Genre Fiction
![Grant Morrison - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_grant_morrison.jpg)
Luda: A Novel
A drag queen initiates her protégée into the magical arts in this phantasmagoric epic, the first novel from the legendary comics writer and New York Times bestselling author.
"Grant Morrison is a modern mythmaker."-Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
Luci LaBang is a star: For decades this flamboyant drag artist has cast a spell over screen and stage. Now she's the leading lady in a smash hit musical. But as time takes its toll, Luci fears her star is beginning to dim.
When Luci's co-star meets with a mysterious accident, a new ingenue shimmers onto the scene: Luda, whose fantastical beauty and sinister charm infatuate Luci immediately . . . and who bears a striking resemblance to Luci herself at a much younger age.
Luda begs Luci to share the secrets of her stardom and to reveal the hidden tricks of her trade. For Luci LaBang is a mistress of the Glamour, a mysterious discipline that draws on sex, drugs, and the occult for its trancelike, transformative effects.
But as Luci tutors her young protégée, their fellow actors and crew members begin meeting with untimely ends. Now Luci wonders if Luda has mastered the Glamour all too well . . . and exploited it to achieve her dark ambitions.
What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the brightest star of them all.
"Grant Morrison is a modern mythmaker."-Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
Luci LaBang is a star: For decades this flamboyant drag artist has cast a spell over screen and stage. Now she's the leading lady in a smash hit musical. But as time takes its toll, Luci fears her star is beginning to dim.
When Luci's co-star meets with a mysterious accident, a new ingenue shimmers onto the scene: Luda, whose fantastical beauty and sinister charm infatuate Luci immediately . . . and who bears a striking resemblance to Luci herself at a much younger age.
Luda begs Luci to share the secrets of her stardom and to reveal the hidden tricks of her trade. For Luci LaBang is a mistress of the Glamour, a mysterious discipline that draws on sex, drugs, and the occult for its trancelike, transformative effects.
But as Luci tutors her young protégée, their fellow actors and crew members begin meeting with untimely ends. Now Luci wonders if Luda has mastered the Glamour all too well . . . and exploited it to achieve her dark ambitions.
What follows is an intoxicating descent into the demimonde of Gasglow, a fantastical city of dreams, and into the nightmarish heart of Luda herself: a femme fatale, a phenomenon, a monster, and, perhaps, the brightest star of them all.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Luda
"Grant Morrison is a modern mythmaker-a once-in-a-lifetime storyteller who has crafted some of the most evocative sagas of our generation. With Luda, Morrison has created a mesmerizing, evocative, and unforgettable journey that still manages to be grounded and character driven. Luda discards the trappings of genre boundaries to concoct something wholly new and truly phenomenal."-Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
"Flamboyant and provocative, witty and incendiary, a delirious drag performance that alternates between spotlight bright and greasepaint sleazy. There are those who have been waiting their entire lives for Grant Morrison to write a novel. Some of those uninitiated will discover that, without knowing it, they were among their number all along."-Kieron Gillen, co-creator of The Wicked + The Divine
"Morrison's debut novel twists genre and gender inside and out in a gonzo free fall through the world of drag theater."-Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt
Praise for Grant Morrison
"Morrison's whole body of work inspired me."-Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance
"I suddenly realized that everything that I'm trying to say in my nonfiction work, and in some of my fiction work, has been so beautifully and so imaginatively expressed in the work of Grant Morrison."-Deepak Chopra
"Morrison is a skilled word magician, seeking creativity in a cosmological dimension."-Publishers Weekly
"Morrison possesses that trick of the best teachers-[they show] you how and why [they are] excited about these ideas, so you get excited by them as well."-Austin American-Statesman
"Grant Morrison is a modern mythmaker-a once-in-a-lifetime storyteller who has crafted some of the most evocative sagas of our generation. With Luda, Morrison has created a mesmerizing, evocative, and unforgettable journey that still manages to be grounded and character driven. Luda discards the trappings of genre boundaries to concoct something wholly new and truly phenomenal."-Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
"Flamboyant and provocative, witty and incendiary, a delirious drag performance that alternates between spotlight bright and greasepaint sleazy. There are those who have been waiting their entire lives for Grant Morrison to write a novel. Some of those uninitiated will discover that, without knowing it, they were among their number all along."-Kieron Gillen, co-creator of The Wicked + The Divine
"Morrison's debut novel twists genre and gender inside and out in a gonzo free fall through the world of drag theater."-Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt
Praise for Grant Morrison
"Morrison's whole body of work inspired me."-Gerard Way, My Chemical Romance
"I suddenly realized that everything that I'm trying to say in my nonfiction work, and in some of my fiction work, has been so beautifully and so imaginatively expressed in the work of Grant Morrison."-Deepak Chopra
"Morrison is a skilled word magician, seeking creativity in a cosmological dimension."-Publishers Weekly
"Morrison possesses that trick of the best teachers-[they show] you how and why [they are] excited about these ideas, so you get excited by them as well."-Austin American-Statesman
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
The Phantom
Here to begin?
