Dear friends, in little over an hour, at 2:30 EST, as the blizzard conditions set in, Carlos and I will be hosting a virtual reading on my twitch channel–twitch.tv/csecooney!
Our Eldritch Horror line-up is amazing. Read more about our readers here!
Mike Allen writes spooky things — a Publishers Weekly reviewer once called his stories “nightmare fuel.” Two of his collections of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award. To Mike’s delight, his newest novel, Appalachian horror yarn Trail of Shadows (Broken Eye Books, 2025), has been named a finalist for the 2026 Webster Award — founded to honor the memory of his dear departed friend Bud Webster. Mike’s other novels include the post-apocalyptic swarming-undead sidearms-and-sorcery adventure The Black Fire Concerto. Other stories and poems of his have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Best Horror of the Year, Interzone, Nebula Awards Showcase, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and more. With his wife Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, home to numerous award-winning and award-nominated sci-fi and fantasy volumes that defy categories and expectations. As an editor and publisher, Mike has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Follow him on Instagram @mythicdelirium and Bluesky @mythicdelirium.bsky.social.
Christa Carmen is the Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Daughters of Block Island, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, “Through the Looking Glass and Straight Into Hell,” & the forthcoming Beneath the Poet’s House. Find her at http://www.christacarmen.com.
Sarah Hans is an award-winning writer whose stories have appeared in more than 50 publications, including Apex Magazine and Pseudopod. A former special education teacher, she has written numerous books, primarily in the horror and dark fantasy romance genres. You can read along chapter-by-chapter as she writes her newest book at patreon.com/sarahhans. She lives in Ohio with her husband, a varying number of teenagers, more pets than she can afford, and enough craft supplies to keep her busy for the next 200 years.
Nicholas Kaufmann is the Bram Stoker Award-, Shirley Jackson Award-, Thriller Award-, and Dragon Award-nominated author of numerous works of horror and suspense, including the bestsellers 100 FATHOMS BELOW (co-written with Steven L. Kent) and THE HUNGRY EARTH. His latest is the collection MONUMENTS IN DARKNESS, which celebrates his 25th anniversary as a published author. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
CASSANDRA KHAW is the USA Today bestselling and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Library at Hellebore, Nothing But Blackened Teeth, The Salt Grows Heavy, Breakable Things, and coauthor of The Dead Take the A Train with Richard Kadrey. They are an award-winning game writer.
Haralambi Markov is a Bulgarian fiction writer and editor with a background in content creation. In 2014, they became the first ever Bulgarian accepted to attend the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Their short story “The Language of Knives” was long-listed for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and their essay “My Father, My Private Monster” made it onto the Bram Stoker Award long list for non-fiction in 2025. Their work has appeared in Reactor, Uncanny Magazine, Evil in Technicolor, Weird Fiction Review, Stories for Chip, Eurasian Monsters, and Fractured Reveries. They were part of the team of BonFIYAH 2021. Mythic Delirium Books will release their debut collection of short fiction, The Language of Knives: Stories, in July 2026. Follow them on Instagram at @somethinghaunted.
S.P. Miskowski’s stories appear in many anthologies. She’s received two NEA fellowships, multiple award nominations, and This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017. Recent works: If You Knew Me (Thomas & Mercer), Daughters of Catastrophe (Grimscribe Press), and The Skillute Cycle (Broken Eye Books).
Jeffrey Thomas’s books include Punktown, Deadstock, Blue War, The American, and The Idol. He has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and John W. Campbell Award, and his stories have been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor, Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors, Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). Thomas lives in Massachusetts
Plus: Plus a “Catch-Up” date, Upcoming Appearances, and William Alexander in New York!
(This is mirrored from my newsletter, so please forgive the repetition if you get both of them.)
Dear friends—
Goodness, how the month has flown!
The Storyteller event in Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop, and Marty’s launch of Audition for the Fox at the Thespis Theatre. were equally really lovely.
Baltimore
I took the Amtrak in to Baltimore and walked from there to the Baltimore Museum of Art . The onboarding experience there was very ludic, with “social sculptures” of usable gaming spaces, encouraging interaction and participation, all while being surrounded by images and objects from the history of human games.
