Tag Archives: reviews

October 29, 2024 · 10:48 pm

Gothic Novel Prompts

Everyone got a written prompt and a pictorial prompt (see the charts below).

We rolled a 6-sided die twice, counting first across, then down on the chart of Kathleen Jenning’s fairy tale art chart. Then we rolled a 20-sided dice for a sampling from Kathleen Jennings’ “Girls Running from Houses” prompts.

Use them together to make something. It doesn’t REALLY have to be a novel! >.>

Christa Carmen
6-sided die roll X2, 3 across, 6 down: Locked Book
20-side die roll: 4

“The house has been infested by libraries and moths. The girl, like the false bride, dances alone.”

Zig Zag Claybourne/Clarence Young
6-sided die roll X2, 3 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 6

“She discovers that the house collects trapdoors. But in addition, there is a legend of a brooding mannequin, who digs holes in the lawn and who slams doors.”

Dr. Kathleen Jennings
6-sided die roll X2, 5 across, 3 down:
20-side die roll: 8

“It’s all happening inevitably, just as she dreamed. One girl runs from the house; another arrives on a Tuesday, seeking peace and quiet.”

Jessica P. Wick
6-sided die roll X2, 4 across, 6 down:
20-side die roll: 15

“The girl was long ago contrary, and she will become sarcastic. She is goose-eyed; she is what the house dreaded.”

Mike Allen
6-sided die roll X2, 2 across, 3 down:
20-side die roll: 2

“In a thunderstorm, the girl is escaping the house. But the house longs.”

Kenesha Williams
6-sided die roll X2, 6 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 20

“The girl was recently restless, and she will become peculiarly gifted. An ancient tree curses fate in the garden.”

Juliette Wade
6-sided die roll X2, 2 across, 4 down:
20-side die roll: 5

“The house is beloved of death, and the housekeeper is lark-hearted, and the girl is star-tongued.”

Rob Cameron/Cameron Roberson
6–sided die roll X2, 5 across, 1 (stays):
20-side die roll: 14

“When she flees the house, she will wear the mark of the house. The girl, unlike the house, is hound-swift.”

Dr. Lisa L. Hannett
6-sided die roll X2, 4 across, 2 down:
20-side die roll: 16

The house labours to discover whether the girl is amenable. The girl was recently morbid, yet she will become stubborn. The feared translucent lady, who leaves ice on the counterpane, turns out to be the groundskeeper.

For You, The Chat
6-sided die roll X2, 5 across, 4 down:
20-side die roll: 18

“In the sickroom, the girl sings to herself. Even so, a beetle undulates in flashes of lightning. When the girl arrives, the house is beset by spiderwebs. Just before she leaves, it will be afflicted with mirrors.”

KATHLEEN JENNING’S ART CHART: FOUND ON REDBUBBLE!

Kathleen Jennings’ fairy tale art chart!

“Girls Running from Houses,” developed by Kathleen Jennings

HallowEEK! Sale

I’m still trying to navigate between what I write here and what I write on my Substack newsletter.

For now, I wrote a HUGE newsletter called “Read, See, Hear, Know: A Week and a Half of Awesome Things I Absolutely Need You to Know.”

So if you’re curious about that, it’s here: https://csecooney.substack.com/p/read-see-hear-know

Not in that newsletter, but something I did yesterday: I received and completed my copyedits for my story “Moons Over Sea” in the forthcoming Tanith Lee tribute anthology: Storyteller.

I LOVED WRITING THIS STORY. I love my demon Embrae, her four beautiful human brothers, their Fish Mother, and their Bread Mother. I love that thing about wishing wells. And that other bit about mills. I love the end especially. I CANNOT WAIT TO HAWK THIS ANTHO FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE. Embrae made me LAUGH OUT LOUD TO WRITE HER!

You can pre-order it here: https://tanith-lee-tribute.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

At the bottom of that newsletter, I talked about this sale at Solaris Books, but I’ll just post it here as a piece of good housekeeping: https://rebellionpublishing.com/sale/

The sale goes from today till November 4th! Saint Death’s Daughter is only $0.99, but look at all the other ones that are on sale.

