Kyla Lee Ward and THE NEXT BIG THING

THE NEXT BIG THING is a chain of book and author recommendations. One author tags five others, who then each tag five more, and so on. The idea is to spread the word — for ourselves and others — on all the quality new writing that’s just out or is coming soon, worldwide. There is a viral quality to the enterprise and hopefully it will allow readers to expand their reading horizons into projects that might otherwise have been lost in this world of continual internet noise. I was tagged by Leigh Blackmore, and now it’s my turn.

What is the [working] title of your next book?

Necropolitan

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

To be cosmopolitan is to be a citizen of the world. To be metropolitan, a citizen of the city – Sydney, in this case. To be necropolitan, however, is to be at home amongst the dead.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

I’ve been assured that it’s urban fantasy.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

As my protagonist Vicky, Liv Tyler
has the right look although she’d have to wear contacts. For her partner Jamal, I’d audition Khaled Abol Naga first with recourse to Oscar Isaac.
The two necromancers are tricky, but given the need for personalities that would shine through the effects, I say David Gulpilil
and Tim Curry.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“The witch is innocent, the city is guilty and defense attorney Victoria Ashe has just found a loophole in the law of death.”

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I do not self-publish. As for the other, it’s a little soon for me to say anything but there are prospects.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About a year, but that was five, long drafts ago.

8)What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

China Mieville’s Kraken and Tim Power’s The Anubis Gates approach the tone, but Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow is the only book that comes close to the setting.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Like most of my work: a nightmare, in which I walked the streets of a very different Sydney to the one most people see. And once I started researching, guess what? It turned out there was one.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Do you know which hotel now stands on the site of the Sydney gallows? The location of the two cemeteries that once lay within the CBD? How about the name of the brewery that drew its water from the Sandhills creek and didn’t stop after the burials began? And beneath it all lie the remains of a people destroyed by plague, whispering their anger in a dead language. Listen very carefully, and you may have sufficient warning…

Bio
Kyla (Lee) Ward is an Australian writer of speculative fiction, poet and actor.Ward was first published in 1994 with her poem “Mary” which was featured in the magazine Bloodsongs. In 2002 her short story “The Boneyard” was nominated for the Ditmar Award for best short fiction but lost to Lucy Sussex and Jack Dann. In 2006 she won her first award with the novel Prismatic, co-authored with Evan Paliatseas and David Carroll under the shared pseudonym of Edwina Grey. Prismatic tied with Will Elliott’s The Pilo Family Circus to win the Aurealis Award for best horror novel.Ward has also contributed to role-playing games including Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game by Eden Studios, Inc. and White Wolf’s Demon: The Fallen. Ward’s weird verse collection The Land of Bad Dreams (edited by Charles (Danny) Lovecraft)was published by P’rea Press www.preapress.com, 2011 and is illustrated by the author. The launch of this book was accompanied by dramatic readings by various theatre groups. Video of the performances is available at Kyla Ward’s website.
http://www.tabula-rasa.info/KylaWard.html

Charles Lovecraft, P’rea Press and THE NEXT BIG THING

Leigh Blackmore tagged me recently about being part of a chain of book and author recommendations under the title of THE NEXT BIG THING. In line with this concept I will answer the questions below on my new book, AVATARS OF WIZARDRY, and in due course tag five other writers to continue the torch of this bright idea.

1) What is the title of your book?

AVATARS OF WIZARDRY: Poetry Inspired by George Sterling ’s “A Wine of Wizardry” and Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Hashish-Eater.” It was published on 26 November 2012 by P’rea Press http://www.preapress.com and is available from bookstores around the world.http://www.amazon.com/Avatars-Wizardry-Inspired-Sterlings-Hashish-Eater/dp/0980462584 Ask at your local."

