February Links & Things

I back up my working data automatically every half hour to a USB drive; specific files and folders (all working data) are backed up nightly to a stand-alone external drive; and the entire "My Computer" (essentially my entire PC) gets backed up to that same external drive once a week. Well, during my weekly backup I have begun to receive bad sector errors, so I ran a disk check upon startup Saturday morning and received four different "File record segment is unreadable" error messages. Disk check fixed the errors so that I was able to then complete the "My Computer" backup, but I'm afraid my hard drive is headed for HDD hell. I have a couple projects that I hope to complete within the next two days, and then I suspect I'll have to replace the hard drive and reinstall the entire "My Computer," and hope that there hasn't been too great a loss of data due to those unreadable file records. Sigh....

Following are my links and such for the month of February. 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.

• Recent reviews of books from two different authors with whom I worked as editor:
  
  Canadian author Nathalie Mallet's second book in a series has recently been published by Night Shade Books. Colleen Cahill, in her review on SFRevu, writes: "In her first book, The Princes of the Golden Cage [2007], Nathalie Mallet took a pass at fairy tales and brought us a new version, with the Prince being locked away rather than the Princess. In her second book about Prince Amir, The King's Daughters [2009], we are again in a medieval fantasy setting, but this time we move from the Arabian Nights to a North Eastern European arena. The good news is Mallet continues to bring us a piece full of fascinating characters and intriguing plots, all presented in a compelling style; the bad news (for Amir) is that while the Prince might be out of the cage, life is not getting any easier.... This book is a good read for fans of medieval fantasy, especially those who want something that does not follow the standard plot. You need not have read the earlier work to enjoy this book, but I recommend both of them. On a cold winter's night, you can't do better than snuggling in with The King's Daughters."
  
  And...Mark Teppo's Heartland, the second book in The Codex of Souls, also from Night Shade Books, is reviewed by @MadHatterReview: "Teppo doesn't suffer the sophomore slump at all with Heartland. In fact, the same level of cleverness and knowledge of the occult still clings to Teppo's prose as this man is a knowledge bucket of the arcane and manages to make it fresh and undaunting.... The Codex of Souls is without a doubt one of the most original Urban Fantasy series going right now. It has stepped away from the pack and embraced a different type of magic and a very different sensibility worth checking out."
  
  You can read my earlier blog post, entitled "Mark Teppo's Codex of Souls Seeks the Light," on working with Mark on The Codex of Souls series.



• Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, writes a sharp and critical analysis -- nay, a rebuke -- of the literary magazine, its writers, and the colleges and universities that sponsor them: "Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies. In short, no one is reading all this newly produced literature -- not even the writers themselves.... To pull out of this tailspin, writers and their patrons both will have to make some necessary changes -- and quick.... young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers. I'm not calling for more pundits -- God knows we've got plenty. I'm saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their work on the line. Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read." Bravo! As of this writing, there are more than 120 comments. (via @Catherine_Asaro)



• As a follow-on to the above link on the demise of literary journals, is this article (rant?) in the Los Angeles Times Book Section from Dani Shapiro, guest editor for the anthology Best New American Voices 2010, the latest volume in a long-running series, which is coming to an end because the publisher can no longer justify its publication due to declining sales. Shapiro criticizes MFA programs because "creative writing programs (not to mention the thousands more who attend literary festivals and conferences) do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans. I see it in their faces: the almost evangelical belief in the possibility of the instant score.... The emphasis is on publishing, not on creating. On being a writer, not on writing itself. The publishing industry -- always the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media -- has the same blockbuster-or-bust mentality of television networks and movie studios. There now exist only two possibilities: immediate and large-scale success, or none at all." If you've often heard other writers say (or have said this yourself, or at least thought it): "So many crappy novels get published. Why not mine?" -- then you need to read this piece.



