Storey Books
You may have caught wind here on the blog of a 'Secret Project' being hatched by Mark Deniz over at his new - but rapidly expanding - publishing house Morrigan Books. Well, yesterday Mr Deniz whipped the covers off his grand scheme and now we can all talk about it. Hooray!
It's called Scenes from the Second Storey, and it involves writers penning short stories inspired by tracks on an album by one of Mark's favourite bands, The God Machine. That's 13 tracks, 13 writers.
There are a few interesting differences about this project, compared with the usual kind of thing I work on. Firstly, the book will be available in two editions - one featuring Australian writers only, the other an assembly of international talent. Theoretically I straddle both categories, but I'm down for the International book, not being a natural born 'Strayan. You can click on the link above to see the full line-ups, some 26 scribes in all.
Secondly Mark's commissioned me on the strength of my previous stories ... without my writing a single word by way of a pitch for this one. That's only ever happened once before (for the Old Friends novellas) and is something of a double-edged sword. On the up side, it's good to be contracted without having to go through the usual pitching rigmarole. But at the same time there's a lot of pressure to justify the undoubted faith shown by the editor for something he's buying, effectively, sight unseen ...
The story also stands out in one other regard. While the other writers get to interpret the lyrics from their songs while they're plotting their yarns, the track I've been selected to write for is an instrumental ... so no help there, then. All I've got is the tune and the one word title:
Temptation.
Lucky I've got a good idea then.
It's called Scenes from the Second Storey, and it involves writers penning short stories inspired by tracks on an album by one of Mark's favourite bands, The God Machine. That's 13 tracks, 13 writers.
There are a few interesting differences about this project, compared with the usual kind of thing I work on. Firstly, the book will be available in two editions - one featuring Australian writers only, the other an assembly of international talent. Theoretically I straddle both categories, but I'm down for the International book, not being a natural born 'Strayan. You can click on the link above to see the full line-ups, some 26 scribes in all.
Secondly Mark's commissioned me on the strength of my previous stories ... without my writing a single word by way of a pitch for this one. That's only ever happened once before (for the Old Friends novellas) and is something of a double-edged sword. On the up side, it's good to be contracted without having to go through the usual pitching rigmarole. But at the same time there's a lot of pressure to justify the undoubted faith shown by the editor for something he's buying, effectively, sight unseen ...
The story also stands out in one other regard. While the other writers get to interpret the lyrics from their songs while they're plotting their yarns, the track I've been selected to write for is an instrumental ... so no help there, then. All I've got is the tune and the one word title:
Temptation.
Lucky I've got a good idea then.
posted by Pete Kempshall at 11:39 AM
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