It’s another pimp something you love post.

Let’s keep it to books, this time.

Tell us about a book — preferably one you’ve read recently or that’s coming out recently — that you dig so much you have to tell us about it or you’ll squeesplode all over the damn Internets.

And yes, I just made up a word, “squeesplode.”

Please spread it widely and with wanton disregard for good manners.

One thing you wanna pimp. Tell us what it is, by whom, and why you dig it.

And not by you. But by someone else.

Here’s mine:

DEAD THINGS by Stephen Blackmoore.

Urban fantasy by way of Richard Kadrey and Jim Butcher. Grimmer stuff, I think, than his debut, CITY OF THE LOST, but still funny at times, too. It’s about magic, and the power and sacrifices one makes with that magic — and one of those sacrifices may involve cozying up to Santa Muerte, which is not a goddess you really want to cozy up to. It’s got murder, mages, and ghosts aplenty. It’s really bad-ass and I want you to read it.

Oh! And two more books in the series will be on the way, too. (CITY OF THE LOST takes place in the same world with the same rules but only has very minor crossover into DEAD THINGS.)

Click here to check it out (you can even read the first chapter there).

Your turn!

When you hear a book is a cross between Blade Runner and Chinatown, you can’t help but lift your brow and give the story a second glance. Such is the case of Alex Hughes’ novel, Clean — and here, Alex sits down to be subjected to the scalpels and drills of the terribleminds interview. You can find Alex at her website or on Twitter @ahugheswriter.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

Once there was a hedgehog named Obion. Obion was a smart hedgehog, much smarter than all the other hedgies in his class in school, and they were jealous. So one day they cornered him in the laundry area of the school (puffy sweaters were popular that year) and pushed him into the trans-dimensional portal in the dryer that normally eats socks.

Obion fell through time and space in a swirling maelstrom of terror and joy. He landed on a busy interstate outside of El Paso, TX, right in front of a huge semi-truck of migrant workers, which fortunately was stopped. A small boy named Manuel stopped to look at him.

“What are you?” the boy said.

“I am a hedgehog!” Obion growled, and much to the surprise of both, the boy nodded.

“I am a boy,” he said. “And we are going to California to pick the avocados. Do you want to go along?”

Obion the hedgehog thought about it. He was so disoriented and he wanted more than anything to go home. But this sounded like a grand adventure, and all the other hedgehogs had told him he was not very brave. So he agreed, and found he did not like avocados at all.

The boy grew up into a man, and over the years they had many adventures together. Obion told the boy what to do, and the boy – now a man – did it. But soon the man fell in love, and the woman did not approve of a talking hedgehog, much less one that gave orders.

So Obion found himself on the street again, an old hedgehog with painful joints, still unable to get home. He found a little spot in a soup can in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant. He looked at the stars that night, and wondered if any of the other hedgies would ever remember him.

He met a raccoon that night, but that is another story.

Why do you tell stories?

There is nothing in the world like falling completely into a story. It’s nubby velvet and rich chocolate, the sting of fear and the bitterness of lemon peel all rolled into one. It’s the chance to live a hundred lives outside your own, and come back to your own warm bed. It’s joy.

Writing your own story is living in that moment a long time, and being the architect of all of those feelings in other people. When it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, and when it’s hard, there’s nothing quite so hard in all the world. But I keep coming back to that feeling I love – of the world falling away and the story taking over. That feeling, that joy, is why I write.

Give the audience one piece of writing or storytelling advice:

Never give up. Never, never, never, never, never give up. And never get complacent. Keep getting better, keep getting the words on the page or the stories in the air, and eventually you’ll find your genius.

What’s the worst piece of writing/storytelling advice you’ve ever received?

All stories must have three acts, which must be outlined in advance with no more than three major characters. Poppycock. The messy, crazy, complex stories of the world are sometimes the very best. Learn the “rules,” then break them shamelessly and without apology when it suits your purpose.

What goes into writing a great character? Bonus round: give an example.

A great character is someone who wants something very badly and can’t have it. The more specific and difficult the better, whether it’s a flying unicorn with a red spot the character saw in the next kingdom (her dad the king is too poor to buy it), or justice for a tortured eighteen-year-old victim whose killer left no clues. Then you fill in the rest of the world in terms of the character. Real people are messy and complicated, with crazy likes and dislikes and opinions about everything. Spend the time to have your character react to the world around him or her and give them hobbies and opinions to the point it seems excessive.  Give him or her quirks; steal shamelessly from the people around you.

