Lincoln Crisler

The easiest definition I can think of for steampunk (or at least the wittiest) is “the science fiction George Washington would have read as a boy, had there been such a thing.” If we follow the science fiction analogy down the road a bit, I think we can safely say that Cherie Priest is well on her way to becoming the Gene Roddenberry of steampunk.

Clementine is the second book set in her Clockwork Century alternate universe. The first, Boneshaker, set the stage in the late 1800s, with an independent Texas and a ongoing Civil War that’s lasted for over two decades. Belle Boyd is a former Confederate spy, cast aside by her Rebel handlers when she became too (in)famous to go undercover. Desperate for employment, she is hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency out of Chicago to ensure that a former Confederate airship delivers its vital cargo to Louisville, Kentucky, without any interference by the pirates chasing it down. Those pirates are under the leadership of Croggon Hainey, former slave, and the ship he’s chasing is his. When pirate and spy meet, they discover there’s more going on than either of them knew, and when they decide to solve their problems together, they’re easily greater than either of them separately.

Hainey and Belle are both excellent characters that grow visibly closer during the course of the book, starting as enemies and quickly learning to respect each other; I daresay the two would make quite the couple, though I kind of like how Priest stayed away from the sort of tomfoolery many authors (including myself!) would have been tempted to include. Lamar and Simeon, Hainey’s crew, round out the cast of main charactes, and play an excellent foil to the captain’s burgeoning admiration for Belle.

While set in the Clockwork Century that’s grown on fans of Priest since Boneshaker’s release last year, Clementine is also a great introduction to her steampunk universe for those who haven’t read the first book. It’s not a sequel, by any means. While Clementine does reference events from Boneshaker, Priest couches those nods in such a manner so as to raise curiosity, not confusion, among the uninitiated. One can easily pluck Clementine from a bookstore shelf, enjoy it thoroughly and then move on to Boneshaker. Those who have read Boneshaker will find that Clementine only dulls the appetite slightly; the story is perfectly suited for its 200 pages, but it’s hard not to want more of Priest’s steampunk. Luckily, more is on the way; Dreadnought, the second TOR novel set in the Clockwork Century, is due in September.

…from a couple of my Seven Deadly Pens colleagues!  I’ve read and blurbed two of these and have the third on my review pile, and I’d be happy to spread the word about these books even if the authors weren’t pals.

Kevin Wallis’ debut collection of short stories, BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THINGS, is being released September 1. You can read more about the book at the publisher’s website, but my two cents goes a little like this:

“Wallis’ storytelling is versatile and heartfelt.  Beneath the Surface of Things is a poignant approach to terrors both supernatural and standard.”

– Lincoln Crisler, author of Magick & Misery

“Tales of a High Planes Drifter” is a collection of four novella-length tales featuring the Merkabah Rider and his adventures in the 19th-century American West. The Rider himself is reminiscent of no one more than Stephen King’s Roland of Gilead; a gunman with conviction, who is prepared to kill but still has lines he won’t cross. Dropping an Hasidic Jew into the Wild West is a pretty gutsy move, but it just might make this one of the genre’s standout books this year.

Not only is the Rider a gunslinger, he’s also a potent Qabbalist (one skilled in the secret arts of Hebrew mysticism; seals of Solomon and the like) capable of astral travel and creating magical talismans. He uses his many talents in a series of battles against bigotry, attackers both supernatural and mundane, and his own tortured conscience.

The general thread woven throughout the stories in the book is that of a man, betrayed by his master, seeking justice in the name of his fallen brethren. In the course of the Rider’s search for the traitorous Adon he takes on a bloodthirsty cult (“The Blood Libel”), a group of bandits in league with a voodoo bokor (“The Dust Devils”), a demon-possessed, grief-stricken father and husband (“Hell’s Hired Gun”), and a cathouse staffed by the daughters of Lilith (“The Nightjar Women”).

Erdelac is a self-proclaimed history enthusiast, and “Tales of a High Planes Drifter” is packed with what must have been a staggering amount of research into Jewish history and mysticism. His descriptive skills are top-notch and he exhibits particular skill at knowing when to throw in a bit of extra gore. The second book comes out this fall, which only adds to the win.

Originally appeared on Shroud Magazine’s Book Review Blog.

