Big Bang Press was a small independent publisher located in the US and UK. Through Kickstarter, we raised funds to publish three original novels by popular writers of fanfiction. Though Big Bang Press has closed its doors, you can still buy our books on Amazon.com and B&N.com. They are: A Hero at the End of the World, by Erin Claiborne, a young adult riff on fantasy tropes; Juniper Lane, by Dylan Morrison, a new adult lesbian romance set in the suburbs of Ohio; and Savage Creatures, by Natalie Wilkinson, an urban fantasy noir set in London. Please direct queries to our ask box. The editors and authors of Big Bang Press greatly appreciate your support.
For more information about our books, check out brief summaries below:
A Hero at the End of the World, Erin Claiborne, $9.99
Seventeen-year-old Ewan Mao knows one thing for certain: according to prophecy, it’s his destiny to kill the evil tyrant whose dark reign has terrorized Britain for as long as he can remember. Although he’s just a normal boy, deep down Ewan is confident that he has exactly what it takes to be a hero. But when Ewan’s big moment comes and his best friend, the clever and talented Oliver Abrams, defeats the villain for him, Ewan’s bright future crumbles before his eyes.
Five years later, while Ewan is living at home and working a minimum-wage job, Oliver has a job as an Unusual in the government’s Serious Magical Crimes Agency, the life he and Ewan always dreamed of. A routine investigation leads him and his partner, Sophie Stuart, to uncover a dangerous and powerful cult… one that seems to have drawn his former best friend into a plot to end the world.
Juniper Lane, Dylan Morrison, $9.99
After a breakup she’d rather not talk—or think—about ever again, Mim Robinson has nowhere to go: distanced from her friends, estranged from most of her family, she finds herself against all odds on Juniper Lane, surrounded by an eccentric aunt and her wealthy, uptight neighbors.
Among the catty gossip and quiet rhythms of the suburbs, Mim finds herself striking up a strange, unexpected friendship with the intimidating Nadia Bahjat, the only other twenty-something on the street. Nadia, a professional chef and perennial disappointment to her parents, had to leave a promising career in the city to return home when her father grew sick—but she’ll soon realize that her parents may not be as perfect as she’d always imagined.
Savage Creatures, Natalie Wilkinson, $9.99
Francis Harding has always been good for one thing: doing what his family tells him. So when his mother asks him to travel across the Atlantic to hunt down his missing sister Catherine, he goes without hesitation–only to find himself an unwelcome shapeshifter in a strange city, looking for a woman who may not want to be found.
Without any alternative, he finds himself turning to London’s supernatural underworld for help, recruiting a slippery but compelling investigator named Jamie. Her particular brand of magic makes Francis’s skin crawl, but it might just help him track down his sister.
Thank you all for your support during our sale -- we did much better than expected and we really appreciate it. We all hope you enjoy your books, and if you’re still interested in buying them, they will be available indefinitely in ebook and physical form on Amazon—A Hero at the End of the World, Juniper Lane, Savage Creatures—and at Barnes and Noble.
Secondly, some housekeeping: we had some trouble with the delivery system on the site during the sale and after—certain things weren’t being delivered due to some things going on the fritz, and then now due to download pages vanishing. Technology is fickle! If you have not received or cannot access a download, please get in touch with us. Our contact email is [email protected]. We want you all to have your books and will rectify all problems as quickly as possible.
ANNOUNCEMENT: BIG BANG PRESS FINAL SALE! (SORT OF)
After two years of selling our wonderful books on our own site, we’ve decided to shut our store down at the end of the day this Sunday, October 2. While it’s been great to be able to sell our books independently, at this point it is simply no longer cost-efficient. The books will still be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but this is your last chance to buy from us—and we would love it if you did!
