Archive for January, 2014

Why I find it so damned hard to write Science Fiction

Posted: January 25, 2014 in Stuff from Mike's Life, Videos, Writing
0

*Sigh* I mostly write horror and dark fantasy. I want to write science fiction. But I can never _anticipate_ the future as a thing of absurdity or satire or terror. Each time I think of some future scenario, it’s overtaken by real life. A million years ago, I tried writing a political science fiction novel that just *became true* before I got far into it because of the candidacy of Ross Perot.  I tried writing about a near-future Great Lakes reality that just *became true* as Detroit imploded.

As a Science Fiction reader and writer, I can’t make up anything as insane as the Japanese Orgasm Game Show Challenge. And yet, it has happened.

I’ve been stuck in the writing of a dystopian SF novel for a while. I threw in a situation like the one below as an idea to sort of play with and explore as something going on in the background of the main action. I could never have come up with the really brilliant added touch of this craziness going on while the person was a.) fully clothed in a steam bath b.) in Alaska and c.) in January.

Here’s the explanation from Uproxx:

“Meet Kathleen Tonn, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat from Alaska currently held by Democrat Mark Begich. Here she is in a video she uploaded to her Facebook page, one that features her speaking in tongues fully-clothed in a steam room, naturally. She apparently did this to try to convert a non-believer into accepting Jesus Christ as her lord and savior.”

 

Really… how could even Alfred Bester, Robert Sheckley, Alice Sheldon or William Gibson have topped this true event through any imaginative act of extrapolation?

Cover Reveal for ChiZine Reprint of My Novel DAWN SONG

Posted: January 10, 2014 in ChiZine, Dawn Song, horror fiction, Publishing, Stuff from Mike's Life, War in Hell, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
0
The totally gorgeous new cover for DAWN SONG by Erik Mohr

The totally gorgeous new cover for DAWN SONG by Erik Mohr

Hi, Everybody!

Above, please take a look at the stunning new cover by Erik Mohr for ChiZine Publications’ reprint of my first novel DAWN SONG. I think it’s an absolutely stunning piece of work, and when Brett Savory e-mailed me the cover, I was in a coffee shop in Cambridge, MA, where I kinda embarrassingly expressed my delight almost the same way Jan Brady would, upon receiving a signed 8 X 10 glossy in the mail from her favorite Monkee.

The reprint of DAWN SONG will be coming as a Trade Paperback and an ebook in June 2014; the ChiZine edition will be loaded with a few extra goodies that have not been in any other previous edition of the book. It will be followed by a sequel in 2015 and another sequel in 2016, the titles of which aren’t really finalized yet, though I can assure you that DAWN SONG: BREAKING DAWN has been considered and soundly rejected.

For those of you who don’t know, DAWN SONG was first published in 1998, and went on to garner the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. According to some metrics, it’s still among one of the 100 most critically lauded genre publications, at # 72. (Hey, man… I’m right between Philip K. Dick’s Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and Fredrick Pohl’s Man Plus on that list. That’s pretty goddam good company to be rubbing shoulders with!)

DAWN SONG is set during the first Gulf War build up of 1990, and is part of a mythology I’ve been developing in fiction based on the notion of a War in Hell… in which the struggles of various factions of demons in Hell for supremacy at once create, and are created by, the psychic shockwaves of conflicts on Earth. The book centers on the quest of Lawrence, a young gay bookstore clerk who’s come to Boston to create a new life for himself, and a Succubus who has also come to Boston to further the agenda of her demonic Patron in the War in Hell. I’ll be posting here about DAWN SONG some more in the future. But for now, let me sign off with a very generous quote from a writer who really helped me a lot in the development of my approach to this kind of material. Thanks so much for stopping by!

“‘The falling snow, dropping from the darkened sky, reminded her of the steady rain of souls upon the plains of her homeland. Although, unlike the souls, the snow did not scream.’ When I read those lines (from Michael Marano’s Dawn Song), I got up, turned on all the lights and checked the locks.”

“The author’s talent is unquestionable, his sensitivity and power of expression quite impressive. How rare to find a work of this genre written in so literate a style. It put me in mind of Anne Rice.”

–William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist and Legion