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

From Sterling and Smith

, and Richard L. Tierney and Leigh Blackmore. I saw there was a tremendous link between the two lead poems of the title and two poems of the subsequent named poets, over a span of 108 years that merited following up. The two latter poems, “Visions of Golconda” by Tierney, and “Memoria: A Fragment from the Book of Wyvern” by Blackmore, were written in tribute to the second poem in the subtitle and which had originally been set alight by the first named poem. So it’s all very timely and historical, not to mention esoterical. It was as if the two lead poems were father and son, and that they had suddenly spawned two grandchildren poems. I can only suggest that Poesy herself was the mother. I merely then connected the dots of various contemporary poets around the world and asked if they would like to contribute. Bruce Boston, Alan Gullette, Michael Fantina, Wade German, Earl Livings, and Kyla Lee Ward came forth to bear poetic arms. The poems had to continue the lineage of English blank verse. They smartly did so, and the end result is historical linkage to the poetic giants of literature: Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Cowper, and Tennyson. Long live blank verse, the queen of poetry.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry, and also imaginative poetry, which is poetry of the supernatural, fantasy, speculative, and the macabre. It is a beautiful and elegant genre, a thing of beauty which transcends lifetimes and eras. Most of the greatest poets of the past can be named as having dabbled in fantastic poetry to a lesser or greater extent, and some of the greatest poems in literature and the mainstream can be found to be fantastic in nature. It can be recaptured again at any time, and waits like the elves of the English woods.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

As there are ten poems a few examples might be:

Christopher Lee to speak “A Wine of Wizardry.”
Peter Cushing to recite “Memoria.”
Sir Richard Burton to vent “The Hashish-Eater.”
Peter O’Toole to declaim “The Necromantic Wine.”
Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams) to speak “Lucubration,” a single solo voice for weird female, written by Kyla Lee Ward.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A poetically elevated, lyrical apprehension of the beautiful, terrible, magnificent, cosmic, and grand, conducted under auspices of revelatory hallucination, and encompassing a celebration and exaltation of the divine nature of Poetry.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

As editor and publisher I will be publishing it under my imprint of P’rea Press www.preapress.com. I seek then normal global distribution and sales channels. Avatars should be available to booksellers throughout America, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, Brazil, etc, via Lightning Source.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The first draft took about nine months from first contact with some of the authors. I allowed a good amount of normal relaxed creativity and time to occur. The editing process took about a further six months. The printing and production process took a further three months.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Epic poems and epic experiences such as the likes of Homer’s Iliad, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Keats’s Hyperion poems, Shelley’s Alastor and Queen Mab, and the plays of Shakespeare.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The above named poets, as stated above, and English language poetry, in this instance particularly Blank Verse. I grew up knowing and hearing the tremendous lines of William Shakespeare performed in plays, read at school or quoted independently. It all had a profound effect on me. The magnificent and soul-bending structure and backbone of the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and Keats, among others, is a most lucid agente provocateur. When I found this kind of poetry in George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith also, I knew I had to proclaim it loud.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

That it is fantasy poetry created with remarkable lucidity, perception, power, and pertinacity, that it is a celebration of English language poetry and blank verse and strives to continue that tradition, and that the book itself is created with loving attention to detail and production values. It is a kind of “hand-made film” of ten epic stain-glass windows. What you see when with trembling fingers you gently prod open those gorgeous antique panes is, as the reviewer Ann Schwader wrote: “From hashish dreams to psychic expeditions through deep space-time, here are experiences not to be found elsewhere.” A pillow of winds were just as weird and wild to lay your head upon in strangest sequined sleeps. And yet the fluttering over pages of this book you can hold in your hands, a veritable reality of beautiful strangeness!

Bio

CHARLES LOVECRAFT is an editor, publisher, writer, and versifier. He began his apprenticeship with literature and his love affair with poetry at an early age due to the influence of H. P. Lovecraft. About one hundred of his poems have been published in magazines and anthologies. He has also authored a bibliographical checklist of Richard L. Tierney’s work and edited thirteen books. In 2007 he established P’rea Press to publish international weird and fantastic poetry and non-fiction. Charles researches classic Australian supernatural poetry and promotes reading, writing and performance of fantasy poetry by conducting panels and workshops at conventions.

Leigh Blackmore (Wollongong Australia)

This is my new writing blog. I have a “>writer’s page over at Facebook: but for longer posts FB is rather ineffective, so I’m going to kick this blog off by writing about my next book as part of THE NEXT BIG THING.

