Recently Tor.com premiered The Last Mortician, a comic written by my friend Tim Hall (author of Half Empty; see my review here) and illustrated by Dean Haspiel. You can learn more about its creation in this video, but I wanted to ask Tim some specific things about the story, which will involve spoilers. So we’ll wait while you go read … Read More
Announcing Haunted: 11 Tales of ghostly horror
A few weeks ago I promised an announcement for fans of Blood Groove, my first novel about vampires in Memphis in the Seventies. Here it is. Sir Francis Colby, the Victorian spiritualist and the only man to ever defeat vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski, returns in a new adventure, “What’s the Frequency, Francis?” as part of the anthology Haunted: 11 Tales … Read More
The Strange Case of the Inadvertent Exorcism
It’s no secret that The Sword-Edged Blonde, the first Eddie LaCrosse novel (and my first novel, period), was inspired in part by the Fleetwood Mac song “Rhiannon.” I was twelve when the song was released, and since I grew up in the era of rock-oriented FM radio, I heard it a lot. And it never failed to captivate me. Remember, … Read More
Genre respect and the NYT
It’s an ongoing issue that genre fiction–mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror–is somehow less important than so-called “literary” fiction. That involves forgetting that in many cases the disposable genre fiction of yesterday (Jules Verne, HG Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, Louis L’Amour, Jack London, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler) has become the acknowledged classics of today. Still, it’s frustrating to … Read More
Age ain’t nothin’ but a…problem
In a recent Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Alter talked about the dangers of having your literary characters, especially detectives, age in real time. She cites several examples of authors allowing their characters to develop the infirmities and declines that come with advancing years, as well as those who freeze their heroes in time so that while the world changes, they … Read More
A free market of idiots
I’m enough of an ex-journalist that I’ve read with interest about Britain’s scandal-plagued scandal sheet News of the World. Short version: to feed its tabloid readership, the paper hacked into the e-mails, phones and private records of politicians and celebrities, to great financial success. So far so good, but then they broke into the voice mail of a murdered teenage … Read More
Interview: Genevieve Valentine, author of Mechanique
Recently I reviewed the debut novel by Genevieve Valentine, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti. I thought it a brilliant and intriguing book, and as a writer, I wondered about the thought process behind some of the concepts. Genevieve was kind enough to answer some questions for me. The bones (in the story, circus aerialists have their human bones … Read More
Look back in chagrin
Recently I’ve been revising an old manuscript that I originally wrote over a decade ago, and haven’t touched in at least seven years. It’s an interesting window into the past of my own creative process, and some lessons I’ve since learned are vividly displayed in all their teeth-gnashing glory. Here are some examples. 1) A little description goes a long … Read More
Interview with Teresa Frohock, author of Miserere
Teresa Frohock is both a friend and the author of Miserere: an Autumn Tale, a book I enjoyed so much that I gave her the following blurb: “Miserere is about redemption, and the triumph of our best impulses over our worst. It’s also about swords, monsters, chases, ghosts, magic, court intrigues and battles to the death. It’s also (and this … Read More
The Wicked Day: the weight of legend
It’s no secret that my new Eddie LaCrosse novel Dark Jenny (which hits stores tomorrow, March 29) draws its inspiration from Arthurian sources. So on the eve of its release I’d like to write about the straight Arthurian novel that’s so good, I wish I’d written it: Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day. Stewart’s first three Arthurian novels (The Crystal Cave, … Read More