Tag: Article

Charlie Human on the Real World Influences for APOCALYPSE NOW NOW

Posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2015

Human-ApocalypseNowNowUS-BlogCharlie Human‘s critically-acclaimed debut novel, APOCALYPSE NOW NOW, was recently published in the US by Titan Books. To celebrate, Charlie was invited by Boing Boing to write a piece about the novel, and he chose to write about the real world influences behind the novel…

In South Africa the spam is hand-delivered. Pamphlet-flickers (guys handing out flyers for sidewalk magicians that offer everything from debt-clearing to penis enlargement) try to outmaneuver me on my commute every morning.

Bouncing on their heels they weave from side to side to intercept passers-by with their haphazardly printed offerings. Love spells, exorcisms, magic money purses. Diagon Alley with a bit more aggression, a bit more style, a little less polish.

Make no mistake, there’s an incredibly dark side to it… There’s also a darkly comic side to this urban reality fantasy. Our tabloids are in on the game, spinning an epic serial of monsters and magic in their headlines every morning…

You can read the rest of the article here.

APOCALYPSE NOW NOW and its sequel, KILL BAXTER are published in the UK by Arrow, and in South Africa by Random Struik/Umuzi. Titan are also due to publish KILL BAXTER in the US, in November 2015. Here’s the synopsis for the first novel…

I LOVE THE SMELL OF PARALLEL DIMENSIONS IN THE MORNING

Baxter Zevcenko’s life is pretty sweet. As the 16-year-old kingpin of the Spider, his smut-peddling schoolyard syndicate, he’s making a name for himself as an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Profits are on the rise, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he’s going out with Esme, the girl of his dreams.

But when Esme gets kidnapped, and all the clues point towards strange forces at work, things start to get seriously weird. The only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin.

Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

Ian MacLeod on ‘Story behind SNODGRASS’…

Posted on Thursday, May 9th, 2013

snodgrassIan R. MacLeod fans should be sure to catch this great post about his short story collection SNODGRASS AND OTHER ILLUSIONS, and his enduring love for the short story medium.

‘… back from the time when people first gathered around a fire to shelter from the darkness, the short story lies at the heart of what we humans are. We like wonder. We like surprise. We like fresh experience. We want to be reminded how it feels to be young, or scared, or deeply in love. And then, after an hour or so (and much as with going to the movies), we’ll stretch and smile and shiver, and head off to bed. The exchange is so natural that the wonder isn’t that short stories have dwindled in popularity, but that any other kind of fiction has ever managed to succeed…

‘Short fiction isn’t a lesser form to the novel. It’s simpler different, and lighter on its toes. After all, there’s a lot to be said for brevity… It’s a fact of our existence that the very best, most memorable and exciting things we experience in life come and go astonishingly quickly. Short fiction celebrates this. We all should.’

SNODGRASS AND OTHER ILLUSIONS is available now, in eBook format from  Open Road Media, and of course, the Sky Television adaptation of  SNODGRASS was broadcast only last month.