We’ve put all our ebooks on sale for the occasion. These are the cheapest prices you’ll see anywhere, so if you’ve ever thought about giving any of these books a spin (or are just seeing them for the first time!), now would be a good time to do it. They are also available in paperback at full price. They are:
A Hero at the End of the World, Erin Claiborne (@eleveninches), $7.99 (reg. $9.99)
Seventeen-year-old Ewan Mao knows one thing for certain: according to prophecy, it's his destiny to kill the evil tyrant whose dark reign has terrorized Britain for as long as he can remember. Although he's just a normal boy, deep down Ewan is confident that he has exactly what it takes to be a hero. But when Ewan's big moment comes and his best friend, the clever and talented Oliver Abrams, defeats the villain for him, Ewan's bright future crumbles before his eyes.
Five years later, while Ewan is living at home and working a minimum-wage job, Oliver has a job as an Unusual in the government's Serious Magical Crimes Agency, the life he and Ewan always dreamed of. A routine investigation leads him and his partner, Sophie Stuart, to uncover a dangerous and powerful cult... one that seems to have drawn his former best friend into a plot to end the world.
After a breakup she’d rather not talk—or think—about ever again, Mim Robinson has nowhere to go: distanced from her friends, estranged from most of her family, she finds herself against all odds on Juniper Lane, surrounded by an eccentric aunt and her wealthy, uptight neighbors.
Among the catty gossip and quiet rhythms of the suburbs, Mim finds herself striking up a strange, unexpected friendship with the intimidating Nadia Bahjat, the only other twenty-something on the street. Nadia, a professional chef and perennial disappointment to her parents, had to leave a promising career in the city to return home when her father grew sick—but she’ll soon realize that her parents may not be as perfect as she’d always imagined.
Savage Creatures, Natalie Wilkinson (@febricant), $5.99 (reg. $7.99)
Francis Harding has always been good for one thing: doing what his family tells him. So when his mother asks him to travel across the Atlantic to hunt down his missing sister Catherine, he goes without hesitation–only to find himself an unwelcome shapeshifter in a strange city, looking for a woman who may not want to be found.
Without any alternative, he finds himself turning to London's supernatural underworld for help, recruiting a slippery but compelling investigator named Jamie. Her particular brand of magic makes Francis's skin crawl, but it might just help him track down his sister.
Thanks to all for all your support, and happy reading.
Savage Creatures by Natalie Wilkinson is now on sale!
Written by Natalie Wilkinson (@febricant) with cover art by Megan Claiborne, Savage Creatures is a queer urban fantasy novella about family and blood magic in the sewers of London.
Released on June 7, you can now order Savage Creatures in paperback and ebook format!
Shapeshifter Francis Harding has always been good for one thing: doing what his family tells him. So when his mother asks him to travel across the Atlantic to hunt down his missing sister Catherine, he goes without hesitation – only to find himself unwelcome in a strange city, looking for a woman who may not want to be found.
Without any alternative, he turns to London's supernatural underworld for help, recruiting a slippery but compelling investigator named Jamie. Her particular brand of magic makes Francis's skin crawl, but it might just help him track down his sister.
A fantasy noir set against the backdrop of a version of London just a half step away from our own, Savage Creatures is a haunting meditation on the destructive power and vital importance of family that will rivet readers from first page to last.
Read an excerpt here!
You can also order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, although we’d greatly appreciate it if you ordered from the publisher’s website if possible if you live in the United States.
Written by Dylan Morrison (@gyzym) and illustrated by @quaedam, Juniper Lane is a queer coming-of-age novel with a cutting satirical insight into suburban American life.
Released on April 19, you can now order Juniper Lane in illustrated paperback and ebook format!
After a breakup she’d rather not talk—or think—about ever again, Mim Robinson has nowhere to go: distanced from her friends, estranged from most of her family, she finds herself against all odds on Juniper Lane, surrounded by an eccentric aunt and her wealthy, uptight neighbors.
Among the catty gossip and quiet rhythms of the suburbs, Mim finds herself striking up a strange, unexpected friendship with the intimidating Nadia Bahjat, the only other twenty-something on the street. Nadia, a professional chef and perennial disappointment to her parents, had to leave a promising career in the city to return home when her father grew sick—but she’ll soon realize that her parents may not be as perfect as she’d always imagined.
