Review of DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP

TITLE: Desdemona and the Deep
AUTHOR: C.S.E. Cooney
221 pages, Tor.com Publishing, ISBN 9781250229830 (softcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy. A goblin market narrative that’s also a steep drop into an uncanny, richly painted underworld, C.S.E. Cooney combines 1920s luxury with deeply felt questions of identity and justice that strike at the heart of who we are, human or otherwise.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney drops the reader into a multi-layered new fantasy world that I hope to see a lot more of. While it tells a complete and compelling story, the novella only scratches the surfaces of each of this world’s layers, with hints of how each has affected the others over their existence.

Cooney gives us “the World,” “the World Beneath,” and “the World Beneath the World Beneath.” The World, known to its human inhabitants as “Athe,” looks and feels very much like our own Earth just before the Great Depression with aspects of where we are in modern times (especially in terms of environmental and human health damage due to uncontrolled industry). The rich get richer off of the toil of the working poor while the natural world is collapsing around them. The “World Beneath” is the Valwode, home of the Gentry (what we might call the Fae), who are concerned about the upheaval of the Valwode’s natural order after the abdication of Queen Nyx. The “World Beneath the World Beneath” is Bana, the home of the kobold-kin (goblins) lead by king Kalos Kantzaros; Bana is a world at odds for different reasons with the worlds “above” it. Humans, Gentry and Kobold can move from realm to realm if they can find the way. But it’s never easy, and always comes with a price. The humans of Athe mostly consider the other two realms to be mythical, but the denizens of the other two realms are all too aware of how actions on Athe affect their own Valwode and Bana.

There is a wonderful lyricality and playfulness to the character names: the alliterativeness of Kalos Kantzaros; the on-the-nose name Mannering for the rich family whose child Desdemona is at the center of the actions; the sensual appropriateness of Gentry names like Nyx the Nighcrawler and Sussura the Nighthag; the regality of a name like Albus Idris and the sheer fun tongue-twister that is The Umber Farkelwhit. Cooney has, across all of her work, a knack for character and place names that conjure immediate and strong images or connections. (The Umber Farkelwhit not only puts me in mind of a Shakespearean court Fool, ala Lear, but also of the character Belaga from the musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 for example.)

One of the things rich-child-turned-activist Desdemona discovers in her travels through the realms is that the richest class is almost always the most clueless and often the most careless. Whether it is the intentional cluelessness of the rich on Athe regarding the human and environmental costs of the industries making them rich, the by-their-very-nature cluelessness of the Gentry regarding how their own attempts to overthrow their previous ruler have doomed them, or the not-quite cluelessness of Kalos Kantzaros regarding the possible misuse of the bargain he struck long ago with members of the Mannering family of Athe, Desdemona sees over and over again the impact of not being aware of the world around you or of your own role in it. The rich of Athe could do more for the poor; the Gentry could do more to recognize their own faults; Kantzaros could temper his search for his missing daughter to find a way out of the contract. But they are all so caught up in their own sense of entitlement that it takes an outsider to set them on redemptive paths. In two cases, that outsider is Desdemona, although it's a different character who sets Desdemona on her own path of redemption.

Early on, Kalos Kantzaros asks Desdemona whose child she is, her father’s or her mother’s, and Desdemona spends the entire book trying to answer that question. We are witness to Desdemona’s incremental transition from spoiled rich child to defender of the weak, and also to the self-discovery journeys of several other characters, notably Desdemona’s closest friend Chaz, Desdemona’s mother Tracy, and the rulers of the other worlds: Albus Idris and Kalos Kantzaros. Each have their own blind spots regarding their better natures or the effect they have on the world around them. All discover that being a part of community is more significant than they previously recognized.

Desdemona’s story may or may not be concluded, but there is so much to explore in these worlds. I’m looking forward to many more visits to Athe, the Valwode, and Bana.

Sunday Shorts: Faux Ho Ho

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.



TITLE: Faux Ho Ho
AUTHOR: ‘Nathan Burgoine
152 pages, Bold Strokes Books, ISBN 9781635557596 (ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Silas Waite doesn’t want his big-C Conservative Alberta family to know he’s barely making rent. They’d see it as yet another sign that he’s not living up to the Waite family potential and muscle in on his life. When Silas unexpectedly needs a new roommate, he ends up with the gregarious (and gorgeous) personal trainer Constantino “Dino” Papadimitriou. Silas’s parents try to brow-beat him into visiting for Thanksgiving, where they’ll put him on display as an example of how they’re so “tolerant,” for Silas’s brother’s political campaign, but Dino pretends to be his boyfriend to get him out of it, citing a prior commitment. The ruse works—until they receive an invitation to Silas’s sister’s last-minute wedding. Silas loves his sister, Dino wouldn’t mind a chalet Christmas, and together, they could turn a family obligation into something fun. But after nine months of being roommates, then friends, and now “boyfriends,” Silas finds being with Dino way too easy, and being the son that his parents barely tolerate too hard. Something has to give, but luckily, it’s the season for giving—and maybe what Silas has to give is worth the biggest risk of all.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: As with most things written by ‘Nathan Burgoine, I was sucked into Faux Ho Ho from the start. The story has real romantic and dramatic stakes, and main characters you want to see overcome them. And all told in a tidy 150-ish pages, so there’s not a wasted word or superfluous scene.

I found Silas and Dino both endearing, the kinds of guys I’d love to hang around with – although like Silas I would be initially intimidated by Dino’s size and athletic ability – and I would certainly love to read more about both of them. Their interplay, as friends and more, is just downright adorable. (And I admit, I might have developed just a little bit of a fictional crush on Silas.) Despite the character descriptions, this is not just another “insecure nerd / cocky jock” romance with stock types; each man has his own insecurities and distinct personality traits and, perhaps more importantly, commonalities that play against the nerd/jock stereotypes.

The development of their relationship, from awkward roommate interview to friends to more, felt natural and real. I’m a fan of books that alternate past and present chapter-by-chapter, and here the alternating chapters heighten the tension of Silas and Dino’s pretense while providing deep insight into the relationship’s background. I think the book would have suffered with a more linear presentation of events; the “twin openings” (for lack of a better term) give us a sense of the dramatic stakes (the drama of Silas rushing to find Dino and make amends for something we’re not yet aware of) and the comedy we can expect (half-naked Dino “meeting” Silas’ parents for the first time via Skype and setting the whole story into motion) in a way a linear progression wouldn’t have been able to.


The author also does a great job of juxtaposing the characters’ very different familial experiences: Dino’s family has clearly always been completely accepting and loving, while Silas’s (with the exception of his sister) has grudgingly accepted their gay son/sibling provided he doesn’t embarrass them and provided he remains politically useful as a ‘good gay’. It’s nice to see more than one part of the spectrum of familial acceptance represented, and also great that through Silas’s sister and her fiancée, Burgoine explores the idea that not every family member reacts/feels the same way about a family member’s sexuality. (Reading Burgoine’s previous Christmas romance novella Handmade Holidays along with Faux Ho Ho really expands this exploration, as the family of the main character of HH completely abandoned him upon coming out.) Like Handmade Holidays, Faux Ho Ho also explores the idea of “found family,” the people who are like siblings and parents to us without any genetic or legal connection.

Unlike Handmade Holidays, in Faux Ho Ho Christmas itself is not much more than a plot point, a reason for delayed travel to keep our main characters out of touch with the wider world for a stretch of hours. (I actually to find this to be true of many Christmas romances (gay, straight, or Hallmark variety) that don’t hinge on actual Christmas Magic as opposed to the ”magical” feel of the season, but that’s a digression worthy of its own blog post). In fact, Halloween gets a bit more “pride of place” in terms of the holiday’s effect on the growing relationship between Silas and Dino, as does Thanksgiving. The family visit / wedding that triggers most of the drama could take place at any time of year. This is not a negative, as it makes the story all the more universal in tone, but readers going in expecting scenes of caroling and gift exchanges might be slightly disappointed.

This story is also a part of the wider world of Burgoine’s fiction, interconnecting not only with Handmade Holidays (with references to characters and specifically to the “Misfits Christmas” tradition at the center of that book) but also with other denizens and locations of Burgoine’s gay Village as seen in his short story collection Of Echoes Born.

For slow-build awkward romance, tweaking family expectations, and adorable characters, check out Faux Ho Ho.

