The Whitechapel Project

Cover of "Close Encounters of the Urban Kind"

Long story short: an anthology I’ve been published in is open for pre-orders. Buying a copy would be awesome.

Details: Pre-ordering opened today for Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, the fiction anthology by Apex Book Company. This anthology features my short story, “Gloomy Sunday.” It’s about a washed-up private detective, his government-employed ex-girlfriend, and a song that kills people. While the story isn’t directly tied to any events in Whitechapel, it does share elements with it (most notably the Lacuna organization, a first-person narration style, and a tendency for me to be really horrible to my protagonists).

The special pre-order price is $15.95, and the book will be available for sale in April 2010. If you’ve been a fan of Whitechapel so far, picking up a copy of this book would be a great way to support me.

The link to the pre-order page is here:

http://www.apexbookstore.com/collections/frontpage/products/close-encounters-of-the-urban-kind-edited-by-jennifer-brozek

… Cold. So cold. I can’t feel my hands. They’re a couple of twitching lumps of meat at the end of my arms, uncaring about my needs or desires. I push them closer to the fire sputtering in a rusted oil drum, but the heat is as unconcerned about me as my hands are.

Across from me, the man with the long, diamond-shaped scar covering his cheek smiles, his teeth as black and broken as the ancient blacktop around us. “It’s cold tonight,” he says. I nod and look away to avoid gagging on breath that smells like cigarettes stubbed out in used cat litter. The lumps twitch toward the illusion of warmth again.

“Name’s Claude,” he says. “You’re new.”

I nod again, still looking out into the empty street near the alley. It’s bad enough that I lost everything – my job, my home, my family. But now I’m going to be trapped in this alleyway, snow melting into my shoes, listening to a disfigured man with breath as stale as his conversation forever. This isn’t just another November night. It’s a pit of hell that I’m trapped in, a punishment for unknown crimes against the universe.

“Sometimes the innocent are put in jail, and the guilty go free.”

Continue reading

One week until the launch of Whitechapel! If you’re looking for other free Internet serials to fill your time with while you wait, I have four other sites you should check out.

Jet Pack is a central point for the fiction of three extremely talented writers: Chuck Wendig, Will Hindmarch and Wood Ingham. I’m particularly into Wood’s sci-fi novella “Memory Sticks.”

And if you can’t get enough Chuck Wendig, he and Marty Henley just launched The Storyverse, a dueling serial that trades off between Chuck and Marty every week. It’s… well it’s… there’s kind of a sci-fi thing… with pirates… and pulp… kinda. It’s awesome, and they’re big supporters of the Project (they even changed their release date so as not to conflict with the launch of Whitechapel), so go check out their work.

I’ve always been a fan of Mur Lafferty, and she’s been doing some of her own serial work in a multimedia story called “Her Side.” I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll probably start catching up really soon. I understand it can be a bit disturbing, but if you’re waiting for horror goodness from me, you’ll probably like Mur’s work just fine.

Finally, I have been ordered by Filamena Young to go check out Tim Pratt’s Bone Shop. It’s a donation-funded urban fantasy novella that’s only a few weeks old, so now is a good time to check it out.

Once you’ve read all that, come back here and get ready for episode 1!