The first draft of WILD, my western/detective novella (with zombies) is complete. 94 pages, 18,653 words. Now my crit partners get to hack it to bits, and I get to polish my query. Gawd, that sounds dirty. No celebratory Scotch, not yet anyhow, but I did treat myself to an Irish Truffle coffee while I finished the book and a nice iced coffee after. Life’s small pleasures and all.

There will be much thanking of assorted personages in the back-of-book acknowledgments page,  but for now I’d like to take the time to thank my Seven Deadly Pens critique group and all of my loyal social network minions who have expressed their support since last fall, when I started this project. Especially the Pens, since they had to slog through the first-first draft and back up their well-wishing with line edits! You all rock!

Dubaku is a short (40-someodd pages), fast-paced horror story set on a 1790′s slave ship. The protagonist, for whom the book is named, surrenders himself willingly to slavers in the hope of rejoining his wife, who had been sold into slavery by her own people as punishment for her marriage to Dubaku. A couple weeks packed into the ship’s hold with hundreds of sick, malnourished, abused and dying slaves awakens him to a harsh reality: none of them are likely to survive, and his chances of rejoining his beloved are slim to none. He is spurred to action, either by spirits or his own twisted sense of justice, and the horrfying results aren’t all that great for the ship’s crew, or the slaves for that matter.

Erdelac’s novella is expertly written, but for one small infodump near the beginning that probably could have been spread out a bit over the first half of the book. He does an excellent job of describing the misery of the slaves, the cruelty of the ship’s crew and the greed of the ship’s captain. The various indignities visited upon the slaves and Dubaku in particular are recorded in detail; I give Erdelac a lot of credit for choosing such an emotionally-charged setting and not shying away from the grim facts of one of mankind’s darkest hours. The crown jewel of the book is Dubaku himself, a powerful African shaman from a family steeped in magic. At the beginning of the book he stands tall and proud, assured of his mission’s success. He rapidly devolves into a man awakened to the truth of his situation, and he makes some dark choices that make it hard to consider him a hero by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever you think of Dubaku (the man) after reading Dubaku (the book), you can’t argue with the logic behind his decisions: the slaves were doomed from the start, and those bastard slavers definitely had it coming.

4.5/5. I already have Erdelac’s next work in queue and can’t wait to get to it.

Creeping Shadows is a collection of three novellas by Alan Draven, Brandon Ford and Jessica Lynne Gardner, and features stories about Jack the Ripper, a brutal fictionalized account of a real-life event and a series of curse-fueled murders. All three stories are excellent, though if I had to pick a favorite, I’d have to go with Ford’s  nonstop, brutal Merciless. The book’s a solid 4/5, and I thought it would be fun to get all three authors together for an interview. So, without further ado:

LC: How did the idea for Creeping Shadows get started? Were these particular stories included from the start, or was there a submissions process?

AD: I’m a big fan of novella collections so I thought it’d be a great idea to publish a book featuring three novellas from three different authors. I’ve known Brandon for a couple of years now and am a fan of his work so I asked him if he’d be interested and he was so all we were missing was a third partner in crime. Since a lot of today’s independent writers are women, I figured it’d be a nice addition to our trio to have Jessica come onboard with us. She accepted my invitation and it grew from there. I gave Brandon and Jessica the very large theme of stories about monsters—whether they be supernatural or not—and a few weeks later the project was a go.

LC: Alan, I love stories about Jack the Ripper, my all-time favorite being Richard Laymon’s Savage. Yours is different in that the Ripper is actually haunted by a ghost, a novel idea that I don’t think I’ve seen in any other stories about Jack. What made you think of it?

AD: I’ve been fascinated by Jack the Ripper for as long as I can remember. The idea for the story actually came to me in a very vivid dream where I was an ethereal bystander witnessing Jack the Ripper murdering a prostitute and seeing her ghost rise from her slain body only to come back and haunt him later on. I did a little bit of research to find out if something similar had been done before and it seemed no one had spun that twist in a Ripper story, so I went ahead and began writing.

LC: Brandon, your story, Merciless, is based on a true story. Can you give us some of the background on this?

