Book Release Day: The Sinister Quartet

Day 2 of being a full-time writer, and… I have a new novel out.

It doesn’t look like a novel, because it’s in a collection with three other novellas, but it’s 20,000 words longer than official novella-length–longer than DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP!–so there you have it.

I’d started a messy af draft more than five years ago, based on a whacko dream I had, and then tried again a few years later, thinking to attempt something more structurally interesting by world-building through cinema and technology, and then I gave up on it and did a bunch of other things, but then Mike Allen was like, let’s do this project; do you have something for me?

and I was like, well, uh. Sort of.

So I did another draft. A full one. It grew from 20000 words to 60000. It grew in form and complexity. It plunged to the depths; it got gross. It brightened, and then went nova, and after that…

Another draft. And another. Three drafts of a novel-length work in 3 months. That was the end of my 2019.

I don’t… think… it’s horror? Though it is horrific. (“Body-horror” is what DongWon called it, gleefully, after hearing a section.) It’s certainly fantasy, and it gets dark. But.

But I have such a WARM, FRIENDLY feeling for the characters–my wry saints, my imperfect Seventh Angel, for Nirwen the Forsaker, for the Bad Uncles, for Jen and Onabrozia, and the poor young idiot Alizar Luzarius. It’s hard to think of them as characters of horror, or products of a dark fantasy, because… because they make me laugh–because I want to sit with them at table, and sing songs together, and go to the latest midnight release in some movie theatre…

The fact that gatherings of friends and movie-watching is as much fantasy now as MY OWN CHARACTERS seems more like the TRUE horror.

And there’s something to be said about a story that seeks to depose monster tyrants and tear down walls.I went as far as I could with the powers I have.

I worked hard, and stretched myself so much I think I probably tore something. Several somethings. What can you do but your best, each time?
So this is my best thing–for now.

My novel is called The Twice-Drowned Saint: Being a Tale of Fabulous Gelethel, the Invisible Wonders Who Rule There, and the Apostates Who Try to Escape its Walls, and it is found in THE SINISTER QUARTET. Out today.

You can order the book from Mythic Delirium’s bookstore, or anywhere books are sold.

EXTRAS:

• Each of the four authors in The Sinister Quartet made PLAYLISTS to go with our fiction. (Click on each graphic, which will bring you to Spotify)
• The four authors got together and we did a ZOOM SALON, reading excerpts from The Sinister Quartet, and answering a Q&A from the audience after.
• The four authors each created a SIGNATURE DRINK to go with our stories on the Books and Booze blog. (Mine is a shrub, no alcohol.)
• Today (the day I’m writing this, release day) we the four authors interviewed each other for John Scalzi’s blog THE BIG IDEA.
• Carlos, Mama, and I dressed up in Mama’s pajamas (pictured below) for a Pajama Party, and I read them an excerpt (not the SAME excerpt as above) of The Twice-Drowned Saint as a bedtime story. Cat included.
• Chapter 2 of The Twice-Drowned Saint (which is really the big opening chapter, as Chapter 1 is a slim little thing) is available for free on the New Decameron Project’s Patreon: if you want to dip your toe in.