*Two Free Print Copy Giveaways chosen by lot from visitors' comments below.
Be sure to visit the publisher's bookshop at http://shop.claytonbye.com
Next Post in Blog Tour . . . August 28 at Kenneth Weene's site at http://www.kennethweene.com/#!excerpt-the-nettle-tree/rjl5i
* * * * *
Title: The Nettle Tree
Publisher: Chase Enterprises
PublishingEditors: Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye
ISBN (print): 978-1-927915-10-3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-927915-11-0
Format: Trade Paperback and eBook
Pages: 166
Genre: Speculative western
Price: $17.95 (print) $3.95 (eBook)
The book and pdf eBook can be purchased at: http://shop.claytonbye.com
It is also available on Amazon in print form and on Smashwords for all eBook formats (there are still some bugs in the formatting, however).
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My
"High Concept" Story in The
Nettle Tree
When
I was invited to submit a short story to The
Nettle Tree, I was immediately enthusiastic. I turned on my TV, sat down,
and bang!, the basic idea came to me.
It's what they call a High Concept, which is an original and unique premise
with mass audience appeal. At least that's what I aimed for.
"State
of the Art" starts with a standard theme in the western genre: a gunslinger
rides into a cattle town, on the alert for anyone eager to shoot him in the
back to steal his reputation. Johnny Graves is tired and exhausted, his wild
days long gone. He only wants to be left alone so he can live in peace. Above
all, he wants to find the girl he left behind.
Abilene
in 1882, though, has surprises in store. Anachronisms abound, the first of
which is "a sleek red Chrysler with tail fins" parked outside the
saloon. What is it, and what is it doing there? Thinking about it, Graves realizes he's seen more
and more "strange objects" lately. Clayton Bye has published other speculative
anthologies which require that stories have a "strangely different"
slant. In my story, the first strangely different element is the sleek red
Chrysler. I use it to perk the readers' interest and make them wonder. Then I
introduce another element that doesn't fit, and another…
I've
deliberately only hinted at what my high concept is because I don't want to spoil
the story for you. Suffice it to say it has something to do with our modern society
and the complex nature of reality, which we don't understand as well as we
think. Despite the grim, gritty surroundings of my tale, I try to introduce
some humor. I hope you laugh or at least chuckle a little, and that you enjoy
all the other stories in this wonderfully varied anthology.
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Author Bios
Jeremy C. Shipp
Biography
Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker Award- nominated author of Cursed, Vacation, and In The
Fishbowl, We Bleed. His shorter tales have appeared in over 60
publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance,
ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Withersin, and
Shroud Magazine. His twitter handle
is @JeremyCShipp.
Phil Richardson
Biography
Phil Richardson writes speculative fiction, horror, mystery, and
literary fiction often with a humorous bent. He is retired from Ohio University
where he met his wife in a creative writing
class. He has published two collections
of short stories: Little Bits of Out There, and Little Bits of Darkness, and
over 80 stories online and in print including
21 in anthologies. Two of his stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
His website, PhilRichardsonStories.com, has links to many of his stories and to his website describing his Navy experiences in the Antarctic.
Casey June Wolf
Biography
Casey
June Wolf is a writer of occasional poems and speculative fiction stories
that range from moody slipstream to hard science fiction. She is a fairly
incompetent rider but nevertheless loves the view from a horse’s back, especially when that view is the hinterland of mountainous
British Columbia. “Fog” is dedicated to her mum, Lorraine, who introduced her to both science fiction
and westerns—and everything else that’s fit to print. Casey lives in East Van,
BC. Read her musings and find links to her work
at Another Fine Day in the Scriptorium:
http://finedayscriptorium.blogspot.ca (And
check out other anthologies from Clayton Bye—you may find a story or three of hers in them, too.)
John Rosenman
Biography
John
was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and he is a retired English professor from Norfolk
State University in Norfolk, Va. He has published three hundred stories in The Speed of Dark, Weird Tales, Whitley
Strieber's Aliens, Galaxy, The Age of Wonders, and elsewhere. In addition,
he has published over twenty books,
including SF novels such as Speaker of
the Shakk and Beyond Those Distant
Stars, winner of AllBooks Review Editor’s Choice Award (Mundania Press),
and Alien Dreams, A Senseless Act of Beauty, and (YA) The Merry-Go-Round Man (Crossroad Press). MuseItUp
Publishing has published six SF novels. They are Dark Wizard; Dax Rigby, War Correspondent, and four in the
Inspector of the Cross series: Inspector
of the Cross,
Kingdom of the Jax, Defender of the Flame,
and Conqueror of the Stars. MuseItUp has also published The Blue of Her Hair, The Gold of Her Eyes (winner
of Preditor’s and Editor’s 2011 Annual Readers
Poll), More Stately Mansions, and the
dark erotic thrillers Steam Heat and Wet Dreams. Musa Publishing gave his
time travel story “Killers” their 2013 Editor’s Top Pick award. Some of John’s books are available as
audio books from Audible.com.
