Five silly novels – now on Kindle!

  

My last post here was to apologise for our lack of activity, and this one's to announce we've published four new ebooks, as well as finally producing the Kindle version of an old favourite! Quite a turnaround! So what's going on? Well, these four NaNoWriMo novels appeared in our magazine in our early days, and we'd always meant to publish them as books, but never made the time. And in truth, they weren't really worth the effort! But that didn't stop them clogging up our publishing plans, and getting in the way of us doing more interesting projects. So, I thought, let's just get the buggers out and move on.

None of them are particularly good, and all bear the scars of having been written in under a month, but there's a good joke every twenty pages or so in each of them. (It's only the one joke, but it is recycled mercilessly.*) I ummed and ahhed for a while about whether to publish Howard's novels under his own name, but, you know, he did gamble away all his rights in them to me in a late-night game of Carcassonne. Putting my name on them just makes the admin easier.

Links are to Amazon UK, but the books are available on Kindle worldwide. All these ebooks are Kindle exclusives for now.

Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting! – a semi-sequel to Professor Challenger in Space, this was originally published as a Rocket eBook all the way back on 22 January 2001. Mrs Challenger sends a mismatched team of heroes and villains out on a mission to stop the tin can brains.

The Fear Man – the President of Earth battles the universe to get his unborn daughter back. Great idea, poor execution!

Howard Phillips in His Nerves Extruded – following the events of the as yet unpublished (and largely unwritten) Howard Phillips and the Ghastly Mountain Howard is looking for more members to join his band. He has hired beautiful actresses to carry him around on a palanquin.

Howard Phillips and the Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta – Howard goes on a mission to a haunted undersea base.

Howard Phillips and the Day the Moon Wept Blood – the worst writer in the world mounts a literary takeover of England, seizing control of our bookshops and making his base at the British Library.

*And like most of the jokes in these books, that line was stolen from Groo the Wanderer.

Apologies for lack of life

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog this month, so this is just a note to apologise. We're not shutting down or anything, I just wanted to try saving the new reviews for the magazine rather than running them on the blog first. Partly to keep the magazine special, partly to give me more time to polish my reviews – they certainly need it! – and partly to make the admin easier (I just have to email each publisher once). Once the next issue's out we'll run the reviews here on the blog as usual.

I worked a bit on issue 40 today, and it's looking very good. Howard Watts has done a marvellous cover that celebrates our reaching the big four-oh, we're up to about forty pages of reviews, and we have some wonderful fiction for you.

Look forward to it – or face my wrath!

Sketch Monsters, Vol. 1: Escape of the Scribbles – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A little girl draws out her problems—quite literally, in a sketchbook—and then has to deal with them when they come to life and start tearing up the neighbourhood. Aimed at very young kids, and they’ll probably enjoy it, but there’s not much in this short book to interest adults. Should do well in primary schools, so long as the binding is good and sturdy.

Sketch Monsters, Vol. 1: Escape of the Scribbles, by Joshua Williamson and Vinny Navarrete (Oni Press, hb, 40pp)

Rascal Raccoon’s Raging Revenge – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Rascal Raccoon is locked in an eternal struggle with Jumpin’ Jackalope, and one day, despite the terminal unreliability of his mail-order death-traps, he manages to kill him. Sort of: a pair of trucks do most of the hard work. Rascal is now a hero to other meanies, a monster to the merries, and a source of mixed feelings for Jackalope’s curvaceous widow Janey, who did once agree to go on a date with him. At something of a loose end without a nemesis, he agrees to help her find their creator and get him to draw Jackalope back to life, a mission that brings them into the “real” world.

Power Lunch, Vol. 1: First Course – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Joey, the new weird kid at school, gets powers when he eats particular foods; which power he gets depends on which food he eats: trail mix gives him super-speed, white food leaves him unaffected. Jerome, the previous weird kid, needs help with Bug, a bully who spends his quiet time burning ants with a magnifying glass. Jerome encourages his friend to try out for the soccer team, but that means he must walk home alone.

Power Lunch is a good little book, as long as it lasts, with bold, colourful illustrations, and like Sketch Monsters should do well in schools and libraries, but there’s not much here for adults. Older kids may find the lack of substance underwhelming; younger children might be upset by the bullying scenes. To get a kid’s-eye view, I asked my daughters to take a look, but it failed their first test: “Is there a girl in it?”

Power Lunch, Vol. 1: First Course, by J. Torres and Dean Trippe (Oni Press, hb, 44pp).

