One Who Disappeared in January

Did I say December?  I meant January.

Expect a big announcement on e-books and the like, as well as a fab refurbishment of this blog, whenever I have some time to waste on social media.  Right now, I'm too engrossed in Tim Powers' amazing HIDE ME AMONG THE GRAVES, the best genre novel I've read in years.

That's great to see Prague lurking in the background, but the novel seems London-bound.  Beautiful image, nonetheless.

One Who Disappeared in December

Here's the cover to my new novel, One Who Disappeared, stunning art by Vlad Verano, stunning layout by Robert Wexler. It's due in December. And the flap jacket copy:

From David Herter, whose work Kirkus Reviews called "distinctive and imaginative, moving to its own disconcerting logic," comes a poignant and masterful novel about a group of artists from the hinterland of Europe between the World Wars, who clash with the clockwork of Time.

Hollywood, 1949. Czech composer Paul Haas lives comfortably at Universal Studios with his wife and family. But he's haunted by memories of the past, of home and of friends and loved ones lost in the recent war. When a telegram arrives, hinting at answers to mysteries that trouble him, it leads Paul to Brentwood Hills and a startling revelation. Driven by what he has learned, Paul feels compelled to journey to his homeland to perform a necessary act of devotion.

Prague, Czechoslovak Republic, 1929. In his beloved homeland at the zenith of her brief democratic flourishing, Paul is drawn into the orbit of Karel Capek, author of Rossum's Universal Robots, and his brother Josef, an avant-garde artist, both blissfully unaware of the shadow of impending war.

After an encounter with a young flautist, who alone spies his secret, Paul seeks out a mysterious village where his mentor, the eccentric composer Leos J------, had snatched a melody from the air and disrupted the fabric of time. Now, in ruins far older than Christianity, Paul embarks on a temporal odyssey towards a great conflagration, where artists from his homeland, Europe and America will join to challenge the coming chaos.

With On the Overgrown Path, The Luminous Depths and now One Who Disappeared, David Herter has crafted a singular epic of time travel; a reverie on the World Wars; an explication of a near-forgotten strand of Eastern European science fiction, music, and painting and a memorable evocation of those artists who, for a brief moment, changed the heartbeat of the world.

On the Overgrown Path -- Extended Edition

To coincide with the publication of One Who Disappeared, I’ve contracted with Vlad Verano — amazing artist and deft e-book producer — to prepare e-book versions of the previous Czech novellas, On the Overgrown Path and The Luminous Depths. In addition, I’ve expanded Overgrown Path by some seven thousand words. And happily, Jim Goddard, who brilliantly edited One Who Disappeared, has agreed to help me with the project.

When I wrote On the Overgrown Path, I had only a vague idea that it would be the first of three books, or that those books would form a rather vast novel called The Obstinates. Now that the project is complete, Overgrown Path begged for expansion — not only to broaden its chthonic undertones and point its ley lines in more helpful directions, but to incorporate the blindingly brilliant trove of material about Leoš Janácek — my Prospero — which came to light a year after my novel was published, in John Tyrrell’s magisterial biography.

Professor Tyrrell is the pre-eminent Janácek scholar (I sat quietly next to him in the Janácek archives in Brno in 2004, when he was hard at work on his masterpiece), and it's not an overstatement to say that his biography makes sense of Janácek for the very first time. Published as two beautiful tomes from Faber — The Lonely Blackbird, and Tsar of the Forests — it’s a work I’ve read and reread (and reread; let’s just say, subsumed) clarifying my understanding of the composer, and providing more than a few nuggets which seem to have a direct bearing on my invented plot. That said, I’ll be instructing Jim to remove any that seem superfluous.

One Who Disappeared about to Appear

One Who Disappeared, the final book in my trio of Czech novels (called The Obstinates), will be published in August or September by PS Publishing. (Hooray). My editor Jim Goddard and I have handed over the project to Robert Wexler, book designer extraordinare. I'd like to thank Nick Gevers, who shepherded the entire series through PS; Pete and Nicky Crowther for publishing it; Vlad Verano for his lovely covers, and Robert for the incredible designs for all three books. Finally, kudos to Jim, who brought a wealth of energy, critical acumen and good humor to the project. Watching Jim run his fine-tooth comb over every historical reference, weed out every excessive punctuation mark, and quash any-and-all Americanisms that might have intruded on the Mittel-European setting, has been a huge pleasure.