That's the big question, I hope you'll agree.
You. Me. Where do any of us "begin"?
Face it. An ill-judged wink across a crowded dance floor invites a lifetime of school bills. An inebriated fumble in the dark, on the playing field, in the cloakroom, gets the same job done just as well.
Even you, hearing this, you might be the product of a case of mistaken identity that wound up in the maternity ward.
I'm not judging.
Judging is your job. You'll have to reach a verdict after all the evidence in the case has been presented. That's how it works.
Off we go; the pistol cracks, jump-starting a spirited, high-heeled lunge from the starting blocks as we jostle for position in the "Human Race"; digging in for the long haul; and what starts as a spirited marathon sprint, winds down over decades until it's a hundred-meter medicated crawl to the finish line.
That's what you'd say if you were trying to be clever, I suppose.
Lucky me, I don't have to try. I've got the front stalls and balcony eating out of my handbag most nights. I can bat an eye, purse my lips, and bring the house down like a drone strike any night of the week.
"Tonight" happens to be a Wednesday. Like yours truly, it can go one way or the other on a Wednesday but the weather's rotten outside, as my dripping, demoralized umbrella will confirm, and that's generally enough to guarantee a packed hall from the orchestra pit to the gods and nosebleeds.
So, if you ask me, and on the clear understanding there's nobody else here in the dressing room, you may as well take the plunge: It doesn't matter where we begin, does it, babes?
When all's said and done, we start off with nothing. You and me both, and all the rest. Hardly matters what happens in between; we arrive with nothing and we finish with nothing, am I right?
Zip. Zilch. Nada. Naught. Nil.
What better place to "commence my narrative" than here, with nothing at all?
At Ground Zero.
What makes me so certain I've got nothing? you may ask.
I can tell you it's because I know for sure I've got nothing to lose.
If you're already asking yourself, How long can she go on and on about nothing, settle in, I've only just gotten started.
Nothing is a blank canvas, you see. Nothing is a mirror waiting patiently for an anticipated reflection to show up. A lonely-looking glass in an Oscar Wilde fairy tale, aching for that special face to drift into view, bringing purpose to its blank existence.
Which returns me to me, unsurprisingly, looking in a glass like that one in the story Oscar forgot to write. Me and the wicked queen from Snow White.
Honestly, if I could sum up my whole life in one image, there's a mirror on the wall and there's me, looking in, or looking out, it's hard to tell with mirrors.
If anyone ever asks, I describe myself as an artist, and an artist needs a carte blanche to get started.
This tabula rasa I call my face has, for quite a long time, been every bit as vacant as it gets: symmetrical, bland, uninhabited, you could say. A halfhearted sketch for a grand, abandoned project. Even these reluctantly accumulated lines and folds and cracks appear to me as if they'd much rather be somewhere else; livening up an Etruscan vase in a museum or adding texture to some moth-eaten rolled medieval tapestry.
Faced with that crumpled imprecision, the only reasonable response is to sanction a scorched-earth policy. Vietnam. The Gulf. Afghanistan. Agent Orange. Edit out the errors, blitz the flaws, illuminate the trenches with color and contour.
Let scarlet poppies bloom on the graveyard pillows of my lips, soldier dear!
Come to think of it, you could say I've been touching myself up my whole life if you wanted to lead with a blue note.
As if to prove my point, having prepped the canvas with Derma Shield, the foundation goes on first-and these days, I might as well layer it on with a trowel, or a bulldozer. My sponge has to work harder than a navvy spreading tarmac on a highway surface pitted with artillery potholes.
I dip two fingers in the pot to scoop up a generous cool blob of W5 Kryolan pancake base before rubbing my palms together nice and slow, so the emulsion squishes through my fingers in creamy prayer. Then, placing the tips either side of the bridge of my nose, I draw my digits down in a tribal chevron.
