Tracie McBride ~ Day 19 of 365 Days of Great Authors and Giveaways

Tracie McBride is a New Zealander who lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and three children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 80 print and electronic publications, including Horror Library Vols 4 and 5, Abyss and Apex, Dead Red Heart and Electric Velocipede. She won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best New Talent for 2007. Her short story and poetry collection “Ghosts Can Bleed” was released in April 2011 by the writer's co-operative Dark Continents Publishing, of which she is vice president. She welcomes visitors to her blog


1) What genres are your favorites to read? How about to write in?

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool speculative fiction fan, both as a reader and a writer. Although my writing is firmly rooted in science fiction and fantasy traditions, it often crosses over into horror territory.

2) Who is one of your favorite characters that you have written? Please tell us about him/her and what book they are in.

The funny thing is, I often don’t like my characters very much, which is why I don’t mind doing horrible things to them. Most writers put a piece of themselves in their work, and the character who most resembles me is the freshly deceased mother-of-three Sharon in the story “Last Chance to See”. I have a lot of empathy for Brother Tomas in “Baptism”, who despite his ultimate failure, is a good guy with honourable intentions. And the amoral “tiger” from “The Last Tiger” was the most fun to imagine and set loose on an equally amoral world. All three of these short stories are in my collection Ghosts Can Bleed.

3) For those who have not read your work yet, what book would you recommend starting with?

As I write short stories and poems, you can find a bit of me here, a bit of me there… Ghosts Can Bleed is my collected speculative fiction works from 2005 to 2010, but you can also get a taste of more recent work in the e-book April Fool and other Antipodean horror stories and in the print anthology The Spectrum Collection.

4) Where can readers find and connect with you on the web?

I hang out in all the usual places – Facebook, Goodreads and on my blog. Much as I am tempted, I don’t tweet, as I fear that if I add one more social networking site to my list, then my butt might become permanently melded to my computer chair. ;-) I love making friends that I haven’t yet met, so don’t be shy, come on over and befriend me!

Links – Facebook ~ Goodreads ~ Blog

5) What is one thing that you could not live without?

A good, convenient and reliable internet connection. Our modem broke down last year, and I was having withdrawal symptoms within a few hours.

Book Spotlight!

Ghosts Can Bleed

Alien landscapes and mythic societies…creatures of the night and the more terrifying monsters of the human psyche…

Be warned: Ghosts Can Bleed… but it’s not just the blood you should be worried about…

Last Chance To See – what if you had a chance to attend your own funeral? A reincarnation facility offers this opportunity, but you won’t be quite as your family remembered…

House Arrest – Angela misses the social event of the year when she realises that there’s no place like home– and no dietary aid in the world like it, dahlings!

Baptism – Brother Tomas is the fourth friar to visit the island of Koreka with a holy mission: to save the immortal souls of the mermaids who live there. But the mermaids have an unholy baptism of their own to offer…

Killing A Goddess - The Goddess demands a sacrifice, and Laura is a willing volunteer. It is a great honour for the five young men chosen to assist in the ritual. But do they really know what they are letting themselves in for?

Ghosts Can Bleed - Maurice knows, because he is one…

DreamCatcher – will prevent bad dreams coming through to you. But what do you do with the nightmares that are caught in it? What if you could return them to their owners?

Rush Hour – Virgil retreads Dante’s Inferno, twenty-first century style. Wasps, tornadoes and dirty nappies block his path – and that’s before the motorway…

Marked – being scarred by lightning is like being touched by the hand of God. This divine spark is essential, because only the Marked can see the creatures that hunger for us…

Blue Screen of Death – Sara’s dead. Again. With Heaven’s computer system failing, and God on holiday, it’ll take a genius hacker to fix it. Problem is, he’s not on Heaven’s database…

Diagnosis – all aspects of human health can be scientifically measured, analysed and assessed. But there’s one measure Dr Chad has neglected to notice…

By turns terrifying, darkly comic, surreal and stomach-churning, these forty one stories and poems from award-winning author Tracie McBride open the veins of the world to show humanity in a different – and much darker – light.

