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Wrong Genre Covers
| The Pursuit of Love as a sci-fi was suggested by Kate, based on Rachel’s continual complaining about every cover for that book ever. Have a funny idea for a Wrong Genre Cover? Email us at nightbeatseu@gmail.com, and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make it in a future issue. Or @ us on basically any of the socials. |
Behind The Screens: Tuesday Author Interview
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Rachel: I’m a huge fan of Jordan S. Carroll’s nonfiction, so it’s super exciting to see him venture into fiction as well. Especially because it’s about pro wrestling, which is inherently hilarious to me. Please tell our readers about it!
J.S: My short story “Romeo Popinjay vs. Iron Hans in the Beauty and the Beast Match You Won’t Want to Miss” is a fantasy narrative about a professional wrestling promotion in an early modern world where some of humankind’s ancestors or cousins have evolved in alternate directions. It’s also a bit of a buddy comedy about a big hairy wrestling savant teaming up with a vain heel who prefers to go it alone.
Rachel: I need it. What inspired you to write this story?
J.S: I’d been reading books about the evolution of human cognition by authors such as Gary Tomlinson and Merlin Donald, and they led me to imagine a hominin species evolving more-than-human powers of imitation and rehearsal or “mimetic skill” instead of developing symbolic thought.
Originally it was going to be a folk horror story in which some wildmen of the forest who’ve been forced to do repetitive manual labor join in solidarity with humans to start a peasant revolt. But then I thought about the time I saw Mojo the monkey fight at an SOS Pro Wrestling show here in Tacoma. He was amazing. That’s when I realized that my wildmen would make really good pro wrestlers.
Rachel: Is there a visual image—a painting or a photo—that inspired you?
J.S: For Iron Hans, I was really inspired by videos of George “The Animal” Steele gnawing on turnbuckle pads. Romeo Popinjay’s wrestling persona draws on performances by Gorgeous George, the pretty boy wrestler who audiences loved to hate. I tried to find YouTube clips of many of the moves I wrote about. I watched a lot of Wrestling with Wregret. Other inspirations included Scott Beekman’s Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America and Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.
Rachel: Ringmaster in particular has been on my TBR list forever, having heard her interviewed on a number of podcasts. But anyway. Why do you write? What drives you?
J.S: Writing is a way for me to make sense of things. Plus it’s fun to have a good excuse to read and think about a lot of topics that I would not have otherwise considered.
Rachel: What’s the secret to editing?
J.S: I read things out loud to myself—even nonfiction. I also spend an inordinate amount of time cutting prepositions.
Rachel: So far I’ve enjoyed everything that you’ve come out with (and I suspect our readers will too). What’s next for you?
J.S: I’m writing a novel titled Fellow Creatures. It’s a gothic picaresque adventure about a shapeshifting ghoul. He’s bouncing around a world that recalls 17th century Europe, but all the wars of religion are fought over the best method of preserving the dead to ensure that they can be resurrected intact on judgement day. Needless to say, being a cannibal makes his life difficult. I don’t want to give away much more, but the title is a phrase often used by religious radicals such as the Diggers and the Ranters around the time of the English Civil War.
You can find “Romeo Popinjay vs. Iron Hans in the Beauty and the Beast Match You Won’t Want to Miss” here. I post about new publications and projects here.
Book Report Corner
by Zilla Novikov
A propulsive read that I finished on the same day I started it. No one in this story is a good person, but they’re such fascinating disasters that I couldn’t help rooting for them. Louise and her matter-of-fact delusions. Cat and her selfishness, Henry and his possessiveness. Of course this can’t end well. The flame that burns twice as bright and all that.
The heart of this book is about loneliness. What we’ll suffer, what we’ll put other people through, to survive it. The masks we’ll wear and the lies we’ll tell, our clothes off in an instant but so rarely naked, so rarely vulnerable. It’s better to be liked for someone you’re not, for something you can do for them, than to risk being alone.
Up to a point.
Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Zilla: It’s dark times, and we need stories that remind us of unexpected community and the possibility of resilience. David Giuliano’s literary novel, The Upending of Wendall Forbes, does just that. David, could you introduce us to your book?
David: Set in the remote northern town of Twenty-Six Mile House, The Upending of Wendall Forbes follows Wendall and Ruby Forbes, an aging couple grappling with memory loss, isolation, loneliness and the rapid encroachment of dementia. When a fierce blizzard descends, bringing with it an extended power outage, a group of six eclectic strangers take refuge in their home.
As the storm rages outside, inside, a tender and surprising exploration of intergenerational hope, grief, and the quiet power of human connection.
The cast of strangers, and a talking lynx and a foul-mouthed raven, restore Wendall and Ruby’s hope for the future and for humanity. It’s a novel that is at once funny, wise, and full of heart.
Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?
David: Three things initially inspired The Upending of Wendall Forbes. First, I was sixty-two years old, on the cusp of the fourth quarter of life. I wondered what the next twenty years might be like if I live that long. What does it mean to be an elder?
I am riding on the tail end of the boomer generation, and I am painfully aware of how capitalism, greed and disregard for the natural world have failed the climate and our grandchildren.
Also, I was reading post-apocalyptic novels, which left me asking if the complete collapse of the world is our only hope. Is there redemption for this world possible?
I started the novel exploring those ideas and questions. Of course, it took on a life of its own as the story unfolded.
Zilla: If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d do instead?
David: For thirty years, I published short essays and poems. I have always been a writer, and like many writers, I did other things. I was a minister in The United Church of Canada, the Moderator (spiritual leader) of the national church, an expressive arts therapist, a spiritual director, served on the national Indigenous ministries’ council, and am an activist. My writing is inspired and informed by all those experiences. I have been a “full-time” writer for almost a decade.
Zilla: What’s the secret to editing?
David: Editing takes time. For me, for every hour of writing, there are four hours of editing. If there’s a secret, it would be taking pleasure in making what I’ve written better. The “Aha!” when I find a better word, sentence structure, or plot line that polishes what I wrote in a flow of spontaneous creative ecstasy.
Another “secret” is finding a good editor who understands what I am doing. I take their recommendations very seriously. I accept nearly all of my editor’s changes. A good editor is gold. Be grateful.
Zilla: What’s your next writing project?
David: I’m working on a third Twenty-Six Mile House novel. I’m no James Joyce, but I identify with him saying, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.” Twenty-Six Mile House is a highly fictionalized version of the town where I have lived for forty years. By getting to the heart of it, I hope to get to the heart of universal human experiences.
Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
David: The Upending of Wendall Forbes is available at bookstores, online and from Latitude 46 Publishing. You can find me on my website, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Zilla: I’m always here for some fantasy—and romantasy!—so we got Karen Eisenbrey in to talk to us about her works. Karen, can you tell us about your writing?
Karen: I write fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero novels. My current project is Tales from Deep River, which comprises a cozy fantasy adventure trilogy and two cozy romantasy interludes for a total of five books. The trilogy can be read with or without the interludes; the interludes can also be read on their own or in series order.
Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?
Karen: A Quest for Hidden Things (Tales from Deep River Book 1) was inspired by a brief dream featuring two wizards and at least three plot twists in a scene that seemed to occur late in a story. In working out what happened before and after, I accidentally built a world and populated it with characters I wanted to know better. It took me 25 years to get that first book right, which allowed plenty of time to write sequels and spinoffs.
Zilla: Unfortunately for authors, we know that writing is only half the battle—then we need to edit. What’s your secret to editing?
Karen: I don’t know if this is a secret, but you have to accept that writing the book and editing the book are two different jobs. It helps me to set the work aside for long enough that I can come at editing as if the writer was someone else. It doesn’t pay to be too precious about a beautiful passage that doesn’t fit the tone of the book or the experience of the point-of-view character. (But it’s okay to save the beautiful passage in another document, in case it can be used later.)
Zilla: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?
Karen: Although I wasn’t actively writing it as young adult (YA), I imagined writing this series for a bookish 14-year-old girl like I was. In reality, even for my overt YA titles, most of my readers have been adults. That’s okay; there’s no upper age limit on young adult.
Zilla: What’s your next writing project?
