October Links & Things

I'll be attending the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose this weekend (Friday through Sunday, possibly this evening as well), so I'm posting my Links column a couple days early. My schedule has been extremely hectic this month: in the past two or so weeks I was contacted by three different publishers all wanting projects completed by mid-November; I think I've negotiated my way around all of them, but only time will tell. Said hectic-ness also explains why there hasn't been any blog post this month, and also why this Links post isn't as long as it typically is; it takes a lot of time to read hundreds of Twitter posts and RSS feeds daily, and then select only those links that I feel are of some value to include here.

Speaking of Time... This is when I wish I had Hiro Nakamura's power, which would allow me to stop time, and then get a lot more work done.

I'm hoping to have a "big announement" soon (big, at least for me) and it will hopefully provide a lead-in to a new blog post. Until then, here are my links and such for the month of October. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern.

• At the top of my list this month is the new Federal Trade Commmission guidelines (a downloadable PDF) for bloggers, and how it impacts the "little" book blogs (or the "little" music blogs, or the "little" clothing blogs, or...). Richard Cleland, of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (i.e. the FTC), states in an interview: "If a blogger received enough books, he could open up a used bookstore." This guy has got to be kidding, right? The FTC expects bloggers to return, or throw away, or donate every single free book they receive; otherwise, the book must be declared as compensation, and noted in the blog that it was received for free. Also, any commercial link(s) on a blog for a book that has been reviewed must be removed. BUT, these guidelines do not apply to newspapers, magazines, and other such commercially sponsored blogs: their reviewers, who are getting paid to review, can keep their books, and any commercial links on the page are okay. Does it sound like the newspaper and magazine industries -- because their buisnesses are hurting -- have been hustling the government for support against these competing "little guy blogs"? If you are a blogger, or you support individual blogs, you need to read this material.
  
  Here's the Dear Author blog with a piece entitled "The FTC and the Unreasonable Case of Disclosure"; and from Jeff Jarvis of the BuzMachine blog: "FTC regulates our speech." Be sure to read the comments on this latter blog, which at this time number 150 and are as important as the article itself.
  
  And Jack Shafer at Slate.com takes a shot at these new guidelines as well, with a great piece entitled "The FTC's Mad Power Grab: The commission's preposterous new endorsement guidelines." (Note: all these blog links on the new FTC guidelines via @RonHogan)
  
  After the blogosphere shitstorm that arose with the announcement of the new FTC Guidelines, Richard Cleland clarifies some points with PRNewser via mediabistro.com: "We have never brought a case against a consumer endorser and we've never brought a case against somebody simply for failure to disclose a material connection." Of course, Elizabeth Lordan, FTC Public Affairs Specialist, also clarified that the per offense "$11,000 figure is old information that used to be a part of the boilerplate in our press releases when court order violations were announced." The current per offense figure is $16,000.00! We appreciate the clarification, Ms. Lordan!
  
  And a last update (I promise!) from Publishers Weekly on 10/19/2009: Mary Engle, an FTC lawyer, spoke recently at KidlitCon 09, a conference of children"s book bloggers. She stated that the FTC "never intended to patrol the blogosphere....We couldn't do it if we wanted to and we don't want to." She went on to say that these guidelines "are intended to put meat on the bones of the 'endorsement and testimonial' guidelines first issued in 1980." She used a Proctor & Gamble campaign, called "Vocalpoint," as an example. According to PW: "Either clarifying or backpedaling from [Richard] Cleland's statements [see above], Engle said Saturday someone with a 'personal blog, writing a genuine or organic review,' did not need to disclose how they got the book or assign it a value."


• If you are an author, an editor, a publicist, a publisher -- anything! -- you absolutely must read this special piece in The New Yorker on modern book publicity. It's the "Shouts and Murmurs" column and the article is entitled: "Subject: Our Marketing Plan." Here's how the article begins: "Let me introduce myself. My name is Gineen Klein, and I've been brought on as an intern to replace the promotion department here at Propensity Books." A must read...


• Literary agent Nathan Bransford answers the question: "What Do Literary Agents Do?" which may indeed surprise you. Bransford's blog post breaks down the lit agent's responsibilities into these headers: The Filter, Pre-submission Editing, Submitting to Editors, Negotiating Offers, Negotiating Contracts, Keeping Track of the Publication Process, Subrights, Career Shaping, and The Ultimate Advocate. Bransford writes: "This is just a basic list, and there's often more to it than this. It's quite a catchall job, one that requires a long apprenticeship, time in the business, a strong work ethic, a good eye, and a passion for books.... For all of these tasks the agent receives income based only on commission -- again, the agent is only paid if/when the author is paid." As of this posting, there are 84 comments; most worthy of your time as well. (via @inkyelbows)


• And speaking of agents, Colleen Lindsay (@ColleenLindsay) dissects a "successful" query letter she received in February from Kelly Gay, author of The Better Part of Darkness. Colleen discusses Kelly's query letter, point by point, and with commentary. The query letter led Colleen to request to see the manuscript, and the rest, as they say, is history. As an added treat, author Kelly Gay discusses the query letter from her own perspective on her blog. A must read for any author who has a query letter to write soon (or an author who has had a recent query rejected).


• Steve Berkun provides an excellent explanation of what a copyeditor actually does in his essay entitled "How copyediting looks and feels." He goes on to explain, from his perspective as a writer, the relationship between the author and the copyeditor. Steve writes: "[My copyeditor is] tough, smart, sarcastic and direct, which is great. I want to hear some tough stuff in the copyedit. How else will the book get better? A copyeditor and author shouldn't agree on everything -- the process should force the writer to think more clearly and catch bad assumptions they've made. I get final say, so what do I have to lose in being questioned? Better now than in book reviews.... Good copyeditors are underpaid. [Here! Here!] They have the most intimate involvement in the creative process, even though it's late in the game. In many cases they make mediocre writers look good." Steve even showcases a screen shot of Microsoft Word's "change tracking" process.


• Speaking of what copyeditors -- and editors and proof readers -- do, Nicola Morgan spells it out for us in her recent blog post "Myths About Writing: I Can Leave It To Editors." Nicola writes: "I can understand that you might be thinking, 'So, if they do all this, it doesn't matter if I submit my work to an editor or agent with a few errors in. In fact, isn't it a waste of time on my part to bother with such details at this stage?'" To which she responds: "NO, NO, NO. NO." -- and she gives reasons why, too! (via @charlestan) BTW, Nicola's blog is entitled Help! I Need a Publisher! -- a great title; I love it!


• Novelist Alexander Chee recounts, in a beautifully written essay, his experience studying under Annie Dillard. Chee writes: "Very quickly, she identified what she called 'bizarre grammatical structures' inside my writing. From the things Annie circled in my drafts, it was clear one answer to my problem really was, in a sense, Maine. From my mom's family, I'd gotten the gift for the telling detail ― Your Uncle Charles is so cheap he wouldn't buy himself two hamburgers if he was hungry ― but also a voice cluttered by the passive voice in common use in that part of the world ― I was writing to ask if you were interested ― a way of speaking that blunted all aggression, all direct inquiry, and certainly, all description." The essay has an exceptional ending, which I won't spoil here for you; you'll have to read it for yourself. (via @MaudNewton)


• Amy Hertz, editor of HuffPost Books, shocked a number of her readers -- and sent the Twittersphere all a tweet -- with her post ("Dear Publishing Colleagues") in which she stated: "This is NOT a book review section. Let me say that again, because I know about 72,000 publicists just plotzed because they have no idea what to do other than ask for a review. Huffington Post Books is not a review -- there's a reason those sections in newspapers are dropping like flies. Book reviews tend to be conversation enders, and when you're living in the age of engagement, a time when people are looking for conversation starters, that stance gets you nowhere. And now you're thinking, If I can't send you books to review, how does anyone get attention for them on your site? I thought you'd never ask." A must-read for book reviewers and book bloggers. Her first suggestion (bullet #2) is something I have committed to doing with this blog, More Read Ink; I always have something to say about the books I've edited, there's just never enough time in which to say (write) it.


• From Reuters: "Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on." "About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly. And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby)." Actually, I don't see this as specifically an Internet thing. I've noticed over the years that my British authors use far more hyphens than are typically found in American English. For example, I find "no-one" hyphenated in British writing all the time, and it frustrates me to no end, and I'm always editing out that hyphen. But there are dozens of instances where the hyphen is necessary because of the consistency of style in the storytelling. Regardless, 16,000 words losing their hyphens may simply bring British English in line with American English. I'm all for it!


• Consulting Editor Alan Rinzler has a blog entitled The Book Deal: An Inside View of Publishing, and his current post, "Why book publishers love short stories," provides quite a bit of inspiration for short story writers everywhere. First, Rinzler covers the numbers: "A quick look at Amazon shows 29,000 story collections listed. Of those, more than 3,500 are anthologies of stories by a single author." He then talks about many authors whose short story collections went on to win the Pulitzer and other awards, or authors who began writing short stories, and then progressed to award-winning novels. As an editor and proponent of single-author short story collections, I'm always pleased to see support for such books. Though, unfortunately, since leaving Golden Gryphon Press at the end of 2007, I haven't had the opportunity to acquire and edit a single-author collection.


• In an article published on DigitalBeat, courtesy of POD People, I learned that now "Sony embraces small publishers and unknown authors on Sony Reader eBook store." Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, and readers, offering multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device. In this article Smashwords has announced that it "has a distribution agreement to get its books published on Sony's new eBook portal.... Now it's much easier for authors to hit lots of readers. Self-published authors can now visit the Sony Publisher Portal and click on Smashwords to sign up for a free publishing account.... Besides Smashwords, Sony is also getting new eBooks from Author Solutions."


• The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (@sfwa) blog has a post by authors' best friend Victoria Strauss, who explains "The Perils of Searching for a Publisher on the Internet." Aside from a couple big-name NY publishers that pop up at the top of most searches, the listings are fraught with sponsored links to fee-based publishers (and, according to Ms. Strauss, not all of these fees are openly mentioned). But what is even more important on this page -- particularly for new writers -- is the link at the bottom, which takes the reader to Ms. Strauss's Writers Beware Blogs! and a fine piece entitled "Learning the Ropes." As Ms. Strauss writes: "Unless writers are able to filter the information they find online, they're at risk of making bad decisions or falling victim to predators. In other words, writers need to know something about publishing before they start searching for publishers (or agents). Rather than plunging in and attempting to learn on the fly, it's a much better idea to first take the time to build a knowledge base."


• Ms. Strauss has another blog entry on the SFWA site, entitled "Thoughts on Self-Promotion," in which she contemplates/reviews the various possibilities as the publication of her own book approaches. The article has links to a Washington Post piece on self-promotion as well as a link to a web-based strategy that is doable on your own. She concludes with: "The key, I think, is to be realistic. Have a plan. Do your research. Know the options. Keep your head -- don't get carried away by the hype that surrounds every new self-promotional strategy. Keep it reasonable -- for your budget, your time- and energy-level (don't let self-promotion cut too deeply into the time you allot to your real job, writing), and your personality (Do conventions stress you out? Do you despise Twitter? Then focus your efforts elsewhere).... And never forget that the basis of all self-promotion is something very simple, and infinitely complex: a good book. There really is no substitute."


• Stephen King, on Entertainment Weekly, presents his harsh opinion on "What's Next for Pop Culture?" -- i.e. the decline of quality in entertainment: books, radio, movies, and TV. King writes: "At this writing, best-selling hardcovers have settled at an e-book price point of about $10, but if you think e-book vendors such as Amazon and Sony are making a profit, you would be wrong. That's because the product is sold cheap for the same reason that dope pushers sell the product cheap, at least to begin with: to get you hooked.... Good stories are dope. I love my Kindle, but what appears there has (so far) been backstopped by great publishers and layers of editing. If the e-book drives those guys out of business (or even into semiretirement), what happens to the quality? For that matter, who pays the advances? No one I talk to can answer these questions."


• Scott Cupp continues his column "Geek with (Lots of) Books" on SFSignal: this entry on the relationship he has with his wife -- "St. Sandi," the title of this piece -- and she with his collecting habits. "And while Sandi is often a saint, she frequently asks when I plan on getting rid of some things. She does not understand the joy of having a vinyl album in its full glory, a cassette of the same album (so you can listen to it in the car) and a CD of it also (with some extra tracks and good sound) which I can play at the house since my turntable is currently not working. When I explain it like that, I get the response 'Well, since the turntable is not working and has not worked in a year or so, why don't you get rid of the vinyl?' She makes it sound so logical. But my collecting mind does not work that way."
  
  Scott's next column is entitled "The Cheap Collector" in which he explains how to build a book collection cheaply. The simplest way is to purchase the book upon publication, at which time, if it is the right book, such that it increases dramatically in price among collectors, then the original publication price (or discounted price at time of publication) will be the cheapest you will ever find the book. Of course, as I said, it has to be the right (i.e. speculative) book. Scott also talks about frequenting used book stores; he's in Texas, and maybe his state still has a lot of used bookstores, but I haven't seen a used bookstore in my area for a number of years.


• And lastly, if you haven't read the novel The Phantom Tollbooth, then there is a definite hole in your being of which you are not aware and it immediately needs to be nourished! Buy a copy, borrow a copy, whatever it takes, you must read The Phantom Tollbooth. My wife and I took turns reading it to our daughter when she was around five. TPT was written by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. The two men lived in the same Brooklyn apartment building in the 1950s after each served a term in the military. They met one day while taking out their garbage. It's a wonderful story; read the Publishers Weekly piece at your leisure, but be forewarned: Juster and Feiffer are collaborating once again (they are both 80 years old!) on a new picture book, The Odious Ogre, for Michael di Capua Books at Scholastic, due out in fall 2010. (via @genreville)

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Mark Teppo's Codex of Souls Seeks the Light

I began writing this blog the first weekend in September, but incoming projects and deadlines prohibited me from finishing the blog post at that time. So, what follows is what I initially wrote, and then I will continue on from there.

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On Tuesday I delivered the final edited manuscript for Mark Teppo's novel Heartland: The Second Book of the Codex of Souls to publisher Night Shade Books. The due date for delivery of the edited manuscript was that day, September 1, but the manuscript had in fact been completed a few days prior. I told Mark that I would sit on it until the 1st just in case he or I came up with any thoughts, issues, or last minute edits. Neither of us did, which is always a good sign.

Just as a point of information, the "Codex of Souls" is a planned ten-book series, though I believe only the first three titles, so far, have a home at Night Shade Books. Personally, I have no doubt that all ten books will assuredly see publication. Book one, Lightbreaker, was published this past June, and Heartland will be forthcoming in early 2010. Each book contains a teaser for the next title in the series; book 3, Angel Tongue, is scheduled for publication in 2011.

I've been working on Heartland for most of this past month. I read through the author's manuscript twice: making notes and minor edits the first time, then I gave the manuscript an intensive editing review the second time around -- sending the author an email as each question/concern arose. At this stage I was working on hardcopy -- I only edit on hardcopy! Once the editing and review was complete, I then keyed in all the edits and notes directly into the author's manuscript file using MS Word's "change tracking." Without "change tracking" I would be forced to deal with hardcopy from start to finish: I would have had to photocopy the marked-up pages and mail them to the author. However, "change tracking" negates the need for all of that. For those unfamiliar with "change tracking": My initial edits/changes are entered in a red font; the author's follow-up edits/changes are entered in blue. So it is easy to keep track of who entered what. Plus, anything deleted is automatically moved into a box in the right margin so one can view deletes as well as adds. And, of course, any change can be rejected by either person. Comments can also be added anywhere, when necessary, to explain edits, to ask questions/clarifications, etc. A great little tool. How did we survive without this years ago? Yeah, I know, photocopy and mail.

