Black Wedding: The Re-emergence of Lenie Clarke.
Inverted.
Let’s get the trivial notes and minutes out of the way first. Echopraxia, “Collateral”, and “The Colonel” all made it onto the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2014. (Still no love for “Giants”, I see, though I continue to love it as perhaps only a father can). Echopraxia (which I’m told has gone into a second hardcover printing, which comes as more of a relief than a delight) has also popped up over at CBC of all places, on a lonely little page with no intro and zero comments— yet accompanied by a pithy little excerpt from the middle of the book, so someone obviously at least read it halfway. I have no idea what it’s doing there. It just sprouted under “CBC Books” for some reason.
Maybe it has something to do with my recent co-appearance with Alyx Dellamonica at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference (yes, that’s really what it’s called). That was largely Lexus’ doing. She has a certain ease with distributors and publishers, whereas my own experience has taught me to just kind of crouch down and avoid them. Lexus dragged me into the light and we sat there at the Raincoast booth on a January afternoon, where I felt all pleased and warm because there was this lineup and so many people wanted us to sign our books for various school libraries even after I suggested that maybe I could personalize each with a pro-recreational-drug-use message next to my signature. I actually felt really good until Lexus confessed later, over Innis & Gunns, that nobody had actually bought any of our books. Raincoast had just given them away for promotional purposes. It made me sad.
Anyway, I’m wondering if Raincoast might also be behind the whole CBC thing, whatever it is.
Latest report from the Barn Door Post-Horse Department: I’ve installed a WordPress Plug-in— accessible from the bottom of the Author page or the [Contact] link over on the side-bar— which allows newcomers to send me emails without revealing my own email in turn. Those already privy to that info might as well keep using it (it’s not as though our interactions have been anything but pleasant, from this side of the exchange at least). Just be aware that from here on in, you’ll all be on the suspects list for any death threats sent to my personal address.
*
Born Again.
Today’s headline, though, hails from Poland, where Adam Rotter took a gorgeous-yet-macabre turn from his usual day job as a wedding photographer to cast his partner, Karolina Cisowska, as Lenie Clarke. Together they’ve done a 16-shot spread[1] inspired by specific passages from Maelstrom. It’s over on facebook under the project heading “Syrena” (which I assume translates as “Siren” and not the more biological interpretation involving manatees). But I have, with Adam’s permission, posted the pics here at rifters.com, together with the associated inspirational snippets o’prose, over in the Rifters Gallery. View. Enjoy.
And my profound thanks to Adam and Karolina. From the in-your-face black rotting skull right down the telescoping shockprod in Lenie’s hand, these are just gorgeous.
[1] At least, I think it’s 16— it’s grown from the three or four that were posted a couple of weeks back when I first mentioned it over on facebook, so maybe it’s still in progress.
Looks awesome. Speaking of plugins, you could get the tumblr crossposter, open a tumblr blog and throw some of this stuff on there. The pictures particularly would go down well, it’s kind of a popular way to share images, and you’ve got a nice collection.
TOS will need to be signed, of course. It probably requires signing off ownership to various parts of one’s personal anatomy, I never bothered to read it myself… 🙂
These are spectacular. I want to show them to someone who’s never read the book and see how much of the mood and theme they can retrofit from the photos and passages. I suspect quite a bit.
Thanks. I really like your work and I tell anybody that might listen. Live long and be prolific.
[…] science-fiction writer Peter Watts notes that two Polish fans of his latest, Maelstrom, have cosplayed a character. Cosplaying dark dystopic […]
Love the photos.
Happy Darwin Day everyone.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/10/18/163181524/charles-darwin-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day
Now adapt, dammit. 🙂
These are good, though some of the little details seem off.
The Baltic coast is nice too. Already has that post-apocalyptic vibe, and it’s not just a vibe. IIRC, the entire arsenal of Wehrmacht’s chemical weapons was dumped into it, and for decades after that it served as toxic waste dump.
All it’s missing is the ‘Baltic singularity’.
It’s no Baltic shore at all, its artifical lake inland Poland. However its true about that sea oddity – I recommend old polish sc-fi movie “on silver globe”, where it is exposed. Sadly the movie was uncompleted by political reasons, nevertheless is eye-candy.
If its artificial lake, how come it has sea stars?
Right. Because there’s no better way of building market share than by giving my online profile up to even more social networks to exploit…
Well, of course the details are off. It’s not like I’m going to ask Karolina to cut her hair and dye it blond. Or drill a hole in her rib cage. But in terms of capturing a mood, I think these are terrific.
Without the plugins, though, exposure is good. Copy and paste so as to keep account info separate.
re-reading Blindsight, I have to wonder, was Siri Keeton a “repaired” vampire?