Series Saturday: Folley & Mallory

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

E. Catherine Tobler’s six-book Folley & Mallory is one of those series that is hard to categorize, an interesting blend of genres. There are alternate history (a recognizable but still different late 1800’s setting) and steampunk aspects (airships that are more than traditional dirigibles, tech that allows a character to have fully-working metal prosthetic arms), shapeshifters (main character Virgil Mallory is revealed as a werewolf early on), Egyptian mythology (the gods Anubis and Horus play significant roles), spy intrigue (Mallory works for an international spy outfight called MISTRAL that has internal intrigues and subdivisions); time travel (to an ancient Egypt that is both like and unlike what we know), historical and sociological commentary (about why Egypt fell to the Romans and about the unsavory nature of archaeological digs in Egypt in the 1800s), and romance (between the title duo of Eleanor Folley and Virgil Mallory, and between a pair of supporting characters). That’s a quick summary of the genres that co-mingle in these books. I may be missing one or two. There’s a lot going on here.

And because this is E. Catherine Tobler, it all melds wonderfully. The steampunk aspects of the narrative enable the time travel as much as the Egyptian mythological aspects; the mythology informs Folley’s family history; the time travel and shapeshifting are sensible roadblocks to the culmination of the romance; the subterfuge of MISTRAL and its sister organization affect the mythological and time-travel adventures. Nothing feels out of place or shoe-horned in.

The arc of the series is instigated by archaeologist Eleanor Folley’s search to discover what really happened to her missing mother. Eleanor’s father claims she’s dead, but Eleanor knows something weird happened when their Egyptian dig was attacked by unknown assailants just as her mother discovered a legendary artifact, “the hand of the Lady.” Now an adult, Eleanor pushes against her father’s constraint to give up the search for her mother. At the same time, MISTRAL agent Virgil Mallory is assigned to protect the Folleys from possible attack by rogue/enemy agents who want to know what Eleanor and her father know about the artifact and the associated “rings of Anubis.” Of course, complications arise that put them in great danger while allowing them to overcome initial distrust. And Eleanor’s search, combined with Virgil’s personal history, will have potentially history-altering consequences as Anubis’ plan becomes more obvious and closer to fruition.

The romance between Eleanor and Virgil is not the primary point of the series. But it is a vital sub-plot as they grow from that initial distrust and miscommunication through to a mutual if unrequited attraction and then to an actual relationship. Their connection helps them to survive some pretty drastic situations that each might not have survived alone. The progression of their relationship feels natural and is not at all smooth. They also discover they have more in common than they thought and that their lives have overlapped even before they ever met.

Eleanor’s life, her family’s history and connection to ancient Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut, and the god Anubis are at the center of everything that happens; to say too much about the family tree, especially her mother’s side, would be to spoil a great deal of what happens in the second half of the series. Suffice to say, we’re very invested in how and what Eleanor’s matrilineal line has done to enable the events depicted. Virgil and the other MISTRAL agents are essentially along for the ride for a good portion of the series. But throughout, we get a lot of background on Virgil: how he became a werewolf and how it affects his daily life, his previous romantic history, certain of his previous cases as an agent that turn out to be connected to his assignment to protect Eleanor. Eventually we also get a bit of detail on fellow agents and distant lovers Cleo and Auberon. Anubis also becomes more fully fleshed out and less of a plot device as the series goes on.

Most of the volumes in the series run around 250-300 pages. These are concisely written books that don’t ramble on about the background world-building. While it would be nice to know more about the history of the MISTRAL agency and the other shadowy groups encountered, none of that is necessary to the plot or progress of this story. (Maybe Tobler will give us adventures of other MISTRAL agents in the future, and that would be wonderful.) The Folley & Mallory series, in order, is:
• The Rings of Anubis
• The Glass Falcon
• The Honey Mummy
• The Clockwork Tomb
• The Quartered Heart
• The Ebon Jackal

(The link leads to the author’s website, which has purchase options listed.)

This is a complete story in six volumes. While there are hints at future adventures Folley, Mallory, and their friends could have, The Ebon Jackal capably and satisfactorily wraps up the main plot and all of the important sub-plots. So those of you who insist on waiting until a series is concluded before you invest in it? You have no excuse here: go get these books, in print or ebook, and get started!

Review of COME TUMBLING DOWN

TITLE: Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children #5)
AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire
208 pages, Tor.com Books, ISBN 9780765399311 (Hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): The fifth installment in Seanan McGuire’s award-winning Wayward Children series, Come Tumbling Down picks up the threads left dangling by Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones. When Jack left Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister – whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice – back to their home on the Moors. But death in their adopted world isn’t always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack herself is carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome. Eleanor West’s “No Quests” rule is about to be broken. Again.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Note: I received a print uncorrected proof Advance Review Copy from the publisher.
The latest entry in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series returns us to my favorite of the Portal worlds we’ve seen so far: the Moors. In Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we witnessed the twins Jack and Jill’s arrival in the Moors and their subsequent adoption, for lack of a better term, by The Master (a vampire) and Doctor Bleak (a mad scientist). The Moors is a very Gothic / 1920s Universal Monsters / 1960s Hammer Horror type of world; everything feels black-and-white and saturated with color at the same time. Supernatural creatures exist side-by-side with lightning-based mad science. The Master has the regal bearing of Lugosi combined with the physical menace of Lee, Doctor Bleak could easily be Peter Cushing. It’s not that The Master and the Doctor are one-dimensional pastiches so much that McGuire describes them in ways that bring your favorite or most frightening (often the same thing, don’t you think?) versions of vampires and mad scientists to mind. In Come Tumbling Down, McGuire expands what we know of the Moors, introducing a Lovecraftian Mythos aspect to the world via the Drowned Gods and the cult/villagers that worship them. And we get to meet another “wayward child,” Gideon, who is the current high priest of the Drowned Gods. McGuire has mad science, gothic horror, and cosmic horror overlap throughout the book, contrasting the different types of horror and the effect they have on the reader.

I don’t want to say too much about the characters of Jack and Jill lest I spoil aspects of Down Among the Sticks and Bones for people who haven’t read it. I can say that this book showcases McGuire’s ability to craft nuanced portrayals of neuro-atypical characters that help those of us who don’t have those traits to understand them, and perhaps relate to them, a little bit better. Jack’s germophobia and body dysmorphia and each twins’ need to not be who they were before they arrived in the Moors are so well-drawn. This extends to the other characters as well: Christopher’s social awkwardness/anxiety and discomfort with bodily fluids, Cora’s connection to water, Sumi being somewhere on the Autism spectrum, Kade being transgender – all are written in the non-judgmental way McGuire is known for. This is a truly diverse cast not just in physicality and in ethnicity but in neuroicity (is that a word?) as well.

The Wayward Children series is set up so that “present day” books, usually built around a quest or a character attempting to return to the world they’ve lost, alternate with “past times” books that show how characters got to their portal world and what they experienced before returning to our world. This book builds off of events in the first and second books. I don’t think one necessarily needs to have read the third (Beneath the Sugar Sky, a present-day quest into the land of Confection) or fourth (In An Absent Dream, a times-past chronicle about a supporting character who doesn’t appear in Come Tumbling Down at all), although reading Beneath the Sugar Sky will help understand where the characters of Kade, Christopher, Sumi and Cora are coming from as they enter this latest adventure. As a rule, I tend to enjoy novels that alternate chapters between the present and the past to build tension. I absolutely love that McGuire is structuring this novella series this way. It means that the books can be read in almost any order, mixed and matched upon re-reads. And I suspect that the reader will notice different things in each book depending on the order of the reread.

I suspect this will be our final foray into the Moors because Jack and Jill’s combined story now has a beginning (Down Among the Sticks and Bones), a middle (Every Heart a Doorway) and an end (Come Tumbling Down). But I really hope I’m wrong. I want to know more about Gideon and how he became the High Priest of the Drowned Gods. I want to know what The Master will do next. And I really want to know more about the werewolves in the hills and whether this world also has living mummies and other classic monster types.

And regardless of whether this is the last trip to the Moors, it is not the last book in the series. There are so many characters and worlds to explore: Christopher’s Mariposa, Cora’s The Deeps, Kade’s goblin world. I look forward to all of those trips, as well as future “present day” quests for the characters and more insight into what is happening with Eleanor West herself.

Come Tumbling Down releases in hardcover in January, 2020. The first four books in the series are available now.

Review of HUNT THE AVENGER

TITLE: Hunt the Avenger

AUTHOR: Win Scott Eckert

130 pages, Moonstone Books, ISBN 9781328916280 (Hardcover and e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Out of tragedy, a hero is born! In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.

A figure of ice and steel, Richard Benson is an avatar of vengeance—a chilled impersonal force of justice masking a cold genius and nearly supernatural power behind a face as white and still as arctic frost. His pale eyes, like a polar dawn, only hint at the terrible force evildoers heedlessly unleashed the day they created…The Avenger!

