On the Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show front: Gak and I put together a little 2008 calendar card featuring a picture of ole DC and a brief promotional message on the back for the anthology as well as my upcoming novel, Road From Hell. A bunch of the cards were given out at Necon, and Dave at Necro Publications will be sending them out with his orders over the course of the coming year. Shocklines will also have a supply, as well as bookstores distributing Necro or Bedlam titles.
A couple of "Circus" reviews also came out recently. Bookgasm had a sort of love/hate relationship with the project:
Rod Lott did peg it as "...one of the strangest books you will ever read. As in ever."
He rightly singled out Gary Braunbeck and Garrett Peck's contributions, as well as Gak's art, and ended the review "not for everyone's tastes."
I concur - either you get it or you don't. The Dead Cat "thing" definitely starts on, for lack of a better reference, the edgier fringes of Invader Zim territory and goes quite a ways beyond, even visiting Ren and Stimpy. I'd challenge the assertion that the rest of the material is comprised of "sketches" – I based my contributions on a fable, work by Saki and Damon Runyon, the routines of Lord Buckley. The reprinted "Dead Cat's Lick" earned an Honorable Mention in the last edition of Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, so Ellen Datlow thought it was a story. Quite a number of the other tales used traditional storytelling structure, though authors were asked to be "brief" and given a word limit so we could fit all the other "bits" and leave lots of room for the art. They were also asked to be as wild, crazy and experimental as they wanted to be, in keeping with the central character's nature: a dead, talking cat thousands of years old.
So Rod is right in that not all the contributions were full-fledged "stories" (Jack Haringa did an "academic paper," which was one of my personal favorites) – we weren't looking for back-to-back traditionally structured tales. That would have been taking the premise a little too seriously for our tastes and the tastes we're trying to appeal to.
And in particular, the pieces at the end – the Miracle Medicine Show section – are not stories at all, but riffs on traditional circus barks and gags, performed and illustrated with that extra special "Dead Cat flava."
And Gak's art gets its richly deserved rave: "Exhibiting a warped, manic energy, they don't just illustrate the stories – they make them better."
That's right!!
So I'll gratefully take and accept bookgasm's judgement on the book - it was great to be out on such a high profile review venue, and I appreciated Rod drawing the line for his own tastes but leaving readers to judge and draw the line for themselves. Thanks!
Now if you look up the book on Amazon.com, you'll see a new review posted in June from someone who has some unconditional love for ole Dead Cat.
So there you have it -- more Dead Cat goodness than you can handle!
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum