An updated micro-post, just to point you towards a few more (positive!) reviews of Carus & Mitch…
Blog
Interview: This is Horror
Head on over to the THIS IS HORROR website to read a recent ‘Meet the writer’ interview (with me, that is).
Along with Carus & Mitch, my answers cover subjects such as writing routines, gore vs psychological chills, upcoming projects and favourite authors.
Short story: The Sleeper
The ‘Troublemake’ issue of Phobos magazine is now available on Kindle and features my story about insomnia and Mars, ‘The Sleeper’. Go and take a look!
Update 20 Apr 15: The physical copy is now available from Amazon.com too…
Guest post: Terrifying Children in Fiction
Today on the dark fiction website, Wag the Fox, you can read my post about children in horror fiction.
I wrote Carus & Mitch while my wife was pregnant, so it makes sense that children were on my mind back then. Children and parenthood have featured in most of the stories I’ve written since, too.
But there’s another reason why my favourite scary stories happen to feature children. I like the kind of horror that arises from everyday situations. There’s something about the unpredictability of children that seems ripe for exploitation in horror fiction, allowing scenes to lurch from tenderness to terror.
Carus & Mitch print edition and review
Look what just arrived! (Amazon Prime, you are FAST.)
I hadn’t really thought about how it might feel to hold a physical copy of Carus & Mitch. It turns out that it feels very, very good. It’s a satisfying, neat little package. I’m so grateful to Kate Jonez at Omnium Gatherum for taking a chance with an unknown author, and for producing such a lovely little book.
Also nice: Carus & Mitch is picking up positive reviews. Here’s a new one from Horror After Dark, also published at Char’s Horror Corner.
Carus & Mitch published
Just a very short note to say…
‘Carus & Mitch’ is now available!
You can get print or Kindle editions. Or both. Both would be good.
USA: amzn.to/1AmK7qu
UK: amzn.to/1DJFfOR
Guest post: Why we write
If you head over to the Liz Loves Books website today, you’ll find my guest post in the ‘Why we write’ series. I’m a bit ashamed to say that I don’t reach a definitive answer to the question. Instead, it’s more a list of things I like about writing, which is a long list.
Today you can also read a short extract from Carus & Mitch on the Speculative Fiction Showcase website.
Book soundtrack: Carus & Mitch
I listen to music while I write. It’s usually drone, industrial or minimal techno. I could wax lyrical about the state of mind induced by Biokinetics by Porter Ricks, Grapes from the Estate by Oren Ambarchi or Water Park by Dirty Beaches. Each story I write is usually accompanied by a particular few albums on rotation.
But that’s by the by. That’s not the kind of soundtrack I want to write about here.
I’ve started creating playlists for each of the longer pieces of fiction I’ve written. You could think of them as soundtracks to imaginary film adaptations, I suppose. But who says that books shouldn’t have soundtracks in their own right? In fact, creating a soundtrack playlist has helped me pin down the tone of stories while I’m still editing them.
I like to make the process convoluted. I’ve come up with a fairly strict set of rules:
- The first and last tracks ought to work as an accompaniment to the story’s ‘opening and closing credits’.
- The playlist should include diagetic (i.e. in-world) and non-diagetic (i.e. conventional overlaid soundtrack) music. Generally, that means not much vocal content.
- Broadly, the tracks should reflect the mindset of the central character. My stories are mostly 1st-person or close 3rd-person POV, so by the editing stage I should have a pretty good idea what makes them tick.
- The ordering of the tracks should reflect the changing mood or plot events.
- Despite rule 4, the playlist should remain listenable in its own right, without sounding jarring. Unless jarring sounds good.
Carus & Mitch
My novella, Carus & Mitch, is published by Omnium Gatherum on Monday (23rd Feb 2015). It’s about two girls who live entirely alone in a remote house, afraid of the dangers outside. It’s kind of creepy.
Here’s a Spotify soundtrack to accompany Carus & Mitch. Hopefully, it ought to work either as a teaser to reading the story, or a kind of epilogue if you’ve already read it.
It’d probably be counterproductive to explain the reasoning behind each of the track choices. But perhaps it’s worth noting that the 1940s tracks and the ‘Autumn’ educational record are the diagetic (in-world) ones. I like the image of Carus and Mitch investigating a vinyl record collection they’ve discovered in the house.
