Fiction To Sink Your Teeth Into, a feature from author and professional chef Rohan O’Duill!
This is a recipe the Rraey celebrity chefs came up with, but I decided to bread mushrooms rather than the original breaded meal in this sci-fi novel. Mostly because it’s legal and mushrooms are tasty.
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: Poetry and nature come together in Su Zi’s poetry collection, Chirp. Su, can you say a bit about your work?
Su: The book linked is Chirp, a book of poems from Hysterical Books that was released just as Covid hit. However, the book was written some years before by the following process: every morning, regardless of weather, I go outside to care for my live-outside family (they are not humans, but they are my family). During the year I wrote the book, I would come back inside and write a poem that recorded the moments just before, with an especial emphasis on birds. I think the presence or absence of birds tells us everything about the health of an ecosystem; people who don’t notice bird populations tend to not notice the world beyond humans. Thus, the poems are naturalist notes of a year’s duration.
I did reference the Cornell site for certain aids in species identification to correctly name who I had seen. Originally, I wrote each poem daily onto a social media platform that had limitations on characters for posts, so I used haiku. I liked that the platform had a bird logo and I was posting bird-naturalism poems. The title is thus a pun.
Sabitha: What’s your next writing project?
Su: There’s a part two manuscript to the work, which is not yet published, but which continued this anachronistic idea of observing the local world and the other life forms with which we exist. I continued to post these daily—where they continued to be as observed as clouds. However, the platform I was using allowed for more character usage, so I used tanka. I hope to see this book fly into physical existence.
The incidence of “naturalism” is in all the work i do—written, visual, or physical; it is a life-long commitment. In truth, I am a second-generation eco-feminist. It informs every aspect of my life.
Since I also review literary works of any genre, I have seen trends in the writing community which tend toward urban violence. Given our times now, this doesn’t strike me as a good direction for the writing community, although it is a bit popular or common. There’s also the perennial reminder of craft—something well-crafted in any art form takes flight in us.
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?
Su: Chirp can be found on the publisher’s website, and it might be available still through Amazon or book fetch sites. I can be found on instagram (xsuzi00) on Etsy (xsuzi00) and on Bluesky (suzi00).
Copies of the artist-book, poetry chapbook series Red Mare are only available through Etsy—contact me for international shipping. Submission guidelines are pinned to the Facebook page Pink House.
| The Catcher In the Rye as spirituality was suggested by Zilla. 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. |
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: It’s always a good time for a space opera! We have James Milne here to tell us about his science fiction story—and as a bonus, it’s free on Royal Road! James, can you tell us a bit about The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green?
James: We start off with the action. An alien maid, finding herself falling through the skies above the Earth, without anything to catch her. She is… unlucky. She was an architect, but took a job on a cruiseliner to experience other cultures, because space travel is only for the rich and famous. The story has her bouncing off a few other figures. A gigantic red-skinned woman whose culture might just be the inspiration for demons. A soft-spoken, but easy-laughing woman whose past is a little secret. A professor who could somehow afford the flight as a guest. And a guest who… has bad taste.
Sabitha: That sounds like so much fun. What inspired you to write this story?
James: I started work on The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green as part of Camp NanoWriMo, back in March. It took me a few months longer to finish it, but that’s writing. Sometimes you just can’t hold the thread.
That’s the key to being a better writer, really. Everything in writing comes and goes. It is as much an art, as it is anything else, and that does mean that you can lose what you had. It also means that with the right amount of time and focus, you can continue to paint worlds. Sometimes it just needs a break.
Part of the break, was helping to solve the problem of a certain character’s death. It had to happen, it had to feel like something… whilst also feeling somewhat pointless. That it shouldn’t have happened. That was the key to making you feel for them, and the pain of it happening. Vague, I know. But death’s tend to be a turning point in literature. Don’t want to give away everything.
Sabitha: Who did you imagine reading your book as you wrote it?
James: I’m really not sure. It’s science fiction, but soft. It’s a little light-hearted, like Doctor Who, but it is more romance oriented than that. But it isn’t a romance novel. If it was anime, I’d stick it right in “Slice of Life”, but it doesn’t quite fit there either. The danger stakes are real. It is certainly an experience.
Sabitha: Do you have a plan for your next writing project?
James: Of course, there’s always more in the machinery. I’ve got about four novels at various stages, and two more short pieces that will hopefully appear before the end of the year. We’ll see how the words flow. But keep an eye out for Official Choices.
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?
James: They can find The Tumultuous Tours of Ivy Green for free on Royal Road. They can find my stories on Amazon, and find me through my website.
In honor of tRaum Books releasing a new palm-sized novella Read and Then Burn This, for a limited time, they will have all of the palm-sized books available again! A perfect chance to get the one you are missing (maybe Zilla’s Query with the ASCII penis cover?) or gift them all to someone. These books are weird, charming, and deadly. We love them more than is strictly appropriate. Get one in your greedy hands here.
The inimitable Dale Stromberg, Rohan O’Duill, and Zilla Novikov wrote a short story to complement the anthology Instant Classic. “Have You Considered Self Publishing” is a satirical take on the rejection letters agents are too polite to actually send. Get your free copy by subscribing to the Night Beats Newsletter—if you’re already a subscriber, there’s a link to download it in the monthly newsletter!
by Sabitha F.
I adore everything Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes, so I’ll hit the buy button or place a library hold on every new book she produces before I’ve even read the plot summary. That said, Silver Nitrate couldn’t be more catered to my tastes if she sawed open my brain and splashed it across the page. Mexico City in the 1990s, evil Nazi occultists, and cinematic alchemy clash in this weird, compelling story of a childhood friendship, a curse, and a cult.
Nothing has gone right for Montserrat, a sound editor who can barely make ends meet thanks to industry sexism, or for her best friend Tristán, a soap opera star whose career failed after a drunken car accident. They encounter Abel, a washed-up horror director who tells them about a lost film, cut short by the murder of its funder. Woven into its film stock is a spell that could reverse all of their fortunes—but as with silver screen success, magic too has its cost.
This book is more difficult and aloof than the author’s better-known work, but it showcases what to me are some of her greatest strengths—flawed, complicated women, supernatural elements that are deeply entwined with the story’s themes and milieu, and inventive subversions of genre tropes. It’s a love letter to horror and a perfect spooky season read.
Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Sabitha: Nothing better than a good fantasy, and we’ve got a great one today. M.C. Burnell, can you introduce us to your novel, Zimanges?
M.C.: Jendaiar Phos is busy blowing up his life with the help of his estranged younger brother and fellow wizard Hecanthes. When they witness a mysterious magical event that draws the hostile eyes of the local authorities onto them, their fates are thrown together. The good news: the mother he hasn’t seen since he was ten just left Jen a house. The bad news: it’s in Zimanges, the city in the clouds. A crossroads kingdom founded by a bandit.
The house turns out to be huge: they can’t afford to keep it, heat it, and still eat. Not without roommates. Their new friends include a troubled elven seer, a shaman who changes their face as the mood takes them, and a pile of leaves that has a mission for them. A demon has found its way into their world, but not even the pile of leaves knows what a demon is other than Very Bad and Can’t Be Allowed to Hang About. It doesn’t help that the bandit king takes an interest in them while a wave of kidnappings sweeps the city.
This would be so much easier if they were living in a house with furniture.
Sabitha: What inspired you to write this book? It feels very millenial/zillenial.
M.C.: There’s a long and rather involved backstory with this book, but basically, I wanted to write a fantasy that didn’t gloss past the fact that heroes are still people who need to eat and sleep and support themselves. They have chores. They worry about bills. My cast of seven roommates is brought together in the first place by economic forces. If that sounds grim and introspective, it’s absolutely not; this story is pretty camp. My heroes aren’t, and that means lots of pitstops to get scared, crack jokes, have no idea what to do, and party in their living room.
Sabitha: What book do you tell all your friends to read?
M.C.: Yikes, just one? The City and the City by China Mieville. Beautiful, strange, and bends your brain. What’s not to love?
Sabitha: Excellent choice. Have you ever killed off a character your readers loved?
M.C.: In my epic fantasy We, I killed everyone’s favorite character. It’s a 5-book series and this person dies in the climax, so readers have a lot of time to get invested. Honestly, I was dreading the text from my mother. Happy ending: she didn’t disown me.
In general, though, I’m not a big character-killer. I feel like we hit a point in fantasy where that got overdone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a valid choice! Whether more for shock value or just realism. But I personally can’t stay invested in a story unless I’m connected through the people, so I delete judiciously.
Sabitha: A 5-book series, and now Zimages. Sounds like you write a lot! What’s your next writing project?
M.C.: I always have a couple things percolating. One project that got a lot of attention this summer was an epic called The Tipping World, which I’ve been rewriting intermittently for the last 20 years. It was the first thing I ever wrote, and it would be neat to one day share it with the world.
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?
Professional editor Jennia D’Lima talks with author Zilla Novikov about her novel Query and reflections on the querying process from her experiences trying to break into the publishing industry. Authors, listen along to find solidarity in misery.
Listen here.
