Now that the first twelve chapters of “The Elect Stories” have been released for a bit, it seems like a fine time to talk about where the tale goes from here. After all, some of you who have finished reading these 12 have been asking for a while about...
A friend of mine who has diligently purchased every installment of “The Elect Stories” upon its release recently made a confession: he hasn’t actually started reading them yet, but he enjoys collecting them. Fair enough. You don’t even have to open them to see that Todd’s covers are super...
Intrigued by Todd Sharp’s portrait of an angst-ridden Jonny Guess featured on the cover of Chapter 9, a friend asked if each issue contains a stand-alone story, or if he’d need to read all eight back-issues before finally learning about the long-haired dude in the purple coat. Well, “The...
If you’ve started reading Chapter 9: “Delving Deep, or, The Macabre Misadventures of Misters Scrivener, Bellwether and Guess,” you’ve likely noticed that it does not pick up where Chapter 8 left off. When last we saw Mister Guess, he was sheltering the fugitives Palm and Timriel in his home...
Back in August, a reader commented that Chapter 5 – in which (no spoilers) Arden Clarkson makes his first contact with the sylueds and discovers his father’s secret – could easily have functioned as the opening of the book. At the time, I replied that the first five chapters...
This month’s cover art by Todd Sharp features the blood-red silhouettes of three men mounted on galloping horses. The curlicues of the art nouveau background, rendered in textured shades of brown, evoke the hand-tooled leather of western saddles. All three of the men are wearing broad-brimmed hats. Two of...
When I moved from Boston to Los Angeles in 1996, the plot of what would become “The Elect Stories” was already (more or less) fully formed. While many of the characters and most of the world-building details have changed over time, the plot was already clear to me from...
Enjoying your summer? Us, too! If you’ve been taking your Kindle along to the beach or the pool or even just to your own comfy couch, we hope “The Elect Stories” has made it onto your summer reading list and provided a bit of escape. In the first 4...
I grew up enjoying Westerns. I’ve always had a particular fondness for Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” films, even before I could properly articulate why. Despite the bad dubbing, the anachronistic production design, and the all-over-the-shop acting, something about those films has always felt more “true” to me...
If nothing else, this month’s cover art – a dark portrait lit with unnatural neon colors, our standard background “frame” warped and washed in black and gray – should tip you off that there are changes afoot in the world of the Elect. From the first page of this...
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