Example: You’re going to laugh at me for using the Archie McNally books as an example, but I adore Lawrence Sander’s main character. I haven’t read one of the books in years, but to this day I still remember Archie going out to the seashore every day to swim for an hour in ridiculous swim trunks. He said he “did the breaststroke because it sounded so nice.” That tells you practically everything you need to know about the character in one sentence – and it made me laugh. Genius.

Give us the 140-Character Twitter Pitch For Your Novel, Clean:

Recovering addict telepath helps the police in future Atlanta track down killers. The latest is a serial killer who kills with the mind.

Where does this story come from?

I’ve always been a *huge* fan of TV cop dramas; I used to watch them with my family growing up, and I still watch 2-3 a week. In college, I’d just read this book called Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge about a tortured telepath trying to make his way in the world, and loved it. I decided I’d try to write a tortured telepath too, only mine would be a detective like the ones I loved from TV. When I sat down to write it, a friend of mine was struggling to recover from anorexia, and I knew I wanted to talk about her story somehow in fiction that year–so I asked, would this fit with this story? And I thought, for this story, I’d need an addiction a little easier to understand. It took multiple drafts to get the story to its present form, but that’s where it started.

How is this a book only you could’ve written?

I end up putting bits of myself and my obsessions into every story I write. For this one, it’s my love of physics and neuroscience, the struggle of my friend and the research I’ve done along the way. But ultimately, this is the story I had to tell because Adam showed up and started talking to me, specifically. It’s not always an easy conversation, but it’s a story I have to tell.

Your bio lists you as a bit of a foodie: what’s one food you wish more people would eat?

This one changes depending on the day you ask me. Today, I’m going to say bruschetta. The good stuff, with homemade just-toasted baguette, aged balsamic vinegar reduction, fresh heirloom or roasted cherry tomatoes sliced with care and love, and a dusting of perfect cheese. Goat cheese, perhaps, the mildest you can find, in little clouds on the top. Or fine aged parmesean, just grated. Bring out the right red wine, and you have an entire perfect meal. Yes, today I’m going to say bruschetta.

Recommend a book, comic book, film, or game: something with great story. Go!

Lately I’ve been recommending Phone Booth, a movie that apparently nobody saw but has an amazing story. The writing on this one is crazy good. I mean really, who in the world can trap a character alone in a phone booth for most of the movie and have me on the edge of my seat the whole time? Plus huge suspense, a genuine character arc, and what Aristotle calls the “unity of time and place,” something no modern screenwriter does. Plus Colin Farrell kicks ass at acting in it.

Favorite word? And then, the follow up: Favorite curse word?

Indubitably. It just makes you sound smart, plus you get all the play of “whatever.” Curse word? Hmm. There are several lovely ones out there! Personally, I like shit. Nice hard sound with a great visual, particularly if there’s a turning fan involved. My series character Adam, though, likes damn, so lately that’s been sneaking into my speech pretty often.

Favorite alcoholic beverage? (If cocktail: provide recipe. If you don’t drink alcohol, fine, fine, a non-alcoholic beverage will do.)

I love a really good red wine, especially a California blend or a complex Malbec from Argentina. I’m also a fan of flavored rum with white grape/peach juice, but I’m told that’s hopelessly girly of me. It is rather overwhelmingly sweet J

What skills do you bring to help us win the inevitable war against the robots?

Networking, a phone, and excellent coordination skills. I have many friends with machetes, swords, and automatic weapons stockpiled (not always in the same house). I also have several engineering friends, and one guy who works with robots for a living. The plan is, I start dialing, we assemble a small army of overly confident Southern guys with weapons to hold off the robots while the geeks reverse-engineer the operating code and Trojan the heck out of the survivors. I figure, forty-eight hours and we’ll have a small army of robots working for us to help me make an Italian feast for the folks who showed up to help. I’ll supervise.

What’s next for you as a storyteller? What does the future hold?

The future is unknown – but that’s the fun.

I have nine books sketched out for the Mindspace Investigations series, so I imagine those will keep me busy. But I’d also like to branch out into other worlds, other stories and other characters. I love stories and I’d like to get my hands in lots of them.

I am a fan of Stephen Blackmoore. I also consider myself his friend, even though he keeps taking restraining orders out on me — seriously, now I have to stay 603 miles away from him at all times, which will make the next WorldCon very awkward. WHATEVER. I dug the hell out of his first novel, City of the Lost, but for me, Dead Things is an epic favorite — I don’t read fast, but this book was like a gun pressed to the back of my head and I read the hell out of it in very short order. I loved it. So will you. Let Herr Doktor Blackmoore tell you all about it.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I am a sparkly unicorn who grants wishes and frolics in the… Wait.  Where am I?

Oh.  OH.  Sorry.  That’s, uh, that’s for something different.

I’m an author.  I write books.  There’s CITY OF THE LOST, about an undead thug who gets caught up in a hunt for the item that raised him from the dead.  KHAN OF MARS, which comes out later this year, set in the 1930’s pulp adventure world of the role-playing game SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY, about a hyper-intelligent gorilla fighting for freedom on the red planet.  My newest book, DEAD THINGS.  I also write short stories and co-host the bi-monthly lit event Noir At The Bar L.A. and run a true-crime blog called L.A. Noir.

I’m kinda all over the place.

GIVE US THE 140-CHARACTER STORY PITCH:

DEAD THINGS is an urban fantasy novel about a necromancer who comes home after 15 years to solve his sister’s murder to find it’s a trap.

WHERE DOES THIS STORY COME FROM?

The protagonist of DEAD THINGS, Eric Carter, is a necromancer, a rarity among mages.  He sees the dead, talks to them, makes them do what he wants.  It gives him a perspective on life and death that a lot of people don’t have.  It’s isolating for him in a lot of ways.

Carter disappears from his old life leaving behind a lot of resentment, anger and confusion.  And when he comes back fifteen years later to deal with his sister’s murder he finds himself having to deal with the fallout of his decisions.  His old friends don’t know how to handle him and he doesn’t know how to handle his friends.  It’s not easy for him.

Between that and his abilities with the dead a lot of the book is about ghosts.  Ghosts of dead people, ghosts of dead relationships, ghosts of the way things were and aren’t anymore.

And for me that’s the core of the story; disconnecting yourself from your life and the challenges of trying to come back to it.  That doesn’t always work.  People change.  Sometimes it’s the people you thought you knew.  Sometimes it’s yourself.

We’ve all done it at one point or another.  It’s part of growing and defining your own life, whether you do it at eighteen, thirty or sixty.  And there’s always fallout from those actions. Carter’s forced to confront the choices he’s made and the consequences of his decisions.  A lot of the story comes from examining what kind of awkward homecoming that might be like.

HOW IS THIS A STORY ONLY YOU COULD’VE WRITTEN?

A lot of writing is about choices.  Which words to use, which ones to leave out, what plot points to emphasize, that sort of thing.  All of those together, and a dozen other things, contribute to a writer’s voice.  I’d like to think that I bring something unique in terms of style to the stories I write.  Another writer would have made different choices, focused on different things.  I’m sure, hell, I know, that someone else could have written Eric Carter’s story.  But it wouldn’t have been this one.

WHAT WAS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING DEAD THINGS?

Making the character of Eric Carter unique and not a rehash of Joe Sunday, the protagonist of CITY OF THE LOST.

Though it’s set in the same world as CITY OF THE LOST, DEAD THINGS is a very different book.  The protagonists are very different people.  How they view the world and their place in it and the challenges they face are about as far removed from each other as it’s possible to be.  In CITY Joe Sunday is trying to adjust to a sudden new world that he’s been thrust into.

But with Carter, it’s coming back to a world that he thought he knew.  Sunday’s very much a fish out of water character, and Carter is more of a guide.  He knows his world, or at least he thinks he does.

I tried to keep Carter different from Sunday by focusing on Carter’s relationships and his character more than I did Sunday’s.  It’s a much more emotional and character driven book.  I think it worked.  Guess we’ll find out.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN WRITING DEAD THINGS?

That writing a book is something I can repeat and do it on a deadline.

