Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
So precioussss
I must admit that I’m enjoying all the images I’m seeing online of the new editions of my Cross books. These are some of my favourite covers yet!
More details:
“Roger Zelazny is one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer”
I feel incredibly honoured to have been invited to the Re-Creative podcast to discuss Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber series, which is probably more responsible than anything else for me becoming a writer. It’s a great conversation between Joe Mahoney, Mark Rayner and myself about the Amber books, my Cross series (The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, The Dead Hamlets, The Apocalypse Ark), spirituality, medical crises, the writing life and more.
We’re Not Dead Yet! – The interview
My interview with the fabulous We Aren’t Dead Yet team is now live! I had a great time discussing my book The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, the confused state of spirituality in our troubled times, and how best to charm a Beholder and ride it into battle in D&D.
Related:
Grey work – The October 2024 Bibliofiles edition
Killer angels, 1950s Hollywood intrigue, the power of deep work, haunted pirate ships and more. Check out my recommended reads from the past month!
Fiction
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Two women vie for the same starring role and the same lovers in a 1950s swords and sandal Hollywood production. The Seventh Veil is a complex dark romance that turns its camera lens on issues of race, gender and socioeconomic status, all while building to an inevitable clash. Rich with intrigue and historical detail, it’s one of Moreno-Garcia’s best books yet.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199927990-the-seventh-veil-of-salome
Genre Fiction
Grey by Ian Rogers
The last human soul has been stolen, which means the end of humanity is near. The angels seem powerless to do anything about it. So who do you turn to when the angels aren’t up to the job? Grey, a dangerous soul caught in Limbo somewhere between Heaven and Hell. Think John Wick pulled into a battle between God and the Devil, and you’ll have an idea where this novella will take you.
Link: https://www.ian-rogers.com/grey/
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Hunt for the Grey Lady by Chris Willrich
I’m always delighted to see a new Chris Willrich tale, and “To Hunt the Grey Lady” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies is no exception. An enchanting story of a pirate captain’s attempt to capture the elusive ship Grey Lady, it features magic sea battles, enigmatic krakens, a sentient ship or two, some very complicated relationships and utterly fantastic prose. I read this one in pretty much one sitting but it’s so rich and layered that I can’t wait to read it again.
Link: https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/to-hunt-the-grey-lady/
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Five Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachel K. Jones
Only 600 words or so, but what a payoff.
Link: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/five-views-of-the-planet-tartarus/
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Nine Tenths of the Law by KJ Parker
KJ Parker is one of my favourite living fantasy writers because his tales are so unlike any other fantasy stories out there. They often feature unlikely protagonists — clerks, engineers, battlefield salvage experts and the like — and are less traditional three-act structure and more elaborate twists and double-crosses, followed by more twists. “Nine Tenths of the Law” is no different and stars a lawyer possessed by a demon who helps possess others so they can carry out various crimes. What happens when one of his clients double-crosses him? Ah, well, that’s why you’ll want to read the story.
Link: https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/nine-tenths-of-the-law/
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Unfinished Basement by A.R. Capetta
In a housing market where every place is haunted by ghosts, what happens when a couple move into a home that has ghosts but is somehow worse? A delightfully weird and unsettling story by A. R. Capetta.
Link: https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/unfinished-basement
Non-fiction
Deep Work by Cal Newport
We live in a world of constant interruption and distraction — emails, status notifications, TikTok trends, news alerts, you name it. Is it any wonder then that we’re all perpetually stressed and feeling as if we can never catch up on all our work? So what’s the antidote? Newport argues it’s deep work – finding ways to turn off all those distractions and focus deeply on one thing at a time. It’s the only way to do something meaningful, Newport suggests, and our only true path to fulfillment in a world that fragments our attention so ruthlessly that we often lose our very sense of self.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work
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The Jack David Master Class: What it Takes to Survive Fifty Years as an Independent Bookseller
Canadian publishing: A house of cards where banks call in loans at the worst times, distributors collapse, printers print books on promises to pay — and a single title can mean the difference between bankruptcy or living to publish for another season.
Link: https://shush.substack.com/p/the-jack-david-master-class
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Live Like an Artist – The Why by Shawna Lemay
“In the end though, it always come back to the why. If you can make delight the why of your art making process, if you can delight in the work of it, this helps make everything make sense. If you can remember that you get to do this, in whatever slivers of time you’ve made work for yourself, that helps. If you can remember that this is what makes a good life, a rich life, this helps. If you can go on being curious and delighting in these things you make, and create a few sparks and delight others, that’s a bit of gravy, isn’t it?”
