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Two novels mentioned in The Secret App

My novels The Beasts of Electra Drive and The Imagination Thief (and one of my main writing locations) are mentioned in a beautifully-produced new app that I’m pleased to be a small part of—“The Secret App”, which reveals “secret” places in big cities. As one of the app’s 57 Londoners, I present six off-the-beaten-track locations in London that I enjoy and/or make use of, which deserve to be better known than they are:

https://thesecret.app/profile/l5q4hyGyYn6M7m5PhdXEYilbbzf4fz/Rohan-Quine

And I explain why I’ve made the choice, at the bottom of the app’s individual page for each of those six locations, including the following trio of places.

The Imagination Thief mentioned in The Secret App

First, my novel The Imagination Thief is mentioned in my explanation on The Secret App’s page about Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park:

https://thesecret.app/secrets/3676/tower-hamlets-cemetery-park

where I say, “This is nearly 30 acres of gloriously dilapidated gravestones and woodlands, being the burial place of hundreds of thousands who lived and died in the hard-scrabble East End since the mid-19th century. Untamed, unsanitised and irreplaceable, it’s open 24 hours a day—though this is no kind of cosy neighbourhood, so if you go there at night, you may want to pack heat. Embedded in the ebook format of my novel The Imagination Thief is a short film called “ALAIA 34”, which I have affectionate memories of shooting in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park (as can be seen in this handful of stills from the film).”

Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"

Some of those film stills are on this page here, showing one or two glorious Victorian Gothic tombs. The film “ALAIA 34” (4’56”) is a suggestion of a couple of The Imagination Thief’s main characters, foreshadowing their love for each other—the charismatic singer Alaia Danielle and the narrator Jaymi Peek. Being located in a cemetery, the film also foreshadows their deaths, although neither of them dies in the novel. (That’s not a spoiler.) Produced by Tiresias Media and me, it was filmed by Robert Chilcot and excellently edited by him, using a complex layering of images.

Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"

Playing Alaia (with me as Jaymi), Alexis Worrell radiated her stunning allure across that landscape of death: for some shots she climbed up high onto a grand tomb; and then for just one or two of her other close-ups, Robert set aside the HDV camera and used a venerable Super-8 celluloid camera instead, so as to capture Alexis’s amazing beauty through this retro film format’s subtly sensuous colours and its flickery home-movie-like evocation of our half-remembered past and our half-imagined future, both of which will one day fade into oblivion.

In The Imagination Thief’s ebook format, this film “ALAIA 34” can be seen on the title page of the novel’s Part I, which is called “Ghost town arrival: spotlight with Alaia”. The film can also be seen on this website, on Vimeo, on YouTube, on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) or right here below. The film’s audio is an extract from the novel’s audiobook format, performed by me, being excerpted from mini-chapter 34 “Big Bang: song of death”.

Film “ALAIA 34” in Rohan Quine’s The Imagination Thief
Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Rohan Quine as Jaymi Peek, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Rohan Quine as Jaymi Peek, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"

Another edit of our footage from that fabulous cemetery appears in one more film, “ALAIA 8” (3’57”), in which Jaymi whirls Alaia and himself through a couple of her own private memories and an intimate fantasy of hers: “You can’t coil around the hovering Jaymi viewpoint, because it is just a viewpoint and you are just sugar; yet it seems that you want to.” This film’s audio is also an extract from The Imagination Thief’s audiobook format, being excerpted from the novel’s mini-chapter 8 “The statue of black sugar”. “ALAIA 8” can be seen on Vimeo, on YouTube and right here below.

Film “ALAIA 8”, for Rohan Quine’s The Imagination Thief
Rohan Quine as Jaymi Peek, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"
Alexis Worrell as Alaia Danielle, in film "ALAIA 34" in Rohan Quine's novel "The Imagination Thief"

The Beasts of Electra Drive mentioned in The Secret App

Then, over on The Secret App’s page about the Leake Street Graffiti Tunnel, my novel The Beasts of Electra Drive is mentioned:

https://thesecret.app/secrets/130/leake-street-graffiti-tunnel

where I say, “This is a wide 300-metre-long tunnel entirely covered with ever-changing street art and graffiti, all of which adds up to a blast of energy and some of which is awesome. I discovered it when I was launching my novel The Beasts of Electra Drive in 2018 in a bookshop that was located (no longer) beside the Tunnel’s south entrance. If you breathe in deeply, you may get high from a multi-coloured scent of spray-paint, as there’s almost always new artwork gong up somewhere in the Tunnel.”

That joyful bookshop event beside the Tunnel was a joint launch of Dan Holloway’s novella Kill Land and of The Beasts of Electra Drive, compered in generous fashion by novelist Jane Davis, as part of Safeena Chaudhry’s Novel London series. Links to them, plus various videos and photos of the fun, may be found at:

One of my writing locations in The Secret App

Finally, another page on The Secret App focuses on somewhere that’s been one of my main writing locations, i.e. the far north-west corner of the third-floor lobby of the National Theatre:

https://thesecret.app/secrets/3672/national-theatre–the-far-north-west-corner-of-the-third-floor-lobby

where I say, “This secret is not the National Theatre, nor anything to do with theatre. This secret IS that the corner of the third-floor lobby overlooking the Thames is a great venue in which to write a novel (as I’m currently doing there) or to do anything else that requires long periods of solitude-in-public-with-headphones. It’s an obscure enough storey not to be crowded, yet the far north-west corner of the third-floor lobby has a grand river view, tables and chairs and (a rare and vital thing) enough electrical sockets; it’s free to use, with no need to buy anything in order to work there; and it’s open until late evening, six days a week.”

Here are a few snapshots that were snapped in that very place, during a session working on tale number 7.

Rohan Quine in third-floor lobby of National Theatre, London
Third-floor lobby of National Theatre, London (photo by Rohan Quine)
Third-floor lobby of National Theatre, London (photo by Rohan Quine)
Third-floor lobby of National Theatre, London (photo by Rohan Quine)
Rohan Quine in third-floor lobby of National Theatre, London

Best of luck to The Secret App, which can be downloaded via this page.

Rohan Quine on The Secret App
Rohan Quine on The Secret App

https://thesecret.app/profile/l5q4hyGyYn6M7m5PhdXEYilbbzf4fz/Rohan-Quine

All the audiobooks are now on Spotify

Spotify in the UK has today started offering audiobooks, including my titles. (Spotify in the U.S. began offering them earlier this year.)

Rohan Quine's titles at Spotify

Narrated by me, they’re all literary fiction with a touch of magical realism and a dusting of horror, to expand and electrify—celebrating the beauty, darkness and mirth of this predicament called life, where we seem to have been dropped without sufficient consultation ahead of time.

The Beasts of Electra Drive on Spotify is at https://open.spotify.com/show/51lAU8HOK6D1TAmYJwa6OK?si=0168c29150a44584

The Imagination Thief is at https://open.spotify.com/show/0cmhfByxujEK5BfIl3RYJU?si=28004ba75f1045c5

The Platinum Raven at https://open.spotify.com/show/0G2oUu3tPN2ZRYDyOLXWsB?si=b8f90ac694dc40e9

The Host in the Attic at https://open.spotify.com/show/1IQNpBiAttP34J7UcTMsi9?si=6f05201e2fd845ae

Apricot Eyes at https://open.spotify.com/show/5bw4Z0kQ90BP0KZoi8UBd1?si=3ea690ee2ac3439e

Hallucination in Hong Kong at https://open.spotify.com/show/4JMAyIfE1mXUOC2cZ8uL14?si=f2ee88a3bb3443d9

All six (so far) are lined up together in a parade of love and poison, like a murder suspects’ line-up, at https://open.spotify.com/search/Rohan%20Quine/audiobooks

Rohan Quine's titles at Spotify

The six titles all receive accolades from the NYC Big Book Award

Glad to see my six published titles have all received accolades from the NYC Big Book Award 2021. Although it’s not restricted to the U.S., the award’s inclusion of the letters “NYC” in its name feels like an apt bit of geography, because I was a New Yorker for a decade, and NYC was where four of the six titles were partly written and three of them were started.