I’ve looked at my writing career, though it’s new enough that calling it a career feels pretentious I don’t know what else to call it, as a series of stepping stones.  I always want to be moving.  I don’t want to do anything that isn’t going to lead me to something else.

The first novel I ever wrote was a weird, little mess for NANOWRIMO back in 2002 to prove to myself that I could do it.  After that I focused on writing and publishing short stories, get my name out there, get some bullets on the resume.  I didn’t try to tackle anything longer for a few years.  Then I wrote CITY OF THE LOST, sold that and jumped onto DEAD THINGS.

I’m proud of CITY OF THE LOST.  I think it’s a good book.  I wanted to make sure that DEAD THINGS was, if not better, at least as good and yet different enough that it stood out.

Up until the point that I turned the book in I wasn’t entirely sure I could do that.  NANOWRIMO notwithstanding (and I don’t really count it) I had never written a book with a deadline.  I was playing with things that I hadn’t really done before, digging into some emotional territory that wasn’t always fun to write, dealing with the pressure of knowing that I could completely blow it.

Now that the book is making its way into people’s hands I’m fairly confident that I pulled it off.  Knowing that I can do that gives me something to hang onto when I run into a rough spot and start believing that I can’t.  I have proof that I can.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT DEAD THINGS?

That Eric Carter is a fuck up.

It’s not that Carter’s incompetent, it’s that he makes bad choices because of flawed assumptions.  You know, like we all do.  He set in motion a series of events based on what he thought people needed and when he comes back into the life he left behind he’s still operating as though everything should be the same and it isn’t.

I don’t like characters who can’t fail.  Superman holds no appeal for me.  Indiana Jones is more my speed.  Watch Raiders of The Lost Ark and you’ll see just how much of a failure as a hero Indiana Jones is.  He screws up just about everything he tries to do in that movie.  Loses the gold idol, burns down Marian’s bar, gets her killed (not really, but he doesn’t know that) and ultimately loses the Ark.  He’s a fuck up.  he just looks good doing it.

That kind of character is much more interesting to me and I tried to put that sort of limitation into Carter.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

Well, I’m about to do a next time.  The sequel to DEAD THINGS, BROKEN SOULS, is due to be delivered in July for a 2014 release.  DEAD THINGS was written during nights and weekends because of my day job.  This time I’m going to try to carve out a couple weeks off the day job and go somewhere I can’t be interrupted.  I don’t know if it will help, since I have an enormous capacity for distraction, but I’m hoping to find out.

Also, the outline for BROKEN SOULS is slightly more comprehensive than the one for DEAD THINGS.  The DEAD THINGS outline started something like, “Stuff happens and then this thing over here and then…” eventually getting into the actual plot.  I didn’t really have a beginning in mind.

This one is a lot more locked down, which on the one hand should make things easier and on the other, as I write it, I realize that it might be a little too tight.  I’m curious to see how far away I diverge from the outline with the finished book.

GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE PARAGRAPH FROM THE STORY:

I don’t have a favorite paragraph, but I do have a favorite line.  “Death keeps her promises.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU AS A STORYTELLER?

I’m working on BROKEN SOULS at the moment and then I have the next one in the series, HUNGRY GHOSTS, along with a couple of short stories I need to do and, depending on how things shake out, some gaming work that I can’t really talk about, yet.

I’m hoping to branch out into some other directions this year and try my hand at a comic script, maybe a screenplay, two things I’ve never tried before.  I don’t really expect much to come of them other than getting used to the form and use them to jump toward other things.

Like I said, they’re all stepping stones.

Dead Things (Feb 5th): Amazon / B&N / Indiebound

Read the first chapter here.

site: stephenblackmoore.com

Twitter: @stephenblackmoore

If you care about this in the context of children’s books (at which point I must assume you’re like, eight years old and probably don’t belong here anyway): the following post has a spoiler warning for Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back and its follow-up, This Is Not My Hat.

Kay?

Kay.

So.

Rob Donoghue sent me the first “hat” book, and it is easily my favorite book to read to my son. Further, B-Dub likes it, too. When he wants it, he makes growling noises and taps his head, or calls out any of the animals within (a particular favorite is turtle, or “toor-tull”).