But my favorite thing was the special exhibit there called Black Earth Rising. There’s an article about it here: https://artbma.org/exhibition/black-earth-rising, if you’re interested! I loved the work of Firelei Báez and Teresita Fernández particularly, but everything made me stare until my eyes hurt.
There were also two side-by-side exhibits: one, Malcolm Peacock’s “A Signal, A Sprout” (it looks like a massive redwood trunk made of all hand-braided synthetic hair); the other, “Heavy with History: Devin Allen and the Baltimore Uprising,” featuring the throat-catching, heart-hammering photography of Devin Allen.
I followed all kinds of new artists on their various platforms after my visit! And I left the musuem incredibly impressed by BMA’s collection: their beautifully and ethically curated African art room, especially.
The Fox LAUNCHES
Marty’s book launch took place at the Thespis Theatre—which is SUCH A PLACE! It resides within the Hellenic Cultural Center, which has so many statues of Greek Gods—anatomically correct, ahem, except for those few missing a few… pieces—a Greek Orthodox chapel the size of a parlor, completely with full stained glass windows, a theatre, and a black box! I loved this place. I want to live there.
Marty himself was wonderful; he said he’d been nervous all day, but had decided to view the book launch as a warm hug. He actually knew everyone in the audience by name—except for our friend Ben, whom Carlos and I had invited. We read an annotated section of his novella together, and then I did a Q&A with Marty before we opened it up to questions from the audience.
Oh, and we had Matt Kressel as our virtual guest on Fiction: Impossible, which is now archived on YouTube here! (In case you missed it and you want company some night while you’re, you know, doing dishes.) (Dishes are endless. Good news is: so is short-form entertainment!)
THE MOST EXCITING NEWS EVER!!!
My darling, beautiful, wonderful BRILLIANT FRIEND, Caitlyn Paxson, has her DEBUT NOVEL out NEXT YEAR, and this week they did the COVER REVEAL!
BEHOLD IT AND TREMBLE! (Tenderly!) (Ardently!) (Amorously!) (For it is a ROMANTASY! With Necromancy! So it is, as we like to call it… NECROPANTASY!)
Here are the two covers: one is Canadian and one is United States. It’s also coming out in the UK but I don’t know what cover goes with that. DON’T YOU WANT TO EAT IT UP! WITH THE SKULLS AND EGGS AND THE POISONED MUSHROOMS AND THE CANDLES AND THE PISTOLS OF IT ALL???
Here is the synopsis:
Here’s some alt-text for that description from Del Rey:
“In this witty fantasy romance, a widow blackmails her rakish necromancer neighbor to bring her husband back to life and save her home-only to find herself falling for him instead.
“Witty, whimsical, and deeply kind, A Widow’s Charm is beyond charming—it’s wholly enchanting.”—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Everlasting
Lady Hildegarde Croft is accustomed to changes in position. After all, she rose from maidservant to lady of the manor when she married Lord Thorgoode Croft. But when he drops dead quite unexpectedly, the plans that would have protected her and the people of Croftholde from her malevolent brother-in-law die along with him. What’s a widow to do?
Fortunately, potential salvation arrives in the form of Lord Erol Elmwood, who is fleeing the consequences of using his forbidden Charm to raise the dead and save his own life. Now he’s injured, destitute, and miserable, stuck hiding out at the neighboring estate.
For Hilde, blackmailing Lord Elmwood to resurrect Thorgoode seems like the perfect solution. For Elmwood, beautiful Lady Croft seems like the ideal distraction from his troubles. The problem is, all she wants from him is the horrifying power he knows he can never use again.”
AAAUGGHHH I CANNOT WAIT OMG OMG OMG! And Alex frikkin HARROW blurbed it? Couldn’t you just GOAT FAINT??? I could!!!
Upcoming Virtual Appearance
This Saturday, September 27th, I get to be a guest poet for the Science Fiction Poetry Association! I shall read you SO MUCH POETRY! But I won’t be the ONLY ONE! It’s an OPEN MIC, yo!
I think you need a membership to Nebula Conference 2025 online, or be a SFWA member!