In the annals of Justice, Inc.’s battles against spies, crooks, and killers, only one malefactor has escaped The Avenger’s clutches not once, but twice—Baron Ulrich Blau-Montag, the half-man, half-machine known as the Iron Skull! But when Benson and his cohorts partner with the mysterious and saucy Domino Lady to hunt down the demented half-robot, and go on to clash with other supervillains, such as the Nazi spy Werner Konrad and a diabolical weapons dealer known as the Countess, a frightening pattern emerges…are they the creatures of a hidden puppetmaster? And is Benson the hunter? Or the prey?

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: If you’re a fan of the original pulp magazine adventurers or the characters who have followed in their footsteps over the decades since the pulps died, you can’t go wrong with this mosaic novel by Win Scott Eckert, one of the best of the “new pulp” writers. Hunt the Avenger is a fun combination of three previously-published short stories bookended by two new stories that create a fast-paced narrative whole.

When Eckert writes about previously-existing characters like Richard Benson, he does his research. In this case, he fully immersed himself in the original pulp Avenger novels by Paul Ernst and the handful of official 1970s follow-ups by Ron Goulart, as well as all of the Domino Lady’s appearances. He understands the history and nuance of the characters and it shows throughout the book. That being said, readers meeting The Avenger and the Domino Lady for the first time via this book will not be confused or lost. Eckert doesn’t assume his readers are as deeply familiar with the characters as he is; he works in plenty of details (without info-dumping) to help new readers understand Benson, his Justice Inc. support team, their sometimes-ally The Domino Lady, and the villains being faced. (For the record, the book’s Frontispiece helpfully lists all of the canonical Avenger works.)

One of the reasons I find Eckert such a talented new pulp writer is that he respects the traditions and cadences of the pulp style without falling into the racist/misogynistic traps of the time. He retains key phrases from the pulps to describe characters (like Nellie Gray being described as a “porcelain doll,” and frequent references to the low-cut revealing nature of the Domino Lady’s outfits) but he also shows just how smart and capable these women are consistently throughout the book. Benson may be the title (and focal) character but the women in his adventures here are not just arm- and eye-candy. If the licensing could be worked out and his schedule allowed, I’d love to see Eckert write an adventure featuring the Domino Lady, Nellie Gray, Rosabel Newton, and perhaps the Shadow’s Margo Lane and Doc Savage’s cousin Patricia.

Of course, there are the by-now requisite winks and nods at The Avenger’s contemporaries. I may have missed a few but there are definitely veiled references to Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Spider that will please fans of the interconnected “Crossover Universe” idea that Eckert and most of his peers work in. And there are nods to a variety of concepts originally introduced by the great Philip Jose Farmer as well.

Hunt the Avenger is only available through the publisher, Moonstone Books. I picked up the now-out-of-print hardcover edition. A check of the website indicates that the paperback is still available as of the writing of this review.

Horror By The Day

During October, I ran #horrorbytheday on my Twitter account. Each day I picked a random horror-related topic and identified my favorite thing related to that topic. Most tweets had pictures attached as well.

I thought it might be a good idea to finally post the entire thread here, for those of you who don’t follow me on other social media, and maybe add some more detail. Feel free to weigh in with comments about your favorites for each of these topics!

October 1: Classic Horror Novel: Dracula by Bram Stoker. I don’t remember how old I was the first time I read Dracula. Probably sixth grade. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve re-read it since then (20 is probably a low estimate). There’s something about the epistolary style and the fact that we pretty much never hear directly from the title character that still pulls me in an fascinates me no matter how many times I read it, and no matter how many adaptations I experience in print and other media.

October 2: Horror Anthology (Comics): House of Mystery. As I was starting my comics-reading experience, both DC and Marvel still published a variety of genre “anthology” comics. In retrospect, HoM was my favorite; I might willingly miss issues of House of Secrets, Ghosts, The Unexpected, and the rest, but I pretty never missed an issue or skipped a story of/in HoM. And I loved how mean narrator Cain could be.

October 3: Horror Cereal: Count Chocula.  Vampires and chocolate. Need I say more?

October 4: Stephen King Novel: ‘Salem’s Lot. Thematically and structurally similar to Dracula, it’s no surprise this is also high on my list. But King’s story is not just a Stoker retelling with modern trappings, and I think that’s what makes it stand out and live such a longer life than most Dracula pastiches. I also love the various connected short stories (like “Jerusalem’s Lot” and “The Night Flier”).

October 5: TV Show: Dark Shadows. I remember rushing home from school to watch this in the afternoons, completely captivated not just by Jonathan Frid’s vampire Barnabas Collins, but also David Hedison’s Quentin (the werewolf), and all the alternate timelines, flashbacks, ghosts and such.

October 6: Edgar Allen Poe Story: The Cask of Amontillado. It’s always hard to choose between this, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Black Cat” when asked for a favorite. But most years, if I have time to re-read only one Poe story in October, this is the go-to.

October 7: Marvel Comics Horror Title: Tomb of Dracula. This should surprise absolutely no-one. I loved almost all of the Marvel horror titles of the 70s (Werewolf By Night, Son of Satan, Monster of Frankenstein, and the rest) but this one more than the others. And not only because the title character is a Dracula whose personality falls very much in line with Stoker’s creation. The moody art of Gene Colan, especially once Tom Palmer joined him as regular inker, and the deep continuity of Marv Wolfman’s story (before “decompressed storytelling” and slavish continuity were a thing for most comics), both make this a direct Dracula sequel that stands out.

October 8: Horror Comedy Movie: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. A friend and I regularly acted out the Chick-and-Wilbur scenes from this throughout high school, to the annoyance of our peers I’m sure. There’s not a bad scene or wasted punchline throughout, and it features Lugosi and Chaney in their signature roles.

October 9: Annual Reread: A Night in the Lonesome October. Roger Zelazny’s pitch-perfect tale of a mystic ritual and the players who fight for/against it, as narrated by a faithful watchdog named Snuff. So many nods to classic horror novels and tropes that even all these years later I don’t think readers have ferreted out every little nod Zelazny worked in. And it’s structured as one chapter per day for the month, which makes it easy to read with other fans via social media.

October 10: Concept Album: Alan Parsons Project “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”  Parsons’ wonderful musical working of a number of Edgar Allen Poe tales sweeps me away every time I listen to it. Not a bad track in the lot, and Orson Welles’ narrations are brilliantly incorporated.

October 11: Musical: Little Shop of Horrors. Little Shop just barely edges The Rocky Horror Show out as my favorite horror-musical. They’re both great, and in reality they probably trade the top spot depending on which one I’ve seen most recently.

October 12: DC Comics Horror Title: Night Force. After they ended Tomb of Dracula at Marvel, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan created Night Force for DC. The first run only lasted fourteen issues (recently collected in hardcover). I loved the idea that the mysterious time-traveling Baron Winters gathered teams of (sometimes unwilling) agents to battle the supernatural on his behalf. Sort of Mission: Impossible The Supernatural Team. Sadly, the sales weren’t there originally or for either of the later relaunches (both with Wolfman as writer but no input from Colan).

October 13: 60s Horror Movie: Rosemary’s Baby. The book was scary enough. The movie, with a great cast including Mia Farrow, Ruth Gordon, and John Cassavetes, works with lighting and mood to keep the viewer feeling as off-kilter as Rosemary. It still haunts me.

October 14: Ghost Novel: Vintage by Steve Berman. Berman smoothly combines teen romance with the ghost hitchhiker trope for an intriguing, scary read.

October 15: Horror Poster: Chip Skelton’s “Universal Road,” as seen at the top of this post.

October 16: Lovecraftian/Mythos Series: Whyborne and Griffin by Jordan L. Hawk. Lovecraft himself may have been incredibly homophobic, which probably is what drives so many queer horror authors to play in his sandbox. Each book in this series is based on a different Mythos entity or trope, but with really engaging title characters and supporting cast and an expanding narrative that has a clear beginning and end.

October 17: Non-Traditional Vampire Novel: Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The setting is a near-future Mexico City that works hard to keep out the vampires that have overrun the rest of North America. The characters are a vampire who has made it into the city in an effort to escape her pursuers and the young man who falls for her despite what she is.

October 18: Zombie Series: Newsflesh by Mira Grant. I’m not a huge fan of zombie fiction. In fact, these may be the only zombie novels I’ve read. What I love about them is that the zombie “apocalypse” is background world-building and the zombies themselves a threat only really when manipulated as a tool. The first book is a 70s-style political thriller (think “All The President’s Men”) set against a world that has become accustomed to the presence of zombies, while the second book is an 80s-style medical thriller (think any Robin Cook novel). The third combines aspects of both with 70s-style all-star-cast disaster flicks. The ancillary short stories and novellas are equally as good and diverse.