Yesterday, I poked through Barnes & Noble (hey, look, physical bookstores still exist! even though this one was phasing out of existence even as I walked through it, the air shimmering and revealing a panoply of retail possibilities — Panera, Old Navy, Coldstone Creamery, Big Dan Don’s Buttplug Bonanzaporium) and I found the sequel, This Is Not My Hat.

I read it.

And I realized:

The two books are essentially the same.

They tell the story of a most ungracious hat thievery, in which one small animal steals the tiny hat of a larger animal. In the first book, a rabbit steals that from a bear. In the second book, a little fish steals the hat off a much larger fish.

In both books, the big animal discovers what has happened and, despite being a bit big and doofy, eventually tracks down the hat thief and… well, it is implied that the bigger creature eats the smaller creature in order to regain the precious and titular hat.

Here’s where a critical storytelling lesson lies:

In the first book, the bear is the protagonist. The bear’s hat has been stolen.

In the second book, the tiny fish is the protagonist. The tiny fish has stolen a hat.

First book, we side with the victim.

Second book, we side with the thief.

We read the first book, and we feel for the bear. When he finally goes ahead and eats the rabbit and reclaims his hat, there is a moment if triumph (if a triumph of some black humor) because: YAY BEAR HAS HIS HAT BACK.

We read the second book, and we feel for the tiny fish. The tiny fish gives all his reasons for having stolen the hat. The tiny fish believes he has gotten away with, erm, clean fins, as it were. When the big fish finally tracks down the tiny fish and eats him to reclaim the hat, there is a moment of horror because: OH GOD THE TINY FISH IS (probably) DEAD.

Same story.

But a shift in perspective wildly alters our perception of that story.

From triumph, to revulsion.

From a tale of a dumb bear reclaiming his beloved hat…

…to the tale of a tiny delusional hat-thief getting his brutal comeuppance.

The lesson is, of course, that a simple shift in perspective changes so much in a story. Use a shift of perspective in fiction — and, perhaps, in life — to deepen the complexity of the story and to gain fresh understanding. Ignore this shift to keep things more narratively monochromatic. Further, it’s a lesson that few antagonists believe themselves evil: the tiny fish does not steal the hat because he is evil but rather because he is selfish and is able to delude himself about that selfishness. He has his reasons. He is, as are most antagonists, the hero of his own story.

For a kid’s book, it’s powerful stuff.

Maybe too powerful right now for B-Dub, who is not even two years old —

But powerful, just the same.

You want steampunk? We got steampunk. Here’s James Blaylock — one of steampunk’s first team — talking about his newest, The Aylesford Skull.

Tell Us About Yourself: Who The Hell Are You?

I’m a writer who sold his first short story in 1976, titled “Red Planet,” about a young man on a Greyhound bus in the Midwest who thinks he’s traveling to Mars, but perhaps is confusing Mars with the red agate marble in his pocket Since then I’ve published about 25 novels and short story collections and a heap of essays, introductions, and other short pieces. I won the World Fantasy Award twice, for my short stories “Paper Dragons” and “Thirteen Phantasms,” and the Philip K. Dick Memorial award in 1986 for my Steampunk novel Homunculus. That was still a couple of years before K. W. Jeter would coin the term. My books are translated in 15 foreign countries. My most recently published book is titled Zeuglodon, The True Adventures of Kathleen Perkins, Cryptozoologist. I recently sold a short novel titled The Pagan Goddess to Subterranean Press. I’ve lived in California all my life. Married for 40 years. Two sons. Dog named Pippi. Tortoise named Ollie. Readers can check out my website at jamespblaylock.com.

Give Us The 140-Character Pitch:

Quick-moving plot, river pirates, graves robbed, magically altered skulls, kidnappings, explosions, many strange occurrences, a certain amount of eating.

Where Does This Story Come From?

I’ve been publishing stories about the characters that inhabit The Aylesford Skull (so to speak) since 1978, when Unearth magazine published my story “The Ape-box Affair,” the first domestic Steampunk publication, hence my being referred to as the Grandfather of Steampunk. (Actually there are three Grandfathers, Tim Powers and K. W. Jeter included. I got in first only because it’s quicker to write a publish a short story. Both Tim and K.W. were writing novels at the time.) I prefer Godfather or Grand Vizier or High Priest or something. “Grandfather” needlessly makes me feel older than I am. Anyway, The Aylesford Skull is my fifth novel involving these characters, so its origins in that sense are decades old. The concept of the story, however, came out of my fascination with so-called Japanese Magic Mirrors (also arguably Chinese Magic Mirrors) that were exceedingly cool objects, which seemed to people to be authentically magic. I believe that they probably were magic a few centuries ago, before magic packed its bags and left town.

