Claiming T-Mo

by Eugen Bacon

Overview

In this lush interplanetary tale, Novic is an immortal Sayneth priest who flouts the conventions of a matriarchal society by choosing a name for his child. This act initiates chaos that splits the boy in two, unleashing a Jekyll-and-Hyde child upon the universe. Named T-Mo by his mother and Odysseus by his father, the story spans the boy’s lifetime — from his early years with his mother Silhouette on planet Grovea to his travels to Earth where he meets and marries Salem, and together they bear a hybrid named Myra. The story unfolds through the eyes of these three distinctive women: Silhouette, Salem and Myra. As they confront their fears and navigate the treacherous paths to love and accept T-Mo/Odysseus and themselves, the darkness in Odysseus urges them to unbearable choices that threaten their very existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946154132
Publisher:	Meerkat Press
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Eugen Bacon is a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing. She has published over 100 short stories and articles, together with anthologies. Her stories have won, been shortlisted and commended in national and international awards, including the Copyright Agency Prize and L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Her creative work has appeared in literary and speculative fiction publications worldwide. Her non-fiction book on writing speculative fiction will be published in 2019 by Palgrave MacMillan.

What People are Saying About This

Dominique Hecq (award-winning poet

The first thing that strikes me about the novel is how efficiently the mood is set, and how effectively it draws the reader in by way of identification at a deep level. Striking are how efficiently the plot is set in motion and how effectively the cast of characters are drawn in the story. The use of language - the breadth of vocabulary and the attention to detail are absolutely engrossing.

author of Holocaust Tours and The Bugger Julian Novitz

A highly imaginative and well-written novel with some highly evocative scenes and well realised characters, it uses the conventions of its genre to explore sophisticated themes.

author George Green

Worlds are described, like those from Calvino’sImaginary Cities, held up for the reader to admire, and then disappear to invite extrapolation . . . There is magic and magical powers, all described with a delight which is convincing and controlled. There is also realism, of a sort; places where the concerns and actions of the characters are similar to our own . . . The world described here is strange and yet familiar; more importantly, the worlds are fully imagined and fully realised. We are placed into it confidently and with assurance, and allowed to make our own way.

Prof. Kevin Brophy (poet

It is not easy to make a work of fiction keep to its genre boundaries and still be an original work. Eugen Bacon’s novel is ambitious and skillful enough to pull this off. This is a novel with several types of magic in it, the magic of beautiful prose, the magic we expect of these characters, and a magically large heart within the telling.

award-winning author of Dying in the First Person Nike Sulway

The voice is particular and energetic: by far the strongest element of the work. The sentences have a bridling, writhing energy that, at its best, carries the reader forward at a blistering pace. The style is reminiscent of Toni Morrison, particularly in works likeThe Bluest Eye, where she experiments with non-standard English, but is far more playful. The combination of voice infused with the playful energy of a form of Standard Black English, combined with a story of quests and magic produces a unique work.”

Editorial Reviews

"Prose with a rhythm that sets it apart. Come for the music, stay for the story." —Michael Pryor, author of Gap Year in Ghost Town and the "Laws of Magic" series

"Claiming T-Mo is a whimsical blend of fantasy and science fiction, an engaging story accented by Eugen's unique style." —Milton Davis,
author of "The Gunman" Series, Meji books 1 & 2, and Amber and the Hidden City


"As playful as it is thought-provoking, this is a work of dizzying originality and profound humanity." —Prof. Oz Hardwick, award-winning poet, author of Learning to Have Lost and The Lithium Codex


"Claiming T-Mo is a story of generations of women striving for fulfillment, but caught in webs of passion, magic and stardust. Eugen Bacon embraces the strange and estranged in this unanticipated contemporary trickster myth." —Emmet O’Cuana, author of fantastic comic Faraway


"Magical, violent, enthralling, it is a book that shines with its own specific aura, a somber and beautiful unique object, designed by a truly splendid writer. A must." —Seb Doubinsky, author of the "City-States Cycle" series


"Nothing is off limits in Claiming T-Mo with a literary eloquence and decadence, which transports the mundane into the magical, suspending time and place into a kaleidoscopic universe." —Mistress of Culture Vultures, https://www.weekendnotes.com/


"Bacon explores a four-generation alien family saga in this gleeful, wacky debut." —Publishers Weekly


(5 stars) "[Bacon's] eloquent, elegant and lyrical prose gripped me from the very first sentence of this immensely passionate, moving and thought-provoking story ... [an] amazing, magical book." —Linda Hepworth, NB Magazine - UK


"Lush, hypnotic and absorbing. Bacon speaks in a language all her own, transporting us to an original, surreal, very real invented world." —Kaaron Warren, award-winning author of Tide of Stone and The Grief Hole

From the Publisher