Categories
BrazenHead fiction Lethe Press novella short stories spec fic The Abode of Bliss Turkey

dispatch from the occult head of brass

Several months later than I expected, BrazenHead has signed up (well, the contract hasn’t been issued/signed, but I’m working on that) its first title:

Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians and ZOMBIES, Eat Your Heart Out opens on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee’s Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual ZOMBIES, leaving Ashbee’s hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can’t lock.

Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni’s experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw?

All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?

Find out in November 2011.

Dayna Ingram, originally hailing from Ohio, currently relocated to the Bay Area because super-expensive rent super appeals to her, has a BA in Creative Writing from Antioch College and is currently studying for an MFA at San Francisco State University. Her work has previously appeared in the queer speculative-lit journal Collective Fallout. Eat Your Heart Out is her first book.


It doesn’t so much appear there will be two BrazenHead releases this year as I’d halfway planned. But there’s always 2012: Writers! Check the guidelines and send me your work!


Other, brazenly self-promoting newses:

New book! Somewhat prematurely, several e-book editions of The Abode of Bliss have been available for a week or so, including a Kindle version at Amazon and versions for different platforms at Smashwords. Presumably the B&N nook and Apple iPad editions will show up in due course. The print (preferred) edition should be out tomorrow. Some Amazon seller is claiming to have a used copy already—must be one of those rare, not-for-sale Advance Readers’ Copies.

I would remind you that PDF downloads of four previously published stories for Adam are freely available, should you wish to sample the book before buying: “Kindness”; “The World of Men”; “The Strait”; “Ramazan in the Gardens of Paradise.”

Story sale! “Liam and the Ordinary Boy” will appear in the Autumn issue (#10) of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction around mid-September. The first of the Liam sequence, “Liam and the Wild Fairy,” appeared in issue #5 last summer. Who knows what will happen to the third…or the four more I have (not really) planned.

 

Story completion! The first I’ve been able to wrestle through to conclusion since “Captain of the World” in February. “Ban’s Dream of the Sea” is a secondary-world fantasy with no in-story ties to the world we know, something I don’t attempt that often—we’ll see if the editor I wrote it for thinks it works. I started four other tries at meeting the anthology’s theme, all of which died miserable deaths, but perhaps something from one of those corpses can be resurrected. Onward!

Categories
fiction football (soccer) short stories Turkey YA

praise from an unexpected quarter

Have just seen an advance review of Steve Berman’s inspirational YA anthology Speaking Out from Kirkus Reviews, notorious in book circles for brutal negativity. The one-paragraph review disappoints, not for its expected negativity (Kirkus doesn’t think much of the book) so much as errors of fact—the book has more than one transgender protagonist, Kirkus; the (slim but definite) majority of characters are female; and it’s the reviewer’s innate bias that reads most of the boys as white, not anything in the text.

Still, my pleasure in the following line is not diminished:

In Alex Jeffers’ standout “Captain of the World,” a gay, Turkish Muslim goalie fights back against both racial and sexual harassment on the soccer field.

Bold Strokes Books will release Speaking Out in September.

Categories
BrazenHead design fiction short stories The Abode of Bliss The New People

sundries

A few things going on.

Seem to be in the process of making BrazenHead’s first acquisition, a little book the choice of which may surprise some people who know me. It surprises me. More dirt when the contract is issued/signed.

Trying to complete a short story for an anthology whose editor has graciously extended the deadline for me. But I don’t know, possibly I’ve forgotten how to write short stories. Ergh.

Possible sale of a different, older story, but only have verbal commitment at this point so don’t like to post details.

Latest design project, a reissue by Bear Bones Books of Jeff Mann’s 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning (for Gay Erotica) A History of Barbed Wire, went from determining page margins to production in an unprecedented three days. One of those days involved a fourteen-hour stint with Adobe InDesign that I should, for my health, have broken up over two or three days. I’m too exhausted to prepare screenshots for the designs page. Print edition should be available via the usual on-line booksellers within the week, e-books when the e-bookmeister can get to it.

The New People / Elegant Threat, an M-Brane SF Double by Jeffers & Bell, is out there, waiting for you to buy it. If you already have, Thanks! I’d love to know what you think.

The Abode of Bliss: ten stories for Adam by Jeffers will go to press in two weeks or so. Official publication date 1 August 2011. You should pre-order it.

Jane and Charlotte will celebrate a (courtesy) birthday this coming Thursday, along with the French Republic. They will be ten. Also my birthday. I will be mumblety-four.

 

Misses Jane Austen (front) & Charlotte Brontë (rear)