Read an excerpt here and check out Juniper Lane’s Goodreads reviews!
You can also order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, although we’d greatly appreciate it if you ordered from the publisher’s website if at all possible. :)
That’s it for tonight’s Q&A—but there will be more coming! We got a LOT of questions, so we’re going to figure out a night later this week when Kady can do another round. We’ll let you know when it’ll be happening.
In the meantime, you can buy Juniper Lane here. If you’ve read the book, we would really appreciate it if you would rate and/or review the book on Goodreads—it really helps!
Thanks for the questions and for reading along! We’ll be back soon.
Most popular pairings are M/M, and your fic (which is gorgeous) tends to follow the same trend. Is that what made you decide to write a F/F novel? Did writing about women change the characters' flaws and interpersonal tensions - do their hangups play out any differently? I've been waiting for this novel the way I would a fic, and I'm so excited to read! (Also, I just bought the Kindle edition, and as a native Ohioan, I'm stoked to read a WLW romance set in Ohio??? Omg!!!) Thanks, Kady!
Okay so first of all, thank you so much for the lovely compliment, and also O-H-I-O GO BUCKS GO BROWNS GO BENGALS (even though, as a life-long Clevelander, it actually physically pains me to type "Go Bengals"). Second of all, this is a GREAT question with a really complicated answer; I'm going to reply to it honestly as opposed to carefully, because I think, in the long run, that gets more done. But, like in anything that deals with the concept of men and women (as opposed to human beings on like, an infinitely variable scale of experience, informed by a variety of different genders but also race and socioeconomics and and and and), the likelihood is high that I will say something that does not ring true for some people, or even something that rings offensively for some people! Of course, as always, if I've messed something up I'd love to know so I can work on fixing it, but suffice it to say that the following answer is about my specific experience in writing characters that fall into the aforementioned predetermined gender buckets, not like, The Universal Writing And/Or Gender Experience. Because, let's be real here: the latter is a topic I am not remotely equipped to address, and even if I was equipped to address it, I think the required response would exceed whatever the tumblr ask text limit is.
Having said that: I decided to write a book about women for a lot of reasons. And I should be clear here -- while this is of course a book about a female/female romance, and while this book has male characters in it, it is first and foremost a book about women. Complicated, flawed, layered, messed up women; women who are struggling with issues of abuse and mental health and socioeconomic status and race and sexuality; women who are sometimes kind and sometimes cruel and sometimes right and sometimes wrong. I actually went out of my way, in writing this book, to make most of the male characters fill the kind of sketched-out, loosely characterized roles that typically fall to women. There's Danny, the ill-advised sex partner, whose life outside of his relationship with the main character is pretty much only brought up for humor; there's Dell, Mim's abusive ex, who I specifically wrote to be more ghost than person, because that's what he is for Mim; there's Cory, Nadia's boss, who only exists in this novel to affect Nadia's life. Most of the men of Juniper Lane are rarely seen, and when they are seen, they're sketches, support beams, or stereotypes of rich white guys. That's on purpose. I think, after generations of fiction about the various and assorted exploits of white dudes, after countless books and comics and films and television shows in which women are sex objects or put on this earth to Help A Man Achieve, it's time to play around with flipping the script.
So that's part of why I wanted to write a book about women. Part of it was that I just thought this particularly story -- that is, a story about what we see as opposed to what goes on behind closed doors -- would be better served and more interesting with women at the center. There's a performative aspect to Juniper Lane and its residents that I felt would tie in really strongly with the performative aspects of femininity, and I didn't (and don't) think that I would have been able to communicate that aspect of the story as fully or as well with male main characters. And part of it was actually that, while my fanfic ~oeuvre does feature pretty heavily in slash (that is, M/M) pairings, the two fics I’m most fond of — and found most enjoyable to write — are We Were Emergencies [https://archiveofourown.org/works/405828] and An Avalanche of Detour Signs [http://archiveofourown.org/works/340976], both stories that feature a woman in a leading role. So, selfishly, I also wanted to write more about women because I thought I’d enjoy it more.
