SPOTLIGHT w/GIVEAWAY - MIDDLE SCHOOL HORROR FANTASY - The Boatman by Kat Hawthorne

The Boatman

by Kat Hawthorne

Publisher: Common Deer Press

Date of Publication: April 30th 2018

Cover Artist and Illustrator Dora Mitchell
Genre: Middle Grade Horror, Fantasy

Tagline: Eleven-year-old Isabel Wixon retreats into a fantasy world to cope with her grief

BLURB

Isabel Wixon is weird. Not only does she see dead things, but her list of friends consists of a talkative ventriloquist’s dummy and the gentlemanly spider that lives in her hair.   Real friends? Too hard. Inventing friends is much easier. Inventing the Boatman—a terrible monster that lures kids into a strange sleeping sickness and never lets them go—probably wasn’t one of her better ideas though.

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Excerpt:

Izzy froze as the spirit of a young girl appeared before her. This morning, as she did on occasion, the girl had taken off her head. The ghost’s body hefted the head a few times, obviously fixing to lob it at Izzy. She stiffened. Izzy had never been hit by a detached head before, but she doubted it would be much fun.

“The Boatman is looking for you,” the ghost-girl said so quietly Izzy couldn’t be sure if what she’d heard was the ghost’s voice or the leaves on the trees above laughing as the rain tickled them. “You should be very careful not to—GAH!!”

Just then, and for no reason Izzy could see, the body fumbled and dropped the head. It crashed to the ground and began rolling away. “You cumbersome hunk of junk!” the head squealed as it bumped into a tree and came to an indelicate halt.

Blindly, the body bent over and began feeling around on the forest floor. Looking for something round, it located a large rock. It spent a few moments trying to lift it, but as everyone knows, ghosts cannot lift things. The head sighed. “Hello! I’m over here you brain dead oaf!” it hollered from its place near the tree. Finally, the body stumbled toward it.

After poking a finger in the head’s eye and shoving another up its nose, ghost-girl’s body heaved the head up by its stringy hair and placed it back onto its neck hole, spinning it around a few times as though it were screwing in a light bulb. When finally the head was fixed into place, though slightly crooked, the now-whole ghost-girl stretched as if she were stiff. “Silly, clumsy thing,” she said. “I swear, one day my body will lose me! How will I ever get a head then?” The ghost put a hand on her belly and chuffed at her own joke.

But not Izzy, she was too afraid to laugh. Instead, she swallowed. Usually when the headless ghost-girl appeared, Izzy ran away. But not today. There was something she’d been meaning to ask, and she knew that the only way to get the answer was to be brave and ask it. Besides, after the whole dropped head debacle and the thing about cracking jokes, the ghost seemed too distracted to be menacing. So Izzy stood as tall as she could and hoped the ghost would not notice her rattling knees. “Um,” she stammered, “who is the Boatman?”

The ghost crossed her arms over her chest. Her lips looked like a pair of bloated worms, particularly when they were pooched out, as they were right then. She tilted her head to the side, or at least she tilted it more to the side than it already was. “Did you just speak to me? Are you not frightened?”

“Yes—I mean no.” Izzy nodded and then shook her head. She peeled a slithering wet clump of hair off of her forehead. She looked back at the ghost, who still waited for an answer. “Oh...Um...I mean, yes I spoke, and no I’m not afraid.” It was half true at least.

The ghost-girl slumped, which made her seem far less frightening. “Really? Am I losing my touch? That would be the pits. I’ve been trying so hard.”

“Oh!” Izzy scrunched her eyebrows together. She didn’t want to hurt the ghost’s feelings. She simply hadn’t considered how the ghost must be feeling. After all, scaring people was the ghostly way. Everyone knew that.

Izzy scratched her pointy elbow then continued. “Well then, I admit that you’ve done a wonderful job scaring me these past few weeks. I mean, the head thing and the song—very creepy. Truly top notch material. However, I don’t know who this Boatman fellow is. I’m not sure if I ought to be afraid of him or not. Perhaps you could explain? That might help.”

The ghost rubbed her chin as if considering. “Well, if you think it will help.”

Izzy nodded. “I do.”

