Early praise for Pacific State

Pacific State is currently doing the rounds with publications and bloggers – and a couple of early reviews are in. The hardworking fellows over at Los Angeles Book Review magazine had the following to say about the climate-punk extravaganza:

Pacific State is rife with iconic, well-timed lines. A remarkable, exciting experience is provided by its clever blending of realistically presented future concepts, rebellious characters, and spine-chilling action. It got my heart racing, my creativity stimulated, and my intellect completely engaged, much like seeing one of the movies from the Mission: Impossible and The Matrix series. If you enjoy futuristic, fast-paced sci-fi with fascinating technological details, this book is for you.

Pretty good, no? The reviewer did also say it lacked nuance, which is likely true. But so did Robocop.

More welcome words have winged their way to me from the magazine LoveReading, which shouts that:

The plot eases you in gradually, following Owen and Mia as their paths begin to cross. This is a clever way to incorporate world-building and is a reason why I didn’t feel as though I was missing out by joining the story in book two. There are also questions raised about the power of capitalism woven subtly into the narrative and a hint of change leaves the door open for future books. I think Pacific State is a quick and entertaining read. Fans of dystopian science fiction would definitely enjoy this series.

To top it off, they’ve awarded Pacific State its possibly coveted ‘Indie Books We Love’ status. They sent me a sort-of sticker, which I’ve added below. It’s like sports day at school, isn’t it, where everyone gets a prize.

check out my geocities page for more stickers

Chart / July

Here we go. The Pacific State promotional machine is shuddering into life. Ungainly, reluctant, in need of a good spritz of oil if it wants to actually go anywhere. An early five-star appraisal from the world’s worst book review site, Readers Favorites, has the following to say:

“The story is excellently written, and it exceeded my expectations by far. There was never a dull moment with all the twists and turns. The suspense kept me on the edge of my seat.”

Honestly, if you’re a writer: don’t bother submitting it to that website. It’s utter trash. Yes, I’ll still quote it, but I’d be better off asking ChatGPT to give me a review.

And here’s another from Ben Scharf, producer at Andere Filme and director of the short film Darwin’s Fox, which won the 2022 Cannes Shorts Award:

“Price is redefining sci-fi. Gone are the days of cardboard characters, artifice and an overemphasis on technology. What we get instead is a dissection of the human condition in a reality that is twisted just far enough to serve the story. Playful, exhausting and crafty, all at once.”

That’s how you write a critique.

In other news, I have a short story appearing in God’s Cruel Joke magazine (print & online) this month. That’s right, I found a magazine to submit to that didn’t charge me $10-20 AND paid me….it is possible. I’ll post the link when it’s up.

Book of the month: Absolutely Boys in Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich. Utterly harrowing and heartbreaking, Alexievich gathers testimonies of soldiers, nurses and civilian contractors who took part in the Russian war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, as well as accounts from mothers and wives of the dead. The stories of the mothers are the saddest. What I find astounding is that these accounts sound similar to those emerging from the current conflict in Ukraine: duping conscripts into travelling to a warzone, leaving soldiers underequipped and starving, bludgeoning the population wholesale with cheap propaganda. Obviously I’m not saying “they should’ve given these boys more of a fighting chance!”; it’s just amazing that the Russian high command evidently didn’t learn anything in the intervening 44 years (more power to Ukraine). It has taken me a good couple of months to read, because a few pages is enough to send me into a misery spiral.

Film of the month: TETSUO: THE IRON MAN. Good God, what a film. It is the most insane hour of celluloid I’ve ever seen. I’d been planning to watch it ever since I was 16, but after reading so many accounts online about how low budget and nonsensical it was, I wasn’t willing to part with cold, hard cash for a copy. Fortunately, Criterion had the film up for a little while, and I feasted on it. Body horror, ingenious camera angles, no-holds-barred sex, an exacavator drill and a giant mecha battle. It’s amazing.

Album of the month: Grian Chatten - Chaos for the Fly. The Fontaines D.C. singer delivers a punchy collection of chamber pop in his signature drawl. I like.

