If you’ve listened to my podcasts, especially the feedback shows with Dan Sawyer, you know that I’m a huge fan of the writings of Tee Morris. Tee was one of the original podcast novelists, along with Scott Sigler and Mark Jeffrey, and Tee’s Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword was one of the two works of audio fiction that inspired me to try my hand at it. (The other was Listening Library’s full-cast rendition of The Golden Compass.) I’ve been watching Tee’s work since then with great interest, cheering him on and waiting for his big “breakout hit” that would get him the attention he deserves.
This may be his moment. More after the jump.
Tee has become known for two things over the last several years: being an expert on social media, and writing crazy-fun steampunk adventures with his wife Pip Ballantine (who is ten kinds of awesome in her own right). Both of these things deserve attention and acclamation, but frankly they don’t do justice to Tee’s abilities as a writer. The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is loud, goofy, rollicking fun, but it isn’t exactly a stretching artistic endeavor for either Tee or Pip. Both of them are capable of work of much greater emotional depth and artistic skill. The thing that has bummed me out, as a friend and fan of Tee, is that while Pip has gotten to show off her writing chops in her own solo books, we haven’t seen much solo work from Tee outside of his new media/nonfiction writing. I’ve been longing to see him stretch his wings and do something different again. And now he has.
It seems that back in 2012, Tee began writing and releasing horror fiction under a pen name. For those who wonder if the author of Billibub Baddings can DO horror … well. #1, you haven’t heard the short story he wrote for 7th Son: Obsidian. Not horror, exactly, but DAMN was it dark and gripping. And #2, that is entirely the point! Tee’s doing something here that I haven’t seen him try before. He’s stretching himself in new directions and then releasing that work into the wild. As both his fan and his friend, that is a tremendously good thing to see.
“Horror … is still undiscovered country for me; and like comedy, is the hardest genre for me to write. Fear, like humor, is subjective. What terrifies one person does not terrify everyone else, and finding that wide-spread terror is a challenge.”
Let’s hear it for tackling things that challenge us! I’m proud of you, man.
