Paper Fruit

As I am a Denver-area spec fic writer, I’ll be at MileHiCon this weekend! Huzzah.

Please do say hello if you see me  in the hallways. I’ll also be in Mesa Verde B, Saturday at 11 AM in on the panel “Strong Women in Fiction and Film.” (Of course, right?)

I also have a reading on Sunday. I’ll be reading with Carrie Vaughn, who is awesome, and we’ll be in Mesa Verde C at 1 PM. Likely I will read something from my imminently pre-orderable Rumbullion and other Liminal Libations and/or my story in the currently pre-orderable The Book of the Dead. Oh, and I’ll also be doing that Autograph Alley thing, so if you have something you want me to sign, like my book, or someone else’s book, then come on by! I’ll have my own pen, even. Um, probably.

See you there! Oh, and my hair is long(er) now, so don’t look for the fuzzhead anymore.

From Egaeus Press:

Discerning readers,

On the 28th of this month of October 2013, Egaeus Press will publish a new volume by British Fantasy Society best newcomer nominee

M O L L Y   T A N Z E R

entitled

R U M B U L L I O N

  A N D   O T H E R   L I M I N A L   L I B A T I O N S.

It will incorporate a brand new novella,

along with a number of previously uncollected stories,

each in turn presented with a recommended imbibation from Molly’s repertoire,

verily in praise of the great god Bacchus.

The book will be a 256 page lithographically printed, sewn hardback with colour endpapers, limited to 250 copies.

It will be priced at £30 (British pounds) worldwide.

ISBN 978-0-957160644

More details will follow in the next week.

Pre-orders will be available though the website (www.egaeuspress.com) on or close to the 21st October.

“The Book of the Dead addresses the most fascinating of all the undead: the mummy. The mummy can be a figure of imperial dignity or one of shambling terror, at home in pulp adventure, contemporary drama, or apocalyptic horror…”

I’m excited to say that the Jurassic London anthology The Book of the Dead, ed. Jared Shurin, is now available for pre-order. This anthology… it’s going to be stunning. Not only does it have a ton of awesome stories (I have a piece in there along with Gail Carriger, Jesse Bullington, Maurice Broaddus, Glen Mehn, and many other fine writers), but it’s also gorgeously illustrated by Garen Ewing (see the amazing illustration for my piece, “Mysterium Tremendum,” at the left), and if you spring for the limited edition hardback… well, here:

Right now, we’re taking orders for copies of the limited edition. This is an edition of 100 hand-numbered hardcover copies – with gold-embossed titles, midnight blue buckram covers and dark cream endpapers. Sultry, eh? Plus, The Book of the Dead is bound in cloth… literally. We then seal each copy in wax and impress it with the cartouche of the Egypt Exploration Society. Because of its unique construction, purchasers of the limited edition will also receive a copy of the ebook for free. (That way they can leave it sealed… forever.)

The book is a friggin mummy!

Oh, and:

This edition also contains an exclusive illustration by Garen Ewing that will not appear in any other edition. Because of its unique construction, purchasers of the limited edition will also receive a copy of the ebook for free.

That’s so awesome. The book has a secret mummified with it. I mean, come on.

But if you’re not down with a mummified book for some reason, there will also be paperback and (obviously) ebook editions.

My story is vaguely Lovecraftian, as is my wont, and is sort-of about how like, maybe Lovecraft had been reading about Tesla when he wrote “Nyarlathotep.” And, cats.

Oh! Oh! And it’s being released on my birthday, October 29th. And there will be a release party, in London, at the Phoenix Art Club, which I will be attending, because I will be in London before heading down to Brighton for World Fantasy. Details here!

Tuesday, I was very pleased to hear that A Pretty Mouth has made it on to the final ballot for the Wonderland Book Award! I’m up against some stiff competition, including my own publisher Cameron Pierce’s collection, and another put out by my cover designer, Matthew Revert. Whew! It’s great: I’ll be happy pretty much no matter who wins!

I know it’s the standard line, but with this Wonderland Book Award nod and with the earlier news of my British Fantasy Award nomination, it really is an honor just to be on the list. Really, I can’t express how thrilled I am that A Pretty Mouth has received so much positive attention. Thank you to everyone who voted for me for both awards; your enthusiasm is appreciated!

That said, A Pretty Mouth could use some fresh reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. If you’ve read it, I’d love if you could take the time to say something about it, whether you enjoyed it, were meh on it, or even hated it. (I’m a writer—I thrive on any kind of attention.) I’d especially like to have a few more review over on Amazon.co.uk. Thanks so much!

It’s a more thematic title than you might imagine! Oooh, intriguing, right? Maybe.

Two things! First, last week I was on the Books and Booze podcast. It was a lot of fun! Renee, Dakota, and Jessica are awesome people who do this podcast thing weekly, where they interview emerging authors, musical artists, and talk about cocktails. You can listen at the link above, if you wish! We talk about all sorts of things—there are links in the show-notes—and I reveal the title of my forthcoming collection for Egaeus Press.

But, lest you have better things to do with your time than listen to me babble for over an hour about drinking, Victorian pornography, and Hong Kong cinema—you know, the usual for me—I’m announcing the title here on my blog! It’ll be called Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations. I posted the likely ToC in an earlier post, so you can scroll back a little if you didn’t catch that, but it’ll be my best stories, plus a new Lovecraftian cosmic horror piece, plus plus a novella that’s been retitled “Rumbullion” because my publisher and I, being the kind of people we are, discovered that “rum deal” was bootlegger slang, rather than something more period appropriate. Anyways, “Rumbullion” is an archaic name for rum, and also meant a brawl or altercation even before that. So… yeah. It’s basically “Rashomon” meets “The Queen of Spades,” whatever that means.

As the collection will not only contain stories, but thematic cocktail recipes, you can see how the theme of the week is… never mind. You figured it out already, I’m sure!

It’s hot. Really hot. A week ago today, I got back from a two-week stay in Florida, and I don’t think it was this hot down South. More humid, sure, and therefore grosser … but ugh, it’s hot.

I’ve been feeling a little drained, perhaps due to the heat, and likely in part due to some sort of mystery-problem with my right hand that has me wearing a brace for a few weeks. And yet, I have a lot of things to be excited about/working on, so I type, with this brace, an update to this blog:

I have a new story coming out! The fine people at Pornokitsch/Jurassic London are putting out a mummies anthology, called The Book of the Dead. It sounds awesome!

The Book of the Dead will be published in collaboration with the Egypt Exploration Society, the UK’s oldest independent funder of archaeological fieldwork and research in Egypt, dedicated to the promotion and understanding of ancient Egyptian history and culture.

Full ToC here. My story is called “Mysterium Tremendum” and is sort-of about Tesla, maybe, and definitely about why you shouldn’t trust cute boys.

Next, my forthcoming Egaeus Press collection doesn’t have a title yet, but I’m hard at work on the all-new novella. Here’s the unofficial ToC for that, in no particular order:

Herbert West in Love
Go, Go, Go, Said the Byakhee
In Sheep’s Clothing
Damnatio Memoriae
Tubby McMungus, Fat From Fungus
The Middle Passage (some all-new cosmic horror!)
How John Wilmot Contracted Syphilis
The Poison-Well
Rhum Deal (the aforementioned new novella!)

Very exciting! I wanted this collection to be a best-of-my-best, and so far I’m more than happy with how it’s shaping up. The new novella is causing me to tear my hair out at the moment, but that’s okay. I think it’ll all work out. Any troubles I’m having I lay at the feet of Nick Mamatas, who I heard one too many times mocking stories where “people do too much with their eyes, like raising their eyebrow while looking at someone over a glass of wine.” So here I am, writing about an 18th century dinner party full of fops, avoiding that. But how does one write about white-people angst without eyebrow-raising? I guess you’ll have to read it to find out.

Also, I don’t think I mentioned it here, but I was nominated for the British Fantasy Award, in the Best Newcomer Category (the Sydney J. Bounds Award), for A Pretty Mouth. Holy shit! The fact that I spaced on blogging has everything to do with the nomination coming two days before my Florida trip, because I am so stoked to be nominated for this. I decided to make good on that membership I bought to WFC in Brighton and go, because damn. So, see you in October, Brighton!

Oh, and speaking of A Pretty Mouth, there might be a hardcover edition at some point. Woah!

As I snoozed in bed this morning I heard my phone beeping at me, but I ignored it because I’ve had an internet phone for four months now so I have learned to disregard any kind of sound it makes before 8 AM. Eventually, however, the ruckus became so serious that I got up to see what the heck everybody was push-notifying me of. It was important! Go figure. Thus, Lessons were Learned about always keeping my internet phone right by my bed forever and ever and ever because (inhale!):

The Guardian! (I know, what?) One of their columnists, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Damian Walter, held a contest of sorts, the point of which was to find out if indie authors/publishers had, amongst their numbers, “[a] book to rival the magnitude and sheer storytelling bravado of George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones.”

Cool! Well, what happened?!

 “The brutal truth is that nothing I saw came close.”

Honestly … no surprises there. I have recently gotten in to A Song of Ice and Fire, and it’s the best thing ever. Who knew, except for everybody except me? Since 1996? Anyways, the good news is that Mr. Walter went through 800 or so indie books and thought mine (mine!) was pretty good! Maybe more than pretty good, if I’m honest:

“My favourite novel among these five, however, is A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer. Imagine a history of 19th-century literature where the eldritch weirdness of Poe and Lovecraft had infected the mainstream drawing-room novels of the era … Molly Tanzer is a tremendously clever writer, with a remarkable knack for fusing the grotesque and the comedic. A Pretty Mouth manages the thing that becomes ever harder as the novel grows older. It does something new.”

