Tomio’s Want List – October Dark by David Herter

We don’t run a ton of press releases because A. I tend to find them boring and B. Where do you stop? C. You get to a point where there has to be a paper exchange to post that information. Sometimes though something catches our eye, and seemingly for the most trivial of reasons. For these occasions there’s Tomio’s Want List.

This week the have the what most would call flimsy circumstances to cause anticipation: a cover and the word of one man. I saw the book in passing visiting the mighty Jeffrey Ford’s blog (pull the BSC file on Ford, and check out the piece he wrote for us in Heliotrope). The days of me reading 80-110 books a year are over, as BSC has just become too large on a daily management level for me to dedicate that time to reading. That’s why I depend now more than ever on recommendations of established purveyors of quality.

David Herter’s October Dark will feature an introduction by Ford and is set to be published by Earthling Publications in October 2009 (perfect for the Holiday). The synopsis at the publisher’s site reads:

From acclaimed author David Herter, a new novel in the tradition of Ray Bradbury’s SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and Tim Powers’s LAST CALL….

     
Halloween, 1931. The metropolis of Grenton. On the ruined canals, a clock tolls midnight. Willis H. O’Brien, the father of stop motion animation, seeks the base elements of a new animation. And Henri Mordaunt, the undying Phantasmagoria magician, will soon provide them. An uncanny bargain is struck, leading to betrayal and dire retribution, and an act of cinematic alchemy that echoes down the history of fantastic film.

     
Halloween, 1977. For thirteen-year-old Will and his best friend Jim — amateur animators and Famous Monsters of Filmland fanatics — summer darkens into mysterious autumn, with a black balloon prowling the skies of their suburban neighborhood, and supernatural images haunting the frames of their latest 8 mm epic, heralding doom. Everything leads to the edge of Grenton’s ruined canals, and the faded cinema palace where STAR WARS has been showing non-stop since late May, a gateway into the mysteries of Grenton’s past, and to a secret history playing out on either side of the silver screen….

     
Where the hell is Christopher Nolan to scoop up film rights? Bradbury and Tim Powers? Definitely some gumption. Ford himself said this: I’ll say no more now save that it’s a hell of a book.

At his blog, Herter states that October Dark will be available via two formats. There are 500 numbered, clothbound copies, signed by the author, going for $50, and 15 lettered, traycased copies, bound using the finest materials, signed by the author and artist (Chris Nurse), for $300. The FINEST MATERIALS, people. Admittedly kind of problematic as I’m not going to pay 300 bills to bring you the word on this book, but definitely something that drew my interest.

The last time Ford recommended a book that I checked out it was in the form of the magnificent Richard Bowes, and he was early on (along with Jeff VanderMeer) singing the praises of Hal Duncan–both great finds.

In Ford I Trust. Especially if you have Benjamins.