skimming the surface, as it were, on such subjects as the Cthulhu Mythos, Jaws, and the extraordinary work of Catalan author Albert Sanchez Pinol in his novel Cold Skin.

If I haven't commended you to this guy's work, let me do so now. Cold Skin is a short novel, about an encounter just past the turn of the last century, between a depressive north-European and a race of Lovecraftian mer-people, on the beaches of an island near Antarctica. It is a bleakly beautiful novel of isolation, obsession and perversion. It goes where H.P. Lovecraft hinted, but dared not venture. It sets up Pinol's second novel, Pandora In The Congo, magnificently.

You should please go read it, before the movie adaptation comes out.

Looker

2011-09-16T06:33:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile since I've had a story interpreted by the folk at Pseudopod - the venerable horror podcast. They've always done a fantastic job of it with three of my stories previously - The Sloan Men, The Inevitability of Earth and The Radejastians. Today, Steve Cropper's reading of my story Looker (originally published in Michael Kelly's anthology Chilling Tales) goes live. Just finished listening to it, and damn... it's hard for me to tell whether the story itself stands up, because Steve's reading is so good.

Check it out, right here.

Herman and I...

2011-08-07T11:36:00.000-05:00

You know you're a proper monster when Kevin Nunn, Toronto Renaissance dude, immortalizes you in bronze -- or the next best thing, papier mache painted to look like bronze. And so it is with Herman Sloan, of the Monstrous Affections cover:

... and my short story The Sloan Men, which is even now available to read right here.

Kevin presented this sculpture to my friends/publishers Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi, and the two shocked me with it during a mid-summer visit yesterday.

I am gobsmacked.

What's wrong with us?

2011-08-01T10:35:00.002-05:00

It happens to all of us at one time or another. We're at a party, the wine is flowing freely, and it comes out that we write, read or view stories of a particular genre. And to keep the conversation going, one of the other party-goers wonders: why would we wish to dwell on the ideas and feelings that emerge from that particular genre? Doesn't real life have enough of those things, without having to dwell upon them further in fiction and film? Or, to get right to the subtext: Aren't we a little unbalanced, for turning our imagination there, and away from more wholesome things?

And we always respond: What is wrong with enjoying a little vicarious despair through the occasional re-reading of Raymond Carver's stories in Cathedral, or samples of the little-known Canadian author Margaret Atwood's early ouvre? What have you got against a bit of vicarious frisky lovin', such as Jennifer Cruzie pens? Aren't there enough of those things extant in life, without having to dwell upon them in story?

Well, we don't really. Because really, nobody suspects the morals of people who enjoy mainstream realistic fiction, or worries about the mental health of people who write and read a lot of romance (well, not much). But we who enjoy horror fiction - we raise questions... insinuating questions.

(More After the Break)

Sometimes, those questions can also be provocative and illuminating. The other night, I was out with friends at a party, and a fellow I'd never met started in on those lines. "I have to admit that I don't like horror," he said, to me and a few other horror writers. "Why would you wish to dwell upon such a thing constantly?"

He was coming at it from a Yogic perspective. If I took him correctly, he was starting from the notion that literature ought to help us reach for higher planes beyond the realm of the physical, and was curious as to how horror fiction could possibly fit into such a notion. To his mind, the genre was all about generating a simulacrum of mere physical fear and by that definition alone, it could not get beyond the Body, couldn't be worthwhile to a reader interested in growth. So what good is it?

This is a tricky question for an artist to face - tricky, verging on ugly. Jiang Qing, the wife of Chairman Mao, was infamous during the Cultural Revolution in China shutting down performances and works of art that she believed did not reflect the tenets of the revolution. Measuring the worth of art to the extent that it either services or subverts an agenda is to set foot upon a very slippery slope.

The other writers present had the good sense to step off that slope, and one by one note the hour and excuse themselves. I myself did not. I have some ideas about horror fiction that I think do elevate it, and I trotted them out.

To begin with, I pointed out some obvious matters: horror fiction can be about spiritual matters and often is. Transcendence is a major theme in modern horror. The difference is that horror fiction often brings a skeptical eye to the idea of transcendence. The protagonist in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House certainly transcends the physical when she enters Hill House; by the end, her transcendental experience takes her from her body, and into the house itself.

One might argue that transcendence is also a powerful operant in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. There, little Regan catches a glimpse of the other side - and the other side comes here for a visit - through the cracks in the cosmos that emerged, as far as we can tell, from the unintended side-effects of Vatican 2.

The works of H.P. Lovecraft all speak of transcendence - with great and thoughtful nervousness. The ancient beings that inhabit the higher planes of existence are a constant presence, and Lovecraft's protagonists are forever transcending towards them, screaming all the way.

It became pretty clear that I wasn't selling my new friend on horror fiction. At one point, he suggested to my companion that he thought women might like horror better than men "because it gives them an excuse to cling to men" and repeated the notion that horror seemed to him to only deal with us as physical beings.

Given the context, I hope I can be forgiven for gently suggesting that while it might be helpful to think of ourselves as spiritual beings, the preponderance of evidence so far suggests that we are no such thing. And that if one found that notion distasteful - or simply the idea of horror distasteful - that my friend need read a coffin full of horror fiction no more than I need to read a stack of cozy mysteries.

But back to my quest to show horror as a legitimate read for people contemplating transcendence. I think it's fair to say that horror fiction has a lot to say about the spiritual yearnings of humanity. Transcendence, and growth, and illumination are powerful themes in the collection of stories, novels and films that make up the genre of horror.

It's just that horror's not selling the idea of transcendence any more than is mainstream literature, cozy mysteries or hot category romance.

For that, you have to go to science fiction.

A midsummer night's blog post...

2011-07-27T07:06:00.000-05:00

It has been, I note, a while since I last drew yard-apes' attention to anything Eutopian - or indeed anything. And it's not that nothing has been going on, because it has. Or at least, I have been googling my own name. A lot.

There have been reviews by dilligent bloggers, like Bibliotropic, Bonnie at Bookish Ardour, Majanka Verstraete at I <3 Reading, Grace at Feeding My Book Addiction, JD at Bureau 42, (and in a slightly expanded form, at Everything2), the reviewer known as prodigy.

Ellie at Curiosity Killed The Bookworm reviewed Eutopia here, and after I sent a thank-you note, asked me some questions then posted the interview here.

The Philidelphia City Paper reviewed Eutopia along with some others earlier this month, here.

Eutopia made it to Poland - or at least to the Polish sf blogger who writes Machaniczny czlowiek, and who reviewed it extensively here, in Polish.(Google translates it here)

Most of the reviews are generally positive, but as I suspected when I wrote it, the book is not for everyone. With that in mind, kudos to Morsie Reads, and Bending the Spine for giving Eutopia a try.

The Call of...

2011-06-20T14:23:00.000-05:00

... never mind what it's the call of. Just watch.

Happy belated Father's Day, yard-apes.

The Feeger Oracle

2011-06-15T07:51:00.000-05:00

Seen through the lens of pain, the Oracle wasn't all that demure.

She stood tall like her brothers, and her black hair hung near her waist, and she seemed strong, with thick hips and large, full breasts and flushed cheeks and lips. But the Oracle paid a toll, and Andrew could see it in her eyes, at once wide and sunken, ringed dark; and her odd posture, bent and swaying in the dark cloth of her home-wove dress. She held a bundle wrapped in cloth and twigs, the way a mother might hold a baby.

That bit is a passage from Eutopia. The illustration is the work of Brian Prince, a graphic designer who surprised and delighted me a week or so ago with an email and this lovely rendering. Brian earns his keep doing matte paintings and other sundry things, and his website, http://www.bprince.com, gives a fine tour of them all.

The World's Biggest Bookstore. Sunday.

2011-06-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

I will be there.

The World's Biggest Bookstore, which so far as I can tell is exactly that, will be having a big old ChiZine Publications Party this Sunday. Dedicated yard-apes will have heard me make mention of this before, but now it's just scant days before the event. So I make mention again.

Me, Brent Hayward and Gemma Files are going to be at the WBB (located in an unassuming little storefront on Edward Street just west of Yonge Street) at 2 p.m. Sunday. I'll be reading from Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism. Brent will be reading from his starred-review-in-Publisher's-Weekly, New-Weird-ish novel The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter. Gemma, from A Rope of Thorns, volume 2 in her prickly (in more ways than one) weird western Hexslinger series.

This is also notable for those who wish to acquire a retail copy of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism. As of this writing, an ordering mishap has meant that for now, the only part of the Chapters-Indigo retail chain that's carrying the book is the World's Biggest Bookstore. As of this writing, there are 35 copies there. Some of them are signed now. I will take care of the rest on Sunday. And also read a scary scene.

As you can see from the photo, there are also copies of the story collection Monstrous Affections, and the somewhat hard to find The Claus Effect, co-written by Karl Schroeder and me.

Thanks to Jessica Strider for the photo!

OOPS revisited.

2011-05-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

A little electric contraption inside played a song every time you opened it. Da, da da Da. Da, da da Da.

He hadn't heard the song in nearly ten years, but he would have recognized it even if it hadn't been Sarah Michelle Gellar on the front of the card: wooden stake clutched in one hand, hovering over her breast – her airbrush-smoothed face unmistakably stricken.

Whatever had happened with that stake, she hadn't meant it.

Inside, one word:

OOPS.

In honor of the Rapture (coming tomorrow, we're told).... thought I'd share with the Yard a short story, which appeared last year in the 'zine No More Potlucks. OOPS. It should help get you sinners into the mood.

An endcap in Toronto....

2011-05-10T13:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Jessica Strider, who sent me this photo, of an endcap display she set up at The World's Biggest Bookstore on Edward Street in Toronto, featuring my books and also an interview she conducted with me earlier this year. The World's Biggest is, you'll note, stocking Eutopia now - at this point, the only Chapters-Indigo outlet that is. Hopefully, books will make it to other outlets over the next week or so.

Next month (on June 5 at 2 p.m., to be precise) I'll be at the World's Biggest Bookstore to sign books and read, along with fellow ChiZine Publications authors Gemma Files (Rope of Thorns) and Brent Hayward (The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter).

The Review, The Bookstore, and Machetes

2011-05-06T07:15:00.000-05:00

This is a bit of a grab bag of a posting, yard apes, so bear with me wile I dig around in it...

First up, I should take a moment to thank Jessica Strider, whose review of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism went live today at SF Signal. She likes it fine as a horror story, but not for the monsters. She writes:

"For a novel that has such a horrifying supernatural creature at the heart of it, the true terror of the book was contained in the historically accurate parts. It's hard to be afraid of made up monsters when the Klan and practicing eugenicists show up. Indeed, when you see the unrepentant Mrs Frost and delusional Dr. Bergstrom own up to their crimes, no fictional monster could possibly stand up to the horrors humans are willing to perpetrate on each other."

The whole review is posted at SF Revue, right here.

The book itself, meanwhile, is a little slow making its way to bookstores in Toronto (although I have it on good authority that it's well-shelved in Barnes and Noble and Borders stores in the U.S.). Yesterday, however, Bakka-Phoenix Books in Toronto got 10 copies in, and I made it by to sign them all just before closing. I expect there will still be some left by the time you get there.

Also: it looks as though the ChiZine Publications blog has finally dared to post my favourite World Horror Convention memory -- the story of me, and Joe, and machetes. Not for the faint of heart.

The Horror of the Lone Star

2011-05-04T08:03:00.002-05:00

It wasn't much of a horror at all, actually, going down to Texas this past week for the World Horror Convention. Coming back on the day of the Federal election... well, that was another matter. But the WHC 2011 in Austin, Texas, was pretty much a joy - an exercise in southern comfort, taking place in a town who's motto is Keep Austin Weird.

It was a very good time indeed. The ChiZine Publications crowd were there in force, to launch the spring lineup (Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism included in that, along with Claude Lalumiere's Door To Lost Pages, Gemma Files' Rope of Thorns, and Brent Hayward's The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter). Also on hand was Michael Kelly, launching the anthology Chilling Tales (which includes my story Looker).

I could ramble on for thousands of words about the high quality of the convention and the coolness of Austin -- but I brought a camera, and took some pictures. So let's try a slide show instead.

On Thursday, day it started, Claude Lalumiere and author Matt Moore and I went walking in downtown Austin, where we discovered this place - the Lucky Lizard, which sells curios and has a genuine sideshow museum in back.

They let me take pictures inside, of such wonders as the fabled Fiji mermaid:

A Mexican mummy:

Me (with my two-headed sheep friend):

There were also readings. Here's me, reading from Looker (thanks to Sandra Wickham, for snapping the shot):

And at the Driskill Hotel, said by some to be haunted...

Green eggs and ham.

Eutopia - The Trailer

2011-04-25T17:33:00.001-05:00

With the official bookstore release of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism just a week off, we figured it was high time to unleash this on the world. Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, the Trailer. Karen Fernandez and I shot this past summer, and Karen put it all together, in hopes - optimistic hopes, if that's not redundant - that book trailers actually work at getting readers to buy books.

We'll see how it goes. There's some fine, terrifying music - by Jon and Al Kaplan, the composers of Silence - The Musical and other morsels - and a good dose of backwoods evil. Go have a look.

The trailer's also embedded in the brand new Eutopia section of The Devil's Exercise Yard, right here. Go there, and you can see all the reviews that have emerged so far, some Lawrence Nickle illustrations that are otherwise only in the limited edition hardcover, and a sample chapter.

And as long as you're clicking through, check out this review from Paul Goat Allen at Barnes and Noble's community blog. He writes, among other things in a very kind review:

"Nickle’s debut novel Eutopia – an entrancing amalgam of historical thriller, dark fantasy and weird fiction – is an utterly creepy, bladder-loosening, storytelling tour de force."

Stephen and I...

2011-04-22T08:16:00.004-05:00

You go along in a writing career, and you hope for certain milestones. Selling the first short story; selling the first novel; winning an award... and, if you write horror, getting a major newspaper review comparing your book to Stephen King's work, in the days when he was really on fire and putting out books like The Shining, Misery and Pet Sematary... the early Dark Tower volumes...

Well, today I can scratch that one off the list. Alex Good of the National Post offered up a very kind review of Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, that had, among other things, this to say:

"Toronto author David Nickle's debut novel, the followup to his brilliantly wicked collection of horror stories Monstrous Affections, establishes him as a worthy heir to the mantle of Stephen King. And I don't mean the King of Under the Dome or other recent flops, but the master of psychological suspense who ruled the '80s with classics like Pet Sematary."

Here's the review, at the National Post.

And happily, it comes as e-books and dead-tree versions of the novel are downloading/shipping from Amazon.com, right here.

Redrum.

The e-books are on the march....

