Dennis Danvers’ Web Site

This review appeared recently on Beam Me Up—

Tails of Wonder & Imagination
Edit by Ellen Datlow
from Night Shade Books

Do you think of yourself as a cat fancier? Do stories about cats or with cats as the main character garner more than just a little interest? Well have I got a book for you! Tails of Wonder edited by Ellen Datlow has collected some of the finest “catâ€? stories I have seen to date. Now I am not talking about the cutesy puss in boots tales (no pun intended) either. Some of the most heart wrenching and frightening stories are contained within the covers, by some of the most esteemed authors in the field today. Stephen King, George R.R. Martin and Mary A. Turrizllo to name a few. Mary’s story you might remember from an earlier BMU program, is Pride which tells the story of a long dead sabre tooth tiger brought back through regressive dna (I know, I am mangling the science) and the horrifying effect that the big cat has on modern society. Or the absolutely indescribable Cat Skin by Kelly Link and one of my favorites in the book Healing Benjamin by Dennis Danvers is absolutely heart breaking.

Forty two stories in all with a fine intro by Ellen gives enough selection than anyone is likely to find several well worth the cost of the volume. I thought I would be wanting at the end knowing that most of the stories would be classified as fantasy, but I had no problem getting to the end and often a lot of trouble just putting it down.

This would be one that I would suggest you checking out no matter what your main story venue is. I think even the most hardened amongst us can warm to this collection.

posted by Beam Me Up at 2:50 PM on May 13, 2010

Summer school starts Monday, so I’m crazy busy.  I’ll be back with news from that front when time allows.

I just heard today that Realms of Fantasy will be publishing another story of mine, “The Banjo Singer.”  While “Here’s What I Know,” previously published by Realms mythologized my father’s life, this one’s about my mom, by way of the fantastic, of course.  Here’s how it begins—

The Banjo Singer

Marie’s father was a large man with hands square and flat like coal shovels.  He owned the music store where Marie worked—like her dead mother before her.  She was a quiet girl, slim and slightly bent like a young tree planted in the way of a tireless north wind, but stronger for it.  There was something discomforting in her gaze if you looked her in the eye, and so Marie rarely looked others in the eye, not wanting to make anyone uncomfortable.

Afternoons she helped her father among the tubas and piccolos and banjoes and violins and thought them all of  no real importance.  Wood tubes, bent brass, strung wires and cat gut—they were dead things.  She wanted to be a singer.  She was a singer.  She wanted this all her life, though few had ever heard her sing.   Even at birthday parties or at Christmas when everyone sang, she always busied herself doing something else.  In church, she never voiced the words, for she knew if prayers were answered, her life would be quite different altogether….

  WRIR, 97.3 in Richmond, one of our favorite radio stations, was in attendance at Fountain Bookstore the other night for one of the Richmond Noir readings.  Check it out:  “Richmond Gets to Tell its Own Dark Story.”  Don’t miss the audio clip, and be sure to wait for the end where I give it my best Texas for the first paragraph of “Texas Beach.”  A big thanks to Kelly Justice of Fountain and Caroline Jackson of WRIR for their support of local writers.

Brian Castleberry and I were on TV Thursday morning promoting Richmond Noir and the wonderful New York Deli event.  Here‘s a link to the video.  Jay Leno, eat your heart out.

As I said in a previous post, I’ve waited a long time for this.  I keep looking at the name on the cover.  Gordon sees fit to give the story an adult WARNING, so I suppose I should too.  Any adults out there?  Never mind.  Here’s the first paragraph to get you started:

Let’s start with the part where you won’t like me much, then take it from there.  No excuses.  I was married to a nice man with a little girl three years old, when I fell in love with another man and left my husband, lost my child in the custody battle, and ended up in the high Rockies with my lover.  He changed.  What did I know?  I’d known him nine months when he shot himself in our cabin, the dead of winter.  I dragged him outside so he’d freeze solid and I could figure out what to do with him, but before I figured it out, something dragged him off.  When the thaw came, I got down off the mountain.  I live in the city now, a different one from where my husband lives.  He’s remarried, moved on.  My daughter calls her stepmother Mom last I heard, though she’s old enough by now to have a daughter of her own.  I leave them alone.  That’s the only thing I’m proud of in that story, not that I ever tell it.  So that’s who you’re dealing with.  In case you think it matters—a person’s best-forgotten, sordid past.  For what it’s worth, I’ve changed too.

