Blog Tour: Twice Spent Comet

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title, Twice Spent Comet, by participating in their blog tour. 

Today we are joined by Ziggy Schutz. Ziggy is a young queer writer living on the west coast of Canada. She’s been a fan of superheroes almost as long as she’s been writing, so she’s very excited this is the form her first published work took.

When not writing, she can often be found stage managing local musicals and mouthing the words to all the songs. Ziggy can be found at @ziggytschutz, where she’s probably ranting about representation in fiction. 

To help celebrate the release of Twice Spent Comet, Ziggy is participating in our Indie Spotlight series:

Seeing Yourself

 

It's funny. I've been writing since I was a little kid and my grandmother let me play with her typewriter, and I've been talking about representation in books for what feels like almost as long. I used to do queer education in schools, and it was something we talked extensively about -- how important it was, to find your own identity staring back at you from the page of a good story.

 

And still, with all of this, it took me until 'twice-spent comet' to realize that I could do this with my own identity.

 

I write queer fairytales and space operas, and yet I hadn't ever written someone who had the same pronouns that I've been using for years. Was it fear, that made me hesitate? Having to explain my shifting mix of 'he' and 'she' to an editor, which felt like a much larger task than the quick rundown I give to folks I've just met? Or was I not practicing what I had preached for so long -- that every identity is worthy of a story and an adventure.

 

When I sat down to write Quarter Jones, a minor character that sits somewhere between memory and myth for most of this novella, writing her pronouns out felt scarier than the rest of the story put together. I wanted to do right by him, and by everyone else who was like me, using he and she interchangeably. I wanted to try to capture the joy that I feel every time I hear someone juggle my own pronouns. Here I am, writing a story about space mermaids and terraforming asteroids. Why was I so worried that it would be the rebellion leader's pronouns that made the story feel less real?

 

But I did it. And as 'twice-spent comet' is released into the world, I couldn't be prouder of Quarter Jones and her mix and match words. In a strange way, it makes it easier to feel proud of myself, too.

 

So go on. Write that story that hits a little close to home. Sure, readers will find it who need to read it. But also give yourself the grace of writing what you might need to read. You deserve it, just the same as anyone else does.

 

Happy reading, y'all. And happy writing, too.

 

- Ziggy Schutz

(she/him/he/her)

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RELEASE DATE: Dec 3, 2024

Science Fiction |  LGBTQ

The fall from hopeful revolutionary to prison laborer is a hard one. Fer’s world has shrunk from the whole damn universe to this anonymous asteroid and the four other convicts who share it with them. It’s a fitting end, for someone who used to wish on stars but now can only seem to collect endings.

But magic and falling stars have ways of finding those who need them, and when Fer takes a chance and looks up, there’s a mermaid staring back at them, silhouetted by stars.

twice-spent comet is a fairy tale for forgotten places and the people whose stories are stuck waiting for the next sentence. 

Bookshop.org  |  Amazon

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Excerpt

1

In the beginning, before Humans had claimed the stars as their own, they held hands as they watched lights streak across the sky and called it Magic.

Magic, as everyone knows, must be Spoken and Heard and Believed, and so it was so, that stars were Magic, and those that fell especially so.

Sometimes, the beginnings of stories are just as simple as that.

~~

Waking up is always the hardest part.

Fer’s been on this rock long enough that they’ve gotten used to the routine. Even grown to almost like it. Maybe it is just like an earthborn kid, to search for the positives of the place that’s going to kill you, but it’s hardly the worst of the habits Fer was born into. On the days that feel just that much longer, they even take to listing those positives, counting them off on fingers that no longer swell with just one day’s work.

They like how easy the work has gotten, when early on they’d barely been able to make it through the day. They like their new muscles, filling out fabric that had hung loose before. They’re fed better here than they were in the prison or the transfer ship, and the companionship is a huge upgrade.

The transfer ship’s captain wasn’t a fan of lights for the prisoners. Wasn’t a fan of much chatter, either. And in the dark, people lose things. Faceless, silent shapes. That’s what the prisoners became, on that ship. Fer paced their cell aimlessly, spilled ink on a blank page. Even now, months later, there are days where words sit heavy on their tongue. Like they’re a limited resource, waiting to be wasted.