2011-04-19T06:53:00.001-05:00

It's a couple of weeks now before the official release date of Eutopia, but that date really only applies to the dead tree versions of the novel. E-books are out there, as of this week. E-junkie is selling MOBI, EPUB and PDF versions, right here. Amazon.com has also released the Kindle version, right here, and the Kobo store's selling the Kobo EPUB version over at Chapters-Indigo, right here.

Dead tree version should be hitting bookstores and Amazon May 3. And ChiZine Publications will be launching it in Austin, Texas, at the World Horror Convention, a few days before. That's where I'll be too. Right here.

I have an Ad Astra schedule - and another nice Eutopia review

2011-04-06T12:18:00.000-05:00

The title line says it all, yard-apes. This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of Ad Astra - the local Toronto sf convention where we Torontonian sf people go each spring to see one another, talk about all things genre and hone our knife-throwing skills. I'll be there this weekend, on panels and doing a mini-launch for Eutopia.

Speaking of which - I'd be remiss if I didn't crow a bit, about a lovely review of my first solo novel by Chris Hallock over at ALL THINGS HORROR. It is a very lovely review indeed - I'm flattered to within an inch of my life - and in recognition of that, I'm going to quote a little more extensively than I do from these things:

Eutopia is the kind of book I'd recommend to literary snobs who badmouth the horror genre while completely ignoring the multitudes of splendid books on the shelves. Nickle comes from a different cut of cloth than a lot of current horror authors. He’s created a unique world that’s a far cry from any of the current trends in horror fiction. In fact, his style seems generations removed from all the apocalyptic zombie and vampire novels on the market. Thankfully, he understands that the most important ingredients are strong characters, originality, and a compelling story. That his novel is also dark, frightening, and beautifully written is just icing on the cake.

Eutopia crosses genres in a world where folks from a rustic Faulkner novel might clash with H.P. Lovecraft’s monstrosities. Add a dash of Cronenbergian body horror to atmosphere worthy of Poe, and you get one of the most original horror stories in years.

The whole review's posted right here, for the perusal of curious yard-apes.

And as for that Ad Astra Schedule? Here's how it's looking now.

Fri 8 p.m.   Eugenics    Erica Pai (m), Gord Skerratt, Herb Kauderer, Diane Lacey, David Clink, David Nickle

Sat 11 am    Ballr. Centre    Chilling Tales: A New Chapter in Canadian Horror and Dark Fantasy

Michael Kelly (m), Leah Bobet, Suzanne Church, Michael Colangelo, Claude Lalumiere, Nancy Kilpatrick, Gemma Files, Richard Gavin, Brent Hayward, Sandra Kasturi, David Nickle, Ian Rogers, Brett Alexander Savory, Simon Strantzas

Sat 1-3 pm    Anton's    Chilling Tales Launch

Michael Kelly (m), Leah Bobet, Suzanne Church, Michael Colangelo, Claude Lalumiere, Nancy Kilpatrick, Gemma Files, Richard Gavin, Brent Hayward, Sandra Kasturi, David Nickle, Ian Rogers, Brett Alexander Savory, Simon Strantzas

Saturday, 6 p.m. Reading

Sun 11 am    Ballr. East    Making Monsters

Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, Michael Colangelo, Kate Daley, Kari Maaren, David Nickle, Rio Youers (m)

Sun 12 pm    Ballr. Centre    Working with Small Presses

Timothy Carter, Karen Dales, Don Hutchison, Laura Marshall, David Nickle, Douglas Smith

Sun 3 pm    Salon 243     Face-to-Face Critique Groups
Aaron Allston, Robert Boyczuk, Matt Moore (m), David Nickle

The X-Files, Rosemary's Baby... and Little House on the Prairie?

2011-03-21T11:53:00.003-05:00

Those are the things that Publisher's Weekly thinks my novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism is made of. There's a very nice review of my book posted at the magazine's website.

The salient parts, pulled expertly by CZP honcho Brett Savory, read as follows:

"Nickle (Monstrous Affections) blends Little House on the Prairie with distillates of Rosemary's Baby and The X-Files to create a chilling survival-of-the-fittest story. . . . [His] bleak debut novel mixes utopian vision, rustic Americana, and pure creepiness."
—Publishers Weekly

Color me chuffed.

Permalink to Publisher's Weekly Review of Eutopia

Cory Doctorow came to town, I stayed put...

2011-03-19T08:55:00.000-05:00

It was a good night, some weeks back, when Cory Doctorow and I read aloud from our new books at the Augusta House in Toronto. The evening was part of the ChiZine Reading Series - and this event celebrated the Cecil Street Irregulars, a writer's workshop from which Cory and I both learned everything we know. Karl Schroeder was to have joined us - but he was prevented, by a damn germ.

They made a video of the evening anyway. Here's the portion in which I read from Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism.

And here's the portion in which I take questions from the audience.

Eutopia's out in May. But pre-orders are always welcome. Check out CZP's Eutopia page, for all the places you can do that, right here. If you need convincing, horror author Nick Cato has posted a blisteringly generous review of Eutopia, at his blog Antibacterial Pope, right here.

For more CZP reading series goodness, and Cory's reading, have a look at their SF Colloquium page, right here.

An Optimistic Reading this Sunday

2011-03-04T08:34:00.000-05:00

This is a note to yard-apes spending the weekend in Toronto and wishing to say hello and listen to a cheerful bit of readings. This Sunday evening, I'll be joining actual optimists and good friends Cory Doctorow and Karl Schroeder at the Augusta House, to read from our novels. I will be reading from Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism. Cory and Karl will be reading from works of actual optimism, I hope.

This is part of the ChiZine reading series, and Sunday's theme is Cecil Street Irregulars reunion. Cory, Karl and I are alumni / current members of the Cecil Street Irregulars writers' group, you see - hence, um, the theme.

Here are the particulars:

Sunday March 6, 2011 8:00 PM - 11:00 PM
152 Augusta Avenue, Toronto, ON (map)

*Please note the time change from the afternoon to evening.

After her tenure in 1987 as writer-in-residence at the Merril Collection, Judith Merril founded the writing workshop that came to be known as the Cecil Street Irregulars. With Cory Doctorow in town, we're having something of a reunion...

Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, and world-renowned science fiction author, will be joining us on March 6th for a special reading. His latest book, For the Win, is centered around massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Other books include Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Tor Books, 2003); Eastern Standard Tribe (Tor Books, 2004); Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Tor Books, 2005); Little Brother (Tor Books, 2008 ); Makers (Tor Books, 2009). All of his books are available under a Creative Commons Licence.

Karl Schroeder divides his time between writing fiction and consulting--chiefly in the area of Foresight Studies and technology. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality and interstellar travel, and have a deeply philosophical streak. One of his concepts, known as thalience, has gained some currency in the artificial intelligence and computer networking communities.

David Nickle lives and works in Toronto, where he covers municipal matters for the Toronto Community News group of newspapers. His fiction has been published in magazines, anthologies and online, and been adapted for television. In 1997, he and Edo Van Belkom won a Bram Stoker Award for their short story "Rat Food." Some of his stories are collected in Monstrous Affections, published in 2009 by ChiZine Publications. Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism will be released by ChiZine Publications in spring 2011.

Vault of Evil loves Eutopia

2011-02-11T21:20:00.003-05:00

Well this was a lovely surprise: came home today to find a google alert showing what I believe is the second on-line review of Eutopia - this time from the reviewer known only as Dreadlocksmile, on the U.K. horror review site Vault of Evil.

It is a fine review, and I will link to it. But I believe the pull-quote would be:

"‘Eutopia’ is an elaborate novel, pulling together intricate interwoven subplots, with a dark and eerie mystery constantly behind it all. Mark Morris’s forceful but swift visions of the grotesque, mixed with elements of early Clive Barker dark fiction, with the final all-encompassing visionary of Lovecraft knitted in for good measure."

I will take that with blushing grace. Read the whole review here.

Eutopia special edition is going, going....

2011-02-02T15:15:00.002-05:00

... gone, on Friday. That's the last chance anyone has to order this special edition from the Horror Mall. It's a $50 signed limited edition, and it's the only place you'll be able to purchase and see illustrations by Canadian landscape painter Lawrence Nickle (my dad). The illustrations are fantastic, and worth the price by themselves, you want to ask me.

I've put up some of those illustrations in previous posts. But as there are only two days left to place the order, I thought I'd put up another one to whet your appetite.

Here it is, then: the illustration for Chapter Two - A Damn Germ..

Jason Thistledown’s mama was tall and beautiful and strong; stronger of arm than many a man and more powerful of spirit than any two. Yet in the end it was not a man nor two nor even a gang of them, but a damn germ that killed her.

If you want to pre-order the hardcover.... click here.

An early review of Eutopia

2011-01-25T11:32:00.000-05:00

Actually, I believe it's the first review of my novel, posted at The Landing Dock Reviews site, right here.

It's a very good review by author Jim Cherry. He concludes:

The horror is more implicit than explicit, there’s no big ’reveal’ scene where a monstrous nightmare vision is thrown at the reader for shock or a visceral reaction. Nickle sets the tone at early 20th century creepy. The tone is more of a pins under your skin feeling, or the feeling of a spider walking across your hand, that keeps you in a state of ecstatic uncomfortableness. The closer I got towards the end, the more it kept me reading to see how this could possibly be resolved. What higher praise or expectations can you have for a book?

I'm delighted.

Eutopia in hand

2011-01-20T05:17:00.001-05:00

Perhaps the most indulgent post I've made about Eutopia so far, but not, I suspect, the most indulgent one I'll make: photos, of one of my author copies of my novel Eutopia. Brett got review copies back from the printer's last week, and set aside a few for the author. So just to prove it's real, and not just a figment of my optimism, here's a small photo gallery.

Optimism sells at the Horror Mall

2011-01-03T08:44:00.004-05:00

Just got word that Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism, had a pretty good first month on pre-order at The Horror Mall this December. The limited edition hardcover is #8 on The Horror Mall's pre-order best-seller list.

It's a premium option for yard-apes that want to pick up the book - a tale of eugenics, mis-applied utopianism, and a monster - but there are reasons to go ahead and shell out the $50 U.S.

In the first place, ChiZine Publications does very nice collectible hardcovers. The book, in a limited print-run of 150, will be signed by me, cover artist Erik Mohr, and Lawrence Nickle - the Canadian landscape painter who's doing illustrations that will only appear in the special edition, and who is also my father, and the second reason to spend big on my book.

This is the first time that dad's ever done anything like this, having late in life discovered his inner Edward Gorey (as you can see by the portion of this dire rendering to the right). He claims he will never do anything like this again (this being family work), but appears to have been enjoying his walk on the dark side nonetheless.

If you're tempted, go have a look, right here. The collector's edition is available through the early spring, while supplies last.

Black Gate is optimistic about Eutopia....

2010-12-30T08:44:00.000-05:00

It's some months still before Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism hits shelves and mailboxes around the world. But Sue Granquist over at Black Gate is already anticipating its release in a very kind way, right here.

Sue also singles out my pal Claude Lalumiere's The Door To Lost Pages, which is coming out around the same time from ChiZine Publications.

The Feeger Sisters Dance Up A Storm

2010-12-27T17:00:00.002-05:00

Regular yard-apes may recall a post or so ago, I let on that my dad, Canadian Landscape painter Lawrence Nickle, would soon be illustrating the special signed, limited edition hardcover of my novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism.

Well, now that the snow's set in at the North Pole (a.k.a. Burk's Falls, Ontario), dad's started in on the work, and fast as he can sketch them, his friend Bill has been scanning it and interwebbing the exquisite drawings south, to me.

To whet your appetite, I've included above, Illustration #4 - an illustration depicting the Feeger Sisters, and their improvisational dance of supplication to the Old Man, a mysterious fellow who dwells somewhere deep in Trout Lake, Idaho.

There are many more illustrations, but the only way to see 'em all is to go order the special collector's edition of Eutopia. You can do it here, at The Horror Mall.

Eutopia - available for pre-order

2010-12-04T19:24:00.001-05:00

It has only been a couple of days since we finished the proof-reading of Eutopia, my novel about eugenics and gunfighters and monsters. But already, it's up for pre-order here, at The Horror Mall, in it's high-end, $50 collectable hard-cover edition.

There's a more affordable trade paperback that will be available at the same time (mid-April, 2011). But the hardcover is a limited edition of 150 copies, and having just negotiated it today, I can pre-announce that the hardcover will include illustrations by Lawrence Nickle - a Canadian landscape painter of great regard, who is also, by no coincidence, my dad.

The illustrations won't be in the trade paperback - that's going to just be text with a couple of clever graphics. So if you want to get a book with Lawrence Nickle illustrations, and you have $50 in your pocket - there's only one way to do it, and that's to pre-order Eutopia from The Horror Mall.

It won't be the first time that Nickle artwork has illustrated a Nickle story - the paintings below have been illustrating my story The Pit Heads since 2007.

Tesseracts Is Coming To Town

2010-11-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I believe the Santa Claus Parade will be kicking up heel in downtown Toronto. Well too bad for Santa. This weekend is also a big celebration for Tesseracts and Edge, at once here in Toronto and Alberta. Tesseracts is, of course, the long-running sf/f anthology series that began when Judith Merrill edited what would have been Tesseracts One if she'd only had the foresight.

I make a little joke. Judith had all kinds of foresight. And in editing that anthology, she effectively gave birth to Canadian speculative fiction, by giving it a venue. Before On Spec, before TransVersions, before Northern Frights and Queer Fear and countless other Canadian sf anthologies... there was Tesseracts.

There are fourteen volumes to the series. Some were published by Tesseracts Books, an imprint run by Candas Jane Dorsey, and some time ago taken over by EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing, Brian Hades' imprint.

Well on Friday, at SFContario, we're going to be launching #14 - edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory, and hosted by me. My story, Basements, is in the collection. It is (let me count...) my seventh Tesseracts story.

But this is more than the launch. Old-timers like me will be on hand to read from older Tesseracts stories. We'll reminisce. We'll argue over chronologies. It will be like the Legion for SF/F, only without the cheap beer.

It all starts Friday night at eight, in the consuite of SFContario.

The Care And Feeding of Horror

2010-11-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you who missed CZP's Speculative Fiction Colloquium last month - here is some video, of my entire talk: The Care and Feeding of Horror: How a Very Unpleasant Emotion Became a Very Unstable Genre.

This video has been made available by CZP and the Chiaroscuro Reading Series. For more information on next year's Colloquium or to donate, visit http://specfic-colloquium.com.

Miles Nickle Fernandez - 2006-2010

2010-11-13T14:03:00.001-05:00

A moment of silence, for Miles - the four-year-old black tabby who carved a groove on my shoulder and a deep, infected gouge in my heart. As you can see by the picture above, he was an agile, merciless little familiar of a cat - named for Miles Davis, so as to make a matched set with his lifelong house-mate Dizzy. Miles was never a picture of health - he spent the first few months of his life locked in a room while he worked the ringworm out of his system. He never did get rid of the feline herpes, so endured a life-long bout of the sniffles that, while endearingly cute, would have driven any lesser cat insane.

