Tell Me a Story: Martin Millar, Kalix and Aural Valium

I've just begun reading Martin Millar’s new Kalix book. LOVING IT!

The Anxiety of Kalix the Werewolf is like a fairy tale. A lot of his books are like that for me. They're bedtime stories for adults. For ex-punkers and misfits. For those of us who still don’t quite fit in.

Here’s a snippet of a description of his stories from Goodreads:

The novels he writes as Martin Millar (ed note: he also writes under the nom de plume Martin Scott) dwell on urban decay and British sub-cultures, and the impact this has on a range of characters, both realistic and supernatural. There are elements of magical realism, and the feeling that the boundary between real life and the supernatural is not very thick.

In the Kalix the Werewolf Girl series, Kalix MacRinnalch is a young Scottish werewolf who’s moved to London (Brixton?). She struggles mightily with anxiety, depression, a nasty laudanum addiction as well as some serious savage tendencies (fer Bast’s sake though, she’s a werewolf, OF COURSE she’s got a violent streak!).

I know what you’re thinking, “that doesn’t sound very fairy tale like to me, Donna!” Hey, truly awesome mythic yarns aren’t all whimsical with pretty, pretty, princesses, shockingly pure knights in glittering armor, talking frogs, magical old coots wearing starry conical caps and bitchy evil stepmothers rockin' totally KILLAH style (if Disney's to be believed).

Mebbe this is just me and my fairy tales?

You can read an excerpt of Mister Millar's latest here at his blog.

You know what I want? I’d very much like to have Kalix stories or chapters from The Good Fairies of New York (LOVE that book!) read to me each night at bedtime. The Amazing Bob, with his midnight jazz DJ voice, would be perfect for the job (if I still had hearing, that is).

He used to read poems to me over the phone late at night, before we began shacking up, (yes, dinosaurs had been extinct for a year or two by then). Yeah, my husband is the BEST romantic! Who needs shiny armor when you've got sexy aesthetic chops like that?

TAB’s voice...aural Valium.

Feeling wistful here.

Back to Herr Millar's book though. Here’s a sketch of the first in the series, Lonely Werewolf Girl, from Goodreads:

While teenage werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is being pursued through the streets of London by murderous hunters, her sister, the Werewolf Enchantress, is busy designing clothes for the Fire Queen. Meanwhile, in the Scottish Highlands, the MacRinnalch Clan is plotting and feuding after the head of the clan suddenly dies intestate. As the court intrigue threatens to blow up into all-out civil war, the competing factions determine that Kalix is the swing vote necessary to assume leadership of the clan. Unfortunately, Kalix isn’t really into clan politics — laudanum’s more her thing. Even more unfortunately, Kalix is the reason the head of the clan ended up dead, which is why she’s now on the lam in London. . . This expansive tale of werewolves in the modern world — friendly werewolves, fashionista werewolves, troubled teenage werewolves, cross-dressing werewolves, werewolves of every sort — is hard-edged, hilarious, and utterly believable

You can find Signore Millar’s books at any fine octavo emporium. Fer instance: