Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
The Dead Hamlets are alive!
It’s alive! My new Cross novel, The Dead Hamlets, is shipping. ChiZine wasn’t just pranking me when they said they’d publish it!
I’ll have more details about launches, blog tours, reviews and so forth soon. But right now I’m just going to crack these open and breathe deep of that new book smell.
And then get back to working on the third Cross book.
This is how they hook you
My publisher ChiZine is giving away books for Family Literacy Day.
TORONTO, Ontario (January 26, 2015) — To celebrate Family Literacy Day, January 27, ChiZine Publications (CZP) will be giving away copies of its young adult books. Trade paperbacks will be distributed at select bookstores across Canada while PDF versions will be available for free for a limited time from the ChiZine website.
CZP will be giving out copies of its first two titles printed under its young adult ChiTeen imprint: Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly by P.T. Jones (a.k.a. Stephen Graham Jones and Paul Tremblay), and The Door in the Mountain by Caitlin Sweet. Giveaways or contests will take place at Bakka Phoenix Books in Toronto, McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, and BookShelf in Guelph.
In addition, PDF versions of titles with young adult themes will be available for free download from the CZP site for a limited time on January 27. Titles that will be available include:
Picking Up the Ghost by Tone Milazzo
The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant by Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Westlake Soul by Rio Youers
Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy
a ChiTeen sampler of upcoming books: Dead Girls Don’t by Mags Storey, The Good Brother by E.L. (Elaine) Chen and The Flame in the Maze by Caitlin Sweet
“The love of reading is something that runs strong in everyone at ChiZine Publications,” says Sandra Kasturi, co-publisher. “And literacy is more than just enjoying books; it’s an essential skill for success in life. We’re hoping to help raise a new generation of readers and book lovers.”
Details of when and how to download the free ebooks will be posted to the social media channels of CZP and the dedicated ChiTeen Twitter and Facebook page a few days before the event.
Contact
Sandra Kasturi, Co-Publisher, ChiZine Publications
http://www.chizinepub.com
sandra@chizinepub.com
About ChiZine Publications
ChiZine Publications (CZP) is British Fantasy Award-winning and three-time World Fantasy Award-nominated independent publisher of surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors.
Roll a d20 for appearances
If you follow this blog, you know that I’m a big fan of the Storm Crow Tavern in Vancouver. Where else can you eat an Elvish Burger while rolling a d20 for random shots — Critical Hit! — while playing one of their many board games — who’s in for a quick game of Arkham Horror in front of the giant Cthulhu head?
On very special nights, such as when the Known Planets align with the Unknown Ones, or certain Thursdays, you can also hear writers such as myself read from their works.
I held the Vancouver launch for The Mona Lisa Sacrifice at the Storm Crow Tavern, and it was a great success, aside from that Curse of Typo Terror cast by the wait staff. Now I’ll be returning to the Storm Crow to read from The Dead Hamlets, the sequel to The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 16.
My reading will be part of the Storm Crow Tavern Reading Series – Season Two. Other readers will include James McCann, Kristi Charish, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Claude Lalumiere and Heather Haley. I’m thrilled to be part of such a great lineup.
I already have a special surprise in mind for the reading. But you’ll have to be there to experience it. Book your time away from work and your family now!
Day job linkage
The day job kept me busy today. First, I wrote a little piece about the Exploding Kittens Kickstarter blowing up the Internet. Seriously. For a while I just sat there, staring at my screen and watching the dollar figures multiply in real time. Clearly, I am working in the wrong business. I need to be getting drunk with friends and coming up with crazy card games.
Second, I wrote an article about the Canada Council, the arts funding agency in my little nation, deciding to completely overhaul its funding model. It’s a decision that will affect artists of all stripes in major ways, but no one yet knows what those major ways are. Yes, that plan of getting drunk and making games is looking more attractive by the minute.
It’s alive!