It'll take as long as it always takes, time enough to say everything that needs to be said. If Luci LaBang is ready when it's curtains up, everything else is secondary.
She's on her way, floating up from the depths to the mirror's surface to replace my vacant featu...
The Phantom
Here to begin?
That's the big question, I hope you'll agree.
You. Me. Where do any of us "begin"?
Face it. An ill-judged wink across a crowded dance floor invites a lifetime of school bills. An inebriated fumble in the dark, on the playing field, in the cloakroom, gets the same job done just as well.
Even you, hearing this, you might be the product of a case of mistaken identity that wound up in the maternity ward.
I'm not judging.
Judging is your job. You'll have to reach a verdict after all the evidence in the case has been presented. That's how it works.
Off we go; the pistol cracks, jump-starting a spirited, high-heeled lunge from the starting blocks as we jostle for position in the "Human Race"; digging in for the long haul; and what starts as a spirited marathon sprint, winds down over decades until it's a hundred-meter medicated crawl to the finish line.
That's what you'd say if you were trying to be clever, I suppose.
Lucky me, I don't have to try. I've got the front stalls and balcony eating out of my handbag most nights. I can bat an eye, purse my lips, and bring the house down like a drone strike any night of the week.
"Tonight" happens to be a Wednesday. Like yours truly, it can go one way or the other on a Wednesday but the weather's rotten outside, as my dripping, demoralized umbrella will confirm, and that's generally enough to guarantee a packed hall from the orchestra pit to the gods and nosebleeds.
So, if you ask me, and on the clear understanding there's nobody else here in the dressing room, you may as well take the plunge: It doesn't matter where we begin, does it, babes?
When all's said and done, we start off with nothing. You and me both, and all the rest. Hardly matters what happens in between; we arrive with nothing and we finish with nothing, am I right?
Zip. Zilch. Nada. Naught. Nil.
What better place to "commence my narrative" than here, with nothing at all?
At Ground Zero.
What makes me so certain I've got nothing? you may ask.
I can tell you it's because I know for sure I've got nothing to lose.
If you're already asking yourself, How long can she go on and on about nothing, settle in, I've only just gotten started.
Nothing is a blank canvas, you see. Nothing is a mirror waiting patiently for an anticipated reflection to show up. A lonely-looking glass in an Oscar Wilde fairy tale, aching for that special face to drift into view, bringing purpose to its blank existence.
Which returns me to me, unsurprisingly, looking in a glass like that one in the story Oscar forgot to write. Me and the wicked queen from Snow White.
Honestly, if I could sum up my whole life in one image, there's a mirror on the wall and there's me, looking in, or looking out, it's hard to tell with mirrors.
If anyone ever asks, I describe myself as an artist, and an artist needs a carte blanche to get started.
This tabula rasa I call my face has, for quite a long time, been every bit as vacant as it gets: symmetrical, bland, uninhabited, you could say. A halfhearted sketch for a grand, abandoned project. Even these reluctantly accumulated lines and folds and cracks appear to me as if they'd much rather be somewhere else; livening up an Etruscan vase in a museum or adding texture to some moth-eaten rolled medieval tapestry.
Faced with that crumpled imprecision, the only reasonable response is to sanction a scorched-earth policy. Vietnam. The Gulf. Afghanistan. Agent Orange. Edit out the errors, blitz the flaws, illuminate the trenches with color and contour.
Let scarlet poppies bloom on the graveyard pillows of my lips, soldier dear!
Come to think of it, you could say I've been touching myself up my whole life if you wanted to lead with a blue note.
As if to prove my point, having prepped the canvas with Derma Shield, the foundation goes on first-and these days, I might as well layer it on with a trowel, or a bulldozer. My sponge has to work harder than a navvy spreading tarmac on a highway surface pitted with artillery potholes.
I dip two fingers in the pot to scoop up a generous cool blob of W5 Kryolan pancake base before rubbing my palms together nice and slow, so the emulsion squishes through my fingers in creamy prayer. Then, placing the tips either side of the bridge of my nose, I draw my digits down in a tribal chevron.
It'll take as long as it always takes, time enough to say everything that needs to be said. If Luci LaBang is ready when it's curtains up, everything else is secondary.
She's on her way, floating up from the depths to the mirror's surface to replace my vacant featu...
