Editor’s Pick: Cutting Edge Fiction in Audere
At Audere, we publish fiction and non-fiction, drawing from the great authors at Chickadee Prince Books, among other places.
Alon Preiss’s most recent novel has been praised as “a complex, magical web of love, betrayal, and secrets that spans years and continents” (Foreword) and “a spellbinding love story that is both intimate and universal” (Clifford Garstang), and we brought you some samples of this great writer’s fiction. Saturday in Yaroslavl tells the story of a young woman’s disastrous attempt to escape from the Russian provinces to Moscow. In Falling in Love with Alice, a young couple in the 1980s share a romantic idyll on the other side of the world, and wonder, Is it really love, if it lasts only a few days?
In Audere’s fiction pages, we span the centuries. We rediscovered a great old fairy tale called The Dovecote, by Violet Jacob, which is a story about a military coup in a magical kingdom, which kids and their parents will all enjoy; and, with the beautifully written Stardust, in which a dreamcatcher chases stardust to the end of the night, we bring you a new fantasy short story with a non-binary slant, by a young poet who remains, for now, anonymous.
In our comics section, we’ve introduced new strips by the talented Craig Eastland, and looked in the vault for long-forgotten classics like “Bertha the Siberian Cheese-Hound,” “Petting Patty,” and, especially, “The Yellow Kid.”
Finally, no one has done more innovative work in these pages than the science fiction novelist Mark Laporta, who has spun a half dozen great serialized stories in Audere. In Moonrock, a lunar contractor yearns for adventure and learns too late that, sometimes, boring is good; in Granular, a brilliant physicist and confirmed rationalist confronts the waking nightmare of a shattered universe; and in the inventive noir-SF serial, Insective, a gang of human activists shifts tactics from civil disobedience to full-blown terror, and a season of discontent begins — which a certain alien detective is sure he never signed up for.
Stay safe, and see you soon.
Frank King was best known as the creator of “Gasoline Alley,” one of the earliest comic strips, and one that is still going strong after more than 100 years. But before that, he was the creator of numerous comics that lasted around a year, or even less. He began with “Jonah, a Whale for Trouble,” which ran for just a little over two months, in late 1910, in The Chicago Tribune, followed by the frog-themed “Young Teddy” (1911 to 1912), “Hi-Hopper,” (February to December 1914), “The Boy Animal Trainer,” “Here Comes Motorcycle Mike,” and so on. In 1915, he introduced this comic strip, “Bobby Make-Believe” (not to be confused with the later “Billy Make-Believe”) which concerned the heroic daydreams of a Calvin-like boy. When the more successful “Gasoline Alley” took off, King dropped “Bobby,” and it was quickly forgotten.