First, the novel The Beasts of Electra Drive is Winner in the Cross Genre category:

https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021winners?lightbox=dataItem-kv3o9twm4

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - banner for Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Winner in Cross Genre category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Winner in Cross Genre category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Winner in Cross Genre category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - banner for Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Winner in Cross Genre category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Winner in Cross Genre category

 

The novel The Imagination Thief is a Distinguished Favorite in the Literary Fiction category:

https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021distinguishedfavorites?lightbox=dataItem-kv58kdf64

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Imagination Thief" as Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Imagination Thief" as Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Imagination Thief" as Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction category

 

The four novellas that constitute The Platinum Raven and other novellas (namely The Platinum Raven, The Host in the Attic, Apricot Eyes and Hallucination in Hong Kong) are a Distinguished Favorite in the Anthology category:

https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021distinguishedfavorites?lightbox=dataItem-kv58kdcn

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Platinum Raven and other novellas" as Distinguished Favorite in Anthology category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Platinum Raven and other novellas" as Distinguished Favorite in Anthology category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Platinum Raven and other novellas" as Distinguished Favorite in Anthology category

 

And The Beasts of Electra Drive‘s audiobook format, which I narrated, is also a Distinguished Favorite in the Audiobook-Fiction category:

https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021distinguishedfavorites?lightbox=dataItem-kv58kdcn2

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Distinguished Favorite in Audiobook-Fiction category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Distinguished Favorite in Audiobook-Fiction category

NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Distinguished Favorite in Audiobook-Fiction category

The full listings are at:

https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021winners
https://www.nycbigbookaward.com/2021distinguishedfavorites

Photos from the recording of The Imagination Thief’s video-book format

It was fun to return to the fuzzy-booth lifestyle, to record the video-book format of The Imagination Thief, whose audio track provided the novel’s recently-published first audiobook edition.

The video-camera only looked in one direction, to create the video-book that lives at

www.rohanquine.com/t-i-t-video-book

and the short-‘n’-snackable teasers from it (some less than a minute long), which live at

www.rohanquine.com/t-i-t-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-imagination-thief-video-book

But the following photos bring back memories of what was off-video-camera, around me in that cosy den whose walls were hung with black drapes and echo-banishing fuzzy black foam, sealed off from reality in a bubble of language and spotlight for hours, hidden away like a rabbit in its basement bedroom at the furthest end of a warren.

(The first 11 and the last five photos are by Paul Lucas.)

Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief'
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief'
Rohan Quine recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief'
Rohan Quine after recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine after recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine after recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine after recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)
Rohan Quine after recording the video-book format of his novel 'The Imagination Thief' (photo by Paul Lucas)

Video-book format and audiobook format of The Imagination Thief are released

It was great fun to perform the full text of The Imagination Thief recently, reading to camera through an autocue, with spongy walls of off-camera foam on either side of me. The resultant audiobook format of the novel is just starting to appear at the first few audiobook retailers, like a little dark orchid, as listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-audiobook

The resultant video-book format of the novel is free to watch at:

www.rohanquine.com/t-i-t-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (some of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-i-t-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-imagination-thief-video-book

The video-book and audiobook formats both resulted from the same recording, and are both complete and unabridged versions of the novel, with the same text as in the paperback and ebook formats.
 

For general juice and sugar about The Imagination Thief, see here.

For some great reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novel are here.

THE IMAGINATION THIEF (novel) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

The Imagination Thief by Rohan Quine is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people’s imaginations and memories. It’s about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.

 

THE IMAGINATION THIEF by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 13

THE IMAGINATION THIEF by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 22

THE IMAGINATION THIEF by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 52

THE IMAGINATION THIEF by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 77

THE IMAGINATION THIEF by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 115

2013 novel The Imagination Thief is gratefully chuffed to be included in a “best of the decade” list of six titles chosen by Dan Holloway

My 2013 novel The Imagination Thief is gratefully chuffed to be included in a “best of the decade” list of six titles chosen by Dan Holloway:

https://twitter.com/agnieszkasshoes/status/1210678118421323776

 

Dan Holloway's best-of-decade list for the 'Teens, including Rohan Quine's 'The Imagination Thief'

 

Part of the chuffingness results from the fact that Dan is alarmingly well-read in a grand array of literary genres and academic fields—his three Gold medals as Creative Thinking World Champion in the Mind Sports Olympiad in each of 2019 & 2017 & 2016, as well as his three Gold medals as Speed Reading World Champion in the same Olympiad in 2019 & 2018 & 2017, being just six visible cherries atop the wider Bakewell Tart of his various brilliant literary and activist and wicked-problem-solving works.

Being about to begin writing the seventh tale (a novel) next week at the very start of the ’Twenties, I’m very grateful to have received such supportive input from Dan throughout the ’Teens, ever since his generous 2013 review in The Guardian of my first tale The Imagination Thief and his generously detailed interview about that same novel at his eight cuts gallery.
 

For some nice reviews of The Imagination Thief, click here.

To see what The Imagination Thief is about, click here.

For some of the main talking points that stem from The Imagination Thief, see here.

Buy The Imagination Thief in paperback or ebook format.

 

Rohan Quine - The Imagination Thief - paperback front cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)

Front cover of paperback of The Imagination Thief

 
Rohan Quine - The Imagination Thief - paperback back cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)

Back cover of paperback of The Imagination Thief

 
Rohan Quine - The Imagination Thief - paperback full cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)

Full cover of paperback of The Imagination Thief

 

Seal of Approval at Awesome Indies, for Rohan Quine's "The Imagination Thief"Seal of approval at Ascribe, for Rohan Quine's "The Imagination Thief"

 

Add Rohan Quine’s The Imagination Thief paperback to Goodreads.
Add Rohan Quine’s "The Imagination Thief" paperback to Goodreads

 
Rohan Quine, The Imagination Thief, literary fiction, litfic, magical realism, horror, dark fantasy, cyberpunk, contemporary, science fiction, gay, transgender, LGBT, visionary, spectacular, Asbury Park, New Jersey, New York, small town, psychic, broadcast

Video-book format and audiobook format of Hallucination in Hong Kong are released

Following the recent release of its three sister novellas’ video-book and audiobook formats, these same two formats have just been released for my novella Hallucination in Hong Kong, wrapped in the radioactive-blackcurrant-coloured cover below.

The outlets for Hallucination in Hong Kong‘s audiobook are listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/hallucination-in-hong-kong-novella-audiobook

The video-book format of the novella is free to watch at:

www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (some of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book/short-teasers-for-hallucination-in-hong-kong-video-book

 

For general juice and sugar about the novella, see here.

For some nice reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novella are here.

HALLUCINATION IN HONG KONG (novella) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

In Hallucination in Hong Kong by Rohan Quine, sliding from joy to nightmare and back, a plane-flight frames a journey into Jaymi’s and Angel’s polarised identities and perceptions, where past and present merge in an obsessive fantasy of love, death, horror and apocalyptic beauty.

 

HALLUCINATION IN HONG KONG by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 1

HALLUCINATION IN HONG KONG by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 2

HALLUCINATION IN HONG KONG by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 3

Video-book format and audiobook format of The Platinum Raven are released

The video-book and audiobook formats of The Platinum Raven have just floated into being, through the haze of the desert between Dubai and the Hajar Mountains.

The outlets for The Platinum Raven’s audiobook are listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-platinum-raven-novella-audiobook

The video-book format of the novella is free to watch at:

www.rohanquine.com/t-p-r-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (some of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-p-r-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-platinum-raven-video-book

 

For general juice and sugar about the novella, see here.

For some nice reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novella are here.

THE PLATINUM RAVEN (novella) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

The Platinum Raven by Rohan Quine is a triple convulsion whereby our heroine Raven escalates herself into the Chocolate Raven and then the Platinum Raven, from London to Dubai to the tower in the hills in the desert—then back down again, forever changed.

 

THE PLATINUM RAVEN by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 5

THE PLATINUM RAVEN by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 31

THE PLATINUM RAVEN by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 25

Video-books screened at Foyles bookshop, in Novel London Literary Festival

I was pleased to be invited to lead a panel in the UK’s most iconic bookshop, Foyles on Charing Cross Road in London, for the opening session of a brand-new annual literary festival—the Novel London Literary Festival, organised by Safeena Chaudhry. Other sessions included a live edit by Dan Holloway (whose developmental editing made a great contribution to The Beasts of Electra Drive, being finely responsive to that novel’s specific vision), plus a lively compering by Norma Cohen of many authors’ readings, and a demonstration by Safeena of festival sponsor Vellum‘s well-regarded book-formatting software.

