Blog Archives
Last chance to save on Cross pre-orders
Last call for discounts! A reminder that my Cross series of supernatural thrillers is 25% off until the end of August if you order directly from the publisher, Wolsak and Wynn. If you’re into books with immortal antiheroes that hunt down angels while solving literary mysteries AND you like discounts, then this is the series for you! https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/collections/cross-books
As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s quite helpful for authors when you pre-order our books. The publishing environment is getting more difficult by the day (what isn’t?), and initial sales of a book can mean the difference between it reaching readers like you or disappearing without a trace. The more pre-orders a book gets, the more likely it is to get decent orders from bookstores and better placement, as well as higher rankings online. All of this ultimately translates into more readers, which in turn translates into more books by me or your other favourite authors. So pre-orders actually matter.
Also, Wolsak and Wynn says they’ll throw in some goodies like special bookmarks and such for pre-orders. I mean, who can possibly resist custom bookmarks?
Anyway, I hope you’re looking forward to the new editions of the books as much as I am. As always, thanks for reading.
– Peter
Welcome to the chaos machine – Bibliofiles August 2024
Murderous monks, creepy suburbia, giant brains, social media chaos machines — this month’s Bibliofiles of my latest reads is as weird and fantastic as it gets! Let me know if you have any tips about what I should read next.
Literary fiction
Satellite Image by Michelle Berry
A city couple move to a small town after one of them is assaulted, hoping for a quieter and safer life. But small towns have their own secrets, and the couple is soon haunted by a satellite image of a potential body in their yard and strange incidents happening within the home, to say nothing of a cast of curious neighbours. It’s a psychological thriller that cranks up the tension with each chapter. You’ll be checking the locks over and over on your own home during your sleepless nights after finishing this book.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214982605-satellite-image?ref=nav_sb_ss_3_15
Genre Fiction
Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead by K.J. Parker
Saevus Corax makes a living scavenging the dead of battlefields with a band of not-so-merry men and business is good. As it turns out, Corax is using his job to hide the fact he killed off his former self, but his past just won’t stay dead and soon he is forced to leave the battlefields for even more dangerous realms. It’s classic Parker, with smart and double-crossing antiheroes and enough twists and turns to throw out your back. Better buy the full series so you have something to read while you rest.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61030541-saevus-corax-deals-with-the-dead
Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell
The clever and wisecracking Greatcoat Estevar Borros arrives at an ancient abbey where the monks have gone mad, demons run amok and the dead gods may not be as dead as everyone thinks. This may be my favourite Greatcoats novel yet by de Castell.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197664774-crucible-of-chaos?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17
Across the Street by Greg Van Eekhout
An office drone decides to try a new route on his lunch excursions and finds himself in a strange version of our reality – a pet shop with a dragon, a meat shop with human corpses, a manhole with a mysterious creature, a church with actual angels and more. A wonderfully bizarre daydream that will speak to all of us who spend in our days in cube farms.
Link: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/across-the-street/
Median by Kelly Robson
A care aide provider in a broken-down car on the highway starts getting emergency calls from people who need help – but she doesn’t know any of them. When she stumbles upon a different and fatal accident, as well as a three-headed dog, things get weird. Another delightfully strange story from Kelly Robson.
Link: https://reactormag.com/median-kelly-robson/
“Gold, Glory, and the McCorry Boys” by Christopher O’Halloran
The best lyrical weird western heist father-son zombie story I’ve read this year.
Link: https://kaleidotrope.net/summer-2024/gold-glory-and-the-mccorry-boys-by-christopher-ohalloran/
“How to Kill the Giant Living Brain You Found in Your Mother’s Basement After She Died: An Interactive Guide” by Alex Sobel
A fun little story about mother-daughter relationships, emotional baggage, and of course giant living brains in basements.
Nine Recordings of Grief by by Zachariah Claypole White
When the world ends, it probably won’t be with zombies or supernovas or alien invasions or something we understand. It’ll likely end with something weird and incomprehensible, something we simply can’t fathom. If an enigmatic apocalypse appeals to you, then I think you’ll like “Nine Recordings of Grief.”
Link: https://www.bourbonpenn.com/issue/33/nine-recordings-of-grief-by-zachariah-claypole-white
Non-fiction
The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher
Why did Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms transform over time from hubs of connection to engines of radicalization and misinformation? The easy answer, as always, is to blame it on the algorithm. But how does code lead to conflict? The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher is an informative but chilling look inside the social media networks to reveal how they turn user feeds into echo chambers of infectious content designed to outrage and mobilize — but most of all to increase clicks/views. Nothing drives engagement like ragebait, after all.
