Today, author Chris Gerrib jets in to tell us about his love for science fiction. Chris's book 'Pirates of Mars' is forthcoming from
Hadley Rille Books this month...
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I love science fiction. My love started as a young boy, when I would ride my bicycle down to my small town’s tiny library, there to devour everything they had in science and fiction. To this day, I remember pages from an even-then dated book by Werner Von Braun, illustrated by the Walt Disney people, about building spaceships to go to Mars.
But as I got older, I noticed that fewer and fewer writers were talking about Mars. Much of that was because the more we learned about the planet, the more we learned it was just like Arizona except colder and with a lot less air. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Dejah Thoris would freeze and asphyxiate at the same time.
So, most science fiction writers moved on from Mars. The ones that stayed on-planet, so to speak, tended to focus on the first landing, the first colony, or some other Martian first. Which is fine, I suppose. Except people are first to do something tend to be square-jawed Dudley or Doris Do-Rights, and hyper-competent to boot.
Also known as “boring.” I wanted science fiction with unboring characters. I wanted real people, with warts, farts and bad hair days. Well, in 2001, I just wasn’t seeing that being written. So I said to hell with it, and wrote my own.
That novel, The Mars Run, came out in 2006. It’s a first novel, with all the flaws therein, but I liked the characters so much that I decided to go back to the well. My latest effort, Pirates of Mars, is pretty much what the label on the tin says it is – Pirates, Mars and the goings-on they get themselves into.
My pirates are not Jack Sparrow; for one thing, they all own soap and showers. For another, they’re not nice people. Nor are the people who fight them all 100% Dudley and Doris Do-Rights. But that’s what makes them interesting. They’re ordinary people who’ve found themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
Come visit my blog at
chris-gerrib.livejournal.com or my personal website at
www.privatemarsrocket.net.
Look at what came in the mail for me... A welcome to Hadley Rille mug from the fabulous Eric Reynolds and the new look BFS Journal (totally gorgeous) which includes New Horizons, Prism and Dark Horizons.
PS Publishing have produced the journal this time and...
(neat little jump here)
...PS Publishing head honcho, Peter Crowther, has just signed a three book deal with
Angry Robot Books. Fantastic news.
As a side note. How wonderful Britain would be if we all had pretty little mailboxes like they have in the US. Of course, I do wonder how you keep the mail from being stolen.
Drumroll please... (I ask for a lot of these but this time it's appropriate)
Theatre of Curious Acts is to be published by
Hadley Rille Books as a novella in 2011.
I am sooooooooo excited.
Theatre is my NaNoWriMo novel from 2009. Originally it sat at just over 50,000 words, but after a recent rejection from a publisher (that story expands a little) I edited it down to 42,000 words.
Last week the original publisher (who shall remain unnamed but I will say, they're an awesome company) contacted me to ask if Theatre was still available, and that if it was they'd like to publish it. I went into a panic. Then I calmed down. Then I contacted Hadley Rille, explained the situation and they offered to read Theatre right away and the rest as they say, is history. Quite literally...
Nineteen-year-old Daniel Cole returns home from the Great War wanting the world to end. His brother and parents are in their graves. Nothing is the same. During a performance at the Theatre of Curious Acts, Daniel and his old friends, fellow soldiers, are lured into a surreal otherworld. Travelling through this strange land they come upon the four horsewomen of the apocalypse, dragons, the steam trains of the Anabiosis station and their ghostly passengers, ancient warriors and a pirate ship waiting to ferry them to the end of the world.
Now Daniel must fight to save a world he wants no part of, and worse, he is about to fall in love with Death. Now I shall have cake.
Received an email this morning from Eric Reynolds over at Hadley Rille Books re the Return to Luna contest. I should note that it was a Round Robin email and not a personal, hey I just had to tell you Miss Catherine Gardner. Anyway, back to the email: they will be announcing the results on August 9th.
AUGUST 9TH!!!!
Thank God that's a Saturday.
And so the nail biting increases. If you've checked out any of their previous anthologies you will understand just how much I want to get in - they are Quality (yep, with a capital Q).
That sounds wonderful. I love space pirates.