• Author @JasonSanford blogs about a website he just discovered: "Selecting and aggregating content from the 'independent' publishing world, FictionDaily presents three new stories each day -- a short, a long, and a genre story. Excerpts of stories in each of these categories are presented without reference to the author's name, the title, or the story's publication. If you're interested, you click over to the original publisher to read the story.... To get a sense of the site's goals, I asked FictionDaily's editor David Backer a few questions." If you're into reading online short-fiction, but don't have the time to search out all the sites and stories, then let FictionDaily do the work for you. I think you'll be amazed as to just how much short fiction is being published online: I counted 54 magazines on the list, and that was only through titles beginning with numbers and the first three letters of the alphabet! And enjoy Sanford's mini interview with David Backer, too.

Kage Baker Redux

As a follow-up to my earlier tribute to author Kage Baker, her family has posted Kage's parting words to her readers on her website:

"I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind."

Kage's family promises to maintain the website and to continue posting news about her work. [To which I say, Thank you!]


And lastly, Stephanie Klose, Senior Editor/Reviews Coordinator for RT Book Reviews¹, emailed me on February 4 with the following request: "RT is putting together a short tribute to Kage for our April issue. Would you be willing to contribute a few sentences about her impact on the genre and/or on you as a reader? Our senior sci fi [sic] reviewer, Natalie Luhrs, sent me your blog post and I'd love to include some of your thoughts about Kage."

The email was time stamped 3:01 P.M. and my deadline was noon the following day, so I spent the remainder of that afternoon pulling together some additional thoughts about Kage. Today, however, I received this follow-up email from Stephanie: "I ended up not having room to use your tribute to Kage, but thanks again for sending it along -- it was a pleasure to read."

Therefore, I am going to take this opportunity to share with readers of this blog my "thoughts about Kage" that were originally intended for RT.

* * * * *

When I worked with Kage Baker, as her editor, on her short story collection Black Projects, White Knights (Golden Gryphon Press, 2002), I often had questions about unfamiliar words, or historical events and people. In the story "Lemuria Will Rise!" Mendoza finds a sprig of Oenothera hookeri ssp. sclatera. I was unable to find anything online about "ssp. sclatera," so I asked Kage about this (and others), specifically was it a real or made-up species. On November 4, 2001, she responded:

All are made up. There's a joke buried in the word "sclatera": the word Lemuria was originally coined by a nineteenth-century zoologist named Sclater as a term to describe a hypothetical land bridge that once existed in the Pacific region, possibly being the method by which lemurs had spread through the different ranges they inhabit. Mystically inclined people seized on the idea of the long-vanished land bridge and interpreted it as a sunken continent in the Pacific, complete with a civilization to rival that of Atlantis. Eventually someone pointed out to them that Sclater had invented the word Lemuria, after which they began calling it Mu... but there are still old editions of Rosicrucian books in the San Luis Obispo library, and they go into great detail about the amazing ancient Lemurians...

For me, it was such a joy to work with Kage; she had a vast knowledge and could twist that knowledge into ways unimaginable in her stories, as evidenced above. And she was quick to share that knowledge as well. Editing each story with Kage was a history lesson in and of itself. She is sorely missed.

Marty Halpern


---------------
Footnotes

¹ Just goes to show you how up-to-date I am: When did Romantic Times change its name to just RT -- and why? I notice that the domain name is still "romantictimes.com."

Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit

After joining Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint as an acquisitions editor¹, a bit less than a year ago, the first book I acquired for reprint was Judith Moffett's novel Pennterra. This was her first novel and had been out of print since 1993. In an email to Warren on February 27, 2009, in which I introduced Judy (virtually speaking, that is) to him, I described her as follows:

...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, and presented at the 1998 Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose held in Stockholm.

Now I know that when Judy reads this, she'll be all "Aw, shucks," and the like, but how many science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream -- hell, even mainstream fiction -- authors do you know with this kind of street cred? Just check out all her awards and recognitions on Wikipedia and then come back here and leave me a comment if you're not totally knocked out!

What influenced my decision to blog about Ms. Moffett and her fiction was a recent online review of Pennterra. The review is by Sam Kelly on a blog entitled Cold Iron and Rowan-Wood. But first, a bit about the novel itself: A group of Quakers colonize a planet -- Pennterra -- already inhabited by the alien hrossa. In order to live in peace and harmony with both the planet and the natives, the colonists are restricted to a single valley, and they must limit their population and forsake all heavy machinery in their building and farming. Not exactly what they had in mind when they left a devastated Earth for a new home amongst the stars. Without the use of machinery, the colonists' days are completely filled with exhausting, backbreaking work, and consequently they have had little time to study the hrossa -- until now. A small group of scientists are sent to live with, and study, the natives, and this is detailed in a large section of the novel through the use of field notes and personal journals; the hrossa have a very interesting set of sexual mores, which has a direct impact on the scientists themselves (sorry, no spoilers here). There is a particularly fine "first contact/coming-of-age" story arc involving the son of one the scientists. The main conflict arises in the novel when another colony ship arrives on the planet and these folks are not so inclined to limit and forsake.

Now, what makes Sam Kelly's review of Pennterra interesting is that he makes little mention of the aliens, but he does comment on the Quaker religion portrayed in the book: "Moffett does a good job of showing us how they find the nature of the planet out...making no distinctions between biological research, botanical studies, practical anthropology, and conversation between friends. At the same time, we see the characteristic painful Quaker honesty about themselves and their reactions to their work. The pacing of discovery is good, without playing I-know-something-you-don’t-know tricks on either reader or characters; it might have been good to have seen the author coming down less heavily on the Quaker side, but then I may well be seeing more of that than is there as a Quaker myself." [Note: I believe the reviewer is sensing more of the Quakerness of the story than a typical reader (myself) would.]

All of this, of course, is to encourage you to read Pennterra. Judy and I spent approximately two weeks copyediting the page proofs, discussing each and every correction during very lengthy (two to three hours) telephone conversations. The Fantastic Books edition of Pennterra is indeed the most accurate text of the novel and thus the author's preferred text. However, copies of earlier editions are available through secondary markets, or you can purchase the Fantastic Books edition directly from the FB website, or via Amazon or other booksellers. (And yes, I'm shilling books here; what can I say...)

January Links & Things

I spent a few hours the other day trying to tweak the code on my previous blog post so that it worked correctly with Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. The blog worked perfectly using IE, but not the other three browsers, which actually are used more than IE. I tried everything; I must have reviewed and tweaked the blog post code (seven printed pages) a half-dozen times, but I couldn't get the blog to list properly on those three browsers. I slept on it, and then tried a different kind of search the next day and discovered that the code I was using for the "jump" break (i.e. "Continue reading...") was obsolete; Blogger had updated the template code, unbeknownst to me. I deleted the old code I had entered, inserted the new jump code, and here we are. Would have been nice to have received something from Blogger proactively; instead I had to do a multitude of Google searches until I found the problem explained, along with its fix, in the Blogger Help forums. I sure could use those hours back!

Following are my links and such for the month of January. 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.

• In an earlier blog post, I wrote about my involvement in Andrew Fox's novel The Good Humor Man, Or, Calorie 3501 (Tachyon Publications, 2009). Unfortunately the book didn't get the attention that I felt it deserved. With the constant talk on the news, news-magazine programs, health-oriented websites and blogs, etc. on the alarming increase in obesity in this country, particularly childhood obesity, I thought that these folks would have eaten up this book! (Sorry, I couldn't resist...) Thankfully, io9 has published Chris Braak's thoughtful, and thought-provoking, review: Headline: "One Lipsuctionist's Wild Ride Through American Gluttony" -- "Fox's presentation of the Good Humor Movement -- the neo-fascist organization that, in order to preserve an overburdened healthcare system from the catastrophic expenses associated with obesity -- doesn't just seem frighteningly plausible; the way [liposuctionist Dr.] Schmalzberg describes it, it actually seems like kind of a good idea. The underlying intelligence of the novel is its recognition that, even in organizations whose actions are manifestly evil, the individual members of that organization imagine themselves to be doing good.... an intensely interesting, wild ride through a wickedly accurate depiction of the American psyche that, fortunately for all of us, doesn't bother hewing too closely to its ideological forebears. This is more than just a goofy reversal of Bradbury's classic [Fahrenheit 451], but a witty, incisive satire all on its own. By turns heartbreaking and mesmerizingly grotesque, The Good Humor Man is well worth the read."


• Another series of books that I had the pleasure to edit is Matthew Hughes's Henghis Hapthorn trilogy (Night Shade Books), which consists of Majestrum (2006), The Spiral Labyrinth (2007), and, finally, the just released Hespira. Henghis Hapthorn is a freelance discriminator (read: investigator/detective) in a world where the scientific method and technology are quickly losing ground to the emergence of "sympathetic association" (i.e. magic). It's a delightful series, which I have seen described as "Sherlock Holmes meets Jack Vance's Dying Earth." You can read Chapter 1 online, on the author's website, but be forewarned: the series builds upon itself beginning with the first book, so you really need to read the series in order. The Publishers Weekly starred review concludes with: "A droll narrative voice, dry humor and an alternate universe that's accessible without explicit exposition make this a winner."


• Author Philip K. Dick spent his final years in Southern California, specifically Orange County. Scott Timberg, for the LA Times on January 24, looks back at PKD's years in the OC, based on interviews with his ex-wives and comments from Tim Powers (which Powers gleaned from his journals). Some revealing content, particularly PKD's marital divorce advice to Powers (PKD was married and divorced five times). The article also touches on the events and paranoia that caused Phil to flee from Northern to Southern Cal, and his health issues, which affected his writing. (via @maudnewton)


• Author Jeff VanderMeer shares with us an excerpt from his recent publication Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer (Tachyon Publications) -- "Seven Points to Consider When Submitting Short Fiction": "1) Standard approaches are still the norm; 2) There are complexities to the term "highest paying market"; 3) Repurposing the public perception of your fiction may be important; 4) Pro rates do not necessarily mean an overall level of pro quality stories; 5) Breaking your standard submission cycle may teach you something new; 6) To a new writer, encouragement can be a kind of payment; and 7) Not every writer's career path is the same because not every writer's fiction is the same." For all the specifics, you'll just have to read Jeff's blog post. (via @ericrosenfield)


• If you think that publishers are looking for big fat wordy fantasy novels, think again. Lit agent @ColleenLindsay, of FinePrint Literary Management, has more than a few words to say on the subject of "word counts and novel length." It's an old post, but since Ms. Lindsay continues to see such abuses in the submission queries that she receives, she has retweeted this blog post yet again. Colleen writes: "If a contract calls for a book that is 100k words and you turn in one that is 130k, expect to go back and find a way to shave 30k words off that puppy before your manuscript is accepted. Remember that part of the payout schedule of an author's advance often dangles on that one important word: acceptance." The word counts are broken down into these areas: middle grade fiction, YA fiction, urban fantasy/paranormal romance, mysteries and crime fiction, mainstream fiction, and science fiction and fantasy. A must read. There are more than 65 comments posted that are also worth reading.


• But before you worry about word counts, you had best master the art of writing first! Caro Clarke points out "four faults" that all beginning writers make: "As an editor, I know when I am reading someone's first novel. I have nicknames for the four give-away faults beginners make: (1) Walk and Chew Gum (2) Furry Dice (3) Tea, Vicar? (4) Styrofoam. I see at least one of these in every manuscript where the author has not mastered the craft of writing before submitting his or her work. What are these four faults and, more importantly, how can you cure them?" If you want to know what these four faults are, and determine if you are guilty of them yourself, then you'll need to read this essay.

In the Company of Kage Baker

Update: January 31, 2010: Sadly, I have just learned that Kage Baker passed away this morning. My thoughts are with her sister Kathleen, her niece "Emma Rose," her extended family, friends, and readers. If I may borrow some words from Jeff VanderMeer: "I would like to think that this is not the end, that instead [Kage has] merely been assigned by The Company to some new mission." Regardless, rest in peace, Kage. I am so grateful for the time -- and the projects -- we've shared together.

**********

My friend, author Kage Baker, is extremely ill. I knew last year that Kage was ill, but it wasn't until we spoke together at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, California, over Halloween weekend -- Kage in a wheelchair while her sister Kathleen looked after her -- that I learned that the evil culprit was cancer. At the con, Kage informed me that she had surgery scheduled, but the prognosis wasn't as dire then as it had become by Christmas eve, when cancer had been found in Kage's brain.

