Six of the Best with DC Petterson

I'm like a little kid about DC Petterson's writing. He ticks all the boxes for me: magic, mystery, creatures of the night, love... And wolves. Dave *gets* wolves. His novel, Lupa Bella, released on October 31 (very aptly, thank you very much) and today I've got him over for a little fireside chat, so to speak.

Author Rosemary Edghill has this to say about Lupa Bella, “Lupa Bella is a compelling secret history of a world that might be our own. DC Petterson blends pagan mysteries and very human evil to create a haunting tale of love, lore, and renunciation that will keep you turning pages in your race to the end. Petterson gets better with each book.  Keep an eye on this guy: he’s good, and he’ll surprise you.”

I agree with her, and I totally couldn't say it better. So, without further ado, over to Dave.

What makes your werewolves stand apart in your mind?

There are a few things that, I think, differentiate the wolves in my stories from wolves in other urban fantasies. One is the Benandanti ("Good Walkers"), a magical fraternity that we know existed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. They claimed to be able to transform into wolves, and in that shape they helped protect their villages. They were tried as witches by the Inquisition. My wolves are remnants of the Benandanti. They have this connection to magic, as well as a long history of partnership with people.

Expanding on this idea, bear in mind that wolves were the first animals to form a tie of friendship to people, the first creatures humans domesticated and started intentionally to breed. In my stories, the wolves have been partners with humans for forty thousand years. I've combined this idea of wolves having been bred and genetically manipulated by humans with what we know about the Bendandanti to create the Good Walkers of my stories. I've brought in many other bits and pieces of historic werewolf lore as well—always tweaked for the universe I’m building.

My werewolves are not people who sometimes take the form of a wolf. They are wolves who can appear to be people.

Why Sicily? Can you tell us a little more about the choice in setting?

I have an ancestral tie to Sicily. My great-grandparents on my mother's side were born in the tiny village I've fictionalized in Lupa Bella. Sicily also has a long reputation for being independent of the mainland. It has a rich folklore of magic, even surviving to the present day. This allowed me to imagine a story about a place where some of the old ways have not decayed, a place that has stood apart from the tides of time and change.

Sicily is also a place of ancient vendettas and family feuds that last centuries. The possibilities for tales of intrigue and of loyalty and betrayal are endless.

Tell us more about the bond between Celeste and Dario.

Dario's family has lived on the slopes of Santo Stefano for many years, but they came originally from Tuscany, a region in the north of Italy, known for remembering wisps of gods so old they predate the Romans, and even the Greeks before them. Celeste is a wolf, who was fostered to Dario's mother when Celeste and Dario were both infants. They were raised as sister and brother, and all the villagers view them--and they see themselves--as fraternal twins.

In another novel, A Melancholy Humour, I used the word "legere" to describe the bond between a human and a wolf. That's an old Latin term for a tie or a knot, and it was used in medieval witchcraft to signify a love spell. I use that word to describe the bond between a human and a wolf, and I depict it as a link closer than the blood-ties within a family, stronger than romantic love, not quite a telepathic link but a touch of awareness that cannot be severed.

It it a link, however, that was purposely bred into wolves by their human masters. Some of them resent it.

Dario and Celeste are inseparable. It isn't sexual, and it isn't romantic. It is a love and respect deeper than any of that. This story has provided an opportunity to test the strength of their bond, and I intend in the future to push it still more, perhaps to its limits.

All stories have a spark. What was Lupa Bella's story seed?

Celeste is the grandmother of the wolf character in A Melancholy Humour. I want to tell the story of that family. As I sat down to write it Celeste’s tale, I realized her brother Dario had an expensive Italian motorcycle. Another character asked him where he'd gotten it, and he answered, "I did a service for someone. He said I could keep the Ducati." This forced me to look back toward their home town in Sicily, and to learn more about how Dario came to own the bike. It all turned out to be far more complex than he'd let on.

What was possibly the most difficult part of writing Lupa Bella? And why?

I tend to fall in love with my characters, even the slimy ones I really hate. I want all of them to feel real, and to be complex and layered. To present them as something other than cutouts, I try to spend a lot of time in their heads, getting to know them. This means I have a deep emotional investment in each and every one, even the minor characters who appear only once. (I really like Clio and Eliana, for instance, and I wish I'd had the space to do more with them.)

Lupa Bella includes some deaths. I tend to agonize over those scenes, writing and rewriting them with enough care to get the emotional nuances proper to the character. They are pretty real deaths to me, the end of the lives of people I've come to know. I keenly feel the loss, and I want to let the reader feel that, too.

I struggled with the death scenes in Lupa Bella. One in particular really broke my heart, but it was necessary for the story. I still tear up whenever I re-read it.

Does this world of yours stretch to other cosmologies? I can almost imagine this encompassing North American myths and legends too. In any case, what lies ahead for your wolves?

Humans have domesticated wolves everywhere on the planet--every single place where there are both wolves and humans--not just all over Europe, but also in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, and in Australia. Everywhere there are domesticated wolves (we tend today to call them "dogs") there also are stories both of the ties between people and canines, and of creatures who freely and frequently step over the line between the two. There is a world full of magical wolf-lore from which to draw. There are differences, yes, and story possibilities can be found there as well, but the underlying ideas, worldwide, are startlingly similar.

Following Lupa Bella, these particular characters are likely to confront the onrush of history about to flood America. I chose the year 1962 for this story with some care. Magic has been fading, but it is not dead, and it is destined to return. I want to tell those stories in the context of a rapidly-changing society, embracing both the horrors and the promise of the new world.

LINKAGE
Now go forth and make me the most amazingly happy author ever by buying this book at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Nook or Kobo, or just go add the damn thing on Goodreads and stalk Dave on Twitter @dcpetterson

Looking forward to DC Petterson's Lupa Bella

Okay, I'm pleased as punch about Lupa Bella by DC Petterson. David and I've known each other for ages, and we recently worked together on his novel, A Melancholy Humour, which was published as an ebook through Lyrical Press. Seriously, if you're looking for a contemporary werewolf novel that recalls the very classic styles of masters such as Alice Borchardt and SP Somtow, *do* pick this book up. I promise you'll enjoy it if wolves are your thing. But back to Lupa Bella. It goes as follows...

For a thousand years, the de Luna family has protected the slopes of Santo Stefano from the outside world. Magic wanders through the woodlands, electricity is but a distant rumour, and werewolves are still secretly fostered to human families. It is 1962, and that’s all about to change. One young wolf struggles to understand the threats of the new age, while protecting her brother, her lover, her secret, her birthright, and the feudal lord who still knows the Old Ways.

What must she lose, and what will survive?

Lupa Bella is being released in the Tales of Darkness and Dismay line, which falls under the Dark Continents Publishing umbrella. Lupa Bella is a historical fantasy novel that DC Petterson wrote as a bit of prequel about his wolves, if you will. You don't have to read the books in order, but they are definitely complementary.

In addition, DC Petterson is the author of Still Life (Lillibridge Press) in addition to A Melancholy Humour. He says: “I wanted to tell a compelling story about the tragedy of abandoning our instinctual, sensual, animal nature in the face of technology and so-called ‘progress’. If we deny our animal selves, we lose our humanity. Passion drives us whether we acknowledge it or not, and passion repressed is a sterile psychosis. We fear and shun the beast, yet turning away from her leads always to greater sins and worse horrors. This can’t be expressed as a rational argument; it has to be told as a seductive tale.”

The cover illustration is by non other than the rather talented Milan Colovic, who's a very talented artist currently operating out of Serbia. He's an absolute dream to work with, and if you're looking for high-quality art, go find him here at eLance. I'll certainly be sending work his way again. Cover treatment and layout is by none other than the awesomely fantastic Donnie Light, who knows the ins and outs of formatting too. If you're stuck for someone to help you produce your novel for indie publishing, he's your go-to man. Drop him a mail and tell him I referred you.

Well, folks, there you have it. Lupa Bella releases on October 31 and will be available in ebook format as well as in print via Amazon. Now go stalk David on Twitter and tell him I sent you.

Review: A Gentle Hell

Title: A Gentle Hell

Author: Autumn Christian

Publisher: Dark Continents Publishing

Lovers of dark, hypnotic and thoroughly surreal fiction need to sit up and take note of author Autumn Christian. A Gentle Hell is a superb collection of short fiction that she has brought out under Dark Continents Publishing’s Tales of Darkness and Dismay banner and she does not disappoint.

They Promised a Dreamless Death investigates our need to deaden our emotions and partake of a mainstream culture that results in the living dead. Or at least that’s how I saw it.

In Your Demiurge is Dead Christian plays upon themes of religious hypocrisy, as well as an investigation into the deaths of young people. The two are somehow linked in a gritty telling.

The star of the show is The Dog that Bit Her, which plays upon the theme of co-dependency in a relationship, as well as the age-old myth of the werewolf and moon madness.

The Singing Grass is perhaps the most difficult story to pin down, suggestive of an artist’s relationship with their muse and the exploration of the subconscious in order to create art.

In conclusion, I’ll state that most of these stories—in true surrealist fashion—are open to personal interpretation, and that to try define them would be to rob them of most of their beauty and mystery. Underpinning all of them is the uneasy relationship between man and woman, in an evocative and atmospheric dreamlike landscape that shifts as restlessly as the story that is being told.

Christian’s writing is pure magic and deserves all the success as a fresh voice in literary genre fiction. Her effortless prose whisks readers into a sometimes nightmarish reality that mirrors our own, with the aftertaste of a fever dream. I place her up there with greats such as William Burroughs, Philip K Dick and Ray Bradbury.

Guest post: Autumn Christian

Today I allow my fellow Tales of Darkness and Dismay author, Autumn Christian, loose on my blog. Welcome, Autumn...

I’ll be honest, I’ve had to rewrite this blog post about four times. I’m nervous about the face I present to the Internet, and as a former closet writer I’m just getting used to talking about my writing to strangers. As a twenty-two year old, I don’t feel inclined to offer writing advice like some kind of pulp war hero, nor am I yet past the phase where I can promote myself without feeling an odd sort of unworthiness. My girlfriend recently took me to her aunt’s house for Christmas dinner. I felt like a strange creature in my doc martens and lace dress, sitting at the dinner table squeezing the tablecloth between my fingers.

“Congratulations on Autumn’s new book!” said this foreign family as they toasted me with wine and I tried to smile but instead hid my face into my shoulder.

“What kind of book is it?”

“Horror fiction,” I said, voice quiet, and the subject was quickly changed.

Nevertheless, I’m pleased to announce the release of my e-novella from Dark Continents, A Gentle Hell, which is part of the Tales of Darkness and Dismay. It can be purchased from amazon here. A Gentle Hell is comprised of four dark fiction short stories. Described as “surreal,” “beautiful and melancholy,” and “The Thinking Person’s horror”:

In They Promised Dreamless Death a salesmen sells sleep with the promise of a better life, but what dreams lurk beneath the substrate of consciousness for those who take it are stranger than they ever imagined.

In Your Demiurge is Dead, while the world adjusts to the death of God and the new reign of the Triple Goddess, Charles hunts for an Oklahoma murderer and is forced to confront his religious ideals when he encounters a new prophet.

The Dog That Bit Her, is the story of a neurotic young woman who gains freedom from her co-dependent marriage with the bite of a rabid dog.

And in the semi-autobiographical The Singing Grass, the artist and the writer converge at a meadow haunted by a carnivorous deer and the burnt monsters that show them the consequences of an artistic life.

If you’d like to follow me around the Interwebs, you can find me at my website autumnchristian.net, on twitter at @autumnxtian or on facebook.

- Autumn

A few words with Tracie McBride

Today, fellow author and dweller of the southern hemisphere, Tracie McBride, joins me on my blog. Like me, she wears many hats, and not only writes but edits. Welcome, Tracie!

You've been writing for quite a while now, and have short stories available in a number of anthologies. Can you tell us a little about the general theme of your tales? Which of your shorts are your three favourites of all time, and also, would you ever plan on a novel-length work?

One of the advantages of being a short story writer is that I have the luxury of exploring a multitude of themes. Having said that, there are some I keep returning to because they’re lodged deep down in my psyche. Often I’ll intertwine the banality and familiarity of modern-day suburban life with surreal or horrific elements. Parenthood and other familial relationships also come under the microscope often.

I’m glad you asked for my three favourites instead of just one, because it’s a bit like having to choose which one of my children is my favourite. In no particular order, I choose –

Baptism, in which a young friar attempts to convert a pod of predatory mermaids to Christianity.

Ghosts Can Bleed, the title story of my collection, which deals with themes of grief and the despair of a life lived without meaning.

Last Chance To See, the story of a woman who is killed in a car accident and is given a ‘loaner’ prosthetic body to extend her life by another 24 hours. This story was inspired by my aunt Noeline who died of cancer in 2008.

Writing a novel remains an elusive goal; the official line is that I’m waiting for a novel-worthy idea to come to me, but the truth is that the thought of writing a novel scares me. I enjoy the immediacy of the short story, the more readily attainable goal of completion and publication, the liberty to experiment with voice and structure that is harder to get away with in longer works, and the challenge of expressing my ideas in as few words as possible.

The short story is quite a different beast from novella and novel-length works. What, in your opinion, are the hallmarks of a great short story? What are some of the issues you see in short story submissions for anthologies?

I have particular tastes in short stories. I like a story that makes me sit back at the end and say, “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that.” Stories that leave a little mystery and room for the reader to interpret it in their own way.Stories that are elegantly constructed with subtle and well-crafted (but never over-laboured) imagery.

I read slush Dark Moon Digest, a US-based horror magazine. The number one issue is a poorly crafted story. If a writer mixes up his or her tenses, doesn’t know how to punctuate dialogue correctly or hands out adverbs like lollies, then I find it difficult to see past the craft to the story within. Number two is a lack of originality. I come across a lot of clichéd concepts and overused tropes.

Electronic publishing has created fantastic opportunities for writers, but it's also resulted in a slew of published works that needed a bit of extra spit and polish before release. What's your advice to writers who're embarking on self-publishing?

Oh boy – you’re trying to get me into trouble, aren’t you? I’m full of advice for indie writers, especially for those at the beginning of their career, but I find that many of them aren’t very receptive to constructive (or any) criticism. I’ll try to limit it to three key pieces of advice.

1) In the absence of a competent editor (and let’s face it, how many indie writers can afford one?) join a critique group. In particular, join a group that has members who are further along in their writing career than you are.

2) Learn to accept criticism with good grace. Even better, learn to heed it.

3) Read widely. Read outside your favourite genres. Read intensively within your favourite genres. Buy books on the craft of writing. Keep those books by your bedside and re-read them until you’ve memorised them.

Small presses. There are hundreds, if not thousands more of them around compared to just a few years ago, and it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry considers himself a publisher. How does one discern whether a publisher is legit, and what are the benefits of entrusting one's writing to a small press as opposed to going it alone?

I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask this question. Because I write short stories and poetry, I have less invested in finding the ‘right’ publisher, so I have a cavalier attitude to choosing a publisher; if they promise to pay me for my contribution and send me a contributor copy, then they’re OK by me. But for fledgling novelists, my advice is to become involved in the writing community (although the act of writing is a solitary exercise, the business of being a writer is not). Join writers’ groups, Facebook groups and professional organizations such as the HWA. Listen out for news, watch where other writers are submitting and observe who wins awards. Dodgy or under-performing publishers will be outed soon enough.

For me, the biggest advantage of signing with a small press is that it provides me external validation and an honest appraisal of the value of my work; they’re not my mother, they’re not my best friend, they don’t have to say they like my work if they don’t want to, and yet here they are saying that they like it well enough to pay me for the privilege of publishing it. Another advantage is that, although small presses don’t have the resources of a major publishing house, they can still expose your book to a wider audience than you can reach on your own. And unless you’re a particularly multi-talented or resourceful writer, the editing, layout and cover design work will be superior to what you’ll be able to afford or achieve on your own.

Please tell us a bit more about your title that's just seen release with Dark Continents' Tales of Darkness and Dismay collection. What were your intentions when you and John Irvine started discussing initial concepts?

The collection is called April Fool and other Antipodean horror stories. It contains three short stories by John Irvine and two by me. John and I share a country of origin (New Zealand), a love of speculative poetry and brevity in storytelling, and a certain dark and dry sense of humour. We’re also both board members of Dark Continents Publishing. And that’s about the extent of our commonalities. So rather than work with a cohesive theme, we’ve gone in the opposite direction by compiling a collection that showcases the diversity of style and theme to be found in Antipodean horror.

Tell us more about Dark Continents Publishing (DCP). I've had the pleasure of reviewing a number of the full-length horror/dark fantasy titles, all of which blew me away as a fresh approach to non-mainstream writing with a serious literary edge to the genre. DCP allows its authors to retain a very authentic voice and a high quality of writing in general, which has been refreshing. What makes DCP special, especially as a "gatekeeper" in current times when it's sometimes difficult to find good-quality fiction among the slew of releases?

First of all – thank you very much! Like most small press, we’re not as driven by financial imperatives as the major publishing houses, so we can afford to take risks and choose novels on the basis of quality rather than looking solely at their likelihood of mainstream commercial success. We have global distribution through our printer Lightning Source and their distribution chain, so we’re not restricted to tailoring our publications to a limited geographical appeal. We’re small, we’re quick, we’re flexible and we’re adaptable. But the main reason DCP is special is that we’re all writers ourselves. We understand the creative process.And we know the difference between sanding down a novel to generic blandness and polishing it until it gleams.

Links

Buy Ghosts Can Bleed here and April Fool here.

Follow Tracie's blog here.

Along the Splintered Path with AJ Brown

Today I welcome my fellow Tales of Darkness and Dismay author, AJ Brown, to my world. To put you in the picture, Tales of Darkness and Dismay is a collection of titles recently brought out by Dark Continents Publishing, an offering of novellas and short story anthologies, available in electronic format from Amazon. Brown is the author of Along the Splintered Path, a collection of short stories.

Tell us a little about your fiction, and especially this latest release through Dark Continents.

I tend to lean a little to the darker side of fiction—not always horror, but rarely ever those feel good, coming of age stories. I find it a bit more challenging to write about people who are put into situations that you don’t see every day. Along with that, the world we live in today is becoming more and more brutal with acts of violence stepping into the realms of unfathomable acts. With that in mind, I try to do the same with my fiction, but without going into the gory details.

Along the Splintered Path falls in that category of the world as it is today. The three stories center on different subjects and one of them even gets a little supernatural, but they all keep their grip on reality. A young man deals with his childhood demons and tries to save his brother from those same memories that haunt him; another man splits with his wife and ends up in a valley in the mountains during a snowstorm. His only refuge? A small hut in the middle of nowhere made of trees and plant life from the forest. And a homeless man who comes into money after it falls from the sky and lands beside him. Their lives are ‘splintered’ so to speak, in one way or another.

Are there any underlying themes in the tale you think are particularly pertinent? How closely does life imitate art in your creative work?

Two of the three stories came as a result of events or things told to me. The Woodshed is based on a story my dad told me years ago about a man who beat his kids with a studded strap. I don’t know if he even remembers the conversation, but it stuck with me. Round These Bones is a result of being in the mountains with my wife and having a truck come zooming by us while we stood on the edge of the road looking out over the mountains.

When I put the stories together I didn’t realize there was a theme—the splintered souls, the torment and discovery of the characters—until my friend, Paula, pointed it out to me. Thus, the title, again thanks to Paula, who came up with it.

Tell us a little more about yourself and your writing methods. Do you outline or do you let the story wander as it will?

I’m a little bit of both. I probably do what most writers do: I get an idea, jot down a couple notes and then come back to it later. That’s usually the extent of my outlining. Once I have an idea, I think about it some—I don’t dwell on it. Doing that makes the story run and hide. Then I start writing.

Most of my stories have either the opening or the closing cemented when I start. I let the story fill in the rest as I go along. Here’s the real thing for me: if I limit a story, it sucks. That simple. If I plan a story out, it sucks. However, if I go into a story with the mindset of, ‘hey, story, are you ready?’ the story gives a nod and we write it together, with the story telling me what to write. It often goes off on its own and—most of the time—I let it. I find this to be the most satisfying and exhilarating way for me to write.

Have you had any truly frightening real-life experiences you wish to share?

Oh man… oh yeah. I’ve had a knife pulled on me. I’ve had a gun pointed at me by a guy with suicidal tendencies. There was an accident as a child that left me partially deaf and resulted in a life long run of headaches.

Possibly the most disturbing thing that has ever happened to me is when I was in my late teens I went next door to see a neighbor. I don’t recall why. When I knocked on the door, her youngest daughter who was maybe four at the time opened it. Her blond hair fell around her shoulders and I asked to see her mom. She looked up at me with those blue eyes and said, ‘My mommy’s dead.’

And she wasn’t kidding. Her mother had died that morning, choking to death on toast. It was just her and her mother that morning and I’ve often wondered if she watched her mother die. I’ve also wanted to use this in a story, but I never have. I will one day—the image is strong and the way it made me feel… I don’t get unnerved very easily, but this bothered me for a long time afterward.

Which three books should be on the great dark fantasy library shelf of all time? And why do you think so?

I’m not a real fantasy person, but I’ll say the Dark Tower series, for both horror and fantasy should be up there regardless of what genre it is viewed as. The storyline is magnificent, the characters realistic and how many series’ are out there that just have readers craving more and more?

Linkage:

Buy Along the Splintered Path here.

AJ Brown's blog.

AJ Brown on Facebook.