October 19: Recent Horror Film: A Quiet Place. I rarely see movies more than once in the theater, but A Quiet Place got me to come back a second time to see if I could pick up things I knew I missed. It’s not a perfect movie (the background world-building doesn’t quite hold up if you think about it too closely), but the use of silence and muted sound pulls me in and doesn’t let go until the last frame.

October 20: Classic Horror Actor: Vincent Price. Lugosi is my favorite Dracula, Karloff my favorite Frankenstein Monster, but for overall 50s-70s horror, Price is the icon. The look, the voice, it’s all there.

October 21: Contemporary Indy Comic Series: Locke and Key. Joe Hill and Gabriel Ba’s opus checks off so many horror boxes (Lovecraft, serial killers, haunted houses, bodily possessions) and a few sf-nal boxes as well (time travel) that it can’t fall into any one category. The creators also wisely chose to keep the story finite, something I hope the upcoming Netflix series will respect.

October 22: Historical Horror Comic: Blood of the Innocent (WaRP Graphics). Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley’s mini-series pitting Count Dracula against Jack the Ripper is a classic mash-up that deserves far more attention than it seems to get. Really hoping there’s a hardcover collected edition eventually.

October 23: Recent Horror Novella: Widow’s Point by Richard Chizmar. Chizmar’s book is the novel version of a “found footage film,” and he works every angle of the trope to full effect. It managed to make me feel claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time.

October 24: Horror Magazine: The Dark. A consistently solid mix of new stories and reprints every month.

October 25: Haunted Object Novel: Paper Tigers by Damien Angelica Walters. Currently out of print. Walters’ tale of a haunted photo album and the scarred woman who turns its pages pulled me in on page one and didn’t let go.

October 26: Shakespeare Horror: Macbeth. Shakespeare didn’t write horror, you say? This one has witches, ghosts, a serial-killing King and his spouse, sleep-walking, and tons of blood. And it is my favorite Shakespeare play ever, the one for which I will never turn down a chance to see a live production.

October 27: Fairy Tale Horror: “Snow, Glass, Apples” by Neil Gaiman. Most fairy tales, if we go back far enough, are more horror than feel-good cautionary tale. Modern authors have been bringing the horror elements back and tweaking them in interesting ways. I loved Gaiman’s take on Snow White, especially as narrated by Bebe Neuwirth.

October 28: Scariest Werewolf: Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf (Hammer Studios). Chaney may be the classic, and An American Werewolf in London may have better special effects, but for whatever reason Oliver Reed’s werewolf scared me more than either, to the point of nausea. In fact, to the point that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the movie again since I was a teen.

October 29: Kaiju Film: Destroy All Monsters. I loved the giant monster movies that showed up on Saturday and Sunday afternoon television, but the one I still love above the rest is this “all-star” production (most recently rebooted/remade as “Godzilla King of Monsters”). As a kid, I could never understand why Gamora the space turtle wasn’t invited to the shindig (adult me understands they were produced by rival studios).

October 30: LGBTQ Anthology: Night Shadows.  A really wonderful mix of short stories by gay authors that roams the width and breadth of the horror genre.

October 31: Horror Franchise: Universal Studios Monsters (1930s-60s). There are those who debate whether this is a cohesive “universe” or not given the number of entries that don’t connect to others at all and given the number of re-casts for several of the principal characters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster) who do recur and given the mood-swings of the series (see the several entries involving Abbott and Costello). I fall strongly on the “cohesive universe” side regarding Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man, because there was some nominal effort made to connect certain films with those that had come before. It’s harder to link the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the later more sci-fi-horror entries in based solely on what we see in the films, but there’s a small cottage-industry creating those links in short stories and novels. And even if they don’t all link together as a shared universe, the decades-long Universal Monsters brand is rivalled only by Hammer Studios’ output for sheer expansiveness.

Series Saturday: The CW Crisis on Infinite Earths

This is a series about … well, series. I do so love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies. I’ve already got a list of series I’ve recently read, re-read, watched, or re-watched that I plan to blog about. I might even, down the line, open myself up to letting other people suggest titles I should read/watch and then comment on.

For this Series Saturday, instead of looking back at a series I’ve enjoyed, I thought I’d make some predictions about a series that starts tomorrow night (Sunday, December 8, 2019): this year’s big “Arrowverse” crossover on the CW. I’m doing this because quite a few friends have asked what I think will happen, so I thought instead of a dozen text messages I’d just post my thoughts here.

AND YES, IF YOU’RE BEHIND ON THE ARROWVERSE SHOWS, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!

For those who haven’t heard, Crisis on Infinite Earths will span 5 hours, taking up episodes of 5 out of the CW’s 6 DC Comics-based shows: Supergirl, Batwoman and The Flash on December 8-10, and then Arrow and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in mid-January. (Black Lightning will also be appearing, but only as a guest-star; the series has always stayed separate from the rest of the DCCW shows.)

The tagline for the television event, as it was for the original DC Comics maxi-series in the mid-80s, is “Worlds Will Live. Worlds Will Die. And nothing will ever be the same.” For better or worse (and I’ll save my detailed thoughts on this for a different post), the maxi-series irrevocably changed the DC Universe. Pretty much every world but one did die; so did a lot of tertiary and secondary and several notable major DC characters (don’t worry; as is standard in comics now, most of them got better over the intervening decades).

I’m looking forward to seeing what beats and moments from the original comics Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and the individual show runners were able to adapt/incorporate and what they chose to leave out (either because characters have not yet debuted in the Arrowverse shows, or because the moments would make no sense in the context of that universe versus the original comics). I have absolutely NO expectations that five hours of television will rival twelve monthly comic issues, even with the half-season of set-ups done on The Flash and Arrow this fall. But I do have some thoughts and predictions.

WHO WILL LIVE, WHO WILL DIE?

Oliver Queen and Barry Allen: We’ve been told repeatedly over the past several months that in order for anyone else to survive the Crisis, Oliver Queen and Barry Allen must die. Interestingly, it’s The Monitor telling them this, and he hasn’t told either one about the fate of the other. (Ollie thinks he prevented both Barry and Kara’s deaths at the end of the Elseworlds crossover by striking a deal with The Monitor; I don’t think he’s been told Barry is destined to die anyway.) The fact that the other characters on each show only know Ollie and Barry are destined to die because Barry and Ollie have told them leads me to believe that neither one is actually going to die. Also, it’s pretty standard that if a show beats you over the head with a character’s destiny, they will in fact not experience that destiny without some kind of twist.

Arrow is ending for good two weeks after Crisis is over (and one of those episodes is an embedded pilot for a spin-off), but I’m predicting (as I’m sure many others have) that Oliver and Felicity will be given the same send-off that the comic gave to the Golden Age Superman and Lois Lane: living happily ever after (theoretically) in a pocket dimension from which they can never (or so they think) leave. I can’t imagine them outright killing “the one that started it all.”

And The Flash, of course, is not going off the air after Crisis. Barry’s been preparing his team for a “world without Flash,” but I don’t for a minute believe Grant Gustin is hanging up the cowl for more than a few episodes. He may, as they’ve done in a previous season, appear to be lost, but he will be back. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that some other speedster will take Barry’s place at the last minute: and since we’ve seen no evidence that Keiynan Lonsdale (Wally) or Violet Beane (Jessie Quick) will be appearing in Crisis, I’m going to say it will be one of John Wesley Shipp’s characters: either the Flash from Earth-90 or a re-powered Jay Garrick. (This will give Shipp the notoriety of having died on the Flash more times than Tom Cavanagh.)

Prior Minor Characters/Guest Stars: The original comic was well-known for the wholesale slaughter of secondary and lesser characters. Depending on when you started reading DC Comics and/or when you came to read Crisis for the first time, some of those deaths hit harder than others. (For me? The death of the original Dove, Don Hall, made me cry. The death of Mark Merlin / Prince Ra-Man? Not so much.) On the current Arrowverse shows, there aren’t quite as many “blink and you miss them” level characters to be slaughtered by the Anti-Monitor’s Shadow Demons. And the ones that are out there? Well, those actors would cost money to bring back in, if they were even available to reprise their roles. However, I can imagine scenes of carnage like the one that lead off last year’s “Elseworlds” crossover: dead costumed characters strewn across Earth-1’s landscape, with faces not visible so we can’t tell these are just extras. I won’t be surprised to see characters like The Pied Piper, Huntress, Red Tornado, The Ray, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl dead in the background of a shot since at this point those characters/actors are not likely to be brought back. Still, as recently as yesterday showrunner Mark Guggenheim said there were at least 6 cameos/guest-star appearances who had not yet been revealed/spoiled, so there is the possibility of an on-screen death for a former guest-star or two.