Link: http://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/thewhy
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Against Rereading by Oscar Schwartz
As a lifelong rereader, I am offended by the very existence of this essay. So much so that I read it twice.
Link: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/09/04/against-rereading
Under the Cover: Behind the scenes of the Cross books
All Lit Up has published my “behind the scenes” account of creating my Cross series of supernatural thrillers. Learn about the ancient poem that was the inspiration for Cross and the first book, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice; why the second book, The Dead Hamlets, had to be a ghost story set in the theatre world; and why the third book, The Apocalypse Ark, is literary chaos.
Related
Publication day for The Mona Lisa Sacrifice!
It’s publication day for The Mona Lisa Sacrifice. I am absolutely thrilled to see the first book of my Cross series of supernatural thrillers back in print with a special new edition from Poplar Press, an imprint of Wolsak and Wynn.
The early reviews have been positive, and it’s been gratifying to see all the love and interest in the book on social media. I’ve particularly enjoyed the podcast conversations I’ve had around the book — it’s always lovely to be able to talk about books and the writing process. Here are a couple that have gone live so far:
If you’ve read The Mona Lisa Sacrifice and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on your platform of choice and/or spread the word about it on social media. Positive word of mouth is how most people discover new reads now, and it’s incredibly important to writers such as myself. The more people that learn about a book, the more potential readers it has. That means a greater chance of future books by the same author!
If you haven’t read The Mona Lisa Sacrifice yet, here’s a brief summary:
For thousands of years, Cross has wandered the earth, a mortal soul trapped in the undying body left behind by Christ. He’s been a thief, a con man, a soldier and a drunkard. He’s fought as a slave in the Colosseum and as a knight at King Arthur’s side. But now he must play the part of reluctant hero, as an angel comes to him for help finding the Mona Lisa—the real Mona Lisa that inspired the painting. Cross’s quest takes him into a secret world within our own, populated by characters just as strange and wondrous as he is: gorgons and dead gods hidden away in museums; faeries that live in countryside pubs, trapping and enslaving unwary travellers; and super-rich collectors who trade magical artifacts among themselves. He’s haunted by memories of Penelope, the only woman he truly loved, and he wants to avenge her death at the hands of his ancient enemy, Judas, a forgotten god from an ancient time. The angel promises to deliver Judas to Cross, but nothing is ever what it seems when Judas is involved, and when a group of renegade angels looking for a new holy war show up, things truly go to hell.
Anyway, I hope you like(d) the book. As always, thanks for reading!
Peter
From inspiration to The Dead Hamlets
I had a wonderful time talking to Ruff Radio about my book The Dead Hamlets and all things theatre — Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, performance vs. text, representation, the creative process, Ur-Hamlets and more. I actually worked in theatre a little in the past, and The Dead Hamlets is very much a love letter to those days. Many thanks to Christine Horne of Shakespeare in the Ruff for her thoughtful questions and theatre insights! I’d appreciate it if you give the interview a listen.
Here’s a bit of background to The Dead Hamlets if you’re not familiar with the book:
Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen. A deadly spirit is killing off the faerie, and it has mysterious ties to Shakespeare’s play, “Hamlet.” The only one who can stop it is the immortal Cross, a charming rogue who also happens to be a drunk, a thief, and an angel killer. He is no friend of the faerie since they stole his daughter and made her one of their own. When it appears she may be the next victim of the haunting, though, he must race against time to save her. He encounters an eccentric and deadly cast of characters along the way: the real Witches of Macbeth, the undead playwright/demon hunter Christopher Marlowe, an eerie Alice from the Alice in Wonderland books, a deranged and magical scholar – and a very supernatural William Shakespeare. When Cross discovers a startling secret about the origins of “Hamlet” itself, he finds himself trapped in a ghost story even he may not be able to escape alive!
Vancouver Sun highly recommends The Mona Lisa Sacrifice
The reviews for the new editions of my Cross books are starting to appear, which is lovely. I’m so grateful to see these books out in the world, particularly with such beautiful new covers. And I’m very grateful to read the Vancouver Sun review of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, which calls the book “a pleasurable, fast-moving romp through history and myth, conspiracy, and confusion.” I very much like the part where Tom Sandborn, the reviewer, says the book “is likely to find a large and enthusiastic audience.”
