SIBS
February 27, 2011 March 1, 2011 fpaul Uncategorized
Sibs is the only one of my forty-plus novels with a strong erotic element. I usually avoid sex scenes. (Yeah, I hear you: Write what you know, Wilson.) But really, they offer too much potential for purple prose. And in too many cases I think they're unnecessary.
But they were necessary in Sibs. It's a novel about sexual possession and wouldn't have worked without them. The villain is a voluptuary and sex is what he's after. So I had to show rather than simply hint. The result is a mixture of horror and police procedural, with erotica fueling the plot.
The seeds of Sibs were planted decades before its publication when I was writing and rewriting a short story about a unique form of sexual domination. When I finally got it right, Weird Tales published it as "Menage a Trois" (later reprinted in the first Hot Blood anthology).
But all along I'd been thinking about another variant on the story, and when I devised the final twist, I had to drop everything and write it. I was in the middle of Reprisal but I put it aside and sat down and wrote Sibs in seven weeks (as a part-time writer). I was doing 50 pages a day sometimes. Like taking dictation. It's a wonderful experience every writer should have. It consumed me. That fire is reflected in the pace of the book. Sibs has, perhaps, some shortcomings in that hellbent-for-leather pace, but I didn't want go back and tinker with it. Something special there, the way it gushed from me. I can't say it's a terribly nuanced novel, but it's one of my favorites for the shear joy of being able to rap that thing out. It grabs you by the throat and does not let go.
The original editions contained 4 illustrations that are integral to the story and are included in the ebook.
For those interested in interstory connections, Sibs has a number of (admittedly tenuous) links to my Secret History of the World: Jack uses Dr. Gates' house as part of a fix in Legacies; In All the Rage, Luc Monnet bids on wine offered by the Gates estate; the Gati family in Sibs is featured in "Menage a Trois" where a Detective Burke plays a part in the framing sections, just as he does in "The Cleaning Machine," which happens to be one of the Seven Infernals.
The ebook sells for $2.99 here.