Theatrically, the ghost hovered a few inches off the ground and faded in and out as the trees swayed and small shafts of morning light blinked right through her. Her voice was low-pitched when she began to speak, very unlike the shrill soprano she took on while singing. “The Boatman is a hideous monster who lives in the world of dreams.” With this, the ghost waved her arm as if indicating that they were in the world of dreams currently. “He sails his rickety boat around on the lake of your thoughts. He is the one responsible for every nightmare you’ve ever had; he’s the one who controls your fear and...”

The ghost sighed and visibly deflated, seeming displeased by the quality of her storytelling. Izzy had to admit, the ghost’s tone had lost some pizazz as she went on. “Too over-the-top?” the ghost asked.

Izzy shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps a teensy bit.”

Author Info

Kat Hawthorne is a nerd times three. Besides writing, she enjoys creating visual art and playing her cello. She is mother to three small boys, who are unwittingly the inspiration for her need to write.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7772294.Kat_Hawthorne

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SPOTLIGHT w/ INTERVIEW - FANTASY - Threshold by Patricia J. Anderson

Threshold

by Patricia J. Anderson

Date of Publication: March 27, 2018

Publisher: Common Deer Press

Cover Artist: Carl Weins

Genre: Fantasy

Tagline: Fantastic Mr. Fox meets The Tao of Physics

BLURB

The population of Ooolandia (a world much like our own but with an extra "O") is hypnotized by the culture of MORE. Citizens of all kinds and colors go about their lives unaware that hidden in the fog of everydayness a great calamity is approaching.

Banshooo, an amazingly mindful monkey, works for the Ooolandian Department of Nature with his colleague a mathlete mouse. Together they have amassed data proving, beyond any doubt, that the natural world is losing the stability necessary to sustain life. Unfortunately, their warnings are ignored by the authorities who are planning to phase out nature altogether.

Freaky winds, icy earthquakes, and mutant anemones plague the landscape. After a wildly devastating storm, Banshooo has a vision revealing the connection between Ooolandia and the Unseen World -- a connection that lies deep within and far beyond all that is seen. This connection is vital to Ooolandia's survival, and it is fraying. He realizes he must take radical action. Along with his quirky sidekick (a one-off of unique appearance whose primary interest is snacking), he sets out on a journey beyond the surface of the Seen to bring back proof of the true nature of nature.

Amazon

Excerpt:

“Oh you know, same ol’, same ol’, still working on that whole transmutation thing. Can’t quite get it down. Can’t quite get it … still trying … still might … still …” His voice trails off as he furrows his brow, apparently lost in the intricacies of some possibility known only to him.

            Ambrose tries again.  “Morie, I’d like you to meet Banshooo. He has an interesting story to tell.”

            The alchemist comes back to the moment, squinting anew at Banshooo. “Ah yes, yes, very nice. Very nice.”  He removes a pile of books from a thread-bare couch, looking about near-sightedly. “I think maybe I’ve got some sherry around here someplace.”

            “That’s not necessary, really.” Ambrose smiles, eyeing a shelf of cob-webby wine glasses sitting next to a bottle marked sulfuric acid. “We just want to talk.”

            “Talk? With me? How nice. Yes, very nice, very nice.”

            Ambrose nudges Banshooo. “Go ahead. Morienus knows about these things.” 

            Banshooo looks at this old man whose long white beard appears to have been used for a napkin. He knows alchemy was once a respected field of study but not anymore, something to do with a failure to turn things into gold. This wrinkled dusty old guy appears to be the last of his kind.

            Banshooo hesitates but Ambrose nods encouragingly. “Go on, talk to him.” And so the monkey tells the alchemist about the sound that washed over him in the meadow. Morie listens intently, his palms together, his fingers against his chin. Now he nods, thoughtfully, then says,

“Ah yes.  That could be.  A sound wave is a physical force. Vibratory resonance can open up a state of awareness beyond the usual everyday state.”

             Banshooo nods. “Yes, that’s what happened. After the sound came, I was able to see something else, something I couldn’t see just walking around normally.”

            “And what was that?”

            “Well, the first time I saw … dying. So much dying.” He lowers his head.  “Extinction everywhere.”

