When There's No More Room in Hell, the Dead Will Serve You Breakfast

I haven't exactly been quiet about how much I admire David James Keaton's work.  His story in the Comet Press Death Panel anthology was my personal highlight by a mile - yes, even more so that my own! - and I've liked everything he's done since.  But nothing more so than his magnum opus (so far), the epic and epically screwed up zombie novella Zee Bee & Bee, A.K.A Propeller Hats For the Dead, first published in Comet Press's follow up to The Death Panel, Deadcore.

So you can imagine how I'd be pretty chuffed when Keaton asked me to write the foreword for the new extended e-book edition he's been putting together.  Nobody's ever asked me to write a foreword before!  I may have raved a little.  I may have applied a degree of praise normally reserved for potential messiahs and people who save babies from fires.  I may, in fact, have used so many superlatives that it threatened to break the English language at some fundamental level.

That's okay, though, because Zee Bee & Bee really is great, Keaton's work is well worth shouting about, and the package he's put together here is an absurd bargain, not to mention exactly the kind of thing that the e-book as an emerging medium is well suited to.  Where print publishing has all but abandoned the novella, e-publishing fits it perfectly - not to mention leaving room for extras like Keaton's own characteristically eccentric introduction, a drinking game all but guaranteed to hospitalise all involved, and my own humble, humbled foreword.

Zee Bee & Bee the director's cut novella edition is available from Amazon US and Amazon UK for about the price of one of those big Mars bars that are really just too small Mars bars in an oversized wrapper.  Which is going to do more damage to your heart and intestinal tract?  I think we all know the answer to that one.

On the other hand, you can't buy Mars bars instantaneously on Amazon.

Now, because I have nothing else at all useful to say and this post is a teeny bit short and I may never get to write another foreword ever, here's an extract:

In the midst of death we are in life, and the best zombie fiction has nothing whatever to do with the deceased.  Who are these characters who shamble through the darkness spouting movie quotes and tearing strips - both literal and metaphorical - off of each other?  Who are these losers, these crazies, these no-hopers who can no longer tell life from death, game from reality, sex from violence?

As the spiritual godfather of this novella would no doubt point out ... "They're us."

Last Testament and Devilry in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction

The latest issue of the ridiculously sublime and / or sublimely ridiculous Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction is now out to buy in print, or to read in an almost improbable number of digital formats.

Now only does it contain my story Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn, which I blithered extensively about here when Mr Theaker first accepted it, it features a very special tale by my mate Rafe McGregor.  Why so special?  Because I suggested the premise to him, that’s why.

Not to imply that I gave Rafe all his ideas or anything.  In fact, it was all the result of a deal / challenge we made each other, what seems a very long time ago.  The plan - and I can’t remember who came up with it, or exactly why - was that we’d both write a story based on a rough idea from the other.  My suggestion was for a mix of sci-fi and Lovecraftian horror set around a bomb disposal robot in a near-future middle-eastern war.  Somehow, Rafe’s brain morphed the near future into the late nineteenth century, the middle-east to India and a bomb disposal robot into elephants.

One of these days I might have a go at writing my version.  It probably won't be as good as Rafe's excellent The Last Testament.

As a point of vague interest, Rafe's suggestion to me was to write a barghest story.  The result was The Hair of the Hound, a semi-sequel to Rindelstein's Monsters, as published in the Comet Press anthology The Death Panel and featuring the same protagonist.  I really like it and I wish someone would publish it.  Comic fantasy seems to be one of the toughest possible sells in today's short fiction market and I'm never entirely sure why.

Which brings us neatly back to Theaker's, and Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn, which is definitely fantasy and hopefully at least a little bit comic.  And - did I already mention this? - it's free!

Some Theories Regarding Monsters, and Other News

A couple of bits of good news to enliven what so far has been a slow and somewhat agonising month on the writing front:

First up, I'm pleased to announce that Encounters magazine, from recent upstart press Black Matrix Publishing, will be including my story Some Theories Regarding the Current Crisis.  Some Theories is a short science-fiction tale, which I wrote a couple of years back for an anthology that (so far as I know) never saw the light of the day.  Since I'm still catching up with myself on the editing and sending stuff out front, that makes it one of the most recent of my stories to appear.  That period of the end of 2007, beginning of 2008 was when it first started to really feel like I was finding my feet, so it's great to see this stuff beginning to get out into the world.