A moveable feast:

1 Kettenkarussell - Maybe

2 Fejká - Hiraeth

3 Route 8 - This Raw Feeling

4 Out Of Place Artefacts - PROCYON

5 Lxury - Oblivion

i'm your lover, i'm your xero

COVER REVEAL: Pacific State

Okay, here we go. The second novel in the Sundown Cycle is called PACIFIC STATE and it will be released by Black Rose Writing on 21 December 2023.

What’s the rumpus? Just this:

On the streets of Berlin all morals can be bought for a price, and Owen Resler sold his long ago. Once an underground dissenter, now a corporate drone, he spends his days reluctantly manipulating data for Big Pharma. Across town, notorious gun-for-hire Mia Warsaw is putting together a team to assassinate one of the city's more unscrupulous business moguls—and she needs someone to handle the ones and zeroes. When Warsaw crosses paths with an increasingly desperate Resler, she hands the former radical an ultimatum: he can either succumb to death by a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts or take a chance with her. Of course, there's no guarantee he'll survive that, either…

Below is the cover, hot off the 90s graphic novel press. The Ryan Gosling tech bro looks slightly worried, but I assume he simply forgot to take his creatine that morning after his MR-assisted workout.

PACIFIC STATE is a sequel to Reality Testing only in the sense that it takes place in the same universe. It is a standalone story. It will be available for pre-order soon enough.

futurepast

Chart / May

It gives me little pleasure to make such a bold declaration, but - with the exception of fiction intended for print publications - I will not be writing or submitting short stories any more. I know server and admin and website costs are expensive, but when it reaches the point where it costs $11 on average to submit a single short story to an online-only publication that is all but guaranteed to fold within a year, one has to take a long, hard look at oneself and realise this is time, money and effort spent elsewhere. It’s a shame the way prices have crept up in the past seven years. Back when I started submitting in 2015, I could submit five or six short stories for a cool $20. Now? Hey you, wanna submit to our 250-word short fiction challenge!? It’s $14.95 for one entry or $25 for two. There’s a $50 cash prize if you win….which you almost certainly won’t! That’s madness. I thought maybe it was a temporary thing, because it started with the pandemic, but three years on it is only becoming more avaricious. So that’s over.

It isn’t going to leave much to report on each month. I’m waiting for the galleys of the new novel so I can start sending it out, but until then I’m in a holding pattern.

In other news, I’ve been asked to translate a biography by one of the world’s most famous living composers. Strange things happening in recent months, let me tell you.

Book of the month: The Old Man and the Sea. I read it once, long ago, as a precocious preteen, and I remembered nothing about it. After angrily chewing through Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and The Left Hand of Darkness, Hemingway was a palate cleanser. As I understood it, the boat is a boat, the fish is a fish and the man is a man. I don’t know if he actually believed that when he said the book contained no symbolism, but I definitely wouldn’t have put it past him to have written the most simple story he could think of and then sit back and watch as academics pulled it apart - like sharks attacking a giant fish, say - in search of a deeper meaning. I raise my dry martini to you, Ernie.

Album of the month: Blómi by Susanne Sundfør. I think this will be an album that people remember twenty years from now. I think, I said. I’m not sure. I need to listen to it more. But it has a weight and an intelligence to it that you don’t hear much these days. She sounds like she should have been a contemporary of Kate Bush.

Movie of the month: Oh, I’ve watched some trash this month. Yes, Madam! The Bedroom Window. Dream Lover. Thanks a lot, Criterion. I will offer up In A Lonely Place for two reasons. First, Bogart is a total brute in this film. Almost from the beginning, his Dixon Steele (“Dix! OH DIX!”….says literally everyone in the movie) leaves a pretty sour taste. Second, I was expecting all the way through that the narrative would find a lame way to make Steele come good. Instead, the ending is thankfully just as bitter as his character.

Jazz music:

1 Yaeji - For Granted

2 Kedr Livanskiy - With Love K…

3 George Clanton - Justify Your Life

4 Seb Wildblood / Lawrence - don’t see this

5 Squid - The Blades

6 Cult Member - Sagittarius

rayograph