Waking up has always been a slow process for Fer. On bad days, they wake up on that ship. On the worst days, there’s a moment where they forget they ever got caught at all. Where in the moment before they’re properly awake they really do expect to see the cluttered walls of their last hideout—dangerously close to being a home. Back before Adrastea happened, and everything went tits-up.

Then they open their eyes to the soft curves of their small cell, and they remember they’re here. Officially occupying the middle of nowhere, six months into a fifteen-year sentence they’re not expected to survive. And everything presses down on them, like artificial gravity.

But, hey. Could be worse.

Fer reaches over, taps the speaker set into the wall so that it’ll stop telling them to wake up. They step into their orange jumpsuit, garishly bright against the soft blues of the metal walls. With an underlayer that will glow even brighter in the event of a loss of light, the suit is “the height of prisoner-safety technology,” according to the worker who had issued it to Fer. As if Fer wouldn’t notice the fraying seams or dried blood staining the cuff of one of the five otherwise-identical suits.

They saved that one for days when they felt especially lucky. Or bitter.

Today, they’re mostly feeling hungry.

They duck through their empty doorway—no doors here, no barricading yourself away, just a thin audio divider that always feels slimy when stepped through—and into the common room, letting the noise of the only other occupants on this asteroid roll over them.

The best thing about prison is other people. Who knew?

What I Read in November

 Well, not a stellar reading month but not a bad one, either. I read a total of 11 books, with one of those for publicity purposes so I won't include it here. 

November flew by, didn't it? And now we're staring down the start of December and all the craziness that comes with the holidays... 

Anyhow, here's what I read and what I thought of them. Let me know if you read any and felt the same!

Sundial by Catriona Ward

What a twisty little bitch this book is, amirite? I can't tell you how many times I kept falling for the set ups just to have the rug completely pulled out from under me at the end.

Well played Catriona. Well played! But also a little ballsy because I gotta be honest, I nearly DNFd twice in the beginning because of all the marriage drama and how our female protag was boo-hooing about her husband's affairs yet was doing dick all about it. But oooohh you sly fox!

If you are anything like me and start thinking of chucking the book before you finish, just don't. I promise you it gets better. It takes a little while for the crazy to start coming out but when it does... you'll be so glad you hung in there.

Liars go on pyres, ya'll.

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica

I desperately wanted a review copy of this book because of how much I loved Tender Is the Flesh. And while I did not love The Unworthy as much as that one, it definitely stands on its own amongst its dystopian peers.

Ecological disaster has caused humanity to fall and those who have survived are seeking protection and solace anywhere they can. Our protagonist scribbles out her story using anything she can find - ink, dirt, her own blood - in the hopes that someone may find it in the future and understand what she and the other women cloistered away with her in the Sacred Sisterhood had to endure for their continued survival.

As an Unworthy, she witnesses and is sometimes forced to participate in unspeakable religious rituals that are meant to cleanse, humiliate, torture, and (when push comes to shove) unalive others under the supervision of The Superior Sister and some mysterious man they hear but never see. She does her best to fly under the radar, generally avoiding the wrath of her peers and the ultimate bodily mutilation when one is chosen to ascend into the higher ranks.

Yet when a stranger claws her way through the convent walls, our narrator willingly puts herself at risk in the face of their growing friendship, and begins to seriously question the things that are going on under the roof of the Sisterhood, most especially with what's taking place behind the locked door where the Enlightened are kept.

A bleak, bizarre, brutal, violent, cultish religious existence in which everything is worse than it first appears, The Unworthy pokes and prods at you, testing your tolerance. It starts off rather curiously, and once it has your attention, begins to dig its nails in, pinching and scratching, relentlessly picking at the sore spot, watching patiently until you begin to reach your breaking point, and then it pounces, going straight for jugular.

The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

I mean... the ending is in the title, so no surprises with this one, and it's more about the journey than the destination, anyway. And oh what a depraved and raunchy journey it was.

