Archive for the ‘Open Mic’ Category
OPEN MIC: “The Author’s Nightmare” by Mark Teppo
“The Author’s Nightmare”
by Mark Teppo
The dust is everywhere, in everything, and each morning the sun exhales across the sky, blowing another sand storm across the desert. This wind–this moisture-sucking, dust-laden, zihmoom of a wind–carries the dust of dead books to the ruined city with its back to the sea.
The city used to be miles inland, but the desert forced it back. The dunes swallowed the fields and the flocks of goats. The sand choked the oases and leaned against the buildings, pushing them slowly toward the sea. Finally, when their bricks ground against the salt-stained shore of the pale ocean, the buildings grabbed on to the rock. Some of them fell, their bones tumbling into the surf, but the majority of the city held on, albeit in a different configuration than the one found on maps of antiquity. The streets became narrow and twisted, filled with tight corners and abrupt dead-ends. The market square lost one side, becoming a triangular plot that was the only open space left in the city where the children could fly their wooden kites.
The wind knows where the library is, lost out in the desert. It blows through the fallen stacks, tearing the bindings of broken books, and devouring the dry and cracked pages. The wind spits the dust of fables across the sloped dunes, rolling the deconstructed text in great clouds across the dry land. The old men–the sons of the sons of the librarians–used to sit in the rooms of the slanted buildings closest to the desert and listen to the tapping sound of the wind hurling grit against the brick. Hearing the ghost rattle of phrase and paragraph in the rhythm of the dust, they would cover pages and pages of parchment with their attempts to reconstruct the lost books of the library.
I have stayed too long in the city. Every day, I go back to the dark bar and the leaf smoker, and every day he repeats the same lie. <i>Tomorrow</i>, he promises. Tomorrow, he will give me what I need. Every day, I try to find a new way to hide in the city. No boats come to the harbor, and I dare not dream again. I am trapped here, in this city of dust, until he tires of taunting me. Until he releases me.
I hate the dust. Every time I breathe it in, my mouth is filled with the cloying decay of fractured dreams. It is hard to keep the despair at bay. It is hard to not lie down and let the sand blow into my mouth. Let it fill my guts and my lungs until they burst.
This malaise drifts over the whole city, and in the dusty corners of the alleys, I have seen the bodies of those who have given up. Wizened husks, their skin as dry as cast-off snake scales, their mouths overflowing with fine white sand. The nocturnal insects–black beetles that appear to thrive, like rats, in the desert heat–are burrowers, and they eat the bodies from the inside out. When they are done, nothing is left by the scattered fragments of ribs and elbows and hips. The skulls grin feebly, as if they know their release is a victory in name only.
I keep a collection in my hotel room, and I scratch tiny lines of ugly poetry on the smooth parts of the whitened skulls. My epic poem, written at the end of the world. I hope it will remain unfinished, but I fear I will run out of skulls before the leaf smoker will show me the way.
I fear I will run out of paper before I run out of story.
New releases from Christopher Golden
Poison Ink by Christopher Golden – Now available!
Everything had been poisoned, and the poison was spreading…
Sammi, TQ, Caryn, Letty, and Katsuko are floaters. None of them fits in with any particular group at Covington High School — except each other. One night, to cement their bond, the girls decide to get matching, unique tattoos. But when Sammi backs out at
the last minute, everything changes.
Faster than you can say “airbrush,” Sammi is an outcast, and soon, her friends are behaving like total strangers. When they attack Sammi for trying to break up a brawl, Sammi spies something horrible on her friends’ backs: the original tattoo has grown
tendrils, snaking and curling over the girls’ entire bodies. What has that creepy tattoo artist done to her friends? And what – if anything – can Sammi do to get them back?
This deliciously creepy psychological thriller is the perfect summer read.
“Action-packed horror with a sidebar of romance, sure to entice those with a taste for blood and the supernatural. Delightfully stomach-churning, [with] a satisfying, violent and sad ending.” – Kirkus Reviews
Read an excerpt at the book’s website:
http://www.christophergolden.com/poisonink/
Learn more about the author:
http://www.christophergolden.com/
MIND THE GAP: A Novel of the Hidden Cities by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
Every big city has a soul, and every soul has a dark, secret side.
Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon have teamed up to create The Hidden Cities, books set in places we all know very well – places which hold secrets almost beyond belief.
Mind the Gap: A Novel of the Hidden Cities
You never know when you’ll find yourself falling through one of the cracks in the world…
Two of today’s brightest stars of dark fantasy combine their award-winning, critically acclaimed talents in this spellbinding new tale of magic, terror, and adventure that begins when a young woman slips through the space between our everyday world and the one
hiding just beneath it.
Always assume there’s someone after you. That was the paranoid wisdom her mother had hardwired into Jasmine Towne ever since she was a little girl. Now, suddenly on her own, Jazz is going to need every skill she has ever been taught to survive enemies both seen and unseen. For her mother had given Jazz one last invaluable piece of advice, written in her own blood.
Jazz Hide Forever
All her life Jazz has known them only as the “Uncles,” and her mother seemed to fear them as much as depend on them. Now these enigmatic, black-clad strangers are after Jazz for reasons she can’t fathom, and her only escape is to slip into the forgotten tunnels of London’s vast underground. Here she will meet a tribe of survivors calling themselves the United Kingdom and begin an adventure that links her to the ghosts of a city long past, a father she never knew, and a destiny she fears only slightly less than the relentless
killers who’d commit any crime under heaven or earth to prevent her from fulfilling it.
Visit the website to make YOUR mark on the map, enter a contest, and learn more about the series and the authors: http://www.thehiddencities.com/
On the success of Open Mic Friday and the establishment of a regular thing
Open Mic Friday was a huge success here. I received several dozen submissions, a little bit of everything: book blurbs, flash fiction, rants, excerpts, stories.
So I’m thinking I’ll make it a regular thing. How about we start making the weekends “Open Mic?”
If you’ve got something you want me to run on the weekend, just send it to me as a WORD attachment with the subject line “Open Mic.” I’ll ultimately make the call on what gets posted, and sending me something isn’t necessarily a guarantee that I’ll post it here. Anything racist, sexist, hateful or just plain offensive won’t see the light of day. Also, whatever you send to me has to be on-topic for my site. This is a litblog, so let’s try to keep things focused on books, authors, writing and fiction. I’m especially partial to original fiction or nonfiction of any length, so feel free to send that along. I’m also open to editorials and reviews of various sorts, plus things that make me laugh or think.
Just send your Open Mic entries to mattormeg@gmail.com, and more than likely I’ll post them starting this weekend.
Open Mic: “Blemish” by Joe McKinney, from “Peacekeepers: Three Novellas”
My good friend, author and homicide detective Joe McKinney has very graciously agreed to allow me to print the lead-off story from his new short fiction collection “Peacekeepers: Three Novellas,” coming in April 2009 from Magus Press.
The story is called “Blemish.” Thanks, Joe!
BEGIN READING AFTER JUMP
Open Mic update: Friday, 6:00 p.m. CST
Since throwing open my doors this morning for any and all of my writer pals who want to talk about their books, current projects and just about anything else they want, I’ve had a ton of cool stuff come through. If you’re just now joining us, here’s some of what you might have missed!
Paul Jessup gave us an excerpt from his new novel “Open Your Eyes”
Steve Vernon waxed poetically on the virtues of Kentucky Fried Octopus
We read an excerpt from Paul Di Filippo’s “Cosmocopia.”
Brendan Connell shared an excerpt from his new novel “Metrophilias”
Jonathan Wood thrilled us with his flash fiction piece “Scary Monsters”
Matthew Hughes invited us to come on by and read one of his novels – his treat!
Van Allen Plexico reminded us that we can be heroes, just for one day
Amy Guth asked for you to guide her on her journey
Ellen Datlow weighed in on “The Goosle”
We all learned how we can help Paul Haines with his cancer treatment
The KGB came by to offer some raffle tickets
Ellen Datlow pondered violence as a viable response to the Botox brides
We watched a cool video for “Get Your War On” from Soft Skull Press
Mark Teppo shared his chilling micro-fiction “The Two Harvesters”
Joe R. Lansdale kicked the dust off of his boots and told us all about “The Leather Maiden.”