So far Mark and I have churned out at least 165 Heartland-related emails discussing the finer (and not so finer) points in the manuscript.

Before I proceed any further, I would like to include an excerpt here from Heartland -- just one paragraph from the hundreds of paragraphs and more than 132,000 words -- with Mark Teppo's permission, of course:

It's a funny way to remember someone: as a sensory phantom haunting you when they are gone. They become a collection of elusive details; you cannot remember them completely, and the more you struggle to put the puzzle together, the more you obsess about the gaps between the pieces. But, when you find these people again, when you crush them to you and inhale their smell, when you hear their voice, when you feel their touch, the pieces arrange themselves and you can’t fathom how you didn't see the whole picture before.

When I read words strung together into sentences to form a paragraph like this one -- well, all is right with the world. (What? You were expecting a quote of some heinous deed, or of some magickal display of power? -- Ahh, but I'm a romantic at heart.)

If the Codex of Souls series had to be classified/boxed/labeled, then I would be forced to say it is Urban Fantasy (with a strong male protagonist). But this series is so much more than that. I don't read much contemporary fantasy these days, as the stories are so overrun with romantic supernatural vamipiric zombies, but you won't find any of that in the Codex of Souls. Blue Tyson, in his mini review, called Lightbreaker "An urban fantasy novel that is a lot more Hellblazer, Mage and Highlander than it is high heels, hot pants and horizontal vampire mambo. There's even a Watcher society and sword fighting." Lupa, at Pagan Book Reviews, writes: "Teppo's story is based on Western Occultism, particularly Qabalah and other forms of ceremonial magic. To be sure, there's a lot of fantasy element to it -- souls shoving each other out of bodies with visible results, qlipothic spirits zapping rival mages -- but the author knows his stuff as far as basic Western magical theory goes."

Recently, I was interviewed by Charles Tan for his Bibliophile Stalker blog. In that interview I mention one summer during college in which I had read Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road – all in succession. If Lightbreaker had been published at that point of time in my life, the book would have fit in quite perfectly between Castaneda and Kesey. How about that for a summer's beach-reading experience!

* * *

Okay, I'm back to the present day. As I said, I turned in the final edited manuscript of Heartland on September 1 to Night Shade Books. Using this ms. file, Ross Lockhart did the page layout; he then mailed me a hardcopy (435 pages, including the book three teaser) and emailed me a PDF of the layout file itself. I copyedited and proofed the page layouts through most of last week. I then sent my list of copyedits to the author, and I am now awaiting his review and input. The page proof edits need to be delivered by October 6, and Mark and I are on track to meet that deadline.

[As an aside: Author Scott Berkun has posted a very helpful blog piece -- "How copyediting looks and feels" -- in which he details the relationship between the copyeditor and the author. Though his emphasis is on nonfiction books, the relationship remains the same in fiction as well. It's amazing how much fact-checking is required in a novel such as Lightbreaker or Heartland. As a copyeditor, I gained some insight from Scott's perspective on copyediting. If you're an author, you'll find Scott's essay worthwhile because he explains his responsibilities as the author in the copyediting process.]

Now, how this project all came about: I was contacted by Night Shade Books in early 2008 about editing a new novel by Mark Teppo. At the time I was unfamiliar with the author's previous work and I don't recall if I was even informed that this novel was the first in a series. (I was contacted via telephone so, unlike email, I have no record of that conversation.)

When I acquire a book for publication, I am usually familiar with the author's work, and I've already read, at least once, the novel I'm acquiring. In the case of a collection, I may have read some of the submitted stories two or three times in order to find that overall vision of what this collection can be. But in the case of Lightbreaker, I didn't quite know what to expect. I had to hope that Night Shade had me specifically in mind for this project, that because they knew of my previous work, they felt that Mark, Lightbreaker, and I would be a good fit.

The manuscript was handed to me, so to speak, with a firm publication deadline already set; I was provided the author's contact information and given permission to communicate directly with him. I sent Mark a lengthy email on 4 April 2008 in which I introduced myself. [Note: Not all publishers grant permission for a freelance editor to contact an author directly; occasionally, I don't want to have anything to do with contacting a particular author directly!]

Mark Teppo is the first author in my ten years in this business to provide me with a "style guide." Now a style guide can be many things. I create one for every book that I edit: I break it down by chapters (and even sections, if necessary), listing the characters that appear in each chapter, where the characters are physically, any special places, items, etc. that are introduced in that chapter, and so on. So if a character, who hasn't appeared in the story for a number of chapters, shows up in a chapter at a certain time/place, I can look back through my style guide and see where he was at his previous appearance. This is how I find inconsistencies in the story arc, holes in the plot, inadvertent swapping of character names, and so on. For Heartland, Mark's style guide listed the eight ranks of the Watchers (and necessary details, like the number of levels in a given rank and the number of Watchers allowed at the higher ranks), the names (both real and assigned) of the nine Architects (the second highest rank, under the one Hierarch), the ten spheres of the Tree of Sephiroth, a listing of all other proper names (historical and fictional) and place names, and a section entitled "Foreign Words and Other Outlandish Entries."

There is quite a lot of Latin phrases spoken throughout the Codex of Souls series, but Mark does a solid job of letting the reader know what is being said, so I never felt lost or left out, so to speak, by not having an understanding of Latin.

So what makes the Codex of Souls such a unique series -- other than what you have read so far in this blog entry? The protagonist is Landis Michael Markham; typically he just goes by Markham, occasionally Michael, but rarely Landis. The source of his power -- his magick (with a "k") -- comes from the Chorus: a composite of all the soul energy, or spirit light, that he has taken from others. Thus his name: Lightbreaker. The focal point of the Chorus is in the white braid of hair that Markham "wears" around his neck -- a token of love from a witch. In an email dated 29 April, Mark Teppo explained this token to me: "The braid of hair is Reija's, and it still contains part of her essence. It's her gift to him, and it grounds him enough that the Chorus couldn't dominate him completely. So, in a way, it holds the Chorus in, more than holding them as in a receptacle. Over time, it has become bonded to his skin and has become a part of him (but not noticeably so, it's just one of those things that looks like a tight choker until you try to get it off). It's a symbol, really, of the fact that someone loved him once, even though he had become a monster, and so, like the dark egg in his belly, it has become the white crown (albeit slipped) that also defines him."

Markham also carries with him an excessive amount of baggage (and I'm not talking about carry-on luggage, either, though he does travel -- from the Pacific Northwest in Lightbreaker, to Paris in Heartland, and there are hints of travels to the Far East and elsewhere in these stories). An incident in a wooded area more than ten years ago had a devastating effect on him: his heart was metaphorically ripped from his chest, and the resulting "hole" in his body -- and psyche -- allowed the qliphoth (that "dark egg in his belly" to which Mark refers) to enter. In a 9 April email, Mark defined the "qliphoth" as "Demons, essentially. The shells left behind by the divine light." And he pointed me to the Wikipedia qliphoth entry, particularly Israel Regardie's interpretation. I'll leave you to pursue this on your own should you so choose.

I don't want to write anything further on Markham, or the Chorus, or of the qliphoth, because I don't want readers to accuse me of giving away (too many) spoilers in either novel. But if a literate Urban Fantasy novel, with Western occult magick at its core, intrigues you, then I strongly encourage you to read Lightbreaker. (And I'm not simply recommending this book because I edited it.) This novel is an original paperback, so even at its retail price, you're looking at only $7.99 (plus tax, if applicable).

Before concluding, I'd like to quote from two additional reviews just to give you more of the flavor of the Codex of Souls series. From author Tim Pratt's review of Lightbreaker in the September 2009 issue of Locus: "Though the piling-up of occult details does make this world's magical system seem intricate and believable, Markham's ruminations and visions can go on too long, and aren't nearly as much fun as the various set pieces involving electrified iron maidens, booksellers transformed into Milton-quoting oracles, brutal magical duels, shambling soulless zombie hordes, and scenes of truly impressive magical devastation. Still, Teppo's preoccupation with profound questions of human purpose and potential make this deeper and more thought-provoking than your average urban fantasy." However, what Pratt seems critical of -- "Markham's ruminations and visions can go on too long" -- are what I find to be some of the most compelling aspects of the novel, and what differentiates this novel from other, more typical, fantasies (urban or otherwise). As the editor, I will be the first to admit that occasionally Markham's cogitations tend to be a bit over the top (I even stated this specifically to Mark in an email dated 16 April 2008), but Markham is a true scholar of the occult -- as well as being a loner -- and he is solidly in character during these periods. In fact, it is fascinating to watch his mind, and his spirit, at work, deconstructing the obstacles he encounters.

And from Rick Kleffel's The Agony Column for 06-01-09: "...Teppo's Markham is no average supernatural crime-solver, and Lightbreaker is a book awash not just in the surreal, but also in the deeply researched field of magick. Yes, that's right, magick with a 'k.' Aleister Crowley, Iron Maidens and the stolen souls of lots of people, and I mean lots of people. Think of all that energy, all the power there. You could pull off something really nasty." And you'll just have to read the book (if you haven't done so already) to find out just what that "something really nasty" is.

But in the meantime, there is the novella "Wolves, In Darkness," which Mark Teppo has published online, and is available for free. This novella is a good introduction to the world of Lightbreaker, but it can also be read after this first novel because the events in "Wolves" are referenced at length in Heartland. In a Night Shade interview on 13 June 2009, Mark Teppo explained: "I wrote 'Wolves, In Darkness' to try to do two things: one, introduce the back history between Antoine [Briande] and Markham a bit, as it may seem a bit oblique in Lightbreaker (neither of them really wants to talk about it). It doesn't contain any spoilers for Lightbreaker, really, but it'll give you a better understanding of why those two are pissed at each other. And two, it is back story that introduces some of the major players in Heartland."

This interview also sheds a wee bit of light (no pun intended) on the other volumes in the Codex of Souls series.

All in a day's work.

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Notes:

The cover illustrations for both Lightbreaker and Heartland are by the inestimable Chris McGrath. The cover shown for Heartland is only a preliminary design, and will undoubtedly change to some degree before the book is published in early 2010.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Mark Teppo for allowing me to quote from his texts and our email communications in this blog entry. Since April 2008, Mark and I have amassed more than 400 emails in the process of working on these two novels. It's been a pure joy (and intellectual challenge) for me, and I look forward to the next book, Angel Tongue, which I assume he will begin writing shortly. (Hint! Hint!) Mark and I have never met in person, and that will hopefully be remedied at the end of October when we both attend the 2009 World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, California.

And lastly, I couldn't resist (Sorry, Mark!) including a photo of the author in his more formal attire. You'll find a complete explanation of the bunny suit on his website: markteppo.com.

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Update: Thursday, October 15:

As I had previously mentioned, the cover for Heartland has been finalized, and since it is so much sweeter than the preliminary cover pictured above, I wanted to include it here -- especially since it matches the Lightbreaker cover so well.

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September Links & Things

I'm posting my September links a couple days early, so that I can get this out of the way in order to work on my next blog post. I've completed some major deadlines (though I have more to come the beginning of October), but I have just enough breathing room over the next day or two to work on a new blog post. This new essay has been an on-again/off-again project for months now; I've actually started it twice but got interrupted with other projects and deadlines -- you know, the ones that inevitably pay the bills! But more on all that later.

So, here are my links and such for the month of September. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern.

• Kristine Kathryn Rusch continues her online Freelancer's Survival Guide with "Setbacks (Part One)." Kris writes: "The real key with setbacks isn't preventing them; it's surviving them when they happen. Over the years, I've become a connoisseur of setbacks. I'm not interested in other people's misfortunes (except as grist for my own fiction), but I am interested in how other people survive those misfortunes.... There are four categories of setbacks and probably a million subcategories. The four major categories are: 1. Financial; 2. Mechanical / technical / production; 3. Physical; 4. Emotional." The author covers the first two categories in great detail in Part One, and I'll be looking forward to Part Two, since the "Emotional" category is one I'm particularly interested in reading.
  
  Update: Actually, Part Two deals with "Physical Setbacks." Guess I'll have to wait for Part Three to read what Kris has to say on "Emotional Setbacks." And finally, "Setbacks (Part 3)" which deals with five types of emotional setbacks: Fear, Anger, Betrayal, Failure, and... Success.
  
  Here's a link to the Table of Contents for the Freelancer's Survival Guide. If you have found the information useful and informative that Kris has been providing in this weekly series, please subscribe to her blog and/or its RSS feed, or follow Kris (@KristineRusch) and/or me on Twitter. I love what Kris is doing, and have been happy to share this with my blog readers, but due to time constraints I won't be maintaining ongoing series in this monthly Links update.


• M. J. Rose is the best-selling author of numerous novels, most recently The Memorist. She recently published an Op-ed piece on PublishingPerspectives.com entitled "Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid." Her gripe is that authors are more and more responsible for promoting their work; in fact, many publishers now require it of authors! So the author invests his/her time -- and money -- and yet there has been no change whatsoever in how the author gets paid by the publisher for their work; the same old royalty schedules still apply. Rose writes: "It used to be that the author wrote and the publisher published. Publishing meant everything from editing to distribution to marketing. Now, more and more books are not being published, but instead are merely being printed. No one walks into a bookstore and says to the clerk — 'I'd like to buy a book that I never heard of and that you never heard of.' Someone has to do the marketing and get the word out. And if that's going to be a shared responsibility, so be it. We all have the same goal in the end. But our contracts and the way we get paid can't remain the same. It's time to start a new chapter."
  
  In response to Rose's Op-ed piece, Robert Miller, President and Publisher of HarperStudio, wrote a follow-up piece entitled: "Re-thinking the Publisher/Author Partnership." I think "partnership" is the key word here. His concern is: "What amount of marketing effort should be expected of the author before their royalty changes?" He feels that both parties should be doing everything possible to promote the book; but what if the book doesn't make money? Who takes the loss? So Miller believes that "publishers and authors should be equal partners, sharing profits fifty-fifty, as we are doing in all of our deals at HarperStudio.... This financial structure requires both parties to think responsibly about costs, since both parties will be charged for those costs at the end of the day."


• A new collective of self-published authors -- Backword Books -- has launched, initiated by the efforts of Henry Baum, of Self-Publishing Review, which I have referenced quite a lot in my Links & Things postings. The 9/3/2009 issue of Publishers Weekly featured an article on Backword Books: "Baum is convinced that literary self-publishing will eventually achieve the same sales results as those of traditional presses. 'The vetting system is out of whack in the publishing industry' said Baum…. 'It's literary writers who are having a tougher time of it in today's climate, not just reaching an audience, but getting published in the first place. With Backwords, the hook is the writing itself. That's our strength.'"


• Author Dean Wesley Smith kills another sacred cow in his ongoing blog series "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing." The latest entry is on "Rewriting": Dean states: "Robert Heinlein's business rules have worked for many, many of us for decades and decades, and his rules go simply: 1) You must write. 2) You must finish what you write. 3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand. 4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it. 5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it. Those rules do seem so simple, and yet are so hard to follow at times. They set out a simple practice schedule and a clear process of what to do with your practice sessions when finished. But for this chapter, note rule #3. Harlan Ellison added to rule #3. 'And then only if you agree.'" Dean goes on to explain how rewriting can make stories worse than better. I'll leave you to read his words and decide for yourself; as for me, I'm not in total agreement, as I'm on the receiving end of those manuscripts.
  