In my panel, alongside screenings of excerpts from the video-book formats of my novellas The Host in the Attic, The Platinum Raven and Apricot Eyes, Kim Sheldon gave a reading from her novel A Hidden Legacy and Adam Stevenson gave a reading from his novel The Death of the Dream Pedlar.

The first of the three videos here below shows my segment within the panel. In it, the screened excerpt from The Host in the Attic is that novella’s teaser VI(xiii) “queasier and churning and aslant”, which can also be seen on this site; the screened excerpt from The Platinum Raven is that novella’s teaser 6(v) “her devastating, desert-eyed perfection”, which can also be seen on this site; and the screened excerpt from Apricot Eyes is that novella’s teaser 5(i) “mouths silent-screaming”, which can also be seen on this site.


(This video is also on YouTube.)

 
In addition to the above, there was a secondary screening of video-book excerpts, which occurred in a breaktime during the festival. The following short video shows three snippets from this secondary screening. From the novel The Beasts of Electra Drive, this video shows projections of teaser 53(i) “behind the skin of night” and teaser 76(i) “power and enormous love”, both of which can also be seen on this site; and from the novella The Platinum Raven, this video shows a projection of teaser 10(ii) “aquiver and alone on the Hollywood hillside”, which can also be seen on this site.


(This video is also on YouTube.)

 
The following video shows the full duration of the panel, in which the conversation ranged from the evolving forms of slavery across recent centuries, through the wider context of the eighteenth century in particular, to the journey a novelist takes in creating a novel.


(This video is also on YouTube.)

 
More information about this dynamic new annual festival, plus other videos and photos from its inaugural 2019 outing, are at www.novellondon.co.uk. Thanks to Safeena for inviting me, and to Foyles’ Events Co-ordinator Clive Judd for his expert help in making sure those video-book screenings behaved themselves technically. (All photos below are by Safeena Chaudhry, except the book display photos and two group photos by Rosina Chaudhry.)
 

Rohan Quine's panel, Novel London Literary Festival 2019 (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)
An excerpt from The Platinum Raven‘s video-book format, screened in Foyles bookshop at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Safeena Chaudhry, and Rohan Quine's panel, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
Safeena Chaudhry, Kim Sheldon, Adam Stevenson and Rohan Quine, Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Novel London LitFest 2019 - Rohan Quine's panel session
Kim Sheldon, Adam Stevenson and Rohan Quine, Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Novel London LitFest 2019 group (photo by Rosina Chaudhry)
The authors and presenters at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Novel London LitFest 2019 - Rohan Quine's video-books screening
An excerpt from The Platinum Raven‘s video-book format, screened in Foyles bookshop at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Rohan Quine, Foyles, Novel London LitFest 2019 (photo by Rosina Chaudhry)
Rohan Quine, Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Rohan Quine's panel, Novel London Literary Festival 2019 (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)
An excerpt from Apricot Eyes‘s video-book format, screened in Foyles bookshop at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Rohan Quine, Foyles, Novel London LitFest 2019 (photo by Rosina Chaudhry)
Rohan Quine, Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Rohan Quine's books, Foyles, Novel London LitFest 2019
The Imagination Thief, The Beasts of Electra Drive and The Platinum Raven and other novellas on sale at Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Novel London LitFest 2019 - Rohan Quine's breaktime screening
An excerpt from The Platinum Raven‘s video-book format, screened in Foyles bookshop at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Rohan Quine's books, Foyles, Novel London LitFest 2019
Book display, Foyles bookshop, Novel London Literary Festival 2019
 

Novel London LitFest 2019 - Rohan Quine's breaktime screening
An excerpt from The Beasts of Electra Drive‘s video-book format, screened in Foyles bookshop at the Novel London Literary Festival 2019

Interviewed on Howard Lovy’s “Inspirational Indie Authors” podcast

It was a pleasure to have a wide-ranging chat with literary journalist Howard Lovy, when I was chuffed to be the guest on his “Inspirational Indie Authors” podcast:

Interview with Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy’s “Inspirational Indie Authors” podcast

A transcript of our conversation is available, alongside the audio, on ALLi’s site:

Interview with Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy’s “Inspirational Indie Authors” podcast, on the ALLi blog

 

 

Among other subjects, we talked about the flames at the heart of an artistic vision, when that vision is the most urgent use of its creator’s limited time on this little blue planet; about how such a vision is incapable of being bent, by market forces, into any other shape than its own authentic one; and about how its core reason-for-being is to be explosively and irreducibly itself to the max, with such force and beauty and rightness that it had to be what it is, and that serves up a gigantic and celebratory fuck-you to the world, expressing both the darkness and the brightness of its creator’s unique experience of being alive.

Aside from his good questions, I also like the groovy sound effects and brief musical embellishments that he’s made judicious use of, to mark the different sections. It would be cool to have the likes of those popping up around us all whenever we speak, even if we’re only buying a can of peas in the supermarket…

Many thanks to Howard for inviting me on—and for running such a civilised corner of the Interwebs, in these days when the politics of the world seem to be getting less civilised with every passing month.

The interview can also be found on:

Libsyn

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Overcast

Player FM

Stitcher

Pocket Casts

Vimeo

YouTube

 

 

Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 9

Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 1
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 2
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 3
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 4
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 5
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 6
Rohan Quine on Howard Lovy's 'Inspirational Indie Authors' podcast - 7

Video-book format and audiobook format of Apricot Eyes are released

In hot pursuit of the recent video-book and audiobook formats of The Host in the Attic, those same two formats have just been released for my novella Apricot Eyes, popping up like a pair of fierce little Downtown New York City divas.

The outlets for Apricot Eyes‘s audiobook are listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/apricot-eyes-novella-audiobook

The video-book format of the novella is free to watch at:

www.rohanquine.com/a-e-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (some of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/a-e-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-host-in-the-attic-video-book

 

For general juice and sugar about the novella, see here.

For some nice reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novella are here.

APRICOT EYES (novella) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

In Apricot Eyes by Rohan Quine, a cat-and-mouse pursuit through the New York City night involves a preacher, a psychic and a dominatrix, broadcast live on air—until a horror is unearthed, bringing two of them together and the third to a sticky end.

 

APRICOT EYES by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 5

APRICOT EYES by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 3

APRICOT EYES by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter 4

Video-book format and audiobook format of The Host in the Attic are released

Following on from last year’s filming of The Beasts of Electra Drive‘s video-book format in a sponge-insulated recording studio, I recently returned to the spongy-walled lifestyle in order to film The Host in the Attic‘s video-book. Like that earlier novel-length recording, this new novella-length one has also created an audiobook format, which has been popping up at the retailers like a little Venus flytrap, as listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-host-in-the-attic-novella-audiobook

The video-book format of the novel is also now available, all free to watch, and can be seen here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-h-i-t-a-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (some of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-h-i-t-a-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-host-in-the-attic-video-book

 

For general juice and sugar about the novella, see here.

For some nice reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novella are here.

THE HOST IN THE ATTIC (novella) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

The Host in the Attic by Rohan Quine is a hologram of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, digitised and reframed in cinematic style, set in London’s Docklands in a few years’ time.

 

THE HOST IN THE ATTIC by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter II

THE HOST IN THE ATTIC by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter III

THE HOST IN THE ATTIC by Rohan Quine - video-book format - chapter VI

Video-book format and audiobook format of The Beasts of Electra Drive are released

It was a blast to perform the full text of The Beasts of Electra Drive earlier this year, reading to camera through an autocue, with spongy walls of off-camera foam on either side of me. The resultant audiobook format of the novel has just appeared at the audiobook retailers (including Audible and iTunes / Apple Books), like a little winter fruit, as listed here:

www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-beasts-of-electra-drive-novel-audiobook

The resultant video-book format of the novel is also now available, all free to watch, and can be seen here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-b-e-d-video-book

And for some short-’n’-snackable teasers from the above (many of the teasers being less than a minute long), see here:

www.rohanquine.com/t-b-e-d-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-beasts-of-electra-drive-video-book

 

The video-book and audiobook formats both resulted from the same recording, and are both complete and unabridged versions of the book, with the same text as in the paperback and ebook formats.