Mild spoilers: The playlist reflects the book in that it transitions from cosy to queasy to a little bit terrifying. Enjoy.
First review quotes for Carus & Mitch
Here are the first review quotes for Carus & Mitch, extracts from which also appear on the back cover of the book:
“Carus & Mitch is punchy and scary and tense and genuinely moving. The central portrait of the book’s sibling relationship captures its mixture of friction and love spot on, with heartbreaking precision. Tim Major is an exceptional writer.”
— Adam Roberts, author of Jack Glass and Bête
“Tim Major takes now-familiar tropes—an apocalypse, a resourceful teenage girl heroine—and recasts them in a bleak miniature portrait of a world ending with a whimper rather than a bang. More The Road than The Hunger Games, blending a John Wyndham-esque melancholy with a dose of existential despair, Carus & Mitch is a compelling, unconventional page-turner. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down until I reached the end.”
— Lynda Rucker, author of The Moon Will Look Strange
”A sad, sweet little book that does post apocalyptic at a soft, intimate level.”
— Garrett Cook, author of Murderland and Time Pimp
”Like life and college, the novella Carus & Mitch will leave you with more questions than answers. But the question you’ll replay over and over in your mind, the question that will keep you up at night will be, “Oh Carus, what have you done?” Tim Major tells Carus & Mitch through Carus, and as with all 15-year-olds, she’s a somewhat unreliable narrator. Grim, bleak storytelling, paired with simmering tension strikes the same haunting chord as Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, and the overall tone is reminiscent of Room by Emma Donoghue and Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.””
— Kristin Luna, Urban Fantasy Magazine
I’m very grateful to Adam, Lynda, Garrett and Kristin for these wonderful quotes. Kristin has also contributed the first review score on Goodreads – an amazing 5 out of 5 stars!
Carus & Mitch will be published by Omnium Gatherum in epub and print formats on Monday 23rd February.
Guest post: The story behind Carus & Mitch
I’ve written a guest post for the online literary magazine, Upcoming4.me. It tells the ‘story behind the story’ of Carus & Mitch, from its origins as a NaNoWriMo draft of a YA novel, through lots of dithering and deletions, before it ended up as a ‘quiet horror’ novella.
The other authors who have contributed ‘story behind the story’ articles put me to shame in their ambition and methodical approach to writing! But I hope some readers will find it useful to read about the haphazard development of this story and the deviations and accidents that became integral to the finished book.
Speculative Fiction Showcase interview
Over on the Speculative Fiction Showcase website you’ll find an author interview with me, covering subjects as diverse as big-screen adaptations, Scrivener, chickens and socks… Oh, and a small amount of discussion about my novella, Carus & Mitch, which will be released in exactly one week’s time!
The book has also been teased on the horror blog, Wag the Fox. My guest post about children in horror fiction will also appear on the Wag the Fox site soon.
The New Accelerator issue #3
Issue #3 of the New Accelerator is out now and features a reprint of my quantified-self story, ‘By the Numbers’.
The magazine is available via a dedicated app on iOS or Android devices.
Carus & Mitch cover reveal
<Cue drum roll, or whatever sound you feel conjures up anticipation>
I’m very pleased to reveal the cover for Carus & Mitch, which will be published by Omnium Gatherum on 23rd February!
Pretty flipping creepy, right? Here’s the back-cover blurb:
Carus is only fifteen but since their mum disappeared, looking after her little sister Mitch is her job. There’s nobody else. Not in their house and not outside, either. There’s something out there, scratching and scraping at the windows.
The barricades will hold.
They have to.
Also, Carus & Mitch now has its own page on Goodreads. Just one step closer to it being a real, actual thing…
Short story: Like Clockwork
SQ Mag Edition 18, featuring my story, ‘Like Clockwork’, is now available for free on the SQ Mag website. ‘Like Clockwork’ took second prize in the Story Quest ‘Punkin’ the Train’ contest at the start of December 2014.
It’s the first of my Mars stories (featuring sand-sculpted dwellings, roaming bases and ‘aye-aye’ AI robots) to be published, though it’s one of the most recent I’ve written. More to come, I hope.
