Get ready to explore a gem of mythic fiction in Michael Williams’ Dominic’s Ghosts Blog Tour. Taking place February 13-20, 2019, this blog tour celebrates a new stand-alone novel in Michael’s ambitious City Quartet.
Atmospheric and thought-provoking, Dominic’s Ghosts will take you on a unique kind of journey that involves a conspiracy, legends, and insights from a film festival!
About the Author:
Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. In Trajan’s Arch, his eleventh novel, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and the recently published Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.
Over the past 25 years, Michael Williams has written a number of strange novels, from the early Weasel’s Luck and Galen Beknighted in the best-selling DRAGONLANCE series to the more recent lyrical and experimental Arcady, singled out for praise by Locus and Asimov’s magazines. In Trajan’s Arch, his eleventh novel, stories fold into stories and a boy grows up with ghostly mentors, and the recently published Vine mingles Greek tragedy and urban legend, as a local dramatic production in a small city goes humorously, then horrifically, awry.
Trajan’s Arch and Vine are two of the books in Williams’s highly anticipated City Quartet, to be joined in 2018 by Dominic’s Ghosts and Tattered Men.
Williams was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent much of his childhood in the south central part of the state, the red-dirt gothic home of Appalachian foothills and stories of Confederate guerrillas. Through good luck and a roundabout journey he made his way through through New England, New York, Wisconsin, Britain and Ireland, and has ended up less than thirty miles from where he began. He has a Ph.D. in Humanities, and teaches at the University of Louisville, where he focuses on the he Modern Fantastic in fiction and film. He is married, and has two grown sons.
Synopsis of Dominic's Ghosts:
Dominic’s Ghosts is a mythic novel set in the contemporary Midwest. Returning to the home town of his missing father on a search for his own origins, Dominic Rackett is swept up in a murky conspiracy involving a suspicious scholar, a Himalayan legend, and subliminal clues from a silent film festival. As those around him fall prey to rising fear and shrill fanaticism, he follows the branching trails of cinema monsters and figures from a very real past, as phantoms invade the streets of his once-familiar city and one of them, glimpsed in distorted shadows of alleys and urban parks, begins to look uncannily familiar.
Dominic’s Ghosts is a mythic novel set in the contemporary Midwest. Returning to the home town of his missing father on a search for his own origins, Dominic Rackett is swept up in a murky conspiracy involving a suspicious scholar, a Himalayan legend, and subliminal clues from a silent film festival. As those around him fall prey to rising fear and shrill fanaticism, he follows the branching trails of cinema monsters and figures from a very real past, as phantoms invade the streets of his once-familiar city and one of them, glimpsed in distorted shadows of alleys and urban parks, begins to look uncannily familiar.
Author Links:
Top Ten List
If you Haven’t Read Them…
Ten Strange Novels that Shouldn’t Go Overlooked.
We all labor on obscure land. It’s part of being a novelist: your work is
quiet and private. And yet all of us
carry a hope that someday, perhaps even after we’re gone, people will pick up
our books, enjoy them, and perhaps even be deepened by the experience of them.
What follows is a list of novels I’ve encountered in my
years of reading—not necessarily the ones I consider the best, nor the most
influential to my life as a reader, writer, and person, but some that I think
are wonderful and strange, and make me wonder how they could have passed
beneath the horizon in our increasingly non-reading time.
There are a number of reasons I have picked these books,
and though I set the list in descending order, I will not be held to the
ranking (or even to the books listed) tomorrow, because a romance with a book
is like a romance with a person, subject to ebb and flow of preference. But here they are, for the moment, with the
strong plea that you roust one, several, or all of them from the back of the
shelf.
Each will repay your efforts. I almost guarantee.
10. Robert
Holdstock, Mythago Wood.
Holdstock passed away a few
years back, much too young, but left behind the remarkable Ryhope Wood series,
of which Mythago Wood is the first volume, and a strikingly unsettled wedding
of dark fantasy and magical realism.
9. Carlos Fuentes,
Aura.
The great Mexican novelist’s
story of a young historian hired to complete the memoirs of a Latin American
general, increasingly trapped in a gothic maze of an urban house.
8. Leena Krohn, Datura.
The account of a reporter’s
journey into an increasingly strange city in search of a legendary
manuscript. One of the oddest books I’ve
ever read, by a Finnish writer considered one of the very best her country has
produced.
7. Francine Prose,
Marie Laveau.
Yes, that Marie Laveau, and I know a number of books have been written
about New Orleans’ most famous voodoo queen.
But I’m guessing this is the best.
6. Michael Ajvaz, The
Other City.
Almost as strange as Datura
(#8 above). It’s as though Kafka meets Garcia
Marquez on an acid trip.
5. Danilo Kis, Encyclopedia of the Dead.
The one collection of short
stories in this list. It deserves its
proper place: Kis was a great writer.
4. Alfred Kubin. The Other Side.
Jeff Vandermeer excerpts
this remarkable Austrian novel in his huge anthology of Weird Fiction. You might like the whole thing.
3. Karen Lord. Redemption in Indigo.
The most recent book on this
list. A writer from Barbados, Lord infuses this mythic and wonderful novel with
magical realism and Senegalese folk tale.
I’ve taught this book twice, and just love it.
2. Hermann Hesse,
Steppenwolf.
The most famous book on the
list. Nowadays talked about but
neglected. A strange, German
Surrealist/Expressionist masterpiece. Hesse is one of my favorite novelists.
1. Mervyn Peake.
Titus Groan.
Probably the next most
famous book on the list. The opening to
the brilliant, uneven, and profoundly inventive Gormenghast Trilogy. Many of you may know it, and the rest of you
should get to knowing it.
Tour Schedule and Activities
2/13 Ravenous For Reads www.ravenousforreads.com Author Interview
2/13 Breakeven Books https://breakevenbooks.com Guest Post
2/14 Marian Allen, Author Lady www.MarianAllen.com Guest Post
2/15 Inspired Chaos
http://inspiredchaos.weebly.com/blog Guest Post
http://inspiredchaos.weebly.com/blog Guest Post
2/16 I Smell Sheep http://www.ismellsheep.com/ Guest Post
2/16 The Book Lover's Boudoir https://thebookloversboudoir.wordpress.com/ Review
2/17 Jorie Loves A Story http://jorielovesastory.com Review/Author Interview
2/18 The Seventh Star www.theseventhstarblog.com guest Post
2/18 Willow's Thoughts and Book Obsessions http://wssthoughtsandbookobsessions.blogspot.com/ Review
2/18 The Horror Tree www.Horrortree.com Guest Post
2/19 Sheila's Guests and Reviews www.sheiladeeth.blogspot.com
Guest Post
Guest Post
2/20 Jazzy Book Reviews https://bookreviewsbyjasmine.blogspot.com/ Top Tens List
Amazon Links for Dominic’s Ghosts
Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Dominics-Ghosts-Quartet-Michael-Williams-ebook/dp/B07F5Z4L18/
Barnes and Noble Link for Dominic’s Ghosts: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dominics-ghosts-michael-williams/1129262622?ean=9781948042581
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