Excerpt from “Baptism”

Brother Tomas drew his habit tightly around himself, a futile gesture against the biting sea wind. He eyed the tiny island in the middle of the bay that would be his new home. He had been in Koreka for less than a half a day, and already he was homesick for the Secoduna Desert. His superiors had decreed that he be sent here, and they took their instruction directly from God, but sometimes he wondered if they might not occasionally be mistaken in their interpretation. Have faith, Brother, he silently chastised himself. Surely, this was no mistake; if anyone could succeed where others had failed, it would be him.
“You're the fourth friar I've rowed out there in as many months,” said Mellie, the rawboned young woman who had been assigned as his escort. She gripped the oars with two windchapped, meaty hands and leaned back, sending the little boat surging against the wavelets. “But I didn't row any of them back, not alive, leastways. What makes you think you'll do better?”
“Greater experience, true devotion to and faith in Our Lord, and a plentiful supply of chasteberry tea.” Tomas smiled and patted his rucksack. His smile faded as he sniffed the air. “What's that smell?”
Mellie looked over her shoulder. A large log bobbed in the water several feet away. Mellie grinned humourlessly and rowed harder until they grew level with the object. A ripe, overwhelming stench rose from it. The 'log' had a face.
The corpse floated on its back, its eye sockets empty and its mouth open to the sky. It still wore its shirt, cravat and jacket, but was naked from the waist down. Its groin was a ragged mess of tattered, bloodless flesh. Tomas retched and covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve.
“What's the matter, Brother?” said Mellie. “Haven't you ever seen a dead man before?”
“I've dealt with many bodies, but they were all...”
“Less chewed?”
“I was going to say 'drier'.”
“You'd better get used to it. Most of them wash up on your island.” Mellie picked up a pike, hooked it through the dead man's shirt and dragged it to the side of the boat. With a grunt, she hauled it over the side and dropped it at Tomas's feet, sending up a fresh miasma of decay.
“They all think they can withstand the lure of the mermaids' song. We try to warn them, but...” She shook her head.
“...but if you tried too hard, it might be bad for business,” Tomas finished. With all the able-bodied menfolk of the town either dead or moved away, their traditional livelihood of fishing was defunct, their nets left to rot on the shore. Perversely, the town thrived, their boats converted from functional fishing vessels to pleasure craft as men flocked from all parts of the country. Most came seeking to satisfy their prurient curiosity, some came to challenge themselves, but save for a few wretched suicides, they all expected to live to tell the tale.
But Tomas was not here for those misguided men. He was here to save the mermaids' immortal souls.
As if in response to his thoughts, a dozen sleek heads broke the surface of the water within arm's length of the boat. Mellie hissed and smacked at the mermaids with her oar. They hissed back and retreated to a safer distance.
“They like to hang around and gloat when we bring in a body, the filthy bitches.” She spat into the sea. Her spittle rested for an instant on the surface before dissipating. “Pardon my language, Brother.”
Tomas barely heard her. He crossed himself as the mermaids encircled the boat, his eyes never leaving them. He had been told that there were no mermen, and that in the absence of available human partners, mermaids coupled with other sea creatures. Indeed, he could see evidence of this in their features; one had a fat round face that bristled with spikes, suggesting that she had been sired by a puffer fish. Another, with her tiny little black eyes set wide on either side of an elongated face, was undoubtedly the offspring of a shark. The impression intensified as she opened her mouth and gave a gurgling approximation of a human laugh, displaying three rows of razor sharp teeth.
He had also been told that, even when they were not singing, the mermaids exuded a malignant glamour, and that to be in close proximity with one was to experience temptation on an almost unbearable scale. His manhood stiffened and pressed against his breechclout, and he shuffled painfully in his seat, anxious to conceal it from Mellie. He had resisted the advances of many a bejewelled Secoduna beauty, yet one look at these creatures and he had to grip the sides of the boat to stop from flinging himself into the water.
“A new man of God!” the shark-like one said. Her voice bubbled like slow-boiling porridge, and Tomas's stomach roiled. “I do hope you will be as...entertaining as the last ones.” Her tail undulated, propelling her torso above the water's surface, and she flung back her long black hair to thrust her breasts at him.
Nobody had told him about the gills.

Giveaway!

I don't know about you, but after reading this and checking out Tracie's books, I am dying to get my hands on a few!!!  Tracie is generously giving one lucky winner a print copy of Ghosts Can Bleed - and this is open Internationally!  How cool is that?  To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below and feel free to leave a question and/or comment for Tracie below!  Contest is open until Midnight, January 28th!

Good Luck, Everyone!



a Rafflecopter giveaway