            “And the second time?”

            “The second time I saw …” He pauses.

            The alchemist raises his bushy eyebrows. “You saw what?”

            Banshooo looks at Ambrose who nods reassuringly. He continues. “I remembered what happened when my mother died.”

            “Hmmm.”  Morie speaks slowly, almost to himself. “This could be a case of resonance, of limbic resonance activating a matched filter.”

            Banshooo frowns. “What does that mean?”

            Morie leans back. “Experience creates a vibration that stays within you. That vibration is a kind of tone, reverberating to certain pitches, certain events and beings. It acts almost like an antenna, picking up one kind of transmission but deaf to others. In effect, everyone is an antenna, vibrating with their own individual experiences.” He puts his gnarled, veined hands on the arms of the chair and lifts himself up, walking slowly around the room.

            “At the same time, sound waves are constantly moving through space, looking for something that will receive them. When they find a match,” he stops and brings his hands together, “we resonate.” He gives a little half-smile. “In effect, beings are like old-fashioned radio receivers, calibrated to pick up one signal and filter out the others, looking for the frequency that will resonate, that will match.” He looks at Banshooo. “A sound can remind you of something you know, even if you don’t know you know it, enlivening something hidden within you, for good or for ill.”  

            Banshooo’s eyes are wide. “It felt like that, like something reverberating in me. Like something alive.”

            “So what happened in this re-“ he pauses, “membering?”

            Banshooo looks up at Morie, ready to tell this old man what he saw.

            “My mother was dead. She was cold. I was cold too. Really cold. Then a shadow came, a shadow shaped like her. And it touched her. Then it touched me. And I wasn’t cold anymore. I was all right.”

            The alchemist is squinting at Banshooo, his expression no longer one of patient instructor. “Are you making this up? That wouldn’t be nice you know, to fool with me.”

            “No. No. I’m not making anything up.” He looks at Ambrose who speaks firmly.

            “He’s not, Morie, I saw it too. A shadow bent down and touched them both. It was like the deep heart of … something. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

            Morienus sits back down in his chair with a stunned expression on his face. After several silent moments he speaks quietly. “You saw a parayama, the highest essence of a species. The one who comes for the dead.” His eyes narrow. “You’re not supposed to see that unless ….”

            “Unless what?”

            “Unless you’re dead”

            “He’s not dead,” Ambrose says.

            “I noticed that. It’s very puzzling.” The alchemist continues. “The essence of the species appears only to that being who has died. You can’t see the parayama that comes for another, you can only see the parayama that comes for you.”

            “But I did. I saw it. I was alone and it protected me. And then there was a soft kind of purring that turned into the most incredible music I’ve ever heard. No. Not music, almost music, like music, but different … it was like they were showing me things, unseen things. And I was safe. I was secure and safe.”

            Ambrose and Morienus look at each other. The owl makes a little shrugging motion, “You’ve got to admit, it’s a miracle he survived. Once his mother died, he might as well have had a sign pointed at his head saying ‘Free Lunch.’”

            Morie nods. “Yes, that’s true. That’s very true.”

            Ambrose speaks slowly as he considers this improbable possibility. “It must have been your mother’s parayama. And it stayed to care for you. That’s a very rare experience, Banshooo. That doesn’t usually happen.”

            “Never, actually.” Morie is staring at Banshooo. “It never happens.” He shakes his head slowly and says it again. “Never.”

            There is a long pause as the ramifications of this statement float through the dingy laboratory.

Author Info

Patricia J Anderson’s essays and short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals including The Sun, Tricycle, Chronogram, Ars Medica, Glamour Magazine and Rewire Me.com. Her books include All of Us, a critically acclaimed investigation of cultural attitudes and beliefs, and Affairs In Order, named best reference book of the year by Library Journal. She is the recipient of The Communicator Award for online excellence and has produced exhibition, kiosk and website copy for such institutions as the American Museum of Natural History and the Capital Museum. She is the editor of Craig Barber’s Vietnam journal, Ghosts in the Landscape. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley.

The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with Patricia J. Anderson

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?