My publisher teases me by posting a photo of my new novel, The Dead Hamlets, partying somewhere in Toronto with new friends, in no hurry to find its way home to me. Wicked, wicked publisher.
The Peter Darbyshires: We are legion
A little while back I got contacted by another Peter Darbyshire who was getting ready to publish his first book. That’s right — there’s another Peter Darbyshire author out there. Cue the Highlander music!
I promised him I’d give the book a shout-out when he published it, so check out The Carpenter’s Tale if you want to read a book by another Peter Darbyshire. (It just launched, although he went with the name P.A. Darbyshire to avoid confusion. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be associated with me. I can’t blame him if so.)
Hmm, maybe if there are more Peter Darbyshires out there we could all band together and make the bestseller lists through our accumulated sales….
Licence Expired
Here’s a piece of interesting news: my publisher ChiZine is publishing an unauthorized James Bond anthology. Ian Fleming’s work has hit the public domain in Canada (there’s a whole other post about copyright in regard to that), and ChiZine is looking for works of a certain flavour. Full press release follows. Read the rest of this entry
Kind of like Jekyll and Hyde
The Globe and Mail profiles Craig Davidson, who also writes horror thrillers under the pen name Nick Cutter, and wonders if multiple writing streams is the way of the future for writers.
The unholy coupling of Craig Davidson and Nick Cutter points to a potential solution. If you can’t survive as a novelist in Canada, what about as two? Or three, for that matter?
I’m not sure the recent trend toward using pen names — Michael Redhill also springs to mind for his Inger Ash Wolfe books, and you may have heard of Peter Roman — is a result of writers trying to diversify their income so much as it is embracing the collapse of the genre walls in publishing. It used to be that if you were a writer of serious literary fiction, that had better be all you write. Similarly, if you wrote fun, crowd-pleasing genre fiction, you’d best stay away from that literary crap that may be good for you but tastes awful. These days, it seems readers are OK with writers who can do more than one thing — and why not? We all love fast food and fine dining, right? We all watch brainless TV sitcoms and smart movies. So why can’t we all read fast-paced fun thrillers and smart, well-crafted literary books?
That was the case when I began to write under the Peter Roman pen name. It certainly wasn’t a financial decision — I’d be better off working overtime at my other job. It was just trying to keep myself entertained by writing things of a different flavour. As it turns out, readers liked the Cross books as well as my literary fiction — and maybe even a bit more. I’m now in the midst of writing more Peter Roman books than Peter Darbyshire books, but sometimes you just discover that favourite dish….
Anyway, check out Davidson’s books — he’s one of the best damned writers I’ve ever encountered. Whatever name he’s using.
And so it begins
The first reviews of my second Cross novel, The Dead Hamlets, have been spotted in the wild. That came as a surprise to me, as the book’s pub date is now mid-February — and I don’t even have a final copy of the book myself yet! I hope the advance reviewers have the most up-to-date version….
I was impressed by a Goodreads review by Pop Bog, which called The Dead Hamlets “A Rewarding, Witty, Hot Mess of Angel-Pummeling, Action and Noir Detective Fiction.” (Warning: minor spoilers.) The reviewer really embraced what I was trying to do and had a great sense of how my work relates to the rest of the genre. That was a relief, as you always wonder if readers are going to get what you’re going for. Also, I had to laugh when the word “unhinged” came up — I think that’s the third time now that I’ve been called unhinged for these books. I should put that on the jacket of the next book.
Please let me know if you see any other reviews of The Dead Hamlets. I do like to read them, as it’s always interesting to know what people think of the Cross books. And you never know: sometimes if you ask for something in a review it may just come true in a future book.
OK, I really should get back to finishing that third book in the Cross series now.
Also on Instagram!
If you’re interested in such things, I’ll point out that I also post lifestream-type photos on Instagram as well as Flickr. The WordPress theme I’m currently using doesn’t allow me to put an Instagram badge up on the top of the site beside the Flickr one, so I thought I’d mention it here. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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