The distributor has provided some give-away codes for the audiobook, for me to give away (which is the best thing to do with give-away codes). Each code will enable a free download of the audiobook by anyone who fancies hearing it with a view to writing a review of it at any of the retailers’ sites, or on Goodreads or Facebook or their own blog. For the moment, these are usable only in the U.S.A. or Canada. But if that’s where you are and if this sounds like you, then that would be faboo, thank you very much—let me know on rohan[dot]quine[at]outlook[dot]com, and I’ll send you a code. 🙂

For general juice and sugar about the novel, see here.

For some nice reviews of it, see here.

Links to the retailers of all the formats of the novel are here.

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE (novel) by Rohan Quine - audiobook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)
 

From Hollywood Hills mansions and Century City towers, to South Central motels and the oceanside refinery, The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan Quine spans a mythic L.A., following seven spectacular characters (or Beasts) from games designer Jaymi’s game-worlds. The intensity of those Beasts’ creation cycles leads to their release into real life in seemingly human forms, and to their combative protection of him from destructive rivals at mainstream company Bang Dead Games. Grand spaces of beauty interlock with narrow rooms of terror, both in the real world and in the incorporeal world of cyberspace. A prequel to Quine’s other five tales (and a Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018), The Beasts of Electra Drive is a unique explosion of glamour and beauty, horror and enchantment, exploring the mechanisms and magic of creativity itself.

 

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 14

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 33

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 41

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 67

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 105

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 120

The Beasts of Electra Drive is a Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018

I’m chuffed to see The Beasts of Electra Drive has been listed as a Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018, in the LGBT category:

www.independentauthornetwork.com/2018-book-of-the-year-winners.html

Of the novel’s seven Beasts (who are all 100% human in appearance), three sit clearly in the LGBT constellation, namely Kim and Shigem and Scorpio. Two of those three are at least as much “T” as they are “G” – each with a genderfluidity whose beauty is very different from the other’s, and that’s delved into as deeply and explored with as much intensity and joy as all the Beasts’ qualities are.

I suspect two of the remaining four Beasts may also stray into the LGBT constellation, namely Amber and the Platinum Raven, as a “G” and as an “L” or “B”; though I can’t quite be sure they reside in it. As for their creator, my fully-human narrator Jaymi, he’s so much a lens into his seven creations, and hides in such plain view, that I’m even less certain we could trust our instincts about his residency there.

In any case, cheers to all of them for a good team effort in triggering the category.

Book of the Year Awards 2018 - Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" as Finalist in LGBT category

Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' as Finalist in IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018

The Beasts of Electra Drive in “Studio UK” magazine

My thanks to Studio UK magazine, whose editor Eddie Saint-Jean has published a piece about The Beasts of Electra Drive’s recent Saint Pancras Clock Tower activities:

https://studioukmagazine.co.uk/2018/09/20/author-rohan-quine-the-beasts-of-electra-drive/

Those activities comprised a live reading I did from The Beasts of Electra Drive and a screening from the novel’s Video-Book format, which together constituted my contribution to a line-up that also featured Safeena Chaudhry and Dan Holloway under the aegis of Novel London. More details on the event, and the faboo Victorian Gothic bell-tower where it happened, are here.

Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" in Studio UK magazine - 1

Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" in Studio UK magazine - 2

Rohan Quine's "The Beasts of Electra Drive" in Studio UK magazine - 3

Clock Tower videos and photos: video-book screening and live reading from The Beasts of Electra Drive

 
One recent evening in the Clock Tower above Saint Pancras station in London, I climbed a narrow spiral staircase, stood on a high balcony and performed a couple of extracts from The Beasts of Electra Drive, as shown in the following video—mini-chapter 94 “Jaymi creates Scorpio’s appearance” and mini-chapter 111 “Scorpio as succubus in the house on Jupiter Drive”. Those two mini-chapters’ texts are reproduced lower down this page.

 

The occasion was the third anniversary of Novel London, whose director Safeena Chaudhry ascended the very same staircase and did a reading from her novel Companions of Clay:

 

Novelist Dan Holloway of Rogue Interrobang, who was developmental editor of my novel and did editorial work on Safeena’s too, drew on his knowledge of both books in his compering of a highly enjoyable Q&A session incorporating questions from him and from the audience:

 

I also screened mini-chapters 98 “Jaymi creates Scorpio’s soundtrack” and 82 “Jaymi incarnates the Platinum Raven”, from the upcoming video-book format of The Beasts of Electra Drive (more information on which will be forthcoming soon), as shown in the following video. Those two mini-chapters’ texts are reproduced lower down this page.

 

And Safeena screened her sleekly-produced book trailer for Companions of Clay:

 

Big thanks to Lee Cooper for his great-looking videocamera work, and to Safeena and Jane Davis and Mel Khan and Lee for the following photos. (To see photographer credits and names of people depicted, hover the cursor over each image.)
 

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Safeena Chaudhry, Dan Holloway & Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Safeena Chaudhry, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)
 

The first mini-chapter of The Beasts of Electra Drive that I performed live, as shown in the topmost video-player here above, was mini-chapter 94 “Jaymi creates Scorpio’s appearance”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Next morning, Jaymi is seated in his bow window above the terrace of the house on Jupiter Drive, surrounded by the grand panorama of canyons and hills and the street-grid beyond. He closes his eyes and thinks back to that unique half-minute when he let his gaze wander up and down the “Cosy Score: Normal-Comfy or Strange-Scary?” Newsfeed, where new posts were popping up every few seconds, every one of them receiving scores and comments from multiple sources.

Then he re-opens his eyes, consults his ever-growing design for The Platinum Raven and checks his sketch for Scorpio’s visuals. Its first description of Scorpio’s physical appearance reads: “a young Armenian man of maybe twenty-one, of a dark and delicate beauty in keeping with the silver scorpion pendant hanging at his neck […] the Armenian boy dressed in black, a Scorpio pendant at his neck. No smile there at all, too much tension and exquisiteness and fierce vulnerability. For him it wasn’t easy, no one-two-three. But here he is—just as if in some club, deep in a city. A sudden smile leaks through, a flush of light across his face, for an instant. Then once again, no smile. Fem in black, for this is realness. So waltz darling, deep in vogue […] he turns his dainty head to one side and slightly up.”

He turns to his design for the game The Imagination Thief, to check his sketch for the visual artwork there. Its first description of Angel’s physical appearance reads: “a dark-eyed Armenian boy of maybe twenty-one, whose spiteful sleek depraved face radiates decadence and damage from its sharp beauty. […] He is shadowy, effete, both unhealthy and luminous: I picture him a pirate-queen scuttling up the masts of a slave-ship, to keep watch. Aside from a silver earring in his right ear, a shiny black vinyl brassiere is all that he wears above the waist, above black leggings and pointed black boots. Through his smooth brown skin I can sense the charge of nerves around his ribs beneath the faint swell of his breasts. His smooth little torso is built like a whip, thin and supple. Beautifully tattooed down the length of his back is a stark, emblematic pair of angel’s wings, cross-cut with faint lash-marks. Half the time his mouth, with its lips painted cinnabar, is sulky; and half the time his teeth are bared, jaws tense and snapping like a starved baby she-wolf. His voice is intersexual, with a degenerate breathiness underlying a fluid steel edge and a slight lisp on every s. A clean but musky sexual scent coils about him, even through the smoke. When his eyes fix mine for the first time, I have to make an effort not to flick my gaze away, so potent is the damage and so luscious is the blackness of fever within them. Hard excitement and the pulsing of attraction to the beauty of the dark spills out of him, as if his sweetest wish is for a violent revenge against life and all who live it. […] And he turns away and slinks to the corridor’s mouth, like a little black dragon with a scorpion’s sting.”

There is then one further little artwork-oriented description of Angel, a bit later on in The Imagination Thief: “he seemed to you, Lucan, like a sexy little fly. You saw him as a creature whose natural habitat would be hovering above a steaming-hot pool of blood and honey, sending his feelers down into it like the snouts of a voracious alien. And those killer eyes on him—so startling in close-up! Those big, brown, vital eyes, so dark and alive and dangerous and watchful, beneath long black eyelashes; the curve of the eyes echoed and magnified underneath by the fuller convexity of pale brown-olive skin curving outward over his cheekbones, then quickly back in and down in slanting arcs to the reticent mouth and smooth sharp chin; and the delicate jaw-line rising around behind, past small ears to the flame of black hair above a round intelligent forehead. That animal immediacy, that play of flesh and electricity combined, that scything sharpness and tang within a wrapping of organic yield and warmth, which knew that it grabbed your own gaze and licked it back.”

