Rearranging the Spark furniture

Spark Furnace is Fabled Lands Publishing's online storefront/catalogue site. With all the new stuff we've got coming along in the months ahead, it was time to give it an overhaul. Now you can find all kinds of stuff:

• A host of resources for Fabled Lands
• Maps and character sheets for the Critical IF gamebooks
• Details of the Golden Dragon reprints
• An inventory of Dragon Warriors material and a map of Legend
• The full story of how I rewrote Frankenstein as an interactive novel
• An audience with the Great Dirk himself

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. No rush, but drop by when you get a minute. And if you're thinking this is pretty lean for an FL blog post: don't worry, it's just a commercial break. There'll be the regular full-lengther on Friday.

Agreeably scary

It's almost Halloween, and if you're stoking up the fire (or even just upping the brightness on your PC's fireplace screensaver) you may be casting around for delicious fictive chills to run a teasing finger of fright along your spine.

Fans of John Whitbourn's classic Binscombe Tales stories will know that few experiences can be quite so disturbing and at the same time strangely comforting as dropping in at the Duke of Argyll in the company of Mr Oakley, our hapless narrator, and the mysterious Mr Disvan. It's what autumn, imagination, log fires and real ale were created for.

The Binscombe Tales are hard to describe. Possessed of great human warmth and yet often coldly heartless. Sometimes scary but just as often more in the way of startling and thought-provoking. Science fictional except where they're fabulous, fantastic, whimsical, spooky or simply bizarre. Thrilling yet often delightfully leisurely. Terrifying or mind-bending - but always funny with it.

In short, they're the very best of English weird fiction, and if you haven't encountered them yet then you're missing a treat. Fortunately, Jamie and I think ahead so that stuff like the equinox, tax demands and the release of Witcher sequels don't take us by surprise, and this year we had the foresight to prepare an omnibus paperback edition of the complete Binscombe Tales from our Spark Furnace imprint.

Herein you will learn about: the man who spent a lifetime waiting for a bus; the suburban kitchen cupboard that is a gateway to another world; the whispering voices that force a nightclub owner to keep the music turned up loud; the incredible reminiscences of an antique writing desk; and all about the mythic threat lurking under Binscombe's electricity substation. I have previously blogged about the first of those stories, which gave me an authentic shudder as John read it out at a ghost story evening chez Morris, and if you want to try "Waiting for a Bus" then it's available as a free PDF - but only until Halloween.

As well as all twenty-six tales, many of which have garnered awards such as the Year's Best Fantasy, Binscombe Tales: The Complete Series includes a long essay by John Whitbourn in which he reveals that oft-asked authorial secret - to wit, where he gets his ideas from. The whole book is 660 pages so there's no danger of running out of gruesome entertainment before the days start getting longer. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the perfect present for those long dark evenings ahead.

Monster-crewed airships of the Georgian Fleet Air Arm

There have been enough posts about Frankenstein's Legions of late that I probably don't need to recap it here. In case you missed the details, it's not my recently-revamped example of next-gen interactive literature, published by Profile Books, which was not a genre work, but instead a steampunk universe in which Frankenstein's technology is used to create armies of endlessly recycled body parts.

The novel, by award-winning SF author John Whitbourn, has been available on Kindle for some time. But not everybody likes an ebook (it has been forcefully brought home to me in comments here) so this month Spark Furnace has published a whopping great paperback edition of the book. It's a large-format, 356-page monster that you will need to keep chained in the cellar if you have any pet hunchbacks you're worried about.

To give you an idea of what it's like, here's a scene where Julius Frankenstein, nephew of the illustrious/infamous Victor, is escaping across the English Channel in a small boat with Ada Lovelace, whose murder he is investigating. (Yes, murder. In a world of Frankenstein science, homicide victims can sometimes cooperate in tracking down their own killers.) A navy cutter spots them and opens fire, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they then attract the attention of a galloon - a lazaran-powered airship of the Fleet Air Arm - which descends to the attack:

* * *

One of Julius’s father’s favourite maxims was ‘never argue with policemen or lunatics.’ He had imbibed that from earliest years, along with ‘Do what you want—but don’t whine about the bill.’ 

So instead he stood and took aim at the galloon. 

Lieutenant Neave hadn’t been expecting that. His own shot went wild. What with the waves and it being extreme range for a mere pistol, Julius’s shot was impressive. Its bullet shattered the pilot’s windscreen—but not, as intended, his head. Lieutenant Neave was duly impressed, amongst other sentiments. 

‘What the—!’ said Mariner.

‘Stop that,’ ordered Frankenstein, meaning the slackening of speed. The authority of education and class was backed by a second, still loaded, pistol.

‘One shot: that’s all it’ll take,’ Mariner advised, meaning the closing cutter, not Frankenstein’s far lesser weapon. ‘We’ll be nothing but blood and splinters.’

Even so, he withdrew his hand from the ropes retarding their progress. Unlike the cutter’s cannon, Julius’ gun was both near at hand and near his head.

‘Since we’re all good as dead anyway,’ observed Frankenstein, ‘I can’t see that it matters.’

Mariner deferred to his logic. Having got his way in that respect, Julius returned to the galloon question. Lieutenant Neave was frantically reloading as best his confined cabin allowed. Frankenstein took the opportunity to take extra careful aim.

Neave’s nerve snapped first. ‘Up!’ His command to the crew could be heard loud and clear through the pierced screen. ‘Up—damn your undead eyes!’

Prow first, the galloon made an emergency ascension, gas valves being flung open as they came to hand, regardless of grace and stability. The lieutenant, on whom Julius was drawing bead, was flung back out of sight in the interior of the cabin.

Frankenstein could have fired anyway, but now there was a new fish to fry. The cutter roared again, and this time unmistakably in earnest. The heat of the ball as it passed not far above caressed all their faces. When they then looked up, as a natural reaction to still having heads, it was to note that most of the mast was no longer with them. Such was the force of the shot, it had not snapped or splintered but had simply been swept away in silence.

* * *

Strange tales from another world

A cross-post from the Mirabilis blog today which is likely to be of interest to only a few Fabled Lands readers, I guess, but if you occasionally yearn for something else to while away your leisure hours other than blasting shotgun holes in waves of marauding zombies, here's something completely different...

I've blogged before about A J Alan, radio raconteur of '20s and '30s Britain. Think of an English Rod Serling, only on the wireless instead of the TV and with considerably less formulaic a cast to his storytelling.

That era was the Burgess Shale of broadcasting, when interesting ideas and a willingness to experiment trumped such things beloved of marketing as genre, ratings and tribally narrow tastes. A J Alan's tales of the odd, the quirky, the (mildly) racy and the (sometimes) supernatural were definitely perfect for long winter evenings by the fireside with tendrils of grimy London fog pressing up against the window panes. Not "the Twilight Zone" so much as "the Velvet Hour" - which, I know, some say is dawn, not dusk, but I think of it as the time when cocktails may be respectably mixed and drunk and one might start to think about dressing for dinner - at least, in the world that Mr Alan and his listeners inhabited.

I mention this now because Spark Furnace Books have just published a paperback edition of But That's A Detail, my collection of A J Alan stories. So if you want something different, and really rather good, I'd say it's an absolute snip at £3.99.

Something eerie on the airwaves

I've been reading the Binscombe Tales and I’m trying to decide if Mr Disvan should be played by Ian McShane or Derek Jacobi. Yes, they’re very different actors. But Disvan is a complex character – serious and politely formal, sure, but also sometimes mischievous. Ruthless but sometimes compassionate. Anciently wise but sometimes childlike. It’s as if Odin took up residence in a Surrey village and drove a fast car with fluffy dice under the mirror. Except that Disvan has both his eyes, so whatever the answer may be to his mystery, that’s not it.

I’m talking about radio, of course, not television. I haven’t gone completely potty. The Binscombe Tales are far too original and idiosyncratic for British TV. Even on the radio, I can’t see us getting either of those great thesps. (Unless they’re fans of the books – well, you never know.)

