The Thin Man

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Slenderman. He didn't make it into my novel because I'm not big on celebrity cameos.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 56 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Rabbit Redux

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Rabbit again. I suspect he's some variant of trickster. He keeps popping up up where he's not expected.

Or invited, for that matter.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 57  days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Flight

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An early attempt to establish what it's like to fly an iron dragon through Hell Gate. From the perspective of the pilot or the dragon, it makes no difference.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 58 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Another Collage

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Another collage. I folded the woman's face to make her stranger and pasted her over a secondary image to suggest an internal double nature to her. Not a good/evil dichotomy sort of thing. More the contradictory personalities we all hold within ourselves.

At this point, I still haven't found a character for the novel yet, though.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 59 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Read the First Chapter of the Iron Dragon's Mother--Free!

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The promotional season (had you noticed?) for The Iron Dragon's Mother has begun! Over at Tor.com, they've posted the first chapter for anyone who wishes a taste to read for free.

But before you do... I should say here that my novel is filled with flying mechanical dragons, fights to the death, the birth of a locomotive, passion, intrigue, excitement, and adventure..

I mention this because the first chapter is a careful depiction of an old woman dying in the hospital. When I told this to Paul Park, he smiled in that gentle, tolerant way of his, and said, "You really know what the fans want, Michael."

By which he meant that it might not be the most commercial possible opening to a novel.

Touche. Also mea culpa. But when your chief goal is not money but too simply write the best book you are capable of writing, you have to go where the muse leads. And in this case, she told me to let the reader know what a remarkable woman was dying and how deserving or not she was of the adventure she was about to find herself in. So I set out to bring Helen V., the dying woman, as vividly to life as possible. I hope I succeeded. But that's a judgement for the reader to make.

Now that you know all that, you can if you wish read the first chapter here.

And today's picture from the Image Book is . . .

 

This particular collage, I think, speaks for itself. I hope so anyway because I tried several times to explain it and finally had to give up.


Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 60 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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"The She-Wolf's Hidden Grin"

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Some time ago, I contributed a story to Shadows of the New Sun, a festschrift honoring Gene Wolfe. I began "The She-Wolf's Hidden Grin" by taking the first paragraph of Gene's novella "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" and performing a reversal--turning the two brothers into sisters, summer into winter, north to south, and evening to morning. Then I proceeded to write what I think of as a feminist Gene Wolfe story. If a rather horrific one.

I was quite pleased with how it came out.

Now Lightspeed Magazine has reprinted my story. You can read it online here. Or (and I think this would be the wisest course of action), you can go to the magazine here and wander about.

The magazine's editors asked me to "also remind readers that the entire issue is available for purchase for just $3.99, and/or that you can subscribe for just $35.88/year." So... done and done!


And today's extract from the Image Book is . . .

"Giantess"

Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 60 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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Lady Moon

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I collaged two images to make this one. Lady Moon isn't in the The Iron Dragon's Mother but she's definitely somewhere in that universe. It's pleasant to see her in an interior for a change.

Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 60 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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