Tachyon’s 30th Anniversary Virtual Reading and Q&A
Oh, and I wanted to remind you of THIS, coming up on Thursday October 2nd! ALSO VIRTUAL:
ACCLAIMED GENRE PRESS TACHYON PUBLICATIONS CELEBRATES 30 YEARS IN 2025
Join us for a night of virtual readings and Q&A on Twitch TV with some of Tachyon Publications’ team: Jaymee Goh(editor), and authorsAuston Habershaw, Josh Rountree, Kimberly Unger, Naseem Jamnia, Mary G. Thompson, Mia Tsai, Pat Murphy, Sam J. Miller, andSamantha Mills.
We’ll be hosting our friend, National Book Award Winner William Alexander for the New York leg of his tour. He’ll be doing one virtual and three in-person events that I know of.
Who is William Alexanders?
Well, you probably already know Will, but for those of you who DON’T:
William Alexander is the author of Goblin Secrets (McElderry) and other unrealisms for young readers. His work has won the National Book Award, the Eleanor Cameron Award, the Librarian Favorites Award, the Teacher Favorites Award, two Junior Library Guild Selections, and two CBC Best Children’s Book of the Year Awards. Most recently he wrote Sunward—his first novel for grownups, forthcoming from Saga Press in September of 2025—and co-edited the middle grade anthology Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities. As a small child he honestly believed that his Cuban-American family came from the lost island of Atlantis.
Will’s New York Tour!
Monday, October 20th, 7-8 PM: online, on Fiction: Impossible!
Carlos and I will be hosting Will Alexander as our Guest Star on Fiction: Impossible. Will will read a bit from Sunward, we’ll ask him some LEADING QUESTIONS, and then we’ll all talk about books and games we’ve liked recently. Join us on my Twitch stream twitch.tv/csecooney
After that, Will’s coming down from Vermont, and we get to HOST him at our HOUSE! “The Week of Fantastic Fish” we’re calling it, since we’ve decided to ONLY EAT SUSHI while he’s here.
Simon and Schuster describes Sunward thus:
A cozy debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning writer William Alexander, this story of found family follows a planetary courier training adolescent androids in a solar system grappling with interplanetary conflict after a devastating explosion on Earth’s moon.
Captain Tova Lir chose a life as a courier rather than get involved in her family’s illustrious business in politics. Set in humanity’s far future, hiring a planetary courier is essential for delivering private messages across the stars.
Encouraged by friends, Tova begins mentoring baby bots, juvenile AI who are developmentally in their teens, and trains them how to interact within society essentially becoming their foster mom. Her latest charge, Agatha Panza von Sparkles, named herself on their first run from Luna to Phoebe station. But on their return, they encounter a derelict spaceship and a lurking assassin, igniting a thrilling chase across the solar system.
Tova and Agatha’s daring actions leave Agatha’s mind vulnerable, relying on Tova’s former AI pupils for help. As Tova starts gathering her scattered family around her, she is chased through the solar system by forces who want her captured and her family erased. This debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning author William Alexander is a must-read for fans of Becky Chambers and Ursula K. Le Guin. Lovers of poignant science fiction, where the bonds of found family, the evolution of AI, and the building distrust of centuries of bias, come together in this visionary look at humanity’s future.
Meet Will Live!
Thursday, October 23rd at 7pm Kew & Willow Books Authors Will Alexander, Carlos Hernandez, and C. S. E. Cooney discussing Will’s new SF novel Sunward, as well as writing in the SFF genre ! (More info on this as it comes) 81-63 Lefferts Blvd. Kew Gardens, NY 11415-1728
Friday, October 24th at 6pm Books of Wonder Authors Carlos Hernandez, Eliot Schrefer, and Will Alexander discuss Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities.
Saturday, October 25th at 2 PM-3:30 PM King’s Bay Library: authors Carlos Hernandez and Will Alexander discuss Sunward, Starstuff, the state ofadult SF and kidlit, for the edification of ALL OF BROOKLYN! 3650 Nostrand Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11229
In a thrilling follow-up to Tasting Light, ten best-selling and award-winning masters of the form use the possible—and the premise of hope—to explore how science and technology can reshape our world and defy assumptions.
At once a collection of hard science fiction for curious middle-graders and an antidote to despair in the face of dystopian uncertainty, these ten horizon-bending stories may seem unreal, but all follow the rules of physics and biology as we understand them today. These tales of space junk, multiverse navigation, an asteroid named Doomsday, and bees and marmots in space pulse with honesty and optimism. Whether home is a planet, a moon, a space station, or a fleet starship, relatable protagonists of different genders, classes, nationalities, ethnicities, and orientations face challenges—some harrowing, some hilarious—true to their moment in time and space. Brisk plots, resonant themes, and scientific rigor define these forward-facing stories by leading middle-grade authors. Taken together, the tales champion youth agency through characters who approach science in adventurous ways, underscoring that we are all, indeed, made of the same luminous stuff.
