Cherries Worth Getting
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Cherries Worth Getting, Fantasy, gay, Mystery, Nicole Kimberling, Weightless Books
Agent Keith Curry only ever had to use his mage pistol once, and that was against some goblin butchers. Curry never says if they were legitimate butchers or the bloodthirsty kind. Just assume they were murderous and magical because Curry works for the NATO Irregular Affairs Division (the Irregulars). Once a carnivore, Curry turned to vegetarianism after seeing the after-effects of too many homicides.
Being a chef is Curry’s special skill. He uses it on the job to root out murder. “Portland’s art, music, and food scenes made it the perfect place to hide a blood orgy.” If that thought makes you laugh before you cringe, then your humor’s in just the right place for Nicole Kimberling’s Cherries Worth Getting. It’s not cannibalism if it’s not your own species, but it’s still murder.
“Rumpled old magicians, witches in business suits, and faerie lawyers” fill the Irregulars, but humans like Curry do most of the work. Perpetrators infesting Portland span the fantastical realm, too. With the right glasses, even a human like Curry can spot hidden magical signs and “vulgar Gaelic epithets left by leprechaun gangs.”
Curry doesn’t need magic glasses to see Gunther Heartman, an old flame and a new Irregulars partner. They’re investigating why human protein keeps turning up in different goblin venues around Portland. Against a backdrop of grilled cheese sandwiches, Curry and Heartman follow a well fleshed-out trail of vampires, pixies and sadistic restaurant owners.
Cherries Worth Getting is a funny, disturbing and erotic novella. I enjoyed it from beginning to end and it’s available DRM-free here on Weightless Books.
Nicole Kimberling lives in Bellingham, Washington with her wife, Dawn Kimberling, two bad cats as well as a wide and diverse variety of invasive and noxious weeds. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. She is also the author of the Bellingham Mystery Series.
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet Author Interview: Nicole Kimberling
Tags: Andrea Pawley, Author Spotlight, how to seduce a vegetarian, lady churchill’s rosebud wristlet, LCRW, Nicole Kimberling, Weightless Books
Author Nicole Kimberling, a columnist for Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, answers a few questions for Weightless Books.
Q: Your non-fiction piece, “How to Seduce a Vegetarian”, appears in the new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet Issue (#29, September 2013). How successful are the vegetarian capture methods you describe?
Kimberling: They are madly successful. Through use of my simple plan, I was personally able to snag a full time vegetarian that I have been cooking for for 27 years now.
Q: What was it like to win the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror for your novel Turnskin?
Kimberling: Well, I was really surprised. I hadn’t even considered the notion that I would win so I didn’t work out a speech or anything and had to resort to stammering out a cute, but incoherent string of “Thank Yous” to random people. I think I also did a little dancey on the stage.
In terms of how it affected me as a writer–I felt a lot more sure of myself after being presented with a glass brick with my name etched into it. Since that time, I haven’t ever suffered from that sort of crippling angst and frustration that afflicts young writers who still feel like they have to prove themselves. So it was really nice. Freed up a lot of mental space.
Q: You write in several formats and genres. Do you have a favorite?
Kimberling: Not really. Each length and genre is fulfilling in different ways. The column I write for LCRW lets me play with language and be philosophical, which is great fun.
The mysteries and romances are interesting to build and execute. Because they’re largely contemporaries, they allow for the sort of observation-based commentary that doesn’t fit well into SF/F writing. (What I mean to say here is that you can’t riff on people’s relationships to their cars in a world that has no cars…and maybe no people.)
And the SF/F stuff allows me to work at the highest degree of difficulty and also to express ideas that are hard to address directly in a contemporary setting without alienating a reader. (I’m talking about big issues here, like race and animal cruelty and things like that.)
Q: Can you offer any advice to people writing novels in a series?
Kimberling: Speaking as an editor who reads a lot of slush–do not plan for a book to be a series. Plan for a book to be a standalone. You can always find a sequel if you really need one.
But if you’re really dead set on writing a series (that is not based on a protagonist who lends herself to episodic storytelling like a detective or mercenary or something) you must have a very explicit plan for how to execute the plot over the intended number of volumes. Otherwise the stories get mushy and indistinguishable from each other–like listening to too many MUSE songs in a row.
I would also suggest that authors intending to write an episodic series have some specific direction for the protagonist to grow so that the intrepid detective (or mercenary or star captain) doesn’t appear to just have had some sort of reset button pushed on her memory directly before the start of every story. Characters who appear to have no capacity to learn from experience get old pretty fast.
Q: Who’s your favorite author?
Kimberling: My favorite author of all time is Douglas Adams. I also really love anything written and drawn by Fumi Yoshinaga. And, of course, I adore all the authors I choose for Blind Eye Books.
Q: What are you working on now?
Kimberling: I’m writing the sixth story in the Bellingham Mysteries, which is a series of contemporary gay comedy-romance novellas set in the town where I live.
In addition to successfully feeding many vegetarians sandwiches in her personal life, Nicole Kimberling specializes in formulating this very same item at the restaurant where she now cooks. A current DRM-free subscription to Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (including Issue 29) can be purchased on Weightless Books.
ChiZine books coming next week
Tags: Chelsea Station Editions, ChiZine Publications, Fireside Magazine, LCRW, Nicole Kimberling
Good news! We’re happy to announce that next week—Tuesday if things go well, Thursday is the sickness-that-is-infecting-the-whole-world gets us—we will be adding all the ChiZine Publications books that we can. Readers rejoice! Some of their ebooks are on a delayed schedule for contract reasons but as per usual we will post every book as soon as we can.
More DRM-free ebooks for the world!
There’s a good profile of James Currier, founder of Chelsea Station Editions, and author of The Wolf at the Door, etc., at the Lambda Literary Review.
You probably noticed that this week we released a new issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. This issue has the second of Nicole Kimberling‘s cooking columns. I love these. Tell me what you think. She just handed in her column for the next issue and it is hilarious.
Also this week saw the third and final issue of Fireside Magazine. Subscriptions will be refunded by next week. We were very sorry to hear that this is the last one but we’ll be watching with interest to see what’s next as Brian says on his site: “It looks like we will be launching the Kickstarter for the revamped Fireside early next month. We are still working on a lot of things, but we think we have a sustainable long-term plan, along with a whole bunch of kick-ass writers lined up. We’ll let you know more as we close in on launching.”
And I wanted to point readers towards Peter Kuper’s Drawn to New York: An Illustrated Chronicle of Three Decades in New York City, which looks pretty amazing.
And don’t forget: Tuesday = ChiZine Day!