BF: Merciless was inspired by a real-life kidnapping that took place in California back in 2002.  Two teenage girls were abducted at gunpoint and savagely assaulted several times throughout the night.  Their captor, a family man, was known by his friends and neighbors as a sweet and kind individual.  But, as those closest to him came to find, alcohol altered his personality drastically.  He’d become often times violent under the influence, but never had he done anything as vicious as this before.  This kidnapping was the first to utilize the Amber Alert system, which proved to be incredibly effective, as it played a key role in the girls’ rescue.

LC: All three of your topics appear to be research-heavy. What were some of your experiences doing the research for your stories?

AD: I’m not big on research unless it’s a subject that I’m really enthralled about. For Vengeance is Mine, my story in Creeping Shadows, I immersed myself for two months in a Jack the Ripper bible and a handful of reliable websites. I read Ripper resources exclusively for the duration of that period of time, scribbling furiously in a notebook all the details of the murders; street names, times of death, conditions in which the bodies were found, etc. When I was done with my research, I felt like I knew the historical aspect, facts, and all the theories on Jack the Ripper like the back of my hand. I was in a very dark state of mind at the end of this, having bathed in the subject for such a long period of time. I then made up my own mind about what had happened, meaning who I thought would have most likely been Jack the Ripper based on everything I’d read. I added to that the angle that he was haunted by one of his victims and I had a historical horror tale on my hands.

BF: I first learned about this incident through a 48 Hours: Hard Evidence special.  I then did a lot of online research for further details I could use in the piece.  However, I tried not to put the case under a microscope, as I wanted to put my own spin on what happened.  So, even though a lot of what is in Merciless actually happened, a large portion of it is pure fiction.

JLG: I’ve always loved researching different cultures. I was one of those kids that adored history and theology and my nose was always stuck in a book on ancient societies so it wasn’t that difficult to get me to read about Mexican superstitions, history and culture! I think Dia De Los Muertos, which is the Mexican Day of the Dead that my story revolves around, is a beautiful tradition because they view death so much differently. They honor the lives of the dead and do not fear death-instead they see it as a cycle of life. To further understand the holiday I actually got some recipes for sugar skulls and candied pumpkin (both are Dia De Los Muertos staples and are featured in Sugar Skull) and made them for my own family and friends. A writer should experience as much of what they are writing about as possible and I like to use all of my senses.

LC: Jessica, you have stories featured in a lot of anthologies from the last couple of years, but Sugar Skull is your longest published work that I’m aware of. How did writing Sugar Skull compare to the other work you’ve done?

JLG: Sugar Skull is my longest published work but I’ve actually been writing longer works from day one. As a child I worked on fantasy novels (which never saw the light of day) that I would give to my family and friends to read. This continued well up into my teens until I took my AP English class my senior year of high school. It was there that I wrote my very first short story. Because I’d never fully completed my novels (I think I was too young to focus properly) I decided to try my hand at short dark fantasy and horror. It was challenging at first to write shorts but it taught me much about writing and editing. Sugar Skull was a bit between both worlds but it made me get back into my novel writing groove and with all the experience I’ve gained from my short publications, it was a lot smoother and an easier transition. Now I’m back to writing novels! What I love about the longer works is the ability to have so much room and creative reign with the settings and plot. I feel that short stories are more about characterization and the details are limited. Being a detailed oriented person I love to spin a nice long tale filled with history, plot turns and lavish descriptions.

LC: What can we expect to see from the three of you in the near future?

AD: I currently have a Halloween short story titled “The Rattling Man” in the Horror Zine’s first annual anthology—And Now the Nightmare Begins. In March, The Odd Mind radio show’s Lesa Trapp will be publishing a book on writing titled Indies On Writing for which I wrote the Foreword and a piece on writing about the importance of self editing. And there is a chance that a collection of novellas and short stories of mine will be released in late 2010 titled Nocturnal Offerings through Pixie Dust Press.

BF: My third novel, Pay Phone, will be released by Arctic Wolf Publishing towards the end of March.  Set in the late ‘90s, it concerns a serial killer that uses the public phone located across the street from his building as a way to lure his victims.  Watching from his third floor window, he dials strangers on the street and lures them into his web.  It’s definitely the darkest out of the novels I’ve written so far and the one I’m most proud of.

JLG: Since I’m back in my favorite element with longer works, I have a newly finished supernatural horror novella based on master-builder legends and am finishing up my first novel and beginning a dark fantasy novel series. So hopefully you’ll be seeing a lot more from me very soon!