In the latest issue of Richmond Magazine, hot off the presses, “Texas Beach” from Richmond Noir is reprinted in its entirety with some terrific illustrations by Barry Bruner.  They can be seen at his blog here.  Run right out and buy 5 copies to give all your friends or perfect strangers.  Or the next time you’re getting a root canal or waiting for an eye exam, remember I’m probably in the pile of magazines in the waiting room.  Skip the People.  Read some noir.

“Healing Benjamin” which appeared in Realms of Fantasy and Tails of Wonder has been included in the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009.

In other good news, my story in Richmond Noir, “Texas Beach,” will represent the collection in the March issue of Richmond Magazine.  The editors of Richmond Noir have set up a slew of events to promote the book.  Check here for a complete list and frequent updates.  The first event will be Thursday February 11th at noon at the Virginia State Library.  I’ll be reading with Laura Browder, Dean King, and Meagan Saunders.  Able editors Tom De Haven, Brian Castleberry, and Andrew Blossom will also be there.  The collection is terrific, by the way.  I’m proud to be included.

Publishers Weekly December 21, 2009

Tails of Wonder and Imagination Edited by Ellen Datlow. Night Shade (www.nightshadebooks.com), $15.95 paper (480p) ISBN 978-1-59780-170-6

Few things alarm the experienced reader more than the prospect of a science fiction, fantasy, or mystery book that involves—or worse, fetishizes—cats. This reprint anthology is the exception, an assortment of 40 stories by authors who are for the most part willing to take cats on their own ground. Datlow avoids the trap of a too-narrow premise: though there appears to be a slight bias toward horror, the stories are various within that field, from Jack Ketchum’s ghost story “Returnsâ€? to Michaela Roessner’s highly scientific “Mieze Corrects an Incomplete Representation of Realityâ€? and Edward Bryant’s brilliantly repellent “Bean Bag Cat.â€? Other tales are amusing, like Lawrence Block’s “The Burglar Takes a Cat,â€? or gently sentimental, like Dennis Danvers’s “Healing Benjamin.â€? This is that rarity of rarities: an anthology of cat stories worth reading. (Feb.)

Electric Velocipede is one of the cooler publications around, and I just got the good news that one of my stories, “The Art Disease,” will appear sometime in the coming year.  2010 is proving to be a good year, and it’s not even here yet.

Till then, here’s the opening—

Derek and Emily had the art disease, the both of them.  Everyone they knew had it too.  That’s one of the symptoms:  Colonies, clusters, movements, splinter groups, manifestos.  Clumping, the experts call it.  She had a master’s in design and decorated cakes at Food One, not the one on 17^th but the one near the park, open till midnight.  He refused to sell out.  He was determined to support himself with his art.

Selling poems in the park didn’t work out.  He didn’t get that many buyers, and when he did, he spent way too much time discussing the poems with them—arguing actually—instead of writing new ones, but it bothered him when he was misunderstood, and it seemed he was doomed to be misunderstood—another symptom of the disease.  He tried prose—carefully observed reflections on the vicissitudes of life—after taking a weekend workshop called Driveway Moments:  The Eternity of Now.  No demand.  Light travel pieces with a profound undercurrent proved no better, partly because he hadn’t done much traveling and couldn’t afford to do more.  He had plenty of profound undercurrent, just nowhere to put it.

I have a new story available in the latest issue of Space and Time.  Along with other fine fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.  It’s a delightfully weird story.  I think y’all should run right out and get a copy.  Barnes & Noble has it, btw.  Here’s the table of contents:

Fiction:

• Small Motel by Dennis Danvers
• To Remember Riobarre by Alma Alexander
• Love and War by Patrick Lundrigan
• End of Our World as We Know It by Robert Swartwood
• Saving Hitler by Chuck Rothman
• Saint Michael’s Sword by Andrew Alford
• The Mambo King of the Inter-Dimensional Dance Floor by C. J. Henderson

Poetry:

• A Mystic by Candlelight by Tennen Dell
• Al Azif by T. Frazer-Eliot
• Nom de Tube by Carolyn Hawkins
• Pixies by Kristine Ong Muslim
• Hunter’s Moon – Wyoming by John Hayes
• From Tindalos by Wade German
• Dancing in the Room by Kiel Stuart
• When We Come for Us by Ann K. Schwader

Non-Fiction:

• Word Ninja by Linda D. Addison
• Review by Sam Tomaino

Cover Art:

• Ben Fogletto