That’s all for today’s newsletter, friends! Beautiful work is pouring out into this world. “Something,” to quote Charlotte Gray, “to set against all this.”
WE ARE DOING IT! WE ARE DOING OUR SPOOKY READING! NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT! 8:45 PM-10:30 PM EDT! Put it in your calendars, friends!
We are doing it on Twitch TV. You don’t even need a subscription to stream it! You can dip in whilst doing dishes and folding laundry! Wahoo!
Edited on reading date to add: Cass Khaw and Tonia Ransom had to bow out, alas! We wish them the very best night!
Reading order:
Christa Carmen Zig Zag Claybourne/Clarence Young Dr. Kathleen Jennings Jessica P. Wick Mike Allen Kenesha Williams Juliette Wade Rob Cameron/Cameron Roberson Dr. Lisa L. Hannett
Alas, I couldn’t come up with a better title than just “Spooky Reading” but, you know… VIBES.
Carlos and I will be introducing the authors, reading your their bios (with FLARE!), and telling you about the awesome stuff they’ve got going on.
At the end of each reading, we’re going to roll some dice, and use Kathleen Jennings’s amazing GOTHIC ART CHART and a list I created from her “Girls Running from Houses” gothic bot to give each author their own unique GOTHIC NOVEL GRAB BAG! That is: a visual prompt and a written prompt that they can leave with… just in case they need to go off right away and write (another?) gothic novel.
At the end of the night, we are going to give the CHAT their very own visual/written prompt as well.
THAT WAY WE CAN ALL GO HOME AND WRITE GOTHIC NOVELS TO OUR HEART’S CONTENT!
All of which to say… it’s time to MEET THE AUTHORS!
Mike Allen has written, edited, or co-edited thirty-nine books, among them his new horror collection, Slow Burn. His first two volumes of horror tales, Unseaming and Aftermath of an Industrial Accident, were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Story Collection, and his dark fable “The Button Bin” was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. As an editor and publisher, he has twice been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Ruadán Books intends to publish Mike’s sidearms, sorcery, and zombies sequence The Black Fire Concerto and The Ghoulmaker’s Aria in 2025 and 2026, respectively. With his wife, Anita, he runs Mythic Delirium Books, based in Roanoke, Virginia. Their cat Pandora assists.
Kenesha Williams is an author, screenwriter, speaker, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag a speculative fiction literary magazine. She has been a panelist and speaker at StokerCon, the Horror Writers of America convention; Boskone, the longest-running science fiction & fantasy convention in New England; ECBACC, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention; and BSAM, the Black Speculative Arts Movement convention. As an, essayist she has written for, Time Magazine’s millennial imprint, Motto, Fireside Fiction, and I Am Black Sci-Fi, among other publications. Kenesha is also a screenwriter who is in pre-production on a horror web series and a short horror film.
Kathleen Jennings lives in Brisbane and writes Australian Gothic fiction and fairy tales and illustrates other people’s books.
Check out her short story collection, Kindling, at Small Beer Press, her Redbubble page at tanaudel.redbubble.com, and this beautiful crowdfunder she contributed to as an artist: Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s Great Oak Feasting Table.
Juliette Wade is a novelist who never outgrew the habit of asking “why” about everything. This path led her to study foreign languages and to complete degrees in both anthropology and linguistics. Combining these with a fascination for worldbuilding and psychology, she creates multifaceted science fiction that holds a mirror to our own society. She is the author of The Broken Trust books: Mazes of Power, Transgressions of Power, and Inheritors of Power, as well as short fiction found in magazines such as Analog, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in Australia with her Aussie husband and her two sons, who support and inspire her.
Lisa L. Hannett is an award-winning author of over 80 weird and whimsical short stories, five collections, and a mosaic novel. She’s an Associate Professor Creative Writing at Flinders University in Adelaide, where she writes and obsesses about Vikings, dreams about fantasy food, and dresses up in costumes.
Check out her latest: Fortunate Isles, nominated in the Best Collection category for the World Fantasy Award this year (and available in a beautiful hardcover edition!) as well as Viking Women: Life and Lore, available in bookshops everywhere in Australia, but only in ebook internationally.
Jessica P. Wick is a writer, poet, and editor. She co-founded Goblin Fruit with Amal El-Mohtar, a quarterly e-zine of fantastical poetry, and is a passionate advocate for the reading aloud of poetry and fiction. Her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award and received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Her short fiction can be found scattered across the internet; recently, her novella “An Unkindness” appeared in Mythic Delirium’s A Sinister Quartet. Jessica’s experience as an editor runs the gamut, from full-length novels to short fiction, poetry collections to magazine articles, academic papers to audio works. She also reviews books for NPR.
Cameron Roberson, who writes under the pen name Rob Cameron, is a teacher, linguist, and lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers. Poetry, stories, and essays, have appeared in Star*Line, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Foreign Policy Magazine, Tor.com, Clockwork Phoenix Five, and Apex Magazine. Daydreamer, his debut middle grade novel, came out from Random House in August.And his novelette Ice Like Honey comes out with Lightspeed magazine next year.
His stories and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex, Realm (formerly Serial Box), Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotosaurus, Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, and others. In addition to being a Kresge Foundation Literary Fellow, Zig is a frequent speaker at libraries, conventions, and other learning institutions. zzclaybourne.com
Check out his new fantasy Breath, Warmth & Dream, featuring wraiths, witches, and beasts!
This was the first series I’d done wherein a fellow author heard me read some of my own work at a convention and, understanding that I narrated for Tantor Audio, specifically requested me to read his work when Tantor bought the audio rights to his books. What an amazing boost to my confidence! I will always be grateful. These are big, sprawling, unpredictable adventures with everything from dinosaurs to fairies to high tech trains to cannibal houses to dragons to laser guns. Okay, maybe not laser guns. But maybe not NOT laser guns too. It’s an interesting world full of colorful characters. This was also the first instance that, after a few weeks in the recording booth, I happened to glance in the mirror, and was surprised by the sight of my own face. I’d been so immersed in Aubry’s world for so long that I’d forgotten what I looked like, and expected to see a different character’s face instead of my own. Time in the “Whisper Room” can be very strange!
1. Prelude to Mayhem 2. Static Mayhem 3. Mayhem’s Children
Fate Weaver Series By ReGina Welling, Erin Lynn
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Series
After I recorded the first book in this series I got a note back requesting me to be a little more “funny.” This was such a challenge; how to be vocally funny? They are indeed funny, fast books, full of witches and wisecracks, gods and gallivanting. I wanted to do them justice. One of the things I tried was really “activating my cheekbones”–basically, smiling while talking. Relax, have fun, but also concentrate on varying the vocal levels, so as to help the jokes land better and more naturally. And there were many jokes! These are glib, sassy books–even occasionally steamy! Sort of a mash-up of a mystery, a matchmaking rom-com, mythology and good ol’ fashioned MAGICK.
1. Match Made in Spell 2. All Spell is Breaking Loose 3. To Spell and Back
Grimm Agency Series By J.C. Nelson
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Series
This is one of your put-upon protagonist must-save-the-world series, with a lot of interference from those who wish to invade, rule, and/or destroy it. It’s in the vein of, say, Buffy or Supernatural–taking place in a world like ours, except . . . paranormal. Now, I recorded these a while ago, but I remember I had SO MUCH FUN with the voice of one of the main villainnesses in particular: I believe, the Faerie Queen. She was French. Plenty of action, some romance, some friendships made through rescue and then through work, and MANY monsters to fight!
1. Free Agent 2. Armageddon Rules 3. Wish Bound
Cat’s Eye Chronicles By T.L. Shreffler
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Series
First of all, the author of these books was just so sweet to work with, very communicative. I rarely have a chance to interact with the author, and for fantasy books especially, I really crave contact! Since I write fantasy, and since so much of the language of fantasy is invented, I want to make sure I am interpreting the writer’s vision as close to correctly as, well, an interpreter can! Second of all, I really enjoyed voicing the Harpies. You heard me: there are are harpies. Third, I started getting a little crush on Crash/Viper, and let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like living in the voice of your latest crush.
