Perpetual projects and daily obsessions.
My interview with Chuck Wendig is up at Terribleminds, and as part of that interview, he asked me for a story “as long or as short as you like.”
Mine ran kind of long. Ahem. (It’s not my fault! He said!)
ANYWAY, in order to prevent reader attention from drifting down the Waverly River, Chuck and I agreed that I’d host the whole story here, so he could focus on the more interview-type stuff.
So, without further ado. Here it is. Enjoy.
I’ve been waiting for this ever since I wrote it, but my personal introduction for Hidden Things is now up on Harper Voyager Books, and with it, an introductory excerpt from the book.
I never thought of Hidden Things as urban fantasy (which is the way it’s often characterized) because ‘urban’ doesn’t really come into it very much, and it didn’t seem to have any of the trappings I typically associated with the genre. Vampires, sexy or otherwise, are nowhere to be seen; neither are werewolves. Ditto Chosen Ones, surly street wizards, or talking animal companions. There is magic, to be sure, but no spellbooks. Tattoos don’t factor in any significant way, and everyone’s is hair a reasonable, manageable length, and generally the right color.
My inspirations came from other areas: Hammett’s stories of Sam Spade and Continental Op gave me a frame of reference for early parts of the story, and the style and pacing of pulp science fiction and fantasy writers like Roger Zelazny have imprinted themselves on me so deeply I probably have Doorways in the Sand encoded somewhere in my DNA. Neil Gaiman’s light touch with the supernatural is something I’ve always loved, as well as Stephen King’s gift for characterization.
If you are at all on the fence about picking up the story, I suggest checking it out.
Hidden Things is out today! Here are the latest reviews (that I know of — if you spot one I missed, let me know). Let’s see what people are saying…
Kirkus Reviews, notorious purveyors of the cutting one-liner, gave the book a pretty terrific review, calling it “agreeably creepy” (which makes me smile) and Calliope a “clever, determined, dauntless protagonist.”
Though not exactly a review, the Library Journal gave Hidden Things a great shout-out in their “Hungry for SF” Genre Spotlight.
Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s dark fantasies and the early books of Stephen King, Doyce Testerman’s fantasy debut Hidden Things (Harper Voyager, Aug.) follows a young woman as she embarks on a surreal cross-country road trip after receiving a phone call from her dead business partner and former lover. This exploration into the supernatural places that lie hidden in the American heartland was a pick of “Books for Dudes” columnist Douglas Lord at the Fourth Annual Librarian Shout & Share program at June’s BookExpo America conference.
The Original Edi won an ARC of the book and wrote about it. Later, she even added a second post to show how much cross-referencing and research she’d put into her read-through. Edi wins the prize for “someone I’d like to add to my ‘reads it before it goes to print’ list.” What an eye for detail!
My Bookish Ways (really gorgeous website, by the way) put up a very touching review of the ARC. The reviewer says lots of nice things, none of which I’m (quite) shameless enough to repeat verbatim, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go and read it.
Library Crystal has a review up that (favorably!) compares Hidden Things to some of my favorite books.
Finally, if you just can’t get enough of these reviews (or want to write one of your own), Goodreads provides, with reviews ranging from five-stars down to no-stars-did-not-finish. (Hey, you can’t please everyone.)
My favorite reviews?
The ones that say “I want to know more; when’s the sequel?!”
So Hidden Things officially releases tomorrow — I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people telling me that they’ve gotten notification their preorders are on the way, which is both very scary and very exciting. There have been quite a few reviews posted already (more on that in another post), but obviously that doesn’t compare to the number of people about to put their eyeballs on the story — I really have no idea what the end result of all that is going to be, so I’m going to focus on what’s going on right now.
This week is going to be kind of crazy.
Today, the Once and Future Podcast has a new podcast up, and it’s me, talking about Hidden Things! Well, it’s me and Anton Stout, and we’re talking about Hidden Things, Adrift, writing, City of Heroes, Tolkein, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, MMOs, fan fiction, lego, Skylanders, tabletop gaming, dice obsessions, and pretty much every other nerdy thing you can pack into an hour and ten minutes.
Wednesday, I will be reading and talking and signing books at the Tattered Cover, a great Colorado indie bookstore. This will be my first public reading, ever, which means I will probably screw it up in some kind of hilarious fashion, and you should totally stop by to point and laugh and post pictures on Facebook.
Thursday, I will be doing an AMA, or “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s r/Fantasy, organized by the fine moderators of that subreddit. I will have more about this as we get closer to go-time, but as a pretty rabid redditor I have to say that I’m incredibly geeked-out and excited about this, and I sincerely hope THE ENTIRE INTERNET shows up to ask me questions about… you know… whatever. I mean, it’s supposed to be about writing, and Hidden Things and probably NaNoWriMo and gaming stuff but… whatever.