And, since we're being honest, while I doubt I’ll ever stop writing slash altogether, I think a big part of the reason I was drawn to writing it in the first place is that fanfic has always been an escapism thing for me, a way to sink into an alternate reality where the problems of my life aren’t front and center. And for me — a woman who really started to write fic in the aftermath of sexual assault by and an abusive relationship with a guy — the only way to write a love story that allowed me to escape the reality I was dealing with was to write about dudes dating dudes. Because dudes, or at least “dudes” as society understands dudes (read: middle to upper class white guys), mostly don’t live their lives looking over the shoulder for rapists, or worrying about walking home alone at night, or going on dates wondering if this is gonna be fun or awful or the first chapter in the story of their grisly murder. Dudes, as society understands dudes, can pretty much do what the fuck they please. And any time I tried to write about women, especially for those first few years, I found myself stalling out on the things I needed to deal with for the characters and fundamentally couldn’t, because I couldn’t deal with them for myself. (A “fun” aside, to this point: in rereading one of my fics featuring women a year or so ago — I won’t say which one because even though I do everything under a pen name and I know he doesn’t know where to find my internet presence, I still worry that this man will find this scene, recognize himself, and come after me — I literally read my own rape. Like. With a couple of changes, of course, and obviously I didn’t realize it while I was writing it out, but: yeah. My rape, fictionalized in stunning technicolor, down to some of the things the character experiencing it is thinking and feeling, is in one of my fanfics. So my subconscious’s reasoning for gravitating towards slash, while flawed, was not strictly speaking incorrect.)
Now, with ALL OF THAT said, the answer to the other part of your question, which asked whether writing about women changed the process, the characters’ flaws and tendencies and hangups, is: of course, and not at all. No matter what character I’m writing, whether male, female, or otherwise, my goal is first and foremost to write them as people. And people, as we all know, are giant messy snarls of feelings and ideas and experiences and urges and accidents and things Important Adults said to them as children. So writing female characters set in an (admittedly fictional) Ohio town at this time in history is of course a different experience than writing male characters in that town at this time in history, because there are things you have to factor in that most, if not all, women experience, which most, if not all, men do not. On the other hand, I’m working on an apocalypse novel right now, and the main character in that has changed gender like 15 times and may, in the end, turn out not to have a gender, or have several genders, or be genderfluid, because when you wipe out human society and the assorted constructs associated with it, you don’t have to factor in those most-if-not-all experiences. Because, you know. Society is gone. Those things we learn and relearn and try to unlearn and learn again, those things no one ever told us but the world taught us all the same, are all conditional on what kind of world we're living in.
I don’t know. Like I said, this is a great question with a really complicated answer and I can only hope I’ve communicated like, even 1/10th of the stuff I think about this, because I think about this literally all the time. The short answer is: yes, for me writing female characters is different from writing male characters, involves more care and more thought and, if we’re going to be really honest, more of myself. But despite that (or maybe because of it), I also find that, at least right now, I find writing women more worthwhile in the end. I find myself prouder of the final result.
I absolutely love the mission statement of Big Bang Press. What was the biggest challenge you encountered when you transitioned from writing fic to writing an original work/book? What was the biggest reward? Did anything (process, support, audience) surprise you?
So: writing a book is hard, y'all. It's hard as balls. The funny thing is that this one didn't even turn out to be hard for the reasons I expected; if you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have predicted I'd struggle with character creation, with developing an independent plot, with world building -- basically, with the stuff you don't necessarily have to do when writing a fanfic.
What was actually hard about writing this book -- harder than I could ever have anticipated -- was digging into the emotional landscapes of these characters, how their experiences and choices and lives have affected them. Which drove me insane! Because it's absolutely my favorite thing to do in fanfic! I live to pick a character apart, break them down into their whys and hows and then reconstruct them, grown and changed and more self-actualized. That's literally my entire jam. But when I decided to write this book I decided I wanted to write about queer women, and surviving an abusive relationship, and the politics of small-town suburbia, and what it means to be an adult; in other words, I decided I wanted to write about stuff I, myself, was struggling or had struggled with. Stuff I understood from experience as opposed to inference. And while I don't regret that choice, it did turn out to mean that the person I needed to pick apart, break down to their whys and hows and then reconstruct, was myself. Which, uh. It was definitely the biggest surprise of writing this book (please imagine me yelling "Fictions! These characters are fictions! Just because they're drawing from my life experience doesn't mean it should be messing me up like this!" into the telephone at an assortment of long suffering friends, thank u friends), and much rougher process than I anticipated, but in the end I think it was also the biggest reward. I do feel like I came out the other side grown and changed and more self actualized :D
Ask more questions here! You can buy Juniper Lane here.
was more caffeine required to write a fic or a your novel?
This is an impossible question, the answer to which is: a metric fuckton of caffeine is required to make my life run at all times. I couldn't possibly determine which projects have required the most for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that my brain isn't capable of cataloging things like "amount of caffeine consumed" until it's actually had, like, at least three caffeinated beverages. Assume, for both fics and books I've written past present or future, that the amount of caffeine required was absurd. And, actually, you can confirm that assumption by checking the acknowledgements of Juniper Lane, where I thank every Starbucks barista in the greater Cleveland area, because I promised them I would and because they deserve all the thanks in the world for putting up with my constant presence for [mumble mumble] years.
Ask more questions here! You can buy Juniper Lane here.
What's your favourite Juniper Lane review you've gotten?
Honestly I've been delighted with EVERY ONE -- there is no greater pleasure for me on this earth than hearing that something I wrote brought another person literally any enjoyment at all. I think my favorite thing to hear, though, is that the characters felt like real people, with rich, complicated lives; I worried about that constantly during the writing process. "DO THESE PEOPLE EVEN SOUND LIKE PEOPLE," I yelled at @febricant for about a thousand years at absurd hours of the night. "DOES THIS READ LIKE TWO CARDBOARD CUTOUTS HAVING A CONVERSATION??? DO REAL HUMANS EVEN USE WORDS??" So I love hearing that they felt real now, if only because it helps to soothe the core of anxiety magma that is burning in my chest at all times.
Ask more questions here! You can buy Juniper Lane here. If it suits your fancy, you can review the book on Goodreads here.
If it was being adapted into a movie what would be on the soundtrack?
Haha, if Juniper Lane was adapted into a movie the soundtrack would be ME, SCREAMING, FOR A THOUSAND YEARS, no one would be able to hear anything but me screaming in delighted mystified confusion. The movie would just be two and a half hours. Of screaming.
Having said that, I popped into the Juniper Lane playlist on my computer; it's, uh, 500 songs long, so I selected the following 12 as a representative sample:
The Good That Won't Come Out - Rilo KileyCountry Roads (Remix) - Pretty LightsYellow Flicker Beat - LordeCoyote - Jenny Owen YoungsHold It In - Jukebox The GhostHurricane Drunk - Florence and the MachineExtraordinary Machine - Fiona AppleHeartbreak Even - Ani Difranco Call It Off - Tegan & SaraMaps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs Comeback Kid - Sleigh BellsMagenta Radio - Rusted Root
Ask more questions here! You can buy Juniper Lane here.
please tell me no lesbians die in this book. that might be spoilery to ask, but it's been a long ~six months for wlw in media and i am so Tired. please.
There are no dead lesbians, dead gays, or in fact dead queers of any flavor in this novel. I'd like to say that's because I have Lofty Aspirations of writing the kind of queer media that subverts fucked up tropes like Kill Your Gays, and that's part of it to an extent, but mostly? I think the sad, queer, and six feet under thing is tired and boring and done, pun very much intended, to death.