If you like The Mona Lisa Sacrifice or any of my other books, please consider leaving a review of them on your favourite platform. It’s the sort of thing that can really help boost a book’s profile and bring it to the attention of other readers. And more readers means publishers are likely to pick up an author’s next book, so that means more books as well. It’s pretty much a win for everyone! Unless, of course, you hate the book….
Link: https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/book-review-bc-peter-darbyshire-dan-brown-territory
Links to order The Mona Lisa Sacrifice
Ottawa has its share of characters….
I did a Six Questions interview with rob mclennan for Chaudiere Books about how Ottawa influenced my writing career. I only lived in Ottawa for a couple of years, but it’s still one of my favourite places in the world, and I think it’s still affecting my literary life in quiet ways.
I think the real thing that Ottawa has to offer is its culture. There’s just so much happening in Ottawa given it’s the nation’s capital and all. Every second person you encounter is a creator of some sort of another, and there are so many cultural industries where you can have a meaningful career. Ottawa is a place filled with people who recognize that culture is just as important to our society as health care or universities or spirituality or you name it. There’s probably an argument to be made that culture intersects with all of these things….
I should point out the interview took place before all the recent excitement in Ottawa, which introduced a whole new set of characters to the city….
Stop drinking? There’s an app for that!
Back at the beginning of 2019, I decided to take a break from drinking alcohol. I didn’t have a bad New Year’s Eve that ended with me waking up in a foreign country or a disastrous Christmas where I found myself naked and covered in ornaments or anything like that. No, I just wanted to get healthier.
I’d found for the past few years that drinking was just taking too much of a toll on my mind and body as I grew older. The odd hangover when I drank too much had turned into headaches whenever I drank anything at all. I developed strange heart palpitations that my doctor said were probably caused by alcohol. I was getting bloated and uncomfortably heavy. I was frustrated with my constant mood swings. I wasted way too much time on drunken midnight descents into 1990s concerts on YouTube.
As the father of a couple of young boys, I worried about the toll of all this and something happening to me that deprived them of a functional father, or a father at all. Leave aside for the moment they were often the reason I drank….
So I decided to try to stop drinking again, at least until I could shed some weight and get healthier. I’d tried a few times in the past and been reasonably successful — I’d gone a few months here, six months there, etc. But there was always some social event or another where I felt it was time to take a drink, and then the cycle started up again.
This time I decided to try out a new app I’d read about on reddit’s Stop Drinking subreddit: NoMo. I downloaded it in early January and started using it, and I 100% credit my year of sobriety to the app.
It has a number of features that are useful. One I quite like is you can track how much money you are saving. Simply check your bank statements to see how much you spent on booze the year before, enter that number into the app, and it’ll tell you how much money you’ve saved each day by not drinking. I’ve saved the price of a holiday trip to another country in one year — that’s right, I was drinking away a vacation each year.
You can also connect with other people for support and that sort of thing, if that’s what works for you. I’m more independent myself, but do whatever works for you.
The feature that works best for me is the app keeps track of your sobriety streak — how many days you’ve gone without a drink. That alone is the thing that has stopped me from drinking many times over the past year. There’s always been some occasion or another where I’ve been at a party or event where there’s a table of open booze bottles, and the thing that’s stopped me from drinking is that streak. I’ve actually pulled out my phone, checked my app and thought, “Nah, I don’t want to break my streak of 157 days of no drinking just to have a beer or shot of rum.”
The effectiveness of this really struck home with me when I was on holiday in Iceland with some friends a few months back. We were staying in a hotel that had an executive lounge that offered free booze every night — good, expensive booze! What better excuse to have a drink — I’m on holiday in Iceland, and they’re giving away excellent drinks for free. I can just take a short break from sobriety and have some fun! I didn’t, though. I didn’t want to break that streak on the app. And I honestly didn’t want to have a drink, either. I liked the way I felt sober and I continue to like the way I feel sober. So I passed and went to bed early and got up early the next day and wandered Reykjavik and went for hikes and had a lovely, inspiring time that I still remember.
I’m not one to be an evangelist about sobriety or anything else. But I’ve been open about my reasons for not drinking and I’ve been pleased with the changes over the last year — I lost 35 pounds, I’m more fit, I’m happier and more level, and I feel I’m much better equipped to deal with stress. Many people have asked me about my experiences and what’s been working for me. It’s clear a number of my friends and acquaintances have their own struggles with alcohol and are thinking about taking a break. So I thought I’d mention the app and my own experiences here for those who are interested.
After all, it’s the start of a new year. What better time to transform yourself into that person you want to be?
Stay strong and have compassion for others but most of all yourself.
Peter
peter darbyshire 