Requiem For the C21st Gods

Any career has it's share of disappointments, and the fate of my comic book C21st Gods perhaps wasn't the biggest I've had, but it's one that stuck with me - maybe because the project was so beset by disaster and then because it came so close to a measure of success.  To have a book unpublished is one thing; to have a book partially published and doomed to never be finished is quite another.  And somehow, the release of one issue of a three-and-a-bit part miniseries was almost worse than having nothing out at all.

But the very worst of it was, it's not that great an issue.  I mean, if we're honest, it's probably not that great a script full stop; beginning as a five page strip, then expanding into ten pages, then expanding into a graphic novel, it was born out of a few short, sharp shocks of effort that all seemed to occur at particularly rubbish times in my life.  And once the artist it had been written for dropped out, it looked for an age as though it would never see the light of day.  So I was all the more thrilled when eventually the pieces appeared to be coming together: with interesting-seeming independent outfit Rosarium in place as publisher and the talented Anthony Summey taking over on artist duties, it appeared that some good might come of all that work after all.

Yet, for reasons I guess I could dig into but won't, there was only ever this one issue, the weakest part of a book that was, in a weird sense, intended to start somewhat weakly.  The thing is, I'd never meant for C21st Gods to appear in separate segments, and it was never going to comfortably fit that format; issue one was deliberately rife with clichés and the entire concept was built on playing with the reader's established expectations.  Essentially, the book was two parts prologue, one part climax, and the climax was what everything was about.

Nevertheless, while it's certainly not the best thing I've written, there's plenty in C21st Gods that I think genuinely stands up, that last issue would have been pretty damn cool, and I wasn't comfortable with leaving things the way they'd been left.  Therefore, as promised rather a long while back now, I've tidied the entire script a bit and stuck it up on my website.  I realise I've been kind of negative about it, but I swear, it's worth a read - especially if, like me, you're one of those folks who likes to get a glimpse behind the scenes!

There's an index of all the parts here, or you can find each separate issue at the following links:
Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3, Epilogue.

Gods Is (Really) Dead

It's possible that if you have a really good memory you'll recall my comic book miniseries C21st Gods, which debuted at the back end of 2016 from Rosarium Publishing.  But probably you won't, since it sold all of about a dozen copies and the subsequent issues never materialized.  At any rate, if you're one of that handful of people who splashed out for the first issue, and have been desperately hanging on, waiting to find out what happens next, then - well, sorry about that, factors outside of my control and all that, and it would honestly have been pretty cool.  But I'm afraid that neither of us will ever get to read the remaining two parts, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Not being a total idiot, I'd suspected for a while that the book's artist, Anthony Summey, wasn't intending to stick with the project; the many months of silence were a definite clue.  But I eventually figured I'd better raise the question, and sure enough, C21st Gods is now without an artist and so effectively defunct.  This, by the way, is the second artist the book has lost, and if you want a truly gruesome, grueling horror story then click on the "C21st Gods" label down there at the bottom of the post and read from start to finish the whole damn odyssey of how I've tried and failed and failed and failed and briefly succeeded and failed to make this goddamn project happen.  Trust me, it'll turn your hair white!

I guess that if I learned one lesson as a writer from the whole experience, it's that you can't save your best material.  There was some really interesting stuff coming up in the remaining two issues, and especially in the closing third, including one particular scene that's been lodged in my head for years now and which I'd really have liked to see on the page.  That said, the truth is that I wrote the script for C21st Gods as a graphic novel, the decision to publish it as individual issues wasn't mine, and it would have been impossible to restructure it as a miniseries by that point.  The reviews for the first issue weren't great, and I think they were generally fair in their not-greatness, but it was immensely frustrating when I knew that most of the criticisms would have been addressed by the remainder of the story.  Which is all the more gutting now that the first issue is all the story there'll be.

Actually, that's a bit defeatist, isn't it?  And I try not to be that, especially when I have a shiny new novel out and should really be feeling quite chipper.  So I think what I'll do, if I can find a minute somewhere, is slap the entire script up on my website.  That way, if anyone wants to know what they missed, they can find out.  And hey, at least that first issue is a thing, one I'm still kind of proud of.  While I'm not exactly thrilled with Anthony for walking off the book a third of the way in without feeling the need to tell me, there's no getting around the fact that he did some seriously nice work in bringing C21st Gods to life, and if you're one of the approximately seven and a half billion people who haven't read it, it's worth a look purely for the artwork.  If you'd care to grab a copy, you can do so from Amazon and Comixology.  And if you'd rather just read the script then keep checking back, I'll get it up there eventually!