This, again, was pretty early on in my narration career, but I do remember that author Tony Peak was SO AWESOMELY PROMPT and COMMUNICATIVE in his response to my request for pronunciations. I mean, I think he overnighted them to me via email. That was extremely helpful, because this is a sci-fi novel, with many kinds of planets and peoples. I remember this book had many female characters, including the protagonist–there was, in particular, a soldier (a captain? a general?) whom I particularly liked, and loved every time I got to voice her. I also remember noticing the strong colors of this book: lurid, alien, beautiful neons, like a favorite weird movie remembered from a 1980’s childhood. Also, I recall the sensation of being slightly cold the whole time I was recording: since the cryosleep chamber plays an enormous role in the plot!
The Rattled Bones By S. M. Parker
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Book
Now, this was a really interesting read–and one I’d’ve read on my own had I just picked it up at random to read for pleasure. It’s YA and it’s a mystery–and it’s also a ghost story. There are horrific elements: historical racism (really awful stuff, and sensitively researched, I thought) and vengeful spirits. This is also a book about grieving. The teenaged protagonist Rilla Brae is QUITE powerful: a young lobster-boat captain. I’ve never read a protagonist like her before. I really loved her, and her grandmother, and her strange, wild, maritime adventure. I remember there was a complicated friendship, a realistically unsatisfying relationship–followed by a much better one. And so many cool things about MAINE!
Starlings By Jo Walton
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Book
Ah. Ah! I have already blogged separately about narrating Starlings, because it was SUCH an experience! If you are interested, please read it at this link.
Suffice to say, this book was an HONOR and a HOOT to narrate, and I was SO EXCITED to have the chance! Not only did I get to do a good bulk of the stories (with my co-narrator Rudy Sanda doing the others), but I got to narrate the poetry. AND A WHOLE ONE-ACT PLAY! WITH ALL THE VOICES! I never felt so much like Mel Blanc in a Looney Tunes cartoon in my whole life!
Mad Hatters and March Hares By Ellen Datlow (editor)
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About This Book
If you stan Lewis Carroll, I think the stories in this book will both feed your obsession and challenge it.
As with the above-mentioned book, Mad Hatters and March Hares was another of those rare works that blew my skull apart at the sutures to try and voice. (Co-voice, actually, with the fabulous Eric Michael Summerer.) In addition to being an audiobook narrator, I also write fantasy; I even had a story in this particular anthology, my first work published under Editor Ellen Datlow, another scion of the genre! Also as with Starlings, I was so anxious about doing right by these stories–not least because I either knew or held in high esteem most of the authors–that it was one of the most difficult books I’ve ever narrated. Nothing shows me my own limitations as a voice actor so ruthlessly as being given something so beautiful and varied and brilliant to narrate that I almost can’t bear it. But I was the one on the ground, and I did my absolute best–sweating the entire time!–and I will forever be humbled to have had the chance.
Bone Swans and Desdemona and the Deep By C. S. E. Cooney
Narrator’s Opinion: What I Like About These Books
Well, these two books are my own works–which sold to Tantor Audio and Recorded Books respectively. Bone Swans: Stories is my collection, and won the World Fantasy Award in 2016. Desdemona and the Deep was just released in July of this year (2019). The collection, comprising five novellas/novelettes, runs a gamut of flavors: from sword and sorcery, to a couple re-told fairy tales, to a fantastical murder mystery, to . . . something that’s just plain nightmarish carnival weird. The second is a standalone work juuuuuust longer than a novella (word count-wise) but meant to be one nonetheless.
They both are full fantasy books, all of the stories taking place in different secondary worlds. Although: HINT–the story called “How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain with the Crooked One” in Bone Swans takes place in the same land as Desdemona and the Deep, only the latter is several hundred years in the future, in the equivalent of our “Gilded Age.”
I wish I were a full-cast of Academy Award-winning actors, each with their impeccable timing and distinctive voices and emotional surprises. I wish I could match in the air what these works sound like in my head. But I have to say, I also love, love, love, love, love narrating my own work. I have read aloud from my stories my whole life to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen: my mother, my brothers, my best friends, and now–my husband–and the idea that I am also reading my own work aloud to people I may never meet is deeply satisfying and warming.
C.S.E. Cooney 