What is it that lurches from the cold North Sea with narrowed eyes and gnarled limbs, trailing kelp and confusion wherever it goes? Why, it’s the old greydog, come to re-embrace the weird with more new publications by interesting folk. How lovely. Today, a fabulous illustrated version of supernatural detective stories which includes art by our friend Sebastian Cabrol, the return of fantasy author Raphael Ordonez and an introduction to the YA paranormal fiction of Miracle Austin.
Yes, where other websites say that they cater to a wide range of tastes, we go one better by catering to tastes you didn’t even know you had. Or wanted. When in doubt we shout the word ‘eclectic’ and run away in the hope that it means ‘all sorts of oddities which we fell over when we went to fill the kettle’.
As for the North Sea, we have been back to the coast and the Wold Newton Triangle en masse, exploring cliffs, caves and curiosities. More lurcher articles and photos of their exploits soon, but let’s get some weird books out there…
Hounds
Not the lurchers this time. Our first mention is of artist Sebastian Cabrol, who has a section in a forthcoming Argentinian graphic novel/anthology called HOUNDS. This is intended to be the first volume in a series from Pictus of Buenos Aires. It’s in Spanish, but the artwork looks so good that we want it anyway. Sebastian’s work is always fantastic, and here he’s joined by some other great artists. HOUNDS contains six paranormal mysteries starring the greatest detectives of the supernatural.
Rodolfo Santullo scripts tales based on the original literary works, with six major artists interpreting these strange adventures:
- Sebastian Cabrol depicts John Silence, Algernon Blackwood’s character.
- Lisandro Estherren illustrates the adventures of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a creation of Sheridan Le Fanu.
- Jules de Grandin, Seabury Quinn’s character, is recorded graphically by Horacio Lalia.
- Steve Harrison, the famous southern detective immortalized by Robert Howard, takes shape in the lights and shadows of Oscar Capristo.
- Matthias Bergara gives life to Thomas Carnacki, the character of William Hope Hodgson.
- Facundo Price was asked to imagine the niece of the famous vampire hunter Van Helsing created by Bram Stoker.
Pictus plans to publish the series in annual installments, and you can see a flick-through video of the artwork here:
We’re currently trying to find out more about availability and if there will ever be an English translation.
The King of Nightspore’s Crown
Last year we were delighted to have US author, artist and mathematician Raphael Ordonez on greydogtales as part of our weird art theme. As well as his striking illustrations, fractals and natural history we discussed his first fantasy novel Dragonfly (see Raphael’s view on genre below). The sequel to Dragonfly is now out, and as we subjected him to trial by interview back then, we thought that we’d let him speak freely this time. So here he is…
“I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest novel, The King of Nightspore’s Crown. It’s the second volume in the Antellus tetralogy; the first volume, Dragonfly, was released last year. Both are available at Amazon, the latter in a print edition and as an e-book, the former in a print edition, with an e-book soon to follow.
“The series takes inspiration the very eclectic Ballantine Adult Fantasy series published in the sixties and seventies and edited by Lin Carter. After discovering Tolkien many years ago, I began looking for other fantasy authors. For a while I searched forward through time, but never found quite what I was looking for. So I began looking backward instead, discovering authors like E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, and William Hope Hodgson, authors who never quite fit in, authors whom no one knew what to do with until they could be retrofitted as precursors of the fantasy genre. I seemed to encounter the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series whenever I went questing search of their works. And that in turn introduced me to the American pulp fantasy of the thirties, and in particular to Clark Ashton Smith, whose work was hardly available elsewhere until recently.
“I like to describe my own stories as sword-and-planet tales, but I think (because people tell me so) that they don’t fit neatly into that or any other category. So, making a virtue of necessity, I appeal to the old eccentrics of the pre-genre days as a defense for whatever is singular or odd about my fiction. I like to imagine that it might fit in with the BAF canon.
“Most entries in the Ballantine series featured psychedelic wrap-around cover paintings: colorful to the point of exuberance, slightly crude or even amateurish, delightfully bizarre, and downright fantastic. I consider them uniquely beautiful. So, the better to situate my novels in that line, I paint their wrap-around covers myself. An attempt at homeopathic magic on my part.