As to the rest of Jim’s career, here’s a bio I found:

In the early 1970s James Goddard edited and published the critical journal Cypher, which attracted contributions from many well-known writers including Brian Aldiss, Kingsley Amis, J. G. Ballard, Bob Shaw, John Brunner, Edmund Cooper and James Blish. Cypher was the first, and is still the only, journal of its kind to have received an element of Arts Council funding, via Southern Arts.

In 1971 he published the first J. G. Ballard bibliography. In the mid 1970s he collaborated with Interzone editor David Pringle in editing the Ballard festschrift J. G. Ballard: the First 20 Years (Brans Head Books, 1976).

In the mid 1980s he was one of the principals of, and editor for, Britain's first SF small press, Kerosina Publications, which published books by Brian Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Gene Wolfe, Richard Cowper, Keith Roberts, D. G. Compton, Michael Bishop, John Brunner and others.

Storeys from the Old Hotel has always been one of my most favorite Wolfe books, so kudos to Jim!

Praise for The Obsinates and David Herter

“I hope you get the full trilogy into American print.”
-- John Simon, critic for The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Opera News

"David Herter is a writer of formidable intelligence and talent." -- Paul Witcover, The New York Review of Science Fiction

“Just as there are touches of D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel in Herter’s depiction through his beloved Janácek of the warp and weave of a civilization under stress, so there are suggestions of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” in the way he spells his great composer into tranced rapport with whatever breathes there and does not wish to be taken into music.”
-- John Clute on On the Overgrown Path

“The Luminous Depths has a richness of prose and a density of allusion and ideas reminiscent of authors like Aldiss and Wolfe -- and, incidentally, it is a page-turning cracker of a horror story. Outside his homeland, Karel Capek may be remembered primarily through his legacy of the term “Robot”. It is Herter’s achievement in this novella to lead us through the narrow window of that single chthonic word to a rich evocation of a fragile, doomed period of Central European history”
-- Stephen Baxter

“David Herter’s trilogy, to which One Who Disappeared provides a spectacular and moving conclusion, does not fall; on the contrary, it remains perfectly suspended, sturdy and elegant — and by virtue of its topography, it does not, like more myopic literary projects, taper off into soothing closure, but opens wide to an even vaster and more glorious universe of possibility.”
-- Brian Stableford on One Who Disappeared

“Distinctive and imaginative, Herter's tale moves to its own disconcerting logic: a debut of immense promise."
-- Kirkus Reviews

New Works, A Taste of Meyrink, Kindlings

I'm deep into the second draft of The Cold Heavens, my Old-Weird Planetary Romance, currently at 220,000 words.

Like One Who Disappeared (due in 2011 from PS Publishing) The Cold Heavens features several real-life characters, none more prominently than the Austrian fantasist Gustav Meyrink.
A disgraced banker, champion sculler and fencer, theosophist, debunker of charlatans, follower of the charlatan Bo Yin Ra, and founder of the Order of the Blue Star, Herr Meyrink was one of the key writers of unease in the early twentieth century. The Golem, written in 1913, is possibly the most famous novel of Prague written by a non-Czech, and a work which seems, like much of his output, to foretell the coming apocalypse of 1914-1918. My favorite Meyrink (apart from the short, sharp stories that gained him his reputation) is The Angel of the West Window, an unearthly, disturbing, complex novel about the possession of a 20th century man by the 17th century world of alchemist John Dee, charlatan Edward Kelley, and the mad, melancholic Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Dominus Mundi, King of Bohemia, Hungary, Germany and the Romans, who ruled his empire from gloomy Prague. (Rudolf is also a character in my novel, his madness compelling him into a solar system haunted by literal angels and demons).





















Look also for The Green Face, written during the War, about a post-war Amsterdam haunted by the figure of the Wandering Jew. . .

And The Opal and Other Stories, a collection of SF/Fantasy and Horror stories written in the early years of the Twentieth Century that recalls (at least to me) the bracing shock of Clive Barker's original Books of Blood.