Kage had chosen not to publicly announce her illness and, respecting her wishes, I kept this knowledge to myself. But that silence has now been broken with this announcement by Kage's caregiver and sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, in which she states: "If we are lucky, the therapies will win [Kage] a few months; if we are incredibly lucky, 6 months to a year. If she gets more than that, it will be a literal miracle...."

But then, isn't that what our genre is all about: miracles, both fictional and real?

Kathleen goes on to say: "[Kage] is not giving up, though, and neither -- obviously! -- am I. I have been her caregiver for 8 months now, and am not going to surrender as long as there is the smallest chance of her living through this."

What Kathleen is asking for is your support: "Please send cards, thoughts, prayers and all the healing energy and love you can!" You can send your prayers and thoughts via email to materkb@gmail.com and they will be printed and read to Kage immediately. Letters, notes, cards and anything else you can think of can be sent to her home:
Kage Baker
331 Stimson, Apt. B
Pismo Beach CA 93449

Back in 1997 I started hearing rumblings of a new time travel novel that was soon to be published -- a story about a group of immortals who traveled back in time, saving (read: salvaging) artifacts in the past for later "discovery" in the future. Sounds like a good thing, right? Saving pieces of the past so that they are not lost and thus can be appreciated by those in the future? Except that most of the saving was being done for future profit, and many of these immortal cyborgs -- and the masterminds behind them -- were not so virtuous, or, let's just say that things weren't so black and white as they initially appeared. The novel was In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker, and it was first published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in 1997. I purchased the UK hardcover edition because I didn't want to wait until the following year for the US Harcourt edition.

That group of time traveling immortals -- and the masterminds behind them -- became known as "The Company" -- officially Dr. Zeus Incorporated (or Jovian Integrated Systems, if you are familiar with the Alec Checkerfield stories) and, its Victorian-era precursor, the Gentlemen's Speculative Society. In the Garden of Iden was followed by Sky Coyote in 1999, Mendoza in Hollywood in 2000, and The Graveyard Game in 2001, all from publisher Harcourt.

Though I had read the first two novels, the one story that really made me take notice was novella "Son Observe the Time," originally published in the May 1999 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction and reprinted in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection, which is where I first read the story. The events in this story take place just before the 1909 San Francisco earthquake; living in the San Francisco Bay Area, earthquakes are near and dear to my heart. [We just had a 5-pointer about three weeks ago.] After reading this one story, I then tried to read all the "Company" short stories that I could find. In May 2001, I contacted Kage Baker via email about the possibility of a short story collection; at the time I was acquiring and editing for Golden Gryphon Press. Kage responded the very same day, stating that she was intrigued with my proposal and that she has forwarded my letter to her agent Linn Prentis¹; they would get back to me on this soon. On May 9 I received an email from Linn: "We are thrilled that you are interested in doing a Baker Company collection. Kage has put together a list [of stories] and we are checking it for possible conflicts." Linn went on to ask about terms and a possible publication date.

My plan was to publish the collection in time for the 2002 WorldCon, which would take place about six or so miles from my home, in downtown San Jose, August 29 through September 2 [my birthday and my anniversary!²]. And since Kage resided in Pismo Beach, about 190 or so miles south, this would allow her to hopefully attend the convention as well and help promote the book. That may sound like a lot of time -- May 2001 to August 2002 -- but that was typical for a Golden Gryphon Press book; much of the lead time had to do with scheduling certain aspects of the publication process to coincide with the distributor's (Independent Publishers Group) twice-yearly marketing catalog. Of course, the contents had to be determined, the selected reprint stories formatted and copyedited, the original stories formatted, edited, and copyedited, original cover art commissioned, ancillary material written, and so forth.

December Links & Things

Here's to a new year (with hopes that my regimen of antibiotics helps me feel a bit more human in a few days)! And to catch up, following are my links and such for the month of December. 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.