Miles was not insane. What he was, was deeply and persistently affectionate. He liked shoulders best, but he was also fond of waking up his humans with a relentless kneading-of-the-bladder, or a damp, snotty head-butt. He ate head-phone wires like licorice, and refused to pay for the replacements. But no one complained. Everybody loved Miles. Miles loved everybody.

He died Friday night, after a week in the tender and competent care of The Animal Clinic in Toronto. There was something with his kidneys - to the end, no one could figure out precisely what. But whatever it was, it wore him down, and wore him out, and by dinner time Friday, it was time.

He was cuddled by the people who loved him most for hours before that time came. A whole day. Then the results of his last blood test came, showing that there was only really one course.

The veterinarian warned us about various indignities we might witness: he might twitch, or yowl, or void his bladder when the anaesthetic overdose took effect.

He was quiet. He was still. And having thoughtfully insisted on using his litter box just minutes before the veterinarian returned, he was dry. He finished his life with immense dignity, in the loving arms of his humans. And that's something.

Miles Nickle Fernandez. Four years old is too damn young.

A Eutopian cover...

2010-11-01T11:58:00.003-05:00

Here it is, in its hideous glory: Erik Mohr's cover art for my novel Eutopia, which blends the early American eugenics movement, industrial utopianism and terrible monsters, and of which you have read so much in past postings.

Erik is the evil genius responsible for my story collection Monstrous Affections' cover, and it's clear that he's decided to continue the motif of hideous deformity with this one. That continuation may have something to do with my own motif of hideous deformity, but we will leave that discussion for another day.

This cover is exquisite, though. I am anxious beyond words to see how it looks on shelves, in bookstores mid-April 2011.

Now this is a book trailer...

2010-10-22T15:58:00.002-05:00

Not my book trailer - but this one's worth sharing. Bruce MacDonald (of Highway 61 and more to the point, Pontypool fame) shot this trailer for Tony Burgess' new book out of CZP, People Still Live in Cashtown Corners.

So turn down the lights, yard-apes. And prepare to be un-eased.

The Care and Feeding of Horror

2010-10-21T07:14:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the radio silence here at the Yard. But here we are, just days before I'm to appear at the Toronto SpecFic Colloquium at Hart House, and here I am, posting about it.

The colloquium is taking place in Hart House at the University of Toronto - and the day long event will feature talks by a bunch of authors more famous and well-regarded than I... along with I.

I will be on stage twice. Once, at 10 a.m. when I will deliver my talk, The Care and Feeding of Horror: How an Unpleasant Emotion Became an Unstable Genre. The title says it all, but I'll be saying a little bit more than that for a half hour to start things off.

Later, there are readings... for me, much later. I'm listed as the last reader of the evening. I expect I'll be reading from Eutopia, the novel that will appear in April of 2011 from CZP.

SF Contario

2010-10-12T06:06:00.000-05:00

In November, I'll be at SFContario, helping inaugurate this new Toronto science fiction/fantasy convention. I've got a schedule - with readings and everything you might hope for. And here it is:

Friday 8:00 PM Gardenview
Small Press Publishing.
How do you get started in small-press publishing? What's the current
market like and what role does the small press play in it? Why should
writers send their stories to the small press? (Gabrielle Harbowy,
Sandra Kasturi(M), David Nickle, Rene Walling, Brett Savory)

Saturday 10:00 AM Ballroom A
Getting It Done
Writers share their tips on time management and techniques for getting
to work on the days where nothing is working -- whether it's from
writer's block, a hectic schedule, or sheer ennui - to get the job
done. (Alison Baird, Karen Dales, Elizabeth Hirst, David Nickle,
Caitlin Sweet(M))

Saturday Noon - Autograph session

Saturday 5:00 PM - Gardenview
Learning to write
Is it possible to learn how to write? Why does Clarion enjoy such a
great reputation when the fact is that two-thirds of those who attend
it never publish a single word professionally? Aren't writer’s
workshops just the blind leading the blind? What should you look for
in a creative-writing course? Will you learn more about writing by
reading the dozen or so good books out there on how to write SF, or by
reading a dozen true classic novels, such as To Kill a Mockingbird and
The Catcher in the Rye (Ed Greenwood, Ira Nayman, David Nickle, Tony
Pi(M))

Sunday 11:00 AM - Kaffeeklatsch

Sunday 1:00 PM - Ballroom A
Will No-one Free Me From This Troublesome Book?
You’re past the halfway point on that novel you’re writing and you
feel like you’ve been working on it forever. Future chapters stand
before you and taunt you in your sleep. How do you keep going to the
end? Writers share their tips on time management and techniques for
getting to work on the days where nothing is working. (Stephanie
Bedwell-Grime, Karin Lowachee, Violette Malan(M), David Nickle)

Sunday 2:00-2:30 PM - Reading.

The Kind of Face You Hate

2010-10-05T07:22:00.000-05:00

It's an appropriate title for a blog taking a look at Monstrous Affections, don't you think? Brett at CZP pointed me to this thoughtful review of a couple of stories in Monstrous Affections - and of the cover, which I would say is more The Kind of Face You'd Hate To Love.

Eutopia is an April release...

2010-09-30T23:33:00.003-05:00

Eutopia is my upcoming novel, acquired some time back by ChiZine Publications. It's a novel about the early American eugenics movement, utopianism, and a terrible monster - taking place for the most part in May 1911.

Well it turns out Eutopia will be hitting shelves just one month shy of the story's centennial. ChiZine's announced its spring 2011 line-up, and Eutopia's coming out April 15.

There will be lots of goodies coming in the months leading up to that date: viral videos, provocative blog postings, perhaps a website ... a jar of guts. To keep you going in the mean time, here is a tiny scene, presented without context or explanation:

Jason brought the candle down the steps. The space in here had been dug out of the ground and lined with fieldstone and timber. the ceiling was a low, whitewashed arch. Air circulation was bad in here, and the few times Andrew had been down before he'd always had the uneasy sense that he was about to suffocate.

"Sure are a lot of jars here," said Jason.

"This is where the hospital keeps its specimens," said Andrew. "Someone's foot gets amputated -- we pull out some kidney stones -- even if we cut out an appendix. It all goes here in a jar."

"Every time?"

"Not every time." Andrew squinted at a line of jars filled with stones of various sizes. Thin sheets of effluvia drifted in the yellowish liquid. "But when there's something remarkable about it. Something worth writing down. Then yes, we keep it."

Jason looked hard at the jars. "Should be a lot of jars like that around here. They're labeled and everything. What're we looking for?"

"Not kidney stones from M. Cunningham," said Andrew.

"Nor a testicle from L. Wharton," said Jason. "A testicle! He can't be too happy with how his life's carrying on."

Andrew chuckled. "I remember that one. I think he's happy enough these days. See how big it is?"

Jason looked closer. "I thought that was just the magnifyin' effect of the glass."

"Oh no. In fact, it looks like it has contracted since the surgery."

Jason whistled. "How'd a fellow walk, dragging something like that between his legs?"

"I wondered that too. And so I removed it."

It goes on like that for pages.

My pal, the author...

2010-09-05T09:35:00.004-05:00

This post should, I hope, prove once and for all that this blog is not just about me, me, me. It is also about my friends: this morning, convicted felon and now Hugo-winning sf author Peter Watts. I got this news from various sources in Australia and beyond, where Peter lost a bet and actually won the Hugo for Best Novelette, for "The Island" last night. It was originally published last year in New Space Opera 2 (ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan). I had the misfortune of critiquing the story before it came out, and finding the only lack in it was that it didn't have a Hugo award.

I'm glad to see that Peter has finally corrected my one significant quibble. My opinion's obviously worth something.

You can read the story, at rifters.com, Peter's website, right here. You'll see what I mean.

Thanks to Allan Weiss, for sending along this photo from Australia, taken after the ceremonies. I'm assuming he took it, so let's say he did.

Rumors of My Publisher's Demise have been Greatly Exaggerated (in 140 characters)

2010-08-26T18:06:00.000-05:00

This is a public service announcement (and also a helping-ChiZine-deal-with-sloppy-tweeting announcement).

ChiZine Publications, the publisher of my story collection Monstrous Affections and my forthcoming novel Eutopia, is doing just fine. So's their parent webzine, ChiZine. You wouldn't know it if you were a-Twitter today, when a ~~fiend~~ ~~bastard~~ sloppy Twitterer posted a note that ChiZine is shutting down. Perhaps it is an honest mistake - earlier this month, Dorchester Publishing let go Don D'Auria, the editor responsible for the Leisure Horror line, and announced they're going into print-on-demand and ebooks. Many presume this means that's it for Dorchester, which has in the past sponsored ChiZine. So presumably, said twitterer thought that might be it for ChiZine the webzine, and further surmised that CZP is also in the toilet.

Oh, the presuming! My, the surmising! Ye Gods, the unsubstantiated crap!

Don't believe me? Here's what CZP posted on their website, which you can link to here:

A Note From the Publishers of CZP
Recently, Leisure Books, due to financial difficulties, had to cease its sponsorship of ChiZine.com. There is a note up on ChiZine.com explaining the details, but this has no effect on ChiZine Publications. The sponsorship agreement never covered CZP, and CZP never had any business relationship with Leisure—we're not an imprint or subsidiary; we are a privately held company. Rumours we are going out of business or in financial trouble are completely false. If anything, based on advance numbers for our Fall books, we're doing better than ever. Don't miss our October 22nd Toronto Fall launch! —Brett & Sandra, Co-Publishers

The Revenge of the Hell-Skull

2010-08-22T10:07:00.004-05:00

Long-time yard apes may recall some trouble awhile back, when we reported the theft of a prized artifact from the Nickle-Fernandez back deck: the Hell Skull of Goran.

It was a deliciously evil sculpture by a once-local sculptor name of Goran, and it was going to be hellaciously, as it were, difficult to replace. The Yard lamented the loss of the Hell Skull, and brought down Hell Skull Curses on the thief who took it.

And that might have been it. But this past weekend, on the way through Burks Falls from Temagami, we stopped at dad's place -- where he had pretty much finished making drawings and oil paintings and watercolours of what has become known as the Hell Skull 2.* So we brought it home.

And now, all is right on Heaven, Earth and the Other Place.

* Yes. It is a bison skull. Bison are not minions of Hell, but rather agreeable big herbivores who are harder to come by than they once were. Play along, yard apes.

Words in the Wilderness part 2

2010-08-01T13:05:00.003-05:00

It's been a week since we drove up to Sudbury to take part in Words in the Wilderness' maiden voyage - and at last, we have downloaded photos. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to sing the praises of the little literary festival that will hopefully become a regular thing in years to come.

It will have finished up now - events were taking place all last week - but the big day for horror fiction was Sunday. That's when local author Sean Costello stepped up at the Creative Spark gallery to talk about his new novel - then Gord Rollo, Ken Lillie-Paetz, Rob Sacchetto and I waxed horrific for two solid hours about horror fiction and us. The audience was small but enthusiastic. I think they liked us - everybody sold a lot of books - and I certainly liked them.

The organizers, primarily in the persons of Ken Lillie Paetz and his wife Jenn, treated Karen and I like the royalty we aren't, putting us up in luxurious digs at the Best Western Sudbury and treating us to a very fine Sudbury Saturday night on the town (if you're in town, have some pizza at Respect is Burning, and try the terrienes at the Fromagerie). The mayor of Sudbury didn't show for us, but he was there the day before we arrived, to kick off the festivities. Hopefully we'll meet up next year, for the second annual Words in the Wilderness festival.

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Karen Fernandez:

At top, Ken, Rob, me and Gord get started on the stories of our own unique acquisition of the horror jones; the conversation continues; I read; and so does Gord Rollo. The audience listens intently.

Alasdair Stuart is a Suave Dude...

2010-07-12T21:37:00.001-05:00

I first learned of Alasdair as the genial Serling at the horror podcast Pseudopod, introducing some fine, terrifying horror stories, and also three of my own. He seemed like a very suave dude in podcast - and this spring, when we met up in Brighton at the World Horror Convention, it became clear his suaveness was not limited to the podcasting world. Alasdair is also an editor, of the U.K. sf online 'zine The Hub, and a blogger, for SFX, the British sf / f / h newsmagazine.

Well, one thing led to another - and before I knew it, I was back in Canada and we were conducting hot man-interview over email. We spoke of Captain Scarlet and Harlan Ellison, horror movies and short horror stories, and Eutopia, my forthcoming novel. Alasdair put it together, in a neat package.

And now it's up. At SFX. Right here.

Words in the Wilderness

2010-07-10T07:25:00.000-05:00

This just in: I'm heading north in a couple of weeks, to talk horror, literature and blackflies in Sudbury, at the brand-spankin'-new Words in the Wilderness Literary Festival. It's being organized at least in part by Ken Lillie-Paetz, and it's a week-long festival to draw together writers and artists and readers from across Ontario.

I'm doing my bit on Sunday July 25, from 3-5 p.m. at the Rainbow Cinema in town. There'll be a reading and some talk, and some book-selling-and-signing going on.

The Polaris File...

2010-07-09T05:28:00.002-05:00

It is that time again - the height of the summer, when our heat-poached brains turn to television and movies and bright, exciting stories presented in a variety of dimensions. Also Polaris - the media-favouring Toronto sf convention that is taking place weekend after this one, in Richmond Hill. For the past few years, they've been letting the writers in - writers including me - along with the stars.

Polaris is taking place July 16-18 at the Sheraton Parkway Toronto North Hotel - roughly at Highways 7 and 404. For directions and other miscellany, click right here.

I'll be there all three days, talking up Supernatural and Lost and Dollhouse, a bit about publishing, and also reading and signing.

Here is my schedule.

I will be reading, probably from my upcoming novel Eutopia, possibly a short story, at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the President's Boardroom

Lost: Really? That's What It Meant?

A post-series discussion of the mythology of Lost.Colleen Hillerup (M), David Nickle, Robert Smith?, Nikki Stafford, Lance Sibley
Scheduled day/time: Saturday 1:00 PM

I will be signing copies of Monstrous Affections and anything else at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Dealer's Room

Bookosaurus?

Is the Internet — with web distribution, e-books, and buying of books online — going to kill the publishing business? What about authors and independent booksellers?
Panelists: Kenneth Tam (M), David Nickle, Rob St. Martin, Karen Dales, Robert J. Sawyer
Note: No more Panelists are being accepted for this Panel.
Scheduled day/time: Saturday 5:00 PM

Dollhouse: Was it Satisfying for You?

A discussion of the plot and character advancements in the second (and final) season of Dollhouse. What did you think of how it ended? What could have been done better?
Panelists: Samantha Daigneault (M), David Nickle, Michelle Rowen, Sheena Callighen
Scheduled day/time: Saturday 6:00 PM

Would You Like A Treatment?