C21st Gods Issue #1 Is Out

I'm a little behind on this, I must admit, having been distracted by that whole thing of The Black River Chronicles: Level One coming out and also having had a birthday around the same time (not a major one, thankfully, I'm not certain I could have coped with that this year!)  At any rate, when I say that the first issue of C21st Gods is out, I mean to say that it's been out for a few days now.  And that, in fact, you can buy it right this minute if the urge should take you.

The response so far has definitely been positive, if not absolutely great: lots of love, understandably, for Anthony's artwork, a general air that we're punching  above our weight in terms of a book from an indy press, but also a few comments along the lines of "So, is this it?"  Which is to say, is the first issue of Gods and its tale of a police detective stumbling across a gruesome string of murders that hint at darker horrors indicative of everything the book has going on?

And no, it isn't.  I mean, of course it isn't.  Anthony and I have some big damn things to come, of that I promise you, and many of those will come more clearly into focus in issue two, wherein the central conflicts become more readily apparent.  A small confession: one of the aspects of writing commercially that I find hardest is that you can't simply ask a reader to trust you.  If you let it, that fact ends up restricting the choices you make; faced with an audience who aren't familiar with your work and who'll tend to assume the worst, the temptation is to play safe, to front load the big ideas, to be attention-grabbing in favour of a slow burn.

But all of those things would have killed this idea stone dead, and that left me in the risky - but, fingers crossed, in the long term more rewarding - place of starting small and quiet and letting the artwork do the heavy lifting.  And at this point I must say, not for the first and surely not for the last time, that thank goodness I stumbled across Anthony Summey, whose detailed penciling and striking design work and eye-catching approach to colour are more than capable of all the heavy lifting I could have asked for.  I'm wholly ready to admit that his art carries this first issue -but that's as it was intended to be.

Because, as I say - big things to come.  And I for one am downright giddy at the thought of what Anthony's going to do with the next issue, when balls (and heads) really start rolling and shadowy figures make themselves known and C21st Gods gets to play some of the cards that make it, I hope, not just another book riding on the lengthy coattails of Mr. H. P. Lovecraft.  But all of that starts here in issue one, with a creepy house and a ghastly murder - soon to be followed by a string of even ghastlier murders - and a cop who realises he's willing to put everything on the line for the answers that no one much wants to give him.

You can pick up the first issue of C21st Gods here on Comixology and here on Amazon US.

Welcome Your Twenty-First Century Gods

I've been talking about C21st Gods for so damn long that it feels a little crazy to say that it's finally real and finally nearly out - at least the first issue - and that in just a few weeks I'll be holding an actual copy in my hands.  But there it is: thanks to Bill Campbell at Rosarium, thanks to some extraordinary work from artist Anthony Summey, Gods is already casting its shadow upon the Earth.

Here's how the blurb talks about that first issue, and indeed the book as a whole:

In a noirish modern re-imagining of H P Lovecraft's classic The Call of Cthulhu, one determined police detective investigates a series of horrific cult murders, only to discover that - in an age when technological marvels outstrip the wildest nightmares of the past - there may be worse to fear than even the return of a godlike horror from Earth's prehistory.

And that's all true, undoubtedly, but maybe it's not entirely what C21st Gods is about.  For me, it's also about horror the genre, and about the idea that sometimes horror isn't all that great a mirror to the things that actually, on a day to day basis, scare the hell out of us.  In particular, it came out of a realisation that The Call of Cthulhu just wouldn't work so well now, because as a species we've been busily cooking up atrocities that would make a semiaquatic, city block-high deity seem like small fry.  And how well would Lovecraftian cults fare in the age of global surveillance?  For that matter, how could one man caught in the midst be expected to make sense of any of it?  Just what is the correct response to threats so vast that you can't make sense of them, that perhaps don't make sense at all?

