The Perfect Sentence

For twenty-seven years, BayCon has been the mainstay of Bay Area (that's the San Francisco Bay Area for those not familiar with the area) Fandom. I had hoped to post here my BayCon guest participation schedule, and then follow that up with some form of convention report. But, alas, family responsibilities have necessitated my cancelling out of BayCon, renting a car (my own car is nearly sixteen years old, and I don't like to push my luck), and making the nearly 400-mile trip to Southern Cal. A helluva trip when it's only for a total of three days! And with no net access during those three days, it will feel like a cosmic return to the age of stone knives and bear claws!

Regardless, my sincere apologies to BayCon for having to bail with only two days notice. But I did check the programming schedule, and the panels to which I had been assigned will still be well-represented. And, I suspect, I will not really be missed. Though I will miss seeing author Kage Baker (and sister Kathleen), with whom I always meet, for lunch or dinner, whenever we attend the same convention. Kage and I go back a handful of years: I sent her an email on May 5, 2001, in which I introduced myself, sharing with her some of the books I had worked on for Golden Gryphon Press, and then expressed my enthusiasm for a collection of her Company stories. Much to my delight, that collection, Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, was published in hardcover in the fall of 2002. The book sold out its first print run of 3,000 copies in one month -- that's right, four weeks! -- had a second print run that same year, and was then released in a trade paperback edition in 2004. Working on this book was a pure joy, and I couldn't have asked for a more gracious, more knowledgeable author to work with. Thank you, Kage!

But none of this is really the purpose of this particular blog entry. What I want to do is share with you some articles I had written, but to do so requires a bit of history. (Those familiar with my previous blog posts/essays know that you're always going to get a "bit of history" -- but not a history lesson! -- in my blog entries.)

In early 2004, when I realized that I would most likely be freelancing for the foreseeable future, I began investigating additional resources and opportunities. This is when I learned about the California Writers Club ("The nation's oldest professional club for writers"), and discovered that the organization had a chapter in my area: South Bay Writers. I began attending the monthly meetings beginning in March 2004. The group met once a month at Harry's Hofbrau in San Jose. The club actually had a nice setup: the meetings were held in a large auditorium-like room at the rear of the restaurant. You checked in, paid your fee, and the registration person handed you a chit good for a set amount in the restaurant. Harry's is buffet style, so you would move through the food line, selecting your items, which would be served by a restaurant staff person; at the cash register, you turned in your chit and paid any difference (typically not more than two or three dollars, and that's only if you were a big eater and selected a dessert).

George Alec Effinger - Part Two

My apologies for such a long delay since my previous blog post. I enjoy this enough that I would love to do it full time, but it doesn't pay the bills, unfortunately. I've had two very big projects that I've been working on that have occupied these past two weeks. I've just completed copyediting The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (approximately 152,000 words) for Tachyon Publications, scheduled to be published in 2010. I also completed my copyediting review of novel Pennterra (approximately 135,000 words) by Judith Moffett; this is the first reprint title I acquired for Fantastic Books (an imprint of Warren Lapine's Wilder Publications). The book had to be scanned from the original hardcover, and there was a huge amount of copyediting work, plus the author has made some text changes to update the book from the mid-'80s to 2009. I'm now waiting on Judy to finish her review of the last portion of the book. My next project will be copyediting vampire anthology By Blood We Live (this one's a monster 245,000 words!) edited by John Joseph Adams for Night Shade Books. Now, on to the purpose of this blog post...

This is the second of three essays on author George Alec Effinger -- one for each of the three collections of his work that I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press, between 2001 and 2007. Part One of this series focused on Budayeen Nights.

Once Budayeen Nights was complete and in the hands of the typesetter, I began thinking about the next collection of Effinger's work. But now that George had passed away, I didn't have his input on this second book as I did for BN. All I had was my commitment to him to help bring his work back into print, and his email of August 30, 2001, in which he suggested a collection featuring "a hefty selection of my 200 stories, with introductions to each one, and calling it GAE: The White Album or GAE Live! At the Village Gate or . . . GAE: The Prairie Years." When George and I were communicating by email (albeit sporadically, due to his health and domicile issues) between 2001 and 2002, I had asked him to put together a list of the stories he would like to include in a "best of" collection, but time just wasn't on his side. And George wasn't kidding when he referred to his "200 stories" -- I know, as I've tried to track down a goodly portion of them! In fact, I probably have the largest "collection" of George Alec Effinger short fiction, only second to Barbara Hambly, who now has all of George's files and books in her possession.