But the algorithm is just code created by workers in shiny tech campuses, so it should be easy to correct this problem, right?
This is where Fisher reveals the more disturbing issue underlying the problem with the social media networks: there’s money to be made in chaos. The Chaos Machine provides example after example of Facebook and YouTube insiders coming up with ways to stop their platforms from encouraging murder, genocide and civil war, only to be overruled by leaders who would rather maximize profits than minimize the death and destruction caused by their products. The end result of this is the world we now live in.
The Chaos Machine should be required reading for anyone who uses social media, no matter what your political ideology, for it reveals how we’re all being manipulated to enrich the lives of a handful of tech barons. We’re not just the audience in the attention economy or even the product. We’re also the victims.
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58950736-the-chaos-machine
Why are debut novels failing to launch?
There was a time when a young writer could publish their first book and have a chance at success on the writing alone. Do you have to be a social media influencer to have a shot at a writing career now?
Link: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a60924704/debut-fiction-challenges/
Early release of Azrael and the Dead Man’s Hand
My latest tale of Azrael the angel gunslinger, “Azrael and the Dead Man’s Hand,” is available for early download for supporters of the Beneath Ceaseless Skies Patreon. What happens when the angel Azrael wanders into a strange town and becomes trapped in a deadly and supernatural poker game? You’ll have to read the story to find out!
This marks the seventh Azrael tale in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Here are the others in order of publication:
- 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.
If you like the Azrael stories, please share them with a friend. Word of mouth is one of the best forms of recommendation for a writer and helps lead to new readers. And new readers means the kind of support a writer and journals like Beneath Ceaseless Skies need for new stories.
As always, thanks for reading.
The joy of indie publishing
My publisher Wolsak and Wynn on why they do what they do (which also happens to be why I love publishing with them):
“We’re publishing books we want to read. The books that you can’t find easily, stories that surprise us, writers that delight us. While we’re also quite sure other people will like these books too, someone here, at the press, has to feel the book is pretty special for us to take it on. Because you really can’t tell which books will take off, someone has to be willing to say, This book is important, full stop. Let’s publish it. I want to read it.”
Wolsak and Wynn was also featured in a recent Toronto Star profile of indie publishers in Canada.
On the Bookshelf: The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich
I thought I’d resume discussing my current reads here on my journal, as I try to resist the irresistible trend of social media becoming the default platform for all conversations. (See my reasoning here.)
First up On the Bookshelf: The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich.
I fell in love with Chris Willrich’s tales at first read, after coming across them in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I was so excited about them I messaged BCS editor Scott Andrews to let him know, and he pointed me to Willrich’s novels.
I recently finished The Scroll of Years, and I still don’t know how to talk about it. Perhaps because it’s one of those books that defies categorization. A risky move for a genre book, sure, but one that’s paid off in this case.
It’s as if it were a fantasy novel co-written by the ghosts of Italo Calvino and Fritz Leiber and transcribed by a dragon monk who sees only in ethereal. This is a tale that revels not only in unconventional characters and unexpected twists but also in storytelling itself. In fact, this is very much a novel about storytelling at every level — the characters’ greatest powers are their abilities to tell tales, the narrative ventures into one different genre after another, and the idea of being able to escape into a good story is actually key to the plot here.
The book mostly follows the thieves Bone and Gaunt, lovers that are trying to escape their pasts and find a safe spot to raise their coming child. But the narrative often shifts away from them to explore other characters’ tales that intersect with the story of Bone and Gaunt. And it’s a wildly imaginative cast of characters — weird magical assassins, a band of mysterious thieves, and even an unconventional dragon. To say any more would be to reveal too much!
The Scroll of Years isn’t traditional fantasy — it’s certainly not high fantasy or grimdark. Nor is it an easy read, as it demands your attention at all times. But it is a unique read and unlike anything else being published at the moment. The literary magic and originality of it alone are enough to earn five out of five scrolls from me.
Related Links:
Website – http://www.chriswillrich.com
X: https://twitter.com/librariangoblin
BCS Stories by Chris Willrich:
- “Hausferatu” — Issue #384, June 15, 2023
- “On Magog’s Pond” — Issue #367, October 20, 2022
- “A Manslaughter of Crows” — Issue #341, October 21, 2021
- “Eyetooth” — Issue #314, October 8, 2020
- “Shadowdrop” — Issue #261, Tenth Anniversary Month Double-Issue I, September 27, 2018
- “How the Wicker Knight Would Not Move” — Issue #99, July 11, 2012
peter darbyshire 