Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Amphisbaena and Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion has now been out for a couple of months, and there are some new reviews coming out in the fall, as well as a couple of events I'm scheduled to attend, and information about the book tour. I'm pleased to say I've finished a new book, Amphisbaena (pronounced 'am-fis-bee-nuh'), and am putting it through the first revisions. Amphisbaena is an experimental romance novel involving the relationship between a man (Bill Sherman, a struggling calendarist) and a woman he meets while speed-dating. This woman happens to be a giant, two-headed snake, which takes on the form of two women. In order to date one of them, he has to date both of them, by their rule. It's both or none, indefinately. One woman is the alpha head, or the 'upper half', and the other plays the enticer head, or 'lower half'.
Each woman represents one of the heads of the Amphisbaena, which functions with each head working in tandem for a single goal. In their past, this was for killing and eating men, but in the book, in our current times, they're trying to cease this in order to achieve something higher, and want to understand the intrinsically human notions of beauty, trust, and at some point, love. The charmer head entices men close, tempts and transfixes them, while the alpha head delivers the killing bite once the man is entranced, though in Amphisbaena, the snake uses this same system for dating, being the only way it knows to interract with men. Much of it comes from Greek mythology, yes. Below, you'll find a teaser image of Amy, the upper half, straight from the special features I'm putting together for the book.
I've received a ton of comment on the special features I created for Tatterdemalion, and this time around, I'm throwing a lot of myself into the special features for Amphisbaena. Trailers, animation, video, 24 audio tracks, 12 features (many with numerous sub-features), articles, explanatory notes, concept art, alternate cover art, a bit of history, some hidden features... and there's even more. The project is nearly completed, as well. Here's one of the images (scaled way down) from the concept art.



That's it for now. There will be more to come on both Tatterdemalion and Amphisbaena. Hope everyone enjoyed Summer. I spent mine writing, revising, and making covers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ray--

Interesting to see what you are up to these days. And thanks very much for your heartfelt remarks about Corey Mesler's poems.