A SINISTER QUARTET makes its debut + new reviews
Mike Allen / Monday, June 15th, 2020 / No Comments »In case you missed it last week — though, if you follow me on social media, you likely didn’t, I’ve been shouting it from the rooftops — A Sinister Quartet, the new anthology featuring C. S. E. Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee and myself, premiered as scheduled on Tuesday, June 9. (To see all the different ways to buy a copy, click here.)
Quite a few terrific and incredibly thorough new reviews appeared, too, including this one from Little Red Reviewer:
And this one from Anthony R. Cardno:
(There’s more but I believe I am going to save those for a future post.)
This next bit almost feels like it should go without saying, but I think it’s clear it should be said: if you’re instead paying attention to the Black Lives Matter protests and the long-overdue and necessary changes that are happening because of them, by all means keep doing that. And stay safe, as the COVID-19 pandemic has not gone away either.
All that said, if our not-so-little book of dark fantastic tales has caught your eye and made you decide to take a break and check it out, and if you happened not to hear about last week’s launch, there’s some fun things the four of us did to promote the book that you’ll probably enjoy catching up on.
On launch day, we all turned up at John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, contributing an essay to the “Big Idea” series he curates in which we all “interviewed” each other about our stories in Sinister Quartet. (Click on the screenshot to check it out…)
As you can see, we have the distinction of setting a new record in the history of Big Ideas.
The next day, all four of participated in a Reddit Ask Me Anything held on the r/Fantasy forum, and the result doubles as a pretty terrific interview with the authors. (Again, to check it out, click on the screenshot.)
Just in case you missed our other stunts in the weeks leading up the book’s premiere, here’s the group Zoom reading we did, here’s a post about cocktail mixes that match our stories that has matching tongue-in-cheek photos, and here’s one about playlists that match our stories with cool matching graphics by Amanda McGee.
I’m grateful my co-authors for all the work they are putting into making this book a success — above and beyond the excellent stories they contributed.
There will be more to come, including a second virtual group reading scheduled for Wednesday, June 24, orchestrated by Book No Further, the downtown indie book store here in Roanoke, Virginia, which just recently re-opened to admitting small groups of customers.
More news on all of that as it develops.