Nights in the Lonesome October
The latest issue of the Lovecraft eZine is a tribute to Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, and it features my story "The Blackbird Whistling, or Just After."
Roger Zelazny isn't quite the fabled "writer who made me want to become a writer," but discovering his work marked maybe the biggest turning point in my journey from being a kid who wanted to grow up to be a writer to growing up to kind of be a writer after all. And while I discovered Zelazny through his Amber novels, A Night in the Lonesome October is, of course, the novel of his that speaks most to me. It's a perennial favorite, and I try to re-read it about every year. So when the call for submissions to the Lovecraft eZine tribute issue came out, I knew I'd have to do something for it.
It was actually harder than I'd have expected. It came with a deadline, of course, and I was pretty busy, so the story was going to have to be short, and I found myself having trouble thinking of what I could contribute to Zelazny's vision that was also still in keeping with my own stuff. I finally settled on a brief story, sort of a soliloquy, about what happens after the "bad guys" win the game.
Since my game was taking place after Zelazny's (obviously), I decided to try to update the tropes a few years. Zelazny mined the great figures of gothic and Victorian literature for his characters, so for mine I went to the pulps and movies from the 40s and 50s. Hopefully I wasn't too coy in my descriptions, and, if I was, there's a handy illustration with the story that does them a bit more justice.
The title comes from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and there you have an author's note that's almost as long as the story itself!
The issue has a bunch of other stories in it too, from folks like William Meikle and Josh Reynolds, among others, and every story is illustrated and has an audio version (including mine!) and there's an essay about the book itself, and even an introduction from Zelazny's son Trent, now an author in his own right. So seriously, check out the issue, and not just for my little story. And if you've never read the book, I heartily recommend you track it down, at least from the library or something, because it is well worth getting to know, and especially appropriate for this eeriest of seasons.
Roger Zelazny isn't quite the fabled "writer who made me want to become a writer," but discovering his work marked maybe the biggest turning point in my journey from being a kid who wanted to grow up to be a writer to growing up to kind of be a writer after all. And while I discovered Zelazny through his Amber novels, A Night in the Lonesome October is, of course, the novel of his that speaks most to me. It's a perennial favorite, and I try to re-read it about every year. So when the call for submissions to the Lovecraft eZine tribute issue came out, I knew I'd have to do something for it.
It was actually harder than I'd have expected. It came with a deadline, of course, and I was pretty busy, so the story was going to have to be short, and I found myself having trouble thinking of what I could contribute to Zelazny's vision that was also still in keeping with my own stuff. I finally settled on a brief story, sort of a soliloquy, about what happens after the "bad guys" win the game.
Since my game was taking place after Zelazny's (obviously), I decided to try to update the tropes a few years. Zelazny mined the great figures of gothic and Victorian literature for his characters, so for mine I went to the pulps and movies from the 40s and 50s. Hopefully I wasn't too coy in my descriptions, and, if I was, there's a handy illustration with the story that does them a bit more justice.
The title comes from the Wallace Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and there you have an author's note that's almost as long as the story itself!
The issue has a bunch of other stories in it too, from folks like William Meikle and Josh Reynolds, among others, and every story is illustrated and has an audio version (including mine!) and there's an essay about the book itself, and even an introduction from Zelazny's son Trent, now an author in his own right. So seriously, check out the issue, and not just for my little story. And if you've never read the book, I heartily recommend you track it down, at least from the library or something, because it is well worth getting to know, and especially appropriate for this eeriest of seasons.