Karen: After I wrap up the fifth book in the Tales from Deep River, I plan to work on book 3 of my St. Rage garage rock/superhero series. It is currently a thin, messy draft that I look forward to sorting out and plumping up. After that, I have plans for another fantasy trilogy, this one using teen comedy tropes in a high fantasy setting. We’ll be doing Accidental Roadtrip, Fake Dating, and Save the Rec Center.
Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Karen: Website: https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/my-books/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7577611.Karen_Eisenbrey
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KarenEisenbreyWriter
X/Twitter: @kareneisenbrey
Bluesky: kareneisenbrey.bsky.social
Our Cookbook has been Meme’d!!!
Our dream in life is to be parodied on Tumblr, and a million thanks to timrousbeastie for making that dream come true! You can see her original post here.
Plus, if you haven’t see Slow Horses yet, you absolutely should, and not just because of this excellent meme.
Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Rachel: Nick Mamatas and I go way back on the internet, but it was only last summer that we finally met in real life. He was launching the first issue of a new zine, Billions Vs. Billionaires, which is so my jam it’s not even funny (unlike the zine, which is hilarious). The second issue is out now, and Nick is here to talk about it!
Tell us a little bit about the project. Why use a zine to fight back against the fascist billionaire class?
Nick: Well, there are forces at work. Forces inspired by DOGE and the weird nerds who enthusiastically signed up as Elon Musk’s anti-spending budget-cutting squad. While DOGE actually didn’t cut much out of the federal budget despite expansive claims about millions of dead people on Social Security rolls etc, plenty of damage was done. USAid for example, was all but destroyed–all the good stuff the program did was cut, but the imperial interventions (spying, funding dirty little wars etc.) were just integrated into the State Department without the public-facing vaccination programs or cultural programs.
The idea, from a former acquaintance of Musk, was to try to make Elon seem less cool to the sort of very online audience that he had cultivated. And the acquaintance had a little bit of money. So zines via itch.io, YouTube shorts, RPGs, bumper stickers and badges to be handed out at science fiction cons and the like.
Rachel: I remain big sad that I didn’t get one of the badges at Worldcon.
So even for a zine, there’s a ton of formal experimentation in Billions Vs. Billionaires, from a fold-out one-page RPG to…math questions??? (Dear readers, I promise they will make you wish you paid more attention to math in high school.) Did you seek this out, or did it happen organically?
Nick: Surely seeking something out is organic! We use our spongy brains to do things. But we basically wanted multiscale meme warfare, so any bundle of ideas is good.
Rachel: What can we expect to see in the second issue? Is there anything that really stood out for you?
Nick: The infographic! A little two-page play (but with three actors, so a role for an entire polycule!), a story by Rich Larson, who is a very successful short story writer (which is why nobody has ever heard of him).
Rachel: I’m clearly one of the cool kids, having hung out with Rich Larson on several occasions. He’s rad af.
Whenever I go to zine fairs, I’m impressed that there are more, and more sophisticated zines, than there were even before social media and print-on-demand made the photocopier less of an influential technology. What’s the state of the zine publishing scene?
Nick: Print is back, baby. The algorithm, and the five big social media platforms that are all just screenshots of the other four, have ruined online, so people are returning to print, and with the graphic design skills people learned online.
Rachel: I’m here for it.
Given the level of surveillance and repression of speech in the US, were you and/or other American contributors worried about putting this out?
Nick: We had a brief conversation about even using the word “antifa” in the zine, and we always ask if contributors wish to be pseudonymous. We also recommend people print out the zines in such a way that printer-identification marks can’t be used to trace where the zine was printed. But thankfully, as Musk himself once said, “comedy is legal.”
Rachel: What’s next for Billions Vs. Billionaires, and where can we find you/more of your work?
Nick: At least two more volumes of the zine:
COMMUNIQUES FROM THE GRIMES LIBERATION FRONT
And
ENTER…THE KILLIONAIRE K-HOLE.
And if anyone wants to produce the play “Grimes and Elon In..Roko’s Basilisk!” from our new zine BREAD AND JAM FOR BIG BALLS and put it online as a tiktok or reel or short or or or or…drop me a line!
Wrong Genre Covers
| The Story of the Donner Party as a children’s book was suggested by Dale.Have a funny idea for a Wrong Genre Cover? Email us at nightbeatseu@gmail.com, and if Rachel likes your suggestion, she’ll make it in a future issue. Or @ us on basically any of the socials. |
Behind the Screens: Tuesday Author Interview
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Zilla: We’re delighted to have Jeffrey Vernon Matucha here to tell us about the punk scene—starting with the music and going from there! Your latest book stars two punk musicians who meet an unexpected visitor. Can you tell us about it?
Jeffrey: Trieste is the story of power punk couple Miranda and Preston, and how the appearance of a pixie punk upends their world, as their bygone fast lane living days rise up to confront them about past sins. It’s a tale, not just about the punk scene, but also the culture of the working class.
Zilla: What inspired you to write this book?
Jeffrey: This work is based on a true story, something that happened to a friend of mine. When you live a wild club and music life, especially when it’s rife with drugs and booze and lots of fooling around, the past can come back to haunt you, especially in unexpected ways. I would say more, but I don’t want to give away too much before people have a chance to experience the story.
Zilla: What would it be like to meet your characters?
Jeffrey: In a way I have met them. Not them literally, but Preston and Miranda are based on the many punks, musicians, and wild burnouts I’ve known over the years. Miranda is loosely based on my late friend Marian Anderson, the singer of The Insaints. Marian has been the inspiration for many of my hardcore characters throughout my writing career.
Zilla: Who is your favourite fictional character someone else wrote?
Jeffrey: Dre from Dani Dassler’s PR is my favorite character from the genre of punk fiction. Her book has been a big inspiration for my writing, especially when it comes to the subject of culture clashes. One of my favorite scenes from my novel A Long Slow Aftermath, when Preston takes his blind friend to her first punk show, is based off of a key scene in PR.
Zilla: Why do you write?
Jeffrey: I was a wild clubber back in eighties and nineties San Francisco. I have way too many stories to tell, and not just wild rock and roll stories. I’ve been in the trenches with the working poor, those living in poverty, and I know the struggles of the homeless. There’s so much more to what I’m writing than crazy club and drug stories. I’ve opened the eyes of some of my readers, and I want to continue to do so. I also would like to tell the muggles what it’s like to do a stage dive, or mosh in a circle pit, or collect all your loose change so you can have some Top Ramen for dinner.
Zilla: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?
Jeffrey: I appeal to a lot of scenesters, old and not-so-old punk, goths, and musicians when I market my books, but my stories just remind them of their own lives. They do get the satisfaction of seeing their world in the written word. But the people I really want to reach, who also happen to be the kind of people who appreciate my writing the most, are the civilians who don’t know what these worlds are like, the realms of crazy punks, of drug addicts, and of the working class. Those are the people I want to reach. I want them to experience these cultures through my works.
Zilla: What’s your next writing project?
Jeffrey: I currently have the manuscripts for books six and seven of my Skye Wright series prepared, and I am writing the manuscript for book eight. I launched a Kickstarter in January 2026 to help fund the launch of these books—funds for professional editors, cover art, and book design. I also set it up so that it can take late donations after it expires, if people want to contribute.
Zilla: Thanks for sharing your story and your process. We’re looking forward to reading! Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Jeffrey: All of my books can be found on my website. The book itself is here: https://needlepictures.com/tbd/book/trieste/
Book Report Corner
by Rachel A. Rosen
In the preface that opens this collection of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror from Palestinian writers in the diaspora, editor and contributor Sonia Sulaiman writes, “Someone once said that all Palestinian fiction is speculative; we are always grappling with the past and living in expectation of the future.” These stories are those of writers violently unmoored from home and belonging. What is more speculative than dreaming of the future, despite a past of dispossession?
There are many standout stories in this collection, which is the first of its kind to be published in Canada. From the unsettling horror of Ziyad Saadi’s “The Third Or Fourth Casualty,” in which a group of boys die while swimming as we are reminded of the insignificance of their deaths, to the triumphant DIY space project of Samah Serour Fadil’s “Gaza Luna,” to the heartfelt queer longing of Nadia Afifi’s “The Generation Chip,” this diverse and imaginative collection is at once a cry of rage and a flickering of hope in the darkness. It’s a must-read.
Night Beats Extended Universe 