Thursday will also see me drop by for an interview with Chuck Wendig on terribleminds.com (direct link when it goes up), which will include a short story that I’ll be hosting here. Also, I’ll be countering his baseless slander and accusations with an interview of my own, with Chuck, posted up here on the same day.
Friday, I’ll be doing a reading/signing up at Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins, another great indie bookseller. I’m excited about this one as well, especially since I really have no idea what to expect from this event, in terms of visitors and audience.
Next week, I’ll also be over at the Qwillery as part of their 2012 Debut Author Challenge.
The object of the 2012 Debut Author Challenge is for participants to read at least 12 debut novels during 2012 – one from each month of the year though you may read them anytime between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012.
(Last week, Hidden Things won the Qwillery’s 2012 Debut Author Challenge August “Cover Wars”, which I’m really happy about even though I had nothing to do with it — it’s just cool that other people liked it as much as I do.)
That’s it for now — I’m still trying to sort out September events coming up, but stay tuned.
So, as a lead in to this, let’s take a look at the cover of Hidden Things. Because I want to.
Now, it’s hardly a secret that I love this cover, in part because I had a lot of input into the sort of elements I thought should go into the thing. My understanding of the publishing industry (confirmed by many) tells me that having anyone ask the author what they think the cover should look like is a pretty unusual thing and I sent a lengthy email capitalizing on that chance. Thus, I am doubly lucky, first to have been asked, and then to have my input interpreted by someone who is very clearly pretty damned good at their job.
So that may make this contest seem a bit crazy and stupid, to which I can only reply: “It definitely is, and it definitely is not.”
Here’s what I want you to do.
Design a cover for Hidden Things.
That’s it.
Any style, any medium. It can be something completely different, or more of an homage to the official design, or whatever. Sculpt in clay. Use mad Photoshop skills. Snap a picture of a chalk drawing on the sidewalk with your smart phone — I DON’T CARE.
It certainly doesn’t have to be serious — I have a cover already, people — in fact I might give a special prize for the funniest and/or very worst submission. Have some fun, people: make something.
Once you’re satisfied, email me a picture (or video, or flash file, or… whatever) of your submission to doycetesterman@gmail.com or post it to my Facebook wall or on G+ or on Twitter, and draw my attention to it somehow.
You have until August 18th.
No, that is not a lot of time. Yes, that means it can’t be perfect. That is rather the point.
Many of you will be saying “Um… Doyce? I don’t know anything about the book, really.” And you’d be right.
So here’s what I’m going to do.
At the end of this post, I will include the exact same email that I sent to my amazing editor when she asked me for cover ideas. If that isn’t enough for you, ask questions in the comments section.
I will have at least three ARCs to give away for this (including ‘cover that made me laugh hardest’), so your odds are… not terrible!
Hi Guys,
I’ve attached some images to go along with various thoughts I’ve had about the cover. I see a couple ways it could go (and I’m sure there are many others), so here are a few photos and ideas.
1. Creepy Abandoned House
This is the idea where the cover shows us the setting for some of the significant scenes, and focuses on creepy, melancholy abandoned farmhouses. Bob Merco is a photographer from Colorado who likes to do these sorts of shots, and while I’ve never met him, I imagine we’d get on fairly well — if nothing else, I like his photos.
2. Long Road Home
In this concept, the focus is on the open stretches of the midwest and the long road home, but still with a bit of a focus on potentially surreal imagery. Only one image here, but I think it conveys the general idea.
A potentially interesting thing here it to take the basic picture and kind of cover it in scribbles that suggest an entirely different landscape.3. Modified Map
Graphically, this is the hardest to do, I think. The idea is to take a basic road map and scribble over it the same way as [SPOILERS] just before Calli [SPOILERS]. I’m no good at graphic design, but I’ve included a map that looks ripe for scribbling.
4. Word Puzzle
On it’s own, I don’t know if this conveys the feel of the story very well, but I still really like it and the scene it’s from, and if it’s not the cover, I would LOVE for it to be the interior cover page [Doyce’s Note: It is!] , so I can scribble on it and circle important words when I sign books. Which important words? Well, there’s twenty-three in the puzzle, all related to the story in some way.
5. Word Puzzle plus an Image
Now, while the puzzle itself doesn’t make a terribly compelling/accurate cover by itself, I saw a movie poster not that long ago that gave me an idea for taking some other image and overlaying that over the text, which I think actually WOULD be kind of cool, if the image behind it was appropriately creepy/spooky. I’ve attached the movie poster, so you can see what I’m talking about.
And aside from that? Sidewalk chalk drawings. Creepy kid’s crayon sketches… there’s lots of different things that would work, depending on what your art people are into. I’m open to whatever, as they are undoubtedly much better at this than I am.
Cheers.
That’s it. Have at it!