Before Watchmen: F— Alan Moore

Art for Minutemen
by Darwyn Cooke

The row over Before Watchmen – a rolling bunch of mini-series in the style of Seven Soldiers of Victory – carries on, and probably isn’t going to go away until the project does. Most reaction to it seems to have been very negative, in principle (while acknowledging that the art looks pretty good), but there’s a bunch of people who seem to think Alan Moore is a hypocrite, and that DC has every right to do whatever it wants with these characters.

The thing they don’t seem to get is that Watchmen is a novel. DC Comics has asked the authors of that novel, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, to write a follow-up, and they have declined.

Orcs: Forged for War, by Stan Nicholls and Joe Flood – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Two sets of humans are at war: the monotheist Unis, waging a “crusade against the vermin that infest this land”, and the pantheist Manis, who have allied themselves with the fantastical races. The orcs of the title are a band of brothers (and one sister) fighting for the Manis: the Wolverines. Whichever set of humans win, the magical races know their time is limited. The Wolverines are orcs (and one dwarf) on a mission, Dirty Dozen-style. Having successfully blown up a bridge (or rather, dissolved one of its legs with a magical potion to make it collapse), they are sent by merciless witch queen Jennesta (who for some reason we get to see topless) on an escort mission, taking goblin sorcerer Eegett-Qinx on the road to test a powerful new weapon.

Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This unmemorable comic acts as a prequel to the film starring Jason Momoa, who was so brilliantly menacing in Game of Thrones. The comic contains forty-eight story pages detailing the quest of Khalar Zym and his daughter to restore the all-powerful Mask of Acheron, eight text pages about the empire of Acheron, six adverts and a two-page map of Hyboria; by far the most interesting of those pages being, unfortunately, the adverts for Munchkin Conan and a new Angel & Faith comic.

I might give it another read after watching the film, to see where everyone came from (Conan is forced to drop boiling metal on his poor Dad’s head), but there’s no other reason to read this over the frequently superb Conan comics Dark Horse have previously published, especially at a premium price. (The creators are uncredited in my pre-release pdf; I’ve taken their details from Dark Horse’s website.)

Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron, by Stuart Moore and Gabriel Guzman (Dark Horse, one-shot, 64pp).

Theaker’s Fab Five #3: The Wedding Present, Romana and Mogwai

Time for another round-up of the dazzling discs dominating my five-CD stereo (which is beginning to show a few worrying signs of wear and tear – if it breaks down it’ll blow as big a hole in my work routine as, well, the day I found I could access Facebook via https, thus circumventing all my carefully laid keyword blocks at the router).

1. The Wedding Present: Search for Paradise: Singles 2004–5

Last time I did a round-up I was having a big catch-up with New Order, and this time it’s been the turn of The Wedding Present, inspired by the imminent release of their new album, Valentina. This bundles up the four singles from Take Fountain, together with their b-sides, and a trio of lovely acoustic versions. Not everyone is keen on David Gedge’s voice, but I love it, for its sincerity and heart, yes, of course, but also because it’s easy to sing along with! I’ve tried singing along with David McAlmont and the results were not pleasant. I was intrigued enough by the added vocals on the Klee remix of “I’m From Further North Than You” to buy one of their EPs, and it’s very nice indeed, even if I can't sing along (whatever I learnt while taking GCSE German has been long forgotten).

2. The Wedding Present: The Complete Peel Sessions, CD Three

Includes sessions nine, ten, eleven and twelve, covering the period from the Hit Parade to Take Fountain. Only just bought this box set, and so far this is the only CD I’ve listened to. At the time, I was a bit disappointed by the Hit Parade, when The Wedding Present released a hit single every month – I couldn’t bring myself to buy “Boing” – and Watusi, because to me they felt like a retreat from the more serious, grinding music they had produced with Steve Albini. But listening to them on here along with the excellent songs from Saturnalia and Take Fountain, the ups and downs of changing production styles evened out by consistent BBC engineering, it turns out I’m really keen on all these songs. Feels sometimes like the album I’d hoped they’d make after Seamonsters (one of my favourite albums of all time). The one thing that could have made this better would have been a few snippets of John Peel, like the one that introduces Mogwai’s Government Commissions.

3. The Wedding Present: El Rey

I must look anxious, 'cause she fixes me with this gaze.
“Face it tiger, you’ve just hit the jackpot,” she says.

Can’t go wrong with a Spider-Man reference! This one’s in “Santa Ana Winds”. Add to that a bit of Seinfeld in “Soup” (chorus: “No soup for you! No soup for you!”), production by Steve Albini, and this has been an instant winner. I’ve been singing the wonderful track nine all around the house, changing the lyrics to “The Thing I Like Best About Me Is My Ranjna”. I think a lot of people would agree with that. Wish I’d heard about this album when it first came out. Somehow I missed it till now and I am well on the way to adoring it.

4. Doctor Who: Companion Chronicles: The Invasion of E-Space

The supply of new audio adventures has dried up a bit since I stopped reviewing for the British Fantasy Society, but I have a few older ones that I didn't get around to before: Big Finish are an extraordinarily productive company! This one features Lalla Ward as Romana, telling the story of an adventure with the fourth Doctor and Adric. I think it’s fair to say that my opinion of most of these has been more or less the same: never awful, never mind-blowingly brilliant, but always enjoyable. Review to appear in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #40.

5. Mogwai: Earth Division EP

The one music CD to survive the avalanche of Wedding Present and Cinerama purchases! (I bought the superb Cinerama Peel Sessions set too.) I like this, but coming straight after the Big Finish CD doesn’t do it many favours, since the first track, “Get to France”, sounds an awful lot like Big Finish’s incidental music. It always takes me a minute or two to realise it’s Mogwai. "Hound of Winter" is unusual for Mogwai, being a proper song with words, but is rather fab, while “Drunk And Crazy” is lovely and noisy. “Does This Always Happen” is classic Mogwai, but with strings.

At one point last month all five slots were taken up by Moby albums, so I carefully avoided doing a Fab Five round-up then. They’re great for working to, but I don’t think I could ever truly love them.

Away from the five-CD stereo, I’ve been listening to the Aphex Twin’s brilliant acid house collection Chosen Lords on the iPad. I’ll be buying the full set of Analord EPs just as soon as my bank balance recovers from paying last year’s income tax. I’ve also been listening to Ghosts I by Nine Inch Nails, which is pretty good, but not quite good enough to get me to fork out for Ghosts II–IV just yet.

The Wedding Present’s new single, “You Jane”, is out now, and there should be a video below. It’s a grower, honest, even if the video's not that great.

What contributors did next #1

Rhys Hughes contributed Thornton Excelsior adventures to TQF38 and TQF39, and I'm pleased to announce that there will be another set of them in issue forty. There's a new interview with him on the Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog. I'm currently reading his new book, Rhysop's Fables, and it's rather fab.

Bob Lock contributed the Halloween-flavoured "Jack" to TQF25, and what's more his new book, Eclectic Sheep That Androids Never Dreamed Of, features a number of my hand-drawn sheep on its cover! Guess which ones are mine and you'll be able to see why I stopped doing illustrations for our magazine.

KJ Hannah Greenberg contributed "Just One Case of Flash: Another Chimera Tale" to TQF30, and her newest poetry collection, A Bank Robber's Bad Luck With His Ex-Girlfriend, is out from Unbound CONTENT. Readers who use the code "sentiment’s chowder" on their order form will get a 10% discount. It's also available from Amazon.

“Every Dialogue Scene Is a Duel” – Matthew Hughes, interviewed by Stephen Theaker

Hi Matt, thanks for agreeing to be our first interviewee.

I’m honoured to be here.

I’ve just finished reading the three Henghis Hapthorn novels, one after the other, and it was one of the most sheerly pleasurable reading experiences of my life. I’ve previously read The Damned Busters and Quartet & Triptych. Where would you recommend I head next? And is there one book of yours that you would recommend to first-time readers of your work?

Since you liked Quartet & Triptych, which is about my master thief and art forger, Luff Imbry, I would suggest The Other, from Underland Press in the US. It’s the first Imbry novel. It came out last month and it’s available in Kindle. You might also want to check with Angry Robot’s e-store in a little while. I’m just in the process of sending them the seven or eight Imbry stories that have appeared in various venues over the past few years.

Majestrum, by Matthew Hughes – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This is the first of the Henghis Hapthorn novels. Having just read the second and third in the series I was surprised at how late in the story this one begins: already, Hapthorn is aware of magic, his intuition has developed a distinct personality, and his integrator has been turned into a grinnet. That is because the novel follows on from a series of short stories about the same character (collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories, now safely ensconced on my Kindle), but like novels two and three it stands perfectly well alone.

Crimewave Eleven: Ghosts, reviewed by John Greenwood

According to the publisher's website, Crimewave magazine was established in order to "plug a gap in the UK marketplace by publishing a crime and mystery fiction magazine". That sounds more mercenary than the magazine's creators probably meant it to. The attention to detail in the design and production of the book feels more like a labour of love than a mere marketing opportunity.