• Ah, the dream of spaceflight... Virgin Galactic has unveiled its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) -- "the world's first commercial manned spaceship.... Thousands of private astronauts will be heading to space once the testing and licensing is finished, with up to six passenger astronauts on each trip." Some great photos of this unique spacecraft. [Note: Well, there used to be some great photos on the Virgin site, but the original link I have no longer works, and the one link that I did find under "Press Releases" shows only one photo. The Virgin website sucks anyhow, since a search of the entire site for "Virgin Galactic" or "SpaceShipTwo" yields a "404" error page. Evidently their webmaster doesn't know how to code a search! Note the visible code at the end of the press release, too.]


• I mentioned in my last Links & Things post that every month there appears to be some type of blow up/controversy in the writing and publishing world, and this month is no exception. Canadian science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts (2007 Hugo Award finalist for novel Blindsight) was accosted, pepper sprayed, beaten, and jailed by US border guards on Tuesday, December 8, when he passed through the US-Canadian border on his way home from visiting friends in Nebraska. You can read the BoingBoing.net article, which is where I first heard of it, which links to Peter's own words on the incident. I met Peter at past ReaderCons and I cannot picture this man inflicting bodily harm on a uniformed border guard. Peter's assault charge on a federal officer is undoubtedly to cover their asses. A legal defense fund has been set up, because a) Peter is not a best-selling author, and b) such a defense, to avoid the potential of spending two years in prison, is going to be very costly. If you want to support Peter's efforts to fight these heinous charges, then please donate. If you're not personally into the legal issues and/or politics, then read Peter's Hugo Award-nominated Blindsight) -- available for free download on his website -- and then donate what you feel the novel is worth. Please donate via PayPal to this ID: donate@rifters.com.


• In other sad publishing news, PoynterOnline reported the demise of publications Kirkus Reviews and Editor & Publisher, by reprinting a letter from Greg Farrar, President of Nielsen Business Media, owners of the two periodicals. Kirkus has always been a tough nut to crack, so to speak; when my co-edited anthology Witpunk was reviewed in Kirkus I was absolutely thrilled; and to have the review end with the words "ringingly brilliant" made all the hassles I had to deal with while putting that anthology together seem inconsequential at best. Mediabistro.com's eBookNewser reported that the Twitterverse was all abuzz with the demise of these two publications: "Ron Charles (@roncharles) of The Washington Post sounded a note of regret for the loss of Kirkus's critical eye: 'Everytime we lose a rare independent voice we grow more dependent on publicists, authors' friends clogging blogs w praise'"
  

The Fermi Paradox Redux: Is Anybody Out There?

My blog post of March 18 -- entitled The Fermi Paradox -- detailed the genesis of the anthology Is Anybody Out There? that I am co-editing with Nick Gevers, to be published by Daw Books in June 2010. So far, it has been more than a two-year journey, and nearly three years will have passed by the time the book actually sees print.

In that initial post, I stated that Nick and I hoped to have the contents of the anthology determined by December -- which is, like, now! And, in fact, we have selected the stories to be included in the book. On December 13, I sent an email to all the authors with a listing of the contents. One of those authors posted the contents list on her LiveJournal, and then two other sites picked it up, and now I see that the information has spread from there -- so an appropriate web search over the past day or two would have yielded the results. But now that you are here, instead of there....

Submissions to this anthology were by invitation only; however, I think you will be surprised (and hopefully impressed in the end) with some of the "new" authors included in the anthology. We had 23 stories submitted, from which we chose 15 -- written by a total of 17 authors (two of the stories are collaborations). We also asked yet another well-known SF author to draft an introduction to round out the book.

But I'm going to keep you in suspense a wee bit longer while I mention a couple other items. Because of my involvement in this project, I occasionally receive links via email and Twitter for articles and such related to the Fermi Paradox. Recently @projectblackcat sent me a link to the January 2010 editorial in Sky & Telescope magazine. The editorial, entitled "Where Have All the Aliens Gone?" was written by Jacob Haqq-Misra (a Ph.D. candidate in meteorology and astrobiology at Penn State University) and Seth Baum (a Ph.D. candidate in geography at Penn State). The authors write: "If growth outstrips resources, human civilization may collapse. This could also explain the absence of extraterrestrials: despite the seeming vastness of the galaxy, perhaps exponential expansion is also unsustainable on a galactic scale." It's an excellent, albeit brief, editorial that tells us, in conclusion, that we had better "become responsible consumers and ensure our own long-term survival." The editorial is available via a PDF, and can be found on the last page of the file.