Two
of John’s major themes are the endless, mind-stretching wonders of the universe
and the limitless possibilities of transformation and transfiguration—sexual,
cosmic, and otherwise. He is the former Chairman of the Board of the Horror
Writers Association and the previous editor
of Horror Magazine.
Christopher Wolf
Biography
I was
born in Long Beach, California and grew up in a Military family. I spent most of
my life bouncing between California and Arizona, finally ending up in Phoenix
in my late teens. I had planned from an early age to join the United States
Army and follow in my family’s
footsteps. Fate would intervene, however, and in the seventh grade I found
myself in a full leg cast due to an A.T.C. accident. Finding myself unable to
run, my career plans were no longer an option.
At sixteen I dropped out of high school. I got my G.E.D. at nineteen and with no direction spent the rest of my life drifting from crappy job to crappy job. About five years ago I taught myself how to write to combat the boredom of being a night security guard on fire watch. I’ve self-published three books on Amazon, and I’m continuing to tap away on the keyboard in the hope that people find my stories entertaining.
Clayton Clifford Bye
Biography
Clayton Bye is an eclectic writer whose body of work spans a period of more than
20 years and includes such classics
as How To Get What You Want From Life,
The Sorcerer’s Key and The Contrary
Canadian. His more recent work involves
too many ghostwrites to count and some great anthologies from his publishing house
Chase Enterprises Publishing. The Speed
of Dark, a strangely different collection of horror short stories, won four
awards and solid 5 star reviews.
Leigh M. Lane
Biography
In addition to writing dark speculative fiction for over twenty-five years, Leigh
M. Lane has dabbled in fine arts, earned a black belt in
karate, and sung lead and backup vocals for bands ranging from classic rock to
the blues. She currently lives in the dusty outskirts of Sin City with her
husband, an editor and educator, and one very spoiled cat.
Her
published works include a traditional Gothic horror novel Finding Poe; the World- Mart
trilogy; and the dark allegorical tale, Myths
of Gods.
Richard Godwin
Biography
Richard
Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour,
One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful
Conversations, Confessions Of A Hit Man, Paranoia And The Destiny Programme,
Wrong Crowd, Savage Highway, Ersatz World,
The Pure And The Hated, Disembodied, Buffalo And Sour Mash and Locked
In Cages. His stories have been published
in numerous paying
magazines and over 34
anthologies, among them an anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child.
He was born in
London and lectured in English and American literature at the University of
London. Find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net
, where you can read a
full list of his works, and where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual
interviews with other authors.
Salvatore Buttaci
Biography
Salvatore Buttaci
is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose poems, stories, articles, and
letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, The Writer,
Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, and Christian Science
Monitor. An English instructor at a local community college and a middle-school teacher in New Jersey, he retired in 2007 to commit himself to
full-time writing.
Two of his flash collections, published by All Things That Matter Press, are available at Amazon.com. Another of his books, still selling well, is A Family of Sicilians … http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/B uttaciPublishing2008
Buttaci resides in West Virginia
with his wife Sharon.
Ken Weene
Biography
“The best part of being a writer is the endless opportunity to do
life over. The worst part is knowing that I still won’t get it right.” With
that motto in mind, Kenneth Weene offers an ongoing stream of books, short
stories, poems, and essays.
Tonya R. Moore
Biography
Tonya
R. Moore is a Public Safety professional from Bradenton, Florida with a
penchant for writing speculative fiction. Stories by Tonya R. Moore have been
published in the Writers on the Wrong Side of
the Road and The Speed of Dark anthologies. Her current projects include Flash Fiction on Patreon, the
Spec-Fic Trifecta Podcast, and her space opera novel-in-progress, The Advent
of Hegira.
Tonya
grew up reading books by phenomenal authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray
Bradbury, Larry Niven, and Anne McCaffrey. Their works portray space-faring
humans and unbelievable creatures having fantastic adventures in distant future and far-flung regions of the universe. She fell
in love with the remarkable characters and worlds those authors envisioned.
Those stories fueled her desire to write.
Tonya is a fan of
anime, manga, and all things spec-fic. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of
Science in Communication.
Kenny Wilson
Biography
Kenny
Wilson is a retired attorney who moved to Arizona in 2011. He continues to
write appellate briefs for practicing attorneys
which require adherence to strict formatting and word count requirements. Such
writing compels a tight style that he carries over to write flash fiction and
short stories. Painstaking research is incorporated for historical accuracy, a
necessity for appellate advocacy. Each piece is redrafted at least twenty
times, until it is honed to essentials.
Kenny enjoys
his adopted state by hiking
and studying its history. He describes writing as: “like making
moonshine; you distill a potent juice out of a vat of goo.” He makes every word count.
Jim Secor
Biography
Jimsecor
has travelled the world, living, working and studying in Japan, China and
Kansas. He continued his study of language use and origins, myths/folktales and
various forms of presentation, both theatrical (where he began) and in print.
In this comparative lit
environment, European Medieval lit and Japanese theatre have had the greater
influence but through it all is the figure of the
trickster, the trickster hero, a character with a
foot in two worlds, often enough laughing in the face of social and cultural norms.
. .and every so often getting caught in his own net of foolishness.
Jimsecor
is, in this, a profligate trickster
of language: the magic and mystery and open-ended quality of language is his reality. Because, from its beginnings,
language the multifaceted and metaphoric
predominated.
It is, indeed, a symbol in itself.
Ergo, the result must needs be metaphoric.
This magicalness
of language requires a broad and
exacting craftsmanship, which enables him to create scope and depth and a plotting
that is not as prosaic or as straightforward
as one might expect. Another important feature of Jimsecor's
writing--one that comes from Japanese Kyōgen--is the use of verbs to create descriptions instead of the more usual
nouns and adjectives. This emphasis on action as the engine of description
enables him to typify his characters without a lot of dry description. What people
look like is simply not important
to his take on characterization, for he engages the reader's imagination instead
of leaving it fallow passive earth in need of being told what to do with itself.
~ Reviews for The Nettle Tree ~
Completed on: 07/28/20162016
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Reviewed By Hilary Hawkes for Readers’ Favorite, 5 stars!
The Nettle Tree is a collection of short stories compiled by Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye. Bye has written one of the stories and the other twelve are by other excellent and talented authors. The overall theme of the book encompasses the western/cowboy genre and this is intriguingly mixed with science fiction and fantasy elements. The stories vary in length and include a shorter flash fiction tale too. An extremely well written and engaging collection of stories, this book will delight fans of short stories with a bit of a dark edge and fantasy elements to them. The authors convey their characters’ personalities and motivations very well. I liked the combination of a variety of subjects and the way the stories seem to fit well together as a collection in terms of tone. While each author has a unique voice, these tales share an overall style and mood as they explore some unusual, baffling, and scary happenings in situations in which the characters find themselves. As I read, I was on the lookout for my favorite story, but I have to admit each one was equally absorbing and brilliant. I liked the humor in Phil Richardson’s The Sheriff of Hog Waller; the weird mix of horror and western in Jeremy Shipp’s The Carousel; and the dark, speculative nature of Leigh M Lane’s Valley of the Shadow. Many of the stories, including Clayton Bye’s The Nettle Tree, explore unseen forces of spirit revenge, and a battle between those in this life and ghosts – suggesting nothing may be as it seems and that we may be fooling ourselves when we believe we have control over events and outcomes. An intriguing collection that combines western, sci-fi, apocalypse, zombie, and portals into other dimensions into an entertaining and gripping read. Recommended.
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Thanks for hosting us on your blog, John. The Nettle Tree has received nothing but 5 star reviews. I hope your readers enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteClayton Bye
Co-editor of The Nettle Tree
I'm sure they will, Clayton. It's a great collection and contains something for everybody.
ReplyDeleteFolks, if you're interested in participating in a drawing for a free print copy, please let me know in your comments. We will give away two copies.
I like the bios with the authors. I haven't seen this kind of detail on previous blog tours. It all looks very professional. As for bugs, they're everywhere. I think typos etc are lurking in cyberspace waiting to invade.
ReplyDelete