The Concept
I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, considering it was six years ago, but if ye olde memory still serves me, I came up with the basic idea for the second collection during a telephone conversation with author George Zebrowski. Unlike archived email, I'm not able to replay and quote six-year-old telephone conversations, so memory will have to do. (Maybe AT&T has the conversation archived in some illegal-wiretapping file? GeorgeZ and I may have mentioned the words "Budayeen" or "Islamic" or "Arab" in the course of our conversations about GAE!)

I had worked with GeorgeZ on his short story collection entitled Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon Press, 2002). During that project, and for some time afterward, we spoke quite often on the telephone. George had unlimited long distance at the time and enjoyed calling and chatting with his many author friends and editors. It was the "author friends and editors" that gave me the idea. Since GAE was no longer with us, to select the stories for his next collection, I decided that I would ask his peers -- friends and fellow authors, and editors -- to select their favorite GAE story. And then, once they told me their favorite story, I would ask them -- as a tribute to GAE -- to write a mini introduction to the story. I wanted to first hook them on the story suggestion, and then seek their cooperation to write an intro. GeorgeZ wholeheartedly agreed to contribute, as did many others.

April End Links & Things

These links are from my previous tweets for the latter half of this 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.

• In July 2008, author Lynn Viehl's sixth Darkyn novel, Twilight Fall, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at #19. She promised her writer friends a few years ago that if one of her books ever made "the list" she would share all the information she was given by her publisher about the book "so writers could really see what it takes to get there." And here is that information, including her complete first royalty statement! Along with all 330 comments as of April 27, when the author turned off comments on this article. Great piece! (via @deanwesleysmith)


• From Publishers Weekly for 4/20/2009: Jonathan Karp’s article "This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing." Did you know that there is an illustrated gift book available entitled A History of Cannibalism? Obviously something we all need to buy for those on our holiday list who are difficult to please. (via @RickKlaw, @ColleenLindsay, and @sarahw)


• Self-Publishing Review has an excellent interview with Carol Buchanan, author of the self-published God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, which won the 2009 SPUR Award (Western Writers of America) for best first novel. And she did it all, according to the interview, for the paltry sum of $600.00. [See my "Mid-April Links & Things" for more information on this book and the SPUR Awards.]


• Author Jay Lake on Andrew's Fox's The Good Humor Man, Or Calorie 3501 (Tachyon Publications, and edited by yours truly): "The jacket copy compares it to Fahrenheit 451, but I'll go with a blend of Don Quixote and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
  
  An update today: The Good Humor Man has received a starred review in Booklist, for May 15, 2009 -- but there is no need to wait: you can read the starred review now.


• Sarah Weinman, in her blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, shares with us a publisher's letter to booksellers that was included in an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) for James Ellroy's novel Blood's a Rover. The letter itself is from the author; here's an excerpt: "Knopf will drop this atom bomb of a book on you September 22. Your job is to groove it and grok its groin-grabbing gravity between now and then.... The novel covers 1968-1972. It's a baaaaaad-ass historical romance -- huge in scope, deep in its exploration of the era, filled with my trademark craaaaazy shit, and suffused with a heightened sense of belief and the corollaries of political conversation and revolution." You need to read this letter!


• I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the passing of author Ken Rand on April 21; I only knew Ken virtually, but his emails always reflected his kind heart. He sent me a submission query in October 2006 for his novel A Cold Day in Hell, but unfortunately, I had already given notice, so to speak, at Golden Gryphon Press, and at the time I wasn't acquiring for any other publishers. The book was finally published this February by Norilana Books, so I'm pleased that Ken got to see the book in print. Ken is also the author of a wonderful chapbook on self-editing entitled The 10% Solution, from Fairwood Press, who also published a number of Ken's nonfiction and short story collections. Fairwood Press Publisher Patrick Swenson posted some heartfelt memories of Ken Rand, along with a wonderful photograph; lots of readers comment, too.
  

Fantastic Books Acquisitions

In a previous blog post I announced my new working relationship with Warren Lapine and his imprint Fantastic Books. Well, since that annoucement was released to the press on February 3, I just wanted you to know that I haven't been resting on my laurels (what a ridiculous phrase -- this particular genus of evergreen contains black berries, not something I would choose to rest on!).