Uh? Yay! What? OMG!

So, thank you to Damien and congrats to everyone else on the list, you can read the whole thing at the link above. And seriously? I am still kind of in awe. (My face! In The Guardian! And for a great reason!) I’d gibber some more about how awesome this all is, but I gotta go do stuff to my most recent batch of kimchi. Writerly life is glamorous, what can I say?

I’ve been slack on blogging, so I have a few A Pretty Mouth-related things to note here!

First: Tomorrow (2/15) begins a two-week Goodreads discussion about A Pretty Mouth, hosted by The Next Best Book Blog, those kind folks who liked my book and for whom I concocted the Infernal! cocktail. They hosted a giveaway about a month ago, and the participants have (allegedly) been reading my book and coming up with questions for me about the text. You, dear reader, may also participate by signing up for the group and asking your own questions. I can only imagine.

Second: Just look at this crazy thing, courtesy Sam McCanna at Scurvy Ink:

Yes, that is a t-shirt of my book cover! Holy moly. I haven’t seen one in the flesh (cotton jersey?) yet but I’m sure they are going to be awesome. Go buy one and simultaneously support an independent shirt-maker and also rep my book!

Third, and finally: The Arkham Digest, a fine site indeed for those into horror, weird, and interesting media, was kind enough to review A Pretty Mouth, glowingly, and then interview me! The questions were very fun to answer. So, go check it out, and check out the whole site, too. Justin reviews super-interesting books and video games and movies and all that stuff, so it’s worthwhile to put it into your RSS feed.

All right all right. Enough! I must flee. Happy Year of the Snake to you all/Gong Xi Fa Cai!

It’s a new year! I intended to do one of those wrap-up posts that everyone does, but it’s already January 2nd so no one cares anymore. Suffice it to say that 2012 was a year of some pretty major ups and downs. On the ups, I published some stuff, including my first book, got an amazing agent which means my novel is now in excellent hands, and became involved with an extremely rewarding (and time-consuming) martial and cultural arts community. On the flip side of things, I lost a beloved parent, and as nothing else even comes close to that in terms of sadness, so that’s all I’ll say on the matter.

In re resolutions, one thing I’ve decided to do in this new year is blog more—but less about myself. To that end I’m going to start both posting my ongoing experiments with mixology, and also review kung fu movies. There’s nothing particularly thematic there, except that I like to mix cocktails and I watch a lot of kung fu movies. I’d love to inspire others to do more of both, so … okay!

But first, some (mildly hypocritical) housekeeping.

First! The Next Best Book Blog is hosting a giveaway plus an author/reader discussion of A Pretty Mouth. Basically you put your name into a hat for a free .mobi copy, then if you win it you read it and all through February I’ll be engaging in discussions/answering questions about the material. So pop on over and see what’s up! This reminds me to remind you that yes, the kindle edition of A Pretty Mouth is available, so tell any of your friends who mentioned being given Amazon gift cards for the holidays!

Next! “Herbert West In Love” is, as I mentioned, available for free along with the entire December edition of the Lovecraft eZine. But! You can also support the amazing work done by the eZine by either purchasing the podcast version of the issue or buying the ebook. I listened to the podcast of my story and it was an interesting experience! I’ve never heard anyone else read my work before.

Finally, I sold a story! “Tantivy” will be appearing in Steve Berman’s anthology Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages, out in 2013 from Prime Books. Mine’s about devious 18th century fops eschewing fox-hunting for hunting zombies. Well, of course it is!

Ho-kay! Now on to stuff not about me!

For Christmas I asked for a bunch of ridiculous wuxia/kung fu DVD sets, and my girl Raechel got me one that includes Vengeance is a Golden Blade, Have Sword Will Travel, The Water Margin, and The Wandering Swordsman.

I began last night with Vengeance is a Golden Blade, because great title. Too bad the title turns out to be misleading, just a bit. The golden blade is actually the MacGuffin of the film, and less the instrument of vengeance. Ah, whatever.

It begins with a bunch of shady fuckers, aka The Vicious Long Brothers, who are pissed at a marginally less-shady fucker and want to ambush/murder him because the Long Brothers provide “protection” for traveling merchants, but they rob their clients. The marginally less-shady fucker also provides protection but, you know, doesn’t rob his clients, so he’s gotten all their business. They are many but he is few, but he has the Golden Dragon Sword so he fights them and they lose and just get more pissed off.