Founding editor Mat Coward is quoted: "We don't do cosy, we don't do hardboiled, we don't do noir. What we do is something entirely different to anything you've ever read before." The lovely noirish, hardboiled cover illustration seems to suggest otherwise, but the contents bear out his assertion, partly at any rate. None of the short fiction represented here falls neatly within such sub-genres. Whether it is entirely different to anything I've ever read before is a rather stronger statement.

Hespira, by Matthew Hughes – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Like the previous Hapthorn novel I had read, Hespira declares its intention to be interesting from the very first page, in this case by introducing the concept of retrospectants. Collecting significant items such as buttons and twigs over the course of their lives, devotees of this spiritual path choose a day to die, and gather their friends together in order to “explain the hidden meaning and structure” of their existences, “as revealed by the seemingly random milestones” collected in their soul boxes. After the final revelation “the adherent would then be quickly killed and cremated”, leaving their boxes to become, with the passage of centuries, highly collectible. One could pick almost any page of this book and find an equally interesting idea.

Reviewing under a pseudonym

Guy Haley, a very experienced genre journalist, has been blogging about the critical response to his novel, Reality 36, a book I liked. There's a lot of good sense in the post, The Agonies of Criticism, plus a tiny bit of moaning about more negative reviews, but what caught my eye was this, with regard to his reviewing for SFX and Deathray:

“Sometimes I use a pseudonym Is there something that could possibly be construed as a conflict of interest by picky cyber-trolls? Then I write under a different name. There never is a conflict of interest, by the way, I’m always as subjectively objective as I can possibly be (or do I mean objectively subjective?), sometimes to the point of personal detriment.”

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The Spiral Labyrinth, by Matthew Hughes – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This is the second novel in the Henghis Hapthorn series, but the first I read; the Amazon listings weren’t clear what the order should be, I downloaded the preview of this one to find out, and having read a page I refused to stop until I’d read the whole book. And what a fantastic and intriguing first page it was: by its end it had promised mysteries, thaumaturges, fancy words, an “intuitive inner self” called Osk Rievor, offworld travel, and that magic would “regain its ascendancy over rationalism”. I paid my eight pounds well before finishing the Kindle preview.

Ian Churchill’s Marineman, Vol. 1: A Matter of Life and Depth – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Marine biologist Steve Ocean, known to fans of his TV show Ocean Encounters as Marineman, has a secret life as a water-breathing, super-fast, super-strong Navy operative. He’s a cross between Steve Irwin and James Bond, although if you’re a child he’s more likely to save your mum than dangle you in front of crocodiles, and he has a healthy respect for women rather than treating them as disposable playthings. That’s a major theme here: respect for women, and also for friends, colleagues, sea life and the environment.

Asking people to vote for you in awards...

Lots of debate among writers today on Twitter regarding literary awards – as usual, one might say. The question is: is it acceptable to ask people to vote for or nominate your work? Adam Roberts described it as a "demeaning and contemptible practice", to which Paul Cornell (one of my favourite writers of Doctor Who novels) replied "demeaning and contemptible my arse". The debate rages on, but that's the gist of it.

Asking people to vote for your work means you think your book would be a worthy winner, and that can look rather big-headed. Or even worse, it suggests you don't care if your book is the best: you want to win anyway. Both of those can rub people up the wrong way.

For example, just before Christmas I saw a guy on Facebook saying that "anyone who hasn't yet read my ---- can assuage their guilt by voting for it in the ---- awards". Now, that is exactly the worst of it: you haven't read my book, but vote for it anyway. Ptui!

Awards are nice, and I'll admit that, now TQF is eligible again for the British Fantasy Awards, I'd be very excited to pick up another nomination, even if I don't think we quite deserve it yet. But they're not worth being silly about. Be cool. Encourage people to engage with the awards process properly, to read as many nominees as they can, not just vote for you because they're your pals.

Incredible Change-Bots, by Jeffrey Brown – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The incredible Change-Bots are divided into two camps: the Awesomebots, led by Big Rig, and the Fantasticons, led by Shootertron. Having devastated their home planet of Electronocybercircuitron, they come to a temporary truce and pile into a spaceship, but fighting breaks out over whether word processors and incredible Change-Bots evolved from a common ancestor and they crash land on Earth. With a handful of unfortunate humans caught in the middle, their never-ending but rarely fatal battle continues to continue.