Well, alright then. That’s the brief, for this final Beast’s visuals. Jaymi glances up for a moment, taking in the canyon ahead; then he fires his attention back into those lines of code, homing in on Scorpio, swooping in towards him like a bird of prey…

This Beast is camera-ready for his very own manga, a cocktail of essences from many places and eras: dark angel of all genders; Roman pathic from the time of Nero, feral and consumed, at the edges of the palace feast; the mystic priestess-boy Heliogabalus, anointed as emperor; and an alien idol fallen to earth from the future, with a tail like a snake’s.

Jaymi zooms in and fills up his screen with the full-length snapshot that’s been circulated to the production crew’s costume department to ensure continuity in Scorpio’s manga-like styling: in his little black pixy-boots, black leather mini-skirt over black tights, slinky black polo-neck and silver crucifix pendant, hooped earring and silver rings (not to mention the sulky mouth and the luscious darkness of obsession that were both touched upon in Jaymi’s initial sketches), this Beast’s femininity is of the dragon-diva type, evenly fused with the rest of him.

As also indicated in the sketches, those Scorpio eyes are horny, as always—hungry for power and revenge, and to be fucked.

Brown eyes, in simple fact. But in greater truth, when the sidelight hits, they are indigo eyes.

And yet, when his darkness melts into sleekness, the simple allure of his slender body, with its smooth little breasts and gentle curves, is topped by the prettiest of androgyne faces—delicate and vulnerable, and even almost innocent.

Thus it is that Scorpio inhabits his own slinky black melodrama, in his own manga-bubble of neon-red and silver: an electrified fusion of self-love and self-hate, flickering between hungry self-pollination and picturesque crucifixion.

It’s a living, for a Beast.

Jaymi hits save, sinks back into his seat and gazes out across the canyons at the haze above L.A.—a mythic city-span like a grand dance-floor, where the sweet fierce beauty of his own little Scorpio will soon dance naked in the sight of the world!
 

Rohan Quine and 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Safeena Chaudhry, Dan Holloway & Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Mel Khan)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Safeena Chaudhry & Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)
 

The other mini-chapter of The Beasts of Electra Drive that I performed live, as shown in the topmost video-player here above, was mini-chapter 111 “Scorpio as succubus in the house on Jupiter Drive”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Late at night, as soon as Amber is asleep on his bed upstairs in the house on Jupiter Drive, Jaymi lets himself and Scorpio quietly in through the front door, into the grand hallway of the building. Careful to make no noise, he leads his new creation up the main staircase, along the landing and on down the corridor, stopping outside Amber’s bedroom door, which he proceeds to open as slowly as possible, so as not to make the smallest sound. With his finger to his lips, Jaymi turns to his Beast, kisses him on the forehead, then points him into the bedroom, gesturing that Scorpio enter within, on his knees, in utter silence.

Scorpio’s eyes are electric with uncertainty, fear and excitement. He does as Jaymi bids: he falls softly to his knees, then slides himself forward, through the door and into the shadows of the room, making not a shred of sound.

Jaymi slips away down the corridor, along the landing, down the staircase, through the hallway and out of the house, to his car. As he drives down the slope of Hercules Drive back home, he can picture what is happening up behind him in the house on Jupiter Drive.

For a long time, Scorpio lies prone on the polished wooden floorboards underneath the bottom end of Amber’s bed.

Then by slow degrees, he crawls out from his hatching-place, like Sadako in Ring—his palms and nails pressing into the floor. His animal gaze darts about him, through the strands of his black hair hanging down before his face. He freezes, hearing Amber’s faint breathing above.

He slinks across the floor along the bottom of the bed, then stops at one corner of it, breathing hard himself. Once he’s allowed his breathing to subside a little, he moves just his head, turning it very slowly to look out from between the strands of his own hair, up the length of the bed to Amber’s head, which is an indistinct shape against the paler pillow.

Remaining on his hands and knees, Scorpio listens again to the breathing from the other end of the bed. Is Amber asleep? Or is he lying there awake in rigid silence, planning what reaction he will give to the tiny shreds of sound he can hear from Scorpio’s movements down at the foot of his bed—planning what sudden violent movement he will make towards that unknown intruder down there?

Scorpio waits immobile, for another half-minute.

Then he slinks onwards, around the corner of the bed, and starts his crawling journey along the side of it, with the wall on his other side, towards the bedside table ahead, prowling ever closer alongside that blond Beast’s powerful body lying up there on its back, all uncovered in the hot sticky night, whose electric charge of warmth Scorpio can even feel down here.

In a single bound, he springs up like a cat, lands on top of Amber’s chest, plants his claws around the wide muscular heat of it, and crouches there quivering.

Amber jolts awake to see a naked feline succubus, with haunches raised, legs splayed, bottom poised directly over Amber’s crotch—and eyes bright and feral in the dark of the room, fixed hungry and murderous on Amber’s eyes, inches from his face. But as Amber stares back into their depths, in this first extraordinary meeting between the pair of them, those Scorpio eyes soften, for Amber alone forever, into the dark submissive gazelle-eyes of a houri…
 

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Dan Holloway, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Safeena Chaudhry, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)
 

The first mini-chapter of The Beasts of Electra Drive whose video-book format was screened, as shown in the fourth video-player here above, was mini-chapter 98 “Jaymi creates Scorpio’s soundtrack”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Jaymi rises from his seat, paces up and down like a caged beast, then sits back down at the window. Onward and deeper into Scorpio!

He gazes down at that ring of hairy-trunked palms around the clearing on his left, where his Beast’s dancing feet can almost be heard twirling through the scratchy grass, behind the warmth of the breeze up the canyon.

What would be the soundtrack that could live up to this Beast’s aforementioned visuals—namely the delicate Scorpionic beauty, sleek depraved face, sulky mouth and luscious darkness of obsession that Jaymi has established in him? What sound would most help the Dreary Ones to hear their own dreariness, through starkest comparison with him?

The answer to this question is a soundtrack sung not in Scorpio’s own lisping-snake voice, but in a flat seductive female one—a voice whose sultriness is so dry, whose unimpressibility so effortless, and whose underground presence so privileged in access and enigmatic in aura, as to add up to an icon of quite unreachable cool.

This unnamed vocalist radiates a majesty of downbeat ecstasy, carrying the torch of the whole city’s underground, burning with her own laconic magic for a single moment, right here … and then she fades, forever.

Synth-pop morphs into gothic, and a gloomy glamour slides up and flowers in the knowledge there is something alluring in Death, with his princely mien, scythe and spooky fashion sense. Heralding his imminence, clumps of staghorn fungus push their yellow fingers up between the flagstones of the terrace under Jaymi’s bow window. Around the kidney-shaped pool on the terrace, kidneys sprout up, ringed by monster-blooms of red rafflesia, the rotting-flesh-scented parasitic meat flower.

The music grows creepier, to keep up with the vegetation. Horror, fat and hungry through the wall of the room, peers in at Jaymi Peek, its sharp little eyes like pinheads.

Peering forward and down, he sees the space on the terrace appears enclosed in walls that swell and breathe, yellow-lit and windowless. Steam coils up from the water in the pool, around a bundle of blood wrapped in velvet that hangs in the air, side-lit through the open glass doors from the lounge directly underneath Jaymi’s chair.

In the corner of the lounge, stubble is breaking slowly through the television screen. The image on the screen is zooming in towards a pair of eyes in place of nipples, each one dripping out an icicle of blood.

A chess-board is set upon the glass coffee-table nearby, in mid-game, the chess-pieces modelled out of raw meat: the mitre on the bishop is a shrew’s-nose of peering eyes. Beside the board is a contraption of severed shrews’ noses; and a hundred baboons’ noses fill a sack by the table-leg. Underneath the table, on the wood-effect laminate, a worm-coloured windpipe lies at an angle to a mangled corpse with babbling heart and twitching bones.

In patriotic colour scheme on the dining-table, a cheese’s interior is traditionally flavoured with blue veins of mould, red arteries of chilli pepper and white bones. For dessert a bitter jelly has set, like a moat, around the base of a blood-filled sponge-cake; while inside a pineapple, kidney-like and intestinal elements are in evidence. As an entree there’s a stew of battered eyelids, in a range of bacon and citrus tints, around a pale brain-stem. All is carefully laid out beneath a hairy ceiling.

Scorpio flickers up smiling out of Jaymi’s screen, takes a dainty bow and claps his hands together—whereupon the terrace and the lounge of the house snap back to their normal state, clean and fresh and cool in the star-lit night across the hillside.
 

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Safeena Chaudhry, Dan Holloway & Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Lee Cooper)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)
 

The other mini-chapter of The Beasts of Electra Drive whose video-book format was screened, as shown in the fourth video-player here above, was mini-chapter 82 “Jaymi incarnates the Platinum Raven”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Back at the house on Zeus Drive, alone at the end of the terrace, Jaymi clutches the edge of his seat in a terror of excitement, as he watches the Platinum Raven slither and slide out into meat-space through the monitor in front of him.

She steps down onto the flat stonework, and stands there with majestic poise, looking about her.

All the transcendence he could create from within him, and his very own response to Bang Dead’s “Arts Score”!

He gets to his feet, and gazes at her, as if at a beautiful ghost. Flaming orange in the bank of dark foliage beside them, the bird of paradise flowers ooze thick sweet sap, as they do all night—drips of nectar spilling down their bulbous orange petal-bases, side-lit by the terrace lamps.

Of all his five Beasts, she is not here for conversation, he’s aware—at least, not for the kind that tends to be recognised as such. Rather she looks and breathes a grander, cleaner colloquy above the level of spoken words or personal identities. So it’s to this level that Jaymi fires up his hearing and his sight, holding those senses there as lightly as he can, while she binds him into the spell of a story whose beginning is intimate, spoken straight at him through her eyes, without words: “A woman was once distraught, on waking, to find that the diamond ring she had placed in a saucer of oatmeal by her bedside as usual (so as to keep the stone clear, following the old superstition) had vanished. By and by, she died. Ten years later, while her children were making improvements to the house, they found the ring under the floor, around the neck of a mouse’s skeleton.”

Her gaze disengages from Jaymi’s and swings to the right, coming to rest over his shoulder at the Pacific, as if at a sunset in the past. Strange to say, he cannot remember whether a sliver of the ocean is in fact visible from here (he should surely know); but he’s not inclined to turn around and verify this when instead he can watch, reflected tiny in her eyes, the waves of a sea bulging and shrinking like muscles in the curve of the hydrosphere. Amid the waves, a hole in the ocean opens—an inverse waterspout—and thus she funnels his attention back to when the Tethys Sea was caught between colliding Eurasian and Indian plates and squeezed up into the Himalayan Mountains. She gives a gentle shrug. Seas change, after all.

For a moment she closes her eyes, like a moon-blink. Her pink noise (more than a mains hum, he reminds himself) resolves, to a music of atom and planet; and onward she draws him and flings him out further, through a sound of darkness singing. You’re what Saturn’s rings enclose and I’m the rings of Earth, he thinks he hears within her pink noise, in a voice like the twanging of a string ten metres thick—its other end tethered somewhere in between the stars, and its near end tethered on this Zeus Drive terrace where she stands statuesque.

Concluding her emergence, she telescopes Jaymi and herself to a height several stars away, flying through a special sky that’s all her own, where giant billboards drift in space, her face depicted on them where they billow through the vacuum, as ships pass in silence. Her eye on one such billboard gives a slow wink; and there within this wink her grandest view tunnels out, fans wide, spans and hovers for an instant: an infinite series of Bang—Crunch—Bang—Crunch, destined to be done by the universe forever … and the terror, the enslaving futility and cosmic enormity of this.

Underneath the wink on the giant billboard, her lips part with a burst of ultra-violet shadow, mouthing Catch you later!

Her eyes close, both up there and down here on this terrace.

Jaymi drops his gaze from her face and bows his head—while west of L.A., above the highway up the coast, the cables on the pylons crackle in the night sky.
 

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Lee Cooper)

Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

Safeena Chaudhry & Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

From inside the Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Jane Davis)

Rohan Quine, Saint Pancras Clock Tower (photo by Safeena Chaudhry)

The Beasts of Electra Drive’s video-book will premiere in Saint Pancras Clock Tower

On 18 August in the 10-metre-high bell-chamber of the Clock Tower Room, up in the Victorian Gothic tower above Saint Pancras station, there will be the premiere public screening from the upcoming video-book format of my novel The Beasts of Electra Drive.

There, Safeena Chaudhry and I shall be both doing live readings, too—mine from that novel, and hers from her novel Companions of Clay.

I’ll also be screening some of the films from my earlier novel The Imagination Thief, to which Beasts is a prequel.

The evening will be compered by novelist and poet Dan Holloway of Rogue Interrobang.

For more juice and sugar about what The Beasts of Electra Drive is all about, click here. For some great reviews of it, click here. And to buy it from whichever retailer you may fancy, click here for the paperback or here for the ebook.

The event will be the third anniversary celebration of Safeena’s organisation Novel London (under whose aegis The Beasts of Electra Drive had its recent bookshop launch alongside Dan’s co-launching title Kill Land, where he and I were compered by Jane Davis).

Looking forward to seeing you in the Clock Tower if you can make it. And be sure to take a look at these directions before you arrive, because they contain the simple but non-intuitive key of information that tells you where to find the street-level entrance, once you reach that glorious ornamental cake of a building: in short, head straight for the third arch to the right of the main entrance of the Renaissance Hotel, where you’ll find a door labelled “Saint Pancras Chambers”.

Tickets and many more details are available on Eventbrite at:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/novel-london-third-anniversary-at-st-pancras-clock-tower-kings-cross-london-tickets-48003171779

and on Meetup at https://www.meetup.com/Novel_London/events/252646079/
 

Saint Pancras Clock Tower, London

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 3

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 84

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE by Rohan Quine - video-book format - mini-chapter 43

Saint Pancras station

THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE (novel) by Rohan Quine - paperback front cover and ebook cover (literary fiction, magical realism, horror)

The Beasts of Electra Drive in literary magazine “The Woolf”

 
Many thanks to literary magazine “The Woolf”, for including me in their article entitled “What if your book is the child of two genres?” by Jim Rushing, alongside other authors who are blurring genres or categories in interesting ways:

http://thewoolf.org/2018/06/01/what-if-your-book-is-the-child-of-two-genres/

As well as being literary fiction with a touch of magical realism and a dusting of horror (a generous dusting, but a only dusting), my novel The Beasts of Electra Drive also has a flicker of science fiction—so it is something of a cocktail of controlled sustances. I’m most grateful to “The Woolf” for including it at

http://thewoolf.org/2018/06/01/what-if-your-book-is-the-child-of-two-genres/rohan-quine/

"The Beasts of Electra Drive" by Rohan Quine, in literary magazine "The Woolf"

The Beasts of Electra Drive—in-depth interview by Jane Davis

 
The Beasts of Electra Drive is delighted to be probed in an in-depth interview by novelist Jane Davis in her Virtual Book Club:

https://jane-davis.co.uk/2018/04/17/virtual-book-club-rohan-quine-introduces-beasts-electra-drive/

I’m very grateful to Jane for giving my tale the royal treatment there, where she fires twinkly intelligent questions at me that encompass Timothy Leary, Frankenstein’s monster, DNA, vengeance, splendour and pain—a little something for all the family, in fact.

Her piece even includes one image of the triple-height billboards she managed to mount in New York’s Times Square, displaying The Beasts of Electra Drive‘s cover at the size of two or three city buses, which I thought was a most thoughtful thing for her to arrange…
 

For more information about The Beasts of Electra Drive, see here.
For reviews of the novel, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in paperback format, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in ebook format, see here.

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 1

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 2

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 3

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 4

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 5

Jane Davis's interview with Rohan Quine about his 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' - 6

The Beasts of Electra Drive reviewed by Catriona Troth at “Bookmuse”

 
Lovely to see this warm and thoughtful review of The Beasts of Electra Drive, by novelist Catriona Troth at “Bookmuse”:

https://bookmuseuk.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/the-beasts-of-electra-drive-by-rohan.html

Big thanks to Catriona for delving with generosity and receptiveness into the world of those Hollywood canyons.
 

For more information about The Beasts of Electra Drive, see here.
For reviews of the novel, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in paperback format, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in ebook format, see here.

Review of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', by Catriona Troth at 'Bookmuse'

 

The Beasts of Electra Drive reviewed by Sally Bend at “Bending the Bookshelf”

 
Here The Beasts of Electra Drive is reviewed by novelist Sally Bend at “Bending the Bookshelf”:

http://bibrary.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/the-beasts-of-electra-drive-by-rohan.html

Many thanks to Sally for her flair and perceptiveness in this review. Gender-fluid power and respect to her across the Atlantic.
 

For more information about The Beasts of Electra Drive, see here.
For reviews of the novel, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in paperback format, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in ebook format, see here.

 
Review of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', by Sally Bend at 'Bending the Bookshelf' - 1

Review of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', by Sally Bend at 'Bending the Bookshelf' - 2

Video and photos of the London Book Fair 2018 launch of The Beasts of Electra Drive

 
At the London Book Fair 2018 in Olympia, London, my novel The Beasts of Electra Drive launched alongside Jane Davis‘s Smash all the Windows and Dan Holloway‘s Kill Land. The following video captured the fun. Big thanks to Orna Ross and Philip Lynch of ALLi for generously giving us free use of their stand, and to Sara Challice for taking charge of the Facebook Live filming and asking us questions. (This video can also be seen on Vimeo and YouTube.)
 

 

For more information about The Beasts of Electra Drive, see here.
For reviews of the novel, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in paperback format, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in ebook format, see here.

 
LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 1

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 2

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 3

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 4

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 5

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 6

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 7

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 8

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 9

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 10

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 11

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 12

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 13

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 14

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 15

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 16

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 17

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 18

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 19

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 20

LBF18 launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive', Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' & Jane Davis's 'Smash all the Windows' - 22

 

Videos and photos of the bookshop launch of The Beasts of Electra Drive

 
In the Travelling Through bookshop on 6 April near Waterloo station, my new novel The Beasts of Electra Drive launched alongside Dan Holloway‘s new publication Kill Land. The launch was compered by novelist Jane Davis, under the aegis of Safeena Chaudhry’s organisation Novel London. It was a joyful occasion.
 

For more information about The Beasts of Electra Drive, see here.
For reviews of the novel, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in paperback format, see here.
For links to all retailers of the novel in ebook format, see here.

 
The following video shows the lively Q&A session with Dan and me, moderated by Jane:

 
The following video shows me reading mini-chapter 1 “The lone violinist in the woodlands at dusk (Ghost, as Hook)”, mini-chapter 97 “Kelly smudges Scorpio” and mini-chapter 53 “Jaymi creates Shigem’s and Kim’s soundtrack” of The Beasts of Electra Drive, as recorded and edited by Novel London:

 
The following video shows the same reading by me (of mini-chapters 1 “The lone violinist in the woodlands at dusk (Ghost, as Hook)”, 97 “Kelly smudges Scorpio” and 53 “Jaymi creates Shigem’s and Kim’s soundtrack” of The Beasts of Electra Drive), but instead as recorded and live-streamed on Facebook Live:

 
The following video shows Dan reading the opening of Kill Land, as recorded and edited by Novel London:


 
And the following video shows the same reading by Dan (of the opening of Kill Land), but instead as recorded and live-streamed on Facebook Live:

 
(Most of the above videos can also be seen on Novel London’s website here.)

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 1 (photo by Venetia Welby)
Jane Davis, Rohan Quine and Dan Holloway at the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Venetia Welby)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 2 (photo by Catriona Troth)
Jane Davis, Rohan Quine and Dan Holloway at the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Catriona Troth)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 3 (photo by Novel London)
Rohan Quine, Safeena Chaudhry, Dan Holloway and Jane Davis at the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 4 (photo by Novel London)
Jane Davis, Rohan Quine and Dan Holloway at the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 5 (photo by Novel London)
Rohan Quine at the launch of his The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 16 (photo by Novel London)
Dan Holloway, Rohan Quine, Catriona Troth et al. at the launch of Dan’s Kill Land and Rohan’s The Beasts of Electra Drive (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 7 (photo by Novel London)
Rohan Quine at the launch of his The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 8 (photo by Novel London)
Dan Holloway at the launch of his Kill Land and Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 9 (photo by Novel London)
Rohan Quine at the launch of his The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 10 (photo by Novel London)
Dan Holloway at the launch of his Kill Land and Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 11 (photo by Novel London)
At the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 12 (photo by Novel London)
At the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 

Launch of Rohan Quine's 'The Beasts of Electra Drive' & Dan Holloway's 'Kill Land' - 13 (photo by Novel London)
Jane Davis, Rohan Quine and Dan Holloway at the launch of Rohan Quine’s The Beasts of Electra Drive and Dan Holloway’s Kill Land (photo by Novel London)

 
 

The first of the three mini-chapters of The Beasts of Electra Drive that I read out, as shown in my two reading videos above, was mini-chapter 1 “The lone violinist in the woodlands at dusk (Ghost, as Hook)”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Woodlands at dusk in the late summer, somewhere on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska.

In a clearing burns a bonfire, surrounded by a scattering of teenage girls and boys, sitting up or lying back on dry grassy earth. A joint glows red from time to time, then is passed through the smoky haze.

Nervous on the group’s edge, a sixteen-year-old Jaymi plays a violin, and the liquid magic of his music is delighting his audience. An end-of-summer hour, near the end of all their childhoods. And doubly endless: first, within its own enchanted brevity; then endless again, through infusing a dusk-shadow whisper of sweet fire-smoke through the very different later lives of all those present.

A noise cuts in, from the end of the clearing.

A band of adults, looming through the trees. As they approach, many become recognisable as parents of the assembled. They are heading straight for this group. No words from them yet, but their manner is confrontational; they are here on a mission.

The first couple of adults stride into the clearing. One grabs Jaymi’s violin and bow, smashes them against a tree and hurls them up and away into the air; while the other snarls at him that his music is perverting the other children, and if he doesn’t leave town then they will hurt him.

So mellow has been the group’s mood, that its members find themselves unequipped to fight against the parents’ force in yanking their offspring up from the ground and hustling them away.

As soon as the last fragments of his violin and bow have curved down and hit the ground, Jaymi sees flashes, through his shock and sorrow, of these same emotions in the eyes of the other children while they are marched off. Within those glimpses, which he catches in slow motion and will remember for the rest of his life, he perceives that the shock and the sorrow he’s seeing in them add up to something essential. These emotions bring him together with them against a common enemy—all that meanness and fear, which appear to be the preserve of grown-ups. He and these other children who were rapt in his music, plus the occasional adult who still remembers, are all united as the outnumbered prey of the more usual kind of grown-up-ness—the kind whose main aim seems to be the destruction of any primal magic it encounters, while lacking the self-awareness even to know this about itself.

Soon the last teenager’s complaint has receded into the woods and out of earshot, leaving Jaymi alone beside the smoulder of the bonfire—his eyes full of knowledge, shock, contempt and ambition.

An hour after his audience was banished, there he remains in the dark of the clearing: a lone violinist, imagining the music he’d be making here, as if for all time, while he sits with his smashed violin and bow beside him on the ground.

Next day, carrying whatever essentials he can, he steps off the grass verge of a highway on the outskirts of town, clambers up through a metal door and takes his place in the passenger’s seat of a massive truck, on a hitched escape from Omaha to New York City.

Soon the truck is miles out of town and gaining speed, with his music soaring grand above the highway ahead…
 
 

The second of the three mini-chapters of The Beasts of Electra Drive that I read out, as shown in my two reading videos above, was mini-chapter 97 “Kelly smudges Scorpio”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

At the bow window on Jupiter Drive late next morning, Jaymi resumes work on Scorpio’s creation cycle—unaware that someone else is also paying attention to the very same thing, up in the Sunset Boulevard building.

As Jaymi recalls from having met her, Kelly Kandy is a fun-loving party animal with an easy manner and a reassuring smile. The simple truth of this impression makes it perhaps surprising, at first, that she’s also someone who will hate this latest Beast on sight, with a chemical hatred. Her horizons are so shaken by Scorpio, in fact, that she forms an immediate intention to fuck him up for good. Confronted by a creature so gorgeously anguished—so cross-cut with sex addiction, of a gender identity so complex and a self-esteem so fractured—how can Kelly wish otherwise than to ramp up his anguish still further? Concerning the reasons for this, she is incurious by nature; though Jaymi has little difficulty in recognising that behind her general hipness, she’s really very “Cosy Score”.

Well then, Scorpio was made for her, Jaymi reflects.