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the Lead Shady Fucker of the Vicious Long Brothers has been carrying on a longtime affair with the wife of Marginally Less Shady. When Marginally Less Shady finds out about the affair, he tells his wife that because of her philandering she must kill herself. She doesn’t really think this is a particularly great idea (go figure) so instead she poisons Marginally’s eyeballs, temporarily, and he is forced to flee with his toddler-aged daughter Xiaolang. They take refuge with a crazy old herbalist and his son.

Fast forward to 18 years later, Marginally Less Shady is crippled and can’t do kung fu anymore so he has trained Xiaolang in swordplay and taught her that one day she must avenge him with the Hanglong Blade he’s been forging for 18 years, coincidentally. But he won’t tell her who will be the object of said avenging so she mostly hangs out practicing and flirting with the herbalist’s son in the bucolic Chinese countryside.

Then one day she begs to go to town and is allowed to for the first time, whereupon, because of course, she falls unwittingly into her now-a-Madam-of-a-whorehouse mother’s hands. But Madam Mother doesn’t know who Xiaolang is, so she tries to sell her body to a foppish magistrate who saw her doing kung fu against some dudes and was “impressed.” After a narrow escape from worse than death and learning that her mom’s a bitch, Xiaolang is pretty eager to wreak some goddamn havoc, and it’s a good thing too because Mom has realized that Xiaolang is her daughter, Marginally Less Shady is still alive and conveniently close-by, and her lover is still pissed about that shit way back when (even though he is in possession of the Golden Dragon Sword, quizzically). In the end, things get really real in the form of Xiaolang murdering improbable numbers of brigands with a sword, so basically my bread and butter.

I enjoyed the film, but I can’t give Vengeance is a Golden Blade more than 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. The herbalist motif is awesome, and Daughter Avenges Father is a favorite theme of mine … but the film is a bit slower than it needs to be, even for a Shaw Brothers kung fu epic, and the girl who plays Xiaolang isn’t all that great of a martial artist. Like, distractingly not that great. Still, definitely worthwhile!

Happy new year, everyone!

I had a great Christmas with the family! We did the big dinner and presents on Christmas Eve (I got a Tofu Xpress!!), then a low-key Christmas Day with just my mom and John. I made cinnamon rolls and Gardein sausage for breakfast and then we took a few walks in the nice weather, relaxed, and gobbled up leftovers for dinner which was fine by me. I’m exhausted after a week of partying with John’s family (not one, but two pallet-based bonfires in the back yard!), a trip to Busch Gardens for their Christmas Extravaganza, and everything else. Also, John got me the Blu-Ray of Re-Animator which I’m too excited about. Deleted scenes! Jeffrey Combs’ winsome faun-like face in high definition!

But! Christmas was also awesome for other reasons: A Pretty Mouth now has a brand-new Kindle edition that’s for sale on Amazon for the low, low price of $6.95. I’m really excited, as folks have been asking and asking about an ebook, and now there is one for purchase! Indeed, several friends were kind enough to let me know they bought it last night, so a big thank-you to those people. You know who you are!

AND … omg so yeah, just look at this:

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS. Just behold the awesome that is “Herbert West in Love,” (the illustration) by Miko. Apparently my Blu-Ray was some sort of trumpeting angel of amazing Re-Animator stuff. Re-Animatormas. I couldn’t be happier—indeed, as I had no idea my story would be illustrated, I am doubly happy. The skull in the lamplight! The crotch bulge! The lace-up club shirt! Oh, Herbert.

Oh, and duh, I should mention that this illustration means “Herbert West in Love” is now available for your reading pleasure over at The Lovecraft eZine. People seem to be enjoying it so far, which is exciting! Thanks to Mike Davis for selecting it for the 20th issue. You can read it for free, which rules! And/or you could wait for the Kindle/Nook edition in a few days and support the eZine which would be awesome of you, as just look at the work they’re doing. It’s awesome. I also hear there will be a podcast edition of the eZine, including “Herbert,” which I plan on downloading and listening to on the plane when I fly back to Colorado. This marks my very first audio edition of anything I’ve published, which is … anyways, yeah, I’m a little emotional. I love this story—it’s about Herbert West kissing boys, of course it’s a favored child—so the fact it’s receiving the deluxe treatment is pretty goddamn awesome.

SO! Merry fucking Christmas to me, me me me me me. But so as not to be totally selfish, here’s something for you, dear readers: A Re-Animatormas cocktail. Top shelf shit, this. Sweet, herbal, nutty, citrusy, and boozy enough to lower your inhibitions when it comes to reaching out and inappropriately touching that special dead someone . It’s a Christmas miracle!

Revivification

2 oz Armagnac
1 oz Green Chartreuse
1 tsp Disaronno

Pour all ingredients into a mixing pitcher. Stir vigorously with lots of ice until cold, then strain into a small snifter. Float a lemon wheel on top. Inhale. Sip.