Why am I thinking at all along such far-fetched lines? Because, to mark the publication of the Binscombe Tales books today (in print and ebook editions) by Spark Furnace Books, Jamie and I are going into the recording studio with Jamie’s brother Peter (an actor who starred in Jamie’s Heart of Harkun BBC serial) and producer Paul Weir to start the ball rolling on a Binscombe Tales audiobook. We’ll do a couple of stories to start, and when people catch on that the Binscombe Tales really are a work of dark brilliance – pardon the oxymoron – then it's time to see if Sir Derek will take our call.

Publication day

It's a big day for us on Monday. That's when Fabled Lands LLP are officially launching their book imprint Spark Furnace with the publication of John Whitbourn's classic ghostly series The Binscombe Tales. These were originally written in the early 1990s and have been collected in many anthologies such as DAW's Year's Best Fantasy. To celebrate, Jamie, Tim and I are being taken to a publication day lunch at Wiltons Restaurant off Piccadilly by Fabled Lands LLP's head honcho, Franklin L Johnson. (Must remember to dress smartly for a change.)

Talking of slap-up meals, here's the skinny: Spark Furnace are releasing the stories as three paperbacks (UK here, US here) and in ebook form via Smashwords - or, if you'd rather sample them in chapbook form, as six Kindle books (UK and US).

One of the things that's amazing about the Binscombe Tales is how many now-famous horror and fantasy concepts appeared first in these books. John Whitbourn's story "Eyes" is virtually a prototype in low key for the entire Final Destination series of movies, and this excerpt from the story "Hello Dolly" anticipates the Amy Pond storyline on Doctor Who by almost two decades:

Linda Disch applied her scarlet lips to a Bloody Mary before proceeding. ‘One morning,’ she said, ‘I was playing there with all my dollies and that, when I felt something strange. The wall behind me seemed to have some give in it. It shouldn’t have. It’d always been just a nice plain, solid wall, it made me safe and protected. I wasn’t worried though. Children don’t have much fear, do they, Mr Oakley?’

You obviously didn’t go to prep school, I thought—but kept it to myself.

‘Leastways, I didn’t have much scare in me,’ said Linda. ‘I just took things in my stride in those days.’

‘But what about this wall?’ I asked (she seemed to be dallying).

‘It wasn’t a wall anymore, Mr Oakley. It was a door.’ Linda was wide-eyed with wonder, as if the incident was only five minutes in her past. ‘I looked up and saw there was a big brass doorknob above my head. When I got up I found the wall was now a great oak door—keyhole, panels, the lot.’

‘And when you tried the handle?’ I asked, urging her on once more.

‘Oh, I didn’t, Mr Oakley. I was brought up to knock before I entered rooms, and somehow I didn’t fancy doing that. What I did do was have a quick squint through the keyhole.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. It was all old and grimed up. You couldn’t see a thing.’

‘I see.’

‘Well, I couldn’t. I was just standing there and gawping, wondering how I’d missed noticing this room before. Then I saw that the door was a poor fit. There was a fair gap at the bottom, half an inch or so. Straight off. I shimmied down on to my tummy and tried to see into the room.

‘There was light in there from a window or something, because I could see bits and pieces of what was beyond. A ray of sunshine was lighting up the gloom. “There’s no carpet,” I remember thinking. “How come Mum stands for that?’” It looked dirty and dusty, all neglected and forlorn. There was faded wallpaper starting to curl off in places and sheets of yellow newsprint lying about. It occurred to me that perhaps even Mum and Dad hadn’t found this room yet. But there again, how could that be? They knew everything. They wouldn’t miss a part of their own house, surely.

‘Then a pair of feet crossed my line of vision, great grey slabs of feet, slowly pacing up and down the room, in and out of that beam of sunlight. I must have gasped or something, because the feet stopped in their tracks as though I’d been heard. They changed direction and headed straight for me...'

STOP PRESS: (I always wanted to say that.) If you live in Surrey, England, pick up a copy of local newspaper the Surrey Advertiser this week, as it features an interview with John Whitbourn in which he talks about his writing, his forthcoming novel (based at the time of the Gordon Riots) and his roots in real-life Binscombe, where his family have lived since the Civil War.