I saw a lot of renewed interest in my novel Faerie Apocalypse at Supanova last weekend and, while it’s been out a while now, I realize that this is the first time I’ve actually taken it to a show. So I figure I should talk about it a bit and, you know, get people to buy it.
Since I first learned to read, I’ve always loved portal fantasy stories, where a character from our world goes off to have adventures in some impossible place. Magic Faraway Tree, and so on.
I’m not a child anymore, and thinking about those stories with an adult protagonist makes them seem… psychotic. That was the initial seed of it. If you’ve read Stardust (I have, multiple times), this is kind of the Satanic version of that. (Not literally, but kind of…)
I reread a bunch of fairy land stories, from Lord Dunsany onwards, and another thing that I found lacking was consent. So the story is about that also.
A series of damaged adults from roughly the present era (1970s through near future) go a-questing in the Faerie Realms, which begin to crumble under the postmodern pressures they exert upon it. The result is in the title.
The story is built on careful logic. I worked hard to established ground rules for how the Realms work, which the protagonists directly attack or indirectly erode. Those rules are based on storytelling conventions, not physics or “a magic system”.
It was tough to write. The protagonists are generally speaking the villains and some are less relatable than others. The story does not unfold in a linear way and that was difficult to balance. A lot of what I thought was good material, cut.
I wanted a dense and writerly style, but also I tried to keep it pacy and fast-moving. I wanted Cormac McCarthy meets Roger Zelazny and maaaybe I got in the ballpark. It’s a short book, but a lot happens. You might be disgusted but you won’t be bored.
It was a Ditmar finalist and I’m really proud of it. If you think it sounds good, please, you know, buy one, or ask your library to get one in. Please and thanks.
Cheers!