Major Characters From Other DC Shows/Movies: We already know we’re going to be seeing, in cameos and/or key scenes, Robert Wuhl (from the Tim Burton Batman), Burt Ward (Batman ’66), Ashley Scott (Birds of Prey tv show), Tom Welling and Erica Durance (Smallville), Kevin Conroy (a Kingdome Come-ish Bruce Wayne) and Brandon Routh (the Donnerverse/Kingdom Come Superman). There was a rumor Tom Ellis (Lucifer) was on set during filming, and I’m holding out hope that some of the unleaked cameos are Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner (Wonder Woman), Helen Slater (Supergirl), Dina Meyer (Oracle on Birds of Prey), David Mazouz or Sean Pertwee (Gotham) and/or Michael Grey/Jackson Bostwick/Garrett Craig (Billy Batson/Captain Marvel from the Shazam tv show). Showing any of these characters dying would have huge emotional impact on those of us who grew up on/watched those shows but possibly less-so on viewers only familiar with the current Arrowverse shows.

Major Characters from the Arrowverse Shows: Of course, what would pack the most emotional punch would be the deaths of one or more of the main casts. The title characters on each show are safe. The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman are not suddenly going to become Frost and Friends, Adventures of The DEO, Thunder and Lightning, or Batwing. But if the producers want us to feel, after the fact, that this crossover actually resulted in a real shake-up of the status quo … somebody major is going to have to be killed off from one or more of the Big Three shows. My thoughts/expectations on who:

·         The Flash: Cisco Ramon. It’s fairly common on drama shows that if a character gets a happy ending and/or closure, they’re probably going to be written out or die (Lost took this to the level of an artform). Cisco has his happy ending: he got rid of the powers he didn’t really want to have, got closure on his relationship with Gypsy (and by extension, Breacher), and has a solid relationship with an understanding and loving girlfriend. But the show has also introduced another super-hacker/scientist type in Chester Runk. And there were rumors last season after Cisco was de-powered that he was leaving. His death would certainly pack the requisite punch for both viewers and fans – more so than Katie/Frost and Ralph, who have their powers and on-going sub-plots. Second Place Guess: Joe West.  There’s no indication Jesse L. Martin is ready to leave the show, and killing yet another of Barry’s father-figures (especially if Jay Garrick takes his place as The Flash Who Must Die) would just be cruel. But after two emotional “I’m not ready to say goodbye to my son” scenes in recent weeks, Joe’s death would be an even bigger gut-punch that Cisco.

·         Supergirl: J’Onn J’Onzz.  Here’s that closure thing again: in the past season or so, J’Onn has moved on from the DEO, gotten closure with the father he thought was dead and the brother he’d forgotten existed, and is in a good place. But we also saw The Monitor tell him that freeing himself of his past is what would make him a valuable part of the team fighting The Crisis. If that’s not a set-up for a heroic, self-sacrificing death, nothing is. Second Place Guess: Brainiac 5. He still has both romantic and a “am I man or machine” storylines going on, but we also know Jeremy Jordan is set to return for a few episodes as Win, which makes me think Brainy could be sacrificed.  Honestly, when it was announced Mechad Brooks was leaving the show, I was confident James Olsen would die during Crisis, but they wrote him out earlier.

·         Arrow: Wild Dog. We already know Black Canary and Black Siren are locked into the back-door pilot, so they’re not being killed off, while Rene has not been mentioned as part of that cast. Since the show seems intent this season on subverting their own future timeline (by having Roy come back to the fold sooner and lose an arm in the process, as well as having Dig and Lyla learn about their sons’ futures and work to prevent that), it would make sense for them to write out Rene before he has a chance to become Mayor and screw up Star City and the Glades. Second Place Guess: Roy Harper. It would be cruel, having Roy willingly lose an arm for the team only to then die for them as well, but they could go this route as a way to even further subvert the future timeline.

·         Legends of Tomorrow: I honestly don’t think they’re going to kill off any of the major cast. We already know Ray Palmer and Nora Darkh are being written out later in the season, so they’re safe. And most of the returning lead cast have on-going sub-plots. However, if they really want to start the new season off with a change in the status quo, killing Nate Heywood off would do it. Yeah, he’s got that whole “I don’t remember the woman I fell in love with” sub-plot brewing, but plots like that have been dropped on shows before when the showrunners wanted to shake things up (remember Ruby being promoted to series regular on Once Upon A Time only to appear in a handful of episodes and then virtually disappear because other storylines took precedent?). Second Place Guesses: either Gary or Mona, since fan reaction to both supporting characters has been less than favorable.

I’m pretty sure that we won’t see a major character death related to Crisis on Black Lightning simply because the show itself is not a part of the crossover. And Batwoman hasn’t been on the air long enough to lose a second main cast member in one season (after the death of Katherine Hamilton in the fall finale), so I think the remaining cast members there are safe.

WORLDS WILL LIVE, WORLDS WILL DIE?

The original comic ended with the Multiverse being destroyed and history being re-written so that there had always been only One Earth. This created a lot of issues for multiple-Earth dopplegangers and characters with the same names but different histories/powers/etc.  The CW shows don’t have that many characters who appear on more than one Earth (and most of those were killed off-camera when Earth-2 bit the dust in the Arrow season premiere) for that to be a storyline problem. (In fact, the only one I can think of that could be a real issue would be the Earth-1 counterpart of Alex Danvers.) But fans have long complained that Supergirl feels way too removed over there on Earth-38 given her great friendship/chemistry with Barry Allen and burgeoning friendship with Kate Kane. We’ve seen in the various trailers that The Monitor decides Earth-38 is where the Heroes need to make their stand, and evidence that first Argo City (home of Supergirl’s birth mother and the few remaining Kryptonians) and then possibly all of Earth-38 get destroyed. There’s also trailer evidence that they manage to evacuate Earth-38 before the anti-matter wave hits.

My prediction is that not all Earths will be destroyed. I think the number of Earths that survive will be small. Most of the Earths that get destroyed will be Earths we’ve either never seen or have only heard mentioned, or will be the Earths for those other DC live action properties outside of the Arrowverse that we know we’re going to be seeing guest-stars from. I’m not even confident Earth-38 will really be destroyed; trailers are notoriously misleading on things like this for dramatic effect. I think we’ll end up with Earth-1 (for Flash, Legends, Batwoman, and the possible Arrow spinoff), Earth-38 (for Supergirl and the possible Superman show), Earth-BL (I don’t think Black Lightning’s Earth has ever been given a numeric designation), possibly Earth-X (just in case they ever want to use evil dopplegangers and The Ray again), and then an Earth-whatever that accounts for the other on-going DC TV shows on other networks (Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, the upcoming Stargirl) and maybe one that accounts for the current “Movieverse.” Although I’m willing to second-guess myself about Earth-38’s destruction. It would definitely shake things up if Earth-1 and -38 were combined, but would also be a storyline logistical nightmare.

KINGDOM COME

We’ve already been told that Brandon Routh’s “Donnerverse” Superman is the Supes from DC’s mini-series Kingdom Come, and photographic evidence that Kevin Conroy’s Bruce Wayne is from that same Earth. My prediction? With the cameo appearance of Robert Wuhl’s “Burtonverse” Batman character Alexander Knox, I’m betting we’ll get at least a line of dialogue or two telling us that Conroy is the Burton Batman and that those movies (and sequels), the 1970s Wonder Woman and Shazam shows, and maybe the Birds of Prey show all took place on that same Earth, even if we don’t get to see Lynda Carter and Helen Slater in their iconic costumes. And of course, that Earth will go out in spectacular fashion after Bruce and Clark are recruited as two of the “Seven” The Monitor mentions need to be found in a recent trailer.

OTHER MINOR PREDICTIONS

·         History will at least slightly be rearranged, through either The Monitor’s doing or the Legends, and after the Crisis is over, Diggle and Lyla (who I predict will both survive) will joyously welcome baby Sara back into the family alongside her twin brother JJ and older adopted brother Connor. And yes, I think Dig and Lyla will remember that they had a daughter, then they didn’t, and now they do again.

·         The Council of Wellses will be completely destroyed, limiting Tom Cavanagh to playing only Reverse Flash, Nash Wells/Pariah (who I think will also survive) and the Earth-2 Wells if he was actually on Earth-3 this whole time, as has been rumored.

·         The West-Allens will find out Iris is pregnant thanks to that little island-hopping vacation they took a few episodes ago – but early next season, they’ll have twins who they’ll name Donald Henry and Dawn Nora. (In the comics, Barry and Iris’s twins were Don and Dawn Allen.)

·         Kevin Conroy will eventually make an appearance as the Earth-1 Bruce Wayne (sans exoskeleton) because like Clark, they can’t avoid the issue of where Bruce has been forever.