Here is a list of titles, and authors (in alphabetical order), that I have acquired reprint rights to for Fantastic Books:

Paul Di Filippo
Fuzzy Dice

Judith Moffett
Pennterra

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The White Mists of Power
Facade
Heart Readers
Traitors
Sins of the Blood
The Devil's Churn
The Fey #1: Sacrifice
The Fey #2: Changeling
The Fey #3: Rival
The Fey #4: Resistance
The Fey #5: Victory
Alien Influences

Dean Wesley Smith
Laying the Music To Rest

In addition to these authors, I am also in talks with four others, who shall remain nameless until (hopefully) contracts are signed.

Our goal at Fantastic Books is to help authors make their out-of-print backlist available once again, so that the authors generate some income from the sale of their titles (whereas authors make nothing from the used book market).

I'm looking for OOP backlist genre fiction, preferably novels, but I will also consider collections (especially if you have been recognized for your short fiction) and even previously unpublished fiction. If you are an author and have out-of-print work that you would like to see in print again -- or new fiction in search of a POD publisher -- please do contact me.

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Rightly Reconsidering (Book) Reviews

Are book reviews (and by default, book reviewers) so sacrosanct as to be above reproach?

Authors -- and yes, editors and publishers as well -- are taught at a very young age in their professional careers to ignore reviews, to not take them personally, to turn the other cheek, so to speak. And why is that? Why can't we respond to reviews?

Because we will give the impression that we are unprofessional, that we are whiners. At least that's what our peers -- and possibly readers of the review -- may think. But from our own perspective, we also have to worry that we'll piss off the reviewer by our response, and then that reviewer will take it out on us a hundredfold in the next review, if in fact there even is a next review. And then others may not want to review our work for fear of receiving such a response as well. And as Cheryl Morgan (a book reviewer and critic) just pointed out to me: "...if an author challenges a review, his fans will go after the reviewer, whether he wants them to or not."

Reviews/reviewers and authors are sort of like the separation between Church and State. Yet the incoming president takes the oath of office with his hand upon a Bible; and the coin of the realm all proclaim "In God We Trust."

So where does that leave us?

Some authors I know truly don't care about reviews, reviewers, or what others think of their stories. Once they've completed a work of fiction and it's been accepted by the editor, they then move on to the next project and never look back. While other authors are deeply concerned -- and affected -- by reviews and what others think of their fiction.

I worked with an author on her short fiction collection, and after the book was published we stayed in contact with one another for a bit. The following year her next novel was published, and it was reviewed in Locus magazine -- a mediocre review at best, but at least it wasn't blatantly negative. (Locus, though, doesn't typically publish blatantly negative reviews; I assume if the book is that bad, they simply choose not to review it, so a mediocre review in Locus, when all is said and done, is definitely not a good review.) What upset the author the most, however, was that the reviewer missed a key element of the story -- and that key element would have explained the reviewer's primary issue with the novel (and maybe then the review wouldn't have been mediocre). Locus, at the time, was considered a highly influential publication (though not so much anymore, now that we are solidly in the digital age, and readers, book buyers, and book collectors get the majority of their information and reviews online), so even a mediocre review could have a strong, negative sales effect on a book. But we'll never know, will we: missed opportunities -- aka sales -- cannot be measured.

But the question(s) remains: Did the reviewer blow it big time by missing that key element of the story? Or, did the author -- and, let's be honest, the book's editor shares responsibility in this as well -- blow it big time by not communicating that key element more effectively to the reader/reviewer? If every review of the novel contained this same "omission," then yes, we could agree that the fault lies with the author, and the author's editor. But if only one review were guilty of this oversight, then the finger would indeed point to the reviewer. If the review was on Joe's Friendly Neighborhood blog, then I don't think the author (and editor and publisher) would be particularly concerned; but when that mediocre review shows up in the Washington Post Book World or Publishers Weekly (before Reed Business Information tried to sell the publication, and, to reduce costs, began paying freelance reviewers $25.00 per review; read more about PW's freelance fees), then we know sales will most likely be affected.

Unfortunately, given the Church and State dichotomy, the author has no recourse but to grin and bear it -- or to hit his [the generic use of "his," implying both male and female authors] head against the wall and scream, if he tends to not be the silent type.

And yet, I'm encountering more and more reviews of late where the reviewer just doesn't seem to get it! Why is that? [Notice I keep asking this same question a lot.] Is it the reviewer's lack of experience and knowledge in the genre? It's difficult to say, unless one knows the reviewer personally, or the reviewer provides a professional bio alongside the review. And all of this places even more pressure on the author who cares about what others say of his work.

Here's my take on the three main issues with genre reviews; they are like the plague, and they are spreading...

Mid-April Links & Things

These links are from my previous tweets so far this 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 originally planned to post "Links & Things" just once each month, but there have been so many (too many!) links that I've accumulated up to this point in April -- 18 so far -- that I wanted to post these now before the number became too overwhelming.

• Carol A. Buchanan's self-published novel God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana (BookSurge LLC) wins a major literary award: the 2009 Western Writers of America SPUR Award for best first novel. Details are available in Self-Publishing Review; and you can read further on the 2009 SPUR Awards.
  
  The SPR piece poses these questions and comments: Where was Amazon.com? BookSurge is owned by Amazon, yet until Ms. Buchanan posted her blog entry about the award on Amazon, there was no mention anywhere of the book having won this award. Isn't Amazon in the business of selling books?


• Writing Forward blog: "18 Do-it-Yourself Proofreading Tips." (courtesy of @nickdaws)


• Charlie Jane Anders on io9 writes: "What's the Difference Between Story and Plot?" with quotes from Samuel Delany and Connie Willis. The article is interspersed with wonderful cover art from Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine. And there's a lot of reader feedback in the "Comments" section, too.


• Author Angela Slatter blogs about "Stray Thoughts on Long Sentences," quoting quite nicely from works by "Captain" Jeff VanderMeer. One of her concluding comments, which is a personal favorite of mine as well, is: "...it's fine to break the rules, to do something new, but man, shouldn't you know what the rules are first?" (via SFSignal.com)
  

George Alec Effinger

This is part one of a planned three-part blog posting on author George Alec Effinger, one part pertaining to each of the three volumes of his work that I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press. In this first part, I'd like to step you through my correspondence with George leading up to the publication of Budayeen Nights, the first collection, published in hardcover in 2003 and reprinted in trade paperback this past September.

I've always been a fan of George Alec Effinger's work (as if you couldn't tell from reading my previous blog entries). His Budayeen novels (When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, and The Exile Kiss) did indeed impress me, but I was more captivated with his short fiction: the subtlety of his writing, his sardonic wit, his very unique craft and range. In my opinion, George is (was) one of the most underrated and underappreciated authors within the science fiction and fantasy genre, and much of his lack of notoriety was due to his chronic illness, which affected his output over the years. By 2001, when I first made contact with George, I believe all of his published work was out of print, though all were obviously still available through the used book market. As an acquisitions editor with Golden Gryphon Press, from 1999 through 2007, I was finally in a position to do something about bringing attention to his work once again.

I knew that George surfed the Usenet groups and thus I was able to track him down in this fashion. Between late July 2001 and early April 2002, I received a total of eleven emails from George. I probably sent him three times as many in return, but I was grateful to have received the few emails from him that I did. At the time, I knew somewhat of George's medical problems and financial difficulties; what I didn't know is that, because of past due medical bills, a local (New Orleans) hospital had threatened ownership of George's intellectual property in order to recoup their expenses. Because of this, for a number of years, George only wrote stories for themed anthologies so that he would at least have some income, while refusing to write any further work involving his own characters and worlds. He should have written the fourth Budayeen novel, continuing the tale of Marîd Audran -- it's what his fans and readers were clamoring for, and the only real source of income before him -- but George didn't want the hospital's lawyers to become any wealthier off of his work, and so he continued his "for hire" writing. Fortunately, the legal case was dropped when the lawyers failed to appear for a court hearing, and George finally got his life -- and his characters -- back. But the damage was done; the best writing years of George's life were now behind him, as I would soon learn.

In my first email to George, I introduced myself and provided some details on books that I had previously edited, and then I presented a couple ideas to him. George's response, on July 31, 2001, was very brief but to the point; he wrote: "I am flattered by both your suggestions. I've been frustrated by how the whole body of my 30-years' work has already disappeared. Please let me know how I can help you in your projects."

I was so excited, I responded that very same day, but it was another month, on August 30, before I received a reply. George suggested a collection featuring "a hefty selection of my 200 stories, with introductions to each one, and calling it GAE: The White Album or GAE Live! At the Village Gate or . . . GAE: The Prairie Years." I again responded immediately, but a number of months went by with no word from George. In fact, I had to go through another individual in New Orleans who tracked George down and told him that he needed to contact me. I learned much later that during these months George's health and housing issues had once again returned to impact the quality of his life; he had no regular Internet access because he was being shuffled from one residence to another.