In other, really belated news, I mentioned a while back that my poem Doppelganger - as published in Chiaroscuro webzine - received an honourable mention for anthologist-extraordinaire Ellen Datlow's annual horror best-of anthology in 2008.  What totally passed me by was that my story Rindelstein's Monsters (from the Comet Press Death Panel antho) got a nod too, for the 2009 edition.  Pretty neat that, and I fully intend to actually get into one of this things, by 2027 at the absolute latest.

Finally, if anyone's been paying attention they might have noticed that my novel wordometer doohickey has been mutating.  The good news is, I've finally broken my 100'000 word target; the bad news - you guessed it - is that there's still a ways to go.  Funland is raging out of control, and the focus now is on finishing it before it tries to take over the world or eat my brains.  I'm hopeful for getting it knocked on the head by close of play on Wednesday.  Frankly, if it isn't done by the end of the week then I might just stop.  Endings are overrated, right?

Friendly out in Theakers # 31

A few snippets of news as the year grinds to a close. First up, the new issue of the ever-wondrous Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is available for free download or purchase from Lulu. Not only does it contain my story Friendly - a wildly batshit tale of interplanetary relations and disturbing alien sportsmanship - but one can also find a tale by Alison J. Littlewood, going by the name of Day of the Bromeliads. I was introduced to Alison through the oft-mentioned-here Mr Rafe McGregor, and have since had the pleasure of catching up on a lot of her previous work - which is uniformerly great and well worth tracking down, perhaps via her website. I can't say much else about the issue, since I'm waiting for my dead tree copies to arrive from Lulu, but the cover is tremendous and TQF is never ever less than entertaining.

Not really news as such, but I finished my copy of The Death Panel, as published by Comet Press and containing my Rindelstein's Monsters, and by heck it's a good collection. Of thirteen stories, five knocked my socks off, and of the rest only one failed to float my boat, (not my own, I hasten to add). In fact, hey, I'm just going to come out and say it: David James Keaton's Nine Cops Killed for a Goldfish Cracker is the best short story I've read in ages, Keaton's the next damn Charlie Huston, and - if you have the faintest liking for hard-boiled crime or horror - you'll be screwing yourself if you don't pick this one up.

Now, since I'd like to actually get in a little writing while I'm here, the other news'll have to wait a day or two...

The Death Panel Open For Business

That other bit of news referred to in the last post is that The Death Panel - containing my Rindelstein's Monsters - is now out to buy from the publisher, Comet Press, and all good internet book retailers. Or at least Amazon and Barnes and Noble, (I haven't researched this very thoroughly!).

Truth be told, it's been out since the back end of last month, but I don't like to plug things unless I can hold them in my hands and behold their glory with mine own eyes. Perhaps the wait was unnecessary in this case, because right from the off I had a feeling that The Death Panel was going to be awesome. And lo and behold, it really is. It's a beautifully put together little tome, and you'd be hard pressed to guess it's come from a small press with only two previous titles behind them.

I can't honestly claim to have read the whole thing cover to cover since it arrived on my doorstep yesterday, but I've done some serious flicking, and I can say with confidence that Rindelstein's Monsters - my possibly bestest ever story - is in damn fine company.

And that 'Murder, Mayhem and Madness' tagline? That isn't just for show.

October Wrap Up

Just a quick post to report a few belated odds and sods of October news:

Well, the month was a bit of a triumph, all told, with a couple of very strong sales and three acceptances for non-paying but fun venues. Of the latter, and not to denigrate the other two, I'm currently most excited about the picking up of my comic strip for Mangaquake, since I've just finished the new edit. It's now called Endangered Weapon B, after its grizzly-bear-in-robot-armour hero Banjo, and it comes in at ten pages, twice as long as Fleshworld (as printed in Futurequake #10) or my forthcoming strip in Something Wicked. It's been fun to decompress the story, and I think that this is the definite high point of (my admittedly limited!) comics work so far. In short, I'm chuffed with it, and can't wait to see what an artist makes of those ten pages of utter dementedness.

I'd hoped to have a couple of things out this month, but neither has materialised; on the plus side, the anthology from Comet Press that's to feature my Rindelstein's Monsters now has a fantastic cover, a neat webpage all of its own, a release date at the back end of November, and perhaps most importantly, a name - The Death Panel. I've seen a copy of the galley, and I can say with only a hint of bias that this one is going to be awesome.

Last up, I found yet another review of The Living Dead, which is both staggeringly thorough and singles out Stockholm Syndrome for credit - in the shape of a 4 out of 5 rating. At least, I hope it's out of five, and not say, seventy-three. Either way, cheers to reviewer Gregory Tidwell.