I can PERSONALLY RECOMMEND: The Witness for the Dead, and The Grief of Stones, by Katherine Addison: set in her Goblin Emperor world. The third book is releasing soon! SO NOW IS THE TIME TO READ THESE INCREDIBLE FANTASY MYSTERY NOVELLAS!!! AAUGGH I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

Here was my blurb for The Witness for the Dead:

“Is there anything greater than discovering a genius in our midst? Granted, I’m last to the Katherine Addison party, but this band is so swinging, I’m just glad to be here. I adored The Goblin Emperor, and Witness for the Dead—also set amongst the elves, airmen, goblins, and ghouls of that world—packs another lightning-fisted literary wallop. High fantasy, murder investigation, ghosts, gods, and the opera: it rocks all my hot spots. Addison lavishes her ardent readers with adventure, new friendships, invisible enemies, and rewards us with her uncommon depths, subtleties, and kindnesses.”

If you’re in the mood for a haunted house novel, there’s A Theory of Haunting. And if you’re in the mood for a haunted HAMLET novel, read The Death I Gave Him, which I got to blurb!

Welcome to Elsinore Labs, where talking to your murdered father’s ghost is the least weird thing a death-obsessed young man might do before embarking on a night of violence and mystery. For anyone who loves Shakespeare, a haunted-house escape room, and a plot full of tenderness, philosophy, brazenness, and terror—as well as the unexpectedly erotic—Em X. Liu’s The Death I Gave Him is the book you never knew you’ve always wanted.

I’ve not gotten to read A Broken Darkness or Beneath the Rising yet, but they’re both by Premee Mohamed, so I WILL. I mean. She’s just. I mean. Phew. I DID read her Siege at Burning Grass, not on offer here, but snatch it up anyway, would you? Here was my blurb for Siege, so you know I’m serious:

“I plunged into The Siege of Burning Grass knowing nothing except that Premee Mohamed wrote it. What more did I need? And yet, it astonished me. A colossal work of fiction and philosophy, Siege is something like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind meets The Things They Carried by way of The Brothers Karamazov. I loved Alefret, Mohamed’s monstrous man of peace, instantly and wholly. I feared for him, I suffered with him, I raged alongside him, all against a backdrop of gorgeous and lonely immensity. I wanted nothing for days but to be reading this book.”

FIDDLE!

Okay, I’ve had enough of a rest. I turned in my novel and my three short stories, and I narrated a few audiobooks, and then I just PLAYED AND PLAYED. Now it’s time to get back to writing until my edits come in.

So… back to FIDDLE, anyone? Been a minute.

…Like, I wrote the first draft in 2019, and the first half of the second draft in 2020, and then Saint Death’s Daughter, Dark Breakers, The Twice-Drowned Saint, and Negocios Infernales happened. And also Saint Death’s Herald, still currently happening.

But still. Can’t play Slay the Spire INFINITELY, can I? Well… I CAN, but… THAT DOESN’T GET FIDDLE WRITTEN. Or re-written, as it were.

Do you know about Fiddle?

It’s kinda rom-com romp set in the Dark Breakers/Desdemona and the Deep world, but instead of, like, the “Gilded Age” of most of the Dark Breakers stories, not to mention Desdemona, it’s… like… in the 1980’s-equivalent of that world. LOL.

P.S. The walls between the Three Worlds fell down sometime in the 60’s-equivalent (called the “Ymbeglidegold”), so now the goblins, gentry, and humans are all mingled together, in with the occasional demonspawn.

So. That’s nice.

I’ve just reorganized my Table of Contents. It’s kind of like an outline. It gives me a structure, anyway.