Finally, on February 25, 2002, I received an email from George. He informed me that he's "online regularly now and back to work, too," and concluded his brief email with: "Let's get to work! I could use... a good project to work on, and something to put out so that people will realize I'm still around and kicking. Typing, I mean." Even in the few short sentences contained within this communication, I could sense his new-found energy, and I was anxious to get to work on a project with him as well. Earlier, George had also suggested a collection of his Budayeen stories, and since I felt these stories had the most commercial potential, given the continued popularity of his Budayeen novels, this was the book we began work on first.

March Links & Things

These links are from my previous tweets over the past month. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail. 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.

PublishingCentral.com – a hub for all things publishing: Associations, Bookbinding, Careers, Copyrights, Distribution, Editorial, Indexing, Libraries, Literary Agents, Printing, Publishing, and much, much more – for book, audiobook, magazine, newsletter, e-book, and e-zine publishing.

From the blogdoctor.me: an article on how to "upload" files (other than image and video files) to your Blogger blog. [Note: the article recommends setting up a Google Pages account, but Google has recently announced that they are no longer accepting new accounts; so, read the "Comments" section in this article, in which the author recommends a MediaFire.com account in place of Google Pages.]

Author Tobias Buckell's book on writing, A Draft in Progress, will be published in segments online; he’s using previous blog posts as the basis for the book. The Introduction and Chapter One are currently available.

Courtesy of Gwenda Bond: The Second Pass -- a new website that reviews both old and new books. Check it out, and you can sign up for their e-newsletter.

Courtesy of Matt Staggs: Mississippi's Clarion Ledger for March 12 has a piece on MidSouthCon, March 20-22; mention is made of Andrew Fox's new book, The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501.

Copyediting Par Excellence

I attended MidSouthCon near Memphis earlier this month, to help launch and promote Andrew Fox's new novel, The Good Humor Man from Tachyon Publications. MidSouthCon planned a "writers track" this year, and the programming staff asked if I would do a workshop, lasting one and a half hours (in addition to a few other panels). I agreed, and then had to think of an appropriate subject. Something that author Mark Teppo had said, when he and I were laying the ground rules for working together on his novel Lightbreaker last year, came to mind. I edit on hardcopy -- that's just how I work; however, when I work directly with an author, I then re-enter all my edits and copyedits from the hardcopy into the author's formatted manuscript file using MS Word's Change Tracking; with Change Tracking the author can easily see both the before and after, and I can enter comment boxes where needed as well. Consequently there is no hardcopy to photocopy and mail (and thus no added expense); the author never sees my hardcopy, only the marked-up e-file. When I explained the process to Mark and asked if he was okay with this, he responded: Track Changes is perfect, and I’m glad that I don’t have to actually go figure out what copyediting marks are. :) [The smiley face was included in Mark's response!] [Note: more blogging to come on Mark Teppo's Lightbreaker, tentatively scheduled for publication from Night Shade Books on April 20.]

So, for MidSouthCon, I proposed a workshop entitled "Learn Copyeditting four Fun and Proft" (typos intentional), with the following description:

You've just received the marked-up galleys of your novel from the publisher. You have less than a week to review these pages and provide feedback. There's so much red ink on the galleys that it looks like the copyeditor was hideously attacked during the editing process! Just what do all those red lines and characters mean?

I created a three-part, sixty-five-page computer presentation, that included ten hands-on exercises for the workshop participants, along with real examples taken directly from the books I have edited over the years -- all of this, as it turned out, for four and a half people (the "one-half" being the person who arrived a half-hour late and left a half-hour early). That was the extent of my workshop participants. So, I thought that I would salvage some of the work I put into this workshop by sharing the finer points of my discussion with readers of this blog.

The Fermi Paradox

Science fiction author and scientist Geoffrey A. Landis writes:

"The galaxy contains roughly a hundred billion stars. If even a very small fraction of these have planets which develop technological civilizations, there must be a very large number of such civilizations. If any of these civilizations produce cultures which colonize over interstellar distances, even at a small fraction of the speed of light, the galaxy should have been completely colonized in no more than a few million years. Since the galaxy is billions of years old, Earth should have been visited and colonized long ago... The absence of any evidence for such visits is the Fermi paradox."

This excerpt is from an article entitled "The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory," published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1998, which Landis later presented at the NASA Symposium "Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace" in 1993. The full article is available on the author's website.

