Chimerascope

Wow! I just learned that my collection, Chimerascope, had made the final ballot for the CBC "Bookies."

The Bookies are the brand new CBC Book Club awards, voted on by readers and (from the CBC site) "celebrating the best in literature in 2010, as chosen by you!" The Canadian entertainment site, Cadence Canada, has a good overview of the Bookies here.

It's great to see two other fellow ChiZine Publications authors on the list too: Gemma Files and Gord Zajak. Not bad for a small Toronto-based press only in its third year! And it is just so very cool to be on a ballot with William Gibson, Stieg Larsson, and Suzanne Collins.

Writer Krista Ball, in addition to her regular blog, runs a separate review site dedicated to small presses. As she puts it, "small presses are often where new authors get started, and I think it's important that we give those houses a little extra exposure. ... I read a lot of small press works and decided to start a review site for them."

And on that review site, Krista recently took a look at ChiZine Publications and specifically, my collection Chimerascope from CZP. Here's an excerpt:

"This collection was impossible to put down. This contains one of the best collections of speculative fiction I have ever read. There is a reason that the majority of these stories have won awards and nominations. Smith is absolutely brilliant as he proves SF is every bit as intelligent and thought-provoking as any literary work out there. ... After reading the collection, I immediately knew Chimerascope would be on my Aurora Award nomination list this year."

You can read Krista's full review here. Thanks, Krista!

It just doesn't get old. Here's another great review for Chimerascope, this time from Innsmouth Free Press. Here are the highlights:

"[T]here is not only something here for everyone, but something good for everyone, as Smith consistently displays his comfort and competence, working within multiple genres. ... Smith’s characters tend towards regular men and women caught in desperate situations, often fallible, sometimes likable, but always portrayed with, if not sympathy, then enough clarity that the reader may understand why the characters behave as they do. ... Ultimately, genre fans eager to read work by a talented author, who consistently writes top-notch prose, will be well-pleased to see the strange beasts lurking within Douglas Smith’s Chimerascope."

Read the whole review here, and if you're interested, check out the buying links for Chimerascope here, including both print and ebook editions.

Cory Redekop, who earlier this year gave my collection a starred review in Quill & Quire, has picked Chimerascope for Best Short Story Collection in his personal "Best of 2010" list. Here's what he has to say:

"A sterling set of tales spanning the triple genres of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Echoes of Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Clive Barker haunt the halls of Smith's work, but the end result is completely original, and always enthralling."

Thanks, Cory! He also includes works by several other ChiZine Publications authors, including:

Before I Wake, by Robert J. Wiersema The World More Full of Weeping, by Robert J. Wiersema The Thief of Broken Toys, by Tim Lebbon

Check out Cory's full "best of" list here.

Claire Horsnell interviewed me for the Torontoist website a while back, and the interview is up on the site now. The interview is a wide-ranging one, covering early influences, favourite writers, use of myth in fiction, my recently completed first novel, dystopian futures, corporate power, Avatar, the "By Her Hand..." movie, and, of course, Springsteen. And Claire does a great job of making me sound way smarter than I am. Here's an excerpt:

"Most science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fans can point to an early discovery period during which they came to their genre, but for prolific Toronto writer Douglas Smith, author of the recent short story collection Chimerascope, it seems fitting that he had not one, but two significant exploratory phases for his field. 'When I was eight, a friend introduced me to Robert A. Heinlein’s young-adult SF novels,' Smith recalls. 'They were essentially rocket and ray-gun books aimed at young boys. I devoured all of those, but then stopped reading the genre. Then in Grade 11, I had to do a paper in English comparing the works of multiple authors. Amazingly, the teacher actually included a group consisting of Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, which, of course, was the group I picked. That assignment got me back into reading SF and fantasy.'

Read the full interview on the Torontoist site here.

Coolness! Here's the final cover (cover artist: Erik Mohr) for my upcoming "full" collection, Chimerascope, which I wrote about here. "Full" with quotation marks, since, much to my surprise, I have more published stories than I could fit into this second collection. The limited edition hardcover is available for pre-order now. The hardcover print run will be based solely on the pre-orders. A trade paperback edition will be available later.