  Dean has added the next chapter to his "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing," this one on "Agents." He lists 12 bulleted points that he defines as "standards of this industry and you can infer what you want from these standards to help your own writing and your own fight against this myth." For point #7, Dean writes: "Editors never know what they want to buy until they see it. An agent who tells you he or she knows exactly what an editor wants is just full of crap."
  
  And yet a third chapter has been added to Dean's "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing" -- "Workshops." Big Workshop Myth #1: "A WORKSHOP WILL HELP YOU FIX A MANUSCRIPT." Dean goes on to explain why a writers' workshop will NOT help you fix your manuscript, but he does give some insight into what a workshop WILL help you with, and he concludes by stating: "...there's nothing a workshop can do to help you fix a story without killing it. But you can learn stuff from a workshop that will help you make your next story better. Your focus always has to be forward, toward learning and writing the next story.
  
  This will be my last entry on Dean Wesley Smith's "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing." You can learn when a new chapter is posted by following @DeanWesleySmith and/or me on Twitter. Or you can subscribe to Dean's blog.


• The Editor Unleashed website, subtitled: "Writing, Publishing, Social Media and Community," has published a list of the Top 25 Best Writing Blogs of 2009. Writing blogs were first nominated by readers, the list was then culled to the top 50, I believe, which were then voted upon. I wish I had had the time to check out the initial 50 but, alas, I don't even have time to write my own blog entries! Anyhow, the Top 25 are broken down into categories "Publishing Trends," "Marketing and Social Media," "Creativity," "Fiction Writing," and "Freelance Writing." Lots of kudos in the Comments, as well. If you're a serious blogger on writing and/or a serious writer, you should check out these 25 blogs.


• Have you ever searched the web for a particular book review? Ever wondered if the hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of Book Blogs out there have reviewed a particular title? Fyrefly's Book Blog has compiled a list of a thousand (as of this writing) Book Blogs, and then designed a custom Google search engine to specifically search these sites. You can view the compiled list and then give the custom Google Book Blogs search engine a whirl. And, if you know of a book blog that's not included in the list, then just leave a comment with your recommendation. Great stuff!


• The chair of the judging panel for the Man Booker Prize has criticized a number of the submissions for their "sloppy editing." Read James Naughtie's full comments and also see what titles made the Man Booker Prize shortlist.


• So, you've forgotten about an upcoming novel deadline because you've taken on too many projects. Or, your agent/publisher doesn't want the novel you've just submitted, but because of your contractual obligations, they want to see another novel NOW! What to do... What to do... Author Holly Lisle (@hollylisle) has developed a technique for just such emergencies and she describes the process on her blog in a post entitled: "Notecarding: Plotting Under Pressure." Lisle writes: "No matter what your situation, don't panic. This workshop will teach you how to create plots out of thin air, with nothing but work, and more work, and maybe a bit of work after that. Sound fun? Well, actually, it is." Sounds like work to me! (via @inkyelbows)


• Author Luke T. Bergeron's blog is entitled "Mispeled" (great title!) and in a series of five blog posts he covers the subject of "Self-Publishing, E-books, and Legitimacy." In addition to his own thoughts and ideas, he shares commentary from Levi Montgomery, a self-published writer who also blogs at The Write Rants, as well as commentary from a New York publishing house insider (who requests anonymity for fear of backlash from his/her publisher). Bergeron tackles "the idea of creating a 'substantial publishing record' through self-published e-books"; the "substantial publishing record" is necessary to become a Creative Writing teacher. He also states the need for legitimacy through numbers: "When a record sells a million copies, it 'goes platinum.' A million is pretty high, but along the same idea, perhaps a target number could be set for a self-published e-book that, when reached, established "legitimacy." This isn't a bad method, since it shows that the work is popular." And lastly, Levi Montgomery gives voice to the New York publishing biz itself: "the industry performs a valuable service, acting as a gatekeeper to the public square, keeping trashy novels, misinformation, and radical error from being published" -- or so the New York publishing houses and agents argue. But Montgomery goes on to state: "But who is it that decides? Who decides that a book isn't good enough for me to read, if not me? How do I decide, unless the book can reach me?"
  
  The link here is to the final entry in the series, but once there, you'll find links at the top of the page to the previous four parts.


• Scott Edelstein (@EdelsteinScott) at HelpingWriters.com has some insight on what to do when an editor asks for a rewrite, i.e. the editor likes your submission but... Scott reviews the standard four options on how a writer should respond, and then suggests another alternative. "In the end, you get everything you want: publication in a form that pleases you, and a satisfied editor who considers you easy to work with."


• Author John Scalzi won a 2007 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer; his blog is entitled "Whatever" and probably has one of the largest reader bases among contemporary SF writers. Scalzi is known for his rants and diatribes -- but in a good way; he knows what needs to be said, and says it in a straight up, no-holds-barred, matter-of-fact way -- and that's why his blog has so many readers. One of his recent posts, "On the Asking of Favors from Established Writers," spells out for the unpublished/newbie writer why established "pro" writers are under no obligation to help you in any way/shape/form, and also why, in the majority of cases, it is to their own best interest to NOT help you. Good reading, especially if you are/were thinking of imposing on an established writer (or even an editor!) for just a wee favor, since you aren't like all those others, right?


• Author and self-proclaimed bookaholic Scott Cupp has joined the staff of SF Signal, with a new column entitled "Geek with (Lots of) Books." The kick-off column was a hoot, subtitled: "The First Step Is To Admit You Have a Problem" -- the problem being the [extreme] habit of acquiring far more books than one will ever be able to read in his/her lifetime. Guess what? I have a problem! But back to Scott Cupp. Check this column out, especially if you are a book collector/acquirer -- in other words, a bookaholic. Scott talks about selling off nearly his entire library, and then gradually reacquiring a number of the titles yet again. Alas...
  
  The second column is entitled "Let's Get OCD." "OCD" for those not in the know, stands for "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder" -- and Scott is referring to the "completist" that tends to lurk in most bookaholics. The completist will purchase books in order to have a complete run of a publisher, or a publisher's imprint, or a series of books, or every title of a particular author. Examples from my own library would be the complete run of the Ace Science Fiction Specials, or the complete run of the Laser Books. Completists don't necessarily read every book; in fact, there are titles that they intend never to read, but they still must have the complete set nonetheless. Scott's column is great fun, even if the finger is pointing back at the reader!
  
  In Scott's latest column -- "Super Special Secret Origin" (September 15) -- he talks about the origins of his new column, his first autographed book, his most interesting autograph, his most unusual autograph, and the autograph that got away.


• As I've previously stated, I'm co-editing a theme anthology on the Fermi Paradox, to be published next year by DAW Books. One of my contributing authors, Paul Di Filippo, has sent me a link to an article in Cosmos magazine about a new equation that would complement the "Drake equation" by developing "a single index for habitability based on the presence of energy, solvents such as water, raw materials like carbon and whether or not there are benign environmental conditions." The draft of this equation was presented on Thursday, September 17, at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany. The equation is under development by planetary scientists at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Some scientists, however, are critical of the work, going so far as to state that it is a "pointless exercise."


• Andrew Fox's novel The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501 was reviewed on the What Book Is That? blog: "50 words or less: In 2041, fat is out and emaciated is in whether you like it or not. Vigilantes burn junk food in the street, nobody wants to get pregnant because then they'll be fat, and twelve pounds of liposuctioned Elvis might be the key to saving all life on the planet.... My favorite book in the entire world is Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. I fell in love with that book the first time I read it years ago, and I keep revisiting it over and over again. Every time I read it, though, I take something new away from it, whether it's the musical language of the book, the hilarity of the storyline, the incredibly serious themes, the outrageous characters, or just the overall experience of reading it. I had exactly the same experience reading The Good Humor Man." [Note: I introduced The Good Humor Man to Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications; he purchased the book, and I was fortunate enough to edit it!]

Continue reading...

August Links & Things

Here are my links and such for the month of August. There aren't as many as there could have been, as I've had to become a bit more discriminating this month due to big projects and short deadlines. But hopefully everyone who reads this will find something of interest. These links are all from my previous tweets. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter.

• I'm co-editing a theme anthology on the Fermi Paradox, to be published next year by DAW Books. One of my contributing authors, Paul Di Filippo, sent me a link to an article from MIT's Technology Review entitled "Fermi Paradox Points to Fewer Than 10 Extraterrestrial Civilizations." Making a number of assumptions, such as advanced civilizations will send out probes first to investigate other worlds (just as we have sent out the 10 Mariner probes, for example), and if "these probes can leave longer-lasting evidence of a visit -- evidence that remains for 100 million years -- then there can be no more than about 10 civilizations out there." Intriguing reading.



• SF Scope reports: "This October, the Library of America will be celebrating the foundations of fantasy and horror in American literature by publishing the two-volume American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub." The two volumes -- 86 stories plus an introduction to each volume by Straub -- can be purchased separately, or as a boxed set. The article lists the complete table of contents, including the story title, author, and original date of publication. The stories date from 1805 to 2007.



• Kristine Kathryn Rusch continues her online Freelancer's Survival Guide. Now that she's finally completed her seven-part discussion on "Money" (in all its glory -- and pain), she's begun a new topic: "Employees (Part One)" -- or, "People You Hire To Do Stuff for You." Kris writes: "Here's the most important thing to remember about anyone you hire for any task: No one else will care about your business as much as you do. No one else will work as hard as you do. No one else will ever have as much at stake in your business as you do." Kris repeats this mantra in "Employees (Part Two)," but she also concludes this section with: "Finally, my advice on all things -- the more informed you are, the better off you'll be. That goes for employees, workers, finances, and just about everything else covered by this Freelancer's Guide. Stick to that principle and you'll do well -- even when hiring others to help you keep your business afloat." (via @KristineRusch)
  
  And one of the most important aspects of freelancing: "Time": "So I have a monthly nut—the amount it takes me to live every single month.... You need to figure out what your time is worth. You need to factor in the intangibles as well as the tangibles. (I don't take a lot of pain-in-the-ass projects; nor do I take projects that'll require me to leave home for months at a time.) You'll need to make sure you make your monthly nut plus some profit. And you'll need to factor in how much work you can actually do versus how much you think you can do."
  
  And, of course, "Deadlines": "Keep your deadlines. Be on time for your appointments. Open your stores on time and don't close them early. Respect your clients. Then they'll respect you in return."
  
  And "Patience": "You have to be so patient that at times it feels like you are doing nothing but being patient."



• The New York Observer headline: "Note to Authors: Make Your Deadlines!" Evidently, in these difficult economic times, publishers are now starting to require that authors make their deadlines! Gawd, what a unique concept! Publishers are using late deadlines as reasons to renegotiate contracts, and even require that authors repay the advance. And if the book is way past deadline, publishers are now considering whether or not they still want the book. But as the article quotes at the end: "The reality is, you don't have to worry about lateness if they want your book. You only have to worry about lateness if they don't." (via @powells and @jay_lake)



• The website "Marooned - Science Fiction Books on Mars" has compiled a list of 20 links to online stories about Mars. Authors include Kage Baker, Mary A. Turzillo, and Liz Williams. The blogger is calling it The Mammoth e-Book of Mindblowing Mars SF. Good -- and free -- online science fiction!



• And speaking of "mindblowing SF," Matthew Cheney's blog, The Mumpsimus, has a list of "mindblowing" SF stories -- all but two by women authors -- that have knocked his socks off, so to speak, over the years. I was pleased to see my friend Judith Moffett's story, "Tiny Tango" (Asimov's, February 1989; reprinted in Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection, and Pamela Sargent's Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years anthology) included in the list; it was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. [Disclosure: I helped Judith with a bit of PR for her latest novel, Bird Shaman, and I acquired reprint rights for her first novel, Pennterra, for Fantastic Books.]



• Unless you've been hiding underground, I suspect you've heard that director John Hughes passed away on August 6 at age 59. Hughes directed such wonderful movies as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, and Home Alone. Evidently, he began a "pen pal" correspondence with a young girl between 1985 and 1987, and that young girl, Alison -- now, obviously not so young -- shares her thoughts and those letters with us, including a telephone call she received from John Hughes in 1997, during which he explained why he left the Hollywood film rat race. Wonderful reading; guaranteed to bring a little moistness to ye olde eyes, no matter how much of a curmudgeon you are. As of this writing, there are over 1,330 comments, some just as wonderful -- just awesome. Enjoy! And thank you, Alison, for sharing with us this tribute to director John Hughes.



• Author Jeff VanderMeer discusses why all authors need to have an online press kit available; and Jeff even provides examples of press kits for his two forthcoming books, Finch and Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for 21st-Century Writers. Jeff writes: "Are [the press kits] purty? No.... They're simple and functional, because they're not for readers -- they're for reviewers, review editors, interviewers, and other people associated with the various and sundry media outlets out there."



• Jeffrey Zeldman, of Zeldman.com, says: "Write when inspired; rest when tired." That's the title of his blog post; he goes on to say: "You are writing for readers, a duty as sacred, in its way, as parenting. If you don't believe the previous sentence, if you think writing is mainly about getting paid, I'm sorry you wasted your time reading this page, and I hope you find another way to earn a living soon."



• Iain M. Banks, one of the most popular writers in the UK, has a new novel forthcoming, entitled Transitions -- science fiction that borders on mainstream... or is it mainstream that borders on science fiction? You'll have to read it -- or listen to it -- and be your own judge. Which brings me to my point here: Banks's UK publisher, Little, Brown Book Group, is making the book available as a free serialized podcast download from iTunes, in both the US and the UK, beginning September 3. A further 22 episodes, each 15 minutes in length, will be available every Thursday and Saturday for the next 12 weeks. "According to the publisher, the iTunes promotion is about 'trying something new and ground-breaking' to commemorate 25 years since Banks's debut novel, The Wasp Factory. They said each podcast would have a 'cliffhanger' ending." Transition will be published in hardcover in the UK on September 3 (my copy is already on order!) and in the US on September 23. Details can be found in UK's TimesOnline.



• Author Dean Wesley Smith is also a professional poker player, and in a recent blog post he categorized the four stages of poker players; he then applied this thinking to his writing profession and has thus categorized the six "Stages of a Writer." Are you this type of writer? -- "They think that constant rewriting makes a story better instead of actually killing it. You hear these people tell you proudly that they have done a dozen rewrites on something. Of course, they have no idea in each rewrite what is better or worse, but they believe that rewriting always makes things better." And be sure to read the lengthy comment by Brad R. Torgersen. (via @DeanWesleySmith)



• Dean has also just begun a new blog series entitled "Killing Sacred Cows in Publishing." The first chapter is on "Speed," i.e. Writing slow equals writing well," or the flip side, "Writing fast equals writing poorly." Remember, this is a "myth." Dean lays out the numbers: "This chapter when finished is going to be around 1,750 words. That is about 7 manuscript pages with each page averaging 250 words per page. So say I wrote only 250 words, one page per day on a new novel. It takes me about 15 minutes, give-or-take (depending on the book and the day and how I'm feeling) to write 250 words of fiction. So if I spent that 15 minutes per day writing on a novel, every day for one year, I would finish a 90,000-word-plus novel, about a normal paperback book, in 365 days. I would be a one-book-per-year writer, pretty standard in science fiction and a few other genres." So, Dean asks, if you know one-book-a-year authors, "What did they do for 23 hours and 45 minutes every day?"



• Here's a worthwhile writing exercise, as suggested by author Pinckney Benedict, "Creating a Writer's Manifesto." The discussion about this writing exercise appears on the Writers Community blog, and the article itself was written by Denton Loving: "Benedict believes once you recognize what kind of items keep popping up in your work, you should embrace them. 'Only obsessive interests are interesting,' he said. Maybe it will help you to investigate why your mind is triggered to bring these subjects back to the page. Or maybe it will work for you to not examine it too closely but to just go forward with it. That's up to you and the writing."
  
  Note: In my ten or so years in editing and publishing, I've only had one author provide me with a "manifesto." I can't honestly say that it meets Benedict's requirements for what a manifesto should be, because it doesn't spell out the author's recurring themes and obsessions. But rather this manifesto is written by the main protagonist of a series of novels entitled "The Codex of Souls." The character is Landis Michael Markham, a creation of author Mark Teppo; and the manifesto, as by Markham, is entitled "How I Came to Magick." You might want to seriously consider adding Teppo's Lightbreaker, The Codex of Souls, Book 1, to your reading list. [Disclosure: I edited Lightbreaker for Night Shade Books, and I'm currently working on Book 2, Heartland.]



• And speaking of Lightbreaker, The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf & Book Review blog had this to say: "Lightbreaker effortlessly melds many styles of magic such as Hermeticism, Shamanism, and Western magick with a healthy dose of Aleister Crowley and tarot symbolism. The story gets bigger and bigger quite unexpectedly, especially towards the end. What starts as an unusual chase develops into a soul stealing cataclysm….Fans of strong male protagonist Urban Fantasy are sure to have an immediate connection to Markham and the world Teppo has concocted."



• Transreal author Rudy Rucker taught at Clarion West in Seattle in July, and shares some "How to Write" pointers on his blog. But even more important, you need to sift through this blog entry and find the link to Rudy's 25-page "Writer's Toolkit" PDF document. Chapter 5 is entitled "Power Chords"; Chapter 6 is entitled "Gnarl." What is "gnarl" you ask? Rudy writes: "I use gnarl in an idiosyncratic and somewhat technical sense; I use it to mean a level of complexity that lies in the zone between predictability and randomness. The original meaning of 'gnarl' was simply 'a knot in the wood of a tree.' In California surfer slang, 'gnarly' came to be used to describe complicated, rapidly changing surf conditions. And then, by extension, something gnarly came to be anything with surprisingly intricate detail. As a late-arriving and perhaps over-assimilated Californian, I get a kick out of the word."



• One of my favorite writers is Bradley Denton, but alas he's not very prolific and in the past 20 years, he's only written five novels. His first, Wrack & Roll, was a finalist for the Campbell Award, and his most recent, Laughin' Boy, was published by Subterranean Press in 2005. Denton isn't a prolific short story writer either, but if you can snag his tandem collection set -- The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians and A Conflagration Artist (both 1993 from Wildside Press and winner of the World Fantasy Award) -- then please do so: you won't be disappointed. Anyhow, Denton's novel Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede (a Campbell Award winner) has been optioned for film to be scripted and directed by Robert Rugen. Denton has thus made the novel available as a free download; his website has it in four PDF files, but you can also find it on Scribd, if you have an account there, or in more than 20 different file formats on Manybooks.net. Enjoy! (via BoingBoing.net and @sfsignal)



• I have acquired and edited over a dozen short story collections: five of those collections received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly with two of those selected to PW's "best of the year" list. In addition, two collections have won the World Fantasy Award, and one of those also went on to win the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award. So I am certainly an advocate of short story collections. Is the author and publisher going to get rich off a short story collection? Not likely. But it is the short story in which the craft of writing can truly be seen, taught, and learned. Larry Dark, on the Story Prize blog, has this to say on the subject: "The point is, story collections aren't poison, and agents and publishers should stop treating them as such. Collections by established writers with strong followings will still sell. And debut collections probably perform no worse than debut novels.... In addition, I have no doubt that the digital age is going to be a boon to the short story, as shortness becomes a greater advantage."



• Jodi Meadows writes "books about adventures, true love, and aliens"; her LJ is (W)ords and (W)ardances. And her July 21 blog entry, which I didn't see until August, is entitled "I'll show you why you're so much more than good enough." Jodi describes the two (actually, three) types of "it's good enough" writers. I'll let you check out the details but I'll leave you with this quote from the blog: "...there are a lot of writers who need to take a second (or tenth) look at their manuscripts before submitting. But there are also a lot of writers who need to stop twiddling with sentences and send the darn thing out. They need to move on and write a new story, and they can't do that while they're searching for the elusive perfection in the novel they wrote five years ago and have been revising since. You can, in fact, twiddle the life out of your story."



• Author Cory Doctorow is interviewed by Mur Lafferty on Tor.com. Many folks are already familiar with Cory because of his connection to BoingBoing.net; Cory was recently a finalist for the Hugo Award for best novel for Little Brother. Mur is an author and podcaster, and you can find her projects on Murverse.com. In this interview, amongst other things, Cory talks about a new audio and print self-publishing pay-as-you-like and POD venture entitled With a Little Help. Many of you may also be familiar with Cory's stand on publishing online via Creative Commons licensing -- I believe all of Cory's novels and short story collections, to date, have been available for free online (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong). So a new venture such as With a Little Help has the potential to greatly influence the market and publishing, specifically self-publishing and POD. "I just can't explain why no one's done it before. One is that if you send me a typo, I'll fix it in the next copy, that's kind of a natural, but I'll footnote you on the page. You'll get a thanks on the page for [fixing] the typo, and then I'm going to [update] an appendix every month with all the finances for the book..." Of course, there's also a hand-bound, elite limited edition of the book that will be available as well, but alas, not for free. (via @doctorow and @tordotcom)



• Andrew Fox's The Good Humor Man is reviewed by James Crane on Electric City: "Granted, this all sounds like the type of dreams you have after eating bad shellfish rather than a believable story, but in a way, that's my point. Fox paints a picture of a future where these things are real and no more fantastical than cell phones. In The Good Humor Man, Fox creates an America in which junk food has been made illegal to combat America's growing health problems. States deputize their own Good Humor Men who root out the contraband wherever it's found and destroy it.... The Good Humor Man keeps the pages turning with scene after scene of conflict and clues with a fair amount of grit.... I'd suggest playing "Heartbreak Hotel" and grabbing a bag of chips for ambiance." [Note: I introduced Andy Fox's manuscript for The Good Humor Man (originally titled Calorie 3501 in an homage to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451) to Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications; Jacob liked the book enough to acquire it for publication, and I had the joy of editing it.)



• Kathleen Duey, author of the YA novel Skin Hunger, a 2007 National Book Award finalist, is currently writing a novel, entitled Russet, in 140-character bursts on Twitter. In her introduction to Russet: A Twitter Novel, Ms. Duey writes: "This is an experiment. Russet is telling his own story on a twitter account. He talks. I type. I don't know what happens next. He's 18, just trying to figure out his complicated life. You can follow him on twitter." Or, you can read the story on her "Russet: One Wing" blog: the site is updated constantly. Or, read the Russet blog, get caught up, and then follow Russet on Twitter. (via @kathleenduey)
  
  
• Scott Lynch, author of The Lies of Locke Lamora, is publishing a pulp adventure serial online in weekly installments. The serial, entitled Queen of the Iron Sands, is actually based on a dream that he had which he explains in the "About This Story" section, which also includes the setup for the story itself. In addition to the online HTML version of the story, Scott is also making an RTF file of the story available for download for readers who prefer to print out the story instead of reading it online. Thanks, Scott -- the RTV version is much appreciated! Chapter 1: "My Father Brought the Sky Home" is currently available. I won't be including this serialized adventure in further postings, so if this interests you, please check the website regularly; you can also follow Scott on Twitter: @scottlynch78.

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Marty Halpern Interview

Charles Tan interviews me today on his acclaimed blog Bibliophile Stalker. Charles asks a number of questions including how I got started in the field, my current projects, what, in my opinion, are the necessary skills for the various editor roles, and so on. I think I'm fairly straight forward with my answers, though pages would be required to fully respond to most of the questions. Regardless, the interview is more than 3,400 words so there is still plenty of content for inquiring minds.

If you should happen to read the interview, and have some additional questions or issues or comments for me, I would be most grateful if you would post them here on "More Red Ink" at the end of this blog entry. This will allow me easier access to respond, and in addition I will automatically be notified so that I will be able to respond in a timely fashion.

So I hope you'll click over to Bibliophile Stalker and check out the interview. It's my first online interview since early 2003, when Golden Gryphon Press publisher Gary Turner and I were interviewed on SF Site by Nick Gevers (with whom I am currently co-editing an original anthology), upon the publication of The Silver Gryphon anthology.

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July Links and Things

Since I just posted a new blog essay on the 31st, I thought I would wait a few days before posting July's links. And there are indeed a lot of them -- hopefully something to satisfy even those who think they've seen/read it all! In fact, to cut down on the number of these links in the months ahead, beginning this month (August, not July, as this is still July, so to speak) I'm no longer going to post any ongoing serializations. So if you are reading the serialized fiction being posted online by Cory Doctorow, Tim Pratt, Catherynne M. Valente, and John Shirley, then you may want to subscribe directly to those blogs/websites. I'll still tweet when new pieces are posted but I won't list them in my links listings in the future, only if it's a new serialization. You can receive all these links in real time by following me on Twitter. I have listed all of the July links here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment.

The first July links entry is the publication of the reprint edition of author Judith Moffett's first novel, Pennterra. This was my first acquisition for Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint, which, by the way, now has a new website. I had the pleasure of meeting Judith for the first time at ReaderCon in Boston last year, and we've become virtual friends, I guess you could say. Judith Moffett is not your typical SF author! She is an award-winning poet with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a couple of Fulbrights under her belt, and grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also a world-class translator of Swedish poetry, who presented at the 1998 Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose. The list of accomplishments in her Wikipedia entry is awe-inspiring. When Pennterra was originally published in 1987, Nebula Award-winning author Michael Bishop wrote: "Stunning... the best first novel I have read in at least a decade... dangerous and breathtaking to behold." Ms. Moffett has a new novel available as well, Bird Shaman, that was published to coincide with her ReaderCon appearance; you can read about the new novel on her website and even order a signed and inscribed copy directly from the author (and at a discount, too). So am I plugging both of these books (and the author)? You betcha!

Here are the rest of my July links and things:

• Author, geek, futurist Bruce Sterling gave the closing talk at June's Reboot 11 Conference. Video available. According to boingboing.net: "In his closing talk from last month's Reboot conference in Copenhagen, Bruce Sterling guesses at what it will be like to live through the next ten years: 'It is neither progress nor conservatism because there's nothing left to conserve and no direction in which to progress. So what you get is transition. Transition to nowhere.'" Ya gotta love Bruce! (@bruces)


• CrunchGear headline: "Indie Kindle author lands book deal." Boyd Morrison, self-published author of the Kindle ebook The Ark lands a two-book contract with publisher Simon & Schuster; the contract is for The Ark, to be published in hardcover in 2010, and the sequel. Morrison became a member of the Kindle Boards and did all his own self-promoting. This is the first reported instance of a self-published Kindle author scoring a book contract with a major publisher.


• Author John C. Wright (The Golden Age et al.) shares his writerly expertise with new writers in his "Ten Commandments for How to be a Writer." Actually, there is an Eleventh Commandment that John refers to as the "unwritten rule": "When you get a rejection slip, be thankful." His insights on rejection slips are quite inspiring.


• The Deadline Dames (@DeadlineDames) are a group of nine urban fantasy & paranormal romance authors. Dame Devon has posted an essay entitled "A Forest Full of Trees," in which she discusses rewriting/revising one's manuscript. Good stuff, for writers and editors both. She lists twenty-one "Big Picture Revision Questions" to ask yourself about your manuscript. #4: "Are the senses fully employed? (Sight, smell, touch, taste, sound)" #10: "Is the dialogue working to move the story forward in ways the narrative can't?"


• Author Holly Lisle's (@hollylisle) blog provides a lot of step-by-step material for writers. A recent entry, "How To Create a Character," lists six bullet points, followed by a lengthy discussion on -- you guessed it -- character creation. The last bullet point is: "Do write from your own life." At the end of this blog post, you'll find a link to a "Character Creation Workshop," which links to a "Dialogue Workshop," which links to a "Maps Workshop," which links to a "Scene Creation Workshop"... Also at the end of the "How to Create a Character" post is another link on "How To Finish a Novel," which links to "How To Revise a Novel," which links to "How To Collaborate," etc. You get the idea. You could probably spend days, if not weeks, on this site.


• Author Kim Wilkins steps us through "The Science of [Self-] Editing" -- the author doesn't include the word "self" in the blog title, but I feel the need to do so, since "self-editing" is far different from what I term "editing." Regardless of the nuances, Kim has some good stuff to say about the self-editing process: "For those of you embarking on a self-edit, the most important thing to remember is to be methodical and detached.... I do this, all the while imagining that I'm not the person who has to fix it. Makes it far less overwhelming (though a little more pathological)." She goes on to explain her own [self-]editing process.
  


• In my previous Links & Things post I mentioned UK author Patrick Ness, who won the UK Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize for his young adult novel The Knife of Never Letting Go. I just learned that, at the same website where he previously published his new short story, he's also been posting a series of writing tips. The current tip, number 6, is called "Freedom from tyranny" in which he poses the question: "Have you thought about making [writing] even harder? Have you thought about setting yourself a limitation, something that curtails the number of choices you can make?" On the same page, within the left sidebar, are links to the previous five writing tips, which include: 1--Getting started; 2--Laying out a structure; 3--On when to be read; 4--Compare and despair; and 5--Finding time to write.


• Alan Rinzler is an Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons and also works privately as a developmental editor with selected authors. For those considering working with (read: hiring) an editor, you need to read his essay "Choosing a freelance editor: What you need to know." Rinzler defines a "developmental editor" as someone who "works with a writer to improve the basic concept of the book, the way it's focused and structured, the style and attitude of the narrative voice, whether it's fiction or non-fiction." He quotes from a letter that editor Maxwell Perkins wrote to author Thomas Wolfe (Perkins had also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, among others) in 1937 when the two were struggling over the length of Wolfe's second novel Of Time and the River: "'But…unless you want help it will certainly not be thrust upon you… I believe the writer, anyway, should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position… The book belongs to the author.'" I couldn't agree more, and I have often used the words "it's your book" to many an author.


• John Matthew Fox (@bookfox) shares "Ten Guidelines for Structuring a Short Story Collection." He quotes a couple of authors, including Benjamin Percy, whose short story collection Refresh, Refresh was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He also describes five story structuring/ordering methods from author David Jauss: "The placement of a story in a collection can alter both its meaning and its affect." If you're an editor (authors, too) responsible for determining the stories to be included in a collection and the ordering of those stories, you will find something of value in this article.


• Andrew Wheeler, former editor for the Science Fiction Book Club (for sixteen years!) and currently Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons, teaches us "Book Marketing 101." The "Introduction" deals with "sales channels": online and brick & mortar book stores, big-box stores, mass merchandisers, affinity organizations, and more. The second entry deals primarily with "Amazon.com" and includes a discussion (and screen shots) of their co-op program, data mining, search engine optimization, tags and tagging, and reviews. (via @charlesatan) And what appears to be the third and final part deals with "Co-op at the Chains."


• Also in my previous Links and Things post I had an entry on a new online literary fiction magazine entitled Electric Literature. Here's a follow-up piece by Ron Charles (@roncharles) in the Washington Post in which he provides some background on the magazine and it's two founders. Charles writes: "And it's not just MFA kids self-publishing their diatribes against Mom and Dad. The first issue sports stories by such heavyweights as Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham and National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard.... At the moment, they're thinking big -- 20,000 circulation -- and why not? They're off to a good-looking start."


