The Great Outer Dark

There was a lot of positive response to my 2015 Lovecraftian sci-fi novel The Midnight Games, so I told the publisher I would make it the cornerstone of a trilogy. Easier said than done: I wasn’t able to get the next book, The Medusa Deep, out until 2021. Soon however, the trilogy will be complete. One of the treats of doing the trilogy is that each book has an ominous cover artwork by Toronto’s Rachel Rosen. Here is the latest.

One of the themes of the Midnight Games trilogy is growth and transformation, as seen in a major character in the final volume, The Great Outer Dark, cover art by Rachel Rosen.

Published
Categorized as Main

An interview with Abdul Wadud; 43 years on

The New York Times recently did an article on the African American cellist Abdul Wadud (1947-2022) and I’m glad to say, linked it to an interview I did with Wadud for Coda Magazine in 1980. Thanks for the USA website Point of Departure for having the foresight, and insight, to reprint the article last year in a new format, introduced and edited by Pierre Crépon, under the title “Knocking Down Barriers: An Interview with Abdul Wadud, 1980.”
NINETEEN EIGHTY! Working for Coda in those years gave me so many opportunities to become immersed in a music that relatively few people knew much about. A career in the arts is not easy, and it’s encouraging to think that one’s work accumulates incrementally, and that what can seem to have been ephemeral can sometimes bounce back into the spotlight, years after it’s done and – you think – gone.

Abdul Wadud with his daughter Aisha. Newark, NJ, July 28, 1980. Photo by David Lee.

Published
Categorized as Main

David Lee in Pat and Skee

photo by Sally

At this writing (March 2022), I’m having a great time (that’s me on the left) playing double bass with Chris Palmer on guitar, at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius in Sky Gilbert’s Pat and Skee. This new play has great performances by Suzanne Bennett as Pat, Ralph Small as Skee, and Sky himself, as himself. Chris and I play onstage, both before the show and during it, as the jazz band in the club where Pat tries to spend as much of her time as she can, and where she encounters both Sky now, and the younger Sky. Audiences have loved it so far! We’re playing until March 12.

Pat and Skee
Theatre Aquarius, 190 King William Street, Hamilton
https://theatreaquarius.org/upcoming-shows/
Thursday, Mar  3            7:30 pm
Friday, Mar        4            7:30 pm
Saturday, Mar   5            1:30 pm
Sunday, Mar      6            1:30 pm
Thursday, Mar 10          7:30 pm
Friday, Mar        11          7:30 pm
Saturday, Mar 12            1:30 pm

Published
Categorized as Main

Kirkus Reviews: January 2022

“Lee enhances his novel with references to the Lovecraft mythos [and] elements that smoothly tie into real-world events, including World War II. Nate’s no-nonsense attitude befits a worthy hero, but Lee gives him just enough snarkiness to make him a believable teenager. The author further invigorates this sequel with vibrant detail … a smashing cliffhanger sets up a potential third installment [of] this dark, ongoing adventure.” – Kirkus Reviews, Jan. 11, 2022

March 3, 2021

Is the pandemic state of suspended animation starting to thaw? I have accepted Scott Thomson’s kind offer to put the recording we made with Germaine Liu and John Oswald on Scott’s Bandcamp page. A Hyphen in Reverse. I originally thought of it as a CD but I couldn’t figure out what I’d do with a CD – sell it at “gigs”? There is space on Bandcamp for a “cover artwork,” however, and thanks to Maureen Cochrane for her help with this, and everything else.

https://sowehear.bandcamp.com/album/a-hyphen-in-reverse

Published
Categorized as Main

November 3, 2020

Wishing all the best to our friends in the U.S.A. on this pivotal day! If you need a bit of levity, Hamilton Public Library asked me to do a reading for their Virtual Storyteller series. I agreed immediately – like a lot of writers these days, I’m more desperate for attention than ever – and read them “A Rope Ladder to the Moon,” which they edited into a very short (2:11) video.

Wolsak & Wynn took this opportunity to announce the upcoming (June 2021) publication of the book that “Rope Ladder” comes from, the Midnight Games sequel The Medusa Deep. The book has a great cover from the artist who did The Midnight Games, Rachel Rosen. Questions or comments? lee.davidneil@gmail.com.

