But hold on...

In all fairness to the quote in my last post, I thought it might be useful to examine the current bestsellers and see if I could spot the trends suggested: I couldn't. There is a wonderful mix, with plenty of "my ilk," though granted many of them are quite established. I suspect the quote referred to breaking a new author in, but I am still salved to see that people want to read about the characters and genre I write in.

I did find this, however, at #8 on the Paperback Trade Fiction list:

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. (Quirk, $12.95.) The classic story, retold with “ultraviolent zombie mayhem.”

So that got me thinking....maybe I'll do Conrad's Heart of Darkness, except it will be two young lovers who go up the Mississippi in a canoe....(ok, he's super hot, has lost his shirt, and anyway, she's the protagonist here, he's just an accessory)...and they find an unknown tributary that leads to a world of vampires, zombies, ghouls, goblins...ooh, yeah, yeah...then I'll use Rossetti's Goblin Market as the guiding allegory...and if these two lovers can't navigate the backwaters they will never return and the Mississippi will drain like an unstopped toilet, taking towns and cities and people, oh the people, oh the madness, the madness...and there they will remain, doomed to wandering the swamps of UnkNOwnLaNd, hearing the lonesome voice of another girl who met a similar fate, her sad Rossetti song drifting on the haze:

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--

The Fall 2008 The Northrdige Review is out

Two of my experimental fiction stories appear in the Fall 2008 issue of The Northridge Review, which is now available. Beyond the fact that my stories are in it, the magazine is a wonderful assembly of fiction, poetry, drama and art, not to mention the freshness brought to it by the student editors. Copies are only five bucks! For details on how to order, drop an email to mhd03 AT gmail DOT com.