• Nick Mamatas, who describes himself on his LJ as a writer of "books and articles and stories and shit. Lots of shit," has written a no-holds-barred series on "How to Find Freelance Writing Work." Part I deals with publishable work; Nick writes: "This isn't about making a living as a freelance writer, which is more difficult right now as ad buys are drying up and content [is] migrating online in some poorly modeled ways, but about getting some money. This is also aimed at people in science fiction, who thanks to the raft of 'writer-friendly' submission guidelines and close community ties between periodicals and would-be writers, have been reduced as a labor pool to a bunch of mewling infants unable to bathe themselves without triple-checking LiveJournal and begging advice from their Clarion teachers and Twittering about how hard everything is." Did I say no-holds-barred? And Part II deals with writing for non-publication, like for friends and neighborhood clubs and businesses, etc.


• Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch continues her online Freelancer's Survival Guide with "Money" (Parts 4 through 7). Part 4 covers profits [since we all make so very little of it]. "If you have what you believe to be a short-term net profit: 1. set aside your taxes; 2. save for future emergencies; 3. reinvest in your business; 4. stash the remaining money in a low-risk investment, maybe even something liquid." For the sake of brevity, I'm linking to Part 4 only; if you have been reading this series, you'll obviously be able to find the remaining three "Money" entries on Kris's blog as well.


• Author Dean Wesley Smith continues his "Life After" series with a new entry on "Life After Copyright": "So, if suddenly anything ever written and anything new that is written had no one controlling all the rights and no requirement for license to use, we would have exactly what I am suggesting in Life After Copyrights. Writers could no longer make a living.... No protection, no money. No ownership either. Copyright is like a property law (with some differences)."


• Every Monday, author Catherynne M. Valente posts another chapter in her serialized, reader-supported novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. An audio download of the chapter is also available. Check my previous Links & Things entries for more on this novel. I'm posting Chapter 4 only here, though the novel now has seven chapters available.


• Also on Mondays, author Tim Pratt posts a new chapter in his serialized, reader-supported Marla Mason novella entitled "Bone Shop." At the end of each chapter there is a link to "trivia and authorial blather" about said chapter. Again, check my previous Links & Things entries for more on this novella. Tim has posted 5 chapters, here's the link to Chapter 2.


• Author Cory Doctorow announced that Tor.com will be serializing his forthcoming novel Makers every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (beginning July 6) in a total of eighty-one parts. What is unique about this serialization is that each part will be accompanied by an illustration by Idiots' Books, which will interconnect with other illustrations in the series. According to Tor: "...after we've posted a number of tiles, we'll release a Flash game in which users will be able to re-arrange the illustration tiles on a grid and create their own combination of layouts." Makers will be published in hardcover in November, and the serialization is scheduled to be completed in January 2010. Doctorow writes: "Makers tells the story of a group of hardware hackers who fall in with microfinancing venture capitalists and reinvent the American economy after a total economic collapse, and who find themselves swimming with sharks, fighting with gangsters, and leading a band of global techno-revolutionaries. The first 50,000 words of Makers were serialized on Salon some years ago under the title 'Themepunks.'" Here's Makers, Part 1; you're on your own for the remaining 80 parts!


• Author John Shirley's new space opera novel, Sky Pirates -- "an homage to Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood" -- is being serialized online, courtesy of The FREEzine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Sixteen parts have been posted so far; here's the link to Part 1. John Shirley is known for his horror writing as well as his cyberpunk work (particularly the Eclipse trilogy), and his short stories, like those found in collection Heatseeker.


• And last, but certainly not least: Novelist and passionate print defender Nicholson Baker takes a literary look at the future of reading in a critical piece in the August 3, 2009, New Yorker entitled "A New Page: Can the Kindle really improve on the book?" Baker explains why he ordered a Kindle, and then tells of its arrival and packaging. He reads a few texts, as does his son; he even goes into the history of the e-reader and the company E Ink. But when it comes to the e-books available for the Kindle, Baker is extremely unhappy and dissatisfied: there's no Nabokov, no Pynchon, no Tim O'Brien, no World According to Garp, no Catch-22, no Breakfast at Tiffany's, no Portnoy's Complaint, no Henry and Clara, no Edwin Mullhouse, no Clockwork Orange. He describes cookbooks with no photographs of the dishes being prepared, even though Amazon uses the same book reviews from the print version, which refer to the pictures, for the ebook version. And when pictures are present, they're difficult to see, even if one enlarges the graphic. (via mediabistro.com)

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At Home with Jack Vance

At 92 years of age (soon to be 93, on August 28), author Jack Vance is finally garnering some long-overdue, well-deserved attention in the media. And considering that he hasn't published any new fiction since 2004 (novel Lurulu, sequel to Ports of Call, 1998; both from Tor Books), this is indeed a remarkable accomplishment. Why all the media attention now? Because Vance has two books that have just been published by Subterranean Press. First and foremost is Vance's autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance! (more on this in a bit). The second title is anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, which is subtitled "Stories in Honor of Jack Vance." Songs features some of the best writers in the genre: Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin (who co-edited the anthology), Lucius Shepard, and Dan Simmons, to name only four, with an appreciation by Dean Koontz. What makes this book even more special is that Vance himself has written a new preface to open the anthology.

Carlo Rotella, director of American Studies at Boston College, wrote an excellent and lengthy piece (nearly 3,700 words) on Jack Vance entitled "The Genre Artist" in the July 15 New York Times. Rotella's introduction to Vance's fiction occurred when he was 14 years old, and he's been reading the author's work ever since. In this article Rotella quotes from a number of Vance novels, quotes from contributors (Tanith Lee and Dan Simmons) to the Songs anthology, and even quotes from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon: "Jack Vance is the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don't get the credit they deserve. If 'The Last Castle' or 'The Dragon Masters' had the name Italo Calvino on it, or just a foreign name, it would be received as a profound meditation, but because he's Jack Vance and published in Amazing Whatever, there's this insurmountable barrier." Well said, Mr. Chabon! I'm awaiting my copy of This Is Me, Jack Vance! from Subterranean Press, but in the meantime I have Rotella's article to tide me over. By the way, Rotella notes that "Vance takes pride in his craft but does not care to talk about it in any detail, going so far in his memoir as to consign almost all discussion of writing to a brief chapter at the end." If you're not familiar with Jack Vance, this article is a great mini-introduction to Vance's work, and his life. Kudos to Carlo Rotella.

I personally lay all the blame for my rampant book collecting on Jack Vance... Well, that's not really fair: his mass market paperback publishers Berkley Medallion and DAW Books actually share that dubious honor. I was already an avid book reader, but it was Jack Vance's Demon Princes series that drove me to my bibliophilic behavior. I don't recall how the Demon Princes series was brought to my attention, but in the early '80s I made a concerted effort to track down these five books. Now, you have to remember that at that point in time, there was no internet; there was no "online" in which to do an online book search. In those days we actually had to visit bookstores; and we used the telephone and, dare I say it, book catalogs sent through the mail to acquire specific titles. My favorite bookstore was Books, Inc. in the Town & Country shopping center near the corner of Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards in San Jose. Books, Inc. closed down not too long after the Barnes and Noble superstore opened about a block away; and now the entire Town & Country shopping center is gone, replaced by the upscale Santana Row. But back to Books, Inc.: The store was a panacea for SF readers in particular because the management never returned a book. Regardless of the number of copies they ordered of any particular paperback, those copies would remain on the shelves until they sold. You could find paperbacks on the shelves that were years old, the pages often yellowed from age. So that's where I went to purchase the five volumes in Vance's Demon Princes series. The first three books in the series -- Star King, The Killing Machine, and The Palace of Love -- were published in the '60s by Berkley Medallion; the final two books in the series -- The Face and The Book of Dreams -- were published by DAW Books in 1979 and 1981 respectively. Unfortunately, I only found one of the DAW books on the shelf. A clerk assisted me by looking up the other four titles in Books in Print (available as a set of humongous hardcovers as well as on microfiche). It turned out that two of the five titles were out of print -- one from Berkley Medallion and the first book from DAW. And, not understanding the stupidity of publishers as the time, I couldn't comprehend why any publisher would allow the middle books of a five-book series to go out of print. It just didn't make any sense to me -- then. But in the course of looking through Books in Print, the clerk discovered that the series had been published in a hardcover edition by an independent press called Underwood-Miller. Great, I said, let's order them. Sorry, said the clerk, we don't deal directly with that publisher, and those titles aren't available through our regular distributor. Sigh... Time to go home and make some telephone calls to other bookstores in the area.

This is how I discovered genre bookstore Future Fantasy in Palo Alto, about a 25-mile drive from where I live. I telephoned the store, and yes, they could order the books for me, but I would have to pay for them in advance. So I made the drive to Palo Alto, only to discover that the store proprietor would only order one volume at a time -- even though I was willing to pay for the five books all at once, up front. Not sure of her rationale; but keep in mind that this was the early '80s and each of these trade hardcovers cost, I believe it was, $20.00 each -- so the set of five books was $100.00 (plus tax). Anyhow, I paid for the first book in advance, returned to the store a couple weeks later when the book arrived and paid in advance for the next one in the series, and so on until I owned all five books. Of course, I was now hooked on hardcovers and limited editions, having been in Future Fantasy -- browsing and buying -- six times over the span of about three months: the road to ruin, you might say. Future Fantasy moved a few years later to a larger store, but then the local competition and the internet finally took its toll and the store closed as well.

However, I eventually did track down all five original mass market paperbacks of the Demon Princes series (see above book covers); and to accomplish that, I had to get on the catalog mailing lists for several dealers in collectible paperbacks. But that's another story. Which brings me to the fact that when I visited Jack and Norma Vance at their home in Oakland in 1989, Jack was gracious enough to sign these five paperbacks, and a few others for me as well. Now, about that visit --

I tracked down Jack Vance's address -- it may have been through a copy of Who's Who, but I can't really recall. I wrote him a letter, introduced myself, complimented him on his work -- essentially, I'll admit it, I wrote a fan letter. But within that letter I also asked Jack if he would be willing to answer [in person] a few questions on his work for a fanzine that I wrote for: Paperback Parade. That initial letter of mine was written on an old Apple computer, and though I still have the computer in storage, all the media are long gone. However, I do have Jack's response: a brief, printed letter in a very large font bearing his bold, black-marker signature; unfortunately, I no longer have the envelope the letter came in, and the letter itself is undated, but I would estimate the time frame to be around March 1989. Jack wrote: "Yes, give me a call two or three days before you want to come up. One day is much like another around here, but call first anyway. Any time in the morning will suit, or, if better for you, 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Bring your friend, by all means, and your books -- but, sorry to say, I won't have time for an extended visit."

The "friend" to whom Jack refers is a long-time friend of mine, Michael Tallan, a book collector and bookseller here in San Jose. Michael and I spent many a day together in years (and years) past, hitting the bookstores in San Francisco and Berkeley; attending author readings and book signings; hanging out together at conventions. On each of the two visits to Jack Vance, Michael drove and I navigated. Where I had maybe a handful of books for Jack to sign, Michael had brought a boxful. In fact, during that first visit, Michael had brought a copy of the Summer 1945 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, which contained Jack Vance's first published story: "The World-Thinkers." Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Remember, this was 20 years ago, and much of the detail of that visit has been lost in the far recesses of ye olde memory. So please forgive me: I've plagiarized the description of the Vance home and the events of the day from my own (albeit brief) article in Paperback Parade. I wrote that piece when the day was vivid in my mind, and there is no way that, 20 years later, I could duplicate as effectively the words I wrote then.

On April 15, 1989, Michael and I made the drive to the Vance home. It was a typical warm, sunny Northern California afternoon, and a wonderful day to go visiting. Jack provided us with excellent directions from Berkeley -- Ashby Avenue, past the Berkeley Claremont Hotel, and onto the Warren Freeway. The Vance home, in the Oakland foothills, is atop a steep, long, gravel driveway. Michael parked at the bottom, off the main road, and we walked up the hill. Jack's son, John, met us out in front of the house and escorted us inside.

The Vances have a three-story hillside home. One walks up a flight of stairs, from the ground level, into the living quarters. Jack informed us that he purchased this land (and the "shack" that existed on it) in the '50s after completing a stint with the Merchant Marines. Over the years, he built up the property, initially by himself and then later with the help of John, to create the existing marvel.

Mrs. Vance -- Norma¹ -- greeted Michael and me and then led us to the dining area where we sat and awaited Jack. Three sides of this room had oddly shaped glass windows, the fourth side was a small balcony that looked out over the kitchen below!

To my surprise, I learned that Jack is an avid potter and has a workshop downstairs. After joining us at the table, his hands still covered with the white of dried clay, he explained that he recently purchased a computer program on mixing glazes, but had had some difficulty with the software due to the flurry of computerese throughout the documentation. Jack even showed us the program manual in order to make his point. He then explained that he had telephoned the program's authors for some assistance and was now able to use the software.

Jack gave us a bit of a tour of the house, with special emphasis on the living room. The ceiling was comprised of imported, hand-tooled wooden tiles, each measuring approximately two-feet-square. Jack was obviously very proud of this ceiling; he spoke of the wood used to make the tiles and the woodworking -- I only wish I could remember from where (Pacific island?) he had imported the tiles.² (Note: I suspect I'll learn all about the house -- and the tiles -- again, once I read the Vance autobiography.)

For the next two hours, Jack, Michael, and I chatted around the dining room table, munching mixed nuts from a large bowl that Norma had provided us. We discussed many of Jack's written works, past and present, and his future plans. Michael and I eagerly kept a constant flow of books in front of Jack until all were autographed. Due to Jack's limited eyesight, he uses a bold marker to sign books, his signature filling the page from margin to margin. I took a few photographs of Jack autographing our books but, since I chose not to impose upon him with the use of a flash, all the pictures unfortunately came out a bit too dark to reprint here, though a couple of the photos do appear alongside the interview in Paperback Parade. In retrospect, I'm now sorry that I didn't snap a picture or two of the Vance house.

Before our visit came to an end, I made sure that I had asked Jack the four questions that Gary Lovisi, editor and publisher of Paperback Parade, had provided me. Jack was opposed to my recording our conversation, however he did suggest that I take notes instead -- which I did. And since my note-taking was fast and furious, I was anxious to write up my notes as soon thereafter as possible.

Years later, I was searching for my own name on the net³, when I came across a website that was a resource of "Jack Vance Information." The owner of the site, Mike Berro, had catalogued every known book and story and nonfiction piece that Vance had written, as well as every known piece that was written about Vance -- including foreign editions as well. I was shocked to see my article from Paperback Parade included in this site's bibliography. I contacted Mike via email to express my surprise, and thus learned that a Vance interview -- even one as brief as mine -- was extremely rare, and therefore noteworthy. We exchanged a few emails (from which Mike quoted on the site) and then I gave him permission to reprint the entire article/mini-interview online. Earlier this week I went searching for that site so that I could link to it in this blog post, but alas the site is no longer in existence. And then I remembered the Wayback Machine! The name actually comes from the 1960s Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, specifically Mr. Peabody's "Improbable History" segment in which he transported back in time to some historical period in the WABAC (pronounced "wayback") machine. Anyhow, the Wayback Machine to which I refer is part of the Internet Archives. If you know the specific URL from some past site, it's just possible that the Internet Archives has it archived. I couldn't recall Mike Berro's name initially, but I did some searching for the Jack Vance Information website, and finally found a broken link for a "mikeb" -- and that's when I remembered Mike Berro's name; I did a bit more searching, and finally snagged the entire URL. I then entered the full URL in the Wayback Machine, and found the site archived over a number of years; after some trial and error, I found the necessary pages. So, courtesy of the Internet Archives, you can read my communication with Mike Berro, and the transcribed text of my article in Paperback Parade.

