INTERVIEW | Bradley P. Beaulieu on His New Series

Already Bradley P. Beaulieu has released the first two books of The Lays of of Anuskaya series in the last two years. The third and final book The Flames of Shadam Khoreh is expected later this year along with his first Kickstarter collection Lest Her Passage Be Forgotten. The collection will also feature at least new 2 stories related to Lays. Now he is branching off into a new world and he just became much busier.

MH: You just signed for a new trilogy with DAW. It seems like the series name is Song of the Shattered Sands. What is the new series about and do you have a working title for the first book?


BRADLEY: That's right! The working title of the first book is Twelve Kings in Sharakhai. It's a story set in a powerful desert city that controls the flow of trade and spice through otherwise impassable terrain.


The story is about Çeda, a woman who fights in the pits to scrape a living from the cruel but beautiful city she calls home. As the story opens, she discovers that the book her mother left her before she died holds the clues to the unraveling the mystery of her mother’s death, which was tangled up in the story of the Twelve Kings of Sharakhai, men who have ruled the desert with an iron fist for nearly two hundred years. As Çeda begins to unlock the secrets hidden within the poems in the book—as well as what her mother was trying to do before she died—the Kings learn of her, and they will stop at nothing to keep those secrets buried in the desert where they belong. And so the chase is on. Çeda must unlock the hidden riddles of her mother’s book before the Kings find her. She had better hope she does, for she is the last hope for the people of the desert.

Beaulieu's Kickstarter Collection

MH: What was the germ of the idea that started it? Is it related to any of your short work?



BRADLEY: I wrote a story called "From the Spices of Sanandira", which was published by Scott Andrews in his literary adventure fantasy zine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. You can still read the story there for free. Because it was (ahem) a longish short story, it was split over Issue 70 and Issue 71.



Spices had the same feel as I was shooting for with the new series, but I needed to widen the scope a bit and deepen some of what was there. I truly hate treading the same ground, so I used that story only as inspiration, groundwork for the new series. (Anyone who reads it, though, will see a return of the desert sailing ships, which I liked too much to get rid of.)



I also wanted to pay homage to stories that affected me when I was younger, so while there aren't direct influences, the astute reader will see touches of A Thousand and One Nights, Thieves' World, and perhaps even a touch of Elric of Melniboné in this epic tale.

MH: When might we see the first book?



BRADLEY: We'll see. The schedule is still up in the air. The first book is about a third written, and I plan to turn that in late this year. I don't know when the first book might get slotted but I'm hoping for late 2014 or early 2015.



MH: Now DAW seems like the perfect publisher for you. You write BIG books and DAW is known for their larger books and also supporting their authors long term.



BRADLEY: I completely agree. There are publishers I would have been proud to be a part of, but I do feel like my style is particularly suited to DAW Books. Part of that comes from reading so many stories published by DAW when I was younger. I paid no attention at all to publishers back then, but my future editor, Betsy Wollheim, was bringing along wonderful talents like Tad Williams and Celia Friedman, who would shape the way I read and now, how I write.



MH: What did you do to celebrate?



BRADLEY: Ha! Again, we'll see. I had a nice lunch with my wife the day I heard, but I like to do these things right. I'm a bit of a foodie, so I'm probably going to hit a favorite food place in Milwaukee or Chicago one of these weekends. I'm a huge Rick Bayless fan, so Topolobampo might be in order. Sanford's and the Hinterland Gastropub in Milwaukee are also abnormally good restaurants. So probably one of those three.

*/****\*

Follow Beaulieu on twitter or at his blog for the latest news.

NEWS | Info on the Ray Bradbury Tribute Anthology

I mentioned news of a Ray Bradbury tribute anthology a couple months ago called Live Forever!, which has since been re-tilted to Shadow Show. The title is a reference to Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, which is the circus from Something Wicked Comes This Way. The cover seen above looks to be the final and judging by the style I'd bet money on it being done by Tom Gauld who also recently did the covers for the Gaiman and Sarrantonio anthology Stories as well as Matthew Hughes' The Damn Busters. Here is the blurb:

Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America’s most beloved authors. In a much-celebrated literary career that has spanned seven decades, he has produced an astonishing body of work. In Shadow Show, editors Sam Weller and Mort Castle have collected short stories from 27 of the most celebrated authors today to honor Ray Bradbury and his contribution to the literary canon.

The revealed list of contributors includes: Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Dave Eggers, Harlan Ellison, Alice Hoffman, Dean Koontz, Audrey Niffenegger, David Morrell, Lee Martin, Ramsey Campbell, Robert McCammon, Dan Chaon, Joe Meno, Kelly Link, Jay Bonansinga, Sam Weller, Thomas F. Monteleone, John McNally, Mort Castle, John Maclay, Gary Braunbeck, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Charles Yu, Julia Keller, Bayo Ojikutu, and Jacquelyn Mitchard. The big names that weren't on the previous list I had include Charles Yu and Kelly Link. So you could definitely say I want Shadow Show come its July 17th release date.

Cover Unveiled for The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

After five years of waiting more concrete information on  Paolo Bacigalupi's first adult book since The Windup Girl has been revealed. The title The Water Knife has been floating around for at least the last 2 years as he worked on his younger audience books such as Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, and Zombie Baseball Beatdown. Now we have the cover and a description to boot.

The eagerly anticipated follow-up novel by the best-selling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Windup Girl: a scorching thriller born out of today’s front-page headlines that preys on our worst fears about potential catastrophic failures awaiting us in our resource starved future. Think Roman Polanski’s Chinatown as written by Michael Crichton. WATER IS POWER.


In the very near future, the American Southwest is battling for water. Phoenix is covered in dust, desolate, and on the verge of total breakdown. Severe drought has demolished Texas. Nevada, as always, is trying to cash in.


Into the fray, steps Angel Velasquez, a water knife working for Las Vegas water mogul Catherine Case. Case is in the Arcology business, opulent real estate in which lush, luxury living environments are raised out of dry earth. Zipping around in his tricked out Tesla, Angel “cuts” water for Case. Hijacking pumping stations or unearthing long forgotten water rights, he is a detective and mercenary rolled into one. When an informant shows up dead in Phoenix, Angel is sent to find out what has happened. It turns out that a major power play is taking place, and the race is on to find a long-forgotten deed between the state of Arizona and a Native American tribe that grants Phoenix the rights to enough water to rebuild itself but to crush Las Vegas in the process. Angel is not the only one hunting down the old agreement. A shady West Coast conglomerate is watching closely, as is Lucy Monroe, a journalist and Phoenix native, desperate to save her city. Angel and Lucy are natural enemies, but the two realize the only way they may stay alive is by joining forces. The missing piece to the puzzle is Maria, a fifteen-year-old Texas migrant, blessed with street smarts, but burdened by getting herself into something over her head. Pretty soon the body count begins to rise, alliances come in to question, and it looks like either Phoenix or Las Vegas is going down in flames.

The Water Knife is currently scheduled for an August, 2015 release from Knopf. For those who can't wait for more Bacigalupi, his latest YA book The Doubt Factory will be out this October.