Sounds like a nice 1950’s B-movie title, doesn’t it? Needs an exclamation point or five and a font dripping blood. Maybe starring Lon Cheney and the child star edition of someone you’d never associate with that sort of thing, like Andy Griffith or Jim Carrey.

Anyway! It wasn’t a horror movie; in fact I had a long and lovely chat with the fine folks of Sci Fi Saturday Night about my new novella Claudius Rex, and that chat is now online for you to listen to!

If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a combination “what’s new in the world of SFF and fandom” chat and interview with a weekly guest. This week had some info about the next season of Sherlock, and about a Sesame Street skit referencing ComicCon, for example. I had a lot of fun (and would gladly do it again, Dome!).

A few notes of things I didn’t get to talk about but wanted to:
I was talking about my own novella, Claudius Rex, in Paper Golem Press’s ALEMBICAL 3 anthology. There are two other fine novellas in that anthology that I didn’t get a chance to put in a good word for, and would like to:

From Earth I Have Arisen, by Matt Rotundo, about an old man playing hero in a hot air balloon in the post-apocalyptic mid-west.

Star-Reacher, by Kam Oi Lee, about an artist and mechanic in a back-woods mining colony dealing with his desire to leave home and go make something of himself. (I’m from West Virginia — a theme like that strikes home with me.)

So, even if you don’t like mine, there are two other excellent stories to read!

I hadn’t intended to talk about the sequel to CLAUDIUS REX, since I’m still not 100% sure it’ll ever see the light of day. Writing a novel-length sequel to a novella can be a tricky proposition, after all, and I’m mostly writing it for my own enjoyment and the practice of finishing another novel draft (as I’ve said elsewhere, I consider myself mostly a short fiction writer, and expect to write two or three novels before I ever sell one). But since I brought it up, here are the details, such as they are: the working title is THE WRONG CLIENT, and it’s about Rex being hired to investigate the disappearance of an anti-AI activist. I’ve had to spend a lot more time thinking through some character and world designs (and deeply regretting a few off-the-cuff remarks in CLAUDIUS REX). When I said that Rex is blind, that’s true (despite Google Glass and its ilk): robot vision is a very different thing than biological vision, and that conversation has really gotten me thinking about how to present the way Rex “sees”. 

The novel draft about half-way done (as drafts go, which is some unknown percent done as books go) and at this pace it’ll probably be done next summer or so. To be honest, writing a novel is difficult work with few rewards along the way, and it’s tough to justify it to myself as something other than a sideline hobby if CR doesn’t do well. So, if you liked CR and want to see a sequel, review it and tell your friends.

Finally, in my story about my inability to order soda in Japan, I was nervous enough about being on the show that I left off the ‘punchline’: Immediately after correcting me about how to order the size soda I wanted, the cashier helpfully pointed me to the sign, which read very clearly for even me to see, “S” “M” and “L”. So, if you’re scratching your head and wondering what the point of that story was… you’re not the only one. But I’m impressed by how polite the hosts were in simply letting that go and moving on!