THE NEXT BIG THING is a chain of book and author recommendations. One author tags five others, who then each tag five more, and so on. The idea is to spread the word — for ourselves and others — on all the quality new writing that’s just out or is coming soon, worldwide. There is a viral quality to the enterprise and hopefully it will allow readers to expand their reading horizons into projects that might otherwise have been lost in this world of continual internet noise. I was tagged by the giant-monster-obsessed and rather brainy horror and dark fantasy writer Rob Hood on November 21, and now it’s my turn.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

I want to call it NIGHTMARE LOGIC (a collection title I’ve had in reserve for quite a while) but we may decide on another title. I have a number of killer titles which may be more appropriate for the final collection but I don’t want to divulge them yet in case someone nicks them.

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

I’ve been assembling a horror short fiction collection for some time, but since I’m not a prolific writer, the going is fairly slow. I was actually approached by a US publisher, whose CEO had read and enjoyed my story “Exalted Are the Forces of Darkness,” a tale written for the Sherlock Holmes horror/fantasy crossover anthology GASLIGHT GROTESQUE: NIGHTMARE TALES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES:  http://www.amazon.com/Gaslight-Grotesque-Nightmare-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/1894063317 in which Sherlock Holmes matches wits with Edwardian occultist Aleister Crowley. As an admirer of this story, the publisher has asked me for a collection which focusses on both horror and occult tales (knowing these are my strengths), or stories which combine the two. He has also asked me to include poetry, knowing that I write weird verse as well as fiction. So the collection should include a number of previously published occult horror stories and weird poems, together with several new stories and poems that have not seen the light of day anywhere else.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

It’s firmly in the supernatural horror genre. Horror readers will certainly enjoy it. Those with a taste for metaphysical horror, in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti and so on will also find it enjoyable because I often use occult themes in my treatment of the supernatural.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Well, I’d need a different cast for each story. Here’s my cast fantasy for one story: someone like Edward Norton would be great for the protagonist of my latest novella, “Crumbs from the Master’s Table.” Furlong has the acting talent but also the quality of naivety that I would like to see conveyed in a portrayal of my protagonist, Osvaldo Carotid. I’d love to see Romola Garai play Visandia, my heroine, in that story – she has the appropriate otherworldly beauty. Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen or Michael Gambon to play the other major character, Quench, would be superb!

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A collection of dark tales and haunting verse which draw on the mysteries of cermonial magic, left-hand path sorcery, Lovecraftian horror and Qabalistic mystery, in which characters are confronted with their many shortcomings in a cosmos filled with the fantastical and inexplicable.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will be professionally published, although I haven’t yet signed a contract. I hope to find an agent at a later date.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

There’s a short story which I hope the publisher agrees will be in the book, an homage to the satirical fables of Lord Dunsany, which I wrote in high school, aged around 15. (I’m now 53).  That will be the earliest piece in the volume. The other stories have been written mainly over a period of the last thirty years (as I said, I’m not prolific with fiction!) and published in various magazines and anthologies. However the novella mentioned above, together with a few new stories I’m working on now, should see the content of the book balance fairly evenly between older material and brand new tales.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I’d place it thematically and stylistically with collections by such authors as Michael Cisco, Tom Ligotti, Kaaron Waaren, M. John Harrison, Simon Strantzas, Joel Lane, Joe Pulver, Mark Samuels, Wilum Pugmire, Terry Dowling, perhaps Jeff Vandermeer. Ramsey Campbell and Fritz Leiber are major influences, as are such classic writers of the supernatural as Robert Aickman, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and so on, all of whom explored to a greater or lesser extent  (Campbell still does) the horrors arising from the uncertainties aroud humankind’s place in the cosmos. I like to think my writing is imbued with the flavours and themes of the best of the classic and modern supernaturalists, while somehow still bringing a unique voice and flavour to this genre. My practical experience as a ritual magician of over 25 years gives me certain insights into magic and the occult which come in very handy in writing fiction along these lines.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always thought, since my earliest days as a scribbler (well, scrivener might be a more dignified word for it!) that I may one day master my craft to the extent that I could publish a collection of my own. Ramsey Campbell wrote to me in 1975, following the submission of an early tale which he rightly rejected: “I trust that I will see your name in print one day”; that always inspired me. One of the first stories in which I felt my own voice beginning to emerge was “The Hourglass,” which appeared in my 1993 anthology TERROR AUSTRALIS: THE BEST OF AUSTRALIAN HORROR. In stories I’ve published since then, I’ve been gradually integrating my concerns – the exploration of the Shadow side of human psychology, the desire to tell a gripping and haunting story, the continuation of the grand tradition of the weird tale – into my published fiction. So my whole journey has inspired me to put the book together. But of course, the immediate catalyst has been my publisher’s desire to issue a collection by me, with a specific thematic focus.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