Style is such a fascinating subject. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of writing and if you’re working on, say, commercial ad copy, the style and approach is going to be very different from a novel, which is different yet again from nonfiction prose. In the case of Threshold, it’s a fable, and I wanted it to be an easy read so the style is upbeat, brisk, and takes you through the action of the story. It’s quirky too. When I started the book, I knew it demanded a story-telling kind of writing but this became one of those situations in which the characters had a lot to say about the style. Sometimes that happens, the characters take over and that really happened with Threshold. The “feel”, the mode of the writing took shape from the characters, their voices shaped the style. It was fun actually, listening to them and recording their story.

What are some of your writing/publishing goals for this year?

My goal for this year is the same as always. To communicate, and you can’t communicate without being published. I write to communicate ideas and I think books are one of the most extraordinary means of communication known to human kind. Stephen King called writing a kind of telepathy and I believe it.

The writer describes a room, there’s someone sitting on a couch, he looks worried, he checks his phone, he frowns and bites his lip. Suddenly he gets up and throws the phone against the wall.

The reader “sees” this in his or her mind’s eye. We have communicated something, telepathically. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?

I’ve always been a writer but I didn’t always want to admit it. It’s not the best career move in the world. I’ve had to work a lot of different jobs to pay the rent. Then, one day, I looked back and noticed that every single job I’d had involved writing so I finally had to face facts. It’s what I am. It flows naturally for me.

Do you have a character that you have been working on for a long time that still isn't quite ready, but fills you with excitement to work on the story?

What an interesting question and yes, I do have such a situation sitting on the shelf at the moment. It’s a realistic novel, (not a fable or a fantasy) about a contemporary photographer who finds letters from a woman living in France in the mid-1800s. The letters reveal that this woman studied with Julia Margaret Cameron, (who was a kind of 19^th century Annie Leibowitz,) a pioneer in the early days of photography. The protagonist becomes obsessed with finding out who this woman was and how she was able to follow her passion in a time when women were discouraged from acting autonomously.

My problem is finding a way to write with a 19^th century mind-set. France was in the middle of tremendous social and political upheaval. Communications at that time were essentially word of mouth so often citizens who lived in the country didn’t know what was happening in the capital for weeks or even longer. This at a time when revolutions and counter-revolutions were replacing entire governments. It was so incredibly different from our lives today. I don’t want to write a story where a key character somehow magically acts as s/he would if s/he lived now. It’s a big challenge to present a past era, and someone living in it, on its own terms. I haven’t quite found a way to do that yet but I’m working on it.

Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere? What would you do with this time?

Did you ever see the Mike Newell film, “Enchanted April”?  The setting is a villa in Portofino, Italy. I would like to go to that very spot and hang out there for a while and see what ideas and revelations presented themselves. Or maybe just sleep late and eat a lot. I’ve never been to Italy but everyone I know who goes comes back raving about the food and carrying a few extra pounds.

http://www.patriciajanderson.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17715637.Patricia_J_Anderson

https://www.commondeerpress.com/threshold

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SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - YA - The Great and The Small by A.T. Balsara

The Great and The Small

by A.T. Balsara

Date of Publication: October 31^st 2017

Publisher: Common Deer Press

Cover Artist: Ellie Sipila of Move tothe Write

Genre: Young Adult

 

BLURB

Deep below the market, in the dark tunnels no human knows exist, a war has begun. Lead by the charismatic Beloved Chairman, a colony of rats plots to exterminate the ugly two-legs who have tortured them in labs, crushed them with boots, and looked at them with disgust for as long as anyone can remember.

When the Chairman’s nephew is injured and a young two-leg nurses him back to health, however, doubt about the war creeps in. Now the colony is split—obey the Chairman and infect the two-legs with the ancient sickness passed down from the Old Ones, or do the unthinkable...

Rebel.

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EXCERPT

A loud crash boomed from the fish stalls, making them both jump.

A huge man wearing rubber boots and a plastic apron came charging down the aisle. “You filthy piece of… I’m gonna get you!” He was focused on something on the ground and didn’t seem to notice that he was charging straight at them.

Ananda’s father braced himself, toothpick though he was, in front of her. But the fishmonger barrelled past, following a streak of white and grey. A mouse! The man raised his boot, slammed it down on the mouse.