The main characters in this book are queer women; it informs their characterization, and the way they're seen by other characters, and, of course, the romantic arc of the story! Other than that, though, it's mostly an incidental, a detail that's important but not the central focus, the way I think our queerness is for a lot of us in life. Certainly there are members of the LGBT community whose life is centered in whatever way around being LGBT, and that's awesome and fantastic and I may well write a character like that someday. But Juniper Lane is about the little social hierarchies that consume the micro-community the story is set in, which are based more in personal history and socio-economic status than anyone else. It's a story about people, how and why they come to care about the things that matter to them, what events and experiences brought them to be where they are today. Mim and Nadia's queerness is part of that, but it's just a piece of the puzzle, and I promise neither of them shuffles off this mortal coil as a result.
Ask more questions here! You can buy Juniper Lane here.
Kady Morrison (AKA Tumblr user @gyzym) is releasing her first novel, Juniper Lane, next week! We’re hosting a Q&A with her on Sunday evening, so now’s the time to message us if you have any burning questions for Kady.
Here’s our askbox! Kady is ready and waiting to answer your questions about her book, her writing process, fandom, or whatever else comes her way. :)
Juniper Lane by Kady Morrison is now available for presale!
Written by Kady Morrison (@gyzym) and illustrated by @quaedam, Juniper Lane is a queer coming-of-age novel with a cutting satirical insight into suburban American life.
After a breakup she’d rather not talk—or think—about ever again, Mim Robinson has nowhere to go: distanced from her friends, estranged from most of her family, she finds herself against all odds on Juniper Lane, surrounded by an eccentric aunt and her wealthy, uptight neighbors.
Among the catty gossip and quiet rhythms of the suburbs, Mim finds herself striking up a strange, unexpected friendship with the intimidating Nadia Bahjat, the only other twenty-something on the street. Nadia, a professional chef and perennial disappointment to her parents, had to leave a promising career in the city to return home when her father grew sick—but she’ll soon realize that her parents may not be as perfect as she’d always imagined.
Read an excerpt here and check out Juniper Lane’s Goodreads reviews!
Juniper Lane is the second book from Big Bang Press, which publishes original novels by new authors from the fanfic community. It will be released on April 19, 2016.
Released to the publisher’s Kickstarter backers last year, Juniper Lane now available to preorder in illustrated paperback and ebook format.
Juniper Lane by Kady Morrison is now available for presale!
Written by Kady Morrison (@gyzym) and illustrated by @quaedam, Juniper Lane is a queer coming-of-age novel with a cutting satirical insight into suburban American life.
After a breakup she’d rather not talk—or think—about ever again, Mim Robinson has nowhere to go: distanced from her friends, estranged from most of her family, she finds herself against all odds on Juniper Lane, surrounded by an eccentric aunt and her wealthy, uptight neighbors.
Among the catty gossip and quiet rhythms of the suburbs, Mim finds herself striking up a strange, unexpected friendship with the intimidating Nadia Bahjat, the only other twenty-something on the street. Nadia, a professional chef and perennial disappointment to her parents, had to leave a promising career in the city to return home when her father grew sick—but she’ll soon realize that her parents may not be as perfect as she’d always imagined.
Read an excerpt here and check out Juniper Lane’s Goodreads reviews!
Juniper Lane is the second book from Big Bang Press, which publishes original novels by new authors from the fanfic community. It will be released on April 19, 2016.
Released to the publisher’s Kickstarter backers last year, Juniper Lane now available to preorder in illustrated paperback and ebook format.
Hi guys! My novel, Juniper Lane, went out to the Kickstarter backers today – I am a ball of emotions about it, but as that is my typical state, it’s not much of a shock. I’m so excited to have it out there, and I can’t wait for the rest of you to be able to read it!!
Preorders will be opening soon – I’ll keep you guys posted as to when – and the book will be officially released in April. I want so bad to show you the cover (it’s basically the happiest thing in the world, I grin with delight every time I look at it), but I’ve got to keep that close to my chest for a little while longer.
In conclusion: happy reading to those who were kind enough to donate when this whole thing started, happy holidays (or lack thereof, if the holidays aren’t your jam) to those kind enough to read this blog, and MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU to everyone, because… may the force be with you. I hope you’re all having a happy, healthy December! I’ll be back with more on Juniper Lane in the new year.
