Category Archives: Journal
Reading aftermath
I had a lovely time reading from my new book, The Wonder Lands War, alongside Katie Welch at Cross and Crows bookstore in Vancouver recently. It was the first event I’ve done in years but I managed to keep my stage fright at bay. Many thanks to all those who attended!
The Wonder Lands War on NetGalley until Nov. 30
If you’re on NetGalley, my latest Cross book, The Wonder Lands War, is available until Nov. 30.
If you prefer to buy the book, links are below.
Buy The Wonder Lands War
Hope you like it!
Whispers from the shelves
Why do we all love books about secret, hidden or forgotten texts?
It’s certainly a major element of my own writing — secret texts play prominently in The Dead Hamlets (a haunted manuscript of Hamlet), The Apocalypse Ark (God’s lost bible) and The Wonder Lands War (magical Wonderland books that spawn strange creatures), as well as a number of my Azrael the Angel Gunslinger tales.
But I’m not the only writer fixated on such things. When I look at my bookshelves, it seems half my reading is also concerned with the topic. So why are we all so obsessed with secret texts?
There are a few reasons that immediately come to mind. Secret texts can often show us the truth of the world and make sense of its chaotic, unpredictable or even incomprehensible nature. They offer an x-ray of our world or turn it inside out, particularly when combined with elements of the horror genre. HP Lovecraft is perhaps the most obvious example of this, with his frequent uses of mythical, forbidden texts that reveal humanity’s true insignificance in the cosmos and the monstrous forces that actually shape the universe. Nobody said the hidden truth of the world had to be pleasant. In fact, that’s often why the books are hidden away: to protect the rest of us from going mad when we realize the truth.
A more contemporary version of this is Jonathan L. Howard’s Carter and Lovecraft series, which features the cop-turned-PI Carter inheriting a bookstore run by a descendant of HP Lovecraft. The unlikely duo stumble into a supernatural plot that reveals Lovecraft was writing about real cosmic horrors and his books were portals to other realms, or to simple impossibilities in our meagre understanding of the cosmos.
Secret books are also often about power. Books are knowledge, after all, and knowledge is power. Some books are hidden away not to protect humanity but to protect those with the power. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is an intriguing example of this, where a mad monk in a labyrinthian library carries out a series of murders to stop knowledge of the lost comedies of Aristotle to escape. It’s a delightfully literary murder mystery, but it’s also a tale of the attempted suppression of free speech by those who want to maintain their power and not share it with the world. The ones with the access to the secret books get the power while everyone else is denied it.
More modern readers may see a similar dynamic at work in RF Kuang’s Babel, which has more than a few similarities to Eco’s work. In Babel specially trained scholars work magic by exploiting the gaps in meaning that occur in translations, with the tension between different meanings of words conjuring a sort of magical energy that can be used for nearly every purpose that has a word assigned to it.
Finally, forgotten texts can be about forgotten — or suppressed — knowledge. In Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, for instance, characters are often confronted with texts or mythic structures created by men and they must reimagine them from a different perspective to survive. Indeed, the stories of The Bloody Chamber are themselves reimaginings of patriarchal tales, told in ways that give the female characters more agency and power.
One way or another, secret books seem to be about revealing secret truths, to understand the world in a new light. And isn’t that why we all read in the first place?
(This post was inspired by the Whispers from the Archives panel at the WCSFA CONnections convention, where I was a participant.)
Excerpt of The Wonder Lands War live at Civilian Reader
If you’re curious about the latest book in my Cross series of supernatural thrillers, Civilian Reader has posted an excerpt.
Learn more about The Wonder Lands War.
Reading at Cross and Crow Books in Vancouver
I’ll be reading from my new book, The Wonder Lands War, at Cross and Crow Books in Vancouver Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. I’ll be sharing the reading with Katie Welch, who is launching her new book, Ladder to Heaven. Hope to see some of you there!
The Angel Azrael Visits the Trading Post at the End of the World a Final Time
I’ve published a new Azrael the Angel Gunslinger tale at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Angel Azrael Visits the Trading Post at the End of the World a Final Time.
The tale follows Azrael as he returns to the mysterious Trading Post at the End of the World in an apocalyptic storm to repay a debt to its angel proprietor. Only there’s a gang of strangers at the trading post who are strange in every sense of the word — and they have their own interest in Azrael’s angel friend.
Soon supernatural six-guns are blazing and the trading post becomes a battleground — and Azrael may finally have met his match.
If you like your westerns weird, it doesn’t get any weirder than this. Hope you check out it.
Here are the previous tales of Azrael the Angel Gunslinger:
- The Angel Azrael Rode Into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse – The angel Azrael rides into the town of Burnt Church for a drink and ends up helping the very strange inhabitants fight off a gang of demons that’s been tormenting them.
- The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies – The angel Azrael encounters an angel who is determined to turn the world into her own personal Hell and only Azrael can stop her.
- The audio version of “The Angel Azrael Delivers Small Mercies” with a new introduction I recorded for the story
- The Angel Azrael Delivers Justice to the People of the Dust – The angel Azrael rides into a mining town that is under siege from curious bone creatures stealing the town’s children. When Azrael intervenes, he discovers that nothing is what it seems in this strange place.
- The Angel Azrael Encounters the Revelation Pilgrims and Other Curiosities – The angel Azrael is hired by a group of pilgrims to guide them through a dangerous stretch of land, where they encounter a city of the dead and an outlaw band of half angels intent on ensuring they don’t make it to their destination.
- The Angel Azrael and the War Ghosts – The angel Azrael tries to stop a group of ghostly soldiers from preying upon travellers and rides straight into his own troubled past.
- The Angel Azrael Battles a Dead God Among the Heretics – The angel Azrael encounters a village full of crazed golems intent upon resurrecting a dead god to unleash upon the world — a god that Azrael has already killed once.
- The Angel Azrael and the Dead Man’s Hand – The Angel Azrael wanders into a strange town and becomes trapped in a supernatural and deadly card game. A recommended read by Locus!
Win a free copy of The Wonder Lands War
The amazing crew at 49th Shelf are hosting a giveaway of the latest book in my Cross series of supernatural thrillers, The Wonder Lands War. Visit 49thshelf.com/Giveaways for a chance to win one of three copies of The Wonder Lands War.
Bonus: You can also enter to win other books by an amazing assortment of writers!
The giveaway period ends Nov. 1, so enter now!
A supernatural giveaway!
Wolsak and Wynn, the publisher of my Cross series of supernatural thrillers, is giving away the entire series! To enter, follow them on Instagram and share the giveaway post.
Wolsak and Wynn link: https://www.instagram.com/wolsakandwynn/
Giveaway post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DQU_RYSj6bv/
Magical Motels and Labyrinthian Libraries: The October 2025 Bibliofiles
This month saw some monstrous reads: supernatural shenanigans on spaceships, goblin libraries, medieval massacres and insider tales of the publishing industry. Enjoy?
Fiction
Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel by Andrew Kaufman
The Shamrock Motel is a magical place that can only be found by those who are lost — both geographically and emotionally. The tales in this collection follow an eccentric cast of characters who all reach some crossroads in their life and end up checking in to the Shamrock Motel.
That’s when things get weird.
A woman embarks on an affair with a bear, a child lives inside a piece of furniture, a man’s penis turns into an extension cord, a woman is confined and cleaned by hundreds of smaller women and so on. It’s as if Schitt’s Creek was directed by David Lynch as an X-rated movie.
Enjoy Your Stay at the Shamrock Motel probably won’t appeal to those who take comfort in a Best Western. But those who have a little more eccentric tastes will never want to check out.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216838651-enjoy-your-stay-at-the-shamrock-motel
Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
Of Monsters and Mainframes is a fantastic mashup of space opera, quirky AIs and pulp horror — like if Murderbot had a dream of Halloween.