A discussion of the ethical and technological ideas presented in the most recently cancelled Joss Whedon show, Dollhouse.
Panelists: Samantha Daigneault (M), David Nickle, Julie E. Czerneda, Christin Milloy, Douglas Smith
Scheduled day/time: Saturday 10:00 PM

Drawing the Line between Heaven and Hell

Lucifer is risen, God is AWOL, and both Angels and Demons are ready for their last dance of the night. As the armies get into position there is more to Sam and Dean than mere hunters. Discuss the brothers' roles in the coming apocalypse.
Panelists: David Nickle, Kelley Armstrong, Gemma Files, Sheena Callighen, Suzanne Church
Scheduled day/time: Sunday 12:00 PM

OOPS

2010-07-01T09:04:00.003-05:00

I have no empirical evidence, but I'm going to guess that most regular Yard-apes are not regular perusers of No More Potlucks, the Montreal-based online culture journal. So I commend you to my story "OOPS," just now gone live in their Mea Culpa issue. Guest-editor Mariko Tamaki approached me to write a Mea Culpa story - and I wrote this one, which starts something like this:

A little electric contraption inside played a song every time you opened it. Da, da da Da. Da, da da Da.

He hadn't heard the song in nearly ten years, but he would have recognized it even if it hadn't been Sarah Michelle Gellar on the front of the card: wooden stake clutched in one hand, hovering over her breast – her airbrush-smoothed face unmistakably stricken.

Whatever had happened with that stake, she hadn't meant it.

Inside, one word:

OOPS.

So yard-apes, please accept my apologies. And check out "OOPS," right here.

A Sunburst Award - Missed It By That Much...

2010-07-01T06:22:00.003-05:00

Very flattering news from the Sunburst Awards jury, who announced the finalists for the 2010 Sunburst Award for Canadian speculative fiction. While it appears I will remain in the cheering section this year for my friends Karl Schroeder and Cory Doctorow - both of whose books made the short list - Monstrous Affections was one of four books to make the recommended reading/honorable mention list.

So congratulations to adult fiction nominees Karl and Cory, Charles De Lint, Robert Charles Wilson and A.M. Dellamonica - and to fellow mention-ees Douglas Coupland, Barbara Roden and Don LePan.

Here's the link.

Noting a Notable Shout-Out

2010-06-30T05:48:00.003-05:00

Ellen Datlow, who edits - well, just about everything it sometimes seems - has posted a list of eight notable story collections from 2009. And she has listed Monstrous Affections, my own little bag of stories, as one of them.

Here's what she said, from her Best Horror of the Year round-up, and the post:

Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (Chizine Publications) is this Canadian’s first collection, although the stories in it were originally published between 1994 and 2009. That story from 1994, “The Sloan Men,” was chosen for the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection. Michael Rowe provides an introduction to a powerful collection.

She also shouted-out collections by Barbara Roden, Reggie Oliver, Simon Strantzas, Simon Bestwick, Gerard Houarner, R.B. Russell and Ralph Robert Moore.

But they can link to their own collections. Here's where to get mine.

A G20 moment...

2010-06-30T05:15:00.006-05:00

There were so many G20 moments worthy of note here in Toronto over the weekend: the moments when black-clad droogs raised the world's consciousness about the dangers of fiscal restraint by setting police cars on fire, smashing store windows and lobbing mailboxes into roads; the moments where police boxed joggers, dog-walkers and Oh-Canada singing protesters into a downtown intersection for several hours during a torrential downpour; or when other police fired rubber bullets into a crowd of peaceful protesters outside their makeshift detention centre (a converted film studio that would see about 1,000 detainees - the largest mass arrest in Canadian history - pass through its gates), less than a kilometer from my house. Or there was the moment that most of us missed, when the leaders of G20 countries agreed it was time to start cutting their deficits and their spending, and posed for a photo op in front of a fake Toronto skyline, separated from the real skyline by a giant steel fence and a billion dollars worth of security.

I choose this one, before it all started, on the fake dock by the fake lake that my country constructed in the media centre of the G20, for somewhere between $57,000 and $2 million. In its saucy fakery, it is a nice moment - a far better moment to think of leading into Canada Day tomorrow, than all those real ones that came immediately afterwards.

-Thanks to Erin Hatfield for snapping this photo.

The Aurora Awards - Thirty Years of Canadian Science Fiction (and me)

2010-06-19T08:35:00.001-05:00

Well this takes me back. In 1991 (or so) Karl Schroeder and I sat down at a Brother portable typerwriter in a farmhouse on the top of the Niagara Escarpment, and banged out the line, "The man in the moon's smile began to slip. It turned into a leer." Which was the first line of "The Toy Mill," our story about a Satanic Santa (or maybe a Santa-ic Satan?) who wishes to destroy the world with wishes, and is ultimately undone by a very focussed little girl. In 1992, it appeared in Tesseracts 4, Lorna Toolis and Michael Skeet's edition of the long-running Canadian sf anthology series. (To give you an idea of how long-running ... well, I've got a story coming out in Tesseracts Fourteen this fall).

In 1992, to our cackling delight, the story won the Aurora Award for Best Short Form work in English. It was pretty early in both our careers, and that award meant a lot to us, and the story. It found its way into David Hartwell's paperback anthology Christmas Magic; Edo Van Belkom's Aurora Award anthology; the prologue of our novel The Claus Effect; and this spring, into The Aurora Awards: Thirty Years of Canadian Science Fiction, from Montreal's Nano Press.

My contributor copies came in the mail yesterday. It's a handsome volume, and it has a somewhat different mix than Edo's compilation more than a decade ago. There are newer stories - work by Isaac Szpindel, Julie E. Czerneda and Hayden Trendholm. And there are francophone stories, translated: work by Elizabeth Vonarberg, Yves Meynard and Laurent McAllister among others. And there's a mix of older stories by Douglas Smith, Candas Jane Dorsey, James Alan Gardner... all people I'm proud to share a table of contents with.

The book is tough to find on Amazon and other spots. It is dead easy to find over at NanoPress' site, right here.

Evelyn Evelyn - or, Breaking Up is Hard To Do...

2010-06-05T13:51:00.005-05:00

It's particularly hard to do if you're trying to split with your parapagus tripus dibrachius twin sister - sharing as you do "three legs, two arms, three lungs, two hearts and a single liver." Good thing that twin rock stars Evelyn and Evelyn Neville (aka Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley) seemed to be getting along so famously in Toronto last night at the Great Hall on Queen Street.

Which is to say, it is time for yard-apes to brace themselves for one of the Yard's semi-regular, semi-coherent raves about the considerable gifts of Ms. Amanda Palmer and her ever-shifting crew of genius collaborators. They were in town Friday, touring for Evelyn Evelyn, a honky-tonk concept album / rock opera (think Tommy by way of Geek Love and Sweeney Todd) about the aforementioned conjoined twins, and their picaresque, grand-guignol journey from trailer to chicken farm to Manitoba porn factory to circus sideshow to Myspace stardom. I picked up the album a couple of weeks ago and have been cycling through it on the mp3 player ever since.

The live show was still a revelation. Amanda and twin sister Jason mashed themselves together in a gigantic frock for a long set of Method-acted piano, accordian, guitar and ukelele duets, while one-man-band percussionist and twin-handler Sxip Shirey handled the shadow-puppet show and proved that he would take a bullet for the twins. Or from them, if need be.

Below, a sample of the song Chicken Man (gone horribly wrong) posted by another attendee:

And here, some tracks from the album set to video from other shows, or by fans:

Bundle that in with the harmonica/music box/marble-in-a-bowl compositions of Sxip Shirey, the Slavic-influenced accordion and guitar set from Jason Webley, and Amanda Palmer's show-ending capper (aided by an unnamed, screaming young woman who came on stage to deliver a show-stopping interpretive dance to a show-stopping performance of Missed Me), and you've got nearly three hours of the best time anyone had in Toronto Friday night.

I post all this here, because as of last night, Amanda came out and announced that ticket sales were, for some reason, fatally unimpressive for her Saturday evening show in Montreal (that's tonight as I type this). She suggested this might be because people in Montreal lack the Internet - and might have been relying on her now-former record label Roadrunner to tell them the show's on.

I don't know about that. Last time I was in Montreal, everybody had the Internet. So in that spirit - for any Montreal-area, wired-up yard-apes looking for something to do on Saturday, June 5 - Evelyn Evelyn's coming to the Corona Theatre, at 7 p.m., in Montreal. After that, they're going somewhere else.

So check it out. And pass it on.

Eutopia in '11

2010-05-19T17:05:00.001-05:00

It can at last be spoken aloud. In the spring of 2011, my novel Eutopia will appear under the ChiZine Publications imprint - the same imprint who did such a fine job with my story collection Monstrous Affections.

CZP announced the title and publication date on Twitter and Facebook just this afternoon. So I am, as ever, two steps behind the curve. But that, like the brevity of this post, should not indicate any lack of enthusiasm.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

* * *

Addendum, May 20: I just realized - the book will be appearing exactly 100 years after the time in which it was set. To the season.

Publishing is an eerie, eerie business, isn't it?

Frank Frazetta - 1928- 2010

2010-05-11T14:19:00.002-05:00

The Death Dealer comes for us all - even Frank Frazetta, the illustrator who almost single-handedly shaped the id of the 20th century teenaged boy; put the thew in Conan; and painted the covers of three-quarters of the paperbacks I read in 1979, easy.

I would say Rest in Peace, but in Mr. Frazetta's case, I can't imagine how that would work.

Road Rage, Canadian Style

2010-05-05T07:24:00.000-05:00

The red car was in front of us - like us, intending to make a left turn from Danforth onto Coxwell. When the light turned green, the car proceeded a nose-length into the intersection but no more - so that only one car - the red one - would be able to make it legally through the intersection on a yellow, if it came to that.

It seemed to be coming to that. So I tapped the horn. Twice.

We both made it through. But once we were through, the red car stopped, blocking us. A stout young man got out of the passenger side, came up waving his arms. Karen, who has strong opinions on the etiquette of left turn lanes, told him the red car should have proceeded fully into the intersection. This was the wrong thing to say.

The stout passenger waved his arms and screamed, "No! The law says you must wait until it is safe to proceed into an intersection!"

I interjected: "You need to get back in your car now, sir." And he did.

I love my country.

Remember this?

2010-05-04T07:19:00.002-05:00

Dedicated yard apes will recall last watching this video here in July, 2008, when I congratulated winners of the ChiZine short story contest I helped judge. Well, the creepy android lady is back - and so am I.

This year, I'll be helping judge the 15th ChiZine Short Story Contest with a deeply cool slate of judges including fellow CZP authors Gemma Files, Brent Hayward and Paul Tremblay. Those are actually all of the primary-tier judges. Breaking ties will be Hellblazer writer Mike Carey.

Here are the details.

JUDGES:
Brent Hayward
Gemma Files
David Nickle
Paul Tremblay
Mike Carey (tie-breaking judge)

PRIZES:
1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes: Publication in ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words at seven (7) cents per word (USD).

There will also be five honourable mentions.

GUIDELINES:

***PLEASE NOTE: SUBMISSIONS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED UNTIL JUNE 1st, 2010!***

• Dark.
• Well-written.
• 4,000 words or less.
• Rich Text Format or Microsoft Word attachment.
• No reprints.
• No simultaneous submissions.
• No multiple submissions.
• Send to ONLY this address:
(Submissions sent to any other address will be deleted unread.)
All submissions will be stripped of author identification and sent to the judges via a third party.
Deadline for the contest is June 30th, 2010. Winners and honourable mentions will be announced by July 31st, 2010. The top three placers will be published in ChiZine issue #46 (October–December, 2010).
(Note: ChiZine editorial staff members are ineligible for this contest.)

The Radejastians, at Pseudopod

2010-04-30T16:04:00.010-05:00

I knew this was coming at the end of April, but - like the tax deadline - it crept up on me. Pseudopod, that weekly horror podcast of which we've heard so much, has, while I wasn't looking, uploaded a most excellent podcast of my story "The Radejastians" - introduced suavely as ever by Alasdair Stuart, given earthy life by Erik Luke of Extruding America.

This is the bit they blew out to get folks to listen:

There is a cathedral in the middle of Radejast. It addresses the approaching pilgrim as a fist of granite and slate and limestone, lifting black iron bells and arches and gargoyles to touch the dangled teat of the soot-cloud that ever hangs low over the land. Within: a forest of stone pillars, some carved with the likenesses of Radejast’s saints, some simply chiseled with the mark of its venerable religion — all surrounding the dome, so high and wide that when emerging from the pillars I stumbled beneath it, madly fearful that gravity might suddenly reverse, fling me from the floor, and smash me against the curved mosaics above the whispering gallery.

The Good News Happening Congregation’s hall was larger than Radejast’s cathedral by half again: a great circular space beneath a peaked roof, lit from high, clear windows on every side. Behind the pulpit stood a crucifix with a painted sculpture of Jesus Christ bound to it, bright lines of blood trickling down his slender limbs, from the crown of thorns he wore. Altogether, it was half-again taller than any similar icon in Radejast.

The Radejastians first appeared in Tesseracts Thirteen last year. It does not (as I miscommunicated to Pseudopod, and as Alasdair mentioned in the introduction) appear in Monstrous Affections. But Ellen Datlow did give it an honorable mention in The Best Horror of the Year Volume 2. And now - it's right here.

Addendum, May 2:

One of the commenters on Pseudopod this morning mentioned Gogol Bordello, a band I had not heard of until now. And so I went a-youtubing, and found this - which fits so well with the theme of "The Radejastians" that I am glad I hadn't seen/heard it while I was writing the story.

The song's called American Wedding. Put your hands together for Gogol Bordello, yard-apes.

You know, this week I would have taken a bad review...

2010-04-28T07:14:00.001-05:00

... with the same equanimity I brought to what seemed like the total collapse of my car's suspension as we drove back from Port Huron (don't worry - part of the plastic on the wheel-well had come loose, and we were able to fix it handily, thanks to the terrifying and barely-legal pocket knife loaned us by a Sarnia convenience store clerk).

But this is not a post about Port Huron, or car trouble, or armed convenience store clerks, or even bad reviews. Matt from ChiZine just pointed me to a very affectionate review of Monstrous Affections, over at Killer-Words.com, by reviewer Monster-Chris, who likes... well, monsters.

I'll quote a bit from the beginning:

A giant Cyclops, a cottaging wendigo, a basement dwelling tar baby, a family of mutants with a terrible gift for love, vampiric miners, a swamp witch... these are just a few of the "monsters" that await in David Nickle's debut short story collection Monstrous Affections (2009). As impressively diverse as this rogue's gallery may seem to be, the truly breathtaking feature of the book is the author's marvelously assured hand as a writer and the deft precision with which he manages to give life to that dark world that often seems to lie just out of our view at any given moment.

