'Automata' and Creepy... Automata

I read E.T.A. Hoffmann's collection of short fiction ages ago, and "The Sandman" ranks way up there on my list of dark fantasy / gothic fantasy short fiction (second only to "Rappaccini's Daughter", another short story that's set the fire under the muse's feet a few times through the years). The idea of a mannequin coming to life and fooling people was an itch I couldn't ignore and ended up scratching it until Automata came out of it. 

Okay, granted a magically infused doll fooling people into thinking it's a real woman is a bit of a stretch, but that's a damn good prompt for a story. 

And Venice is back to being the ideal location for a darkly magical story -- I actually refer to it as something like folktale horror -- and in the Curiosities universe, it's still a city on the water with canals and palazzos and extravagant ballrooms while guarded by special supernatural protector knights (in a manner of speaking). The guardians in this book are the Maschere ("masks" in English), and they're dressed in all black with white masks -- the traditional Venetian costume of the bauto and the tabarro, and they stand well over six feet tall. 

They also hunt supernatural threats in their own way.

The automata are all part of a collection of inventions by a noblewoman. One of them goes rogue and comes after Alexej once he takes that fatal step of wishing for love after suffering humiliation in his efforts at forging connections with possible partners.  

Loneliness and the threat of death from a weak constitution and a lifelong dependence on medication make him vulnerable to making cursed wishes, which is the overarching theme in all three books I wrote for the Curiosities collection. Alexej and his adoptive family first made their appearance in Dollhouse, the book that debuts the not-quite-series, hence the book's opening referencing the fate of Alexej's best (and only) friend, Arthur. You don't need to read Dollhouse, though, to enjoy Automata as each book in the collection was written to stand alone despite events all taking place in the same universe. 

Automata is part of this month's Backlist Bonanza special, and it's on sale for 50% from online bookstores.  

'Compline' Gallery Page Now Up

Like the post title says. The gallery page for Compline is finally up and running, and it's actually a more serious page than the ones before it. All right, call it a very earnest page.There aren't any music videos included, alas alack, but I do get into enough detail about what I took from the original folktale and how it was worked into my version of it.

It was really tempting to reveal way more about the book, but I managed to hold back. You'll just have to wait till the book comes out on July 1 to see what it's all about. :D

Anyway, you can go here for the main gallery page, where pages to other books are also linked, and you can check them all out.  

In other news, I did flirt a little with the idea of possibly diving into gothic horror zines as a future project, but there are too many restrictions I'm already facing (time and physical space being the primary ones), so I'll settle for being a happy supporter of zines I can get my hands on. I've already purchased a couple from Etsy, and I love them -- especially the whole DIY nature of these booklets. Democracy in publishing, yeah!

As for me, looking into the future (past 2026, I mean), I am going to continue writing and publishing the stories I'm known for. 

The difference between now and the future is the output, i.e., the calendar will be reduced from three books to two per year. For good reason, y'all. While I'm easing my way to retirement from writing and publishing (not any time soon, judging from my recent time spent in introspection and the resurgent inspiration and determination that came from it), I'll just be balancing my time and will be engaging in more relaxed activities for myself away from the computer. 

I did say I'm one of the growing numbers who're moving back to analog -- as a Gen Xer, I'm more than comfortable with that as it was the world I was born into, and if I could, I'd ditch my phone and just limit online stuff to my desktop. But I need it for work. Anyway, I'm looking more and more into activities I can do in solitude that will help me find balance again (not to mention enjoy life like I did in my younger years). 

As a fun aside, I'm hoping to pick up my crochet hooks again and this time actually complete a sweater project.  

June Backlist Bonanza: 'Automata' and 'Children of Hyacinth'

Hello, June! Love you already (don't make a liar out of me, bro). My current WiP is coming along pretty swimmingly, I've finally put in a vacation request for my birthday week in August, and other real life things outside work are also progressing surprisingly well. As an aside, for a variety of complex and irritating reasons, I haven't taken any vacation time for over five years straight, so this is a massive victory for me. Hoping to do better next year with at least two weeks off (not taken together, of course). 

But I'm not here for that. I be here for this month's books for my Backlist Bonanza. So for starters, a book from my Curiosities collection:

AUTOMATA

A disastrous incident at a ball in St. Jude threatens to undo Alexej Sauveterre, and his protective adoptive family whisk him off to San Marco, a mythical and romantic city in the water. Born sickly, young Alexej has grown up resigned to the fact that only his family's immense wealth makes him barely palatable to other gentlemen seeking partners.

The family's sojourn in San Marco at first promises a much-needed distraction to Alexej when his older brother introduces him to an aristocratic inventor of automata as well as an old school friend who now tours the European continent as a classical pianist. Baseless hope and heartbreak, however, seem to follow Alexej everywhere.

Alexej's fascination for automata and his hopeless infatuation with Briant Cousineau draw the attention of an entity from the otherworld, one that's been wandering the globe for unwary souls to claim through cursed wishes. San Marco's winged lion summons the city's supernatural guardians in answer, and in the midst of glittering balls, magical clockwork puppets, and lonely dreams, a terrifying fight for Alexej's soul darkens the streets of a fading city.

And secondly, a book from my Arcana Europa collection:

CHILDREN OF HYACINTH

Iulian Dalca is a twenty-one-year-old musical prodigy with big dreams. He's also blessed with a hint of light magic in his blood, a gift that's apparently unique to prodigies and whose purpose appears to be the developing of an extremely strong connection between artist and audience during a performance. Unknown to most, the gift of light magic also allows him a powerful and inexplicable psychic link to someone who remains invisible, a person he's never met in the real world. It's a connection that strengthens over time, a symbiotic bond whose purpose remains a closely guarded secret among the goddesses believed to have created it.

Cosmin Vasile is an eighteen-year-old young man living in obscurity and poverty in a rural village in the Wallachian countryside. Gifted in song, he spends his time adding to his parents' meager income by weaving and gathering wool for sale, singing rustic songs he knows by heart as he works. He's also plagued by mysteriously restless sleep lasting a week and occurring once a year since he turned eleven, though he remembers nothing of the dreams or nightmares that may have caused the disturbance.

Then out of the blue on two separate occasions, a once-in-a-lifetime chance at fulfilling their dearest dreams suddenly comes along, and youthful hope takes flight...

Only to tumble headlong down a nightmarish pit of old magic twisted for a darker purpose, where lines separating reality and decades-long madness blur. Haunting portraits of long gone students, a cursed mirror hiding a terrifying world of corruption and death, a monstrous satyr lurking in the shadows of the mirror's world - time and hope for escape disappear as Iulian and Cosmin suddenly discover the awful price of being marked as the Muses' rare, favored children. 

For the entire month of June, both e-books are 50% off at all online stores. Just click the book titles above for their respective pages and store listings. For readers who prefer to shop at Kobo and Smashwords, click those two respective links to get to my author pages at both stores. Later this month, I'll be posting individual stuff for the books so readers can enjoy a bit of behind-the-scenes goodness that led to their writing. 

What a Bizarre Month It's Been

In truth, nothing major's happening at work. Things have been quiet and predictable and even dragging at times, but we're nearing summer, and the amount of work we have has surprisingly gone up following a slow spell. 

What makes this month feel like passing through some demon's blocked bowels pertains to my daily commute, which is monumentally cursed all month long. I can understand an occasional snafu with the early bus service. Same with the local train service. But missing my train for an entire week straight because the bus was painfully slow or having the entire train system shut down for a day -- followed immediately by equipment problems the next week and then an electrical fire that crippled everyone's southbound commute for a good week afterward...

Well, let's just say I can't wait for June to come despite all the unknowns. Who the hell knows what'll happen next to either bus service or train service? 

