The Goat in the Sky

There's now an in-depth interview of my editor Kristopher Young and me - by the cool Martin Garrity - online @ Solarcide, regarding Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

Martin writes:

"TSMG is an odd sci-fi tale of corruption in a dystopian future, set in Melbourne, Australia. (Bergen is himself Australian, though he now lives in Japan) It features an immediately likeabe protagonist, Floyd Maquina, who is a government endorsed ‘seeker.’ Floyd’s job is to hunt the deviant menace that threatens the future of the last inhabited city on the planet. This could almost be a special edition, Vegemite-flavoured version of a certain Philip K. Dick story.

"But that ain’t even the half of it.

"TSMG is also homage to the golden age of film noir. It’s a cigar puffing, whiskey sipping, piano playing, bar lout, and the book may very well stir up memories of a black and white nature. Andrez makes a million and one references to movies (The Third Man and The Maltese Falcon, in particular, are heavily drawn on) and the settings are stuffed to the margins with inspiration from this classic era of cinema."

I actually really dug doing this interview; Martin was great to yack with and he asked some canny questions - and I really loved the head-to-head between he and Kristopher.

Anyway, you can read it if at all interested HERE.

Cheers, Martin! ;)

On the Printing Press Thingy

Well, the novel is done.

After a couple of years of slugging it out, nutting it out, pulling ideas from our collective buttocks, head-butting grammatical rules, ditching my beloved semi-colons and ironing out my wayward non-standard dialogue tags, it's done.

Big, big thanks to Kristopher, Bob, Christine, Justin and everyone else at Another Sky Press, along with Scott Campbell on art duties.

The next announcement on this blog will be the one that it's now available; we're just awaiting the test-pressing of the finished tome, but in the meantime if you're curious you can check out more and/or pre-order here.


Strangely enough I haven't had a chance to enjoy this moment.

Instead I've been sick as a dog since the very next day after we wrapped the project, with some weird virus/flu/bronchitis collaboration that's completely knocked me out and I've been woozie for a week and sleeping most days. Here's a picture, left, of what the über-bug might (or might not) look like up close and personal.

I like the star on it. Looks like Captain America's shield.

I know I pushed myself way too hard over the past couple of weeks (or should that read years?) with the novel, plus I had a huge story on sake that I was writing at the same time, a swag of techno industry interviews I'd stupidly committed myself to doing, an anime subtitles project, plus some music EP/album stuff... so this is prob'ly just desserts.

Likely my body is saying sod off.

Oh yeah, and I had an odd, rather feverish dream last night that a talking octopus was my pet, it called me "papa", and was otherwise downright cool. I made it a house in my kitchen blender (sans blades, of course!), and I don't think I can eat octopus sushi again for a bit.

Damn.

Another Sky Press

Amongst its self-confessed missions, Another Sky Press (based in Portland, Oregon, in the U.S.) hopes to subvert the traditional publishing paradigm and do it their own way, put the artist and audience in direct connection with each other, hence removing the (expensive) middlemen, they want to spread culture for the good of all—not control it for profit—and they'd like to dismantle the world and reassemble it in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.

Grand plans indeed, and these worthy people have released a wad of stunning coffee table art books with images by Jesse Reno and others, plus some equally cool novels by the likes of Kristopher Young (Click) that you can read online for free, or purchase at cost. It's up to you if you deem the writer worthy of bonus extra patronage.

I love these people, and I'm one of the lucky ones: I currently have my first novel (Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, the one Scott C. did the cover for—see the previous entry below) in the sub-editing phase with them, and it should be out sometime this year.

Regardless, I'd adore what the posse is on about; their mentality is precisely my cup of tea.

There's a way cool new online interview with Kristopher Young, who runs Another Sky with his partner, Christine Barnum, with help from a wide variety of like-minded others.

It's an extensive beast of a chat, full of insights into a crew we should all be in there rooting for and supporting. Go forth, grab a big cup of coffee, and brush up on your leftfield-publishing-with-a-superlative-punk-ethic kind of thing.