Lyndon Perry has written a thorough and engaging review of Talebones #36 for The Fix. Of the whole issue, Lyndon says, "The mixed genre approach (from space opera to hard sci-fi to horror, fantasy, and surreal) made for a wonderfully complete buffet that even a casual fan of speculative fiction could enjoy," and of "A Secret Life of Gluttony," "This visceral and emotive story is what modern allegories should be, a thoughtful and provocative reflection on some of life’s most weighty issues."
Read the whole review here.
The anthology Interfictions is on the 2007 Tiptree Awards Honor List. Ellen Kushner of the Interstitial Arts Foundation says that the Tiptree Award Honor List "is a strong part of the award's identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list for the rest of the year."
If you click the Interfictions link, you can also hear a podcast of part of "Pallas at Noon," which is one of the stories in Interfictions.
I'm pleased to announce that my short urban fantasy "Black Annis" will appear in the anthology Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet. According to the editors at Dark Scribe Press, Unspeakable Horror is "a brilliant sampling of queer horror stories that will surprise with their universally resonant themes while exploring the deeper aspects of the closet experience -- coming out, staying in, being haunted by."
Just to be clear: that's queer as in not heterosexual. Closet, as in the metaphorical place gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people hide in from the homophobes in their lives. If the word out is used in these stories, it probably doesn't mean outdoorsy.
The editors are updating the blog regularly, announcing related news and introducing the Unspeakable authors one at time in hopes of increasing the suspense.
What feels like months and months ago, I promised to post a review of the feature film I saw at the Boston Underground Film Festival. It seems the film, La Belle Bete, has since won a Director's Choice Award in the form of a statuette of a fanged bunny rabbit in jockey shorts, drinking a bottle of what looks like it might be Jack Daniels, and smoking a stogie. Way more appropriate for the often raunchy, sleazy, disturbing, etc etc BUFF films than the alarmingly smooth bald guy handed out by the Academy (though I'm guessing the folks involved with La Belle Bete would accept the latter with underpants-on-my-head glee).
The burning desire to review this film has passed, but I still wanted to mention that I both loved it and loathed it and would recommend it to anyone who like films that make them shudder in horror, and mutter a lot afterwards in prolonged alarm. It was a claustrophobia- inducing anxiety piece about a mother and her two teenage children (a boy and a girl) living in a country manor house. Something awful happened to their father when the kids were young, and now all they have left in the world is each other. The narcissistic mother is a tad too attached to her son; the neglected, frantic, ugly daughter is learning all the wrong relationship lessons from her mother; the beautiful, empty-headed son is a tad too attached to his horse. Bookended by the photo of the father who drowned in a nearby lake and the mother's perverted new lover, the story erupts with psychosomatic facial cancer, sex outdoors, lots of inappropriate touching, feces on the floor, a gory, skull-popping trampling-by-horse, and a guy who might be the ghost of dad standing around on occasion, wearing a suit and a paper mache horse head. The special effects were really quite good and gory, but the best stomach-churning parts featured emotional terrorism and narcissistic manipulation.
Scary. Don't miss. Srsly.
Watch the the trailer.
A Talebones reader named Mallory wrote a thorough review of Issue #36, in which she says of "A Secret Life of Gluttony," "I liked it but it makes not one little bit of sense." She shows the issue some tough love, but the review is thorough, well-reasoned, and nicely written. Read the comment thread if you haven't yet weighed in on the conversation about author-gender-ratios in current SF magazines.
Tamara Kaye Sellman has written a review of the anthology Interfictions, in which she says, "Joy Marchand's "Pallas at Noon" stole my breath with its emotional rigor and its ending-as-beginning motif." Please take a moment to read the whole review here and visit MRCentral.net to find out more about Magical Realism's Interactive Community.
Karen Burnham at the Spiral Galaxy Reviewing Laboratory has published two reviews one here and one here of Interzone 215.