It's what I would expect from a musician-turned-writer writing about a coked out, liquor loving dude who masquerades as a beauty product salesman but really's just in it for the pussy. And good lord does he get a lot of it, never mind that he's got a wife and kid at home that he doesn't really seem to give two shits about, until his wife takes herself out and then all the walls come crumbling down around him, don't they?

It's a book that makes you feel bad for the bad guy. You really don't want to because he's just such a scumbag, and that poor kid of his, who looks up to him and adores the shit out of him, but fuck it, there you are feeling like you want to reach on into those pages and give him a good shake, and a slap across the face, and then hug the heck out of him because he needs it. And his kid needs a better dad. And you need him to stop being such a god damn fuck up.

That hot pink on black cover is quite hot too.

Saint Sebastian's Abyss by Mark Haber

This was a gifted copy from a reader friend I typically vibe very closely with but sadly I think we're on opposite ends of the rating scale with this one. And if I'm being honest, it looks like I'm on the opposite end of the rating scale from everyone else who's read and reviewed this book too. (Welp. Can't love 'em all!)

I don't usually go in for books about fictional art / artists / art critics, so I was admittedly a little scared of this one and it's not totally surprising that I didn't fall in love with it, though I think a bigger part of it was the fact that the entire book was hinged around this snarky toxic male friendship that came out of a mutual obsession with an obscure painting. It also didn't help that the narrator just kept rehashing the same things over and over again for a hundred and forty pages:

- my ex bff defriended me because I said a horrible thing

- my ex bff also hated my first wife and my second wife because they both thought he was a joke

- my ex bff always tried to one up me over who was more obsessed with the painting and it was tiresome but I was happy to be his doormat because even though he was a complete ass he totally got me and here let me share all the mean things he's said and done to me while I jump on this plane to go visit him on his deathbed after he stopped speaking to me ten years ago after I said that horrible thing.

The ending ended exactly the way it needed to, though, didn't it?

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

This was another recommendation from a reader friend that I typically bookvibe with and while I liked it ok, I didn't find much to love about it. And yes, I know, here I am again, on the opposite end of the rating spectrum from everyone else who's read it, lol. But honestly, this one was a little weird for me. It oozes girl rage, fetish art, sex as a weapon, trauma and violence (both self harm and harm of others). Mental health and addiction, of both the drug and body dysmorphia kind, also saturate these pages.

It's a predator story at its core, only here the predator is a young woman who convinces men to pose for her in sexually deviant and incredibly uncomfortable ways. So it's a power play that inverts gender dynamics, with a manipulative leading lady that is slowly but surely unraveling at the seams. The abused becomes the abuser and calls it art. It's grungy and edgy and aggressive but also maybe trying a little too hard?

Have you read it? Are you a lover or hater?

People Like Them by Samira Sedira

I saw this floating around #bookstagram and thought it sounded interesting, and I really liked the cover.

A family is brutally murdered in a small, close knit town in France but it isn't really a mystery or thriller per-se because the book opens with the murderer already on trial.

The story is told through the POV of his wife and bounces cleanly between the trial and the events leading up to the murders. It's slow paced with very little tension. There's no surprising twists or reveals... just a series of situations that eventually push our narrator's husband to do the unthinkable, the only thing he can think to do, a horrific and unforgivable act of desperation.

This is a book that probably would not have caught my radar on its own, and I might have been ok with that. It was just alright. Nothing to write home about, but not a total waste of reading time either.

Have you read it? Do you have strong feelings on it, either way?

The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

This was a total impulse buy while shelf browsing at the bookstore. I hadn't heard of it and thought it sounded too good to walk away from, and I'm glad I ended up getting it.

The book starts off with a young girl named Maeve who survived a near drowning twenty five years ago but is in a coma from which she will never wake, apparently frozen in time, having also not aged since the accident.

The rest of the book bounces back and forth in time, telling the story of those who are, whether they realize it or not, intimately connected to Maeve and her family, where all threads tie back to a groundbreaking new drug that claims to halt the aging process while also reducing chronic pain.

