| Coffee, Cats and Crooked Men: a chat with Edward Morris | 12.11.2009 |
Let's get the facts straight: Edward Morris, a 2010 Bram Stoker award nominee, has been up for big awards before. In 2005, he was short-listed for a British Science Fiction Award. In 2008, he was nominated for the Rhysling award for science fiction poetry. And while Morris thinks the odds are long for his short story "Lotophagi"--a piece detailing a group of Sasquatch rampaging a communal farm--to win the Stoker award, this might just be his year. People are beginning to take note of this multi-genre writer.
This is because Edward Morris is pretty damn brilliant. I suspected this the first time I met him, at this year's Orycon, where he discussed Kafka, The Fly, and pulp fiction with equal verve. But I knew it for certain when I sat down to talk to him in his Portland home. It's the kind of place packed with paintings (he and his partner run an art studio) books, more books, and one clever cat who seemed to like me. When Morris passed me a cup of coffee, he spouted references to more fascinating science fiction writers than the local library contains.
Not only has he read more than most people, he's done more. Morris has spent time as a house cleaner, a stand-up comedian, a ticket salesman for the symphony, a caretaker for the developmentally disabled, and even a farmer. He's lived in Pennsylvania coal country, San Francisco (you can read about it in his memoir, Atlantis 1999) and settled in Oregon in the last ten years or so. Through it all, he's stuck with writing--much it of focusing on alternative history.
His new series from Mercury Retrograde Press is set in an alternate history drawing on those Pennsylvanian roots. It's smart and it's dark, and it's going to run a whopping eight volumes (small volumes, but still!). Best of all, Mercury Retrograde is running a sort of Volume 0 on their website, in the form of the serial "Death, Inc." They're even polling their readers to choose which possible ending to post. It's an exciting project that uses the Internet to the small press's best advantage.
While Morris has a number of projects forthcoming (he has a story in The New Dead, a hot zombie anthology coming out in February), the Crooked Man series has him most excited. It's an intense new mythos, worthy of H.P. Lovecraft but drawing on a wealth of literary traditions and a remarkable grasp on history--as Morris himself says, "I use the parts of history that are the least believable, while the stuff I make up sounds real."
I left Ed Morris with my head spinning. He'd pretty much doubled my reading list and rekindled my interest in anthropology (he minored in anthropology in college after childhood exposure to the topic). But when I tried to compliment him on his brains, humor and coffee-making abilities, he brushed it off with a casual, "at the beginning of the day, I still put my pants on one leg at a time." And for a man who writes with no cliches, I found it an odd thing to say.
If you'd like to learn more about Edward Morris, check out his blog: http://edwardrmorrisjr.blogspot.com/
And for information about the Crooked Man series, visit: http://mercuryretrogradepress.com/authors/Edward_Morris.asp
By Little Miss Zomcon
This is because Edward Morris is pretty damn brilliant. I suspected this the first time I met him, at this year's Orycon, where he discussed Kafka, The Fly, and pulp fiction with equal verve. But I knew it for certain when I sat down to talk to him in his Portland home. It's the kind of place packed with paintings (he and his partner run an art studio) books, more books, and one clever cat who seemed to like me. When Morris passed me a cup of coffee, he spouted references to more fascinating science fiction writers than the local library contains.
Not only has he read more than most people, he's done more. Morris has spent time as a house cleaner, a stand-up comedian, a ticket salesman for the symphony, a caretaker for the developmentally disabled, and even a farmer. He's lived in Pennsylvania coal country, San Francisco (you can read about it in his memoir, Atlantis 1999) and settled in Oregon in the last ten years or so. Through it all, he's stuck with writing--much it of focusing on alternative history.
His new series from Mercury Retrograde Press is set in an alternate history drawing on those Pennsylvanian roots. It's smart and it's dark, and it's going to run a whopping eight volumes (small volumes, but still!). Best of all, Mercury Retrograde is running a sort of Volume 0 on their website, in the form of the serial "Death, Inc." They're even polling their readers to choose which possible ending to post. It's an exciting project that uses the Internet to the small press's best advantage.
While Morris has a number of projects forthcoming (he has a story in The New Dead, a hot zombie anthology coming out in February), the Crooked Man series has him most excited. It's an intense new mythos, worthy of H.P. Lovecraft but drawing on a wealth of literary traditions and a remarkable grasp on history--as Morris himself says, "I use the parts of history that are the least believable, while the stuff I make up sounds real."
I left Ed Morris with my head spinning. He'd pretty much doubled my reading list and rekindled my interest in anthropology (he minored in anthropology in college after childhood exposure to the topic). But when I tried to compliment him on his brains, humor and coffee-making abilities, he brushed it off with a casual, "at the beginning of the day, I still put my pants on one leg at a time." And for a man who writes with no cliches, I found it an odd thing to say.
If you'd like to learn more about Edward Morris, check out his blog: http://edwardrmorrisjr.blogspot.com/
And for information about the Crooked Man series, visit: http://mercuryretrogradepress.com/authors/Edward_Morris.asp
By Little Miss Zomcon
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