That’s just one of the topics that Greg Hall and I talked about during a fast hour of conversation on Friday’s installment of The Funky Werepig Show. If you didn’t get a chance to tune in to the live podcast, you can download the full interview here.
The Funky Werepig Show – August 4, 2012
Along the way, we got the chance to touch on a number of forthcoming books, with me promising to post more information here.
Thus, if you’re interested (and since you’re reading this I assume you are) here’s what you came for:
Hazard Yet Forward, edited by Natalie Duvall, Matt Duvall, and Deanna Lepsch: a multi-genre charity anthology featuring seventy-six writers connected to the Seton Hill University Writing Popular Fiction program. Some of the notable writers featured in the book are World Fantasy Award winner Nalo Hopkinson, Bram Stoker winners Michael A. Arnzen and Michael Knost, Spur winner Meg Mims, Asimov’s Readers’ Award winner Timons Esaias, and many more.
My contribution to the book is an acrostic sonnet that first appeared in Amazing Stories way back in 1982. (I was a precocious child!) It is being reprinted here for the first time.
All proceeds from Hazard Yet Forward will benefit Donna Munro, a 2004 graduate of the SHU writing program who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
I had the honor of serving as Donna’s writing mentor for two terms. She is a wonderfully talented writer and one of the driving forces behind Seton Hill’s annual writing conference, the In Your Write Mind Workshop. The ebook launches tomorrow at Amazon.
Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Paula Guran: an anthology of some of the best f/sf/h music-themed stories ever written. Contributors include Poppy Z. Brite, Edward Bryant, Pat Cadigan, Bradley Denton, Elizabeth Hand, Graham Joyce, Greg Kihn, Marc Laidlaw, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Charles de Lint, Alastair Reynolds, David J. Schow, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Lucius Shepard, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, F. Paul Wilson, and Howard Waldrop – a veritable who’s who of fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
My contribution, “The Mercenary,” is one of two stories written specially for the anthology. The other is “Mourningstar” by Del James, who in addition to being a terrific writer also serves as the tour manager for Guns N’Roses. The book is due out this October from Prime Books.
Challenger: Lost Places, New Worlds, edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec, the same editors behind the Sherlock Holmes Gaslight series: Gaslight Grimoire, Gaslight Grotesque, and Gaslight Arcanum. This new anthology features some of today’s top writers working with another Arthur Conan Doyle character – the irascible Professor George Edward Challenger.
An official list of contributing writers has not yet been released, but I have it on good authority that two of my friends from the Gaslight books – Stephen Volk and Simon Kurt Unsworth – are going to be joining me once again in this anthology. Cover art is by Oscar-winner Dave Elsey!
My contribution to Challenger: Lost Places, New Worlds is a new science fiction story titled “King of the Moon.” I do not have a release date available yet, but I expect it to be available in 2013. I’ll be sure to post updates when they are available.
Greg and I also talked about Vortex: Book Three of The Veins Cycle (which I am pleased to report has been turned in and is scheduled for release next year) and the ambient rock CD Veins: The Soundtrack, which serves as a musical accompaniment to the three-book cycle.
As for the topics of dancing in the headlights, Greg dusted off an out of print recording of my gothic Celtic-rock tune “Watching Brid Cairenn,” a song about a woman who wants to go dancing and ends up performing in the middle of nowhere – in a good way, of course.
The tune is one of my originals from the out of print CD Two Seas, recorded in 2006 with The Laughrey Connolly Band.
The track features me on lead guitar and vocals, Chris Laughrey on rhythm, Bob Banerjee on mandolin, Duane Davis on bass, and Lee McGinn on drums.
The podcast seemed to compress the song just a bit, with the balance favoring the lead guitar at the expense of Bob Banerjee’s terrific fiddle solo. If you’d like to hear the tune in all its glory, you can check it out via the link below.
Play it loud . . . and if you feel the urge to go dancing in the headlights, just make sure the car is parked.
Here’s the link: “Watching Brid Cairenn.” Rock on!
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