And a bit from the end:

Monstrous Affections has already won David Nickle the Black Quill Reader's Choice Award and deservedly so, Monstrous Affections is an absolutely brilliant collection and easily one of the most satisfying books of the past few years and marking David ~~Nickel~~ Nickle as one the most talented writers to emerge from Canada in the last 10 years.

And of course I'll link to it, right here.

Thank you, Monster Chris!

... and Back Again

2010-04-27T07:32:00.008-05:00

We got back into Toronto last night at around 9:30, from the sentencing hearing that saw our friend Peter Watts avoid jail time. The crossing back from Port Huron was happily uneventful - particularly as we passed the spot on the bridge where, in December, U.S. Customs and Border official Andrew Beaudry beat and pepper-sprayed Peter without any rational cause, then presented a spurious allegation of assault that might have seen Peter in jail for as long as six months.

As I posted all too briefly yesterday *, that didn't happen. U.S. Circuit Court Judge James P. Adair rejected a pre-sentencing report recommending that Peter be sentenced to six months in jail - less two months, if he came up with about $2,000 in fines and fees - and set him free.

About a dozen of us came down from Toronto to listen to the sentencing and offer up our support. I think it had an impact. It had more impact, certainly, than the presence of officers Beaudry and Behrendt, who took time to attend the hearing but made tracks seconds after Judge Adair rendered his verdict.

The biggest impact, according to Peter's lawyer Doug Mullkoff, was probably from the juror who has posted on various blogs as proudinjun. She and her husband attended the ~~trial~~ hearing too, and wrote to Judge Adair, explaining that no one on the jury had thought Peter deserved jail time - and that she and some others put little credit in the account of the event given by Beaudry, Behrendt and the others. We met at the ~~trial~~ hearing, and Doug toasted her afterwards. She took enormous grief from her fellow jurors, from her neighbours (as represented by the trolls who comment on the Port Huron paper's website) and she didn't flinch. You want a hero in this story - proudinjun is it.

You don't want to underestimate Doug Mullkoff's impact, though. I'd never seen him in action until this moment, and man. That's a lawyer who earns his keep.

He started off tearing apart the sloppy work in the pre-sentencing report, which listed Peter as being a U.S. citizen, over-estimated his income, and downplayed the infirmity of his father by listing the 92-year-old widower's age as "unknown." He strung the various letters of support that Peter had received into a narrative that showed Peter to be non-violent, kind and thoughtful, milking that just as much as he could. He explained that Peter's questioning nature meant that he would not fare well in the military, but that shouldn't be a crime, and he characterized the incident at the border as a "goof up" that already had lasting consequences. He pointed out that the simple conviction meant that Peter would never, ever again enter the United States of America. He asked Judge Adair to exercise his prerogative, and suspend Peter's sentence if he paid his fines in full (which he would do immediately - Peter brought with him $2,000 in crisp U.S. greenbacks).

So Judge Adair rendered his lengthy verdict. He told Peter that he was a puzzle to him; that he thought he would enjoy having a pint with Peter (Peter told him he would buy; Adair said he would get the next round); spoke at great length about the need to listen to and obey police officers. He explained he could only render a verdict after he looked a person in the eye. Then he spoke again about what folly it was to disobey police officers. He messed with our heads, Judge Adair did, for what seemed like an hour but couldn't have been more than 15 minutes. And in the end, he agreed with Mullkoff; a suspended sentence of 60 days (less time served), if Peter paid his bills. In other words: no jail time, but a stiff fine.

We took the news pretty happily, the four of us in the car - me, Peter, his partner Caitlin and our friend Madeline**. The interview with the Canada Customs officer heading back home was giddy and incoherent; we left him smiling and shaking his head. We listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joan Jett, Kansas and the like as we hauled back along 400 series highways in the late afternoon sun, and laughed and grinned like everything was finally okay.

Of course, everything is not okay. Peter doesn't go to jail. But he's a convicted felon now - convicted of not getting on the ground fast enough when U.S. border guards demanded it. He and the rest of us went through hell while the Michigan justice system played with his life like a cat plays with a mouse. That system and the people who thrive in it persist; Peter's life is forever diminished.

And he did nothing wrong.

* thanks again to the Quay Street Brewing Company for letting us use their office computer and internet connection (try the Nutting Better Brown Ale - I also hear their wheat beer is very good).

** Madeline Ashby, that is. There's a link to click through on her name. Don't be shy. It takes you to Tor.com, where she has set down a heart-rending account of our day in Michigan, with far greater detail and emotional depth and beauty than you will find here at the Yard. It chokes me up every time I re-read it. It is, once again, right here.

Peter Watts is free

2010-04-26T15:24:00.002-05:00

I type this from the basement of the Quay Street Brewing Company, where manager Mike Ziegler has kindly let me post this.

Sentencing is finished. Judge Adair dismissed any thoughts of jail time, made Peter pay a fine, and shared wisdom about the respect we must afford police.

But never mind that. No jail time. We are celebrating for a bit at Quay Street, then heading home.

Off to Port Huron tomorrow

2010-04-25T13:38:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow (Monday April 26) Peter Watts will be in a Port Huron courtroom to learn what the spring and summer have in store for him. It is his sentencing date. As discussed on this blog and elsewhere, Peter was convicted of resisting and obstructing border guards, stemming from an incident late last year at the Blue Water Bridge. He is facing jail time - at this point, reading the sentencing report that came forward just last week, it looks like four months, if he pays about $2,000 in fines and court costs. Perhaps the judge will show clemency, and Peter will come home Monday night. Thanks to the generosity of many people around the world, Peter was able to afford an excellent lawyer, Doug Mullkoff. He'll be there in court tomorrow, making the entirely reasonable case that Peter doesn't deserve to do jail time for the offence of which he's been convicted.

I'll be there too. If things go well, you can hear how it went from Peter on his blog at Rifters.com. If they don't - I'll be posting reports and updates. I'll be doing that on the news crawl at Rifters, and probably here too, as soon as I can get to a computer with internet connectivity.

If things go badly, that is. I'm not quite there yet.

Affection for the Kindle!

2010-04-21T19:54:00.001-05:00

A brief note, to let those of you who've shelled out for a Kindle and have come to mistrust paper, that Monstrous Affections (and other great ChiZine titles) are now available for Amazon's Kindle. I think, actually, that you could read digital versions through the Kindle before. But now you can buy one through Amazon. There's no digital rights management gewgahs attached either.

And you can order it right here.

Other ChiZine titles are also available. Check 'em all out here.

(H)ad Astra

2010-04-12T22:44:00.002-05:00

Well that was some Goddamn fun I had, spending the weekend at Ad Astra as I did, staying up too late and doing a stink of a lot of panels and flashing the cover of Monstrous Affections in front of very many people who had no idea what was coming. Ad Astra is the local literary sf convention for me, and I always manage to have a good time there. This time was busy, and enlightening. My high school pal Steve Bevan showed up with Gwen and their daughter Grace, and my only regret was not being able to hang out with 'em a bit more.

But damn, it was busy for us Ad Astra panelists.

We spoke about how there is a fine line between screaming horror and Bugs Bunny; we considered how ravenous, brain-eating zombies might be interpreted as an ode to community and cooperation; we looked at a movie made from a Douglas Smith short story. We read stories, Peter Watts and I, until the time was up and we had to give up the room; and we all launched the hell out of ChiZine Publication's spring lineup, including Gemma Files' A Book of Tongues, and Douglas Smith's Chimerascope.

And as Michael Rowe observed, it seemed as though the fans who showed up were getting younger, and better looking, and much faster off the mark. I refrained from mentioning then that it might not be the fans that are getting younger, but we...

You get the idea.

* * *

In an unrelated moment of self-congratulations, I would be remiss if I didn't note that Ellen Datlow wasn't quite finished with me when she gave "The Radejastians" an honorable mention in the Best Horror of the Year Volume 2. Today, she released her long list of recommended stories from 2009. Included was "Other People's Kids" from Monstrous Affections.

So thanks, Ellen!

Ad Astra

2010-04-02T08:24:00.000-05:00

Back from one convention, off to another: Ad Astra, in Toronto this time. It is at the Toronto Don Valley Hotel and Suites - a venue remarkably similar to the Toronto Crown Plaza Hotel, where it was held last year. Both hotels are located in the same physical space, at 1250 Eglinton Avenue East. The only difference, really, is the name.

The convention takes place next weekend - starting April 9, that is. Unlike the World Horror Convention, just past, on this one I've got lots of programming.

Here's my schedule:

Fri 8:00 PM
Ballr. East
Critiquing Groups
Being a good writer does not necessarily make you a good editor/critiquer. What skills, strategies and techniques are needed to set up a critiquing group and provide constructive criticism of a story?
Matt Moore (m), David Nickle, Suzanne Church, Megan Crewe, Lorne Kates

Fri 9:00 PM
Crowne Room
Reading: David Nickle, Peter Watts
David Nickle, Peter Watts

Sat 11:00 AM
Ballr. Centre
ChiZine Publications Panel
Beginning as the print off-shoot of Chiaroscuro, in less than two years, ChiZine Publications has grown into a small but influential player in independent genre publishing. CZP staff and authors discuss and answer questions about its growth in a bad time for publishing, the future of genre publishing, why a small press might be a better option for beginning writers, and how they have fun doing it.
Brett Alexander Savory, Sandra Kasturi, Matt Moore Gemma Files, David Nickle, Claude Lalumiere, Douglas Smith, Helen Marshall, Laura Marshall, Erik Mohr, Bob Boyczuk

Sat 1:00 PM
Salon 243
Monster as Political Statement
Zombies and body snatchers and communism, Frankenstein and the enlightenment, vampires and Victorian morality, the role of women and sexuality. When is a walking corpse just a walking corpse and when does it have a greater message?
Nancy Kilpatrick, David Nickle, Tim Liebe, Thea Munster

Sat 4:00 PM
Ballr. East
Autograph Session (to 5:30)

Sun 11:00 AM
Salon 243
Genre Crossing
Can cross-over books ever be the best in either field? Will an SF novel ever win an Edgar? Do crossovers get a bigger audience (all SF plus all mystery fans) or a smaller one (only mystery fans who like SF)?
Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, David Nickle, James Allan Gardner, Kelley Armstrong

Sun 2:00 PM
Ballr. Centre
Dueling Openings
Aspiring short fiction writers (audience participation required!) take turns reading the opening lines of their published stories, and the audience chooses which opening(s) they like best. Authors discuss what makes a good opening, why they're important
Douglas Smith (m), Claude Lalumiere, David Nickle, Robert Boyczuk

Sun 3:00 PM
Ballr. Centre
Laughing in the Face of Death
There’s more crossover than you’d expect between horror and humour. You can find black comedy, horror franchises becoming self-parodies, and intentional and unintentional humour in horror; why does it work? Why do we laugh at horrifying things?
David Nickle, Sandra Kasturi, Aaron Allston, Gavin Stephens

I'm also doing something at noon on Sunday, interviewing Doug Smith about his movie. But that's all I know about that.

Brighton, 2010

2010-03-30T12:19:00.016-05:00

Well I'm back, from England and Brighton and the World Horror Convention.

The business end of it was pretty straightforward, and went very well. We had to get there on Thursday in time to launch ChiZine's line of books that night. This, we did - with a certain amount of gusto, I think. Gemma Files, Philip Nutman, Douglas Smith, Tim Lebbon, Claude Lalumiѐre and I all presented and read and signed while publishing/editing/domestic duo Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi made it happen.

After that, it was as these things are, when they're good: meeting up with a lot of good folk, seeing a fabulous town and enjoying the hospitality of the Royal Albion Hotel (whose staff were, I will say, very helpful in correcting some of the most eyebrow-raising hospitality infractions to be seen outside Fawlty Towers). I didn't make it to very much programming - which was a disappointment. Organizers Steve Jones and Amanda Foubister did a fantastic job and I should really have paid it more heed.

Blame the bright glories of Brighton, and the conversations with so many new friends and old ones I don't see often enough.

Gemma Files (pictured at left) was my travelling companion to the World Horror Convention in Brighton. Here we are, just off the red-eye from Toronto at Heathrow, awaiting our motor-coach. Gemma, incidentally (but not co-incidentally) is the author of A Book of Tongues from ChiZine. It had its launch in Brighton, and has received a very favourable review in Publisher's Weekly. Gemma's grin here has nothing to do with that review: this was Thursday, days before the review came out.

It was also several hours before we arrived in Brighton, and at our hotel.

The Royal Albion.

The hotel looks quite lovely from the outside - particularly on a bright morning like this one. In this sense, it leaves a misleading impression. The Royal Albion is well-suited to hosting a horror convention because it is, in so many ways, a horror show. From the dead flies on the pillows to the toilet that would not flush, the showers that ran cold, the bath plugs only removable with the complimentary tea spoon... well, you won't be hearing about that sort of thing on this blog. Email me separately if you need to hear more.

Feast your eyes instead, on some of the decor: like this Green Man hiding surreptitiously on the corner of an armoire in the hotel's ~~lobby~~ lounge.

Or this rather spectacular lamp, next to the Green Man at the gateway to the dining hall:

The lamp, really, makes a perfect introduction to Brighton's big tourist draw, the Royal Pavilion. Constructed by King George IV when he was just prince, the edifice seemed to have been made with the dual purpose of blithely misrepresenting Asian cultures (aesthetically, it's a bizarre and opulent mash-up of a mogul's palace, a Merchant-Ivory production, a Chinese restaurant and the planet Naboo), and making George's father Mad King George III even madder. I can't show photos from inside, because photography's not allowed, but here are a couple of exterior shots to give you an idea:

The pavilion was built on the site of a farmhouse that the Prince Regent purchased on advice from his doctor. As might be inferred from this statue, George suffered from a certain amount of gout:

It's unlikely, however, that the waters of Brighton helped much - because the structure became a kind of Pleasure Dome of George, Prince Regent, where guests were fattened by an army of cooks and servants, under 30 foot long, dragon-wrapped chandeliers, before they danced like fiends, drank like fish and succumbed to any vices that might be left over after that. It was many years before Queen Victoria would move in and put a stop to all that nonsense.

A group of us headed out to see the place Saturday morning - including Jetse de Vries, who some of you may know as editor of the important new optimistic sf anthology Shine:

When I speak of new friends made at the convention, I mean Jetse - and Alasdair Stuart, and Philip Nutman and Anya Martin, and Sandra Wickham, and Benjamin Kane Etheridge... and that's just a start.

I didn't take pictures of them - stopping mid-conversation to snap a picture is a buzz kill, I find. But we did all get together for a fantastic time Friday evening, courtesy of extraordinarily generous dark thriller author Heather Graham. She was good enough to cut a deal with a pub at the end of the Brighton Pier (pictured here) -

- to cover drinks and victuals for everyone at the convention, whilst she and a band of horror-author minstrels rocked out on the stage. For anyone in need of a little fear, she made sure that the Horror Hotel across the pier provided free shrieking terror to anyone who dared set ass in buggy.