Prime Books’ Sean Wallace addressed Michael Cisco’s concerns
We tuned in for an episode of “The Reality Break Podcast”
Weston Ochse dropped in to tell us about “Scarecrow Gods”
Richard Parks told us that everything we know about evil magicians is wrong
Nicola Griffith talked about self-defense and her novel “Always”
Kelley Eskridge got all Ranty Rant Rant about the publishing world
Stacey Levine invited us to Mrs. Porter’s Women’s Art Salon
We learned all about the wovel – and zombies!
I’ll continue to update this as more Open Mic entries come in. Stay tuned!
Open Mic: “A Monkey Will Never Be Rid of Its Black Hands” by Rachel Swirsky
Papa and Uncle Fomba told me if I didn’t join the army, they’d kill me. They didn’t. They cut off my hands.
This was after U.S. forces marched on Syria, but before we invaded Lebanon. On every city block, posters of Uncle Sam entreated every Tom, Duc, and Haroun to get blown up in the name of freedom. Papa and Fomba gave me two weeks to enlist. I ran for Canada instead. They caught me.
Open Mic: Nicola Griffith talks about her novel “Always”
I wanted a serious challenge: to reimagine Aud Torvingen, the Norwegian über-woman who always wins. The woman I’ve been writing about for ten years in The Blue Place, then Stay, and now Always. I also wanted to have a blast, to write something smartly plotted, richly textured, and stuffed with joy–something that also cracked Aud open a little (because seamless protagonists are, y’know, boring). But everytime I settled in to write, I’d get another email from a reader of the first two books wanting to know where they could learn what Aud knows, how they could stride as confidently through the world as she does. And, oho, I thought.
Open Mic: Richard Parks on “The Long Look”
Thanks to Matt for the chance to sound off. Since it sometimes seems like everyone in creation has a novel coming out, why should I be any different? This is my first, and since something had to be the first, it’s an oddball, perhaps even morally reprehensible fantasy called THE LONG LOOK. The process has been both exhilarating and scary
as hell. Here’s the skinny:
“Everything you know about evil magicians is wrong.
Tymon the Black is the latest in a long succession of magicians to suffer under a curse called “The Long Look.” He gets glimpses of future horrors, horrors that will almost certainly come to pass unless he acts. When one such glimpse prods him to arrange for the murder of a headstrong young prince, he sets a cascading chain of events in motion that could lead to a future even more terrible than the one he tried to prevent.
Read the rest of this entry »
Open Mic: Author spotlight, Weston Ochse
This author spotlight makes me want to read “Scarecrow Gods” all the more….
Weston Ochse is the author of Scarecrow Gods which won the Bram Stoker award for Superior Achievement in First Novel in 2005. He lives in Southern Arizona with his wife, Yvonne Navarro, and Great Danes, Pester
Ghost Palm Eater and Goblin Monster Dog. For entertainment he races tarantula wasps, wrestles rattlesnakes, and watches Border Patrol Death Race 2000.
In a recent interview about what Weston’s influences were as a child, here’s what he said. ”So imagine me reading a Joy Harjo poem in the living room, then racing downstairs to see what Tarzan was doing next,
then reading Steinbeck, only to grab the latest issue of The Defenders or The Avengers comic books. I read Kipling like it was a bible and Howl-ed with Ginsberg as if I was old enough to be doing what everyone else was in the ‘70s. Heinlein groked me running until I discovered Tolkien and Brooks and then Stephen King with The Stand. As a first book to read of his, that one was a damned doozy that has stayed with me, as it has many of us, forever.”
Publisher’s Weekly recently reviewed Scarecrow Gods and had this to say: “God speaks through odd prophets in this schizophrenic tale…[whose]…underlying themes of faith, martyrdom, madness and loss are richly, sometimes achingly portrayed.”
For more information about Weston Ochse go to www.westonochse.com or to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1929653956/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp to buy Scarecrow Gods at a discount.
Open Mic: A message from Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale writes:
I have a novel, LEATHER MAIDEN coming out August 5th, and I’m trying to spread the word, and hope folks who want it will order it on August fifth, or go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and order it before then. I would like to make a good show on the day it comes out. Joe Lansdale
Will do!
