Eugen Bacon
Foreword Reviews Weighs in on The Road to Woop Woop by Eugen Bacon
We were thrilled to learn that Eugen Bacon’s THE ROAD TO WOOP WOOP & OTHER STORIES was reviewed in the upcoming January/February issue of the magazine!! Reviewer Tanisha Rule’s insightful comments made our heart sing! Be sure to check out the magazine for the full review!
The short stories of Eugen Bacon’s The Road to Woop Woop contort in the audience’s imagination because of their original imagery, unique turns of phrase, and refreshing, diverse cast … Smart, ambitious, and daring … masterful in combining science fiction with reality, resulting in an unforgettable storytelling experience.
FOREWORD REVIEWS | TANISHA RULE
The Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories
Eugen Bacon’s work is deemed cheeky with a fierce intelligence in text that’s resplendent, delicious, dark and evocative. NPR called her novel Claiming T-Mo ‘a confounding mysterious tour de force’. The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories imbues the same lushness in a writerly language that is Bacon’s own. This peculiar hybrid of the untraditional, the extraordinary within, without and along the borders of normalcy will hypnotise and absorb the reader with tales that refuse to be labelled. The stories in this collection are dirges that cross genres in astounding ways. Over 20 provocative tales, with seven original to this collection, by an award-winning African Australian author.
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Eugen Bacon
Cover Reveal: Mage of Fools by Eugen Bacon
We are really excited to reveal the cover of Eugen Bacon’s upcoming novel: MAGE OF FOOLS, which will be published in March 2022. An Afrofuturistism tale set in the socialist country of Mafinga—plagued by climate change. Mafinga needs a savior as the socialist state is sick from the ravages of a dictator and his sorcerer. Jasmin’s strength is in books—what she knows might cleanse Mafinga of its deadly pollution. MAGE OF FOOLS is a story about the spirit of humanity, and free will. It’s about hopes and dreams, country, liberty and belonging. A secret story machine tells of fate, love and promise, charted by bold authors and their indelible scripts.
MAGE OF FOOLS by EUGEN BACON
In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator’s sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution.
Mafinga’s malevolent king dislikes books and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin’s husband Godi. But Jasmin has Godi’s secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin’s crime for possessing the machine and its forbidden literature filled with subversive text is punishable by death. Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin’s children as her own. Jasmin is powerless—until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer.
Excerpt
IT HAPPENED in slow motion. Jasmin ran inside the castle that stood atop a hill. She raced up the winding staircase, hands moving along its mahogany rail shimmering with sheen. The Heidi dress she wore, a flowing thing that plunged down her waist and touched just above her knees, rose and fell with her running. No belt, just front buttons going all the way down. She lit up a flight, up another, up, up. She rose with such thrill, such rush, all the way to the nursery in the northeast tower of the marble-coated monolith. She flung herself into the rotary room—it slowly moved, revolved: a sundial or a snail-paced merry-go-round. It was a tavern with faint music in the background, an odd melody, the hiss of a snake and a soft clash of cymbals. Arched doorways, pillars rimmed with gold. Bracelets of orange-flamed candles at half-mast. Along the walls hung dimly lit paintings inside veils of cloud, each with a version of the Garden of Eden. Eve leaning towards a behemoth serpent. Eve offering a glowing red apple to Adam. Eve and Adam running naked from an ash-haired God—a voluptuous woman full of breasts.
Jasmin caught sight of the children and her heart swelled. Two-year-old Mia in her unicorn pajama set, tiny shorts and a T-shirt. Four-year-old Omar in his all-over flying dragon jammies. They lay on the floor, head to head, as the nursery spun.
“My goatlings.”
Mia puckered up at the sight of Jasmin. Omar’s eyes filled with reproach. Days and days of their mother’s absence. She dropped to her knees, threw her arms wide. The children yanked out of their moment, soared within reach, fell into her breast.
. . . Pause.
Pause for a moment, that wasn’t the beginning of the story. Rewind, back, back down the stairs. Jasmin tearing backwards, down a flight, down another, down, down. Her rush, her thrill ebbing, as she moved away from the nursery, out of the castle with its white walls and white doors, mirrors everywhere. She walked backward along light-splashed lawns and their gardens full of blood-red flowers. She moved, not at a furious pace—just faster than slow. Back, back beyond the Ujamaa monuments of togetherness, sculpted hands of a village holding aloft a naked, black toddler with fat legs and plump cheeks. Back past the courthouse and its long windows, golden drapes in hourglass shapes, bound at the waist by melancholy ribbons. The courthouse splashed with lights from a trail of monster eyes hanging off the ceiling. A dais where the royals sat to give judgement. People went through the entryway peaked with spikes and never walked out.