I am organising my collection around a structure referring to the Qliphoth. The Qliphoth, as ritual magicians may know and others may not (even in ritual magick this is a little-explored area) refers to the Dark Side of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is an esoteric construct which basically explains creation and manifestation; it originates from the Jewish esoteric tradition of the Sepher Yezirah and the Bahir. The ‘light side’ of the ‘tree’ consist of ten conceptual spheres (known as  ‘Sephira’) which progressively emanate from the divine sphere of Kether to the earthly manifestation of Malkuth, and contain different qualities of human consciousness, and each of which

also corresponds to various things such as a particular planet of the classical astrological tradition.

The Qliphoth is in effect a ‘reverse’ tree which contains demonic beings – all the dark and shadowy parts of ourselves which are seen as having been ‘cast off’ (Qliphoth means ‘shells’ or husks’) but which must be reintegrated for complete psychological and spiritual integration. It’s rather similar to black portion of the Ying/Yang symbol, with which all Westerners are now familiar – the black and white mandala in which the white portion contains a spot of black and the black portion contains a spot of white, the idea being that within each polarity, the seed of its opposite is both contained and necessary.

Not all of the stories directly relate to the Qliphoth as such, but some do, and the tales will be arranged in  such a way that a Qliphothic demon will ‘rule’ each tale in the collection. Tales in the book include “Cemetery Rose”, a somewhat MR Jamesian story set in Sydney’s Rookwood Necropolis (previously only available as a podcast on The Writing Show on the web); “Dr Nadurnian’s Golem,” a modern take on the Golem genre; “Uncharted”, my Ditmar-nominated novella from 2003; “The Arcana of Death”, another tale of Sherlock Holmes whose plot hinges on the use Tarot cards in murders in Victorian London; and numerous others. The weird verse in the collection includes some poems from my 2008 poetry collection SPORES FROM SHARNOTH AND OTHER MADNESSES (P’rea Press http://www.preapress.com/), and some new poems, a couple written in collaboration with other poets (Fred Phillips and Richard L. Tierney).

You can keep track of developments in my writing by going to the Facebook page link at the top of this post. I hope that my horror fiction collection will appear mid-next year in the USA.

Bio
Leigh Blackmore (BCA Writing, Hons) was second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association (2010-2011), and edited issue 5 of their magazine Midnight Echo. He runs his own editorial business, Proof Perfect and is the editor of the SSWFT Amateur Press Association (Sword and Sorcery/Weird Fiction Terminus APA). A widely-published critic, editor, poet and story writer, Leigh has twice been nominated for the Ditmar award (once for fiction and once for criticism). Recent critical essays appear in Lovecraft Annual and Science Fiction, recent poetry in Weird Fiction Annual No 1, and he regularly reviews horror books for US journal Dead Reckonings. His verse collection Spores from Sharnoth & Other Madnesses (P’rea Press, 2008, 2010 www.preapress.com; revised/retitled ed Rainfall Books (Rainfall Chapbook 091), 2010 ) has garnered extensive acclaim. New stories are forthcoming in various anthologies including Urban Cthulhu II. Leigh is also a dedicated ritual magician, and plays bass in the band The Third Road. For more info see: http://www.australianhorror.com/member_pages.php?page=86

Now to name names. I have tagged the following wonderful writers to tell all about their own NEXT BIG THING  on Wednesday 13th December: Margi Curtis, Laura Goodin, Kyla Ward, B. Michael Radburn, Charles Lovecraft . Most of the writers have asked me to host their posts here on my blog, thus Baz Radburn’s, Kyla Ward’s, Margi Curtis’ and Charles Lovecraft’s answers will be found in separate posts here. Click on Laura Goodin’s link above to find her post.