CINNABAR’S GNOSIS: A HOMAGE TO GUSTAV MEYRINK

A story of mine is in this anthology from Ex Occidente Press. The book looks like it should be good. It is already almost sold out I believe, so get a copy quickly if you want one. The table of contents is:

Portrait in an Unfaded Photograph, John Howard
The Weimar Spider, Colin Insole
Pulvis Lunaris, or, The Coagulation of Wood, D.P. Watt
The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold, R.B. Russell
The Black Metaphysical, Reggie Oliver
Meyrink’s Gambit, George Berguño
On Consideration of the Muses, Eric Stener Carlson
Pocátek Románu: A Flutter of Lorn Love, Albert Power
Feet of Clay, Head of Fire, Richard Gavin
The Antediluvian Uncle, Rhys Hughes
The Chymical Wedding of Des Esseintes, Brendan Connell
Her Magnetic Field, Adam Golaski
The Autumn Keeper, Mark Valentine
Modern Cities Exist Only to be Destroyed, Michael Cisco
The House of Sleep, Stephen J. Clark
The Multiples of Sorrow, Steve Rasnic Tem
The Age of Decayed Futurity, Mark Samuels
White Souls that March in the Astral Light, Jonathan Wood
The Cabinet of Prague, Mark Beech
The Cylinder of Shunyakasha, Adam S. Cantwell
The Light Invisible, The Light Inaccessible, Peter Bell
Tzimtzum, Quentin S. Crisp
The World Entire, Ron Weighell

Last Drink Pre Order

Last Drink Bird Head, a neat anthology the proceeds of which go to ProLiteracy, is available for pre-order from Wyrm Publishing, at a 5 buck discount. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer are the editors, so you can be sure it is all quality stuff. Go here for details. 

To celebrate the occassion, I give an extract from my contribution:

Thick, soft, doughy muscles, body anointed with mustard paste; he was short with a sharp nose and hair on his back.

He wore neck-weights, did rigorous squats and plyometric press-ups and exercised with a thick length of bamboo to which a large stone was affixed. He ate pulses and fish seasoned with turmeric and drank chickpea water. 

Dead Souls update

A while back I posted that a story of mine was going to be in Dead Souls from Morrigan Books. My story was first accepted back in 2007. The editor wanted me to make some changes to the story (I thought for the worse). I made them. Then the editor I was working with was off the project and another came in. I think I might have made some more changes. Frankly I don’t remember. Anyhow: Lots of e-mails, “Let’s get excited! “Woo Woo”.

Frankly, I was not that excited:  I have lots of stuff published, and this for me was just another story.

Then a few weeks ago there was the final TOC. This is two years after my story was accepted.

The publisher said the book would be out in a week or two or some such thing.

I wasn’t holding my breath.

Then, a week later, I get news that my story and a few others the copy editor thought needed complete re-writes and the publisher agreed. Maybe I could rewrite it and maybe it could be in another book.

Or maybe not.

You just dont hold someone’s stuff for that long and then decide it needs major editing or a rewrite. You tell them that before you accept it.

The reason I am writing this is not out of anger. Frankly I don’t care that much. But I have seen a few folks searching my name in connection with this book, and I already publicly mentioned my story would be in the book, and it is best to let it be known about the way certain publishers operate.

As an ironic afternote, about a week ago I got a spam on my Facebook account urging me to buy the book.

An Extract…

This is an extract from a novel I am in the process of finishing up:

Bottles ranged on shelves against a mirrored wall barman working vigorously making coffee pouring drinks washing dishes / skinny pimp leans on the counter / man smoking a pipe reads a newspaper and Clark sat, the humiliation or anger or regret of what had happened with Susan still their, lingering, like a bad odour that followed him wherever he went and maybe the only way he could really wash it away was to throw himself into some new role, throw himself away and be recreated as something if not the opposite of what he had been at least with the quality of spirit that enables one to face difficulty and danger with firmness—not the difficulty and danger of being cheated on, because that had been almost a relief, but to face his own lack of renown with something resembling courage.

 

 

Venature

My story Mesh of Veins has been translated into Italian by Massimo Giraldo. You can find it here, at Intercom Science Fiction Station.

The cover of my upcoming book…

Here is the cover of my upcoming book, The Architect, from Crossing Chaos, Enigmatic Ink…Not sure if it is final, but I think this is the basic image…

Dark Horizons

A story of mine called The Putrimaniac was recently published in Dark Horizons.

An upcoming story in….

I have a story forthcoming in Des Lewis’s upcoming Cern Zoo project…

I can’t say which of the stories is mine though,

Notes from an as-yet-unpublished novel

The oxen he had bathed in hot water so they would grow fat. The hides of a select few were slit and air blown through a reed between their flesh and the skin and into their entrails for the same purpose. But these latter grew sick and died and were put down as the price of an experiment without success.

By making small glasses in the shape of cherubs, and then placing these same around young pears, he produced beautiful fruit. The glasses were broken away at harvest time and he had three baskets of pears in the shape of cherubs to present to the Duke.

The Lifted Brow

One of my stories was published here. I don’t remember what the original title was, but in The Lifted Brow, it is listed as “A Married Man”.