And speaking of the importance of that mini-interview with Jack Vance: In my search for Berro's original Jack Vance Information site, I came upon another website, the Vance Museum. Unfortunately, there aren't many resources on this site, other than an extensive two-part Jack Vance biography written by David B. Willliams. I was again surprised to see an excerpt from my interview with Vance quoted in this bio: "There were a lot of influences and it would be most difficult to put names to all of them," he [Vance] told Marty Halpern. "Robert Louis Stevenson, for one. Golden Book magazine had a fantasy story each month, a wonderful magazine.... I loved the Oz books as a child too, but you’ll not see any of those influences in my work." This Williams biography of Jack Vance is astutely written and well worth the time to read.

Anyhow, it took an entire year for my article/interview to actually get published in Paperback Parade, appearing in issue #17, March 1990. Also in that same issue is a lengthy retrospective article by Gary Lovisi on the various paperback editions of Vance's The Dying Earth. Vance wrote a series of stories during the '50s while in the Merchant Marines, and those stories were pulled together to form The Dying Earth, which was first published by Hillman Periodicals, New York, in 1950. Gryphon Books (not to be confused with Golden Gryphon Press), the publisher of Paperback Parade, still has copies of issue #17 available (though a second printing, priced at $10.00), and it appears that the periodical is still going strong, with issue #72 mentioned in the "News" column.

Of course, after our April 15 visit, I followed up with another letter, thanking Jack and Norma for their kindness and hospitality. I received a response once again from Jack, this one dated April 20, in which he notes: "I will be at a bookstore, the Dark Carnival, in Berkeley for activities I ordinarily do my best to avoid: namely a book-signing between 2 and 4 pm April 30." He then invited me back to the house : "should you chance to be in the neighborhood at 5:30 pm -- I stipulate time, so as not to interfere with my work-habits," and he concluded with: "thank you for your kind words." Again, the large, bold Jack Vance signature in black marker.

Forward in time to March 1990: Shortly after PP #17 was published, my comp copies arrived in the mail, along with extra copies for Michael Tallan and Jack Vance. Road trip! Granted, I could have mailed the copy of the 'zine to Jack Vance, but what fun was there in that? So I contacted Michael to make sure he was up for another trip to the Vances, and then I wrote Jack Vance once more, explaining that the interview had finally been published and that I would like to personally present him with a copy of the fanzine. This time, however, I received a very kind response from Norma Vance, dated March 8, 1990. She began the letter with: "We look forward to seeing the fanzine and your article," and suggested that if it wasn't too short a notice, that I come that weekend, either Saturday the 10th or Sunday the 11th. I don't recall the date that we actually visited, but I'll assume it was that weekend. By this time Jack had lost most of his eyesight (thus the letter from Norma, and not Jack himself) following his glaucoma surgery the previous July (approximately 3 months after our first visit). Consequently Norma was always at Jack's side from then on to assist him with signing his autograph: she would help place his left hand, and specifically his thumb, on the page to be signed where his signature was to begin; Jack would then use his thumb as a guide to begin writing the capital letter "J" -- and the rest of his signature would then flow naturally across the page. By the time he was done signing, his left thumb, and often his left index finger, was covered in black marker ink. Regardless, Jack Vance never disappointed his fans whenever he made an appearance, though these appearances became extremely rare in the years immediately following.

I actually recall even less about this second visit than I do the first, most likely because I didn't write about it at the time. But I did get my copy of PP #17 signed, and if I recall correctly, Michael brought along yet another boxful of books. Besides, how could we not enjoy sharing yet another house visit with the Vances.

What makes Jack Vance's writing so seductive is the rich texture of his words, the exotic rhythms of his sentences, and all the subtle nuances that make up a story of his creation. And his character names... it is as if the stories had to be written around the names; the stories had to exist because the names existed. Does that make sense? For example, the names of the five villains in the Demon Princes series: Attel Malagate (book 1), Kokor Hekkus (2), Viole Falushe (3), Lens Larque (4), and Howard Alan Treesong (5).

Earlier, I mentioned Vance's last novel, Lurulu. The title word is an undefined something, that the various characters in the story search for. Much of the story takes place aboard an intersteller freighter called the Glicca, captained by Adair Maloof. The ship travels from planet to planet, where adventures -- and misadventures -- occur. Captain Maloof, in an attempt to explain lurulu, calls it "a special word from the language of myth. It is much a mystery to me now as when I first yearned for something which seemed forever lost. But one day I shall glance over my shoulder, and there it will be, wondering why I had not come sooner."

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Notes and Footnotes

The Jack Vance photo that opens this essay accompanied the New York Times article by Carlo Rotella; the photo was taken by Justin Stephens. Since I do not have the rights to reprint this photo, I have linked to the photo on the NYT website. It's an absolutely wonderful photograph of Jack Vance -- the man has traveled, the man has seen things. Thank you, Justin Stephens, for sharing this photograph with us.

And this is as good a time as any to thank my friend Michael Tallan for transporatation to and from the Vances home -- twice. And for many more trips into the city for author readings and signings, and bookstore shopping.

¹ I was saddened to read in the May 2008 issue of Locus magazine of the passing of Norma Vance. She was certainly a lovely, kind woman, always seeming to want to take care of us during our visits. And very protective of Jack, too. Born Norma Genvieve Ingold, on May 29, 1927; she passed away on March 25, 2008.

² Though I didn't think to take photographs of the Vance house, I'm pleased to say that others did. Gan Uesli Starling evidently visited the Vances on January 21, 2000, according to his website, and took a number of photographs during his visit. Fortunately, Gan has posted an account of his visit, along with the photographs, in which you can see the dining room table at which we sat, surrounded by the three walls of windows. There is even one solo photo of just the ceiling tiles!

³ Go ahead, admit it: we all search for our own name on the net! Now, you can even set up a Google Alert to automate the process!

Addendum:

About five hours after I posted this blog entry, I received an email from Francesca Myman, editorial assistant at Locus magazine, in which the above photograph was attached. I had requested this photograph earlier in the week for use on the blog; I especially wanted a photo of Norma Vance. But when Francesca responded yesterday, she explained that the Locus office was extremely hectic. With the passing of Charles Brown on July 12, I could certainly understand the situation, and so I told her not to worry about the photo, that I would find one of Jack Vance on the net to use. So, my surprise when the above photo arrived. This is a wonderful picture of Jack and Norma Vance, from 1997, and taken by Charles N. Brown. A special "thank you" to Francesca and Locus magazine for allowing me to post the photo here. Charles Brown was the glue, if you will, that held together the worldwide SF community, and his passing has surely left a huge gap in that community. My sincere condolences to the staff of Locus, and Charles's family and friends.

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12 Stories Do Not a Collection Make

The big announcement last month concerned my friend Alastair Reynolds, author of the superb space opera novels Revelation Space, Redemption Ark, and Absolution Gap, among others -- all part of his Inhibitors-Conjoiners (aka Revelation Space) universe. According to the announcement and mini-interview in the Guardian, Reynolds has signed an unprecedented contract with publisher Gollancz in the United Kingdom: the contract calls for ten books over a span of ten years for 1-million pounds sterling [that's $1,620,660.00 as of this writing]. Congratulations, Al!

Al and I have worked on a couple of projects together over the past few years: a limited edition chapbook novella (Turquoise Days, Golden Gryphon Press, 2002) and a short story collection (Zima Blue and Other Stories, Night Shade Books, 2006). [I'd love to link to additional information on Zima Blue but all NSB editions are out of print.] And hopefully there will be another project in the foreseeable future. If all the authors with whom I've worked, or will work, had the professionalism, moral integrity, care and respect for others that Al Reynolds displayed during these two projects, I would be in editorial hog heaven.

With this new multi-book deal, Al no longer has to worry about sample chapters and outlines and pitches for his next book contracts (at least for the next nine years), he can now devote that time to the craft of writing. And we, his readers, will continue to delight in the fruits of his labors. If you're not familiar with Alastair Reynolds's short fiction, check out his story "Spirey and the Queen" available online (included in Zima Blue); and if you're into audio, Al reads his new story "Scales," his first military SF story, as part of the original Guardian Books Podcast series.

So, you wonder, why am I spending so much time chatting about Alastair Reynolds? Because I'm going to use his collection, Zima Blue and Other Stories -- and specifically how this collection came together -- as my example in this essay on short story collections.

In recent years I have noticed a trend among "young" authors -- particularly those published by small presses, and to be even more specific, the print-on-demand (POD) small presses -- to publish a new short story collection as soon as they've accumulated (and that's the correct word I wish to use) a dozen or so stories. If the writer is sufficiently prodigious, that could easily work out to a collection (or two) a year. As a point of clarification, I use the term "young" loosely here. Author William Gibson was thirty-six years old when his first novel Neuromancer was published in 1984; Lucius Shepard was thirty-eight and Jay Lake was forty when each won the Campbell Award for best new writer. In response to an age question on his blog, John Scalzi has written an excellent essay on why new, young writers are typically in their 30s when they finally get published; he even lays out his own writing career as an example.

I realize authors need income, and if they are primarily a short story writer, then a collection of said stories is one of the few (if only) income-generating options open to them once the stories themselves have been initially published. I understand the need, and the rationale, but...

In my tenure as an editor, I have worked on twenty short story collections; not a large number in the overall scheme of things, but not too shabby either for the small press business. I am referring to the full package here: working with the author to develop the collection, selecting the stories, determining story order, editing and copyediting the stories, and whatever else was needed to create the book. Authors included Kage Baker, Michael Bishop, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Lucius Shepard, Jeff VanderMeer, and, of course, George Alec Effinger, plus a handful of others. And though I'm far from being an expert on story collections (every author and every book always has something new to teach me), I have had a wee bit of experience.

Often, an author and/or the author's agent would send me a manuscript consisting of a predetermined set of stories and word count. In every instance I worked with the author to change the contents list and increase the word count. This was necessary because the author and/or the agent included weak stories and insufficient word count. However, had those manuscripts been sent directly to a POD press, they undoubtedly would have been published as is; possibly with little, if any, copyediting (and certainly no editing), which, depending on the press of course, is typically the responsibility of the submitting author.

What happens is, the author floods his own market with his short fiction collections. Each collection, without doubt, contains excellent, maybe even great, stories; but each collection also contains one or more stories that should not have been included in that particular collection, or should simply not have been collected -- ever. Consequently the author (and publisher) ends up with a good collection -- but not a great collection. The collection garners a couple or so reviews if the author is lucky, but nothing memorable comes of the book, and it is all too quickly forgotten. All the author's hardcore fans will most likely purchase the book, but beyond that? Sound familiar? I'm sure if you are a reader of short fiction, and short fiction collections in particular, an author or two comes immediately to mind.

As an acquiring editor for Golden Gryphon Press, I first contacted Alastair Reynolds via email on April 16, 2001, regarding a short story collection. Al had already published about sixteen stories as well as his first novel, Revelation Space. (Second novel, Chasm City, would appear about three weeks later.) At this point in time, I had read quite a few of Al's short stories: "Digital to Analogue" (In Dreams, edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman, 1992), "Spirey and the Queen" (Interzone, June 1996), "Great Wall of Mars" (Spectrum SF #1, February 2000), "Merlin's Gun" (Interzone, May 2000), and "Hideaway" (Interzone, July 2000). There was no doubt in my mind that Alastair Reynolds was going to be one of the preeminent SF writers in the years to come, and I wanted to be the first to snag a collection of his stories. Unfortunately, I was too late...

Al responded the following day. In the email, he raved about Golden Gryphon Press books (he said that he had just obtained a copy of the Robert Reed collection, The Dragons of Spring Place). Unfortunately, Al also informed me that about a month earlier he had made a commitment to publisher Night Shade Books for a short story collection. But here's the caveat: Al told me that he suggested to Night Shade that they wait another year or two for the collection to ensure he had a "sufficiently good core of strong stories to justify a collection." So Al chose to delay his own collection by at least two years (waiting a minimum of one year and publishing the book the following year) -- even though two small presses were clamoring for a collection now -- because he wanted to ensure a quality collection. Shocking!

I've had authors turn down my solicitation for a short story collection for a variety of reasons: they had promised a collection to another publisher (others authors, in addition to Al); they planned to include a collection as part of their next contract negotiation with their NY publisher; they could make more money with another publisher; or they were just too busy now to even bother. I've had an author respond that they passed my inquiry on to their agent, who then completely ignored me -- even after follow-up emails; some professional courtesy would have been nice, even if their response was simply to tell me to just go away. But I've never had an author turn down a short story collection because they felt they didn't have enough quality fiction to be included in the book. You have to understand my surprise because the five Reynolds stories that I mentioned above totaled nearly 65,000 words. And he had another ten or so stories in addition to these. Certainly enough word count overall, and the quality of these five particular stories was not to be questioned.

My follow-up email to Al that same day was a hardcore sales pitch. I did all I could to place Golden Gryphon in the spotlight and even suggested two different collections to Al so that both publishers would be satisfied: one collection now -- for Golden Gryphon, of course -- and a second collection in a couple years for Night Shade. Al's response? He still insisted that he didn't have enough strong stories and that he wanted to wait for another year or two, but he did like the idea of two collections, broken out by his "future history" stories (a la Revelation Space) and his other stories. I expressed my enthusiasm for either collection -- though I had a definite preference at the time for the "future history" stories. [Remember this two-collection idea for later reference.]

Fortunately, Al and I continued our email dialogue. But I'm no fool, and I anticipated Al's increasing popularity in the field, so in a May 10, 2001 email, I posed the following scenario: In a year or two from now, when Al (and Al's agent) is negotiating a new contract, his UK publisher, Gollancz, asks for a short story collection. What does he do now that he has already committed (albeit only verbally, but one trusts Al on his word) to a Night Shade Books collection? And though I didn't bring this point up, I was also concerned that Al's contract with Gollancz included first refusal rights, which would mean they would have first dibs on any collection proposal. That collection might not interest them now, with Al having published only two novels as of 2001; but what about one or two years from now? Thus my concern for delaying said collection.

In Al's response the following day, he wrote: "The points you make are good, and I can appreciate your argument about moving sooner rather than later. From what I can gather, though, there's not much enthusiasm among the mainstream UK publishers for short fiction collections, so I suspect this won't be that big an issue. Gollancz have never once mooted the possibility, or showed any interest in my non-novel activities. I suspect they'll be happy just to deal with novels from me (and if the current book stiffs, they may not want to talk novels either...!)."

I, in turn, responded to Al that I think he underestimates himself, given his newness in the field (only two novels to date), and referred to UK authors Stephen Baxter and Greg Egan (actually Australian but published in the UK), both of whom have had highly touted short story collections published by "mainstream UK publishers." Regardless, Al and I agreed to postpone any further discussion on a collection until after he completed work on his third novel.