It never occurred to me until I wrote that last paragraph, but I can see now that that's where C21st Gods fits into the line-up at Rosarium.  Hell, I don't want to pretend that the book is astute social criticism or anything like that, but it's not quite the pulpy little bloodbath that this first issue suggests either.  (Though it definitely is that too - and on a side note, I've learned the hard way that if you've got a weak stomach, don't write horrible things in scripts that someone might then go on to draw, because you'll just end up freaking out over your own comic.)  I guess what I'm saying is, Gods is about pulp horror and also some big ideas about what's really scary in the twenty-first century, and if Anthony and I have done our jobs right then hopefully the result is a story that works on both of those levels.

Though, there's really no question that Anthony has nailed his part.  Just look at that cover!  And its heartening to see that the early reviews have been praising Anthony's work just as much as I've been, his contribution here alone is ample reason to pick up the book.  Which, oh right, was half the point of this post in the first place: C21st Gods is now available for review, here on Netgalley.  So if you're a reviewer then go grab a freebie copy.  And if you're not then please consider picking it up when issue one becomes available to buy on the ninth of November, which - and I've no idea if Bill realises this or not - happens to be my birthday.  What better present could you possibly give me than to buy the first issue of my new horror comic miniseries?

Yeah, that was a trick question.  The correct answer was a herd of capybaras and a garden big enough to keep them in.  But buying my comic book would be pretty cool too. 

Short Story News, May 2016

To my surprise, things continue to trundle along apace on the short fiction front, at least enough to warrant another post on the subject only a couple of months after the last one.

The most up-to-the-minute development is that my paranoiac science fiction short Team Invasion is now available to read for free in the first issue of new pro 'zine Liminal Stories, along with five other tales.  I've not had the change to read them yet but they all look intriguing, and the accompanying illustrations are fantastic.  Incidentally, one of the nicest back-handed compliments I've received was that my mum was worried to tell me what she thought of Team Invasion because it had disturbed her so much.  I spent a few minutes feeling pleased with myself before I realised that traumatising your mother perhaps isn't an achievement to be proud of.  Still, this one was meant to be all kinds of unsettling. so at the least I got the desired result from one reader.

On the subject of stories coming out, there's also Dancing in the Winter Rooms, which, having already appeared as its own adorable e-book, has since made it into the latest Digital Fiction Publishing anthology, Ctrl Alt Delight.  I know I go on a lot about these (after all, I've been in four of them now, with more on the way!) but they really are excellent, varied collections, at a wholly reasonable price, and I always look forward to digging into them.  For those with catholic sci-fi tastes, they're definitely worth a look.

Of course, I say that having sold another story to Digital - this time, Rindelstein's Monsters, to the fantasy wing - but hey!  And in other sales news, my story Witch House is going to be in the second issue of fairly new, definitely exciting magazine Shattered Prism - which, I only realised after I'd submitted, lives under the umbrella of my C21st Gods publisher Rosarium.  Anyway, Witch House is a slice of (literally) magical realism and a particularly English modern folk tale, though with some larger concerns ticking away in the background.

Perhaps the strangest sale I've made of late, though, was when I got an e-mail out of the blue from the editor of forthcoming anthology Far Orbit: Last Outpost, a book I'd submitted to and been rejected from some months before, asking if my story Risk Assessment was still available.  I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it turns out that the only thing nicer than an acceptance is an acceptance, months later, of a story that's already been rejected.  As the title suggests, we're talking military sci-fi here, though Risk Assessment is a little closer to the parody edge of that genre, which is perhaps why it didn't make the cut the first time around.  At any rate, I remember the precise moment when the idea for this one came to me: it was a health and safety lecture back in my MOD days, a talk so boring that what else was I supposed to do but splice it together in my head with scenes from Starship Troopers?

Last up, the Mysterion anthology - a book I'm really looking forward to, purely because its focus on genre stories drawing upon the weirder aspects of Christian theology is something I've not seen done elsewhere - now has an official table of contents.  After reading on their blog that the editors were receiving an overabundance of stories with one word biblical place name titles, I'm rather proud that Golgotha was the only one to survive the cut!  And, in fairness, I can't imagine this story under any other title.  Anyway, here's the line-up, along with the rather gorgeous cover:


“The Monastic” by Daniel Southwell
“When I Was Dead” by Stephen Case
“Forlorn” by Bret Carter
“Too Poor to Sin” by H. L. Fullerton
“Golgotha” by David Tallerman
“A Lack of Charity” by James Beamon
“Of Thine Impenetrable Spirit” by Robert B. Finegold, MD
“A Good Hoard” by Pauline J. Alama
“Yuri Gagarin Sees God” by J. S. Bangs
“Confinement” by Kenneth Schneyer
“The Angel Hunters” by Christian Leithart
“Cutio” by F. R. Michaels
“St. Roomba’s Gospel” by Rachael K. Jones
“Yuki and the Seven Oni” by  S. Q. Eries
“A Recipe for Rain and Rainbows” by Beth Cato
“This Far Gethsemane” by G. Scott Huggins
“Ascension” by Laurel Amberdine
“Cracked Reflections” by Joanna Michal Hoyt
“The Physics of Faith” by Mike Barretta
“Horologium” by Sarah Ellen Rogers

An Alternative to Puppydom

So it's 2016 and the Sad and / or Rabid Puppies have done it again.  And for anyone who doesn't know what that means, a) you're fortunate and b) here's a link to an article in The Guardian that explains things, more or less.  Short version: right wing idiots try and reform the Hugo awards in the same way nasty children try and reform other kids' sandcastles.

How do you persuade adult bullies to stop being bullies?  Probably you can't; probably it's much too late for that.  Either way, most likely we'll end up with a bunch of no votes like last year, and the whole miserable shambles will continue until either the Hugo awards are a thing of the past or the bullies finally realise just how little they're achieving and start misapplying their energies elsewhere.  What I find most frustrating is that, hidden amidst all the rhetoric and bigotry, there was the core of a good point at the beginning of all this: while it had as little to do with Social Justice Warriors as it did with Bigfoot or rogue Atlanteans, the Hugos had dug themselves into something of a niche.  A little thoughtful discussion and considered reform might not have been such a bad thing.  So the fact that we've had two years of precisely the opposite of that represents the worst of both possible worlds.

Ah well.  At least this might be the year when gay dinosaur porn finally gets the kudos it deserves.

Anyway, here's my suggestion, for whatever it's worth: let's forget about the whole stupid mess.  Let's pay the Puppies precisely the amount of attention they deserve - that would be none whatsoever - and let's all devote the time and mental energy we save thereby to something positive.  Like, say, the 2016 Clarke Award shortlist, which is a pretty damn great overview of the industry, and includes my friend Adrian Tchaikovsky and his novel Children of Time, which by all accounts is stunning.  (The only reason I'm yet to read it is that I've been too busy reading all five billion pages of The Shadows of the Apt!)

Or ... here's a thought.  If we really wanted to show the Puppies up for the churlish sack of nutters they are, maybe we could promote some genuinely worthy cause?  Like, oh say, Rosarium Publishing's Indiegogo campaign.  Right now it's doing pretty well, with more than half of its funding raised.  But there's also a good chance that it might not make its target, so the time for anyone who's been sitting on the wall to start paying attention is right now.  Especially since big name author chap Rick (Percy Jackson) Riordan has pledged to match all commitments made between now and the end of the campaign up to a total of $10'000.

Here's the thing: the genre publishing industry talks an awful lot about diversity and representation, but too much of the time that's nothing but talk.  And sometimes it feels that people would rather be outraged by those getting it wrong than praise those striving to get it right.  Rosarium is home to creators from all over the world, and the only thing that unites them (I guess I should say, us) is that they're (we're) talented storytellers with cool ideas to share.  For me, this is precisely what a small press (and hey, the big five too, but maybe that's a wish too far right now) should be doing: putting out cool, exciting books by creators regardless of their race, colour, gender or creed.  And surely it's precisely what we as an industry should be supporting, instead of getting our collective underwear in a twist over how a bunch of bigots have derailed some award.

So, if you're interested in independent books and comics, or in promoting diversity within the publishing industry, or in reading stuff that's good, please go take a look here and see if anything grabs your fancy.  And if nothing does, or you're just short of money, perhaps think about spreading the word.  There are only three days left, and this is kind of a big deal for a whole lot of people.

Help Rosarium, Help Cthulhu

It's been a while since I've talked about my horror / sci-fi comic book miniseries C21st Gods, so let's redress that a little, shall we?  After all, there's never been a better time to do so - but more on that in a moment.


The first bit of big news is that, after some hiccups last year, the project is now fully up and running again in the hands of a new artist: the hugely talented Anthony Summey.