I mention this article by way of my own introduction -- just in case you are unfamiliar with the term Fermi Paradox: I am pleased to announce that co-editor Nick Gevers and I have sold Fermi Paradox-themed original anthology, Is Anybody Out There? to Daw Books via Martin H. Greenberg's Tekno Books, for publication in 2010.

Hopefully you will recognize the name of my co-editor, Nick Gevers: he has had a regular short-fiction review column in Locus magazine since 2001; he has written reviews and literary criticism for the Washington Post Book World and the New York Review of Science Fiction, among many other venues. Nick is also an editor for British indie publisher PS Publishing; and, he has had two original anthologies published so far this year: Other Earths (with Jay Lake, Daw Books) and Steampunk! (Solaris Books).

This week Nick and I sent out our first round of formal invitations to authors (we've received only one decline so far!) and we're excitedly awaiting the influx of incredibly fine short stories in the weeks and months ahead. Here's an excerpt from the "pitch" we sent to our authors:

Why is it that, in such a vast cosmos, with hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone, and no doubt billions of Earth-like planets orbiting them, we have found no evidence of intelligent alien life? No evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth (other than discredited UFO mythology), no detectable signals in all our SETI searches with radio telescopes... So: we’re asking for entertaining stories that explore explanations for this enigma, looking seriously or comically at solutions to Fermi’s question. Is intelligent life a fluke, arising only once or twice in the universe’s long history? Does intelligence arise frequently, but with gulfs of time and distance keeping technological civilizations irretrievably apart? Do such civilizations inevitably implode or self-destruct within a few hundred years? Is our definition of intelligence fatally subjective? Are aliens among us right now, unseen? Are there aliens everywhere, but determined not to let us notice them? These, or other hypotheses, no matter how unlikely, should inform contributions to Is Anybody Out There?

I'm Going to Graceland...

Graceland / In Memphis, Tennessee...

Actually, I'll only be at Graceland in spirit. I will be in Memphis, however, attending MidSouthCon next weekend, March 21-22. Joining me at the convention will be two of Tachyon Publications's finest: author Andrew Fox and publicist Matt Staggs (of Deep Eight LLC). We'll be in Memphis to launch Andrew's new novel, The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501. Where else, but Memphis, would we have a book launch in which one of the "characters" in the novel is Elvis (well, not actually Elvis, per se, but a part of him!), and one of the major secondary characters throughout the story (beginning with Chapter 8) is Daniel Swaggart, Associate Director for Acquisitions and Exhibits for Graceland? [Note: I previously blogged about this book on Thursday, February 19; scroll down to read this earlier post.]

The official book launch is on Saturday (March 21) at 9:00 PM in the Chestnut Room. If you're attending MidSouthCon, please do join us for this program event at which Andrew, Matt, and I will converse most eloquently, and at length, on how The Good Humor Man came to be. There are definitely some tales to be told here. (And I believe Glen Cook, in the dealers room, will have copies of the book available for sale during the convention.)

Before I go any further, I would like to thank some of the staff of MidSouthCon -- Dan Gamber, Eric Groff, and Carlin Stuart -- for their most gracious assistance in helping us schedule this event, as well as their help with all of my programming and programming requirements. I'm looking forward to a great weekend, a rewarding weekend, and most likely an exhausting weekend, too.

February-Early March Links and Things

These links are from my previous tweets over the past month. I've listed them here, all in one post, and with additional detail. I wanted to do this -- and will continue to do so in the future -- so that I 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.

February 12: Self-Publishing Review interviews Tessa Dick, Philip K. Dick's last (fifth) wife, who has reworked and self-published The Owl in Daylight, the novel PKD was working on when he died. This is an honest interview, with comments about Tessa's relationship with her husband, how she wrote the book, and her experience with the New York publishing machine.

February 27: (courtesy of boingboing.net) Herdict is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; it is a browser plug-in that detects & reports net censorship.

February 27: " 'Blade Runner meets Casablanca written by Nelson Algren' would be the Hollywood pitch for Budayeen Nights, a collection of stories by the late George Alec Effinger. But there's much more to these hard-boiled, lemon-scented tales." A great io9 review of Budayeen Nights, which was recently released in trade paperback by Golden Gryphon Press. I worked with GAE on this book, but, sadly, he passed away before the book saw print.