Don't tell anyone, but Gemma kept her eyes closed through the whole ride.

It was, overall, a very good convention and I could go on for five thousand more words easily. But that would take too long. So in their place, here are five more pictures, which should be worth about the same:

Now about WHC...

2010-03-23T06:30:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be at the World Horror Convention, cheerful but bleary-eyed after a red-eye flight from Toronto to London, and a bus ride to Brighton, on Thursday morning. If you're there, Yard-ape, say hello. I'm not signed up for any programming, alas - I got my membership after all that had been finalized. But I'll be there at ChiZine's Euro-Launch, introducing Monstrous Affections and a bunch of ChiZine's new titles to the British horror crowd. And I'll be around.

I will also be thanking Ellen Datlow in person, for including my story "The Radejastians" from Tesseracts 13 in her short list of recommended short horror fiction, at the back of The Best Horror of the Year Volume 2. Michael Kelly's T13 story "The Woods" is also on that list. And Ellen said some kind things about the powerful-ness of Monstrous Affections in the introduction. So she's going to get thanked for that too.

But the ChiZine Launch is the big deal. Here, from ChiZine's own dark-tinted lips, is the press release/invite:

The End Is Nigh . . . Where Will You Be?

Commanding Hordes of the Undead

Leading a Posse of Gunslingers through Hell

Seeking Oblivion in Drugs, Booze, and Rock 'n' Roll

OR . . .

Carousing at the ChiZine Publications Launch Party!

CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS co-publishers' Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi -- along with authors Philip Nutman, Tim Lebbon, Douglas Smith, Gemma Files, David Nickle, and Claude Lalumiѐre -- will treat you to a dazzling night of books and booze at the World Horror Convention 2010.

On Thursday March 25^th CZP will be launching its new fall titles at Bar Rogue from 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM

These include:

• Chasing the Dragon, Nicholas Kaufmann
• Chimerascope, Douglas Smith
• A Book of Tongues: Volume I of the Hexslinger Series, Gemma Files
• Katja from the Punk Band, Simon Logan
• Cities of Night, Philip Nutman
• The Thief of Broken Toys, Tim Lebbon
ChiZine Publications
http://chizinepub.com

How I'm feeling...

2010-03-20T07:26:00.011-05:00

I know I promised not to write about feelings (see the Yard's mission statement to the right of this post). But as the case of my friend Peter Watts and the guards at the Blue Water Bridge sinks in, feeling seems to be all I'm doing. So while this might be a good time to start telling you about the ChiZine launch at the World Horror Convention in Brighton next Thursday, I've got no stomach for it.

I wasn't at the trial in Michigan, where a jury delivered their conviction Friday morning; I was here in Toronto, in a meeting with my superiors at the paper, cheerfully talking about how the Toronto mayor's race was shaping up. I'd pretty much convinced myself that, based on what I knew about the case and reports I'd gotten about just how well Peter's lawyer Douglas Mullkoff was arguing it, there would be an acquittal.

After all - under cross-examination by Mullkoff, the border guards had conceded that Peter hadn't assaulted anyone; hadn't threatened to assault anyone; and that his aggressive stance was nothing any reasonable person would consider aggressive. The allegations that he had somehow choked border guard Andrew Beaudry while Beaudry was hitting him, were demolished. The only choking going on is mine right now, typing that Beaudry was merely somehow mistaken when he accused Peter of being a strangler.

If I was wondering anything, it was what we'd be eating at the homecoming party.

Didn't work out that way. Because, there is this statute - that essentially criminalizes non-compliance to such a broad degree that asking a question (as Peter did) before complying with an order from a border guard is a felony. In terms of the sentence one might serve - well, Peter might as well have choked Beaudry. It amounts to the same thing.

As Peter explains on his blog:

The press has frequently characterized the charge against me as “assaulting a federal officer”. The alleged (and discredited) “choking” episode has been repeated ad nauseum. Here at the Sarnia Best Western I don’t have the actual statute in front of me but it includes a lengthy grab-bag of actions, things like “assault”, “resist”, “impede”, “threaten”, “obstruct” — hell, “contradict” might be in there for all I know. And under “obstruct” is “failure to comply with a lawful order”, and it’s explicitly stated that violence on the part of the perp is not necessary for a conviction. Basically, everything from asking “Why?” right up to chain-saw attack falls under the same charge. And it’s all a felony.

This shouldn't surprise me - the United States is a foreign country, for all its nearness. Its founders espoused different values from those of the architects of my homeland; those founders' sons and daughters today espouse values utterly alien to my own. That an American state should pass a law that criminalizes the act of questioning - of hesitation - in the face of a physical assault by a representative of their federal government... that might come as a surprise in the particular case. But generally, in the context of American history, it's not so far off the mean that I should be as shocked as I am.

The temptation to fall into anti-Americanism has the pull of gravity right now; the "neighbour to the south" feels to me like the kind of neighbour that returns our tools broken and leers at our daughters. Ask me now if I ever intend to visit the United States, I'd say no. Not again. Ask me if you should, and I'd say: only if you can't avoid it. And if you do go, bring a bagged lunch, a thermos of coffee and only order glasses of water in the restaurants. Keep your at-par dollar working at home.

That's how I'm feeling - but look, I understand it's not productive. I know too many Americans, and love and respect too many Americans, to start thinking about building walls and silly little personal economic sanctions. America has become fearful for its safety since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Really, it would have far more cause for that fearfulness, were it not for the goodness of so many of its people.

Many of those people did, in fact, contribute to Peter's defense fund, that allowed him to make his case so eloquently - to discredit the lie, that he did anything to deserve the brutal beating he received at the hands of Andrew Beaudry, or that he did anything that might warrant the hell he and those close to him have gone through in its wake. Some jurors even appear have come forward and added nuance to their decision, in singular missives among the many vile comments on newspaper articles and blogs. Like this one, at the Times-Herald, by a commenter claiming to have been on the jury:

proudinjun wrote:
As a member of the jury that convicted Mr. Watts today, I have a few comments to make. The jury's task was not to decide who we liked better. The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge.

Or this one, on Peter's blog:

Peter,

I believe your description of the trial and deliberations is more accurate than you could know. As a non-conformist and “libertarian” (who has had some experiences not unlike yours) I was not comfortable with my vote, but felt deep inside that it was consistent with the oath we took as jurors. I believe nearly all the jurors searched for a legitimate reason to vote differently. In the end it came down to the question “Was the law broken?”. While I would much rather have a beer and discussion with you than Officer B. I never the less felt obligated to vote my conscience. I also believe most, if not all, the jurors sincerely hope that you are handled with a great degree of leniency, we, unfortunately have no say in that matter.

They both sound like good-hearted people. My own conscience would have driven me to a different decision than the one they made. Even if it weren't my friend's life in the balance, I like to think I would have asked the judge the question:

If we feel the statute is mis-applied, if we feel that the accused is a victim of a crime and not a perpetrator - and that statute is functioning to mask the real crime - can we without violating our oath deliver a verdict of not guilty even if the accused's actions technically fall within that statute?

But if some of the jurors' values appear to also be mine - I know that my conscience is not theirs. As Peter said in his blog, they deliberated for some time before coming to their decision. They took the matter seriously. That's something.

It doesn't comfort; it doesn't change anything.

But it's something.

Peter Watts was convicted today

2010-03-19T17:42:00.007-05:00

The news of this hit me hard this morning. Peter, you may recall, was beaten and pepper-sprayed while crossing the Canada-U.S. border at Port Huron, Michigan. For his troubles, they charged him with resisting arrest and assaulting a federal officer - a young man named Andrew Beaudry, who accused Peter of attempting to choke him during the beating Beaudry was administering.

Good people around the world - the first of which were Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi - mobilized to help us gather Peter the funds he needed for an excellent lawyer and a vigorous defense.

The fundraising worked wonders. The justice system of that place in Michigan failed profoundly and delivered a conviction.

Here is Peter's own, more generous account of the verdict.

I would link to the local Port Huron paper's coverage of the trial - it's a good account - but the comments by local readers so sicken me that I cannot in any conscience send you there.

Here's the Toronto Star's wrap-up that went online today.

I will write more on this later.

CORRECTION: MARCH 22: Up top in this blog entry, I'd suggested that the Port Huron paper's coverage of the trial was a good account.

In fact, I have since been informed that the paper incorrectly reported that Peter Watts was convicted of assaulting a federal officer. As of this morning, the newspaper has not corrected the error.

As a journalist myself, I regret my error in misplaced professional courtesy, and any inconvenience it may have caused.

Never Open A Book With The Weather.

2010-03-07T12:05:00.004-05:00

This is Elmore Leonard's first rule of 10 rules of writing. And it is a good one.

He doesn't say anything about opening a blog posting with a picture of the weather, though: particularly this knobby bit of ice at the end of the Leslie Spit in Toronto, photographed by me, on a freezing cold bike ride there, earlier today.

Lots of Affections for America

2010-03-06T10:11:00.005-05:00

This is a note for U.S. yard apes that might have been thinking about getting ahold of Monstrous Affections but were feeling stymied by its spotty availability. For a few weeks now, Amazon.com's been promising more stock real soon. And who knows where the books are available on the ground?

Two bits of encouraging news, then. First, Amazon.com's re-stocked, and will be filling those orders that came in during the stocking haitus. Check it out here.

And second: Brett at ChiZine informs me that Borders has placed a very large order of Monstrous Affections for the chain. It is the kind of order that might just put the second printing over hump-day, and should stock shelves in a sizeable number of the bookstore chain's outlets. Soon.

Stop by for a Bite...

2010-03-03T08:05:00.003-05:00

This evening, I'm planning on spending some time at the Bitten By Books site, along with fellow Tesseracts Thirteen authors - for a part of a day-long marathon online interview-fest, in the continued launch of the chilling edition of the Canadian sf anthology. My story, "The Radejastians," is an innocent enough story about the benefits of regular church attendance; others are more ghoulish.

So stop by and talk about it. Bitten By Books has an RSVP site which you can visit to find out more, and RSVP, to be eligible for PRIZES PRIZES PRIZES.

It's right here.

Shark Attack!

2010-02-28T22:55:00.010-05:00

It's not as bad as it sounds. Today, the Great White EBook Shark took a bite out of Monstrous Affections. But ever since that Benchley incident back in the '70s, sharks have really gotten a bad name when it comes to playing rough.

The Great White EBook Shark website is a very constructive kind of shark attack. The Shark as he/she calls him/herself takes bits of prose that strikes the Shark's fancy. As the name suggests, the site is in the business of highlighting and promoting ebooks, by pre-digesting the writing on a word-by-word, em-dash by em-dash, colon-by-comma level.

So far, the Shark has wondered how devout Christian readers might feel about the introduction of the Crucifix glitch in Peter Watts' Blindsight; analyzed the comma-conjunction structure in Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners; and taken a close and loving look at an oppressively long and evocative paragraph from Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

This afternoon, the Shark had a good long sniff at "The Mayor Will Make a Brief Statement and then Take Questions" - and swam by, leaving the text unmolested.

Here's the verdict:

OK, I give up. There is nothing to say except that the following story is very, very creepy – and very, very well written.

Next time, I must remember to trail a little chum in the water. That drives the sharks crazy, I'm told.

Here's the link.

I really owe Rose Fox a nice dinner out...

2010-02-26T15:06:00.004-05:00

Rose Fox is the genre fiction editor at Publisher's Weekly and the author of the Genreville blog. Last year, PW gave Monstrous Affections a starred review. Then Rose put it in the bottom end of her top ten sf/f/h books for 2009.

And now, she's done it again. In her Feb. 23 blog entry, as she was wondering why there weren't more out-of-country nominations for the Bram Stoker Award this year, she had this to say:

Meanwhile, my first thought when I looked at the Stoker ballot was “Where are the non-Americans?”. Not that there are so many on the Nebula ballot–China Miéville might be the only one, actually–but while plenty of top-notch SF/F was published in the U.S., there is no question in my mind that the best horror of 2009 was published by ChiZine Publications in Canada and HarperCollins’s new Angry Robot imprint in the U.K. Slights should absolutely be on that ballot, and Nekropolis, and Monstrous Affections or at least a couple of stories from it, and probably a selection or two from Horror Story and Other Horror Stories (which I haven’t read, but have heard very good things about).

For the record: it is okay that I didn't end up on the Stoker ballot. I have a Bram Stoker Award already, for mine and Edo Van Belkom's short story Rat Food. I received a very nice Black Quill Award, for Monstrous Affections, just the other week. People are buying and reading Monstrous Affections, so ChiZine is making a profit on the money they invested in me, and I am too.

And Stoker or no, I'm stoked that Rose thinks my book deserves one.

Read the whole thing right here.

Is that a steel banana in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?*

2010-02-16T07:13:00.010-05:00

It was just over a week ago that I met up at east-end coffee shop Tango Palace with Devon Wong, the literature and theory correspondent for steelbananas.com - a very cool webzine that subtitles itself 'that post-pomo variety show' - and his photographer, Matt, for a chat about Monstrous Affections, the art of horror and comedy, why lying is sometimes a good thing, and the vocal stylings of Tom Waits. I wore my black leather coat and glowered up a storm to put the fear into 'em, but it didn't work. We went outside to take a picture of me and said our goodbyes.

Well you got to know it doesn't take long for something like that to end up on the internet. So yesterday evening, I came home from a birthday dinner of meat and meat (go, carnivorous yard-apes, and try the goose foie gras at The Black Hoof on Dundas Street West at the top of Trinity Bellwoods Park; go now) to the spectacle of me, on the cover, and the interview itself posted right here.

So go check it out. Devon and Matt did me proud, I think.

And while you're there, feast your eyes on the rest of the journal, which includes articles on everything from break-ups and the movies, to dinosaur porn. I'm bookmarking it all. Although possibly not at work.

* Sorry, steelbananas.com; couldn't resist.

Monstrous Affections wins a Black Quill Award

2010-02-09T17:18:00.007-05:00

Some time back, I mentioned that Monstrous Affections was nominated for a Black Quill Award, for Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection. Well today, I found out that it actually won the award, in the Readers' Choice category. Which means that readers of the webzine Dark Scribe Magazine old and new weighed in on which story collection they liked best. And this year, enough weighed in on Monstrous Affections to give it the prize.

I assume some of you yard-apes had something to do with that. So thanks, yard apes! Also thanks to Dark Scribe Magazine, which sponsors and administers the three-year-old award. And congratulations to all the winners and nominees, especially Jameson Currier, who won the Editor's Choice award in the same category for his story collection The Haunted Heart and Other Tales.