Ananda gasped. So did others in the crowd. The mouse squirmed in pain, its back paw crushed. A dark splotch of blood bloomed on the pavement. 

The man lifted his boot again.

Everything seemed to slow down for Ananda. “Stop!” she roared. She pushed by her dad and jumped between the man and the mouse. Blood pounded in her ears and her heart thrummed. She held up her hands to block him and shouted, “Leave it the Hell alone!” 

The man stumbled backward, tripping over his own enormous boot. He pulled himself up to his full height and glowered down at her. His face was as red as boiled lobster, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his fat upper lip and quivering jowls. He sneered. 

“What’s your problem, you stupid kid?” he snarled.

Ananda was too pumped with adrenaline to be cowed by this mastodon. She rose to her full five-foot-one-inch height and glared up at the giant. “I’m not the troublemaker here, you bloody, murderous jerk! What gives you the right to hurt an innocent animal?” 

“Are you crazy?” the guy sputtered.

Ananda wanted to sink her fist into his fat ham of a face. “No, you’re crazy! Torturing an innocent mouse who hasn’t done you any harm—ouch!” She was suddenly yanked to one side.

Her skinny father, with his thick glasses and mop of dark brown hair, stepped forward, putting himself between her and the fish-selling Goliath. Tom pushed his glasses up his nose. “Let’s all just calm down…”

Giant Fish-Guy began ranting, waving his meaty hands, drops of sweat flying off him like a dog shaking itself after a dip in the pond. Tom’s voice began to rise.

Leaving her dad to it, Ananda swooped around and crouched on the ground before the mouse. It was white with grey markings. It looked like it had a little cape. It was still moving, its long, pink tail flickering like a groggy snake.

“Come on, little guy,” whispered Ananda. “You’ve got to get up now.”

The small creature seemed to know it had been given a reprieve. It picked itself up, slowly peeled its crushed back paw from the pavement, gave itself a small shake, and lolloped away, holding its crushed paw to its belly. It made it past the gargoyle statue. It had just leaped onto the column when Fish-Guy caught sight of it. He swore and lumbered after it.

“Leave it alone!” screamed Ananda. She went to run after him but was stopped by an iron grip on her arm. “Stop him, somebody!” she shrieked.

By now, the entire market had stopped to gawk. The mouse was halfway up the column. Cursing, Fish-Guy hopped on one foot and ripped off a boot. He threw it. The boot bounced off the column.

The mouse kept climbing.

Fish-Guy threw the other boot. Missed!  

Ananda cheered as the mouse slid over the rooftop. “Yes! The mouse got away!” She jumped up and down, clapping, and swung around. Dozens of people were staring, jaws flapped open. She froze. In the crowd she saw one of the guys from her school. He looked like Ed the Hyena from The Lion King. His mouth was in perma-sneer mode, and his head thrust forward on his neck like someone was leading him by his pimply nostrils. He shook his head at her. “Loser,” he mouthed, and laughed. She’d seen his type a million times. A coward until he smelled blood. There was no way he was going to bully her.

Although prickling sweat had broken out all over her body, Ananda thrust out her chin. She smiled—a bright, fake mask. “Good!” she called to the crowd. “The mouse is safe. All’s well that ends well, right?” She curled her mouth into a sarcastic grin and stared down the hyena.

Buy Links:

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The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with Andrea Torrey Balsara

The Great & the Small, released October 31^st 2017

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?

You’d think that would be an easy question to answer, but I find it difficult to analyze my own writing. I would have to say that, whether I am writing picture books or young adult novels, the one thing that stays consistent is that I try to use only the words necessary to tell the story, and no extras. I love simplicity; especially simplicity that conveys depth and complexity. When I read a story that has achieved that, like To Kill a Mockingbird, I am in awe. I aspire to such simplicity in my own writing.

What are some of your writing/publishing goals for this year?

To finish the projects that have been on the back burner for a while and to promote the books I already have out.

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?