How Is This A Story Only You Could’ve Written?

I’m not certain how, but I’m certain that it is (unless we’re talking about the infamous roomful of monkeys with typewriters). Bruce Sterling once said that my work had a “refreshing natural lunacy,” and Robin McKinley, in what was no doubt meant as a positive statement, wrote, “No one should be spared the unique perversity of Jim Blaylock’s world view.”

What Was The Hardest Thing About Writing The Aylesford Skull?

The constant research was difficult, or at least time consuming. There was a ton of it necessary in the beginning, when I was working simply to envision the book and the characters, but the real work came when I was writing. I found myself checking any of a hundred different sources on every page that I wrote, and to make matters worse, one thing would inevitably lead to another. I’d start out reading about hops growing in Kent, England, for example, which would lead me to pieces about oast houses, which would remind me of a scene in The Pickwick Papers that I’d best reread, etc. I can’t tell you how much I learned about coal dust, for example, while I was working on the book (utterly useless knowledge in my daily life, I’m happy to say). Also, I’m anxious to get the language “right.” I want it to sound authentic in some sense of the term, not inaccessibly antique, but not characteristically modern, either. I wanted to fool the reader into hearing a novel that I might have written if I were alive in the 19^th Century. I constantly read Victorian novels, or modern works set in that time period, just to keep my ear in tune. It’s shocking how often I checked useful dictionaries in order to avoid anachronism or to understand idioms or scientific words of that strange age. I was surprised to discover that “dirigible,” for example, was very new in 1883. If the book were set in 1880 I’d have stuck with “airship” or “air vessel.” I often found myself checking The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in order to find a nifty word or phrase, and then rechecking it in the Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles in the interests of accuracy, and then deciding against using it altogether because I didn’t like the sound of it or because it was too obscure or show-offy. That sort of thing could waste a good five minutes or more, and the result was that it would take twice as long to write the day’s thousand-words as it would have taken me to write two thousand words of a contemporary novel set in California. That being said, it was a great deal of fun.

What Did You Learn Writing The Aylesford Skull?

I learned something that I already knew but that I often forget: that the best stuff in any of my stories and novels flies into my head out of nowhere during the act of writing, and that I have to trust to the language and the muses and not to a lot of pre-thinking. Conversely, much of that cool, flying stuff ultimately can’t be used, because it simply doesn’t fit. There’s a constant interplay of momentary inspiration and rational assessment.

What Do You Love About The Aylesford Skull?

I’m very fond of some of the smaller characters, who began as bit players and then developed into very much more. That’s related to what I was just talking about – part of the very real magic of writerly invention when all cylinders are firing.

What Don’t You Like About It?

Can’t think of anything, and if I could, I’d quite likely keep it to myself. Reminds me of one of my favorite bits from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: “A dwarf who carries a standard along to measure his own size is a dwarf in more articles than one.”

Give Us Your Favorite Paragraph From The Story:

This one is completely impossible. Here’s a paragraph that I like, however:

Wise reeled away. His senses were uncannily sharp in that

moment; he heard the rain beating on the deck and hissing on the

hot iron of the oven, and he smelled the rain and the river, and saw

with particular clarity the lights winking along the far shore. He

felt the railing in the small of his back, and he heard what sounded

to him like the murmuring of the Thames flowing in its bed toward

the sea, its waters unsettled and agitated by the incoming tide. He

found himself teetering backward, his weight levering him over

the railing – the brief sensation of falling and of the dark waters

mercifully closing over him as he drowned in his own blood.

What’s Next For You As A Storyteller?

I’ve got two novel proposals in the works – one Steampunk and one not. Also I’ve promised to write a couple of short stories. That should fill up a couple of years of my writing life. More of the same after that, as long as my brain doesn’t lose air pressure like an old tire.

The Aylesford Skull: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound