Hi friends!
Here are my eligible publications from 2017…
Novella
Short Stories
“There are cycles repeated here, as Lolo and the others try to find and support each other and ultimately escape, but the ongoing layers of mystery means that there is never a moment without intrigue. Is their bizarre prison on Earth, or somewhere else? Are Lolo and the others children, or adults who have lost their semantic and episodic memories—or something else? Are the Caretakers around them seeking to experiment, indoctrinate, or possibly protect these humans from self-inflicted harm?” (Black Gate review by Brandon Crilly)
I’ve really been blown away by the kind reception for Never Now Always, my novella now available from Broken Eye Books. The review in Publisher’s Weekly was particularly exciting! Lots more positive reviews here.
I also had tons of fun doing some podcasts and interviews, including a lively conversation with Scott Nicolay on The Outer Dark (The Outer Dark Episode 018: Walking Reality’s Festering Fault Lines … with a Dog) and a very fun roundtable with the crew at Miskatonic Musings (Miskatonic Musings Episode 179: Doctor-Patient Confidentiality).
Also, John Scalzi was kind enough to host me as a guest blogger for “The Big Idea” on the Whatever blog. I wrote about processing the inspiration and terror I found in C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair.
You can read the opening pages here on the Broken Eye Books website.
You can also read another except at Weird Fiction Review.
Buy from Amazon | Buy from Barnes & Noble | Buy from IndieBound
Hi friends!
Here’s the list of my publications from 2016…
Short Stories
Related Works
Exciting news! I’ve written a novella called Never Now Always, and Broken Eye Books will be publishing it this winter. Broken Eye Books did a fantastic job with the recent anthology Tomorrow’s Cthulhu — which included my story “The Great Dying of the Holocene” — and I am very happy they’ll be publishing this novella.
Never Now Always is a weird, slipstreamy kind of story that’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror. It touches on many of my obsessions: vast megastructures and creepy aliens, the tyranny of the past and the desperate attachment between siblings who have no one else. It also grapples with something that’s horrified me ever since I was a young child and read C. S. Lewis’ book The Silver Chair: remembering only to forget again, understanding that you’ve been here before and will be again.
More details about the story here in Broken Eye Books’ announcement of the novella:
“To their alien Caretakers, the children are nothing more than lab rats: keys to a mystery about memory far larger than they could understand. As they undergo their captors’ experiments, a few children begin to excavate fragments of their lost past. These stories might be the key to survival. Or they might just be another form of subterfuge.”
Never Now Always will be available in paperback and e-book and you can even pre-order both formats here.
“Reading Tom McCarthy’s fiction induces a certain kind of mania,” writes Duncan White in The Telegraph. “It demands to be unpacked and decoded, charted and mapped. Every chapter – no, every sentence – invites you to plunge deeper into the book’s dark pool, groping for the submerged pattern. It is as if you are trying to read two books at once. There is the conventional one – paper and ink – but this is only the gateway to the second, which is a vast virtual blueprint of the novel’s hidden architecture, detailing its dizzying connections. Reading a McCarthy novel is like being in a McCarthy novel: everything is part of a fizzing network, the scope of which can never be fully apprehended.”
It’s an uncannily accurate description of this uncannily accurate novel. I recognized the sensation instantly: that induced mania.
Far Fetched Fables is a great podcast that has featured many of my most favorite writers, so I was very happy when they asked to present my story “Love Is The Spell That Casts Out Fear,” originally published in John Joseph Adam’s The Way of the Wizard in 2010. A tiny excerpt:
The wizard lives alone in a tiny house at the forest’s edge. To the north are the tangled woods, home to unlikely zoological and botanical specimens the wizard has spent several lifetimes cataloging; she plans to spend several more. To the south lies the city: Perta Perdida, the City of Lost Girls.
The girls of Perta Perdida call the wizard Hanna D’Forrest, when they think of her at all. She’s charged with their protection. Whether this responsibility is one for which she volunteered, or one forced upon her, they no longer remember. Neither does she. Time moves differently here, languid as a summer stream. A place of refuge, this city was built to elude change. If they could trap this world like a leaf in amber, they would. But in the absence of that kind of magic, they settle for slowed clocks. They cling to their world as tightly as they can.
You can download Far Fetched Fables #88 here. Along with my story, read by Heidi Hotz, the episode includes flash fiction by Melody Marie Sage, read by Catherine Logan.
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If podcasts aren’t your thing, the full text of the story is freely available here, along with a fantastic short introduction that I think is really insightful about what I was hoping to do with the story.
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When the The Way of the Wizard came out, editor John Joseph Adams published interviews with several of the authors. You can read my interview here.
Tell us a bit about your story. What’s it about?
My story is actually two stories. One story is about an average girl who lives in a middle-class suburb, attends a typical evangelical Christian church, and hides a big secret. The other story is about a girl wizard who lives in a fantastical city called Perta Perdida, where lost girls from every universe escape to be safe. Of course, the two stories are really the same story. That story is about the sacrifices we make for people we love, and the way our fantasy lives give us the power and courage to make these sacrifices.
What was the genesis of the story–what was the inspiration for it, or what prompted you to write it?
When I first set out to write a story about a wizard, I knew I wanted to write something that would explore magic and wizardry in a metafictional way. I adore M. John Harrison’s story “Seven Guesses of the Heart,” which beautifully engages the idea of magic and what it means — as well as what it is and isn’t capable of changing. Inspired by this story, I wanted to write something in a similar vein. I also knew I wanted to write something with anachronistic elements, using signifiers and scenery that would disassociate the story from any particular place or time.
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Ranging from irreverent humor to straight out horror, What the @#&% Is That? grew from a meme on Twitter when iconic comic book artist Mike Mignola painted a monster. Nobody knew what the F it was, but they loved it.
What the @#&% Is That?, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, is forthcoming from Saga Press in August 2016 and includes my story “Down in The Deep and the Dark.”
Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more.
Forthcoming from Broken Eye Books… Tomorrow’s Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity, edited by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski. The anthology includes my story “The Great Dying of the Holocene.”
Pre-order now for release on 1/21/16.
My short story “Construction Project” is live at Nightmare Magazine, the new horror publication edited by John Joseph Adams. I’m excited and humbled to appear in this issue alongside such luminaries as Ramsey Campbell, Joe Haldeman and Poppy Z. Brite.
Also check out the author spotlight, which may shed some light on the more ambiguous aspects of the story. Nightmare Magazine’s Editorial Assistant Seamus Bayne asked me some great, thought-provoking questions — fun to answer and hopefully fun to read!
At Weird Fiction Review, I discuss science fiction author Jerome Bixby’s 1953 short story, “It’s a Good Life.” Read the story (it’s utterly haunting), then check out my review:
But “It’s a Good Life” – the story that elevated Bixby from forgettable pulp scribbler to science fiction grand master – well, it’s different. If Bixby’s other stories began as tales told around the campfire, this one began with a cold sweat in the middle of the night. “It’s a Good Life” is a slowly building nightmare; each layer is a new realization of powerlessness and despair.
The story centers on Anthony, a psychic three-year-old who possesses the power to change the world with his thoughts. Anthony’s unfortunate family and neighbors do all they can to avoid attracting his notice. Mostly, this means living in a constant state of bland cheer, not just in word, but also in mind.
