Tag: Frankenstein

Last Call for WANDERING SPIRITS: Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN

WS CoverToday is the last call on WANDERING SPIRITS: TRAVELING MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, my limited-edition travelogue chapbook from Tallhat Press.

If you’ve been on the fence about buying this, now’s your last chance.

I can’t believe it’s been 9 months since Yves Tourigny swooped in and made my idle wish a beautifully illustrated reality. Many thanks to him, and to the readers who bought, reviewed, and advocated for this adventure.

FRANKENSTEIN turns 200 offiicially next year, so there is much more bicentennial celebrations to be enjoyed. Please tune in to the Facebook page,  Frankenstein200, for more things Frankenshelly.

Publishing Notes: 2016: The Year in Review

Reading! Writing! Editing! Yay!  As far as I can recall, this is what I was up too this year in publishing:

Fiction

Last Session

“The Last Session: The Facts in the Case of Clarissa Collyer.” Dunhams Manor Press Limited Edition Chapbook.

Longest fiction written to date. A whole novelette! Hot dang, I will conquer you yet, novel. This is a riff on Poe’s “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” but through the exploration of a mother-daughter relationship estranged by adolescence and cancer, and of course Emo. I got some nice reviews and comments on this one, and I dare say the creep/cry factor is dialed to 11. Many thanks to editor Jordan Krall on letting me give this one the chance to breathe.

“The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour.” Reprint for WORDS zine, Hex Publishers. 

This anti-Orientalism Steampunk tale set in Turkey originally appeared in Sarah Hans’ STEAMPUNK WORLD (Alliteration Ink). I was stoked to give the Şehrazat another avenue and be a part of Hex Publishers’ weekly magazine WORDS. There is a lot of great FREE stuff over there–stories by Nisi Shawl, Jason Heller, E. Lily Yu, and Alvaros Zinos-Amaro–so if you haven’t checked them out, you are missing out. Thank you for the opportunity, Josh Viola!

“Arrangement in Juniper and Champagne.” MIXED UP: COCKTAIL RECIPES (AND FLASH FICTION) FOR THE DISCERNING DRINKER (AND READER), edited by Nick Mamatas and Molly Tanzer. Skyhorse, October 2017.

I am proud of this story for several reasons.

First, to be in anything edited by Nick and/or Molly has been on my goals list for a while, and many thanks to them for liking and accepting the story!

Second, all I really ever want to do is write fiction about cocktails, in this case the French 75.

Third, I’d been reading a lot of and about Hemingway this year, and had been toying with the Iceberg idea–something like “Hills Like White Elephants,” but from only women’s perspectives. Pair this with the constant ostracizing of women who don’t want to have children ever (by women), or define their being by their sexual prowess, or dream of fairy tale love to be complete–you got “Arrangement in Juniper and Champagne.”

Fourth, I had no idea what was coming in November, so I feel this was sort of a preamble for whatever changes to my writing that may bring. Read More

Happy Birthday, Mary Shelley!

romantic outlawsAugust 30 marks two major events in Romantic literature. Today is the day Mary Godwin Shelley was born in 1797, which lead to an infection in her mother’s womb. Thus the world lost its pioneering feminist and adventuress, Mary Wollstonecraft, ten days later.

This wabi-sabi truth of creation would haunt Mary and the pages of her most famous creation. In her own life, too, she strove to live within her mother’s ideals, and as a result, lead a very interesting and parallel life to Wollstonecraft’s. It is an obvious thesis, but not until last year has any biographer sat down to illustrate the various connections outside of academic and intellectual sympathies.

Enter Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws. Telling both of Marys’ stories in alternating chapters, she makes great and thorough connections with their posthumous relationship, and as a result, really enhances any and all readings of Mary Shelley’s work. It is no surprise that it was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle award. It is, by far, my favorite resource for my own studies, and if you are looking to celebrate Mary Shelley today, or any day, honoring both her and her mother’s lives is a great way to do it. For more information on Romantic Outlaws, including purchasing details, check out Gordon’s website here.

 

 

Wandering Spirits Update: August

Wandering Spirits:  Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN  has been out in the world for a few months, and I’m happy to report that, not only is it alive, but doing well! I have been getting thrills from seeing Book Selfies on Facebook (scrapbooked below), and getting cool shout-out on various Frankenstein related content like Orrin Grey‘s piece on the “9 Best Frankenstein Movies” for The Lineup.com. I was especially honored to be interviewed by Nate Pedersen over at the Fine Books and Collectibles blog. If you want some “behind the music”* access to this project, you’ll certainly find it here.

Wandering Spirits selfies
Before you think I’m super creepy, I asked and obtained permission from all above. Many thanks to Nick Mamtas, Molly Tanzer, Larva Jane Parker, Travis Neisler (who won the Frankenstein 200 giveaway), and Anya Martin!

It’s also garnered some 5-star reviews at Amazon and on GoodReads:

Ross Lockhart wrote on both venues:

“A stunning presentation of Selena Chambers’ epistolary travelogue exploring the locales of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this Tallhat Press chapbook includes breathtaking illustrations by Yves Tourigny, an afterword providing larger context and history of the travelogue, and extensive notes. Fans of Frankenstein would do themselves a favor to pick this up before it goes out of print in early 2017.”

Jake Marley wrote on Amazon:

“I am dearly hoping that Wandering Spirits will tutn out to be the first in a series of literary travel books. Selena Chambers brings us along for an unforgettable journey through the world of Frankenstein, offering up charming insight into the past, and into her subject.

The book felt like a really great escape, and with the beautiful artwork by Yves Tourigny it all came together is a perfect package.”

And over at Goodreads, Adam Gorman said that it was:

“A short but enjoyable investigation in epistolary form. I highly recommend this chapbook for anybody who works with or enjoyed Shelley’s Frankenstein.”

Reviews and social buzz are critical to writers and indie projects like this, so an infinite amount of thanks to the gentlemen above who took the time to review Wandering Spirits, and also to my friends and colleagues who have bought the book, posted awesome pics of it online, and helped me share the news, and spread the word! If you, dear reader, would like to help with further word-spreading, I am available for interviews or guest posts about this, or anything else, really. Just shoot me an email at: LeFilleHST@gmail.com.

As you may recall, Wandering Spirits: Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN is a bicentennial, special-limited edition designed and annotated by Yves Tourigny and Tallhat Press. Only 200 copies will be made, and only then available for 9 months (as of last June). So, current stats are:  152 copies are left, with 7 more months to go. If you would like to purchase a copy, you can do so at the below links:

Order now on Amazon.com
Order now on Amazon.ca
Order now on Amazon.co.uk

*Quoting friend J. T. Glover, who described it as thus, and I’m stealing because it makes me sound much cooler than I am.

 

The Curse of Frankenstein, Updates, and Other Frankenphilia

Wandering Spirits shrine
Wandering Spirits: Traveling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Tallhat Press) now available for purchase at Amazon.

Last Thursday, my good friend, vintage movie expert, bomb writer, and teratologist Orrin Grey inducted me into the wiles of the Hammer Frankenstein films. I’ve never seen them, and so what a better way to celebrate #Frankenstein200 than live-tweeting the experience. It was loads of fun, and we storified the experience here.

In addition to celebrating the Villa Diodati bicentennial, we were also marking a few other related events:

The release of Orrin’s first non-fiction collection, MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT, which collects over five years worth of his regular vintage horror flick column, VAULT OF SECRETS, that runs over at INNSMOUTH FREE PRESS. And speaking of, his latest column there delves into more territory with a look at IT! (1967). Check it out here.

Word Horde did a cover reveal of its Frankenstein tribute anthology, ETERNAL FRANKENSTEIN, out in October, and boy, it is a beauty!

And, of course, my own little chapbook from Tallhat Press, WANDERING SPIRITS, which has been doing really well since its release last week. In the past few days, it premiered as #1 New Release in its category, even hit #5 at one point, has been spotted in the wild via book pics, become the focus of a really fun giveaway at the Frankenstein200 Facebook page, and has garnered five stars in its first review!  I am really excited about the response it has been getting, and I know it wouldn’t have been done without the help of friends and colleagues who have helped spread the information, and to the readers who shelled out to buy this book. To each and every one of you:  Thank you!

[View the story “The Curse of Frankenstein Live-Tweet for #Frankenstein200” on Storify]

Now Available: WANDERING SPIRITS: TRAVELING MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN (the chapbook!)

PR imageAlthough Frankenstein was published in 1818, fans are getting a head start on celebrating the novel’s bicentennial starting this week. On June 16-18, 1816, in Geneva, Switzerland, three days of terrible thunder storms caused a crew of young poets and libertines–Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr. John Polidori, Claire Claremont, and Mary Shelley–to seek shelter in the Villa Diodati. To while away the time, they drank and read each other ghost stories. Eventually, Lord Byron challenged his friends to write their own fantastic tales, and it was through this writing prompt that Frankenstein was conceived. (This is of course, the bare bones version.)

I have, since a pre-teen, been in love with this anecdote, as well as the young girl it concerned, Mary Shelley. This infactuation with her and her circle stuck with me through adulthood, and at 28, compelled me to visit her old haunts as well as those found within her most famous novel. I wrote about these travels in a web series called “Wandering Spirits” on WeirdFictionReview.com, and they were collected as a whole and published alongside the Frankenstein source text for Non-Binary Review’s Issue 2: Frankenstein, to which the travelogue was nominated by editors Lise Quintana and Allie Marini for Best of the Net.

Wandering Spirits has been one of the more intense and gratifying things I’ve done as a writer and a traveler, and doing so gave me a greater appreciation, love, and respect for Mary Shelley and her work. I am thrilled that the work is being reanimated by Tallhat Press, who has collected, annotated, and illustrated this series into a new special limited edition chapbook in honor of the Villa Diodati bicentennial.

Only 200 copies are available, and will only be on sale for the next nine months (to commemorate how long it took Mary to draft Frankenstein).

If you would like to help me celebrate, you can buy the chapbook at Amazon, or you can just share the below press release on whatever social media platform you feel most comfortable doing. Either way, I am grateful for your interest in my work as well as Shelley’s.

—

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE–Tallhat Press Presents:  Wandering Spirits: Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN by Selena Chambers

“…although Mary and these poets experienced a lifetime before they were thirty, here I was at 28, having never left my homeland. I needed to flee—go forth and find sublimity. What better guide than Frankenstein.”

          —From Wandering Spirits:  Traveling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

WS CoverSix years ago, Selena Chambers turned her first major trip abroad into a literary scavenger hunt of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Visiting Geneva, Switzerland, Ingolstadt, Germany, and Chamonix, France over a series of several days, she found within the nooks and crannies of these modern European towns the residual Romanticism that inspired the teenage Mary Shelley and shaped her most famous novel.

This annotated, illustrated, and special limited bicentennial edition chapbook collects this Best of the Net nominated travelogue to commemorate Frankenstein’s conception during the week of June 16, 1816. Written in the epistolary vein as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, these letters portray Chambers’ visits to three of the most important sites within Frankenstein and takes us all on a journey through the sublime.

It is available for purchase on Amazon at the following links:

U. S.:  https://www.amazon.com/Wandering-Spirits-Traveling-Shelleys-Frankenstein/dp/1533286957/

U. K.:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wandering-Spirits-Traveling-Shelleys-Frankenstein/dp/1533286957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465575043&sr=8-1&keywords=Wandering+Spirits+Selena+Chambers

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Wandering-Spirits-Traveling-Shelleys-Frankenstein/dp/1533286957/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466001132&sr=8-1&keywords=wandering+spirits+selena+chambers

About the author:

Selena Chambers’ fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a variety of venues including MungBeing magazine, Clarkesworld, The Non-Binary Review, Tor.com, Bookslut, Cassilda’s Song (Chaosium, 2015), and The Last Session (Dunhams Manor Press, 2016). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and the Hugo and World Fantasy award. You can reach her at www.selenachambers.com.

About the publisher:

Tallhat Press is a small press interested in publishing evocative and energizing Genre-based non-fiction in well-designed print editions. For more information, please visit: http://www.tallhatpress.com

For publicity or review inquiries, please contact the author at:

LeFilleHST@gmail.com

Title: Wandering Spirits: Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN

52 pages.

$8.00

Author:  Selena Chambers

Layout and Graphic Designer:  Yves Tourigny

Publisher:  Tallhat Press

ISBN-10: 1533286957

ISBN-13: 978-1533286956

Summer Catch Up

Hukilau selfie
Aloha from the Jungle Queen Cruise, part of the 2014 Hukilau in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

So, it is summer again and I’ve let the heat, humidity, and well…frankly, Hannibal keep me from blogging. And, I was doing so well, too!So here, in list form, is what’s been up on the writer side of things. Travel side of things will come later. Eventually. After I consume Season Two, more likely:

Publications:

Online you will find a few things:

“Vintage Scenes #3: Morellino di Scansano, 2011 Vendemmia” is now available in the latest issue of Mungbeing magazine. This round’s theme is reflections, and although the wine is Tuscan, I couldn’t help but play in Frida Kahlo’s world of scryes a bit. And there’s some local flair in there too, for those who are around.

“The Revolution Will Be Served: Jeff “Beachbum” Berry Mixes at the Hukilau and Takes us Through the Past, Present, and Future of Tiki” ran a few weeks ago on ATLRetro.com. I interviewed the Beachbum and talked about the rise and fall and rise again of Tiki, as well as his awesome new book POTIONS OF THE CARIBBEAN, which I highly recommend, even if you aren’t a cocktailian.

This interview is in conjunction of Hukilau coverage I did for ATLRetro, where I joined editor Anya Martin to check out the vibe. It was a great vibe. Hadn’t had fun like that in a while, if even ever…. Definitely something to put on repeat.

In Print:

“The Venus of Great Neck,” is my Jazz-baby Steampunk story written exclusively for ACRONOS II edited by Josué Ramos (Tyrannosauras Books), and is currently only available in Spanish. Although, an English edition is being discussed, and I’ll be sure to throw deets down when they are available.

Forthcoming:

My series “Wandering Spirits: Traveling Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN” will be published as a whole in the second issue of NonBinary Review, where Mary Shelley’s seminal novel is the theme. If you haven’t heard of NonBinary Review yet, definitely put this on the radar because…well, their website says it best, so I’m just going to quote from them:

“NonBinary Review uses Lithomobilus, a new type of e-reader that allows for multi-threaded, interactive literature. It allows novelists to tell a story from every point of view. Essayists can comment on other works. Short story writers can add alternate points of view to an existing narrative. Any author can add notes, photos, or other artifacts of the creative process.”

Thanks to editors Allie Marini Batts and Lise Quintana for having me aboard! I am very excited to be a part of this, and to have my letters aside one of my favorite novels of all time. And, if that wasn’t enough, the cover is going to be done by the awesomeness that is Mandem!

You can download the reader here, and check out the first issue–all for free.

Updates on Forthcoming Publications

James Ng's interior illustration of "The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour," my short story in STEAMPUNK WORLD.
James Ng’s interior illustration of “The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour,” my short story in STEAMPUNK WORLD.

STEAMPUNK WORLD, edited by Sarah Hans for Alliteration Ink is still steaming along. I am unsure of the final release date, but I do know that James Ng has finished his interior sketches, and I am allowed to share my story “The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour.”  Also, Alliteration Ink has partnered with BitLit to bundle digital copies with all hardcopy sales, so those who will be receiving print copies as part of their Kickstarter pledge will get a digital copy also, I believe.

A DARKE PHANTASTIQUE edited by Jason V. Brock for Cycatrix Press, containing my short story “Descartar,” should be out by the end of the summer, and is available for pre-order here.

STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY, edited by Nate Pedersen for PS Publishing, containing my short story “Remnants of Lost Empires,” is slated for September 2014. According to Nate’s website, PS Publishing will be launching the tome at FantasyCon. Update can be found at the above link.