I could be completely wrong about all of this. But hey, when it was announced before Season 1 of The Flash that John Wesley Shipp would be playing an important mystery character, I predicted it would be Jay Garrick – and I was only two seasons off! I’ll do a “let’s see how I did post” after the final two hours of the crossover air in mid-January.

Guest Post: Connecting A Village by 'Nathan Burgoine

It’s no secret that I love fictional worlds, whether they’re as vast as a space sector or as intimate as an apartment building. Characters who cross over into each others’ stories, whether as main/supporting characters or winking in-passing references, really make my day. It’s fun teasing those “easter eggs” out when authors pay tribute to a favorite writer or character, but it’s even more fun when an author creates, across stories, an interconnected world. ‘Nathan Burgoine does that in his stories of The Village, the most recent of which, Faux Ho Ho, is available now from Bold Strokes Books. Today, ‘Nathan visits us to discuss how to connect a Village….

Connecting a Village by ‘Nathan Burgoine

When it comes to stories centered around the holidays, I often find myself removed. Sometimes, I mean that literally: when was the last time you saw one of those Hallmark-esque movies including a queer person at all, let alone a queer person with a chosen family of queer people surrounding them? Sometimes, I mean it figuratively: even when you do find the occasional story with a queer main character, if there’s any strain from a familial sense, it’s often resolved with a bow, snowflakes, and tinsel before the credits roll or the epilogue concludes. It’s a yearly frustration, and it very much led to my first foray into queer holiday romance, Handmade Holidays.

Handmade Holidays is all about a chosen family, and how they gather, sometimes part, support each other, sometimes unknowingly fail each other, and grow. As it’s a romance, there’s also a core relationship developing throughout the novella, but my main goal was to show these queer people for what they were: as a real a family as any biological one might be, and no less the loving for it.

I honestly thought I was done with holiday stories after that. I tend to write stories with a dash of speculative fiction, but Handmade Holidays didn’t have a speculative element. I had knowingly set it in my fictional Village—a version of Ottawa’s own gay Village, only with that dash of magic and less gentrification—and the Village was definitely a place I wanted to revisit again and again. The Village is, after all, another metaphor for chosen family, and the magic thereof, and takes center stage in my first collection, Of Echoes Born, including what more-or-less sparks off the rebirth of the Village in the included novelette, “A Little Village Magic.”

But another holiday story? No. Unlikely.

Except…

One of the great things about writing romances is the grand love of various tropes. There are shorthand discussion points to the romance genre that grant whole skeletal frameworks to telling a story, and if there’s one I’ve always loved, it’s the fake relationship trope. There’s just something about people only realizing how they feel when they’re pretending to feel it that really makes my little queer heart go pitter-pat, and part of that, I think, is inherent to the queerness: so many of us spend so much time pretending we’re not what we are. A reversal of that, where pretending leads to a truth? It just feels good.

Also? Fake relationship stories are often funny, and I wanted to write something funny to get myself out of a year-long funk. It turned out to be a good idea on that front, and so Faux Ho Ho, contains some moments I hope will tickle the reader: super-awkward dates, some Dungeons & Dragons cartoon cosplay, and maybe a flung jock strap. A pink one, of course.

Faux Ho Ho grew from the notion of wanting to explore a fake relationship trope plot, coupled with wanting to explore chosen family again, but in a slightly different way. I’d seen a queer friend posting a tribute to “those of us who look at the holidays like a chore of endurance” or something similar, about spending time with families that weren’t outright hostile, but weren’t welcoming, either. Or a mixed bag, where there were family members who were great and loving worth withstanding other family members, who weren’t.

Those two thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone, and it occurred to me that having a fake partner to take home for the holidays would be like bringing a small piece of a chosen family home as backup to get through a difficult time. After that, Faux Ho Ho began to fall into place.

Chosen family meant connections, and so I found myself back in the Village, eyeing the characters who’d come before, looking for an entry point. I knew I wanted someone gregarious for the role of fake boyfriend, and the most outgoing character I’d written thus far was Fiona, an outspoken lesbian who—like Handmade Holidays main character Nick—had been disowned and disconnected from her own family when she came out. In Handmade Holidays, Fiona eventually opens up her own gym, Body Positive, where the mandate is to make sure everyone, no matter how they feel about their body, has a place to foster a more positive relationship with their body and their health.

Having a trainer who worked for Fiona be the fake boyfriend became the first piece of the puzzle, and Dino was born.

Connecting Dino to Handmade Holidays and the Village in general meant I could ground the hero of Faux Ho Ho in the close-knit community I’d already crafted, which as a writer felt akin to putting on a warm sweater I already knew would fit. Silas, a geeky computer programmer type, wasn’t going to be a person who was naturally outgoing, so I eyed my stable of characters and almost immediately decided he’d be connected to Ru, the love interest of Handmade Holidays, who is blunt, outgoing, and doesn’t stand for letting a friend stay on the sidelines when they deserve to be front and center.

During Handmade Holidays, Ru leaves Ottawa to look after his father for a few years, and then returns. When he returns, it’s a quick decision, and he has nowhere to stay immediately, though it’s intimated he couch-surfs with the rest of the characters for a while. At that point, it struck me I had a great way to introduce Silas, and to create the very reason for Silas and Dino to know each other: Silas would be Ru’s roommate, and given the concluding events of Handmade Holidays, Silas would at some point be looking for a new roommate, once Ru moved out.

That became my starting point. Silas and Dino, have been living together as roommates for nine months at the start of Faux Ho Ho, and when Silas is faced with going home for a Thanksgiving event he really, really doesn’t want to attend, Dino jumps in and pretends to be his boyfriend, citing a prior commitment to his own family, and Silas has a graceful out. Neither thinks much of it after that, except when an invitation shows up later for Silas’s sister’s Christmas wedding.

Which is when the whole “fake boyfriend” thing really takes off. Like, in a plane, all the way back to Alberta where Silas’s family lives.

In a similar way to how Handmade Holidays moves through time, a year or two between each chapter, Faux Ho Ho alternates between the present in Alberta and the past nine months that Silas and Dino have spent together as roommates. So much of their time together involves the chosen family of the Village, not just Fiona and Ru, but also Nick, and Phoebe (a trans woman first introduced in Handmade Holidays, who owns and operates a consignment fashion shop we’ve seen before in Saving the Date), Fiona’s wife Jenn and their two kids, Reed and Melody, as well as a few new faces, most importantly Felix and Owen, who make up a quartet alongside Ru and Silas of friends who hang out at Bittersweets (the Village coffee shop) on a weekly basis to catch each other up on their lives.

They also play D&D and board games, because if I’m going to write queer stories, I’m going to include queer nerds out of solidarity for my people. Silas also plays the cleric, which, for my fellow D&D nerds, was a conscious choice that says a lot about who he is.

The chapters where Silas is at home, surrounded by his Village friends and living the life he’s chosen for himself are full of connections. The chapters where Silas is back in Alberta, with his family (but with Dino for backup) are an opportunity to show what those connections have done for him, and how he’s changed in his time in the Village. That was the facet of Chosen Family I really wanted to focus on this time with Faux Ho Ho: how much we grow when we finally get to be the person we are, when we finally find back-up and support.

And although Faux Ho Ho can absolutely be read as a standalone, I don’t think it’s a story I could have written without all the other stories that came before. The short fictions in Of Echoes Born, and the novellas Handmade Holidays and Saving the Date, gave me the confidence to write a character completely bolstered by the support of a good, loving, accepting community because I could picture all of them so clearly. I had a Village, so to speak.

Like Handmade Holidays, I made the choice to stick to something completely contemporary, though the fellas do hang out in Bittersweets and they do mention going to Avery’s chocolate shop from “Vanilla” (another short story set in the Village, where the proprietor has a habit of adding a mystical oomph to anything he crafts by hand, including his chocolates). Faux Ho Ho doesn’t have a speculative element, but that’s not to say there’s no magic. It’s just this time the magic is the kind found in the strength of support and community, pride, and a really well-timed kickboxing lesson or two.

--

’Nathan Burgoine grew up a reader and studied literature in university while making a living as a bookseller. His first published short story was “Heart” in the collection Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction. Since then, he’s had dozens of shorter fictions published, including releasing his first collection Of Echoes Born. He does sometimes write longer things, including novellas (In Memoriam, Handmade Holidays, and Saving the Date) and has crossed the line into novel-writing, too. His debut novel, Light, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and since then he’s released two urban paranormal novels, Triad Blood and Triad Soul, and a contemporary speculative YA novel, Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks. He lives in Ottawa, Canada with his husband and their rescued husky. You can find him online at NathanBurgoine.com.