On the back burner, I've been preparing my novels for Kindle and other e-book platforms. Expect an announcement soon about a subtly-expanded Ceres Storm and its massive unpublished sidequel, Yan Tan Tethera (Therese Littleton's favorite unpublished book), as well as a substantially tightened and polished and darkened October Dark (aka OD: the director's cut?).

The Cold Heavens reaches a milestone

Yesterday I hit 200,000 words in my Old Weird Planetary Romance, The Cold Heavens. (Full title, The Cold Heavens: Eine planetarische Romanze). I expect the draft will come in at 240,000 or so.

One Who Disappeared now synopsized

Nick Gevers and I have concocted the flap copy for forthcoming One Who Disappeared, now posted on the PS website. It's cool to see everything coming together. I recently took another look back at the manuscript from 2007, and didn't feel the need to change a word of it (a rarity for me).

Hollywood, California, 1949. Exiled Czechoslovak composer Paul Haas lives a comfortable life at Universal Studios. He has a loving wife and family. His opera The Insect Play has been a hit at the Metropolitan in New York. But for Paul, the past is never far away; he’s haunted by memories of home, of too many friends and loved ones lost in the World War.

On a summer day, a telegram arrives, hinting at answers to mysteries sinister yet promising. It leads Paul into the heights of Brentwood Hills, and a startling revelation.

Driven by strange currents of destiny, Haas is compelled to leave his easy existence for one last journey into the past, to perform an act of devotion...

Prague, Czechoslovak Republic, 1929. Haas arrives in his beloved country at the zenith of her brief flourishing. Keeping to the shadows, Paul finds himself nonetheless drawn into the orbit of the urbane, witty Karel Capek and his insightful brother Josef, both in the prime of their artistic lives, unaware of the horror that lurks on the horizon.

After an encounter with a young flautist named Magdalena, who alone spies the truth of him, Paul seeks out a mysterious village in the hinterlands of Austria. It was there, six years earlier, that the eccentric Maestro J------ — Paul’s beloved mentor — snatched a melody from the air, disrupting the fabric of time. Now, in ruins far older than Christianity, Paul will be changed irrevocably, beginning an odyssey that leaps across the dwindling years toward a great conflagration, where artists of his Republic join with those of Europe and America to deliver an unexpected challenge to the coming chaos.

With On the Overgrown Path, The Luminous Depths, and now One Who Disappeared, David Herter has crafted a singular epic of time travel; a reverie on the World Wars from unique angles; an explication of a near-forgotten strand of Eastern European science fiction, music, and painting; and, most of all, a memorable evocation of real-life artists who, for a brief moment, changed the heartbeat of the world.

From Brian Stableford's introduction to One Who Disappeared

"One Who Disappeared is the third volume of a trilogy, which began with On the Overgrown Path and continued in The Luminous Depths. There are, of course, numerous ways to concoct a trilogy; many are merely three-decker novels, others follow the N-shaped trajectory favored by script-writing theorists, in which a set-up phase is followed by a phase in which everything goes wrong, in order that the concluding phase can take the form of a soaring ascent. The most ambitious and most appropriate way to plan and build a trilogy, however, is the inverted pyramid.

"The inverted pyramid begins with a phase that is economical, neat and self-contained; a perfectly-satisfactory work of art in its own right. On top of that is placed something much larger; not merely, or even necessarily, larger in terms of mere wordage, but something more substantial, with greater reach and grasp, which is, once again, whole in itself, perhaps to the extent of seeming conclusive. On top of that is then placed something so much larger, thematically and ambitiously, as to seem vast. The escalation of scale is, in itself, easy enough to contrive, but what is difficult is to keep the whole structure in balance, so that it stands up and does not wobble, in spite of its seeming defiance of safety. The third volume of such a trilogy must not only absorb its predecessors into a coherent whole but must demonstrate their perfect balance, prove that they function as a pivot and an intermediate support that are both essential and reliable. Without that, the whole edifice falls.

"David Herter’s trilogy, to which One Who Disappeared provides a spectacular and moving conclusion, does not fall; on the contrary, it remains perfectly suspended, sturdy and elegant—and by virtue of its topography, it does not, like more myopic literary projects, taper off into soothing closure, but opens wide to an even vaster and more glorious universe of possibility. . ."

— Brian Stableford