In going through these old emails, I somehow managed to lose or misplace a year and a half's worth between me and Al. I'm sure a hard drive crash contributed to some of the loss. [I now use strictly web-based email; I also backup/clone my PC weekly to an external drive.] After the above email dated May 11, 2001, the next email I have on file is from January 31, 2003. In that intervening time, I acquired Al's novella Turquoise Days, which was published by Golden Gryphon Press (September 2002) as a signed and numbered limited edition chapbook, with an awesome Bob Eggleton wraparound cover. TD was selected the following year for Gardner Dozois's anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection; and that same year it was published by Gollancz, Al's "mainstream UK publisher," along with another of his novellas, "Diamond Dogs." (And Al thought Gollancz would only be interested in his novel-length work!) Dozois later included TD in his Best of the Best, Volume 2: 20 Years of the Year's Best Short Science Fiction Novels.

That January 31, 2003, email was to confirm with Al that he had heard from Jason Williams, of Night Shade Books, that I would be editing his collection for NSB. At that point in time, Night Shade was primarily a publisher of fantasy and horror; Jason was concerned about their lack of science fiction expertise and so we had discussed on the telephone that I would edit the collection. Essentially I would put together the same type of collection that I would have for Golden Gryphon Press -- same in terms of quality, length, format, etc., working directly with the author -- except this collection would be published by Night Shade Books. And now that it had been nearly two years since Al had originally committed to a short story collection, Jason was nudging me to nudge Al so that we could move forward with this book. Jason was hoping for publication of the collection to coincide with the 2004 WorldCon. Unfortunately, the collection didn't see publication until 2006, with most of that delay due to Al's one-novel-per-year commitment to Gollancz, which always, by necessity, took precedence over the collection. [And we see the results of that commitment in his recent 10 books, 10 years, £1 million contract!] Oh, and in the latter half of 2005, Al also married his long-time partner Josette Sanchez. So, between the novel-writing and marriage, we cut him some slack!

Ah, but there was a change in the wind blowing in from the East: In an email I received on November 25, 2005, Al wrote: "Orion will be doing a collection (provisionally entitled Galactic North) containing only the Revelation Space universe stories, to appear in October 2006, in the UK. This will include all the existing stories, apart from 'Diamond Dogs/Turquoise Days,' along with some new material. This in no way prevents [you] from including the existing RS stories in the Night Shade collection... I think we have enough material that we can easily afford not to use some stuff in the Night Shade book if we choose, and there certainly won't be any shortage of space-operatic, hard SF stuff.... Night Shade is keen to get the book out at around the same time as the UK collection, which means agreeing on a content list (and title, of course) in the fairly near future, so as soon as you're ready to start discussing what goes in and what doesn't, I'm up for it. In the meantime I quite fancy Beyond the Aquila Rift and Other Stories, or Zima Blue and Other Stories, but see what you think." So, my supposition, if you will, that Al's UK publisher would eventually want a short story collection within a year or two (in this case, four years), turned out to be spot on, as the Brits would say.

When Al sent me a list of stories to consider, he wrote: "I've omitted my first two stories since I really don't think they're all that hot, as well as a later one from Asimov's which I'm not wild about.." Again, with the quality! Whatever happened to "Here's my first twelve stories, make them into a book"?

So I had some choices to make: I could use some of the "future history" (aka Revelation Space) stories in the Night Shade Books collection if I wanted. But I knew that Al had a sufficient quantity -- and quality -- of non "future history" stories to comprise its own collection, which I felt would successfully stand on its own; plus, Al promised to write a new story that would be exclusive to the collection. There were a number of advantages to not duplicating any of the stories to be included in the Gollancz collection: 1) Al's hardcore fans and collectors could buy both collections without feeling ripped off by the duplication of stories; 2) because there is no duplication, Gollancz -- and in turn, Ace, his US publisher -- may later choose to publish a reprint edition of the book; and 3) purchasing both collections would provide readers with nearly all of the best of Al's short fiction. [Note: Zima Blue was, in fact, published by Gollancz just a couple months ago, though with a slightly different content; after the Night Shade edition was published, Al wrote a third "Merlin" story, "Minla's Flowers," which was included in the Gollancz edition.]

Three of the stories Al sent me for possible inclusion in the collection I rejected; and we also decided not to include any of his short-short stories either. But one story that we did include that wasn't originally on his list was "Understanding Space and Time." It had only been published as a 400-copy limited edition chapbook by the Birmingham [UK] Science Fiction Group for Novacon 35, November 11-13, 2005, to commemorate the author's Guest of Honor appearance. I obviously hadn't seen a copy so Al graciously sent one of the chapbooks to me. "Understanding..." is a cosmological hard SF story (read Mark Watson's review on the Best SF Reviews website) that was so mind-boggling that I read the nearly 19,000-word story straight through, twice! And, as promised, Al wrote a new story for the collection, entitled "Signal to Noise," which totaled just under 16,550 words. Add in the very personal notes that Al wrote on the genesis of each story, an introduction by SF author Paul J. McAuley, and we had a book -- one helluva book, if I do say so myself. For many of their hardcover titles, Night Shade also produces a signed, limited edition, and Zima Blue was no exception. For the bonus story included in the limited edition, I chose "Digital to Analogue," an older story that is one of Al's personal favorites. "D to A" is quite different from anything else that Al has written, and we figured it was obscure enough that few of his fans had actually read it. The story was originally included in the In Dreams anthology, edited by Kim Newman and Paul J. McAuley, who had also agreed to write the book's introduction. The story concerns dance music and what's embedded in the music (viral music).

Zima Blue and Other Stories was published in a trade and limited edition hardcover in September 2006 -- nearly five and a half years after I originally contacted Al! The book garnered a starred Booklist review: "Reynolds' collection constitutes excellent reading and confirmation of his reputation as one of the best writers of contemporary space opera.... Reynolds does short stories with particular flair, and this collection contains some spectacular sf storytelling." And from Publishers Weekly: "This solid collection of 10 stories spanning the galaxies and the career of British SF author Reynolds (Pushing Ice) demonstrates that his pursuit of truth is not limited to wide-angle star smashing." The reprint trade paperback edition followed in May 2007.

I obviously did an end around, as they say, regarding the topic of this blog post. And, in fact, I may not have succeeded in my efforts to convince authors that publishing a short story collection as soon as they've accumulated a dozen or so stories is not really the way to go, that contrary to popular belief, such collections are not necessarily going to enhance their professional stature. But maybe with some extrapolation on your part, you’ll understand the conclusion I was aiming for.

* * * * *

This past week I completed one major project and began another. I completed copyediting the omnibus edition of Glen Cook's Darkwar trilogy -- Doomstalker, Warlock, and Ceremony -- 565 pages and 244,000 words, to be published by Night Shade Books. Also for Night Shade, I have begun work on Mark Teppo's sequel to Lightbreaker, entitled Heartland: The Codex of Souls, Book 2. This will be what is called a "developmental edit," and I'm working directly with the author on his original manuscript. In the wings, I have Liz Williams's fifth Detective Inspector Chen novel, The Iron Khan, for developmental editing (also for Night Shade); and for Tachyon Publications, I'll be copyediting Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow. I've already scanned in and cleaned up seventeen of those stories (nearly 127K words); this time around I'll be copyediting those plus seven additional stories that didn't need to be scanned. And from Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint, I'm awaiting the page proofs for Paul Di Filippo's novel Fuzzy Dice. And last, but certainly not least, co-editor Nick Gevers and I have received our first two submissions for our original DAW Books anthology entitled Is Anybody Out There? which concerns the Fermi paradox. The two authors shall remain nameless at this point in time since neither story has been accepted as yet. Please see my previous blog post for more info on this DAW theme anthology.

I've been hearing more and more lately from other freelancers who don't have time to post to their blogs because their freelance work requires most of their time. And that time investment is critical: completed freelance projects bring in income, and that income pays the bills. And given the present state of the economy, a freelancer can't risk losing work -- or even the potential for work. I find myself in this same situation, which is why there hasn't been a personal blog update here for about a month. But that's really what freelancing is all about, and we should all be happy that we still have work to do. My wife is self-employed as well; in the month of June she lost more than 70% of her income; and that loss will increase by another 12% at the end of this month. And with the unemployment rate in our area (currently 11.2%), it doesn't appear that her service will be in demand anytime soon. Thus the increased pressure on me to acquire additional freelance opportunities. This is not a whine, just an explanation for the lack of blog posts here -- though it's certainly not because of the lack of ideas. I have a list of blog posts I would like to address, but time is always the limiting factor. And since I don't blog about my morning cup of coffee (with half-and-half, no sugar) or that I went shopping today at Costco (OJ, Alaskan salmon, virgin olive oil, bananas, frozen spinach ravioli, and a few other items -- just under $123.00!), I just hope you'll bear with me until I have time for more in-depth blog posts. I won't feel bad if you check in, see nothing new, and move on to another site; as long as I know you're still checking in. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed so that you are notified of new updates; or follow me on Twitter.

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Notes:

My heartfelt thanks to Alastair Reynolds for his permission, allowing me to quote extensively from our email communications. And a special thanks, too, to Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books for the opportunity to edit Zima Blue and Other Stories.

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June-End Links & Things

The time I would have normally spent last week writing a new blog entry went into responding to interview questions from Charles Tan -- a 3,300-word interview to be more specific. The interview will appear on Bibliophile Stalker on August 25. I'll send out a link tweet when the interview appears. If you want to know what's happening in the genre, and if you enjoy reading interviews with authors, editors, and publishers, then Bibliophile Stalker, Charles Tan's blog, is a must read.

The new blog post I've been working on for this week has morphed from my original idea, and if you are a writer, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, then you know that a morphed idea can get away from you and it becomes more difficult to pull the idea together once again. I'm still working the idea.

For now, and since the end of June has passed, I'll go ahead and post my links and such from the past two weeks. There are quite a lot of them, to be sure, and hopefully everyone who reads this will find something of interest. These links are from my previous tweets. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail and comment. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter.

• I'll begin this post with one entry on singer, songwriter, and performer Michael Jackson: This is the one MJ video that everyone should watch; go ahead, it's only one minute and twenty-one seconds long. Enjoy.


• Okay, okay, just one more... Music critic Roger Ebert's eulogy, if you will, entitled "The boy who never grew up: Michael Jackson, 1958-2009": Roger writes: "He lost happiness somewhere in his childhood, and spent his life trying to go back there and find it. When he played the Scarecrow in 'The Wiz' (1978), I think that is how he felt, and Oz was where he wanted to live. It was his most truly autobiographical role. He could understand a character who felt stuffed with straw, but could wonderfully sing and dance, and could cheer up the little girl Dorothy."


• David Halpert on Scifi Watch (@ScifiWatch) gives us "15 Ways Publishers Can Increase Sales, Save Money, and Promote Publicity." I personally like point #11: Highlight Editors Blogs: "If there's something I love more than reading the blogs of my favorite science fiction authors, it's reading the blogs of their editors. Editors are largely the face of a publishing house, working hard behind the scenes to bring you the literature on the market today. They're also very knowledgeable and at times candid about what goes on in their daily lives....If you don't already highlight an editor's blog on your publishing website, DO SO IMMEDIATELY! It will easily increase traffic to your publishing house, and with any luck increase sales as well."


• As promised on June 15, award-winning author Catherynne M. Valente posted online Chapter One of her new novel The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Design. She'll be posting one new chapter every week on Mondays, and estimates that she should finish the novel in time for the holidays. Each chapter will also be available as an audio download. In her current adult novel Palimpsest (Bantam Books; the main theme is a sexually transmitted dream), one of the characters referred to a children's book that she had loved; at the time, the book -- The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland -- was completely nonexistent. Not any longer. Chapters Two and Three have now been posted as well. And check out the wyvern icon at the end of Chapter Three (and future chapters) for a link to the author's audio commentary. There's a PayPal tip-jar, so to speak, on the site, and Cat is asking for your help to support her writing.
  
  Here's a background post from Cat Valente on The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Design.


• And another writer is in financial need: Tim Pratt, author of the Hugo Award-winning short story "Impossible Dreams" (Asimov's, July 2006), plans to write and publish (every Monday) an online novella series, entitled "Bone Shop." He's hoping to support his efforts through reader donations. On Tim's Live Journal, he posts some background information on his character Marla Mason, who appears in his novels Blood Engines, Poison Sleep, Dead Reign, and Spell Games. His LJ entry also links to the Bone Shop and Marla Mason websites. And here's a link to Chapter One, posted as promised on June 29; at the end of the chapter is a link to the author's notes.


• In a thoughtful essay aimed at e-book publishers, JA Konrath, author of the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thriller series, reveals his Kindle sales figures for a number of his books -- a rare disclosure from a published author. He also offers some helpful hints for those uploading books to Kindle. Konrath writes: "With 1.5 million Kindles sold, I could sell 200 books per day, for 720 days, and still only reach 10% of all Kindle buyers. If we include all of the iPhone and iPod Touch owners who can download a Kindle ap, along with continued Kindle sales, I should be able to sell quite a few books before coming close to saturating this market. If the $90 per day trend keeps up, that's $32,850 a year. Not a huge amount, but not chump change either." (via GalleyCat) $32,850 not a huge amount just from e-book sales? Of course, you gotta have a book – or books – that folks are willing to pay to download!


• If you're a fan of the television series Fringe, and especially of actor John Noble (Denethor in The Lord of the Rings movies), you'll enjoy reading what the actor has to say of his portrayal of mad scientist Walter Bishop, via Variety: "I admire the pure part of his mind and that, fundamentally, he's a kind man. It must be terribly hard for someone of his intelligence and abilities to actually relate to anyone, but he still tries in his own Walter way."


• Are you a collector of autographed books? Afraid of what the digital era will do to such autograph collecting? The New York Times reports that an increasing number of readers are showing up at book signings and asking the authors to sign the back of their Kindles! One author states that she will only do so if the reader can show that they have downloaded a paid edition of one her books. Now, Kindles are pretty small... Do you buy a Kindle for each author's autograph? (Hmmm, at $300?) Or, do you only "collect" your one very fave author's autograph? (And what about the reader who has many very favorite authors?) (via GalleyCat)


• From The Onion ("America's Finest News Source"), in "Science & Technology": "Archeologists Discover First Guy Named Marty." "University of Toronto archaeologists excavating a prehistoric settlement near the Serbian border announced Tuesday that they had unearthed the remains of the earliest known Marty, dating back nearly 9,000 years....In 1998, researchers thought they had discovered the first Marty in Azerbaijan, but carbon-dating test results later revealed they had in fact discovered an early Eddie who just looked like a Marty." (via Paul Di Filippo)


• From Self-Publishing Review: Author Bonnie Kozek shares with us a personal essay entitled "Finishing the Hat: A Writer's Pursuit of Lonliness." The "hat" in the title pertains to entering that artistic state that allows the artist to create something new. Kozek writes: "As a writer, aloneness and I are close and constant companions. Yet, I know it's a double-edged sword -- and as such I am both devoted to it and disquieted by it. So disquieted, in fact, that I spent many years trying to escape it. During those years I chose compromise. I wrote at home; I wrote in an office not far from home. I worked 9 to 5, more or less -- going to and coming from work in sync with the majority....But, frankly, it never worked well. Because once that door -- the door leading into the world of the hat... once that door is cracked, the whole raucous outside world comes jangling in."


• Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch posts entry "Money (Part Two)" in her online Freelancer's Survival Guide: "Question: Is my business going to fail? Be realistic. The answer is probably yes. If it is, cut your losses immediately. The last thing you want is all the debt incurred by the continued monthly expenses. Shut the doors, turn off the lights, and search for a day job." And "Money (Part Three)" follows.