READING ROUND-UP: September 2019

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and writing.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues and stand-alone short stories in e-book format as “books.” I read or listened to 11 books in September: 10 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 0 in audio. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #112 (September 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Rajan Khanna’s “All In,” Seanan McGuire’s “Hello, Hello,” and Kiina Ibura Salaam’s “Desire.”

2.       Beyond the Farthest Star by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I grabbed this off of my bookshelf when I realized that it was ERB’s birthday, mostly because it was the shortest ERB book on my shelf. It’s comprised of two novellas about the adventures of “Tangar,” an Earth human transported to a planet much further away than Burroughs’ more well-known star-faring heroes John Carter (of Mars) and Carson Napier (of Venus). There’s a ton of wonderful world-building that left me wanting more of the main character, his friends, and the planet they’re on.

3.       The Dreaming Volume 1: Pathways and Emanations by Simon Spurrier, Bilquis Everly, and others. Part of DC’s “Sandman Universe” relaunch. I was happy to see old favorite Sandman characters return (Lucien, Jack Pumpkinhead, Cain, Abel, Eve, Matthew, even Brute and Glob), and was even happier to see the return of one of DC’s horror anthology hosts from the 70s who didn’t make it into Gaiman’s run (I won’t spoil the surprise). I’m intrigued by the new characters added to the mix, but am not sure I’m happy with the way Daniel, the current Dream, is handled. Still, I’ll read the next trade collection.  

4.       The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13), by Seanan McGuire. The latest Toby Daye book takes October into uncomfortable and unfamiliar waters – literally, as all but the opening chapters take place in a floating fairy Knowe in the Summerlands version of the Pacific Ocean. Toby still has most of her support group with her, but none of them can really help her fulfill the destiny her mother and older sister both avoided, helping the Ludiaeg end the existence of the Selkies. Lots of great twists and turns.

5.       Midnighter and Apollo by Steve Orlando, Fernando Blanco, Romulo Fajardo and others.  I really enjoyed this look at Midnighter and Apollo’s relationship, and how far they’ll each go to save or protect the other. (Someday, I really should go back and read all of their earlier appearances.) Also loved Orlando’s use of rarely-seen gay DC Comics characters Extrano and the Tasmanian Devil.

6.       Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I’m very late in coming to Moreno-Garcia’s earliest novel, and it blew me away. Magic through Music in Mexico City, juxtaposing the characters’ teen years with their present-day circumstances. I really don’t understand how Netflix hasn’t snapped this up as a mini-series.

7.       At The Bay by Katherine Mansfield.  An interesting character study of a group of women at a seaside resort for the summer. Full Review Here.

8.       The Ebon Jackal (Folley & Mallory #6) by E. Catherine Tobler. I was sad to see this series come to an end with this installment. I’ve grown to really love Elaine Folley, Virgil Mallory and their companions, and the intrigue of exactly what Anubis has been manipulating them towards over the course of these books. In the final installment, Tobler alternates the stories of Folley, her time-traveling mother, and time-traveling grandmother, to reveal all.

9.       Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus. The October offering is a disturbing look into the mind of several potential mass murderers.  Full Review Here.

10.   The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez. A really fantastic short story collection from the author of Sal & Gabi Break the Universe. Combining hard science, Cuban mythology, a bit of fantasy and even a crime story. Hernandez’ wit and wordplay shine in every story. Full Review Coming.

11.   The Storm Runner (The Storm Runner #1) by J.C. Cervantes. Another #ownvoices entry under the Rick Riordan Presents banner. It took a while for me to connect with the main character and his situation, but the second half of the book really takes off. I’m not as familiar with Mayan mythology as I am with Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Norse, and still felt like I understood the interactions and the background. (Also, made me want to seek out books of North, Central and South American native mythologies.)

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 365 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) each year. Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it:

1.       “Exile From Extinction” by Ramez Naam, from Lightspeed Magazine #112 (September 2019 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Sacrid’s Pod” by Adam-Troy Castro

3.       “Hello, Hello” by Seanan McGuire

4.       “The Answers That You Are Seeking” by Jenny Rae Rappaport

5.       “A Bird, A Song, A Revolution” by Brooke Bolander

6.       “Flight of the Crowboys” by Micah Dean Hicks

7.       “All In” by Rajan Khanna

8.       “Desire” by Kinii Ibura Salaam

9.       “Come Marching In” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

10.   “Adventure on Poloda” by Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Beyond the Farthest Star.

11.   “Tangor Returns” by Edgar Rice Burroughs

12.   “Hope Is Swift” by Seanan McGuire, new novella at the end of her novel The Unkindest Tide.

13.   “The Aphotic Ghost” by Carlos Hernandez, from The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria.

14.   “Homeostasis” by Carlos Hernandez

15.   “Entanglements” by Carlos Hernandez

16.   “The International Studbook of the Giant Panda” by Carlos Hernandez

17.   “Los Simpáticos” by Carlos Hernandez

18.   “More Than Pigs and Rosaries Can Give” by Carlos Hernandez

19.   “Bone of My Bone” by Carlos Hernandez

20.   “The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory” by Carlos Hernandez

21.   “American Moat” by Carlos Hernandez

22.   “Fantaisie Impromptu No. 4 in C#min, Op. 66” by Carlos Hernandez

23.   “The Assimiliated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria” by Carlos Hernandez

24.   “Brigid Was Hung By Her Hair From The Second Story Window” by Gillian Daniels, from The Dark #52, edited by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

25.   “Our Towns Talents” by Simon Stranzas

26.   “The Ways of Walls and Words” by Sabrina Vourvoulias, read by Ezzy G. Languzzi and Isabel Schechter, on the Cast of Wonders podcast, September 27, 2019

So that’s 26 short stories in September, keeping me way ahead for the year so far. (September 30th was the 273rd day of 2019.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 3 of 14 read.

365 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  26 read; YTD: 348 of 365 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 2 read; YTD: 23 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 11 read; YTD: 103 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 5 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 of 10 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 0 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I may not do something like this every month but September was Hispanic Heritage Month, so I set a goal to read as much stuff by Hispanic/Latinx authors as possible. It didn’t end up being as much as I wanted to read, in fact not even a majority of what I read for the month, but I did read books by Carlos Hernandez, J.C. Cervantes, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, plus two stories edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and a graphic novel that had art by two Hispanic creators.

October’s mini-goal of course is: Horror, Horror, Horror! Because Halloween!(October is also apparently German-American Heritage Month, Polish-American Heritage Month, and Italian-American Heritage Month. So I may try to read at least one book by someone from each of those backgrounds. That would be a mini-mini-goal!)

Book Excerpt: SIMON SAYS by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

I had a chance to read an electronic Advance Review Copy of Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s sci-fi police procedural Simon Says a few weeks back. I’ll let the book description that follows tell you all about the plot and focus on what I loved about the book: the seamless interweaving of three very different genres. The book is part near-future SF (androids that pass as human), part police-procedural (well-researched by the author through several ride-alongs with current KCPD officers), and part comedy (mostly from character interactions, but also near-future pop culture references that include Wolfie Van Halen’s band). It’s not easy to get these three genres in perfect harmony, but Schmidt manages it throughout the book. No one genre overwhelms the others. It’s an ideal read for folks who love books that blend genres. It’s also the start of a new series.

The excerpt that follows the book description is perhaps my favorite scene in the book that doesn’t involve car chases or shoot-outs. It also happens to combine all three elements, and features a guest appearance (of sorts) by my favorite rock band of the 1970s. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Master Detective John Simon is a tough, streetwise fifteen year veteran of the Kansas City Police Department with a healthy disdain for the encroachment of modern technology into his workplace. When his partner is kidnapped after a routine stakeout by thugs with seeming ties to connected, wealthy art dealer Benjamin Ashman, he’s determined to find the truth, but the only witness is a humanoid android named Lucas George. Reluctantly, he takes Lucas along as he begins to investigate and soon finds himself depending more and more on the very technology he so distrusts. Meanwhile, Simon’s precocious teenage daughter begins to teach Lucas how to sound more like a cop using dialogue from famous cop movies. If only he’d use them in the appropriate context.

As the two men dig in deeper, they find themselves and every witness they touch faced with danger from assassins as they begin to uncover a conspiracy that may stretch from the heights of the KCPD itself to South America and beyond. Can they identify the guilty before it’s too late without getting themselves killed in the process?

This exciting new mix of near future science fiction and procedural thriller captures the gritty realism of Michael Connelly’s Bosch, the humor and action of Lethal Weapon, and follows the classic science fiction tradition of Isaac Asimov’s City of Steel. From the editor of the international bestselling phenomenon The Martian by Andy Weir, and the national bestselling author of tales including official entries in The X-Files, Predator, and the Joe Ledger thrillers, comes this action-packed first entry in an exciting new series.