In any case, as soon as this Beast’s delicate Scorpionic beauty, sleek depraved face, sulky mouth and luscious darkness of obsession appear on her screen for the first time, all as aforementioned and in one package, Kelly applies her skilled fingers, state-of-the-art software and well-used keyboard to the task of smudging his visuals as painfully as possible.

There he is on the monitor right in front of her, clinking champagne glasses with some woman in a busy nightclub. Kelly pounds her keys, clicks her mouse, and sends her cursor curving and flicking all across her screen’s image of the nightclub.

As she does so, Scorpio senses the air in the room being flicked and whisked by a slicing of damage that has yet to gain ingress. His little silver cross swings flashing through the space between his nipples, sweats and glints in the candle-light and lands at a slant on his chest, while he glances around him … and then she breaks through.

An attempt to smudge a Beast’s visuals is felt as a visceral distaste, flavoured by the nature of the Beast, at what the smudger would presume to impose. And so he slides down, from a diva on a champagne-high of club chic, to a fey little fly buzzing drunk above a sleaze-pit. Kelly sees the barbed-wire coiled around him, ramps it up and rams it through the cells of all the others in this room—self-mutilation as the darker side of narcissism, flowing through these clubbers gathered here—a perverted, delirium-obsessed scent of visuals, gleaming in their eyes and revealed as the engine of a nightmare of culinary events.

By queasy degrees, he understands what is flowing through the room.

He fears, in other words, that he may be eaten by these people, in a literal sense: chefs and long pigs…

In shock, he sets off at a run, across the room and down a passage—then halts as he sees a girl of five, just ahead, playing with a high-fashion doll whose legs are so exaggeratedly long and elegant as almost to suggest grasshoppers’ thighs. The girl is practising ballerina moves, while talking in a cute, flirtatious, young-adult way, very “Hollywood” and precocious for a five-year-old. She turns to face him. “Hi! I’m Nutmeg,” she grates in a different voice, a voice of guttural harshness—and through her veil, Scorpio sees that this five-year-old’s face is much older than he thought. It even has lines around its eyes…

Black light blazes and her head rears up, a mass of pulp with several eyes pushing out at odd places. Shrieks cut the air.

He turns and sprints back down the passage, knowing she’ll be watching as he runs—but after fifty metres, the barbed-wire around his torso catches on a nail in a door-frame, so he has to turn back in her direction and scrabble at the wire, in a frantic bid to unhook it before she can reach him.

While he fumbles, with tears pricking the backs of his eyes, he feels the tickle of a drip of blood running down his chest beneath his black clothes, behind his crucifix.

The girl scuttles sideways up the length of the passageway, towards him. “I like to have my eyeballs licked!” she grates; and a black steel worm curls out from inside the eyeball nearest to Scorpio, as if to invite his tongue to dip down and lick it.

Without any warning, Nutmeg starts scalpelling herself, with her own smiling consent to the process—and inside a moment, a full operation is in progress, performed by Nutmeg using a single deft hand. “When I’m with you alone, late tonight,” she grates sweetly at Scorpio, “I’ll let you see me rip my face off, leaving just a slab of flesh—

A shot of pain flickers up in Jaymi, from groin to heart (the Scorpio places). Crying out, he springs at his keyboard and starts hammering out multiple batch-reversion commands, until he has reversed Kelly’s work, returned his Beast’s visual world to what it should be, then sealed off the cockroach-hole Kelly wriggled in through. Sinking back into his seat, he spits through the open bow window.
 
 

The third of the three mini-chapters of The Beasts of Electra Drive that I read out, as shown in my two reading videos above, was mini-chapter 53 “Jaymi creates Shigem’s and Kim’s soundtrack”. The text of that mini-chapter is as follows.
 

Jaymi pulls his study chair closer to his monitor and rubs his hands in glee: Shigem’s and Kim’s soundtrack! This will be a joy. It will also be his first attempt at channelling a soundtrack born of two Beasts at once. As such, it will derive from their love for each other, despite their not quite having met yet.

So unfinished are Shigem’s and Kim’s individual creation cycles, neither of them has even realised that the object of his own inchoate yearning will be another Beast. Yet somehow Kim does already possess a nugget of knowledge not often attained by someone until much later—after he or she has found and run with another individual alone, composed a major or minor symphony of interpersonal music with them, then lost them forever. The thing Kim knows, with such precocity, is that all the private running and music shared in any such temporary union are for all time, being parts of everyone throughout history and the future—as is likewise true for such union’s private losses.

There’s a rustle and a whisper behind the skin of night, with a scent of limonene, as his knowledge coalesces: shrill girls giggle, then they shush one another, as he hears them and looks around in vain to see who’s there … and Jaymi smiles, for this kerfuffle is the opening of the soundtrack he’s about to reveal.

Next comes the chuckle of an Arcadian brook, on whose idealised bank Kim is reclining in the garb of a shepherd, blond and Classical, contemplating how nothing lasts, nothing can be grasped forever, everybody passes and decays at last.

Dawn glows pale at the side of the heavens, his flock is scattered peaceably around the field behind him, and blue through the air comes a call from that heifer lowing at the skies—an echo of a footnote of stone via song.

Before this eclogue can wilt into too etiolated an idyll, Jaymi electrifies it by touching Kim’s shoulders with a jolt of something new to him. Almost pre-physical, certainly pre-sexual, it’s nonetheless an ecstatic ripple that runs through his body like a touch of the divine, as if from a figure leaning down from behind—a young female figure, he senses (for thus has Jaymi shown himself, on this unique occasion). And THIS exists also! she seems to be informing Kim.

Into his pastoral aloneness comes her touch, an intimation of her smile, and a promise that before too long (oh soon, very soon) he will know about things he doesn’t yet know about. Until then, she’ll watch to check he’s still on track to know them. And she’ll love him unseen, while he nears that knowledge—so he may feel her breath upon his neck, while she watches. She knows Kim will have to see horrors on his journey. She’s sorry in advance: so sorry he will have to see that, so sorry that the other one will do that, so sorry they will leave him such an echo and a stain… But she’d hate it even more if he were not to break through, to his arrival and completion.

An electronic pulse floats down into the soundtrack—the sexiest music Kim has ever heard, though he wouldn’t yet know to call it such. That Greek Golden-Age paradise of Arcadia slides down the hill-slopes, into the town on the island. His unseen protector leads him through its narrow whitewashed alleyways to the entrance of a little club called City Bar. Standing close to him in the alleyway outside it, she attends with sweetness to Kim’s appearance, straightening and smoothing down his shepherd garb, during which their eyes hardly meet, until he lays his head on her shoulder. She puts her finger to her mouth, bidding silence, whispers something indistinct and kisses him on the lips, soft and warm. Then she turns away to leave. He keeps hold of her hand for a moment, then lets it drop. She slips off into the gathering crowd, around a whitewashed angle of wall, and is gone.

Jaymi’s attention departs in her—but then it reconsiders this, eases up and out of her, and floats around and down again unseen, where Kim walks into City Bar.

Inside the venue, Kim’s and Jaymi’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark. Under the spotlights, a skinny sexy boy is dancing manically, feminine and ash-blond, and Kim hears his own voice asking in his head, “Am I silver who needs gold, or am I gold who needs silver, or am I either silver or gold who needs more of the same?” The androgynous stranger catches his eye for an instant, without expression … and this whole soundtrack clicks one step closer to full orchestration, as the half-created Kim achieves his first realisation that the object of his own inchoate yearning will be another individual Beast.

Obvious perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight. But no Beast is coded with all such knowledge ahead of time—not even one who likes to think.

“Perhaps, when I find him, he’ll have green eyes,” Kim murmurs to himself.

Kim cannot yet have any intimation of Shigem in particular, but this soundtrack straight away features the incursion of an audio sample so imbued with soft dark enchantment that it almost feels like an intimation of him. This sample is arcing back here from a point far ahead, deep in the game-play of The Imagination Thief, where Jaymi will use it as a sound from Kim’s amber days, thus: “That soundtrack was playing, and now it reached the infinitely creepy-sweet ‘Mysteries of Love’. And through your leaded window, all those distant background figures, standing still or gesturing in talk or crawling ant-like across the frame, were sealed in a different world, photographed and laminated here in your memory.” And Jaymi’s eyes feel as if they glow, to recall that that moment in the game will occur just before Shigem and Kim will meet and pair for life.

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