For me it’s both. I had to learn the process of story writing. I had always dreamed of being an illustrator, and so it wasn’t until my sister, Michele Torrey, who is also a writer, pointed out to me that I had a knack for writing that it even dawned on me to try to do it professionally. I took correspondence classes from the Institute of Children’s Literature, which de-mystified the writing process, but it took a long time to learn. Now, many years later, my writing usually flows, but not until after I’ve faced the dreaded first draft. Once that’s down on paper, I get to play. I love reivising. I love the feeling when a scene finally comes together and becomes real. Or when the characters start to “write” the scene themselves, and I feel like I am simply the observer. That never gets old.

Do you have a character that you have been working on for a long time that still isn't quite ready, but fills you with excitement to work on the story?

Definitely! I always have character and story ideas simmering on the back burner. I think it’s typical of writers to have far more ideas than time to write them. 

If you could spend one-week with 5 fictional character, who would they be?

I would love to spend a week with Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird, Frodo Baggins, from The Lord of the rings, Majnun from Fifteen Dogs, Jo, from Little Women, and the battle-hardened mice from the Mouse Guard graphic novel series.

Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYWhere? What would you do with this time?

I would stay in the U.K. and explore the old castles and hike the countryside. I happened to be born in the UK while my American parents lived there for a couple of years. There is this feeling of connection to it, to its history, that I have always had.

Can you share you next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?

I am the illustrator for a picture book series (Happy the Pocket Mouse by Philip Roy, published by Ronsdale Press) and have the 5th book in the series to illustrate. I also have a picture book that I wrote and illustrated, called, The nightingale’s Song, which still needs work. It’s coming out this spring through One Voice Press. In December I will start research on a picture book story idea I have about a child born into modern-day slavery. Last year I took an online course about modern-day slavery and while it horrified me, it also inspired me to try and do something about it.

Author Links:

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SPOTLIGHT w/GUEST POST - Genesis 2.0 (Magic Circles Series, #2) by Collin Piprell

Genesis 2.0

Magic Circles Series, #2

by Collin Piprell

Date of Publication: October 5^th 2017

Publisher: Common Deer Press

Cover Artist: Ellie Sipila

Genre: Sci-Fi, Mystery Thriller

 

BLURB

A nanobot superorganism lays waste to the Earth. Is this the apocalypse? Or does the world’s end harbor new beginnings?

Life will always find a way. Though some ways are better than others.

Evolution on steroids and crack cocaine —the most significant development since inanimate matter first gave rise to life.

You can’t predict novel evolutionary developments, you recognize them only after they emerge.

Then you have to deal with them.

Buy Links:

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Excerpt

 “DO THE TOES still hurt?”

“Not really.” Dee Zu looks down at her naked body, smeared with dried mud from the cave, scratched by thorns, burned by satrays, bruised by who knows what. “But I’m filthy. I’ve never been this dirty.”

Cisco sits beside her, also naked, also the victim of violent encounters with his world. He’s enthralled by a symphony of odors and scents, some of them Dee Zu’s. What he smells now bears scant resemblance to what he was given in his encounters with this woman in GR Worlds. “Generated realities can appear realer than real,” Leary once told him, back in his holotank in the Mall. “But real reality still offers something the qubits don’t.” And he’d been right.

He misses Leary. That’s the Leary he spoke to in Aeolia not many hours before, the same one, more or less, who died in Living End a few hours before that. Cisco remains amazed at all that has happened since he fled the disintegration of Eastern Seaboard, USA (ESUSA) Mall. Could that have been only two days ago?

Dee Zu is charming when she wrinkles her nose. “You stink,” she tells him.

Keeping an eye on their surrounds, Cisco is engaged in an internal confab, a Lode-assisted orientation. Bacterial wastes, he learns, are responsible for most of the smells. His WalkAbout also conveys grounds for surprise that he and Dee Zu are so thoroughly colonized by bacteria this soon after escaping the Mall.

It’s surprising that any bacteria survived the PlagueBot. For sure, few survived internal mall operations management, where all but the most essential bio and machine microorganisms were anathema. Admit the wrong bio-engineered or mutant virus, or a feral nanobot self-replicator, and it would have quickly sterilized the malls, the last human enclaves on Earth, of higher biological life. But never mind all the defenses, all MOM’s neurotically careful management. Now the malls, both ESUSA and ESSEA, maybe the last of them, lie breached and ruined. Yeah, well.

