“16 superbly written, often surreal stories of misogyny, blood, anger, agony, and abuse. Bruce’s stygian tales are technically accomplished, but also powered by a profound depth of feeling. They often compel and overwhelm at the same time. Like the cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein, This House of Wounds is both beautiful and horrific.” PAULA GURAN, LOCUS
“The stories in This House of Wounds are richly allegorical, formally innovative, thought-provoking and ambiguous. All the things I love, in other words.” NINA ALLAN
“Bruce is the real deal. This House of Wounds is an essential read across all genres… It is a compulsive, powerful collection… a debut to behold.” BLACK STATIC
“This is an eminently impressive debut collection of sixteen stories that showcase the author’s virtuosity, range and potential… This collection establishes Georgina Bruce as a genuinely original writer.” INTERZONE
“Bruce’s collection of feminist, fantastical short stories has something to please nearly every taste. Bruce’s knack for ethereal tales that cut straight to the core of what it means to be a human (and specifically a woman) will delight readers who enjoy a smattering of the supernatural and blurred edges of reality.” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“An astonishing, totally absorbing debut collection. Edgy, disturbing and delicious in equal parts. Georgina Bruce plays with myth and horror beautifully.” KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE
“The stories in This House of Wounds strike me as both an emotional and intellectual examination of pain, from how it spreads and is passed on to others to how it can easily turn us into different, crueller creatures. Each act formed in pain leads to another, then another, and this makes for twisted, beautiful reading. Georgina Bruce is a courageous and compelling writer.” ALIYA WHITELEY
“Ms. Bruce is not one for linear narrative or an easy distinction between reality, dreams, analogy, art, intoxication and self-deceit. In many ways the whole book is an exploration how we distance ourselves from reality, and from ourselves. A truly astonishing achievement.” STEWART HORN
“Very bloody, disturbing, female-centric and gorgeously-written – I would recommend it to you!” TRACY FAHEY
“Oh you are in for a treat. One of the best debut collections I have ever read. The Bruce is a genius.” JIM MCLEOD, Gingernuts of Horror
“This House of Wounds is simply a gorgeous book, with ravishing cover art by Catrin Welz-Stein to complement the contents. Fairy-tale motifs abound – Red Queens, sorcerous crows, Princess Beasts, Woods Kings – yet they’re frequently jump-cut past the reader in fragmented, discontinuous, subjective glimpses, like a mystic marriage of Angela Carter with J.G. Ballard. And the beauty and glitter is frequently the sparkle of streams of blood or the shine of polished bone – the wounds are there, laid bare and held open by retractors for probing and examination. This absolutely is not horror per se, but it touches on horror territory persistently. It’s anything but pedestrian.” PAUL ST.JOHN MACKINTOSH, author and journalist.
“Your book gave me nightmares.” PENNY JONES, reviewer and author of Suffer the Children.
Hi Georgina,
I was browsing the list of attendees for the forthcoming World Fantasy Con in Brighton in 2013 and, recognising your name from OWW, clicked through to your web site. Among the interesting things I found was this blog post on “Scrivener”. Your description of this tool sounded like something that might really help me.
Out of interest (rather than expecting to be able to install it on Linux computer operation system which I use) I looked it up and was surprised to find a Linux Beta version exists. However, it appears to be quite a significant task to install it in Linux.
I am currently struggling with an outline for turning a short story in to a novel (Rose in Winter – you commented on early chapters through OWW) and am finding myself struggling to outline three viewpoints and several plot lines that have expanded and now require me to fill in additional detail and add new elements to earlier chapters I had thought at least were drafted! It is driving me nuts trying to keep track of my notes and, technical installation challenges aside, Scrivener looks like it might be the answer.
So I can’t give you feedback on the tool but I wanted to let you know I hope you will post more about how you are getting on with it.
Cheers
Phillip Spencer
Hi Philip 🙂 Thanks for finding me. Are you going to WFC 2013? I will be hoping to meet as many folk as possible there.
Scrivener is ace – I can’t praise it enough, to be honest. I think it’s the perfect tool for sorting out huge messes of text – you can categorise everything and get it into order, without ever having to throw any work away. It can take a while to import all your notes and writing and to figure out how to order things, but once you’ve got a project underway, it’s really easy to see the big picture – vital for novelling and screenwriting alike.
Afraid I don’t know anything about installing in Linux, but they seem to have a pretty good help desk and lots of literature about how to get things set up, so I’d say give it a whirl!
Let me know how you get on.
Yes, I plan on going to WFC2013 in Brighton (as is my daughter, Holly, who is at Sussex Uni so just up the road!). I also intend to go to Fantasycon 2012, which is also back in Brighton. It would be good to meet up with other OWWers!
Installing Scrivener on Linux turned out to be a breeze and following a quick dabble with the manual’s Quick Tour I launched into it with my novel. Already finding benefits of being able to dip in and edit / rearrange scenes rather than edit separate chapter documents. Am currently wowed by the power and flexibility.
It is my month for trying new software. I have also just started learning to set up blogs from scratch using WordPress and so posted the Linux guidance links there (http://www.nightspore.co.uk/?p=11). Easy to install and free… what more could one ask of software?
Hey I’m glad you’re enjoying Scrivener! I am finding it helpful in lots of ways. And I definitely hope to meet you and lots of OWWers and other writers at WFC. I went to uni in Brighton, too, so it will be fun to visit again 🙂