Rewind all the way to the egg shuttle—it had no wings—where you entered coordinates into the console and the vessel took you for an intergalactic ride. The same shuttle that had seen the Neutral Zone, where you gazed at planets like Peridot and Tourmaline and they blinked brighter than jewelry. The shuttle that once lived in the land of Exomoon that had no shortage of xeriscape plants, its wild blooms, cacti and succulents, its sky of gargantuan rings by day and tiny moons by night. There, citizens changed color in more spectrum than chameleons. Same shuttle that airlifted Jasmin to her execution.
Granite entered Jasmin’s stomach as the vessel glided to height, then bulleted forward. As the starlit night stretched into the horizon, Jasmin was a prisoner in a silent egg in the sky. She looked down and saw the people of Ujamaa Village in a gather. They gazed up at the egg flickering with incandescent lights as it climbed higher into the skyline with its cargo. Jasmin wondered if, on the face of it, despite the crowd’s helplessness, some carried questions about what died, what lived, and the power of a crowd. She wondered if, one day, a turning point would swing without warning in Mafinga. And when that happened, if the same mob that stood with limp hands and gazed with bleak eyes at dusk and the egg soaring up the sky towards its scatter of stars, would reach the edge of its stupor, finally tremble and come to life in a murmur that lit up to a roar.
Beast Heart
2020 Awards Shortlisters, Longlisters so far!
It is that time of the year and we are already blown away at the showing from our 2020 catalog!
- VELOCITIES : STORIES by Kathe Koja (story collection) | Bram Stoker Award nominee, This is Horror Award nominee, Locus prelim ballot
- THE ATTIC TRAGEDY by J. Ashley-Smith (novella) | Bram Stoker Award prelim ballot, Aurealis Award nominee
- THE ROAD TO WOOP WOOP & OTHER STORIES by Eugen Bacon (story collection) | Foreword Indies Best Book of the Year nominee, BSFA longlist
- DEPRIVATION by Roy Freirich (novel) | Foreword Indies Best Book of the Year nominee
- ROAD SEVEN by Keith Rosson (novel) | Foreword Indies Best Book of the Year nominee
- BEAST HEART by Kyle Richardson (YA) | Foreword Indies Best Book of the Year nominee
We loved these books from the start and that’s why we published them, so it warms our heart to see these amazing authors’ babies getting the attention they deserve. We hope you’ll check them out if you haven’t already.
2020 Awards – Shortlisters & Longlisters
Previous Award Winners, Shortlisters, Longlisters
Dominique Hecq
Speculate Blog Tour & Giveaway
From what began as a dialog between two adventurous writers curious about the shape-shifter called a prose poem comes a stunning collection that is a disruption of language—a provocation. Speculate is a hybrid of speculative poetry and flash fiction, thrumming in a pulse of jouissance and intensity that chases the impossible.
GIVEAWAY
a Rafflecopter giveawayTOUR SCHEDULE
1/18 – Myweereads – Book Review
1/18 – Qwillery – Excerpt
1/19 – Sadie’s Spotlight – Excerpt
1/19 – Speculative Fiction Showcase – Excerpt
1/19 – LargeHeartedBoy – Playlist
1/20 – Tomes and Tales – Interview
1/20 – Curious Cat – Book Review
1/20 – Motherofzombiedragons – Book Review
1/21 – b for bookreview – Excerpt
1/22 – forthenovellovers – Book Review
1/25 – Earthy Soulful Things – Book Review
1/26 – T. Kent Writes – Guest Post
1/27 – All Things Jill-Elizabeth – Book Review
1/27 – PaulSemel.com – Interview
1/28 – The Next Best Book Club – Guest Post
1/28 – Vol.1 Brooklyn – Interview
1/28 – Suganya Mohankumar – Book Review
1/29 – Writing Forums – Interview
1/29 – Big Indie Books – Guest Post
Folk Songs3 months agoFolk Songs for Trauma Surgeons Blog Tour & Giveaway
- Dominique Hecq4 months ago
Speculate Blog Tour & Giveaway
- News2 months ago
Rebecca Gomez Farrell’s Wings Unfurled coming 2022
Eugen Bacon5 months agoThe Road to Woop Woop Blog Tour
- Folk Songs2 months ago
Aurealis Magazine Reviews Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons
- Kathe Koja2 months ago
2021 Summer Scares Reading List: The Cipher by Kathe Koja & More
- Beast Heart2 months ago
2020 Awards Shortlisters, Longlisters so far!
- Ariadne, I Love You4 months ago
2021 Releases from Meerkat Press
