Release Day for AFTER HOURS

Posted on March 1, 2011 by dbjackson

After Hours:  Tales From the Ur-Bar is now officially out and available for purchase!  This anthology, edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, and published by DAW, includes “The Tavern Fire,” the very first D.B. Jackson publication.  Set in Boston, on the eve of the Great Fire of 1760, “The Tavern Fire,” offers one possible explanation for the fire’s origins.  The anthology also includes stories from Benjamin Tate, Patricia Bray, S.C. Butler, Jennifer Dunne, Barbara Ashford, Maria V. Snyder, Kari Sperring, Seanan McGuire, Juliet E. McKenna, Laura Anne Gilman, Ian Tregillis, Avery Shade, Jackie Kessler, and Anton Strout.  I hope you’ll check it out.

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Writing a Bit of Mythology

Posted on February 28, 2011 by dbjackson

Expanding just a bit on my previous post…

Today, still working on another project, I wrote my own short myth, something that would help to clarify my own thinking about the magic system I’m developing.  And I found myself adopting the stylistic nuances of mythologies that I read last week.  The language is more formalistic — it almost reads like High Fantasy of the sort you might read in The Silmarillion (although not as good, clearly).  It was fun writing that way, and I think it helped me compose the myth; it put me in the mood, if you will.

I bring this up because I have written histories for previous projects, and didn’t feel the need to do the same thing with my prose.  I was perfectly content to let it to read as a rather dry recitation of facts, dates, events, etc.  But the myth, I felt, needed something more.

And anticipating questions:  No, I’m not ready to share the myth I wrote today.  It’s very rough…

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Mythology and History

Posted on February 25, 2011 by dbjackson

Expanding here on a short post to the D.B. Jackson Facebook page…

I spent much of this week reading mythology for another project, and I found myself thinking about the degree to which American history can be considered a mythology.  Yes, much of it is “true” in the sense that certain things actually did happen on certain days.  There are facts that can’t be argued, but there is much that remains open to interpretation, and there is much that is used by different people, or groups of people, and laden with different meanings.

George Washington is said to have cut down a cherry tree, and then to have had an honest exchange with his father about the incident.  From all accounts, this is mythology, not history.  The Boston Tea Party has, in the past couple of years, taken on a new and somewhat controversial resonance with a certain portion of the body politic that assigns to it a significance that may or may not actually be there.  Paul Revere’s ride; Abraham Lincoln’s childhood and early adulthood — even his beard; the attack on Pearl Harbor (the lead-up to it and its aftermath); the assassination of John Kennedy — all of these things can be documented with facts to some degree.  But all of them also have taken mythical qualities that are used in different ways by different constituencies.

It’s easy for us to read the supernatural stories of Celtic mythology and dismiss all of it as fiction.  It can’t be real, right?  No one swallows a butterfly and nine months later gives birth to a beautiful girl.  No warrior could do all the things that Cu Chulainn is said to have done.  And yet, those tales are every bit as important to the culture of Ireland as our stories are to us.

So, I find myself asking if it matters whether formative historical incidents are apocryphal or real?  What role does mythology play in a society?  What role does history play?  Are they interchangeable?  Complementary?  Totally separate?

I have more questions than answers right now, but I do find the questions interesting.

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Past, Present, and Future

Posted on February 24, 2011 by dbjackson

Tonight my wife and I are going to see a university production of the Greek tragedy Hecuba, by Euripides.  For the past couple of days I’ve been reading legends from the Mythology and Ulster Cycles of Celtic history.  There is nothing remarkable about either of these things.  People read mythology all the time, and somewhere in the world someone is always going to one dramatic production or another.

And yet, while there is nothing out of the ordinary in what I’ve been doing, there is something truly stunning in what it says about the endurance of art and in particular the written word.  The Celtic myths of Lugh and Daghda are literally thousands of years old, as are the works of the Greek masters.  And yet they still speak to us.  They still fascinate and entertain.  They touch on elements of human emotion, conflict, and ambition that in many ways remain as relevant today as they were the day they first were told.