The tale follows the voyages of Demeter, a sentient spaceship that hauls passengers around the galaxy. But something goes wrong on one of Demeter’s voyages and hundreds of passengers die. Only Demeter knows the truth — the passengers were killed by Dracula!
If that’s not bad enough, Demeter’s next voyage features a werewolf running amok and killing most of the passengers. And the voyage after that has a strange bunch of cultists hijack the ship in an effort to find their sleeping god. And after that… well, you get the idea.
If it sounds absurd, that’s because it is. Of Monsters and Mainframes delights in playing genres against each other — science vs. supernatural, cold corporate bureaucracies vs. emotional AIs, and so on. Yet it’s also an intriguing mystery about consciousness — what can a ship actually perceive, and what if the AI is delusional — as well a warm found family tale.
If you’re looking for a little supernatural in your sci-fi, then this one is a monstrously good read!
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216540053-of-monsters-and-mainframes
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
A lyrical nightmare of a tale that follows a disgraced knight wandering through an apocalyptic, plague-ravaged Europe that is populated with genuine monsters and demons — and angels?
Buehlman is one of the most creative and original fantasy writers of this generation and perhaps ever. While he may be best known for The Blacktongue Thief and its prequel, The Daughters War, Between Two Fires is a masterpiece of psychological horror and visionary madness.
Think The Road meets Hieronymous Bosch and you’ll have an idea of what lurks between the covers of this book, waiting for you.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13543121-between-two-fires
A Random Walk Through the Goblin Library by Chris Willrich
If your ideal fantasy tale is a magically written, literary labyrinth infused with Calvino, Borges, Lovecraft, necromancy, demons and supernatural libraries, then check out “A Random Walk Through the Goblin Library” by Chris Willrich.
Link: https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/a-random-walk-through-the-goblin-library/
Nonfiction
The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem by Tajja Isen
Is publishing’s obsession with sales numbers hurting publishing?
Link: https://thewalrus.ca/the-publishing-industry-has-a-gambling-problem/
Distribution and the Terror of the Backorder by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
What happens when a book is popular but there are no copies available? Silvia Moreno-Garcia discusses how distribution trends are hurting writers.
Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/distribution-and-141904814
Why Access Copyright matters
I recently received my Access Copyright payment for this year, and it’s an important reminder of how critical it is that creators receive compensation for their work. (Scowls in the general direction of AI companies that rip off writers.)
Access Copyright is another great Canadian program that ensures writers and publishers are compensated for their work being copied.
How it works
Access Copyright negotiates blanket licences with institutions that typically make copies of books, poems, articles, etc. to allow for such copying in return for compensation which it then distributes to writers and publishers.
Experience has proven that without such licences creators rarely get paid for use of their work, as those doing the copying don’t usually go through the effort of tracking down the rights holders and asking permission to copy, let alone offering compensation.
Why it matters
Canadian publishing is chronically underfunded and most publishers survive season to season. Canadian writers fare no better, with most authors earning low advances and having to cobble together an existence of different income streams.
The Canadian bookselling marketplace has largely been colonized by American culture over the past few decades, and it’s commonly estimated that Canadian authors only account for around 5% of Canadian book sales. In an environment like this, every bit of income matters to struggling creators.
The simple math of the situation is that if creators aren’t paid for their work, they’ll need to find other work to survive and that means they’ll be creating less. Each dollar invested in their support is a dollar invested in a new creation.
Access Copyright licences also protect the institutions behind the copying from infringement. There’s little danger of them being sued if they’re paying for the right to copy, and those doing the copying can do so knowing it’s legal and ethical.
Thanks
All of this is to say many thanks to Access Copyright and the people that keep it running for all they do to protect and support Canadian culture!
peter darbyshire 