The following posts include (1) "footnotes" for The Doris Piserchia Website (link at left), (2) texts-in-process that will eventually appear there, (3) texts from other websites, and (we hope) (4) stimulating discussion threads. The picture to the left is the back cover of The Spinner (book club edition), depicting a citizen of Eastland "hanging out" while Ekler the cop and Rune the idiot-superman look on.
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Cover galleries updated: 1973 - 1978 and 1978 - 1983. Added the French and Dutch covers and changed the picture links so they make use of a new image-retrieval system here at Digital Media Tree, which should make them load faster.
Book cover for French edition of The Spinner. ("L'homme-araignée": The Man-spider). Published by Fleuve Noir ("Black River") in 1985. The foreground figure, I'm guessing, is Rune, but it also appears to be a weird hybrid of Rune and the Spinner, with clawed, webbed feet and "spider markings" on his clothing. Also, what's with the futuristic weapon? And the woman behind him--is that the cognitively impaired girl Rune impregnates? She looks like a cross between an amazon warrior and a crusader.
More new Doris Piserchia related pages on the Internet: a page listing works of hers that were translated into French (mostly short stories or serialized novels in Galaxy and the like--but not Earthchild or Star Rider, which we know were in French because we have covers), and a page on a German feminist sf site [update: this appears to be gone now], which links to our interview and main page here. Also, this isn't new, but there is also a page listing two books translated into Dutch: Jade Van De Sterren (Jade of the Stars?--Star Rider in the US) and Reee (Earthchild). Eventually I'll get the Dutch covers up in the cover gallery.
Another French cover surfaces: Cavalière des étoiles (Star Rider). Go, '70s earth mama! Other news: SF Site is now linking here in its list of author pages - P. Also, a Russian site. Lastly, I added a chapter from Earth in Twilight to the Excerpts page. That page is really critical as far as snaring potential new readers, and it's been weak. This new addition gives a good feel for the rhythm of DP's writing, I think, which is so hard to capture in excerpts.
UPDATE: Added the French Star Rider cover to the first page of the book cover gallery.
Here is the new last paragraph of the Blood County review (still fiddling with this):
Blood County is a ripping yarn that thrills and keeps readers guessing as the author reveals one facet after another of her clever rethinking of the vampire myth. The action is nonstop, with none of the florid passages bogging down Anne Rice novels--as vampire Faulkner it's closer to the lurid pulp of Sanctuary than the lofty experimentalism of The Sound and the Fury--as well as memorably spooky images: the face of a recently dead woman pressed against a screen door, staring into a dark room where the living are sleeping; a five year old vampire nipping at the legs of an old drunk until he's dreened. The book implicitly condemns Appalachian provincialism, and unhealthy political systems the world over, but also carries a hefty emotional tug, since the author is semi-autobiographically revisiting the world of her girlhood. It's a bit sad that she's telling a tale, near the end of her writing career, of a smart man who leaves the sick, hick town of his birth, to start a new life in the big city (as Piserchia did), only be drawn back there till the end of time. Woven in with all the fun and mayhem is a subtle statement, perhaps, on the difficulties of transcending roots and class in America: think It's a Wonderful Life with a bloodsucking George Bailey doomed to make the best of his own hillbilly Bedford Falls.