The news on NEVER NOW ALWAYS: Reviews, interviews, podcasts and more!

“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 

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Craving Authenticity: a reading of Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island

“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.