• The Daily Beast features an op-ed piece by Peter Osnos, a senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation, suggesting that publishers start selling physical (ie. paper) and digital books together, so readers can enjoy the best of both worlds: "For readers, the ideal development would be to make books portable. In this scenario, you would buy a printed hardcover or paperback book for, say, $25 and could then activate it as a digital file or downloadable audio from an embedded password. Ergo, the book becomes a multiplatform object transferable wherever the reader wants to go." Osnos is the founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs Books. He is vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, a former publisher at Random House, and was a correspondent and editor at The Washington Post. In other words, his credentials ain't too shabby.


• The first issue of Electric Literature, a new online anthology that is published bi-monthly, is now available, and features "five great stories that grab you....We select stories charged with wit and emotional gravity right from the first sentence. You choose how you want to read them. We deliver content in every viable medium." Be sure to read the "About" and "Submit" sections if you are a writer: "Electric Literature accepts fiction only. Length should be between 500 and 7,000 words. Submissions are welcome all year long." Payment is $1,000 per story. (via @roncharles)


• Author Dean Wesley Smith continues his series of blog posts that imitate the History Channel's Life After People series. This time around is Part Two of his "Life After Agents" series. As Dean states in this entry: "Agents are not regulated in any fashion and are not required in any way to take any training, including learning publishing contracts or money management. Yet young writers who want someone to 'take care of them' put all their faith and complete income into agents' hands. As we all discovered recently in the financial world, having an unregulated group of people control money is always a route to disaster. Agents are unregulated and have no required training. Just keep that in mind."


• Writer Michael A. Burstein discusses on his blog "The Value of Our Work." Part One deals with getting paid for one's work; Part Two follows from the comments that were posted to part one; Part Three discusses "Free Options"; and Part Four deals with "Donations." I suspect additional entries will be forthcoming; also, please be sure to review the comments that follow each part as well. Michael writes in Part One: "...when he asked if he could reprint the story, his first words were to tell me that he wouldn't pay anything, but he could offer me 'exposure.' It rankled me to hear that. He wouldn't consider not paying the costs of printing the booklets or distributing them, but when it came to the content, he didn't seem to grasp why it was so wrong to offer no compensation at all. The irony here is that in this particular case I really didn't want a reprint fee, just respect. Had the guy approached me and asked what the reprint fee would have been -- or even if he had said something like we don't have a large budget for this project but I can give you $10 -- I would have replied thank you for asking, but for your cause I'm willing to let you have it for free."


• Back in 2002 I sold an anthology, entitled Witpunk, co-edited with Claude Lalumière, to independent publisher Four Walls Eight Windows; the book was published in 2003. There's an interesting story behind Witpunk, and one of these days I just might talk about it. [Note: The "Part Two" blog entry I did on George Alec Effinger briefly mentions Witpunk.] The anthology was composed of half original and half reprint stories; Ernest Hogan was one of the authors who contributed an original story. Ernest just emailed me to check out his latest blog entry, which has to do with Witpunk and his original story "Coyote Goes Hollywood" as well as Russian mobile phone ringtones!


• In an announcement in the Guardian, my friend, author Alastair Reynolds, has signed an unprecedented contract with publisher Gollancz in the United Kingdom: the contract calls for ten books over a span of ten years for 1-million pounds sterling [$1,648,681 and change, as of this writing]. Good things do happen, boys and girls, even in a piss-poor economy! And it couldn't happen to a nicer, harder working person. I acquired and edited Al's novella Turquoise Days, which was originally published as a signed and numbered limited edition chapbook by Golden Gryphon Press in 2002. I had also contacted Al about a short fiction collection, but was about a month late as he had already promised a collection to Night Shade Books. But to my joy, a year later I got to edit that collection -- Zima Blue and Other Stories -- for Night Shade. From the Guardian: "Reynolds himself was unconcerned by any pressure the new contract might bring. 'I just let that wash over me,' he said. With its first three books already mapped out -- an African-inflected trilogy charting how humanity might go on to conquer the solar system and the galaxy -- he's also confident that he'll be able to come up with the goods. 'Hopefully over the last ten years I've demonstrated an ability to deliver books on time,' he said."
  
  And check out this original Guardian Books Podcast in which Alastair Reynolds reads his new story "Scales," his first military SF story, which "considers the ways in which the pressures of war shape those who fight them."


• Author Lilith Saintcrow (@lilithsaintcrow) explains why "A Good Book Ain't All You Need": "I am constantly amazed at people who think turning in a manuscript is like shooting off an email. (Or even a blog post. Ha.) It isn't. I would bet that most of these were first drafts, and that none of them had been spell-checked; the authors thought they could speak English just fine, so what did they need to study sentence structure or punctuation for?" In this blog post, Lilith discusses: a) dealing with agents and editors; b) following directions; c) being professional; d) being patient; and e) not being precious. And don't get me started on these either...


• Publishing Trends web site shares with its readers a "groundbreaking report": "Last summer, [The Codex Group] undertook a massive author website impact study that surveyed nearly 21,000 book shoppers. Its objective was to understand the relative effectiveness of author sites among shoppers and to determine the elements that will keep them coming back to the site." And what did the study reveal? Among other things, that "Book shoppers who had visited an author website in the past week bought 38% more books, from a wider range of retailers, than those who had not visited an author site." This article also provides specifics on how to keep a website "sticky," that is, to keep readers coming back for more.


• A reader asks author John Scalzi the age-old question (pun intended): "Whenever I hear about a 'new' novelist, they turn out to be in their 30s. Why is that? It seems like you hear about new musicians and actors and other creative people when they are in their 20s." John concludes his lengthy response with: "...the combination of writing skill development and the mechanics of contemporary publishing conspires to drive the age of most debut novelists into the thirties. It doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon." John looks at the novel-publishing process from the time an author learns the skills of writing professionally to getting that first novel published; he then looks at his own writing career from this perspective. And, at this time, 144 comments have already been posted. (via @sfsignal @jasonsanford)


• UK author Patrick Ness, who won the UK Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize for his young adult novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, has published a prequel story entitled "The New World." The Knife is book one in the "Chaos Walking" trilogy; book two, The Ask and the Answer, was released earlier this year, and volume three is due out in 2010. "The New World" tells the dramatic story of Viola's arrival on Todd's home planet. The story is available online or as a downloadable PDF. The sponsoring website is Booktrust, "an independent charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to engage with books and the written word."


• And finally, author Jeremiah Tolbert, who is now the managing editor of Escape Pod, the Science Fiction Podcast Magazine, shares with readers "An Editor's Perspective on Rejection." Tolbert explains his standard form responses, such as "didn't grab me," to the more positive "I liked it, but I didn't love it," to the you-almost-sold-me "doesn't fit my needs at this time." He states: "It's not the (short fiction) editor's job, especially not today, to cultivate the writer's talent. We support your talent, but we don't have the time to fertilize it. You need to turn to other sources for advice." That is so very true, but I constantly find myself critiquing and providing feedback on author submissions. Call it "paying forward" if you will. And just maybe when those authors finely tune their craft, they'll think of me and send me another submission.

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Mid-June Links & Things

These links are from my previous tweets to date for the month. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail (and occasional editorial comment, since I am an editor!). This allows me to have a somewhat permanent file of all these links. And hopefully you'll find something of interest here, especially if you're not following me on Twitter.

I especially wanted to post now, before Monday, June 15, because of the very first entry that follows:

• Author Catherynne M. Valente is in a bit of a financial difficulty. As a way of earning some income, she has decided to write a much-requested novel, and post chapters online every Monday beginning June 15. Ms. Valente writes on her blog: "Over the course of the Palimpsest [Bantam Books, 2009] tour, people asked me one thing more than anything else. What about The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland? Is it a real book? Will you write it? And I said no. It's impossible, a YA book that is a book-within-a-book in a deeply non-YA novel. I even said no to a very sweet six-year-old.... [But] Starting Monday, I will start posting chapters of a full-length novel version of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I will be writing it in real time, posting every Monday. It will be free to read -- but please know that the sheer calories to make my brain create it require funding, and I would very much appreciate your support. Pay whatever you like for it, whatever you think it's worth. It's kind of like an old-fashioned rent party.... This is a book about a little girl named September who gets herself a ticket to Fairyland on the back of The Green Wind and a somewhat cranky Leopard. There she discovers the realm of the capricious Marquess and the dangers of the Perverse and Perilous Sea. It is going to be something else. And yes, you can read it to your kids."
  
  Ms. Valente is also the author of the two-volume The Orphan's Tales series (In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice), which as a whole or in part won the 2006 James Tiptree Jr. Award and the 2008 Mythopoeic Award, and was a finalist for the 2007 World Fantasy Award.



• "In the parodic future dystopia of Andrew Fox's The Good Humor Man [Tachyon Publications] (whose influences include classics like Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and a lot of mid-20th-century popular culture/kitsch), there's a major government clampdown on all fattening foods, which naturally generates both a thriving black market and a force like sanctioned vigilantes dedicated to stamping out such villainy. First-person narrator Dr. Louis Schmalzberg, a former liposuctionist and founder of this movement, ironically dubbed Good Humor Men, has begun to lose his faith in their brutal raids on ordinary citizens who just happen to have a sweet tooth. He also feels some nostalgia for the lost days of Fat America: jumbo cars, supersized meals, McMansions, singers like Fats Waller, Fats Domino and, toward the end of his career, Fat Elvis....Going beyond the wonderfully irreverent parodic horror of his 'Fat White Vampire' books into new realms of farce and social satire, Fox also tackles the SF thriller mode with panache. Can Elvis's belly fat save the world? Read it and see!" – Faren Miller, Locus magazine, June 2009.


• "Everything You Need to Know About Self-Publishing" by the Writer's Digest staff. This information changes constantly, but as of May 1, 2009, this is what WD had to say about the subject matter. The 8 topics include: The Truth About Self-Publishing; The Reality of Self-Publishing: An Agent's Perspective; What Can Your Publisher Do for You?; Book Publishing Stats (2009); An Insider's Look at Self-Publishing; How to Create a Cover Package; 2009 Directory of Self-Publishing Companies; and Future Self-Publishing Models.


• Dave Eggers, the McSweeney's magnate, gave a speech at the Authors Guild in Manhattan where he offered an email address where folks could contact him if they were ever losing faith, despairing, that print media was dying. John Lingan, of SpliceToday.com, contacted Eggers at that email addy and received a form letter in which Eggers stated: "As long as newspapers offer less each day -- less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos -- then they're giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself." However, Lingan, in his article entitled "Dave Eggers and The Myth of Print's Importance," argues that "Dave Eggers, insofar as can be gleaned from this email, has his head up his ass with regards to the decline of print media." Lingan concludes his piece with: "Let the medium die; it's the writing that matters."


• Here's a lovely and wonderful tribute to the oddball characters who frequent bookstores: "An Example Remembered" by Brad Craft: "It is not the delusional or the frighteningly unhappy I am thinking of just here, rather it is the gentler folk for whom the bookstore is a quiet refuge."
  
  And while I'm at it, I'd like to recommend a story by Jeff VanderMeer entitled "Greensleeves," though it is about the oddball characters who frequent a library, rather than a bookstore. "Greensleeves" was included in Jeff's collection Secret Life (Golden Gryphon Press, 2004); the story was originally published in Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, August 1992. Since it's an older story, possibly if readers bug Jeff enough, he'll post the story electronically.



• Rick Kleffel's "The Agony Column" commentary for 06-01-09 on "Mark Teppo's Lightbreaker: Cracking the Codex of Souls": "It's steeped in a dense mythology the author uses to transform and subvert the mystery genre into something both tougher and more fun. Markham [Lightbreaker protagonist] is a great guide to Teppo's universe, which feels appropriately Hermetic, self-sealed and internally consistent. Teppo has clearly done his research, but more importantly, he enjoyed it, and readers will get that sense of joy and exploration. And dread and terror, and tension... with some release, though what happens when you release the soul from the body is perhaps less beneficent for both than you might imagine. And like any good book it just might change your perceptions forever, every time you hear the phrase 'free soul.' Freedom cuts two ways. It's a sharp knife."


• And speaking of author Mark Teppo [I'll be blogging about working with Mark on Lightbreaker in the near future], Night Shade Books interviews Mark Teppo upon the release of his novel Lightbreaker: Book One of the Codex of Souls. On research: "...there’s an entire six-foot-tall IKEA bookcase next to my desk that is filled with primary source magick books. Another one on the other side of the room is devoted to comparative religion, cultural anthropology, and all the stuff that would be classified as secondary source. A good deal of which I haven’t read all the way through, but it’s right there when I need an answer to something."


• I've been sharing these links with you since April: Author Kristine Katheryn Rusch is writing an online Freelancer's Survival Guide, and is posting weekly entries; the latest subject is "Discipline." Kris writes: "So what is it that makes some people work hard at their freelance careers while others work hard enough to get by or can't figure out a way to work at all? It's not discipline. It's figuring out how to get yourself to work Seriously. What gets most people to their day jobs isn't the job. It's the money they get from the job, money that lets them pay the bills and support their family. Sure, a handful like their work, but most like the paycheck and benefits better...."
  
  And the next installment to the online Freelancer's Survival Guide: "Money, Part One." "You need to figure out what you want out of life, out of your freelancing, and out of your finances. That's the first step in this money discussion."


• Author Eric Barnes, whose novel Shimmer has just been published, blogs about his writing process, receiving a thousand-plus rejection letters, finally getting published, and the very long wait. "Because although nearly 200 publications have said no to my stories, although at least 100 different book editors said no to my manuscripts, after all that one editor said yes. To my novel, Shimmer. One publisher accepted my book. And so it will be published.... And so that one yes, that acceptance, it in a sense makes everyone else wrong. It makes them irrelevant."


• Agent Colleen Lindsay interviews Ron Hogan, senior editor at GalleyCat [where I get a ton of my information and resources] and founder of the Beatrice.com reading series. Colleen asks Ron about the new Center for Fiction Writers' Conference, a conference he organized for the Mercantile Library and Fordham University's creative writing program. Ron also talks about the current state of publishing. "...publishing is a crucial part of a literary-industrial complex I value greatly, and I am genuinely optimistic that somebody will figure out how to make this all work. Yes, the biggest publishers in New York are worried because they've come up against the limits of their old business strategies... But I've said it over and over: Publishing is not just New York."


• Dean Wesley Smith gives us Part Two on his essay series: "Life After Returns" in which he discusses the book- and magazine-selling trade. Dean writes: "For the most part, magazines are paid for by ads and all a publisher of a magazine is interested in is how many copies they ship out and have sitting on the stands. That's the number they tell their advertisers and how they set their ad rates. Also understand that when you are standing in line at a grocery store, every magazine you see in line has paid the store and the distributor for the spot. The closer to the cash register, the more expensive the spot.... The advertisers don't care how many magazines actually sell, they just care about the placement and how many are shipped; and the stores don't care about how many are sold, they just want their fee for the spot"



• In the style of the History Channel's Life After People series, author Dean Wesley Smith begins another new blog series entitled "Life After Agents." In Part One, Dean writes: "Agents are employees of writers. Now, let me say that again simply because many, many newer writers are confused at this moment in time about what an agent is. An agent is a writer's employee. They are not a salvation, they are not a god to be worshiped, they can't write you a check for your book, and they earn all their money from you. They are an employee. Nothing more. They work for you and do what you ask and if they don't, like any employee, they should be fired. They do not run your business, you do.... Interesting isn't it how this industry has gotten sort of screwed up? Bookstore owners take no responsibility for their own inventory with the return system and publishers take no responsibility for their own slush piles." Read on; another great blog series from Dean.

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