Tagging the Moon

S.P. Somtow's L.A. Fairy Tales, collected together for the first time in this new edition. Somtow puts a new spin on some classic themes in this volume of 10 short stories set in the back alleys of downtown L.A. A must-have for the modern horror reader and collector.Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

From Publishers Weekly

Aka The Terrifying Thai, Somtow has published some 40 horror and fantasy books, including 1998's Bram Stoker-nominated Darker Angel. He sets this collection of 10 stories in the surreal urban nightmare of Los Angeles; most are retellings of children's lore and religious mythology. "Gingerbread" is a horrific version of Hansel and Gretel where the witch, a chameleon-like fortune-teller who pimps two homeless children, dies in her own oven. In "Dr. Rumpole," the most imaginative and least violent of these tales, a hack screenwriter outwits a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin. The screenwriter could be talking about all the stories here when he theorizes that "Dr. Rumpole is an archetypal construct, brought to life by the frenzied collective agony of Hollywood screenwriters... when reality fails you, fairy tale kind of takes over." "The Ugliest Duckling" is a creepy tale of vampirism, while "A Thief in the Night" explores the continuing battle between Jesus and the Antichrist, from the latter's point of view. The title story deals with graffiti artists and centers on ill-fated, teenage street kid Bobby Donahue, whose fondest wish is to tag the moon. Thanks to a couple of possibly menacing, possibly imaginary aliens, he may have achieved his wish. Collectively, these stories portray ghostly/ghastly bottom-of-the-barrel L.A. losers in a mostly sympathetic light. One can smell the smog and hear the grinding gears of the city's traffic. Bangkok-born Somtow is also a composer and photographer, and several pages of his photos of his adopted city appear at the end of the book, for the edification, he says, of readers in Bangkok, which is also called City of angels. (July) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Ten tales, nine from 1993–98 and one original, from the author of Darker Angels (1998), etc. Three are based overtly on familiar fairy tales: Gingerbread features Hansel and Gretel as abused children who fall into the clutches of a witch who's also a Hollywood madam. Rumpelstiltskin returns as Dr. Rumpole, a Nazi war criminal and screenwriter of genius, who ends up an unwitting slave in a canny operator's basement; and in Mr. Death's Blue-Eyed Boy, the Pied Piper of Hamelin shows up, demanding payment for his services--plus accumulated interest. Elsewhere, vampires are on the side of the angels; when Jesus returns to Earth, the devil succeeds at the third attempt in corrupting Him--but, here, the devil's the good guy; King Arthur mixes it up with mythology, movies, and a serial killer; in the title piece, a tagger (a graffiti artist) yearns to leave his tag on the Moon, and, helped by like-minded aliens, succeeds; an ancient Mexican vampire wakes to find that the entire world is run by vampires; a violent father turns his stubborn son into a zombie; and a necrophiliac discovers his heart's desire in a vault full of cryogenically preserved heads.Creepy, nasty, and often disquieting: Somtow revels in aspects of the human psyche that most of us would rather not encounter. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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