Urraca: Cesar Torres' Fiction and Machine Lore

Indeed.

Writer. My book is now live and in the marketplace. If you have written a review of it on your blog, let me know so I can link to it. You can also write an Amazon review.

Gourmand. So, finally all my talk of tripe and arthropod cuisine has paid off.

Strongman. Did you know I am currently on a barbell-lifting workout program? You can call me a circus freak.

According to Jay Swartzfeger, who wrote a review of “The 12 Burning Wheels,” I qualify for those nouns. He interviewed me recently for his blog, and we discuss the writing process behind the short story collection, my relationship with the English language, creative breakthroughs, and pork fetishes. Go check out his interview with me.

Also, I am back from major dayjobbery. That means I will be promoting “12BW” this spring in full with book readings, music and more. I will also be back on my regular writing schedule. “Rotnacht” continues!

On and on.

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I wrote a book of short stories called “The 12 Burning Wheels.”

You can buy “The 12 Burning Wheels” on Amazon as a book, as an e-book for the Kindle, and you can also buy it as a book and as an e-book, in more formats, from M BRANE SF.

Jay Swartzfeger reviewed it.

Jaym Gates reviewed it.

See what they had to say.

I can say I am flattered and glad they enjoyed my stories.

This is a good week.

Also, I’ll be back to regular blogging soon. I am almost done with other responsibilities, so I will be back soon to stories of books, birds and machine lore. If you read my book, please post a comment here or write a review on Amazon. Thank you.

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Or most are, anyway.

Here’s my plan. I want to round up a few writers and musicians. Writers can be sci fi and fantasy writers, but I’m pretty open. Just write cool shit, I say. Musicians should be laptop musician types.

I want to do a combo music performance/lit reading in April. I can read from my newly released book, “The 12 Burning Wheels,” and maybe bathe myself in blood while cradling eggs. Maybe a claw? You know, something mellow.

In a bar. In Chicago.

No soft-spoken reading in a bookstore. I want noise, booze, cat calls from the audience, and beats.

Any ideas? Are you a laptop musician? I think I might have Eden Robins on board so far.

WHO ELSE?

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Yes, my book is out. It’s a collection of short stories titled “The 12 Burning Wheels.”

In “The 12 Burning Wheels” you will encounter:

Ancient goddesses.

Murderous, wealthy cannibals.

Sine-wave lemons.

Labyrinths.

Love potions, broken hearts and murderous lust.

Raven shapeshifters.

And more.

Here’s how you can get your copy:

You can get “12BW” as a book or e-book (in PDF, e-Pub, and Mobipocket formats) directly from my publisher M Brane SF.

You can buy “12BW” from the Amazon store .

Also, don’t forget you can listen to the companion music playlist. One track for each story. Yeah!

Support small independent publishers!

And for those who care about the behind-the-scenes work:

“The 12 Burning Wheels” was written and designed using:

1st Draft
WordPress
Google Docs

Editing, revisions

Scrivner
Bean
Adobe Reader

Design
Pixelmator

E-Book formatting

D. D. Tannenbaum did this work. I’ll update here to see what tools were used.

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Hello, Gentle Reader.

I have curated a playlist for “The 12 Burning Wheels,” and I am releasing it today, the day before the book hits the streets.

Here is the FREE YouTube version of the “12BW” playlist so you can listen for FREE (keep in mind the St. Etienne song is only available in YouTube as a cover).

You can also go right into iTunes and download yourself the whole thing so you can play it on your iPod anytime, anywhere. YEAH!

1. The Broken Chest
Pedro Infante, “100 Años”
Pedro Infante, one of the classic singers from the Mexico’s Golden Era. Look him up, love him. A hundred years. This song insists on the perseverance of emotions and memories through time, just like those found in the father/daughter relationship of “The Broken Chest.”

The Scryer
L7, “Shitlist”
You don’t fuck with a Worm Queen or her kin. That’s all I can say about this  90’s classic.

Honey
Goldfrapp, “Deep Honey”
You can read the afterword in the book to hear the connections between Honey and this track off Goldfrapp’s “Black Cherry.” And to clarify, Brachygastra mellifica is a species of wasp that makes honey. Most other species don’t.

Mantis Love
VNV Nation, “Defiant”
“Defiant” doesn’t sound like your typical VNV song, but it does convey a youthful energy and courage, which is what I feel when I read through “Mantis Love.”

Madre Catrina
Sally Shapiro, “Looking at the Stars”
Italo disco reminds me of whale sonar, the lower depths of the ocean and shimmering waves of blue. All praise the arpegiator.

Victoria
Saint Etienne, “Hobart Paving”
Victoria’s life and its limitations, despite its gruesome backdrop, fill me with melancholy. So does “Hobart Paving.”

Tincture DRK-01
Neko Case, “This Tornado Loves You”
How do we explain the obssessive, all-consuming quality of love? Is it an artifice or something found deep within? Is it a force of nature?

Dig Your Own Hole
The Pixies, “Silver”
“In this land of strangers there are dangers.” The dusty, creaky quality of this Pixies song generates an image of a brooding sky, an uncertain black future, just like that which nears in the story. The title came as a reference to the Chemical Brothers song, but “Silver” captures its sound better.

Lemonade: an Electronic Opera in Six Parts
Vitalic, “Repair Machines”
I still have never heard a song that accurately captures the sounds of this opera. But this great Vitalic song serves. For more ideas on how you can make your own mental and auditory Lemonade opera, see Tangerine Dream, Art of Noise, The Knife, Atari Teenage Riot, Aphex Twin, Matmos, Fever Ray and Brian Eno.

A Conversation with the Elephant
Smashing Pumpkins, “Siva”
If you haven’t read the story yet, I’ll advise you to skip this one for now. “Slowly for Those,” the song referenced in the story, should really come from your own imagination. When you’re done, though, you can come back to “Siva.” Then listen for that explosion of raw sound near the end. Try not to look into the elephant’s eyes.

We Merge
Ladytron, “Runaway”
Some of the synths in this song make me think of giant spider legs trampling trees in the woods.

Machina
Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Red Light”
Divination through technology. I imagine each reader’s imagining of the Machina App would have unique sounds attached to it, but whirring shutters, synths and eerie vocals from the Ice Queen put me in the right mood to have my dreams interpreted by the machine.

And below, some notes to explain the cuts. Don’t forget you can buy “12BW” right over at M Brane SF.

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M Brane SF just posted an update on their Web site regarding “The 12 Burning Wheels.”

You can now also pre-order it for $3.99 in your choice of THREE e-book formats. E-Pub, PDF and  MobiPocket (for Kindle). Also, starting February 22, when the book releases, you can buy right in the Amazon Store.

The book is $7.99, by the way. If you want to save trees, get the $3.99 e-book.

Whoa.

And just yesterday, I got my own copies.

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Please read this entire New York Review of Books article by Jason Epstein in its entirety. All of it. Seriously one of the best syntheses on the current publishing landscape I have read in a long time.

I do think technology is moving us somewhere new. I am not sure where we are headed. I do know books belong in that future.

What do you think? Are we living in a revolutionary publishing world?

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My editor and publisher Chris Fletcher sent me the following pic today. You can see Chris tucked in behind the physical version of the book.

We are less than a week away from the release of the book. Whoa.

Reminder: If you are a lit blogger or you write for a publication, and you would like an advance copy of “The 12 Burning Wheels” to review, please contact me.

Chicago peeps, I’m also looking to do a reading or two, maybe in conjunction with some laptop musicians. Any leads? Let me know.

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What I did this weekend:

Spent a great evening talking to my friend Robert Grillo, blogger at Free From Harm. He made a pizza, we drank wine, and we discussed sustainable eating, insects as a food source, the ethics of bodybuilding diets, and one of my favorite subjects, organ meats.

Saturday, I spent Valentine’s Day with the lover, and though I never intended to plan an ironic Valentine’s Day celebration, that’s how it turned out. My efforts to choose a bar that would be quiet, but elegant? Thwarted. River North crowds made Pops for Champagne a raucous affair. Remind me to avoid River North crowds for some time to purge myself. A friend’s suggestion for a bistro on Wells  I had never tried before? A slight disaster. I don’t know about you, but when restaurants go out of their way to recreate the experience of the country whose cuisine they present, well, I find myself in troubled cultural waters. Let me just say this: myriad papier mache cocks, corks on the walls, and an iron reproduction of the Eiffel Tower hanging from the ceiling induce the chills in me. The douche chills. This is no different than walking into a restaurant that’s jammed every available surface of its establishment with sombreros, Frida Kahlo portraits and worst of all, bad paintings of bull fights.

Paper hearts hung from the ceiling, the waiter spoke to us in a decidedly fake French accent, and a tiny old man jammed his elbows into a violin, playing songs that squealed just like my teeth squealed as I gnashed them.

And yet, we endured. The decor would not detract from a lovers’ night with the lover, who incidentally, thought the whole experience to be ironic, amusing. This I did not intend either. My lover reminded me not to be embarrassed, to let it go. Good advice.

That was dinner. Afterward, I got over it. Valentine’s shouldn’t hang on these details, but I admit that I wanted it to be a solid experience, and when it didn’t turn out that way, I just had to let it go. And anyway, isn’t the whole point that one has a lover, someone who gives into romantic reciprocity, someone who accepts the grotesqueries of the other lover, someone who allows one to be oneself? That’s the real point.

Sunday was about food. Dim Sum brunch (tripe people, that tripe was good at Furama), then  vodka-sauce rigatoni at a friend’s house for dinner.

And what’s ahead now? Probably the busiest month of the year for me, with a conference to attend and grad school deadlines nipping at my heels. So bear with me if I get anxious, a bit stressed. I will try to be the best version of myself, given the current climate.

I also have a book coming out next week. How the hell did that happen? By the way, any of you lit blogger types, if you want to read an advance copy, contact me. I can hook you up.

And today we have some muzak.

“We’re right under your nose, we’re the lovers that you don’t know.”

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I read his novels “Koko,” “Ghost Story,” “Floating Dragon” and others when I was barely entering high school. As an adult, I realized not only was he good at writing suspenseful stories, his craft and love of words made his books literary too. This interview with him about his new novel “A Dark Matter” makes me so excited for his work and proud to be working as hard as I fucking can to improve my own writing over a lifetime.

Yes, Peter, yes!

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