EXCERPT

"Who we looking for first?" Lucas asked from the seat beside him.

"Ashman's ex-protege, Mia McGuire—now one of his chief critics and rivals," Simon said, while waiting at a light in the left turn lane at Broadway.

"I thought when you called she wasn't in the office," Lucas said.

Simon nodded. "Yeah, but her assistant said she was at lunch with Japanese clients, Woo Song." He made the turn on Broadway and began scanning the right side for the restaurant.

"Really? What is that?"

"It's a restaurant, karaoke. I don't think the slip was intentional."

"What's karaoke?"

"People singing along to favorite songs," Simon said. "Crazy human antics. You'll love it."

Lucas pursed his lips and mumbled, "Hmmm."

Simon pulled into a small lot and found one of two open spaces, parking the Charger. Woo Song was to the north. He and Lucas got out and headed for the doors.

"Look, it would help me out if you can distract her clients somehow, while I talk with her," Simon said. "We don't want word spreading around about investigating Ashman any further than it already has."

Lucas nodded as Simon grabbed the door handle of the glass front door. Lights fluttered inside from the dance floor and pounding music leaked through to the street.

"I'll see what I can do," Lucas said.

"They're Japanese," Simon suggested. "These people love robots. Improvise."

Lucas shot him a quizzical look as Simon opened the door and they stepped inside.

The place smelled of Chinese food buffet and exotic spices. Half the tables were empty, but Simon immediately spotted two Asian men dancing and singing to Madonna on the stage. They didn't look like "Material Girls," but they were enthusiastic about making the claim.

Scanning the room, he found a dark-skinned woman in an expensive, tailored business jacket and skirt, sitting with three other Asians at a table on the right side, two away from the stage. There were six plates filled to the brim with Chinese food. The three Asians were eating with chopsticks and laughing. The woman—Mia McGuire, he hoped—was using a fork and watching the performers on the stage with amusement. The woman looked to be in her early forties, about right for a person who'd started with Ashman in her twenties and been pushed out a little over a decade later. Now they were rivals and she had her own company, smaller, but still competitive. Her lips were full, round, her eyes intense, focused, very blue, and she wore just enough makeup to highlight her features well but not seem obvious. She was important and she dressed and acted like it.

As Simon headed for the table, Lucas stood to one side, watching the stage with curiosity. The two Asians performing weren't awful as karaoke goes, and Simon had to admit he loathed karaoke, especially when it involved people with voices like cats serenading an alley. The Asians wore business suits and ties, like their three companions, but that didn't stop them from awkwardly moving enthusiastically to the rhythms in some kind of attempt at real choreography. Their voices were far better than their moves.

Simon stopped beside the table and smiled. "Mia McGuire?"

She looked up, surprised. "Yeah. Who's asking?"

Simon was reluctant to flash her a badge in front of her clients. "I need to talk with you about something important."

She frowned. "This is important. I'm with clients." She panned the table with her hand.

"Yes, but official business," he said, emphasizing the third word and locking his eyes on hers, trying to get the message through.

"Official like what? You an agent or something?" She shifted nervously in her chair, looking at the Japanese, who had quickly gone back to watching their friends and ignoring Simon as soon as they realized he wasn't talking to them.

"Yeah, something," Simon said.

The Madonna song ended, and the three Japanese applauded their friends vociferously and stood, bantering in Japanese—obviously deciding who would be next—as the others stepped down from the platform and came back to the table.

McGuire had kept her stare focused on Simon, even as she put on her best smile and joined the applause from her clients and others at nearby tables. "This isn't a good time," she said through clenched teeth.

Before any of McGuire's group could get to the stage, Simon heard the familiar strains of Styx and turned to see Lucas standing before the microphone. The Japanese businessmen brightened with recognition and began conversing, then Lucas launched into:

"Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, Mata au hi made... Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, Himitsu wo shiri tai..."

The android’s Japanese sounded perfect, incredibly so. Then he did the best Robot Dance Simon had ever seen. The Japanese businessmen enthusiastically raced to the stage to cheer him on and Simon found himself alone with McGuire.

He badged her. "It's about Benjamin Ashman."

McGuire scowled at the name then looked toward the stage and her clients. She sighed. "Can we make it quick?" Her gaze found his again with a look that said: not in front of the clients, please.

Lucas launched into the verse now with the Japanese handling the echoes: "You're wondering who I am (secret secret I've got a secret)..."

Simon nodded and sat down beside her in one of the vacated chairs. "You were Ashman's protégé, yes?"

"You clearly know that or you wouldn't be here," McGuire said. "My guess is we have about three minutes. Is that really the stuff you want to ask me?"

Simon grunted, accepting the challenge. "In your time with Ashman, did he ever involve you or himself in anything that pushed boundaries?"

McGuire raised a brow. "That's what his business is about—pushing boundaries, getting there first."

Simon clarified, "Legally."

She chuckled. "Ah, of course." She thought a moment. "Actually, he was pretty clean. In fact, shockingly so for one so rich and powerful in my experience. Didn't even make lewd comments, hit on me—like the others did. In fact, he called them out for it a time or two."

"Really?" Simon knew that wasn't always the case, even in the 21st Century, despite all the progress society had supposedly made. "So, he wouldn't be involved in illegal nanochips, data, forged art..."

McGuire turned back from the stage, stiffening and straightening in her chair. "Are you saying he is?" She seemed totally shocked at the idea.

"I'm saying someone might be," Simon said.

"At Ashman Industries?" she asked, clarifying.

Simon nodded.

She shook her head. "Wow. That would blow my mind if it's Benjamin. I mean, I am pissed at the guy for the way I got tossed aside and written off, and he's a tough competitor, doesn't make it easy for me going out on my own like this, but—" She paused, thinking a moment.

Simon waited, not wanting to interrupt her and break her train of thought.

Lucas and the Japanese hit the chorus now: "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo, Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo..."

"You know, most of it was Paul," she said then.

"Paul Paulsen?"

She nodded, her eyes darkening at the mention of his name, flashing a bit of anger. "Yeah, he's the one who really pushed me out. Ashman hired him out of college like me. Supposed to be his next big protégé."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, For doing the jobs that nobody wants to. And thank you very much, Mr. Roboto. For helping me escape just when I needed to..." Lucas sang.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," McGuire's clients sang in pronounced accents. "I want to thank you, please, thank you..."

"But Paul hated me from day one," McGuire continued. "Hated women, I think. But he resented me for sure, and I thought he was a cocky, smartass kid who should have respected my position and accomplishments and let me teach him. It started that way, too. Ashman encouraged it." She took a sip of her soda and leaned back in her chair. "But Paul worked on him, earned his trust, his ear, had a couple of impressive successes that didn't involve me, showed me up once or twice—and that was it. I was out, he was in."

"So he replaced you?"

"In Benjamin's favor, yes...and then eventually in my job, too," she agreed. "I wasn't asked to leave. I felt I had no choice. I wasn't going anywhere in Ashman's company anymore, you know? And I had ambitions, goals...I was almost as good at what Benjamin does as he was, and everyone knew it. Maybe Paul targeted me because of it..." Her voice trailed off as she looked down, lost in sad memories.

Simon watched Lucas dance for a minute, amazed by the android's well designed choreography. They'd heard the song on the radio the other day but where did he get that?

"The problem's plain to see: Too much technology."

"Your friend isn't bad," McGuire said with a chuckle.

Simon nodded. "Yeah, I had no idea."

"My clients love it," she said and sounded pleased.

"So if I look at illegal activities, you think I should start with Paulsen?" Simon asked, getting back to business as the song entered repeated choruses, winding toward the end.

"Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, domo...domo..."

"Yeah, I would," she said, sounding sad. "Hell, for all I know he could have corrupted Benjamin by now. We don't see each other or interact much and haven't for years now. But I know who he used to be, and the old Ashman wouldn't risk his hard work with such crap. But Paulsen...yeah, he's capable of anything."

She grew silent then, watching her clients dance and cheer as Lucas finished the song. Then they all gave him high fives as the android stepped down from the stage.

"Purrfect," Simon heard one of them yell.

Lucas thanked them as they followed him back toward their table and McGuire. Simon stood.

"Get what you needed?" Lucas said softly as he stopped beside his partner.

Simon laughed. "Yeah, for now."

The Japanese men were chattering and circling round Lucas like he was a celebrity.

Lucas shrugged. "You wanted them distracted."

"Where'd you learn that dance?" Simon asked.

"The Robot? It's in my programming," Lucas said sotto voce.

Simon thought it was a joke but couldn't tell for sure. "Really?"

Lucas winked.

If you enjoyed or were intrigued by that excerpt, here’s a look at the cover to Simon Says. Of course, the book is available via all online outlets, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble.