Someone’s Read it Already

L. Lee Lowe is self-published because she simply wanted to opt out of the publishing industry, full stop. She wants to be a writer — a person who writes and has people read what she writes — rather than a businessperson, and has arranged her writing career thusly. Her novel, Mortal Ghost, is available in a few different formats; one can read it for free on her website here, as blog entries. One can also go here for the book in podcast form, read by a young Welshman who is an acting student; here (direct link) for the whole thing in PDF format; here for various other formats, including HTML and various ereaders, and here for a POD via Lulu (not free).

Jesse Wright is homeless; however, one day, during a ridiculously hot summer in an unidentified part of England, he meets Sarah, who definitely isn’t homeless, and decides to take him on as a reclamation project of sorts. Jesse has issues of all kinds — intimacy, trust, whatnot — and while Sarah’s parents definitely help, it’s not easy. His nightmares — of a burning house and dying people — have always been there, but they’re becoming different. Perhaps it is one of his gifts — an amazing memory, an amazing ability to learn things very quickly, and something that may or may not have to do with fire — that is the key to the mystery that is Jesse? (more…)

Lloyd Alexander is one of the grandmasters of children’s fantasy; he started publishing back around the time of the early Madeleine L’Engle and Susan Cooper books, and continued right up until his death last year. I’ve read several of his books prior to starting this blog — the Prydain chronicles and the Westmark trilogy, arguably his most famous works — and reviewed one before (The Rope Trick) and I still haven’t actually made a dent in his output. Generally his books are for middle-grade readers; he’s even got a habit of featuring strong female characters among the lot. The second of the Prydain chronicles, The Black Cauldron, was made into an animated Disney movie back in the early 1980s; it’s mostly been forgotten now (although I own it on an all-but-useless VHS tape).

Gypsy Rizka lives outside of a town called Greater Dunitsa, but barely — she spends most of her days inside that town. Ostensibly she’s waiting for her father, a fiddler, to return for her, but most days she amuses herself by meddling in the affairs of the townspeople. Often it’s for good, such as helping her friend Sofiya acquire and be allowed to keep a kitten or five, but when someone in the city — Chief Councilor Sharpnack — decides that she’s an eyesore and a blot upon the town’s sterling reputation, she doesn’t pull any punches. (Ask him about the incident with the chicken.) Will she be allowed to stay? For that matter, will she want to stay? (more…)

I’ve reviewed the other three books in this series — the Books of Pellinor — previously, here, here, and here. Smart readers might recall that I particularly adored the first book; I liked the second and third books well enough, but I thought The Naming (or The Gift in the UK) was outstanding. This book will not be released in the U.S. until March of 2009; I got impatient and ordered in a copy from England. Allison Croggon is a poet and playwright; she also writes opera libretti. She lives in Australia with her husband, also a playwright, Daniel Keene. According to her blog, she has just started a new novel — a fantasy novel, like Pellinor, but much shorter. At this point, she’s not sure if it’ll turn into a series or just a standalone, but I have to admit, I’m excited to hear she’s even writing another fantasy novel.

As The Singing is the fourth novel in the sequence, I’ll cut the plot description for those who haven’t gotten this far. (more…)

Peter Dickinson is an award-winning speculative fiction author, primarily for YAs and middle-grade readers. He lives in England, as it says in the bio at the back of the book, with his second wife. I only mention her because, well, his second wife is Robin McKinley. There really is a frightening amount of talent and brain-power in that house. He has recently turned eighty, and has published a collection of poems in honor of his birthday. In any case, The Lion Tamer’s Daughter, and Other Stories is a collection of four works — one short story, and three that I would consider novellas, ranging from 60 to 140 pages.

According to the blurb on the inside of the book, each of these stories is about the idea of a double or a twin in some way, shape or form. It’s true, obviously. The first story is about a boy who gains a twin through odd circumstances; the second is about an older man telling a ghost encounter from his youth; the third is about a young man captured by kidnappers who imagines a ghost — or does he? The last story, the one of the title and the longest story in the volume, is about a young man named Keith and his best friend Melly — and her doppelganger, who lives in Edinburgh. (more…)

Firebird is an imprint of Penguin (Puffin) Publishers; it was founded in 1999 when Sharyn November had the idea to release books specifically aimed at all the young-adult types who had been telling her how much they enjoyed reading science fiction and fantasy, and how they had to go to the adult section to find new authors. This anthology, pulled together by the intrepid Ms. November, is made up of authors who have had books published under the Firebird imprint. A good deal of Firebird’s novels are reprints; Sherwood Smith’s four volumes, for example, were originally published in the ’80s and ’90s. Sharyn November is a poet by training (at Sarah Lawrence College, no less) and has been editing children’s and YA books for almost twenty years. She has edited this volume, the second volume (Firebirds Rising), and a third volume, to be released shortly.

This collection of speculative fiction stories includes such authors as Charles de Lint, Delia Sherman, Sherwood Smith, Meredith Ann Pierce, Lloyd Alexander, Megan Whalen Turner, and Diana Wynne Jones, among others. All, I believe, are original to this collection, although a few have since been reprinted in other places. The collection is over four hundred pages long and contains sixteen stories. Each story is followed by a short biography of the author, and then the author’s notes, describing some of the background of the story itself. Elves, fairies, men trying to get jobs, airplanes, bluegills, trees who become human, babies in bank overnight deposit boxes — even very mundane elements of life take on a shimmer in these tales. (more…)

Here, today, we spotlight a different kind of short story collection: an anthology, where each story is written by a different person. The main theme of this anthology seems merely to be fantasy stories. Each story is original to this volume, which was originally published in 1993; there are thirteen of them. Michael Stearns is a native of San Diego, a graduate of the University of Southern California, and the recipient of the James Purdy Award for Fiction. He appears to have been the Children’s Editorial Director for HarperCollins; I think he’s recently taken a change of employment and become an agent.

The thirteen stories in this volume include authors familiar to most readers, such as Patricia C. Wrede, Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Bruce Coville, Jane Yolen, and Sherwood Smith. (Well, the last is certainly familiar to readers of Someone’s Read it Already.) There are also authors I didn’t know, such as Alan P. Smale, Dan Bennett, and Tappan King. The subjects include dragons, wizards, elves, fairies, Snow White, and the Princess Who Kicked Butt. All are bound by a thread of the fantastic; some are set today, some are set in high fantasy worlds. Some are serious, and some are humorous. (more…)

Last week was Small Press Week II. I enjoyed it a lot; I read a good deal of books that I would not otherwise have found, and they were all excellent. Some were even spectacular. In any case, I decided that I kind of like themed weeks, so this week (which will probably be the last themed week for a bit) will be Short Story Collection Week. Today’s short story collection is by Megan Whalen Turner, author of The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, both of which I reviewed here. She has also written the third book in that series, entitled The King of Attolia, which I haven’t read yet.

There are seven stories in this short collection, which only spans 150 pages or so. The characters include ghosts, leprechauns, faeries, and cockroaches; there are high fantasy stories and urban fantasy (in the ‘elves in New York’ sense); horror, ghost stories, and one set in the future. I don’t believe that any of them were published prior to this collection, which was originally released in 1995. The titles include “Instead of Three Wishes,” “Leroy Roachbane,” “Factory,” “Aunt Charlotte and the NGA Portraits,” “A Plague of Leprechaun,” “The Nightmare,” and “The Baker King.” (more…)

Our final publisher for this week is BelleBooks, or more specifically their Bell Bridge imprint. BelleBooks publishes specifically Southern fiction (Southern Fried Fiction, as their tagline says), and this imprint is to go beyond that and publish fantasy, horror, and YA, among other things. The imprint was only started in July of this year, and Bite Me is one of their first releases. Parker Blue (a name that is obviously a pen name, but an awesome one at that) has published just this novel so far; she lives in Colorado with a dog that, as she says, “bears an uncanny resemblance to Val’s part-hellhound mutt, Fang.” She very much likes the color red and finds reality television — at least the kind where they have people come on to do stupid things and then make fun of them (i.e., American Idol). I have to agree with her on that!

Val Shapiro, eighteen, is one-eighth succubus, or lust demon, and (as she says) it takes the other seven-eighths of her to control it. She’s out one night hunting vampires — since violence will sate the succubus for a while at least — when her sixteen-year-old blond cheerleader half-sister, Jennifer, follows her out. Naturally her parents decide that the best course of action is to kick Val out of the house. So Val leaves, ungraciously, and finds herself a sidekick — a part-hellhound dog named Fang — and a job, with (of all people) a special unit of the police — that allows her to kick butt. But what happens when her sister refuses to stay away from the vampires? (more…)

Carl Hiaasen is from Miami; he’s apparently been writing about Florida and Miami for many years. At the moment he’s a columnist for the Miami Herald; I don’t actually know what his columns are about, but I’m sure I should. He’s written a good deal of strangely funny books for adults, including Sick Puppy and Skinny Dip. Hoot is his first novel intended for children/YAs, and considering that it was a Newbery Honor Book a few years ago, I’d say he did just fine for his first time out. It was turned into a movie by Walden Media some time recently. I haven’t seen it yet, because I thought I ought to read the book first. After reading the book, I definitely intend to find the movie at some point.

Roy is the new kid at Trace Middle School; he’s usually the new kid somewhere. His father works for the Department of Justice, and therefore the family moves around a lot. Being the new kid, of course people want to beat him up; one day, as Dana Mathewson is trying to strangle him, he sees a strange boy without any shoes running fast and far. Roy jumps off the bus and follows the kid, but before he can catch him, he’s hit by a golf ball. Who is this kid, and why is he running around without shoes? Secondarily, why has there been random acts of vandalism (pulling up the survey stakes, painting a sleeping cop’s car windows black, removing the seats of the heavy equipment) on a construction site for Mother Paula’s Pancake House? Does someone hate flapjacks? (more…)

Adrienne Kress is involved in the theatre, apparently. She either currently teaches or recently taught drama to 8-12-year-olds; she must be very brave. After attending the University of Toronto, she went on to study and act in London. Her parents are also theatrical sorts, and she not only dedicated the book to them, but reiterated her thanks in the afterword. This book was a birthday present from Ben; I think he primarily bought it because of the title. Admittedly, the title is quite good. This seems to be Ms. Kress’s first novel, although she appears to have written several plays; the second, Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate, will be published next year.

Alexandra Morningside, more commonly called Alex, lives with her uncle, who sells doorknobs, on or near a bridge. She has just started sixth grade at the prestigious Wigpowder-Steele Academy (her uncle is inexplicably on the board of directors), and she has a brand-new teacher: Mr. Underwood. Mr. Underwood turns out to be a descendent of the Wigpowder who founded the school; that man was a pirate, and he still has some treasure somewhere. However, the descendant of the Steele is currently a pirate, and he thinks that Mr. Underwood knows where the map to the treasure is. Before too long, the pirate kidnaps Mr. Underwood. Alex, having very little other family (Mr. Underwood and her uncle have become great friends), must go after him. She’s only ten-and-a-half years old, though. What can she do? (more…)