February: Friend and author Bruce McAllister has published the McAllister Coaching newsletter: "Our goal is to provide information, advice and resources helpful to short story writers and novelists, non-fiction writers of all lengths (articles, columns and books), screenwriters, and poets." Check out the first issue, and then make your way to the "Bio" page and sign up.

March 1: The Hartford Courant in an article entitled "Independent Bands, Writers Perceived Differently", speaks to the "curious divide in the pop arts world over the do-it-yourself ethic and the different, and opposite, ways it applies to books and to music."

Potlatch 18 Convention: the Pros and Non-Pros

We've all attended conventions where many of the panel topics are so esoteric, so over-the-top, that not only is no preparation necessary by the guest participants, but the nature of the topic allows the panelists to spout nearly an hour's worth of endless drivel of whatever spontaneously comes to mind. Everyone has a good laugh and the panelists pat each other on the back for a job well done. Fifteen minutes later you have no recollection of anything said during the panel you just attended (certainly the panel wasn't worthy enough for note-taking), but you think you had a good time. If you're a serious, albeit non-pro writer, I would think you would want more (expect more) out of your convention attendance. Then there's "pay it forward" -- sharing your knowledge, your skills, your experiences good and bad, on the path to becoming a pro, with those who aren't quite there yet. But if skills and biz-related panels/workshops aren't included in the convention's programming, then does the con become little more than a mutual appreciation society for the pros?

February 28 and March 1 I attended Potlatch 18, the first Silicon Valley Potlatch, held at the Domain Hotel in Sunnyvale California. To quote from the program book: "Potlatch is a small literary-oriented convention with a single track of panels, and it's fundamentally about books and conversations." And, from the con's website: "Proceeds from Potlatch benefit Clarion West -- an intensive six-week workshop for writers who are preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy." This was my first Potlatch, and I was a bit sceptical, once I learned last October from the person in charge of programming that there are no panels or workshops on the craft of writing, no discussions on the business-end of writing (e.g. agents, publishers, self-promotion, etc.), which I thought odd given the relationship between Potlach and Clarion West.

Books Received

Following is a list of books I have received over the past few weeks; some were complimentary copies sent to me by the publisher because I had worked on the book, some were titles that I purchased myself, and others were part of submission packages from their respective authors:

John Davey, Blood and Souls, The Nephyrite Press, London, 2001.

John Davey, The Hole: A Teen Fable, The Nephyrite Press, London, 2008.

Andrew Fox, The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501, Advance Reader Copy, Tachyon Publications, 2009.

Joe Hill, Gunpowder, Signed Limited Edition, PS Publishing, 2008.

Steve Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, Free Press, 2009.

James Morrow, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, Tachyon Publications, 2009.

Mike Resnick, Kilimanjaro: A Fable of Utopia, Subterranean Press, Signed Limited Edition, 2008.

Alastair Reynolds, The Six Directions of Space, Subterranean Press, Signed Limited Edition, 2008.

Dan Simmons, Drood, Little, Brown & Company, New York, 2009.

Andrew Fox and The Good Humor Man

A very welcome surprise arrived in the mail today: the Advance Reader Copy of Andrew Fox's new novel, The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501 -- from here on to be referred to as simply GHM (but don't let the simplicity of these three letters detract from the quality of this very fine novel).

Andy emailed me in January 2008, with the subject line: "A Novel Which May Perk Your Interest." And indeed it did! In this novel, the entire health of the world is at stake, but there is just enough wit to take the edge off. To use a well-worn cliché, this book has everything: a Middle Eastern assassin, gun-toting women, high-speed chases, pop culture excesses, mystery, romance, and most important of all -- Elvis Presley! (Elvis himself isn't actually in the novel, but let's just say that part of him is!) The story line moves from Los Angeles, to Memphis, to New Orleans, to Tampa, and finally to -- where else? -- Las Vegas! The story also deals with such issues as government-sponsored health care, anti-obesity laws, elderly dementia, agri-cloning, and body image. Have I left anything out? (Actually, what's left?)

Andy, along with his agent Denise Dumars (of the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency), had been trying to find a home for GHM for quite a while. A number of editors liked the novel but couldn't figure out how to market it, or they felt it was too over-the-top, or they didn't like the humor (or they were really worried their boss -- or his/her boss -- wouldn't like it), ad nauseam. As for me, the "serious yet sardonic" style of the writing reminded me of the work of both Terry Bisson and James Morrow, and thus Tachyon Publications, who regularly publish these two authors, immediately came to mind. I contacted publisher Jacob Weisman, and told him about the novel. To make a long story short, Jacob acquired GHM, I edited it (along with a great effort by the author himself), and now we have the actual book.

