Rudi Dornemann

When I hosted the second season of the Why Why Why podcast, my goal was to talk to writers from different parts of the world, but I started closer to home.

Since I was new to interviewing, I figured I’d ease into it by talking first with someone I already knew–Daniel Braum, whose first short story collection, The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales, had recently come out.

Now the book is being reissued in print by Cemetery Dance, with a spectacular new cover, plus a new introduction, afterword, and story notes.

So to mark the occasion, I’ve dusted off the podcast.

In it, you’ll hear me talking to Dan about how the book and some of the stories in it came about; talking to his editor, Norman Prentiss, about how Cemetery Dance came to publish the book, and talked to reader (and proprietor of Green Hand Books) Michelle Souliere about how she came to read the book.

This collection is an excellent introduction to Dan’s fiction, full of mysterious music, nights full of dark skies and hidden dangers, ambiguous encounters with the miraculous, and characters who navigate all of this with a lot of heart.

(My personal favorite of the stories is “The Sphinx of Cropsey Avenue.” Except on days when it’s “A Girl’s Guide to Applying Superior Makeup and Dispelling Commonly Found Suburban Demons.”)

Following the online event I did back in July with Robert Levy and Daniel Braum, there’s now an extended, written version of my conversation with Dan over at the Cemetery Dance website.

We talk quite a bit about my story in F&SF from this past summer, “Starblind, Booklost, and Hearing the Songs of True Birds,” but we also talk about the earlier stories set in the same world, “Sunfast, Shadowplay, and Saintswalk,” and “The Moonless, the Midnight Eye, and the Season of the Last Gate.”

“Sunfast…” is still online at Strange Horizons, but “Moonless…” has only been published in print magazines, and I’d gotten some inquiries about whether it was available to read anywhere. So I’ve added the whole story to my page for the story.

For anyone who’s been checking out my newsletter/podcast, Notes from an Imaginary Place, we talked about that, too, and I discussed a little of what I’m doing with the stories and the whole series.

I’ve got a story coming in the July/August issue of longtime speculative fiction mainstay, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It’s a magazine I first encountered when I was growing up, so it’s very cool to see a story of mine in its pages.

It’s a longer story, a novelette in the terminology of science fiction magazines. It’s set in the same city as two of my older stories, “The Moonless, the Midnight Eye, and the Season of the Last Gate,” and “Sunfast, Shadowplay, and Saintswalk.”

You should be able to find the magazine at many bookstores that carry magazines (including the “big box” bookstores you might find at your local mall), or you can get it in various electronic formats from Weightless Books.  (I’ll post a direct link to the issue when it’s available.)

Also, as part of Daniel Braum’s Night Time Logic reading series, I’ll be appearing on July 21, 2022 along with Robert Levy, whose story “Ceremonials” will be in the same issue.  Dan will be talking to us about our stories and having us read a bit from them. The event will be viewable on YouTube and available there afterwards.

 

So, the anthology Spirits Unwrapped is out now from Lethe Press, including my story “Fog Marsh.”

I was very happy to have the story included. It’s in great company among a really varied group of other mummy-related stories.

Here’s an interview I did with Daniel Braum, the editor behind the collection, in which he asks me about the story and a bunch of other things, and I ramble on a bit in a (hopefully) interesting fashion.

I’ve posted my third podcast episode. This time around, I spoke with Ng Yi-Sheng, author of the fabulous collection of Singapore-based speculative fiction, Lion City. I also talked with his editor, Jason Erik Lundberg of Epigram Books, and with Varun, who shared his thoughts on reading the collection.

I’m anticipating that I’ll have more news soon about Spirits Unwrapped (coming out in a month!) If I don’t wind up talking about my story in the anthology elsewhere, I’ll definitely do so here. I did a lot of interesting research in the process of writing my story and look forward to sharing some of the highlights. In the meantime, I see there’s a review over at Publisher’s Weekly.

 

My second episode of the Why Why Why books podcast is now available wherever you get your podcasts. This one is on the Anthology Iraq + 100, which asked Iraqi authors to imagine life 100 years after the American and allied invasion. I talked with Anoud, the author of the lead-off story in the anthology, with editor Ra Page from Comma Press, and with Anna Simpson, who’d come across the book after her work as a futurist had taken her to Iraq.

My third episode is in the works and I hope to have it out before the end of June.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some news–I’ve got a story in the anthology Spirits Unwrapped, which is coming in October 2019. The idea of the book is to have writers create stories about mummies that aren’t the usual ancient Egyptian variety, so my story is about someone mummified in a Danish bog… and what happens after that. Various online and real world activities are being planned around the book, and I’ll share details about any that I’m involved in. There’s also a Spirits Unwrapped Facebook page, which is sure to have updates on anything that’s happening related to the anthology.

I’ve got a couple bits of news to share…

I’m teaming up with my friend Linda Mannheim on a podcast about books called Why Why Why. Our approach is that we talk to the author about why they wrote the book, talk to the edit about why they chose to publish the book, and talk to a reader about why they read it.

Linda’s starting things off with a set of episodes about books published by British indie presses, beginning with Rowena Macdonald’s The Threat Level Remains Severe.

I’ll pick up in late January to do six episodes on speculative fiction. I’m lining up the episodes now, and I think I’ll be bringing you some interesting conversations about some cool books. I’ll post more details once I know which episodes will be happening when. In the meantime, you can catch Linda’s episodes on iTunes or Soundcloud.

Locally, I’ll be hosting the Maine Organization of Storytelling Enthusiasts’ December 13th event at the Portland Public Library. That means I’ll be introducing anyone telling stories for the open mic portion of the show, as well as the featured storyteller, Vernon Cox. There’s a strong storytelling community here, so I’m sure there will be a good variety of well-told tales, and I know Vernon’s been preparing something special for his set.