There's her mother Naomi, a lead researcher for one of the newer biotech companies, who mysteriously drowns while swimming out to an island searching for answers among odd red stones and strange algae blooms; her father Lionel, now her caretaker, once had a passion for studying the cosmos but ended up becoming an entomologist; the woman named Tess who Maeve's sister Evangeline meets in the cemetery and who is dying of brain tumors; a famous performance artist and refugee named Monique who survived a horrific epidemic in her homeland only to be faced with another one here; and Kevin Marks, the owner of the Museum of Human History, a man who is obsessed with the preservation of the ancient caves and artifacts of the island they all call home.

Like a pebble dropped in a body of water, the ripple effect is strong and wide reaching. Bergman pokes and prods at base human fears - those of aging, of losing precious memories, and of the terrifying idea of being forgotten or not measuring up. And the actions, or inactions, taken by our cast of characters based on avoiding or accepting or overcoming those fears, create waves, some greater, some smaller, that come crashing in upon the shores of their lives.

What do the crystalized red rocks and algae have to do with Maeve's current condition? What was her mother Naomi hoping to learn by swimming out to the algae bloom? And how does the strange doll covered in the red rocks that was found with the remains of the ancient residents of those caves, now on display in the Museum of Human History, tie into all of this?

It has the feel of a dystopian novel, with speculative and sci-fi elements, and leaves us with more questions than it gives us the answers to, but that's totally ok because I found it to be an enticing, fascinating read.

Stranded by Bracken Macleod

Ooooh! The environmental and isolation horror is strong with this one. And the whole men as the real monsters thing? Yeah, that makes the horror of it all so much worse!

So we've got a big ass boat making a supply run out in the middle of the ocean when they find themselves tossed about in a really bad storm. Fog too thick to see through, all communications and radar knocked out, the crew flying blind and hanging on for dear life.

Once the fog dissipates, they realize they are iced in. Stuck. Stranded with no way to call out for help. And most of the guys onboard are showing signs of an unknown illness, some getting worse by the moment. Noah, one of the deck hands and the only crew member to not have caught whatever's going around, notices something else out on the ice with them, about a mile away. So he and a brave few, those who can still get up out of bed and stand upright on their own, decided to head out for it, hoping that it's the oil rig they were supposed to connect with, and with it, the potential for rescue before they all freeze or starve to death.

Only... something they could never have expected is waiting out there for them. Something that makes no sense at all. Something they couldn't have planned for...

Like most of the survivors, you're constantly wondering just what in god's name is going on out there. It's weird and wonderful and a perfect winter horror read. Don't snooze on this one like I had!

That's All I Know by Elisa Levi

What a quietly deceptive story. Oh my gosh, I loved it.

In it, Little Lea, a nineteen year old girl, is sitting on a bench overlooking the forest when a man comes rushing up looking for his dog. Lea asks the man to have a seat, and warns him against chasing the dog into the woods. Wait, she says. The forest eats people up and refuses to spit them back out. But dogs... dogs will return to you. She begs him to be patient and asks him to share a joint while she tells him a story to help pass the time.

And the entire novella is just that... it's the story Lea tells the man about her family and their small town, and the dangers of the forest, and the end of their world, a world she claims has been slowly dying over the past year.

I know what you might be thinking. C'mon, a whole book that's just one long monologue? One hundred and sixty pages of a young girl smoking some weed on a bench with a strange dude. How is that a five star read? Ok, yes, it's that... but it's also so much more. It's about loving when you're not loved back. It's about loving the unlovable. It's about refusing to give up but knowing when to give in. And it's about making the tough decisions and doing the things you know no one else will do, understanding you'll come out forever changed in the end.

You guys, I fell straight in. Fully and willingly, bewitchingly, hopelessly, and just you wait.

Just. You. Wait.

Maggie's Grave by David Sodergren

Instant regret reading this one. The Haar is far superior. By leaps and bounds!

So many of you are out there talking this one up and I'm over here like nope. The kill scenes were just hokey and perverted. I think it's meant to be campy and softly splatterpunk, like those old 80's slasher movies where the dead come back for revenge and there ain't no stopping 'em till they get it. And of course it all kicks off with some teens screwing on a witch's grave. I mean, c'mon. So tropey, right?! It just all came across as gratuitous and over the top.

This one missed the mark with me. Eyeroll city, you guys.

At least I'm no longer suffering from FOMO, though.