Paper Fruit

Holy moly! A Pretty Mouth dropped early—by like, a month!—so it’s up on Amazon and you could buy it if you wanted to. And you know you want to! Because really, the cover alone is worth the price.

But what about inside said cover? Well, I’m super-proud of the contents, which I can actually take credit for. If you pick up my book you’ll be getting a short novel and four short stories about the Calipash family, first featured in my “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” which people seemed to like well enough. The stories are all set in different time periods so it’s like, sort of Blackadderish, but with lots of incest and necromancy and you know what, my friend and colleague John Langan said it way better than me here:

“The stories and short novel in Molly Tanzer’s impressive debut collection move steadily backwards through English history, from an Edwardian resort to a Roman encampment, stopping on the way for the nineteenth, eighteenth, and seventeenth centuries, all in the interest of tracing the main trunk of the notorious Calipash family tree all the way to its roots. It’s a family linemarked by its excesses of sensuality, cruelty, and sorcery, and in excerpting the exploits of its storied members, Tanzer demonstrates her facility with a variety of voices and styles, from Wodehousian farce to Victorian erotica to Restoration class comedy. Each of the narratives collected here stands and succeeds on its own terms, but taken together, they add to a whole greater than the sum of its parts, in which the recurrence of key motifs in a diversity of settings creates the sense of a family living out its doom generation after generation. Tanzer is an ambitious writer, and she is talented enough for her ambition to matter.” —JOHN LANGAN, author of The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies

See that? An actual college professor claims my book has “key motifs!” Fuck yeah, that’s pretty much everything I ever wanted right there. But in case that’s not enough to convince you that your $11.95 will be well spent on my book, you can scroll down on the Amazon page and see that such people as Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Stephen Graham Jones (who also has a book out today through LFP, so get ’em both and maybe you’ll get super-saver  shipping?), John Hornor Jacobs, W.H. Pugmire, and Nick Mamatas all thought it was pretty okay, too.

Anyways! Many thanks to Amazon for saving me the trouble of doing a bunch of pre-promotion, because I suck at it. Just go buy it! Please? Thank you!

Whee! Last week I remarked that I, at long last, had completed a piece of fiction. Well, huzzah, for I have now sold that piece of fiction! I’m super-happy to announce that my short story, “Ho Pais Kalos” will be appearing in Geek Love: An Anthology of Full Frontal Nerdery, edited by Shanna Germain and Janine Ashbless. I’m really honored to be a part of this project, along with Wendy Wagner, Camille Alexa, James Sutter, John Nakamura Remy, and other fine folks. Many thanks to the editors, staff, and everyone else associated with this project.

The other exciting thing I saw late last week was my final-final cover for A Pretty Mouth! I can’t believe it, but the book went to the printer last Friday. The final cover, which you can see below, has some new fonts going on (which I adore), and also added sparkly stuff in the form of blurbs from Laird Barron and Caitlín R. Kiernan. I’m starting to get butterflies over the imminent release, in a good way. I think. But it’s too late to change anything now, so that means the time for worrying about whatever is past!

BEHOLD:

I love it! And many thanks to Laird, Caitlín, and everyone else who blurbed/edited/helped/read/everything-elsed with this project. Also, just a reminder, but I will send a .pdf to those interested in reviewing the book on their blog, on a review site, or on Amazon (when the page goes up).

Speaking of Calipashian goodness, one of the stories in A Pretty Mouth is now available for purchase! The Book of Cthulhu II is now shipping from Amazon and has also been spotted in bookstores. So, if you’re desperate to read “The Hour of the Tortoise,” get it now! You’ll also be getting stories by Neil Gaiman, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Livia Llewellyn, W.H. Pugmire, Laird Barron, Orrin Grey , and many more.

Finally, Coming Together: Arm in Arm in Arm is out! The kindle price is only $3.99, and that goes to Oceanea, a charity devoted to helping the oceans. Go buy it! I have porn in there, it’s Lovecraftian, it’s weird, I dunno. I also have a .pdf, so if you’d like to review the book, please email me and I will send it to you if you’re one of the first five people to email me.

My mom’s in town, and we’re about to get some lunch, so that’s all for now!

Two announcements re: A Pretty Mouth, my forthcoming debut!

First: I have an uncorrected advance .pdf and will send it out to interested reviewers. It would be super-cool to get some reviews/buzz going for this project, on Amazon (when the page goes up/book comes out, obvs) and around the Webs, so if you like, I dunno, Jeeves stories, Restoration class drama, Re-Animator, sword and sorcery, The Secret History, fops, or Victorian pornography, please consider reviewing the book!

Second: I’m super-happy to report that there’s already some amazing buzz going on around my little project, and my editor, Cameron, has compiled some a list of some of the blurbs on the LFP site. So far, Laird Barron, John Langan, Nick Mamatas, W.H. Pugmire, Nathan Long, Stephen Graham Jones, and several others have had some very kind things to say about A Pretty Mouth. A more complete list can be found via the link above, but here are some quick, fabulous, awesome soundbites:

“A Pretty Mouth is a fine and stylish collection that pays homage to the tradition of the weird while blazing its own sinister mark. Tanzer’s debut is as sharp and polished as any I’ve seen.”  —LAIRD BARRON, author of The Croning

“This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: when Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.” —STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, author of Zombie Bake-Off

Tanzer is an ambitious writer, and she is talented enough for her ambition to matter.” —JOHN LANGAN, author of The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, as a few elements were finalized—and some stuff may still change, of course—but I could not be happier about this:

Click to enlarge and bring up all the cool little details!

So, yeah. I love my publishing company! Many thanks to my editor Cameron Pierce and my cover designer Matthew Revert. Seriously, I don’t know if I could love this any more!

Oh man. October seems frighteningly close and yet so far away…