Allow me to pimp a book to you. The title is "Tales from the Secret City." This is an anthology chapbook available from Lulu, and it bundles together the very best fiction from Austin’s most elite, most clandestine, and indubitably the sexiest writing group.
I don’t know if I could claim to be one of the founding fathers of Cryptopolis, but I’ve been a part of it from the beginning, and I coined the name, a response to the veil of secrecy which accompanied my invitation to the group. I don’t want to say too much about Cryptopolis. Even though we’ve emerged from the shadows, there’s something discomforting about it being a publicly recognized organization, as if the Mason’s threw an open house party where all the guests received their own noose.
Let me talk a little about the actual story content. I wouldn’t say there was a unifying theme or style, the stories run the proverbial gamut from Lovecraftian horror to high-fantasy to hard S/F to slipstream. It would be hard to pick a more diversely representative collection of speculative fiction.
That’s why I’m going to limit the scope of this blog-pimp and only talk about me.
My selection in the anthology is easily twice as long as anyone else’s. It’s called "Race to the Noonie" and it’s a prequel of sorts to my unpublished trunk-novel "Patchwork kingdom." "Noonie" is the sort of story you’re never going to see in print because it’s a high-fantasy comedy with a cross-dressing goatman and 5,000 too many words to be published as a short story, and 100,000 too few to be a novel. Nevertheless, there’s an epic journey and gunplay and plenty of sex appeal as this selection demonstrates:
| Quote: |
| The sun had just risen over the edge of the world, shining at an apparent mid-afternoon angle. Over the course of the day it would sink across the sky until it faded into the haze down slope. There would be a long, murky twilight, and then the sun would shine only on the unexplored side of the world.
At a clatter above his head, Babbock looked to see Terry, their guide, descending the cliff. It always amazed Babbock how agile the goat-man could be in high heels. Terry scrambled at running speed, sticking his red, stiletto-heeled shoes into cracks no wider than a finger. Despite the chilly, morning air, Terry wore a red silk slip with the buttocks cut out to give witnesses an unimpeded view of his G-string. Which was precisely the sort of flamboyance that kept the Greys from hiring him. Terry jumped the last twenty feet and squatted across the campfire from Babbock. “Hey, baby, you warm up some beer for me?” “There’s plenty in the pot. Help yourself.” Babbock smirked across his beer mug. “So, Terry, what would you say if I suggested that it might be a good idea to keep your knees together while squatting in that slip?” “I would suggest that you help yourself to an eyeful, baby.” Terry winked in good humor. When he tilted the mug back, beer slopping through his cleft lip and onto his beard. |
Pretty hot, huh?
I read some of the beginning at Dillocon, the part that actually explains some of the premise to "Noonie" and it got plenty of laughs. This is part of my con principles: the first being that I will never again do a serious panel, and the second that every reading has to be funny.
So trust-me, "Race to the Noonie" by itself is worth the price of the cryptopolis chapbook. What are you waiting for?!? Pull out your credit card RIGHT NOW and follow this link to fiction paradise!