I know that this isn’t an earth-shattering insight.  Others have said as much before.  I’ve said as much before.  But it is one of the reasons I love to write, and one of the reasons my wife and I have tried to impart our love of books and theater to our children.  I’m not so vain as to think that people will be reading my books a thousand years from now.  But that’s okay.  I do believe that my stories are part of a long tradition of storytelling, one that stretches back in time to the origins of the earliest oral traditions, and, I hope, one that will reach deep into the future, far beyond the time when my stories and I have been forgotten.

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AFTER HOURS!!

Posted on February 22, 2011 by dbjackson

AFTER HOURS: TALES FROM THE UR-BAR, edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia BrayFun times!  Today I received my author’s copy of After Hours:  Tales from the Ur-Bar, the anthology edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray that includes my short story, “The Tavern Fire.”

This is my first publication as D.B. Jackson, and so I’m very excited to see the story in print at last.  After Hours is a beautiful volume — DAW did a terrific job with it, as did Joshua and Patricia.

Briefly, “The Tavern Fire” offers one explanation for the Great Boston Fire of 1760, which destroyed much of the Cornhill section of the city — some three hundred and fifty buildings — without causing a single death.  For more about the story, please visit this page.  Or you could just buy a copy of After Hours.  Its official release date is March 1.

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A Bit About Boston in the 1760s

Posted on February 17, 2011 by dbjackson

Had a comment on another site from a friend — he was wondering about the size of Boston in the 1760s, where “The Tavern Fire” and the Thieftaker books are set.  Boston was, by that time, the third largest city in North America, with a population of around 16,000.  Twenty years before, it had been the largest city in the colonies, but due largely to economic circumstances and demographic changes brought on by the French and Indian War (or the Seven Year’s War, as it was known in Europe), it was overtaken at midcentury by Philadelphia and New York.

For more on the historical circumstances underlying the Thieftaker books, check out the Historical Notes page on the D.B. Jackson website.  And if that doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, go to the Historical Sources page, for titles of books that might be of interest.

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Going Live!

Posted on February 16, 2011 by dbjackson

Well, the site is as close to ready as it’s going to be without an actual book out yet.  And my Facebook account, Twitter account, etc. are open and ready for business.  So I guess it’s time for me to open this site up for business and get things rolling.

The most important news for now is the impending release of After Hours:  Tales from the Ur-Bar, which includes my short story, “The Tavern Fire.”  Like the Thieftaker books, “The Tavern Fire” is historical urban fantasy.  It even features a character from the Thieftaker series, though I’ll leave this person’s name for a future post.  In any case, I hope you’ll explore the website, maybe read the sample chapters from Thieftaker in the “Free Samples” area, and perhaps take time to drop me an email.

Welcome.

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My First Post

Posted on January 26, 2011 by dbjackson

What if you had a coming out party, and no one came?

That’s kind of what I’m doing right now.  This is sort of a test, a way to see if my RSS Feed is working.  But it’s also, by necessity, my first blog post.  Thing is, my website and blog are still a few weeks shy of being ready for prime time.  So, nobody is going to read this for a while.

Still, I believe an introduction is in order.

–Ahem–

My name is D.B. Jackson, and I’m a fantasy author.  Have been for about fifteen years now.  But I’m starting something new, and so I’m doing it under a new name.  The something new is historical urban fantasy.  In addition to writing fantasy, I also have a Ph.D. in U.S. history, and so this is a chance for me to bring together two passions.  The new project is called Chronicles of the Thieftaker, and it’s set in pre-Revolutionary Boston.  My lead character, Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker — basically an 18th century private investigator.  He’s also a conjurer.

The first book in the series is called Thieftaker.  It will be published by Tor Books early in 2012.  In the meantime, I have a short story coming out in an anthology this March.  The anthology is called After Hours:  Tales from the Ur-Bar, and it’s edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray.  The story is called “The Tavern Fire.”  It’s set in Boston as well, on the eve of the Great Fire of 1760.

If you’re interested in reading more about the story or the Thieftaker books, please visit my website:  https://www.dbjackson-author.com.  And please stop by this blog again.  And again, and again.  Eventually their will be more posts.  I promise.

Thanks for stopping by.

Posted in "The Tavern Fire", Fantasy, History, Novels, Short Fiction, Thieftaker, Urban Fantasy, Writing | 1 Comment