Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
You are out of consciousness
I was reading an article about the fridges of the future, which will send orders to restock themselves when out of needed items, when my Starbucks app alerted me of my new balance. How long until the Starbucks app monitors our activities/blood/soul and tells us when our caffeine levels are too low and orders us to a nearby cafe to refuel?
And would that be any worse?
Introducing The Mona Lisa Sacrifice
So here’s the cover of my new book, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, coming out with ChiZine in June 2013. It’s the first book in a supernatural thriller series, which is all I’m going to say about it for the moment. (Still have to write the jacket copy!)
One of the things that excited me about publishing with ChiZine was getting an awesome cover, courtesy of Erik Mohr. I’m even more thrilled with this one that I thought I would be.
Yes, that is a pseudonym on the cover. I’ve been writing a lot in different genres lately, and it’s time to start distinguishing what is what for readers. So along comes Peter Roman to take the credit for my supernatural stuff. Hopefully you’ll be as welcoming to him as you have been to me.
More on the Cross series soon.
Idea for a story I will never write
The Martians from War of the Worlds actually defeated and enslaved us. We’re now living in a mass hallucination they’ve created for us, a la The Matrix, in which we think their invasion was only a story. But one writer knows the truth….
Humour is tricky
Luckily, Eamonn Murphy over at SFcrowsnest found my latest story in On Spec, “The Only Innocent Soul in Hell,” to be more or less a laughing matter.
‘The Only Innocent Soul In Hell’ by Peter Darbyshire is an amusing spoof about Hell’s admission clerk and his processing of a difficult new entrant. The idea of John Lennon being hauled out at Easter to sing ‘Imagine’ and add to the general suffering made me laugh and I’m a big fan of the guy. (He might have laughed, too.) One other incident was a bit disturbing as comedy for my taste, even black comedy. But, hell, humour is tricky and, overall, it was an entertaining piece.
On a related note, I love the fact that there are people out there reviewing short stories. And to think some critics say the Internet is killing reading.
Azrael rides into a BCS anthology
I’m thrilled beyond belief that my first Azrael story, “The Angel Azrael Rode Into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse,” has been included in The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year Three. Every issue of BCS is a must-read for me, so this is a real honour — and I’m delighted to be in the company of such a group of gifted writers. Check out the anthology for their weird and wonderful tales if not mine.
Best of all, it’s only $3.99, and if you order it before Oct. 19 from Weightless Books, you get the Best of BCS, Year One and the Best of BCS, Year Two for free.
A couple of nice reviews in Locus
Lois Tilton reviewed my two most recent stories over at Locus, and she seems to have liked them. About “The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies” she says “Strong stuff here in this dark dark fantasy” and “raises the bar for the iconic image of the lone gunslinger with a past.” About “The Only Innocent Soul in Hell” she says “Some amusing moments in this overly complicated hell story.”
I’m happy to say I’m working on sequels to both stories. More to come on that later.
"I’d like to go out of this world having brought as many good things into it as I can."
Here’s an interview I did with the Canadian Public Relations Society about how I balance my life as both a writer and a newspaper editor. It’s all about the coffee….
I’ve written plenty of books articles or columns that have come from my contacts in the writing community. And news stories have definitely led to fictional stories for me. For instance, my last published novel, The Warhol Gang, came into being after I read a couple of different articles, one about neuromarketing and one about a man who kept pretending to be an emergency responder at accident scenes. The two met up in my mind and mutated into a novel. So the two fields are a pretty combination for me.
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