This is Bloody Waters
This is Bloody Waters
After years in the wilderness, my occult rock'n'roll novel Bloody Waters is finally out in North America. This is the story of my first novel.
Bloody Waters started out as a short story, written for an anthology call. The theme was Witches, and my idea was to play different witchy tropes of against each other. I wanted to write about rock musicians and send up popular culture and I found a good setup for it: the lead guitarist was a girl, the witch was a boy, and together they were the perfect satirical weapon for me to turn against the music industry. I didn’t get into the anthology, but I got an encouraging note from the editor PD Cacek, who told me I had something cool on my hands and I would sell it elsewhere. That short story grew into a novel.
The anthology callout was in 1999, which is the year it became clear that the cultural moment that shaped my late teens had passed. I was disdainful of the Generation X label used to describe my cohort and I would never have used it to describe myself, but the mid-90s is the only time when I really felt a sense of alignment with a cultural movement. I didn’t like the label, but I took its values to heart.
Grunge music and gritty independent cinema. Grimy urban fantasy and surreal horror comics. I was already wearing the anti-fashion wardrobe, and I would have grown my hair out if it wasn’t so damn curly. It sounds pompous to say it out loud, but during that half a decade from 1992-1997 it really felt like integrity mattered, and the establishment was losing its stranglehold on culture.
That movement died a self-inflicted death and the fallout was predictable. We are generation that loved to talk about irony, but didn’t quite grasp what the word meant. Many of the bands I loved split up. Others shed the elements that made them unique in favour of commercial product they hoped the record labels would get behind. But it was all in vain. The pop music that took over seemed to revel in its disposable nature, and I was furious.
Bloody Waters was my response. The band who never let you down with a cash-in Christmas album. A band that was big enough and powerful enough to stand up against the monsters: corporate, artistic, and literal. A band who might even, perhaps, face down the Devil.
With that said, the grunge wonderland of the 1990s was no paradise, especially if you were a woman. That is the driving force behind the book. The protagonist, Clarice, is a guitar virtuoso. In the ‘90s that was probably enough to earn some novelty hits, if said virtuoso was willing to put up with a sufficient amount of demeaning bullshit. Clarice is not. Clarice isn’t a nice woman, or a kind one, but she sticks to her principles and she gets what she wants. When she runs out of options, she turns to the Devil for help. But she doesn’t offer him what he expects, and he doesn’t want what she thinks he does.
I know there are a lot of stories about musicians who make deals with the Devil. It’s a hoary trope, which I have tried to turn on its head in this book. It’s not the deal, but the fallout, that allows Clarice to reach her potential. In the end, Bloody Waters is as much about the Devil as it is about Clarice—but you’ll have to read the book to find out how that works.
After a number of near misses with agents and editors, I sold Bloody Waters to a micropress in 2012 and expected it would never be seen again. So nobody was more surprised that I was when, the following year, it was shortlisted for an Aurealis award. Since then it has become my calling card book. Its popularity has continued to grow and here we are, 10 years later:
Today, Bloody Waters is out in North America in a new edition with a handsome cover by Chris Yarbrough cover, thanks to Outland Entertainment. (It is, of course, still available in other regions and in electronic format with Rhys James’ brilliant original cover). I’m incredibly proud of this book and, if it sounds cool to you, there will never be a better time to check it out than now.
First day sales are of crucial importance in today’s realtime, algorithm-powered world. So are reviews: if you’ve enjoyed the book, I will be forever grateful if you would leave me a brief review on Amazon or Goodreads.
I’m unlikely to be able to sign copies of the book for most of you, because the price of postage from Australia is insane, but if you email me a receipt I will gladly post you a signed bookplate, anywhere on this green earth. (I am sorry to disappoint those of you who live on the moon.)
If you’ve read this entire message, I salute you. Even you Moon People.
Franksly yours,
— Jason