Anthony is brilliant.  I  mean, he's a brilliant artist, you can see that for yourself just from the logo there, but he's also been brilliant to work with, and an absolute professional.  I've seen inked pages for about half of the first issue now, and they're marvelous, not to mention a great representation of what's got to be one of the better scripts I've written.  I don't know, perhaps this is the year for projects coming back from the brink of death, but I'm confident that when this thing hits the shelves later in the year it's going to look great.

Which brings us round to why I'm mentioning this now, and why C21st Gods is happening at all - which is to say, Bill Campbell and his publishing house Rosarium.

There's a lot to like about what Rosarium's been doing these last couple of years, but one thing that stands out above all others.  Inclusivity in publishing is one of those subjects that lots of people talk about and very few people act on in anything but the most surface ways.  One of the rare exceptions - perhaps the most major exception right now - is Rosarium.  Rosarium has inclusivity in the very marrow of its bones, and that's led to a range of creators and of books that you're unlikely to find anywhere else in today's market; these are varied and exciting works by varied and exciting people, and it's an honour, frankly, to be a part of that line-up.

And Rosarium has been growing fast.  I mean, even in the short time I've been involved, that much has been obvious.  With projects like Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, The SEA Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia, and APB: Artists against Police Brutality, they've grown into a force to be taken seriously - hence some major attention and a couple of awards being thrown their way.  Now Rosarium is perched on the verge of great things, and that means needing money, and that means a fund-raising campaign - in this case, Indiegogo.

Now, I try not to badger anyone to throw their money at things here on the blog, even things I've written, because, hey. we're all broke, right?  But I hope people will have a look at this and maybe think about hurling a little cash Rosarium's way.  If only because most of the awards are books, and Rosarium do great books.  Get something brilliant to read and help a publisher that's actively making the industry a better place flourish more than it's already doing?  I feel okay with asking people to do that.  With that in mind, you can find the details of Rosarium's Indiegogo campaign here.

C21st Gods Are Near

The stars are nearly aligned.

It feels like I've been working on C21st Gods forever.

Or rather, I should say "we."  For this project began with my artist friend Duncan Kay, there was never any possibility of anyone else drawing it, and for that reason, Duncan has been hanging on with this thing for every bit as long as I have.

Which is a heck of a long time.  I mean, what, four years now?  And in that time Gods has been through plenty of iterations, growing longer and more complex with each passing take.  Looking at the final script, it's hard to believe I somehow originally crammed it into a mere eight pages!  In the end, though, a graphic novel felt like the only option that made sense.  There were plenty of reasons for that decision, just as there are good reasons the book wound up running to three issues, and they don't all have to do with my story - though there's no denying it gains from having that room to breath.  But no, the reason C21st Gods needs to be in its current form, the one it will finally see daylight in, comes down to one thing, and that's Duncan's artwork.

Because for me, first and foremost, that's what this book is about.  It's a story and a script I'm rather proud of, a weird little tale perched on the brink of horror and science fiction and poking at the soft flesh where those two genres meet.  But that story and script have been designed from the ground up to be a showcase for Duncan's illustration work.  It's gorgeous, is the thing; I love looking at it, so will other people, and one of my missions in life is to do whatever I can to make sure they get the chance.

I realise I've gone all this way without explaining just how it's come to be that C21st Gods is close to seeing the light of day.  And that's a story in itself, but here's the shortened version: I got talking to a guy by the name of Bill Campbell about some entirely unrelated matter, and during the course of that conversation I remembered having seen on Facebook that Bill had something to do with comic books.  So we started discussing comics stuff, and it transpired that the reason Bill was an authority on the subject was that he was publishing them through his outfit Rosarium.  Within minutes I'd discovered that Rosarium was putting out some genuinely exciting work and that Bill was exactly the kind of editor I'd like to work with, and eventually I got around to pitching him C21st Gods - which as luck would have it was right then at a stage where it could be pitched.  Needless to say, Bill liked it.  And suddenly, after a mere four years, everything was in place for Gods to become a reality.  If only things could always be so easy!

That said, we've a ways to go yet.  But finger's crossed, we'll have the first issue out by the third quarter of this year, with two and three following in close succession, and then - the main event! - the trade paperback, with probably some DVD-extra type stuff thrown in and definitely a hidden secret extra ending, because it's right there in the script. 

So watch this space.  Or, I guess, maybe just watch the stars.  Either way, C21st Gods are finally on their way.