Showing Posts From
Mazywood
Author: Tananarive DuePage Count: UnknownPublication Date: Expected publication 2026-09-22 APL Another morning staring at a blank screen while my morning chamomile grows tepid on the mahogany desk. My publisher demands prose; my aristocratic lineage demands distinction. And yet, this wretched writer's block remains more stubborn than a Vanderbilt clinging to old railroad stock. But salvation perhaps arrives in the mail, disguised as publisher galley sheets for Tananarive Due’s upcoming Mazywood. Let us inspect the pedigree. A Pedigree of Privilege and Peril The synopsis attempts to brandish comparisons to S.A. Cosby and Percival Everett—truly, publishers never tire of reaching for the shelf—yet my eyes naturally gravitate toward the lineage. We are tracking bloodlines here. Johnny, a filmmaker of descent, retreating to a California mountain lodge left by his grandmother, Mazelle Washington—a Black actress whose career spanned Hollywood’s golden cage from the twenties to the forties. Old Hollywood. How I adore a proper period of inherited glamour and hidden rot. Mazelle brushed shoulders with Gable and Horne, yes, but she carried a subterranean secret. A dark wish from childhood. One must ask: does the synopsis rely too heavily on the supernatural crutch of a "dark wish" rather than the delicious, mundane cruelty of studio-era exploitation? One hopes Due leans into the latter. Monsters lurking in the woods are terribly pedestrian. Monsters manufactured by the studio system and preserved in mountain air? Now that warrants turning a page. The Burden of Inheritance We aristocrats understand the crushing weight of what preceding generations left rotting in the cellar. Johnny brings his family to Mazywood—a splendidly haughty name for a cabin—only to discover fifty years of accumulated familial sins. Yet the synopsis remains infuriatingly vague. Fifty years after her death, he confronts the truth. But what truth? Vague marketing copy always protects the twist. And yet, Due’s previous work commands respect. If The Reformatory proved anything, it is that she understands historical ghosts quite intimately. One suspects the book will explore the transactional nature of fame and how generational rage curdles into heirloom venom. Or perhaps it is simply an excuse to spend three hundred pages chronicling California real estate horror. Either way, it offers a welcome distraction from my own editorial paralysis. Now, if you will excuse me, I must brave the absolute catastrophe of traffic crawling out toward the Hamptons—merely because some dreadful hedge fund manager decided a Friday departure was appropriate for polite society. #TananariveDue #Mazywood #LiteraryThriller #OldHollywood