“My novels take place in the counter-earth at the cosmic antipodes, chronicling the adventures of Keftu, the Last Phylarch of Arras, as he journeys from primordial jungles to ocean-girding cities, from ancient ruins to orbiting palaces, battling beasts of fen and forest while picking a perilous way past the spent weapons and prostrate members of forces that fought before man was a dream. Dragonfly, which appeared last year, was conceived of as the first volume in the Antellus tetralogy; The King of Nightspore’s Crown, which came out last week, is the second, and continues Keftu’s adventures in the rust-stained city of stone, mankind’s omega. The end of all change is at hand, hastened by the machinations of the veiled warlock Zilla. On a hopeless quest to halt to the slow slide into tepid chaos, Keftu journeys from the crumbling tenements of Enoch to the black jungles of Ir, forming alliances the like of which he would never have dreamed, to the peril of both body and soul.
“Beneath Ceaseless Skies, an online magazine devoted to literary adventure fantasy,has featured a number of my stories set in the same world of paleozoic darkness and daemonic sway. My latest, “Salt and Sorcery,” just came out on August 4 ( ‘salt & sorcery’ in beneath ceaseless skies ). It’s inspired by a few of my favorite sword-and-sorcery stories, Herman Melville’s meditations on whiteness, the 2015 Yuggoth Pluto flyby, and, of course, salt.
“My stories are aimed at readers looking for something substantial, fresh, strange, and different. Anyone interested can find links to my short fiction (available for free online) and purchase information for my novels at my blog, Cosmic Antipodes.”
Here are the links for Dragonfly and The King of Nightspore’s Crown:
king of nightspore’s crown, amazon us
There’s a UK link for King on the right, though no ebook at the moment (Dragonfly is now available as an ebook as well as hard copy). Raphael’s blog (which used to be called Alone with Alone) is a fascinating read, with regular entries on a wide range of topics, and is well worth a visit in its own right.
Doll
Miracle Austin is a writer we met during a shared blog hop, and is from Texas. She writes a wide range of short fiction, with horror/suspense being her favorite genre. She often includes societal themes and how they affect her characters, drawing on her social work background. Doll is her debut YA/Paranormal novel, and won the Purple Dragonfly Award, 2nd place, in the Young Adult category in 2016. It’s also garnering a lot of good reviews on Amazon in the US.
As Doll, a tale of high school, voodoo and supernatural revenge, is now widely available, we have a few words from Miracle as well, including the tale of her introduction to publishing:
“My journey to publish traditionally began with my collection Boundless. I researched so many presses/agents all across the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada, and Africa. I found over 300. Out of those 300 plus presses I found, I received 315 rejections. My rejection emails or letters read: ‘Thank you for submitting, but we feel that your manuscript would not be a good fit with our company. We wish you luck in your future endeavours.’
“I figured that no one wanted to publish my work, and I should give up. I started to believe that no one would ever want to take a chance with my work because I was a nobody in the publishing world. Unexpectedly in the next few weeks (this was over a year ago), I received four promising emails, but only one worked out, at least that was my initial hope; I decided to pursue and signed my first contract.
“However, after several months of no action for Boundless, I became more frustrated and decided to start working on a short story, Doll, which later transformed into my first self-published YA/Paranormal novel.
“Boundless remained in a large binder unpublished. My publisher contacted me several months later to share that rights would be returned back to me, due to personal reasons in her life. Frustration and terror defined my preliminary emotions, until I realized this would work in my favor later.
“Doll was only meant to be a short story and serve as a personal distractor for me—waiting for Boundless to become published first. While I waited, Doll continued to grow. The idea for Doll was adult focused, until a potential publisher shared an observation about my writing.
“They thought that my writing was more suited for the YA/NA audience, which I had never thought about. I decided to transform the Doll story and make it more YA friendly, which meant setting, characters, and plot changes. My new characters emerged and took over. The story started out as 1,000 words and grew – 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and finally over 50,000 words.
“With the novel version, I wanted to share a familiar story about the have-nots and the haves with unfamiliar turns. I enjoyed the deep character development and defining personal struggles because this was my longest work to date. I reflected back on my experiences and observations I stored about all the cliques in junior high and high school, to assist me in completing my first stand-alone.
“So now Doll can be found on Amazon and my website. It’s available in both eBook and paperback formats, and there’s an audio version currently being completed.”
Boundless itself, mentioned above, a collection of short stories which Miracle describes as ‘a gumbo of diverse themes’ will hopefully be published in the Autumn of 2016. More info about her work can be found on her website:
We have some seriously weird, dark and thoughtful fiction to cover in the future, some new longdog pieces and some stunning art, but we can only pack so much in, so we’ll have to stop. Back in two or three days, dear listener…
scavengers on amazon uk