Published
Categorized as Main

August 23, 2020

The thing about writing books is, it takes a long time. My Midnight Games sequel, The Medusa Deep is now scheduled for spring 2021 so I am working on a third book to make a trilogy.

There have been opportunities to do shorter pieces: The Hamilton Arts Council commissioned me to write an online essay on the Dundas-based painter Catherine Gibbon

Early this year the FB page Cha: An Asian Literary Journal announced the existence of a new book, The Flock of Ba-Hui, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, by the Chinese writer “Oobmab” (spell it backwards). I ordered a copy and wrote a review of the book for Black Gate Magazine. 

There are occasionally chances to play double bass. Whenever we get the chance, I get together with Hamilton musicians, guitarist Chris Palmer and saxophonist Connor Bennett. We have been getting together via Zoom, and given the chance to play in IICSI’s (the International Institution for Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph) online IF Festival in August, we did our best to offset the technical handcuffs of online collaboration by recording ourselves separately; Connor Bennett mixed the tracks together and with visuals added in real time by Andrew O’Connor, we offered Pandemic Assemblage #1.

Published
Categorized as Main

April 25, 2020

My novel The Medusa Deep, sequel to The Midnight Games, is still scheduled for this fall – I’ve got my fingers crossed that Wolsak & Wynn will be able to issue it then! Like everything else, publishing has been slowed to a crawl by COVID-19 / aka the coronavirus. Since books seem to be all about text (they aren’t really), you might think publishing would be relatively immune, but books are really about bookstores, readings and launches, browsing shelves and listening to word-of-mouth, about holding an object in your hand that came to you from other persons that you talked to and interacted with, so the book trade has been hit hard.

The Medusa Deep, in continuing the story, transports the imaginative world of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” to present-day Hamilton, Ontario (this time, Nate also goes to the BC coast, and points beyond). It is also about an individual confronting not only the alien and strange, but the terrible power of crowds and misplaced faith, and the ways in which the need to survive becomes the need for power, and then somehow that need changes character, changes shape, and becomes something terribly evil. With this in mind, writing in this particular place and time, it is hard to create fiction that keeps pace with actual events.

Chainsaws: A History just came out in paperback, and Harbour was able to get me on the Hamilton TV station CHCH on March 11, just before everything really started to lock down (in the video I announce a signing at Epic Books, for example, that didn’t happen and may never happen). For my own reading, I am ordering a few books from my local indie booksellers, but as long as social movement is stopped, publishing is stopped too!

I’ve got to thank Harbour Publishing for the new edition, and for taking on Chainsaws in the first place. Harbour is also now distributing my novel Commander Zero, since its original publisher has ceased operations. For technical reasons they can’t include it in their catalogue, but if you contact them, they can provide the book!

Published
Categorized as Main

October 14, 2019

If you write books you can go for months, and even years, with very little feedback from the outside world. You may have put out books that had really positive reader, critic, and sales response but, naturally, soon the enthusiasm moves on. If you want to get it back, your only hope is to write a completely new book. And writing a book is a big job.

With this in mind, this summer I was very pleased to be in touch with three different publishers about upcoming books.

• The Medusa Deep. Response to The Midnight Games was so positive that Noelle Allen (publisher of Wolsak & Wynn / Poplar Press) and I immediately began to discuss the ways in which it might become the foundation of a trilogy. I’ve drafted a sequel, and Noelle and I have agreed on the revisions that will make this manuscript publishable. I’m just about (October 2019) to finish this new draft– although a publication date will depend on Wolsak & Wynn’s upcoming publishing schedule.

• Chainsaws: A History. I’ve always thought of Chainsaws as a homage to the small-town and rural culture that was so much a part of my upbringing, and that still informs so much of how I see the world. Since it came out the book has only been available in hardcover, but Harbour Publishing contacted me this summer about doing a new, paperback edition. I have managed to slip in a few small but (I hope) helpful revisions. The paperback edition of Chainsaws: A History will come out in February 2020.

• Outside the Empire: Improvised Music in Toronto 1960-1985. This is a projected book adaption of my 2017 PhD dissertation. It is also under negotiation with a very supportive academic publisher. But my own teaching (a new vocation for me) and other writing commitments have stopped me from seeing the revisions through to completion. If anyone’s interested, check in again in a few months and I should be able to say something more conclusive! The best way to contact me is via email: lee.davidneil@gmail.com

Published
Categorized as Main