Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: If you’re looking for a murder mystery, Claris Lam never disappoints. Her latest mystery continues with Aubri’s story, as she goes from solving her first murder mystery to getting stuck in her second. Claris, can you tell us about your books?

Claris: Engagement To Die For is the second book in the Harlow Mystery series.  Here’s my little blurb:

After everything Aubri went through at the resort, the last thing Aubri needs is more drama. However, meeting her previously-unknown twin sister for the first time, and attending her mother’s engagement party, results in yet another murder.

Due to the remote area of this crime, the police won’t be able to make it for a few days. Aubri realizes that she, along with her friends and her sister, must take up the mantle themselves to solve the case or risk being new victims again.

I’m also happy to share that Engagement To Die For was a  3-category nominee for the 2023 Indie Ink Awards and an 8-category nominee for the 2023 Queer Indie Awards!

Sabitha: That’s fantastic—and very well deserved. What inspired you to write this book?

Claris: Reading books like Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie definitely inspired me to write a murder mystery taking place on a train! It was so fun to figure out how luxurious the train the book takes place in was, in particular – there are many amenities included that most normal trains don’t have.

Sabitha: I love that book too. It’s a classic! So trains were the main focus of your research for the book?

Claris: I had to research the internal layouts of trains. This helped me figure out where the main characters were traveling to and from on the train during their investigation.

I also had to do some medical-related research for this book. This is related to a major reveal in the book, so I can’t share too many details or else I’ll give away spoilers! However, I looked it up because I had to figure out if that was possible in real life before implementing it in the book. The short answer: yes, but it’s very rare.

Sabitha: I’m tempted to ask, but no spoilers! Back to Aubri and her friends and family. If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

Claris: If I met my characters, I would just tell them to continue to persevere and move forward the best they can. Bastian goes through some particularly tough moments in this book, so he definitely needs the encouragement.

Sabitha: And of course the response—what would they say to you?

Claris: I think all of my main characters for this book (Aubri, Bastian, Aria, and Nick) would be tired of murders happening wherever they are, but they appreciate at least being on a train where they have plenty of drinks available.

Sabitha: Have you ever killed off a character your readers loved?

Claris: To my knowledge, no. I’m pretty sure every character I’ve killed in the Harlow Mystery series so far is someone people usually don’t mind getting killed off, mainly because they’re terrible (or mostly terrible) people.

Sabitha: 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?

Claris: You can find all links to my main website, newsletter, and socials in my Carrd. As for where you can purchase “Engagement To Die For,” check out any of the links here.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: One of my favourite stories in the science fiction anthology The Dance was Eli K.P. William’s tale of duality, “The MachineGarden”. So I asked Eli to come here and answer some questions for me!

Without getting too spoilery about worldbuilding, I fell in love with the duality of the machine side of the world vs the garden side. As a queer person, I instantly jumped to a trans reading of the story, particularly when Eos explains the, “gap between me and myself was there all along.” Did you intend or consider a trans reading as you wrote the story? If not, was there another type of duality intended?

Eli: I think that’s an interesting way to read “The MachineGarden.” The crisis for Eos is that, due to a rare variety of insight she possesses, she experiences her body as swinging between the two poles of a binary. However, this is a binary of ontology, rather than sex or gender, and it convulses all of (post)human existence, rather than any individual body, faster than the mind can follow.

Zilla: You are not the first author to explore the dichotamy of built vs grown, though I’ve never read your particular take on them before. As I read your story, Mass Effect and This Is How You Lose The Time War both came to my mind. What stories inspired you as you wrote your own?

Eli: I could give you a long list of authors who influenced me when writing the Jubilee Cycle trilogy: George Orwell, William Gibson, Ursula le Guin, Haruki Murakami, and China Mieville to name just a few. However, for “The MachineGarden,” I intentionally tried to break away from the influence of past writers because I wanted to unlock a new vision of the future that is rooted in the zeitgeist of the 2020s as opposed to in an earlier age. I don’t think I was entirely successful, but I hope to make further attempts in the coming years. Cultivating a radical new movement in science fiction is, I believe, the central challenge that the current generation of authors must rise to.

Zilla: I have the usual complaint of a reader who finished an excellent short story–I need more. Are you done with Eos, Arata, and particularly with the MachineGarden world, which feels like a character in its own right? Or do you think there are more stories to be told in this ‘verse or with these characters?

Eli:

I think there’s enough narrative and conceptual potential in “The MachineGarden” for it to be extended to novel length, but I’m happy leaving it as is, for now, so I can work on other books. I’m currently seeking an agent to represent a hard-to-classify novel set in two alternate versions of Toronto, and for the past few years, I’ve been gradually building a world for a near future novel about alien communication that takes place mostly in the upper atmosphere. I’m also busy doing research for a non-fiction book on Japanese science fiction. (You can read my first stab at the topic here.) 

However, there are threads in “The MachineGarden” I hope to pick up in other stories, such as the built-versus-grown dichotomy you mentioned, which I began to explore in A Diamond Dream, the final book of the Jubilee Cycle. I also have vague plans to run with the IntelSchism idea and use it as the core conceit for a full novel.

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?

Eli: You can get The Dance here. You can learn more about me here, follow me on Twitter @Dice_Carver, or join my fledgling Substack Almost Real.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Comedy and science fiction—two great tastes that taste great together. Today, they come with a side of plumbing! Christopher George Quick is here to tell us about his space adventure novel, Citrus Bravo. Christopher, take us away!

Christopher: Citrus Bravo follows the misadventures of Arthur Bartlebee, a humble plumber aboard an aging space station named Citrus Bravo. Although Arthur would love more than anything to live out his simple days managing the pipes and drains of the station, he is quickly ripped away by a whirlwind of absurd events that place him smack dab in the center of an otherworldly conspiracy. Flanked by odd aliens and carefree cyborgs, Arthur is bewildered to find humanity’s destiny lies in his less-than-capable hands.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Christopher: I was inspired to write this work because of a dream I had where the name “Citrus Bravo” was the name of a Martian base. I don’t remember any of the content of the dream, but the name basically haunted me until I decided to do something with it. The making of the main character into a plumber is because I’m a plumber and I always thought that Sci-Fi missed out on talking about the tales of the mundane. Everyone in Sci-Fi is some uber soldier or explorer extraordinaire, occasionally you get the unlikely hero trope, but they don’t ever seem to be regular working class stiffs, like our boy Arthur.

Sabitha: I love that—there’s a special place in my heart for working class science fiction stories. With such a fun set of characters, imagine you met them. What would you say?

Christopher: If I met one of my characters, I would say, “Hi, how are you?”

Sabitha: And the response? What would they say?

Christopher: If they ever ran into me they would say, “You son of a B!&#$ you’re going to pay for what you put me through!” as they throttled my neck.

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Christopher: Since I work in plumbing, there wasn’t much research needed for that aspect of the book, but for one of the scenes I did have to learn a lot about methane-eating bacteria to try and create a presentation for Arthur to give the rest of his crew-mates about space-faring waste management. It was riveting.

Sabitha: Waste management is criminally underrated. If your next book isn’t about space-faring methane-eating bacteria, what is it going to be about?

Christopher: Citrus Bravo is a pretty brief work, definitely in the novella range, so I think I would like to write a stand-alone sequel to it. Something with new characters but in the same literary universe. Maybe I’ll call it Cherry Alpha.

Sabitha: 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?

Christopher: You can order it here. You can see the other disappointing swill I’ve written on my Goodreads author page, and I have a fledgling Mastodon account that I will probably abandon later.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Sabitha: Fortune-telling combined with wide open spaces give us an open canvas for our imaginations to write fascinating stories. Eli Horowitz is here to tell us about his latest novel, The Final Days of Kobold Kody’s Frontier Exposition and Tonic Show, which is a fantasy inspired by the myths of the Wild West. Eli, can you tell us the blurb?

Eli: The end is near for Kobold Kody’s Frontier Exposition and Tonic Show, but Andra, the show’s fortune-teller, is the only one who knows. As the seams come undone and the curtain falls for the last time, it’s up to her to save as many of her friends as she can—and, if she can find a way, herself.

Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book?

Eli: This book was inspired by three main threads: the Wild West, trashy fantasy from the ’60s through the ’80s, and the antiwork movement. I was reading a bunch of pulp fantasy when I realized that the barbarian trope felt a lot like the colonialist idea that Native Americas were so-called “noble savages.” In both cases, the characters are thought to be fearsome warriors who obey a simpler, less refined, and somehow purer moral code. So I wanted to write a barbarian character whose real life and personality were less sensationalistic than his reputation in the dominant culture. And from there it just expanded: who would the gunslinger be? What could I do for a lion tamer? If the Wild West was when America colonized the breadth of the continent, how would that translate to a fantasy context? What would all of these familiar characters look like if we tried to let them define their own experience instead of seeing them through a growth-oriented, colonial-type lens?

Sabitha: How much research did you need to do for your book?

Eli: To help flesh out my world, I wanted to build a magic system that had a scientific flavor so that it connected in some way to nature. That way, we could see how all these different cultures use magic differently in light of their different beliefs and values. So I used a system of sympathetic magic based on the consumption of animal products (meat, organs, secretions, etc.). That was probably the most intensive part of the research, because it gave me an excuse to learn about both real and mythical creatures that have cool, unique abilities. I ended up referencing everything from the cockroach wasp and the kangaroo rat (made famous by Dune) to dragons and salamanders, so that was a lot of fun.

Sabitha: Do you have any suggestions to help people in our community become better writers?

Eli: If anyone is looking for writing advice, I’d say two things. First, it’s important to realize that different people need different advice depending on their strengths, goals, and development as a writer. And then second, to go along with that, I’d strongly suggest finding people you can trust to listen to you and give you the advice that’s right for you. It can be really scary and even painful to ask other people for help or feedback, but it’s so incredibly important. Finding the right community, even if it’s just one person, will unlock a lot of doors.

Sabitha: 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?

Eli: You can find Kody here and my first novel, Bodied, here. I’m also on Mastodon, where I’m always eager to connect with other writers and help to build the Masto writing community.

Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Zilla: Rachel A. Rosen, Night Beats founder and writer extraordinare, has written another piece of literary glass to pierce my heart. Her newest short story “Do You Love the Colour of the Sky” can be found in the anthology The Dance.

The story starts with a poignant image–the protagonist circling the sky between a thumb and forefinger, trying to memorize the colour so it can be stored, temporarily, in memory rather than lost immediately. The story is about two characters who deeply love beauty dealing with its loss. The way I’ve made my own peace with loss is to say the transience itself is part of the beauty. But then, publishing a story about loss is a way of building permanence out of that feeling. How do you handle the space between permanence and transience within art?

Rachel: Everything I write will be forgotten.

There’s a strange contradiction where everything you say on the internet is forever, but the chances of any single thing you say being immortal is infinitesimally small. I am not Shakespeare, nor am I Nanni writing to Ea-nāṣir. This might bother me more if I were the sort of person who thought much about her legacy, but for the most part I’m not. If I can capture a fleeting emotion, put it down on paper, and shove it into someone else’s mind for however many minutes or hours they’re reading about it, that is cool and magical and good.

Zilla: The links between the Sunken Museum and the British Museum are obvious–the story reminds me of the debates about whether it’s best to keep stolen artworks “safe” in the the UK or return them to their war-torn homelands, with the British studiously avoiding the question of why those homelands are so war-torn in the first place. Curators are regularly confronted by the archivist’s conundrum. I assume you’re on the side of repatriation, but do you see any nuance in that question?

Rachel: I’m of course on the side of repatriation/rematriation—the Archivist’s arguments are intended to be understandable and sympathetic, but ultimately wrong—and it’s a theme that I often address in my day job as a teacher of both Visual Arts and Indigenous literatures. This story was inspired in part by a workshop I attended by Leslie McCue, an Anishinaabe arts educator who works with the Royal Ontario Museum on addressing some of the historical wrongs that the museum’s curatorial practice has perpetrated. She talked about some of the complexity in identifying poorly categorized objects and tracing ownership and belonging. I think there’s nuance in the how of returning cultural artifacts, art, and ancestors to their peoples and homelands, and that in itself is a fascinating discussion, but I don’t think there’s a lot of room for nuance when it comes to the should.

Zilla: Is it possible for a story like this one to have a happy ending?

Rachel: I think it is, though ultimately mine doesn’t have one. Besides memory and impermanence, this is a story about change—in order for the ending to be happy, the Archivist has to change in a manner that is in many ways a death. At least one of the alternate pathways suggests that this is something she’s capable of doing, and the choice that she ultimately makes isn’t by any means necessarily the end to her character arc. But ultimately, the story was inspired by melancholic works—in particular the works of Walter Benjamin—so a melancholic ending seemed most fitting.

Zilla: Are you prepared to share the story behind the title? Or is that an Easter egg that if you know, you know?

Rachel: It’s an Easter egg for a subset of extremely online depressed Millennials who spent too much time on Tumblr. Years ago, there was a meme entitled that, featuring a comically long image gradient of the sky throughout a 24-hour cycle. Its popularity points to the Dadaist humour that Tumblr is absolutely fantastic at, but I also see something tender in it, about the meditative pause that it enforces while doomscrolling. Of course, it refers more literally to the Archivist’s habit of mentally “preserving” the sky (also a habit I had as a child that I of course have grown out of and never find myself doing) but thematically, it’s about the desire to capture something transient by its nature.

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?

Rachel: They can get The Dance here, and all my social links are here.