Act I: Dida + Istat = L0v3

Scene 1 Best of All Sisters

Scene 2 Goblin Favors

Scene 3 Okay, So He’s Pretty Okay

Scene 4 Thorn in the Dark

Scene 5 The Way of the White Widow

Act II: Ghilbrenna the Abyssborn

Scene 1 Demonspawn

Scene 2 Fexting

Scene 3 Lenscraft

Scene 4 Hen Night

Scene 5 Orca Goons

Act III: Three Weddings and a Rocket Launch

Scene 1 Deep Lords and Clade Queens

Scene 2 The Lost Basilica: Wedding One (Gentry Tripartite renewal of vows)

Scene 3 Oracles for the Unwary: Wedding Two (Dida and Istat)

Scene 4 Third Times’s the Boom: Wedding Three (Ghilbrenna and Squiddy)

Scene 5 SS Vespel Nest

Finale: Vessel Infernal

Internal illustration for Dark Breakers’ “Susurra and the Moon”, art by Brett Massé.

Why did I use this “Susurra” image to illustrate my FIDDLE blog, you ask? Why, because the gentry of the Valwode, second world down on the three-petal World Flower, live a LONG-ASS TIME.

And some characters you might have met and loved in DARK BREAKERS and DESDEMONA are alive and well in FIDDLE.

Because… you know. Immortals.

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Tagged as dark breakers, Desdemona and the Deep, fantasy, fiction-writing, reviews

October 1, 2019 · 10:12 am

A Celebration of Desdemona and the Deep in Reviews and Pictures!

Dear Friends,

Publishing is so funny; Desdemona and the Deep came out from Tor.com not even three months ago, but it seems in some ways it was another lifetime.

…Another season, anyway, and the world rolls on. It debuted in the bright heart of summer, and now it’s the first day of October.

But in many ways, Desdemona really is an Octobral book, isn’t it, with its goblins and bargains, its tithes and transformations. I hope that this October and for many Octobers to come, readers will discover Desdemona for the first time, or take it out for a re-read, or use it as a basis to play dress up! That Alyssa Wynans cover is such a perfect palette for autumn!

Here are some pictures from both my book launches, and some gorgeous fan art that my beloved friend Caitlyn Paxson made for me as a present. WHAT A GIFT!

Also to celebrate, I received news of three great reviews for Desdemona today all from Locus Magazine, October 2019 issue! One from Liz Bourke, one from Amy Goldschlager (for the audiobook), and one from Rich Horton!!!

Yikes! I let my subscription Locus lapse in the furor of summer: TIME TO RE-UP!

Here are some snippets:

“C.S.E. Cooney won the World Fantasy Award for her collection Bone Swans. She has a strong – even glittering – track record with short stories, but Desdemona and the Deep is her first book-length work . . . At any other length, it would lose something of its impact: shorter, and it would not have time to build up the momentum for its series of punches; longer, and the effect of its short, sharp, furious poetic dismantling of assumptions would be diluted away from its pointed achievement . . . Desdemona and the Deep is an eloquent, elegant novella about power, art, consequence and change. It’s also pleasantly queer and drunk on language, which appealed to me deeply. I recommend it.”

– Liz Bourke, Locus

“Professional audiobook narrator Cooney . . . reads her own tale with joy and confidence. She is delighted to tell you her story and you will be delighted to hear it. Cooney also does a great drunk voice, and some really fun character voices. I particularly liked the voice of the assistant to Desdemona’s mother; it reminded me a lot of Jane Horrocks’ character Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous, if Bubble were American and somewhat smarter. Edgy, romantic, earthy, and colorful.“

– Amy Goldschlager, Locus (audiobooks)

“I’ve been looking forward to C.S.E. Cooney’s Desdemona and the Deep for quite a while, and having arrived, it doesn’t disappoint . . . The best thing about this book is the prose – lush images and glorious words mix in a sometimes comic and sometimes earnest olio. . . There is always the music of the writing, and the comic coloration, and the engaging and just awakening Desdemona to keep us entranced.“

– Rich Horton, Locus

And now some PICTURES!

This first gallery is from my first launch at the Savoy Bookshop and Cafe in Westerly, Rhode Island, where I lived for five years. So many people helped with this event! My friends even decorated the store to look like the Valwode!

My husband, Carlos Hernandez, Cos-Playing the Umber Farklewhit

And here’s the second launch, at the GLORIOUS Astoria Bookshop in Queens, where I currenly live. This place is wonderful! Please check it out if you get the chance! Well-worth an adventure!