Dee Zu conducts a nuzzling investigation into local species of Cisco stink. He finds this at once embarrassing and, despite residual shock from what they’ve just witnessed, nice.

Here they are, both of them still alive and pretty well here in this anomalous patch of life on the other side of the planet from their former home. However alien this still-smoldering oasis with its tame PlagueBot and all its subterranean installations lying wrecked beneath them, what lies beyond the border, back the way they came yesterday, looks worse still. Much worse. It could be another planet, or a GR World gone bad — the type of nightmare, in fact, that both Cisco and Dee Zu, in their capacity as Worlds UnLtd test pilots, were trained to identify and, where possible, fix.

*

Dee Zu also stinks, much of it a good stink. Cisco inhales the heady perfume and feels himself invaded with power.

“Maybe you should put that away for now.” Dee Zu points and little Cisco points back.

“Come on,” Big Cisco gives her his most boyish grin. “Let’s do it. Wet sex.”

Dee Zu is Dee Zu, after all, and she straddles him without further ado. This isn’t entirely reckless, mind you, since they do it sitting up so Cisco can watch behind her while she watches behind him. It doesn’t last long, but it’s good. It has an urgency and depth he never experienced when they did it in the Worlds, no matter how imaginatively. Maybe the threat of imminent death, so recently demonstrated, has something to do with the way things go.

*

They sit there a bit longer, Dee Zu’s legs still locked behind Cisco. He breathes deep of her, buries his face in her hair. Meanwhile she scents this strange world, still burning in patches, smelling of charred wood and flesh and things. She feels good. At the same time she continues to watch.

And this world, their world now, watches back. Though it’s anything but clear who or what might be watching. Or from where.

Buy Links:

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Guest Post from Collin Piprell

READINGS AS INSPIRATION

The following – both reading for pleasure and theme reading for the Magic Circles series – are among the non-fiction books in progress: Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (some years ago I read Kauffman’s Re-inventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, and found it compelling, if sometimes difficult reading). In a similar vein, I’m reading Terrence W. Deacon, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. I’ve also recently read Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and Hold Still, Sally Mann’s memoir with photos.

My fiction backlog includes Authority, the second in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (I enjoyed Annihilation, the first). Jerusalem, by Alan Moore, and A Horse Walks into a Bar, by David Grossman are also in the pipeline.

MUSIC AS INSPIRATION

Do you listen to a playlist or music that helps the creative process? And if so, what songs, artists, etc.

I listen to everything from Miles Davis’ Live/Evil to Back’s Goldberg Variations. But I go for the adrenaline-pumping music – jazz, blues, Latin American and African – when I want to surf the feeling that I’m on top of things. More often I work without a soundtrack.

 

Author Info

Collin Piprell is a Canadian writer resident in Thailand. He has also lived in England, where he did graduate work as a Canada Council Doctoral Fellow (later, a Social Sciences and Humanities Fellow) in politics and philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford; and in Kuwait, where he learned to sail, water-ski and make a credible red wine in plastic garbage bins.

In earlier years, he worked at a wide variety of occupations, including four jobs as a driller and stope leader in mines and tunnels in Ontario and Quebec. In later years he taught writing courses at Thammasat University, Bangkok, freelanced as a writer and editor, and published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics (most of these pieces are pre-digital, hence effectively written on the wind). He is also the author of short stories that appeared in Asian anthologies and magazines, as well as five novels (a sixth forthcoming in 2018), a collection of short stories, a collection of occasional pieces, a diving guide to Thailand, another book on diving, and a book on Thailand’s coral reefs. He has also co-authored a book on Thailand’s national parks.

Common Deer Press is publishing the first three novels in his futuristic Magic Circles series.

Collin has another short novel nearly ready to go, something he only reluctantly describes as magic realism. Less nearly ready to go are novels he describes as a series of metaphysical thrillers. Not to mention several Jack Shackaway comic thrillers, follow-ups to Kicking Dogs. He also has a half-finished letter to his grandmother, dated 10 October 1991, saying thanks for the birthday gift.

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