Here's their press release:

Black Quill Award Winners Announced

FLYNN, SIMMONS TAKE TOP HONORS IN BLACK QUILL AWARDS

LONG ISLAND, NY, February 9, 2010 — A master of otherworldly suspense and a literary fiction darling have taken top honors in the 3rd Annual Black Quill Awards, as winners were announced today by DARK SCRIBE MAGAZINE, the virtual magazine “dedicated to the books that keep readers up at night.”

Chicago-based author Gillian Flynn snagged the coveted Editor’s Choice award for DARK GENRE NOVEL OF THE YEAR for her sophomore effort, DARK PLACES, while veteran dark scribe Dan Simmons took Readers’ Choice honors in the same category for DROOD, his historical reimagining of the last years of Charles Dickens’ life. Simmons was nominated in the same category in 2007 for THE TERROR.

The Black Quill Awards were handed out in (8) categories honoring works of dark genre literature – horror, suspense, and thrillers – from both mainstream and small press publishers. While six of the awards recognized literary efforts, two of the awards recognized important aspects of book publishing and promotion: cover design and artwork and book trailer production — a growing marketing aspect of dark genre publishing. Peter Mahaichuk and César Puch dominated the BEST COVER ART AND DESIGN category for their work on Michael Louis Calvillo’s AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT for Bad Moon Books, while Calvillo himself took Readers’ Choice for BEST SMALL PRESS CHILL. Filmmaker JT Petty won Editors’ Choice for BEST DARK GENRE BOOK TRAILER for his work on the book trailer for real-life wife Sarah Langan’s AUDREY’S DOOR, while up-and-coming trailer producer John Palisano took Readers’ Choice in that same category for Gary Braunbeck’s FAR DARK FIELDS.

First-time nominees fared well in this year’s Black Quills, with Paul G. Bens Jr. taking top honors in the BEST SMALL PRESS CHILL category (Editor’s Choice) and Stoker Award-winner Lisa Morton scoring an Editors’ Choice nod for her editing work on MIDNIGHT WALK in the BEST DARK GENRE ANTHOLOGY category. Jameson Currier snagged an Editors’ Choice award for BEST DARK GENRE FICTION COLLECTION for THE HAUNTED HEART AND OTHER TALES, while David Nickle picked up the Readers’ Choice award in that same category for MONSTROUS AFFECTIONS. Editor Michael Knost took Editors’ Choice honors in the BEST DARK GENRE BOOK OF NON-FICTION category for the how-to compilation WRITERS WORKSHOP OF HORROR, while frequent Stephen King chronicler Bev Vincent earned Readers’ Choice honors in the same category for his THE ILLUSTRATED STEPHEN KING COMPANION. Elsewhere, Sarah Totton and Harry Shannon earned Editors’ Choice and Readers’ Choice nods, respectively, in the BEST DARK SCRIBBLE category. Totton’s short story “Flatrock Sunners” appeared in the UK print magazine BLACK STATIC, while Shannon’s “The Night Nurse” ran on the webzine Horror Drive-In.

Prolific genre editor Ellen Datlow – a double nominee this year – added a Black Quill Award to her lengthy list of honors for her editing work on POE: 19 NEW TALES INSPIRED BY EDGAR ALLAN POE. This was Datlow’s third nomination, following last year’s nomination for INFERNO: NEW TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL and a second nomination this year for her work on the LOVECRAFT UNBOUND collection.

Nominations for the Black Quills are editorial-based, with both the editors and active contributing writers submitting nominations in each of the (8) categories. Once nominations are announced, readers of DSM cast their votes for their picks in each category. For this year’s outing, more than 3,300 votes were cast by the magazine’s readers. In a unique spin intended to celebrate both critical and popular success, two winners are traditionally announced in each category – Reader’s Choice and Editor’s Choice. Winners receive recognition in DSM, inclusion in press release materials announcing nominations and winners, a virtual icon to be used on their own website, and a handsome award certificate.

Tesseracts 14

2010-02-05T07:47:00.007-05:00

I was really torn for a minute there. Brett Savory put out word yesterday that the Table of Contents of Tesseracts 14, the next edition of the long-running Canadian sf anthology he's co-editing with John Robert Colombo, will be revealed shortly. Because it is a big secret.

Some time later, I got this... email from Brett. And I thought to myself - can I brag about it on my blog yet? Is it ethical? If it's not, is my ass covered by good company?

I did a google blog search. And doing so, I found this, and this, and this.

My ass, I figure, is covered by good company.

* * *

And so...

You heard it here first, Yard-Apes: my story "Basements," a rambling meditation on the war on terror, home renovation obsession and the need to wear trousers when guests show up, will be listed in the table of contents of Tesseracts 14 when Brett and John finally get around to posting it.

This is the seventh Tesseracts volume that's contained a story of mine. In addition to having a clear conscience, I am also delighted to be a part of what promises to be an excellent anthology, given the company.

Like the stories in my collection Monstrous Affections, "Basements" will be sealed behind a shriek-inducing cover by the inimitable Erik Mohr.

There must be something (under) the water...

2010-02-01T07:46:00.005-05:00

I'm beginning to think that my hometown of Toronto has more in common with Arkham, Innsmouth and Dunwich than just its aura of loathsomeness to the rest of the country.

Turns out this town is, like Innsmouth, a bastion of eldritchery.

Case in point: Joseph Nanni, a local H.P. Lovecraft fancier and film-maker of great energy and talent. His blog, Bad Advice for Good Times, notes that he and his fellow cultists are embarking on their first feature film, Drawing Baphomet.

I do not know Joseph Nanni personally. I do not know what Drawing Baphomet is about. But I have been enjoying his short Lovecraftian films - The Necronomicon, Casting Call of Cthulhu, and right here, Elder Sign:

Ftagn.

The Secret of My Success

2010-01-26T08:07:00.006-05:00

This is not the first time I've sent praise in the direction of Erik Mohr. It may not even be the first time I've posted a blog entry devoted to this clever, diabolical cover designer from northern Ontario. But given recent internet activities surrounding my collection Monstrous Affections, certain things are becoming clear. A large percentage of the people reading the book, and seeming to like it, would not be doing so without the baited hook of Erik's cover and design.

The Publisher's Weekly review last year shouted out Erik's "jarring" cover illustration before they mentioned a word of my deathless prose; when January Magazine picked the collection for its best fiction 2009 post, the blurb began "The first thing that hits you is the cover."

More recently, the blog calling itself The Casual Optimist just cut to the chase and used a link to a months-old National Post interview as an explicit excuse to post the image.

Romance writer Vanessa Jaye reported on her blog Procrastination Station that she's enjoying the book, but leads into the discussion with a reposting of the cover and the comment, "Behold the power of cover art."

And some bizarre corner of social media called tumblr has a feed/blog called This isn't happiness, which dropped all pretext of enjoying the collection, or indeed any words beyond the title, and just shared the image.

So I thought, in that spirit, I should take the space to showcase some of Erik's new work for upcoming titles out of ChiZine Press, starting with Gemma Files' first novel, A Book of Tongues.

Douglas Smith's Chimerascope:

And Nicholas Kaufmann's Chasing the Dragon:

The Innsmouth Free Press: A Bastion of Eldritchery

2010-01-16T10:49:00.004-05:00

For those of you who haven't checked it out, might I recommend the Innsmouth Free Press - the website of the newspaper that's been covering the community of Innsmouth above and below sea level since the Old Ones walked the Earth. It is a magnificent journal, of which the ~~denizens~~ locals are justly proud.

And if they make the odd mistake - hey, everybody's... well, humanoid.

And I'm always there to help out a fellow journo.

Monstrous Affections: Back In Stock

2010-01-08T07:20:00.005-05:00

The downside of selling out the first print run of your story collection in late November, is that all through December, no one can find the damn thing on Amazon.com.* Hopefully, this didn't ruin Christmas for too many yard-apes - or worse, cause them to inadvertently pay $200+ from the online book dealers at Amazon.

The upside of selling out the first print run of your story collection, on the other hand, is that there is a second printing. It's been available for awhile now at Amazon.ca, but as of yesterday, Amazon.com lay hold of some copies. So all is as it should be. Not in time for Christmas, true, but there are still plenty of shopping days 'til Valentine's Day.

Here's the link:

Monstrous Affections @ Amazon.com

*Of course, Toronto-area yard apes were able to find the book at places like The World's Biggest Bookstore, where they bought quite a few, and Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore, where they bought a bundle: enough, in fact, to put the collection on the store's best-seller list for the second month in a row (in November, its first month on the list, I am informed it was the store's top-selling trade paperback). See for yourself right here

Another shout-out, Aurora season, and other fine Things in the New Year...

2010-01-03T10:05:00.012-05:00

That's the kind of header you get when you have no one thing but many unrelated things to talk about in one day. So let us get to it, Yard-Apes.

First, thanks to Daniel Rabuzzi, whose novel The Choir Boats was released to much happy fanfare from ChiZine Publications, about the same time as Monstrous Affections. He too has a blog, Lobsters and Canaries, and he offered up a year-end summation of pretty much everything, in which he spared many kind words for my short story writing chops. To whit:

David Nickle, Monstrous Affections. A master of economical story-telling successful at raising the hairs on the back of your neck. A skewed and disturbing worldview. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for sharing, Daniel.

* * *

It is Aurora season, yard-apes, which means that loving fans, readers, and self-loving authors get to nominate short stories, novels, and - ahem - collections and anthologies by Canadians or non-Canadians who live here for the fan-selected Canadian speculative fiction award.

Yard-apes who are considering nominating a David Nickle work for an Aurora Award will not find discouragement here. Below, find a list of eligible work:

In the best long-form work in English category:

Monstrous Affections by David Nickle, ChiZine Publications

In the best short-form work in English category:

"Other People's Kids" (Monstrous Affections)
"The Radejastians" (Tesseracts Thirteen)
"Slide Trombone" (Monstrous Affections)

This isn't all about me, though. Other works I'd recommend you take a look at are (in long form English) Tesseracts Thirteen, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell (EDGE) (actually as an anthology, I think this goes into Best English Language Other), The Sunless Countries by Karl Schroeder (TOR), Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumiere (ChiZine), and (in short form English) "Off-Track Betting" by Madeline Ashby (FLURB), "A Patch of Bamboo" by Jill Snider Lum (Tesseracts Thirteen), and "The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2). Best Artist, I think, has got to go to Erik Mohr for The Tel Aviv Dossier, Monstrous Affections, Objects of Worship, The Choir Boats and The World More Full of Weeping, all from ChiZine Publications this past year.

You can nominate on-line or by post here.

* * *

Now on to the Other Fine Things category. The aforementioned Peter Watts this past year wrote but did not publish what he describes as his first piece of fanfic since 1976: "The Things," a blood-soaked hard-sf meditation on the premise of John Carpenter's classic sf/horror film The Thing. Here in the early days of 2010, he has now also published it, at the online sf 'zine Clarkesworld. You can read it here. And you can listen to a kickass podcast reading of the story, by Kate Baker at the same time as you're reading (right here - the player's at the bottom of the page) - which is what I did.

The story's goddamn brilliant. Go listen to it/read it. Then put it on your lists for 2010 awards.

We have some winners...

2010-01-02T10:17:00.007-05:00

... in Bob and Dave and Doug's Flash-Flash Fiction Contest, and they're right here, at ChiZine Publications's website.

Dedicated yard-apes may recall that the contest to find the best short-short-short story (300 words or less) closed to submissions last month, with promises that January 2 we'd come up with a winner and two runners-up. The winner would receive copies of we three judges' story collections: Horror Story and Other Horror Stories, by Robert Boyczuk; Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière; and Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (me!). The runners' up would get their pick of which story collection they wanted.

All that Bob and Claude and I had to do was read the stories, pick the best, and ChiZine would do the rest (including posting the winners on their website). All that is now done. So go check them out. The winner is Cedar by Donna Burgess; the two runners-up are One Zombie by Catherine MacLeod, and Layers Deep by Paul Abbamondi.

Congratulations to the three top stories, and thanks to everyone who entered.

A Happy New Year, from January Magazine...

2010-01-01T09:54:00.004-05:00

... appropriately enough.

While the rest of us were whooping it up last night, counting down the end of December 2009, the literary web-zine January Magazine was posting its best fiction of 2009 piece - a list of just over 20 books that its editors liked best from the past year. They liked all kinds of things - books by Raymond Carver and Margaret Atwood, China Mieville and Stephen King, E.L. Doctorow and John Updike and Douglas Coupland. And, apparently, David Nickle. Here's what reviewer David Middleton said about Monstrous Affections:

"Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (Chizine) 296 pages
The first thing that hits you is the cover. A seemingly innocuous portrait of a man with short cropped hair. But look closer and you see the real picture, something twisted, disturbing. The cover of Monstrous Affections was so compelling that I had to read it. And like the cover, the stories inside are not what they seem. But also, like the cover, the stories inside are brilliant. David Nickle has a talent for writing what, on the surface, appear to be normal stories peopled with characters you can identify with. Stories that on the surface have a feel of the everyday, but upon finer scrutiny outline things seen in a skewed miasma of real life gone horribly wrong. Ghosts, Vampires, mythical beasts and circus sideshows. You’d think that you were reading a book full of what you had always expected a horror story to be, but Nickle takes a left turn and blindsides you with tales that are not of the norm, but are all the more horrific because of surprise twists, darkness and raw emotion. -- David Middleton"

Once again, I note that Erik Mohr's shrieking horror of a cover takes top billing in the review. That is as it should be. Boy's a genius. Always said so.

Read January Magazine's whole year in review here.

Goodbye to the 'oughts...

2009-12-31T11:09:00.003-05:00

Well, it's New Years Eve. Soon I will be putting on my ritz-pants for the evening's celebrations. For now, I am working on mid-point outlining for the very secret project of which we must not speak. And also, recalling how much I like Amanda Palmer, and wish I'd made it to a show like this on November 14, 2009 (shot and cut by Michael Pope and BriAnna Olson for mediaVox) in the year that's fast passing:

Happy New Year, apes. See you on the other side.

A quick year-end shout-out for Monstrous Affections

2009-12-28T09:16:00.005-05:00

With just days to go before the end of the year, Quill & Quire reviewer Alex Good has put together his 2009 year-end summation at his blog/website Good Reports. There's not a top 10 list, or a bottom 10 list. But there is this:

"It's customary to end the year with a list of highs and lows. I often get asked to suggest names for these and usually pull a blank. This past year was no exception. A couple of new books that stood out, however, were David Nickle's Monstrous Affections and Jason Guriel's Pure Product. An Honourable Mention list would include a half dozen others."

Alex had written a very kind review of the collection in November's Quill & Quire - kind enough that he put a star beside it - so I knew he liked it. But liked it enough enough to make a Top Two list? Man.

Thank you, Alex!

The Yule Hits the Yard...

2009-12-24T11:37:00.004-05:00

Happy hols, yard-apes - and smoke 'em if you got 'em:

Barely in time for Christmas...

