Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Welcome to the World of Transgressive Fiction.

This Fall I have two new short stories coming out in anthologies, one a high seas adventure forthcoming in Pirates & Swashbucklers (to be released on Talk Like a Pirate Day—Arr!), and the other a very odd tale in Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, available now! As the editors describe it, Fracas is an anthology of transgressive fiction, a genre some readers might not be familiar with. So as a public service, here's the quick and dirty on what the genre is all about, as well as some reading recommendations from the contributors to Fracas.


Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Author Interview: Misty Massey


Misty Massey is no bandwagon pirate fanatic who got turned onto the trend on account of the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean movies or by watching too many Captain Morgan rum commercials. Nope, she’s been fascinated by pirates since she was a kid, and her first novel, Mad Kestrel, carries on the rich literary heritage of great pirate adventures. Misty and I became acquainted several years back on an online forum where she was hosting a Q&A session. She happened to mention that the Tim Powers novel On Stranger Tides was a big influence for her, and I quickly bragged that I work with Powers at the Orange County High School of the Arts, and was myself a big fan of his work. She was duly impressed, and when my book The Roads to Baldairn Motte (co-written with Craig Comer and Ahimsa Kerp) came out, I more or less begged her to give it a read and write a cover blurb. She obliged, and once again her generosity has come through by granting her time to come chat here on my blog.

What follows is the inside scoop on a potential sequel to Mad Kestrel, who it is that makes her gush like a school girl, and some secret skills she’s been honing that’ll keep randy buccaneers at bay on the dance floor. Yarr!

Garrett: First off, how is the sequel to Mad Kestrel coming along?

Misty: (laughs) That's the question of the hour, isn't it? You wouldn't believe how many people ask me that every day (which is lovely, and I'm not complaining at all.) It’s coming along. I'm in rewrites, and frankly I've discovered a few things that I somehow missed in the first draft, making it a deeper and hopefully more satisfying story. I had hoped to be finished mid-July, but now it looks like I've got another week or so of work. The end is in sight!