GOOD NEWS, EVERYBODY! The wonderful folks at Ticonderoga will be publishing my collection — which was previously known as LITTLE DIGS, but now, with its new lease on life, is forevermore to be known as SONGS FOR DARK SEASONS — in April this year!!
HOORAY!!!
Cover art to come (this pic is from an article in the New Yorker; it’s not the cover!) but the book can be pre-ordered here:
And here’s the blurb:
With a twang in its heart and a song for luck on its tongue, Songs for Dark Seasons takes readers back to the lonesome dream counties introduced in the World Fantasy Award-nominated collection, Bluegrass Symphony.
Trailer parks and graves are only temporary homes for souls in these tales, where gods dwell in churches and parking lot groves. Friday night football stars mingle with sirens; hunters’ wives help their kids not to shoot, but to fly; Chanticleers spar their way into local government; and rash-afflicted men take dryads for lovers. In backwater towns, some witches have the know-how to pin pageant queens pretty, while others relieve girls of highfalutin aspirations. Local crow-boys and bloodthirsty Ursines are the best miners around.
In these thirteen stories, forests are imbued with the deepest, saddest strains of country music, cornfield horizons stretch as long as a lone fiddle’s wail, and distant hills make mandolin promises: sweet and catchy and short-lived.
Lisa L. Hannett 