2009-12-20T11:55:00.007-05:00

... the second printing of Monstrous Affection ships. Last week, ChiZine honcho Brett Savory let me know that new copies of my ordered-out story collection were in Canadian distributor LPG's warehouse, and should be shipping to those who've ordered 'em Tuesday. Which means that Amazon.com, which has listed the book as 'vanished' for the past month or so, may well have some available for order. This will probably result in a bit of a plummet in the price of copies of the book advertised there from secondary sellers. As I type this, I note that one vendor is selling the thing for $111.48 (plus $3.99 shipping).

As an author, I'm flattered at the price that this bookseller thinks he/she can fetch for a first-printing copy of my book. For a collector who wants a first-printing copy of Monstrous Affections - maybe $111.48 USD plus shipping is a fair price to pay. But if I were a shopper who doesn't put much stock in first printings and just wants the damn book in time for Christmas, I would be mighty ticked to have put down $111.48 USD, only to check back Tuesday and find the book available on Amazon for $14. I would have appreciated a tip-off.

Well consider yourself tipped-off, American shoppers on Amazon.com. More MA's are on the way.

freethesquid.org

2009-12-16T17:20:00.005-05:00

Okay. Peter Watts is free right now (although that freedom could well be fleeting). And he is not a squid (although that is what his friends call him).

Nonetheless, I'd like to direct you to Free The Squid, a comprehensive website set up by U.S. fan Chris Knall over the past few days: freethesquid.org. It's a page that brings together all the information you need to first decide whether you'd like to help Peter defend against charges that he assaulted a U.S. border guard - and then if you do want to help, it tells how to get Peter the money he needs to pay the considerable costs of that defense. It's got news feeds, showing what the news sites and the bloggers are saying about this case - which is plenty. It doesn't have a comments page, because comments have been getting out-of-hand on this situation, and really...

Chris put the whole thing together himself, with no input or approval from Peter and only minimal consultation with me. I would buy him a beer for his troubles, but I'm not going to be in New York for the forseeable future all things considered... so it will have to wait.

Much thanks, Chris. And once again: here's the link.

The Radejastians - in your iPod...

2009-12-15T08:21:00.003-05:00

Just heard last week from the folk at Pseudopod, that my story in Tesseracts Thirteen, "The Radejastians," will be adapted for podcast sometime soon. This will mark the third story of mine performed on the long-running weekly horror fiction podcast. To get a sense of how it might sound - go listen to the first two, "The Sloan Men" and "The Inevitability of Earth ."

Bakka-Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore is taking donations for Peter Watts

2009-12-13T09:55:00.006-05:00

It's been two days since we began fundraising for Canadian sf writer Peter Watts' legal defense - and the response from around the world has been staggering. The money that's come in to date will see Peter financially solvent through the first hump of this ordeal - so thank you, world - but we have no idea, still, how much he's going to need before he's free and clear.

That means we're still at it. And still looking for that "more graceful" way to get money to Peter. Toward that end, Bakka Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore manager Chris Szego has offered the store's mailing address, for the small but significant number of potential donors who are uneasy about using the PayPal online service and who would rather write a cheque.

Cheques made out to Peter Watts can be mailed to Bakka Phoenix Science Fiction Bookstore at this address:

Bakka-Phoenix Books / 697 Queen St. West / Toronto, Ontario / M6J 1E6

Folks in Toronto can also drop by with cash, and Chris or anyone else on staff there will make sure Peter gets the money.

* * *

Now back to the response. It has been startling, both in terms of donations, and attention. Science fiction writer John McDaid has put together an excellent survey of who's writing about the incident - both mainstream media and blogging - right here.

* * *

(Update December 14). There have been a lot of comments showing up on the various postings about this situation. I'm not weighing in on them - other than to repeat: send money to Peter Watts.

But I am going to link to this one (that very eloquently sums it up), courtesy Robert Ashby (husband of sf writer Madeline Ashby) on her blog, right here.

A small (but significant) correction

2009-12-11T18:29:00.004-05:00

I got a detail wrong in the account I gave of Peter Watts' incarceration, in the post below. I had understood that he had been released from custody in Port Huron, wearing nothing but jeans and a denim shirt, during a snowstorm - then walked across the bridge to Canada.

In fact, officials in Port Huron did transport him back to Canada before leaving him there, coat-less and without a vehicle, in a winter storm.

Just learned this fact after talking with Peter again. I've sent the correction off to John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow. I have also posted it here.

Give Peter Watts money

2009-12-11T17:06:00.003-05:00

This posting might seem redundant coming as it does at 6 p.m. on Friday afternoon. But I honestly thought that waiting just four or five hours after putting the word out to Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi about my friend Peter Watts' nightmarish legal situation, I would still be timely in posting a plea for help. As it turns out, I am come late to the call for cash to pay for Peter's defense. And the love is flowing.

Nonetheless, I will repost the note that I sent to Cory and John - for those few of you who come here but don't care for Boing Boing and Whatever (if for no other reason than to clarify the possibly-obtuse lead paragraph of this post):

Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.

Peter, a Canadian citizen, was on his way back to Canada after helping a friend move house to Nebraska over the weekend. He was stopped at the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan by U.S. border police for a search of his rental vehicle. When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating, restrained him and pepper sprayed him. At the end of it, local police laid a felony charge of assault against a federal officer against Peter. On Wednesday, he posted bond and walked across the border to Canada in shirtsleeves (he was released by Port Huron officials with his car and possessions locked in impound, into a winter storm that evening). He's home safe. For now. But he has to go back to Michigan to face the charge brought against him.

The charge is spurious. But it's also very serious. It could mean two years in prison in the United States, and a ban on travel in that country for the rest of Peter's life. Peter is mounting a vigorous defense, but it's going to be expensive - he's effectively going up against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he needs the best legal help that he can get.

He's got that help, courtesy of one of the top criminal lawyers in the State of Michigan. We, Peter's friends and colleagues here in Canada, want to make sure he gets the help he needs financially to come out of this nightmare whole.

The need for that help is real. While Peter is a critically successful science fiction writer, he is by no means a best-selling author. Without help, the weight of his legal fees could literally put him on the street by spring.

We can't let that happen. So there's going to be fundraising.

We're going to think of something suitable in the New Year - but immediately, anyone who wants to help can do so easily. Peter's website, rifters.com, has a link to a PayPal account, whimsically named the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund. He set it up years ago for fans of the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight and his Rifters books, to cover veterinary bills for the cats he habitually rescues from the mean streets of Toronto. Peter has made it clear that he doesn't want to use the veterinary money to cover his lawsuit. But until we can figure out a more graceful conduit for the legal fund, that's the best place to send donations for now. Just let Peter know that the donation's for his legal defense, and that's where it will go.

Here's the link to the backlist page on Peter's website, rifters.com, or you can just send a PayPal donation to donate@rifters.com.

The link to the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund is in the middle of the page. The page also links to Creative Commons editions of all his published work, which he's made available free. Peter would approve, we think, if you downloaded one or two or all of them. Whether you make a donation to the legal fund or not.

A Monstrous Christmas at the Merril

2009-12-06T08:15:00.007-05:00

We drank tea and ate scones and sang Cthulhu Christmas carols and carried on like the risen dead at the Merril Collection - and as a final Christmas miracle, my laryngitic voice held out long enough to render a uniquely terrifying reading of "The Mayor Will Make A Brief Statement And Then Take Questions." As I said to the crowd before the reading, "I am deathly ill and delighted to be here, and that sentence doesn't come up in conversation very often."

Seriously - it was a great time, and in a minute I'm going to craft a thank-you email to the Friends of the Merril Collection for having me and ChiZine honchos Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi as guests yesterday at the afternoon tea. For now, here is a shot (courtesy of Yard Ape Do-Ming Lum) of Sandra Kasturi and I, acting out a scene from Nosferatu, in the original Silent.

-photos by Do-Ming Lum

Off to the Merril Collection...

2009-12-05T10:08:00.003-05:00

... and we'll see how it goes, this Christmas Cream Tea reading. I spent the last couple of days battling laryngitis, and this morning have something resembling a voice. So I'm going to try and read a short story in such a way that won't ruin everybody's Christmas and start a run on returns for the story collection. Wish me luck, yard-apes.

In the meantime, however, I note that the Advent Book Blog has posted my review/pitch of Albert Sanchez Pinol's brilliant novel Pandora in the Congo. It was supposed to be 25 words or less. I seem to have gone a little longer -- by, um, a factor of 10. But that's because it's a good and complex book, and saying, Brits Battle Mole Men, Bed Mole Woman, wouldn't do it justice. The editors have indulged me, and it's right here.

Kaaron Warren and the pulsing blue intestine...

2009-12-03T08:15:00.007-05:00

This came in from author Kaaron Warren (Slights), at the Mind Meld section of SF Signal yesterday, wherein she and other authors of note were asked to pick their favourite things of 2009:

Best short story collection: Monstrous Affections by David Nickle. The cover is creepy, tapping into that visceral reaction we have when the 'normal' is slightly twisted. The stories themselves are also very creepy, drawing you into believable, domestic worlds then showing you the blue pulsing intestines of those worlds.

I have conveyed my gratitude privately - and now do so publicly. Inard-felt thanks, Kaaron!

* * *

Also - for those in the United States and the UK wondering where in the world they can get a copy of Monstrous Affections and other fine ChiZine titles: the news is good. Yesterday, the ChiZine team announced a new distribution deal with Diamond Book Distributors, that will see the books sent far and wide.

I'll let them tell you the rest in their own press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS SIGN WITH DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS FOR U.S./U.K. DISTRIBUTION

TORONTO, Ontario (November 29, 2009) – Building on its deal with the Literary Press Group and LitDistCo, ChiZine Publications (CZP) has signed a deal with Diamond Book Distributors to have its books placed in U.S. and U.K. bookstores.

One of the U.S.'s leading distributors, Diamond distributes to booksellers like Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, WaldenBooks, and Borders. It represents a number of book and comic publishers, including Borderlands Press, Night Shade Books, Prime Books, Subterranean Press, and Random House UK.

"It's another step forward, but a bigger risk," says CZP Co-Publisher Brett Alexander Savory. "Getting books on the shelves means getting those books printed. If they don't sell, we eat that cost. But our experiment with the Literary Press Group worked. Some of our books sold out. So if we're going to grow, we need to be in major markets like the U.S. and U.K."

The announcement comes on the heels of a lengthy article about ChiZine Publications that appeared in The National Post's Afterword literary blog. In the article, Brett, fellow Co-Publisher Sandra Kasturi, and authors David Nickle (Monstrous Affections) and Robert J. Wiersema (The World More Full of Weeping) discuss the origins of CZP and the challenges of being a "genre" publisher at a time when "genre" fiction is assumed to not be "literary" fiction.

Brett says the plan is for CZP titles to be in U.S. and U.K. bookstores by early 2010.

Contact

Brett Alexander Savory, Co-Publisher

ChiZine Publications

http://chizinepub.com

brett@chizinepub.com

About ChiZine Publications

ChiZine Publications (CZP) is an independent publisher of weird, subtle, surreal and disturbing dark fiction. It is the book-length, print version outgrowth of ChiZine (www.chizine.com), an online professional market in operation since 1997 focused on the same type of story material. All of CZP’s publications are hand-picked by co-Publishers and Bram Stoker Award-winners Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi. Erik Mohr serves as cover artist and graphic designer, with publicity by Matthew Moore.

About Diamond Book Distributors

Diamond Book Distributors is a division of Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., and is dedicated to making a wide selection of graphic novels and other pop culture collectibles available to the mainstream book market. For more information, visit Diamond Books on the web at www.diamondbookdistributors.com.

A show of affection from the Black Quill ..

2009-12-02T07:14:00.007-05:00

I just found out yesterderday that Monstrous Affections is on the ballot for the 2009 Black Quill Awards. It is up for a prize in the category of Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection, alongside collections from Dennis Cooper, Robert Dunbar, Tom Cardamone and James Currier.

This award, sponsored by Dark Scribe Magazine, is a young one: it's only the third time out. In the necessarily recent past, it's honored folks like Sarah Langan and Joe Hill (and his dad Steve), John R. Little and Tim Lebbon. This year, it's cast its net to the work of Dan Simmons, Ellen Datlow, Brian Keene and others.

Bottom line: I'm well-stoked to see my name in shadows - particularly such shadows as these - on this list.

Which you can read for yourself, right here.

What an honour!

Monstrous Merril Event

2009-11-29T09:24:00.003-05:00

A little belated note to those of you in Toronto who either belong to or think you might like to join the Friends of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in Toronto, and also want to pick over the sad remains of ChiZine's stash of first-edition Monstrous Affections:

Come to the library's 2009 Christmas Cream Tea this Saturday December 5. It starts at 1:30 p.m. and goes until 4 p.m. And it's at the Merril Collection of course - at 239 College Street, at the very top of the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library.

In addition to the scones and coffee and other snacks, this year there will be me, and Brett Savory, and Sandra Kasturi. We've been invited, you see, as guests. So there'll be a reading and a sale and lots of conversation, as we celebrate the looming solstice with the appropriate amount of festive dread (okay, that last bit wasn't from the official invitation).

I am a sell-out...

2009-11-24T17:19:00.005-05:00

Oh, what a misleading header that is, to lead into a report that Monstrous Affections has sold out its first print-run and is going into the second one now. That is what this post is about, though; just three months after the collection hit the bookstore/online retailer/book launch circuit, ChiZine tells me that the last of the books in the first print run are now spoken for. Fortunately for you Yard-Apes who've been slow with the debit-card, there'll be a second edition coming along briskly.

This is very good news: in fact it is the second bit of good news to come along today.

The first went online at The National Post's website this morning. It's a round-table interview by publishing writer Mark Medley, with me, fellow ChiZine author Robert Wiersema, and ChiZine honchos Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi. We go on forever, it seems like, about Canadian horror and the buttery goodness of ChiZine publications, how Robert Wiersema drank himself into a publishing contract and why Pants Are For Company is not the title of my collection.

You can read it all here.

The Mohr Monster Gets Around...

2009-11-21T10:05:00.006-05:00

Monstrous Affections has been getting face-time, as it were, at some pretty high-traffic spots lately. Just last night, I was reliably informed that io9, the sf/f/h news spot, featured a portion of the cover in this posting right here, about the success of independent sf publishers at the end of the publishing world.

And earlier in the week, the Yard's reliable friend boingboing used the Sloan Man's kissable mug to remind the world that all of ChiZine Publications' books are available as affordable, DRM free e-books.

All this has less to do with me and my deathless prose than it does with the devil's-work of boy genius Erik Mohr, who designed the truly deathless cover of Monstrous Affections and indeed has designed all the covers for ChiZine's books.

Erik really is an evil genius. As Tomb-R.O.A.C.H., one of the commenters at Io9, wrote:

"I would call this a post that starts with a image that makes you wanna run away. But the hashtag was too long."

Mwahah.