I have just been tagged in the “Next Big Thing” thingie by the biggest thingie of them all: Rhys Hughes.
Thanks, Rhys.
As I understand it, I am to answer the following 10 questions about my next book or work-in-progress, then, with permission, to tag another writer that I think is of interest.
What is the title of your next book?
BEYOND HIRAETH by DF Lewis and others.
A small selection from my collaborations during the 1990s with various writers, whose permission I have received in order to find a publisher for these stories as a single book:
The Sound of Children – DF Lewis & Anthea Holland (fantasque 2000)
Variations on the Vile – DF Lewis & Richard Gavin (Book of Dark Wisdom 2003)
Knuckledraggers, Inc. – DF Lewis & John Travis (The Zone 1999)
Popper’s in the Wine – DF Lewis & P.F. Jeffery (Lateral Moves 1998)
In the Belly of the Snake – DF Lewis & Paul Pinn (The Edge 1996)
I Consume That of the Edge of Exquisite Taste – DF Lewis & Craig Sernotti (Not Dead, But Dreaming 1997)
The London Fairground – DF Lewis & Allen Ashley (The Heliograph 1999)
Harvest Time – DF Lewis & Gordon Lewis (Enigmatic Tales 2000)
Three Suns For Yesterday – DF Lewis & Jeff Holland (previously shown on-line)
Don’t Drown the Man Who Taught You to Swim – DF Lewis & David Mathew (Redsine 2002, Paranoid Landscapes 2006)
The Fat Bat – DF Lewis & Scott Urban (Octobyr 1998)
Tale With Unknown Collaborator – DF Lewis & Carlton Mellick (previously shown on-line)
The Slippery Pearls – DF Lewis & Mike Philbin/Hertzan Chimera (Masque 1995)
NITS – DF Lewis & Paul Bradshaw (Voyage 1999)
Tungus – DF Lewis & Jeff Holland (Rictus 1995)
The Shoal – DF Lewis & Lawrence Dyer (previously shown on-line)
The Moon Pool – DF Lewis & M.F. Korn (Eraserhead Press 2001)
The Quest of the Mouther – DF Lewis & Rhys Hughes (Visions 1997)
The Swimming Pool – DF Lewis & Tony Mileman
Disaffected Blood – DF Lewis & David Price (Unhinged 2000)
Tiny Hooks and Dainty Door-Keys – DF Lewis & Mark McLaughlin (Flesh & Blood 2003)
Mary’s Broken House – DF Lewis & Dominy Clements (previously shown on-line)
The Winged Menace – DF Lewis & John B Ford (The Evil Entwines 2002)
Finnegan Awake – DF Lewis & Simon Woodward (shown on-line)
This Flight Tonight – DF Lewis & Gary Couzens (Substance 1994, Second Contact 2003)
Remission – DF Lewis & Anthea Holland (Roadworks 1996)
Any publisher who sees this ‘Next Big Thing’ and likes the idea, please contact me.
NB: The multiple collaborationss with Stuart Hughes are already published as BUSY BLOOD (2012)), with Gordon Lewis as ONLY CONNECT (1998) and as A MAN TOO MEAN TO BE ME (2012)), while those with Tim Lebbon are to be published in 2013 as LET’S EAT MONSTERS and with Marge Simon as THE HORN’S LAST RITE also to be published in 2013. (The WORDHUNGER collaborations now published by me in 2012.)
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
It sort of came to me that there was a lot of great material going to waste sitting on my blogs which nobody knew was there. I wondered if these, when placed together as a whole, actually represented the best example of my theory regarding ‘gestalt real-time reviewing’ or ‘the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’ both of which I recently discussed on-line when Chômu Press interviewed me. All this happens in some oblique way that will gradually cohere — as the stories paradoxically jostle and blend their relationships by being ‘frozen’ on paper.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
A genre that I would call Disturbing Fiction.
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
The writer-collaborators themselves!
5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Fiction depicting an evilly balanced dilemma between madness and sanity.
(6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
As I did with my novella ‘Weirdtongue’ and with my two collections ‘Weirdmonger’ and ‘The Last Balcony’, this will be by attritional word-of mouth without submitting them via or directly to anyone, till a publisher approaches me!
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
The years between 1992 and 2000. This was done piecemeal and with firewalls between participants as cross-sectioned by timeframes and discrete human brains, mostly by snail mail. This is the first draft unlike any other first drafts, consequently.
8) What other books would you compare this book to within your genre?
I don’t think there is anything with which to compare it!
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The Small Press world of the 1990s, my friends there, Light’s List, Scavenger’s Newsletter…
10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
The actual process of these uniquely ‘DFL-stirred’ concoctions with ‘veils and piques/peeks’, ‘vales and peaks’, in conjunction with manifold separate souls or mock-‘Proustian Selves’, seems to me to have created fictions unlike any other in the history of literature. The book may well pique many readers (like any book may do) but, here, the stories themselves need to be piqued in turn, i.e. by the process of being read igniting their ‘authonomous’ gestalt.
I now pass the ‘Next Big Thing’ to someone who, among her body of work, recently had published what I consider to be a truly amazing story (Songs For Dead Children) in ‘The First Book of Classical Horror Stories’: Aliya Whiteley.
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Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
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