My writing in 2014
Novels written in 2014
- The House-sitter (74,000 words) – SF time-travel mystery
Short stories written in 2014
- A Crest of a Wave (2300 words) – SF, Mars
- Like Clockwork (3000 words) – SF, Mars
- Cast In The Same Mould (4200 words) – SF, Mars
- Finding Waltzer-Three (1400 words) – SF
- An Empty Vessel (3000 words) – horror
- What Are We Going To Do With You? (5900 words) – YA horror
Flash fiction written in 2014
- For a Tooth (850 words) – humorous SF
- Kraken Mare (250 words) – SF
- Corvus Cornix (250 words) – horror
- All I Can See Are Sad Eyes (850 words) – horror
Fiction sales in 2014
- By the Numbers (4200 words) – SF, written 2012 – Infinite Science Fiction One anthology, Sep 2014
- Finding Waltzer-Three (1400 words) – SF, written 2014 – Interzone #255, Nov 2014
- Like Clockwork (3000 words) – SF, Mars, written 2014 – 2nd prize in Story Quest contest, to be published in forthcoming issue of SQ Mag
- The Sleeper (1650 words) – SF, written 2013 – to be published in forthcoming issue of Phobos
- Carus & Mitch (16,500 words) – horror, written 2013 – to be published as standalone print/epub title, Feb 2015, Omnium Gatherum Books
I wrote about 124,000 (new) words in 2014. That’s less than last year, but that figure doesn’t reflect the huge amount of time editing and reworking ‘The House-sitter’. Also, I’ve often been exhausted due to my son’s sleep patterns, so this is still a higher word count than I’d anticipated.
To date, my fiction word count total is now something in the region of 448,000 words. I’d hope to reach the half-million mark at some point in early 2015.
Favourite films watched in 2014
As a consequence of having a one-year-old child, this year I saw only ten films released in 2014. The only essential one was the unsettling and astounding Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer). Next in line were All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor), Frank (Lenny Abrahamson) and Calvary (John Michael McDonagh). Locke (Steven Knight) gave plenty of food for thought, in terms of scripting and character development.
Before my son was born I worried that I’d no longer have the attention span for ‘difficult’ cinema, but I was proved wrong. Being stuck in the house every evening has its benefits! My favourite films that I saw for the first time in 2014 include Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana and Diary of a Chambermaid, both subversive and compelling. For All Mankind (Al Reinert) was a revelation – how had I never seen this NASA Apollo footage before? I was blown away by the formal perfection of Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda). Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche) and Stroszek (Werner Herzog) tie for the most engaging central performances. Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman) and Hunger (Steve McQueen) were the two films I found most unsettling. Other than For All Mankind, The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer) and The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris) were my favourite documentaries, both exploring the truth via artifice, although Hoop Dreams (Steve James) came close. Alongside Cat People (Jacques Tourneur), my most purely pleasurable film experiences this year were Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman (Val Guest) and The Nanny (Seth Holt).
Favourite tracks of 2014
Firstly, it’s been more a year for albums rather than individual songs. Even though my longlist is 41 tracks and 4.5 hours, I’m being strict with myself for this list by not including tracks to represent albums I love, if the track doesn’t stand alone. So nothing from Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism (Part 3 came close, but is far more glorious in the context of the album). I’m also disallowing tracks from compilations and rereleased albums, therefore it’s a no-show for the Soul Jazz Gipsy Rumba or Strut Haiti Direct compilations, Finders Keepers’ Lewis album, or the rerelease of Aby Ngana Diop’s Liital.
So it’s a pretty pared-down list. Only eight tracks remain, though two of them are well over the 10-minute mark:
- I Have Walked This Body by Jenny Hval & Susanna
- Advice to Young Girls by Copeland ft. Actress
- CIRCLONT6A[141.98][syrobonkus mix] by Aphex Twin
- Hidden Thieves by Eyes & No Eyes
- Nothing Important by Richard Dawson
- Body Sound by Holly Herndon
- Pretending by Mice Parade
- Speech Spirits by FIS (The Nagger remix by Oren Ambarchi)
Here’s a Spotify playlist:
The numbers
OK, so I keep a log of all the new stuff I listen to. Doesn’t everyone do that? Up until today I’ve listened to 589 unique albums, 98 EPs and 41 singles this year – that’s 728 releases in total.
354 of these titles were released in 2014. This chart shows the release years, ordered by listening date:
254 releases were by artists from the USA, 204 from the UK. Germany’s next in the list with 37 releases, then Australia with 23, then Sweden with 18. I listened to artists from 55 different countries in total.
But that’s just the releases that were new to me. I don’t log everything I listen to. That would be crazy.
Most of my listening was via Spotify. The site’s ‘Year in Music’ tells me that my most-listened genres were experimental, drone, glitch, warm drone, post-rock. Sounds about right.
Apparently I’ve listened to 38,739 minutes of music on Spotify this year, which certainly justifies the £10/month payment.
That’s 645 hours. That’s 27 whole days.
Finally, Last.fm tells me my most-listened artists this year. Given that many Oren Ambarchi tracks are longer than 10 minutes, he’s even more of a clear winner:
Favourite albums of 2014
Meshes of Voice by Jenny Hval & Susanna
Plotting a course between pretension and striking beauty, this album features more exquisite moments than any other this year. Jenny Hval’s impossibly high falsetto weaves in and out of Susanna’s warmer tones. Contrasting hummable melodies, the most unexpected elements are the unsettling drones, reaching a pinnacle in ‘I Have Walked This Body.’
Nothing Important by Richard Dawson
The title track is the single most exciting song I’ve heard all year. It’s folk music for this century. It’s punk music without the posturing. It’s the short story I wish I’d written.
Quixotism by Oren Ambarchi
Every so often I revisit a location important to me during my childhood. Each time, when I arrive, I worry that the magic won’t remain. Each time, I’m surprised all over again. Quixotism works in just the same way. Its simplicity seems mundane at first, until you begin to notice all of the irregular elements. Then it becomes hypnotic, even when the thump segues into jerky techno. It’s my favourite 2014 album for driving in the dark, occupying a similar place to Carter Tutti Void’s 2012 album Transverse.
Everybody Down by Kate Tempest, for its genre-busting storytelling. Pipes by Katie Gately, an artist who’ll no doubt produce something even more astounding in the near future. La Isla Bonita by Deerhoof – an unexpectedly direct and fun return to form. Wilderness of Mirrors by Lawrence English, for soundtracking my writing in 2014. And possibly, although it’s a bit soon to tell, Shadow of the Monolith by Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker.
Compilations
My absolute favourite is Gipsy Rhumba: The Original Rhythm of Gipsy Rhumba in Spain 1965-1974 from Soul Jazz, strange and diverse and loved by my son. Marshall Allen presents Sun Ra And His Arkestra: In The Orbit Of Ra on Strut is outstanding. The French Avant-Garde in the 20th Century on LTM is terrific, too.
2014 reissues
Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1 by Craig Leon – astounding proto-techno from early-80s Takoma label. Money by Nath & Martin Brothers, the funkiest ride of the year. Furia by The Fates, a weird folk/post-rock diversion from 1985.
Favourite record labels
Thrill Jockey (new releases by Skull Defekts, Man Forever, OOIOO), Hospital Productions (Vatican Shadow), Exotic Pylon (Time Attendant, Isobel Ccircle), Editions Mego (Oren Ambarchi).
Favourite albums overall, new to me, from any year
Even before the release of Quixotism, 2014 was, for me, the year of Oren Ambarchi. I heard 14 of his albums for the first time, five of which I adore (Connected, Grapes from the Estate, Intermission 2000-2008, In the Pendulum’s Embrace, Quixotism). The combination of The Glass Trunk and Nothing Important puts Richard Dawson in close second place. Free jazz was another predominant theme – I love Karma by Pharoah Sanders and World Galaxy by Alice Coltrane. Hillbilly Tape Music by Henry Flynt is an eye-opener. What?? by Folke Rabe was on constant rotation for a while, during writing stints. Material by Emptyset is terrifying and exhilarating. Inspiration Information by Shuggie Otis features killer tunes. I felt embarrassed I’d never before heard Slates by The Fall. And Go Bo Diddley by Bo Diddley is another of my son’s favourites and therefore mine too.
Favourite books read in 2014
I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t read much this year (23 books, with two still unfinished). Blame my one-year-old son and my recent tendency to fall asleep after reading two or three pages in bed. (Having said that, I may have read Where The Wild Things Are more than 100 times.)
