Resonance & Revolt listed among year’s best in Vector – plus Kindle edition and two more reviews

In a great start to a recent weekend, I discovered that writer and critic Dev Agarwal has listed Resonance & Revolt among his year’s best in Vector. Never mind the croissants – this was the ultimate treat with my Saturday morning coffee. Dev writes:

“These stories span historical European settings, contemporary Britain and the near future. The collection is thematically linked around the concepts of resistance and Lynda Rucker discusses in her introduction how Rabinowitz’s evocative prose gifts the reader with a sense of the history and also a present that feels layered by the lives of those now past.”

Thanks, Dev.

And now in further R&R news, the Kindle edition of Resonance & Revolt is now live. Since 2010 I’ve been an avid Kindle user. Yes, I enjoy paper books and will always keep a lot of them on hand. I still buy them for special occasions or when I’m looking at a book with beautiful graphics. However, I love being able to transport an entire library with me. It’s especially useful when I have a few anthologies and collections on the go. I always appreciate the opportunity to try out new writers with an inexpensive click, so I’m very pleased to make my book accessible this way and available at £2.99.

I am also pleased to report two more reviews since the last R&R Review Roundup. One was part of a roundup by David V Barrett in Fortean Times (374). He writes that “revolutionary religion and politics, music and art wind in and out of these fascinating stories”. This review isn’t available online but I’ve posted a screenshot below. It includes a piece of the next review, which looks at Christopher Priest’s book An American Story. I did this partly for the sake of symmetry and also because I’m happy with the company.

 

This is followed by a review from Seregil of Rhiminee at Rising Shadow. He writes:

“It’s a must-read collection for everybody who loves literary and intelligent speculative fiction, because it’s different, captivating and thought-provoking. I was deeply impressed by this collection and found it utterly compelling. It’s an intriguing re-imagining of what the world could be like, but it’s also much more than that, because there are many layers in it. Reading it is like pealing an onion and seeing what lies behind each layer. Whether the revelations are beautiful, challenging or strange, they’re always captivating and intriguing, because time and history are wonderfully intertwined in the stories. There’s also insightful wittiness in the stories that adds fascination to them.”

This review had been published in December 2018. It was just the thing to read and reread slowly as the mid-winter darkness rolled in. 🙂

The Golden Hour in Best British Horror – and two real-time reviews for Uncertainties III

I’m pleased to announce that The Golden Hour, originally published in Uncertainties III, has been selected by Johnny Mains for the 2019 edition of Best British Horror. Though I had honourable mentions from Ellen Datlow in 2016 for The Lady in the Yard and Meat, Motion and Light, this will be my first appearance in a ‘best of the year’ anthology. As with any reprint, it is lovely to know that not only one – but two – editors liked a story enough to publish it.

Here’s  the table of contents. I’m thrilled to find myself among such a distinguished and exciting bunch of writers.

CAVE VENUS ET STELLA – Anna Vaught
WORMCASTS – Thana Niveau
THEY TELL ME – Carly Holmes
DISAGREEABLY HITCHED – Gary Fry
PACK YOUR COAT – Aliya Whiteley
VOICES IN THE NIGHT – Lisa Tuttle
THE FULLNESS OF HER BELLY – Cate Gardner
MAW – Priya Sharma
TEUFELSBERG – Madhvi Ramani
THE OTHER TIGER – Helen Marshall
SENTINEL – Catriona Ward
THE WORM – Samantha Lee
THE ADJOINING ROOM – AK Benedict
THE GOLDEN HOUR – Rosanne Rabinowitz
THE PERFECT DAY TO BE AT SEA – Kayleigh Marie Edwards
THE HARDER IT GETS THE SOFTER WE SING – Steven Dines
THE DEMON L – Carly Holmes
BY SEVERN’S FLOOD – Jane Jakeman
FISH HOOKS – Kit Power
OLD TRASH – Jenn Ashworth
BOBBO – Robert Shearman

I thank Johnny Mains for selecting my story and I also thank Lynda E. Rucker, who edited Uncertainties III. The Golden Hour is one of three stories selected from this anthology; the other two are Bobbo by Robert Shearman and Voices in the Night by Lisa Tuttle.

And while I’m talking Golden Hour, I’ll also post two ‘real-time’ reviews of Uncertainties III. One comes from Des Lewis, which I somehow missed when it was in progress over September and October 2018. The other appeared in Supernatural Tales, which ran a review over several weeks.

Des writes that the anthology is “crammed with unforgettable observations of our imaginarium, our past country that is LP Hartley’s as well as a future rapture when the present is finally transcended.” He concludes a rundown of all the stories with comments about my own contribution. I particularly appreciate the way Des put the story in context with my other work and its recurring locations.

“An effulgent work amid this by-line’s characteristic stamping-ground of 20th interfaced with 21st century inner South London. Working people in interface with rapture and haunting, to try shake off the thrall others have put on them… As a photographer myself in recent years, I cherished the description of this art herein. And the whole ambiance of this equally free-flowing text positively subsumed any of my negativity today.”

David Longhorn’s review of this “nifty new anthology” in Supernatural Tales starts on 27 October 2018: “Uncertainties means just that – the moments when we are unsure if we have glimpsed a ‘little slip of the veil’, exposing us to something that may be supernatural, or at least unknown.” He goes on to review each story and concludes with a look at The Golden Hour.

“The story is strange, and rather wonderful, but it is rooted in the sheer oddness of friendship – how people come together, how they drift apart. Friendship is more mysterious than love, in some respects, and the author explores this mystery while conjuring up a London as numinous as anything in Machen.”

These are the kind of reviews I need to reread if I get downhearted. Thanks very much, David and Des.