HAZELAND

The name has changed a lot, let's just set that record straight.

I started this whole thing out a bunch of years ago, with some malformed and half-baked ideas that haven't yet seen the light of day. Maybe they will. Things have turned around like that. But this really didn't get started until I submitted a story called "Chunked" for an anthology called TOMORROW'S CTHULHU, put out by an outfit that I'd never heard of before but would get to know a lot better, by the name of Broken Eye Books.

Amazingly enough, that story got accepted and printed. Step forward about a year and a half, maybe two, maybe a touch more. I talked to the publisher about whether or not it was cool for me to do something else in that setting but under my own thing, for comics back then. Back when making comics on spec almost made sense. Hint: they don't, unless the person who's actually drawing and therefore co-writing the comic is working for just back end pay (sub-hint: nobody works for just back-end) you need to come up with a way to pay them. About thirty grand if you want to pay non-insultingly for an OGN's worth of material.

So I asked the publisher if that was cool, and to my surprise, he asked me to pitch him the story instead. In short order, I came up with the story of a counterfeiter of occult books who wants to stop making fakes and make something real. Which she does. Then things come unglued. Throw it all into a compelling setting and mix in some atmosphere and it's just a couple steps to QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. Which that book became.

But the plan was always to do more of them. Just wasn't sure how. Fast-forward a bit to October of last year. Got the go-ahead from the publisher to run with two more follow-ons to QONT, those being the currently-underway MY DROWNING CHORUS and the one after that which is a little more nebulous called GLASS WOLVES (h/t to Richard Kadrey who threw the title out there on Twitter and said "do as thou wilt" so I did.) After that will be VOIDMAW which is a weirdo gothic space fantasy, more DUNE (1985) in tone and feel than STAR WARS or other more obvious antecedents. That'll probably be worked on in the second half of next year, but I can't name a publishing date.

Which left me with the problem of series identification. See, my first published writing under my own name and all was in comics. And there, stories are usually constructed under a single title with arcs broken out of those. But the over-reaching title comes first, then the 'book' name. So for instance STRANGEWAYS: MURDER MOON was the first of my works. THE THIRSTY was the second. No you can't buy them on Amazon, only over at the bigcartel store. And I'll never sell physical other than POD at Amazon until they change their ways and actually order say ten at a time so postage costs don't destroy any shot at anything like a profit (but you know Amazon makes their nut every time.)

I found myself needing a series name now. I played with NO TOMORROWS or THE SMOKING CODEX or SIGHTLESS EYE. Went back to SMOKETOWN (which may yet come back around). Tried some new ones like ABYSSAL or even THE NEON ABYSSAL and they weren't quite right. I worked on a new name, one that could evoke the city of LA and the region around it, as well as summon up a feeling of mystery and intangibility, all useful in describing the weird.

I decided on the below, and it was approved a few days ago.