My absolute favourite this year was Stoner by John Williams, a story so familiar and everyday that each of the protagonist’s disappointments felt like a friend injured. Couples by John Updike didn’t let me down and opens up for me a whole world of Updike novels not featuring Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom. Concrete Island, though flawed in its second half, is my favourite of the three J G Ballard novels I read (the others being High-Rise and The Drowned World). The Machine by James Smythe was the only recently-released novel I read, but I thought it was fantastic. My favourite non-fiction book was Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. And I wish there were more books as digestible and unmissable as Sum: Tales From The Afterlives by David Eagleman.
Favourite TV shows of 2014
My favourite TV show this year was Fargo (FX/Channel 4), an unexpected treat featuring a plot more convoluted and characters more relatable than anyone had any right to expect. Like HBO’s True Detective, the anthology format gives high hopes for keeping things fresh in later seasons.
BoJack Horseman (Netflix) was another show that oughtn’t to have been so good. The Netflix binge-watching approach worked in its favour, with a central storyline and the ability for single episodes to take diversions such as the incredibly bizarre ‘Downer Ending’.
My far my favourite UK show was the rural murder-mystery Glue (E4), demonstrating that youth dramas could be just as complex as any gritty adult programme. The twists were satisfying and characters were allowed to fade into the background once proven innocent.
The most frustrating misses this year were True Detective (HBO) – with six enthralling episodes followed by two that, for me, undermined most of the character development that came before – and Sherlock (BBC) – in which the writers fell prey to serving the huge online fanbase rather than the story. Finally, while uneven, Doctor Who (BBC) generally hit the spot, with Peter Capaldi and the raft of new writers excelling but the old guard dragging their feet.
Phobos story acceptance
More publishing news! I’ve been told that my short story, ‘The Sleeper’, will be published in the third issue of Phobos, the weird fiction magazine based in Philadelphia. I’m really looking forward to reading the magazine!
SQ Mag contest win
I’ve just been told that my story, ‘Like Clockwork’ has won second place in SQ Mag’s current Story Quest contest. The theme of the contest was ‘Punkin’ the Train’ – though my story isn’t specifically steampunk or dieselpunk etc and I’m not sure which classification might include a Martian sand-sculpted steam train… This nostalgic version of Mars features in several of my stories, but this is the first that’ll be published. I’ve always liked the idea of threading a story/world across several publications, so fingers crossed for that. I don’t yet know which issue of SQ Mag will include ‘Like Clockwork’.
So that’s good news, and offsets a rejection email (for another story) that came through at around the same time. Despite the harshness, I’m very much in favour of this kind of blunt feedback: “The high quality of the writing camouflages that this is a very dull story. It’s very dry, slow and neither inspires fear or wonder.”
Swings and roundabouts.
‘Finding Waltzer-Three’ Interzone illustration
The Interzone team have revealed the illustration for my story, ‘Finding Waltzer-Three’, which appears in issue 255. It’s by Wayne Haag, the same artist who created the terrific cover.
I love it. It’s the first time that any of my stories has been illustrated. I couldn’t be prouder.
17 Nov 2014 update: And Interzone #255 is available in print now! Click here and scroll all the way to the bottom.
Review: Agent Hunter website
Disclosure: I received a free 6-month subscription to Agent Hunter in exchange for writing this review. However, all opinions are mine and The Writers’ Workshop didn’t see the article prior to posting.
The Agent Hunter website, launched in September 2014 by The Writers’ Workshop, is a subscription service that allows writers to search for UK literary agents and publishers. In theory, it’s a one-stop-shop that dispenses of the need for writers to trawl the internet in search of suitable agents.
The site features profiles for each agent, literary agency and publisher, each accessed via search pages. Emphasis is placed firmly on individual agents – while there are 14 search filters for an agent search, there are only 3 for agencies and publishers. The unique selling point of the website is the inclusion of a ‘transparency index’, which assigns a rating to individual agents based on “how much info a given agent chooses to release into the public domain”. This rating is not applied to literary agencies as a whole, or publishers.
Searching for individual agents
As of 1st October 2014, there appear to be around 390 UK agents listed. Other than searching directly for an agent by name, using the search filters is only the method of customising this list. The search filters are as follows, with my notes:
Interzone story acceptance
I received some good news a couple of days ago…
My ghostly SF story, ‘Finding Waltzer-Three’, has been accepted by Interzone and will be included in the November issue. That’s a bit of an ambition fulfilled, right there!
23 Oct 2014 update: And here’s the cover!
Tim Major 
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