The Good Humor Man is a postmodern Fahrenheit 451, with a dash of Carl Hiaasen, that dares to ask the question: Can Elvis save the world sixty-four years after his death?

The Very Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine

I received two very large boxes this week. The first box, from Jill Roberts at Tachyon Publications, contained a whopping 611-page manuscript. The second box, from F&SF Magazine publisher and editor Gordon Van Gelder, contained a stack of back issues (the oldest being June 1966) and three different, old F&SF anthologies (the oldest dated 1953), along with a couple other books and photocopies. And a recent email from Gordon stated that he still needed to send me a few more issues.

As you may have surmised, all of this stuff was sent to me because for my next project...

I will be copyediting the anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder for Tachyon Publications. This book is so new -- literally -- that it hasn't even been mentioned as yet on the publisher's web site. So does that mean you've heard it hear first? Maybe...

It has been a very long time since a 600-plus page manuscript has crossed my desk. But the most enjoyable part of a job like this is that I get to read all this wonderful "very best of" F&SF fiction, and get paid for doing so! Ya gotta love it! (Of course, I also have to catch all the typos, missing punctuation, scanning errors, etc. while reading all this great fiction.)

Warren Lapine and Fantastic Books

After a two-year hiatus, editor and publisher Warren Lapine (formerly of DNA Publications) has returned to genre publishing. You can read the full press release courtesy of Ian Randal Strock on SFScope. What I respect most about Lapine's return is that he is taking care of previous business (which legally he is not required to do), and making good on money owed and subscriptions cancelled with the demise of DNA Publications. I bring all of this to your intention because of my new working relationship with Warren Lapine; here is the press release that Warren sent out:

Wilder Publications is pleased and excited to announce that Marty Halpern has accepted a position as a freelance Acquisitions Editor for Wilder Publications genre imprint, Fantastic Books. Marty brings close to a decade of editorial experience with him. He has twice been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, bringing the number of World Fantasy Award nominees currently on staff to two. Books edited by Marty have won the prestigious Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, and have been selected to Publishers Weekly's Best of the Year List.

So what does this mean for you, the author?

I am currently acquiring out-of-print backlist titles -- sf, fantasy, horror, slipstream, etc. If you have an oop book that you would like to make available to today's readers, so that they don't have to search the used bookstores for a copy (the purchase of which doesn't make you, the author, any money), then please do contact me. Please contact me personally, not by leaving a comment here. My email addy is marty dot halpern at gmail dot com. I would be open, however, to responding to any general comments posted here.

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Welcome to More Red Ink

I've been debating whether or not to actually begin blogging for a number of months now -- the primary point of contention being the amount of time involved to blog consistently, and to blog with intent/content. Regardless, here I am!

I first want to thank author Bruce McAllister (whose first short fiction collection, The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories (2007), I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press) for suggesting the blog title "More Red Ink." It's an intriguing title to use in these current economic conditions, when "more red ink" implies yet another financial loss to one's bottom line. With the extreme hit all of our retirement savings have taken over the past year (and which will unfortunately continue through this year), well, Warren Zevon's words, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," take on greater significance for most of us, in that we'll all have to continue working 'til we drop, with no retirement in sight. My intent, however, with this blog title, is that "more red ink" potentially improves the bottom line, so to speak, of any particular written work in which I am involved. But that's really for the authors and the publishers to judge.

I also wish to thank author Jeffrey Ford for allowing me to use his "Marty/Moses and God" quote in the header -- even though Jeff specifically expressed that it not be used in the header. Sorry, Jeff -- really! -- but this is where the quote belongs.

I first met Jeff at the 2000 World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas. I attended his reading, during which he read the yet-to-be-published story "Creation" (which won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for best short story). I was so knocked out by this story that I went up to Jeff after the reading, introduced myself, and told him that I would like to publish his first short fiction collection. I was only familiar with about four of Jeff's other stories, but after hearing "Creation" I knew that he was a writer to watch, and I wanted to be the editor to snag his first collection. It took a number of months for the collection to come together (Jeff's NY publisher had "first look," so we had to wait for the publisher to pass on the collection), and The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories was published by Golden Gryphon in 2002; it won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for best single-author collection. For Jeff, that made two World Fantasy Awards in the same year: matching bookends!

So, welcome to "More Red Ink"!