Oh, another thing -- I've avoided taking the car on Fridays for the last couple of months since it was unavailable for the most part, and when I finally DID drive it to work, I was rewarded with a veritable parking lot on my drive home because of an injury accident. And! Said accident happened in the OTHER DIRECTION, with nobody in mine involved at all. So that parking lot of cars on the freeway? Just rubberneckers doing their thing and making me want to set fire to the entire Bay Area. 

So! That's how it's been on the day job front. Things are a significant improvement on the writing end of things, though. 

I'm progressing pretty well, I'm having fun with the story, and I'm finally having a go at a love triangle, but seeing as how this is me I'm talking about, there's a twist to this triangle. I did say something about the Narcissus and Echo myth, and I'm running with it even though this book's main plot isn't a retelling of the legend. I just love playing with certain elements in the original story and figuring out how to make them work in this book. 

In other news, I've also been raiding the public library for gems and have been dividing my time between print and digital books. My inching back to the analog world IS making me think about the future and what I'd like to do next after 2026, which is the extent of my publishing calendar so far. I've been mining Pinterest for images I can use for prompts, but I do find myself saving pretty similar and even predictable art. 

So I'm trying to expand my reach by checking out YT videos on subjects that I'm peripherally interested in but never bothered to explore. I find that more productive than simply collecting images, and I'm already forming ideas on what else I can do with my story ideas down the line. If something more solid and sure forms, I'll be talking about it here; otherwise, it's been a smattering of vague ideas for the time being, and I hope something comes from this pea soup in my head.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite videos, which I dedicate to my fellow creatives or even those who appreciate and support art in all its forms:

All right -- final week of May is here, and I'm already looking forward to the weekend.

'The Twilight Gods' and a Favorite Fairy Tale

This book was my gay YA retelling of the Native American folktale, "The Girl Who Married a Ghost", which ended up on my very short list of favorite folktales of all time. I first ran across it in the anthology edited by Joanna Cole called The Best-Loved Folktales of the World, but when I moved, I had to give up pretty much every print book I'd collected over the years -- including this amazing volume. Oh, I can still get a used copy, of course, and I just might because I'd like to reread those stories from anywhere outside Europe. 

Particularly Asia, whose stories I found to be gentler compared to those from Europe (which tended to be pretty dark and violent). I'd love to write my own take on one of those stories, but I'm jumping way ahead of myself.

this was the edition I owned

The Twilight Gods is set in the mid-19th century England during the time of The Great Exhibition, and I wrote the story as a metaphor for a queer kid's coming-out. 

"The Girl Who Married a Ghost" has some spectacular scenes in it that I kept, and the second half of the book is nearly a blow-by-blow retelling of the fairy tale. And that's because that fairy tale easily tracks the progression of a teenager's self-discovery and the aftermath. So everything -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- about what follows Norris's talks with his family's strange lodger, though eerie and (yes, I'll always default to this word) gothic, encapsulates the confusing and even terrifying experience of learning more about one's true nature and how best to reconcile it in a world that's still saddled with so much stupid and ignorant ideas. 

The presence of ghosts, of skeletons, and the lodger who becomes Norris's guide (she represents the original fairy tale's Screech Owl, who also acts as the bride's guide in the story) are all in the fairy tale, too, and nothing could have worked more perfectly for my purpose. 

The setting was also carefully chosen since The Great Exhibition was a celebration of progress in science and technology and all that, yet backward thinking still runs rampant in the book, and just like the bride in the fairy tale, Norris is forced to make a choice in the end.

Here's a small bit of trivia about the book:

After I had the second edition of the novel published by JMS Books some years ago, the publisher was approached by the ALA to see if they were interested in submitting The Twilight Gods for a Stonewall Award. Unfortunately, as it was the second edition, the book didn't qualify, and I had to decline. 

Did it suck? Yeah, it did.

The Twilight Gods is 50% off through the end of May. You can check out the book page for the blurb as well as the link to different online stores where you can get a copy, including Smashwords and Kobo.