So this got me hooked on Sky & Telescope. The magazine has a new article online entitled "The Chance of Finding Aliens" by Govert Schilling (an astronomy writer in Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Alan M. MacRobert (senior editor of Sky & Telescope). It's a very lengthy (5 pages), detailed article, broken down into numerous sections. In one of those sections, the authors delve into -- and at great length -- each expression that comprises the Drake equation, which is used to calculate the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy:

The article gets quite technical discussing each of these expressions, with calculations, graphs, and postulations -- and I'll leave this part of the article to those of you who might find this interesting. But it is the last page of the article that really piqued my interest. Schilling and MacRobert write:

And here is perhaps the most important point of all: the Fermi paradox turns the definition of "optimist" versus "pessimist" on its head when it comes to life in the universe.

If star-traveling intelligences are extremely rare or nonexistent, despite the abundance of planets where life can begin, there must be some kind of "Great Filter" that prevents the emergence of interstellar colonists. Is the Great Filter something in our past, or our future? If we've already passed it – that is, if the filter is the origin of life, or the leap from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, or the leap from single-celled organisms to large multicellular animals, or from animal brains to human brains -- then the great test is behind us, and our way is open to spreading to the stars.

But if the Great Filter lies ahead of us -- for instance, if technological civilizations arise often but always destroy themselves -- then we are doomed. We will never get to the stars. Because (by definition) we are extremely unlikely to beat the odds that have already filtered out all who made it as far as we have now.

So, if there is in fact some "Great Filter," is it behind us? Are we simply holding ourselves back by not investing enough funds -- and thus effort and technology -- in human planetary travel? Or, is the "Great Filter" in front of us, and we are doomed to extinction because we will inevitably destroy ourselves -- either through war of one form or another, or through the unrepentant, excessive consumption of all our natural resources?

Charles Stross: On Her Majesty's Occult Service

In 2001, as an acquiring editor for Golden Gryphon Press, I proposed an idea to the publisher: a new line of signed and numbered, limited edition chapbooks. To which, after much discussion, the publisher agreed. I had already been in contact with Alastair Reynolds regarding a short fiction collection (which I ended up editing years later for Night Shade Books; see my lengthy blog post on the Reynolds collection) -- so I asked Al if he would like to submit a novella to launch our new limited edition chapbook series. And, much to my joy, Al agreed. He currently had other commitments, but he said he could begin work on a new novella shortly after the new year (2002). The end result was Turquoise Days, which premiered at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention. (I would like to share with you in detail how I met with Al in the lobby of his hotel in San Jose, California, the day before the start of the convention, after which I trucked up boxes of Turquoise Days to his hotel room, where we chatted at length as he signed 500-plus copies of the book. But I won't because this blog post, really, is about Charles Stross and his "Laundry Files.")

Around mid-2002, while Al and I were finalizing the edits and such on his novella, I began seeking out an author for the next title in this chapbook series. Howard Waldrop had already committed to writing a chapbook story -- what became A Better World's in Birth! -- and for those of you who know Howard, you'll understand when I say that it took a year for his story to be completed and published. So, in the interim, I was looking for another author and story. (I wasn't successful, but not for lack of trying; the Waldrop novelette was actually the second published chapbook in the series.)

One of the first authors who came to mind was Charles Stross. I had read quite a few of his stories, particularly "A Colder War" (Spectrum SF #3, August 2000; available online in its entirely on infinity plus¹), and I was hearing a great deal of buzz regarding his forthcoming novel, Singularity Sky², due from Ace Books in 2003. So, I emailed Charlie on August 2, 2002. In addition to introducing myself and Golden Gryphon Press, I promoted the new limited edition chapbook series and asked if he would consider submitting a story. I was aware that Charlie was scheduled to attend ConJosé, so I invited him to drop by the Golden Gryphon booth in the dealers room so that we could actually meet and chat a bit.

Charlie sent a reply that very same day:

"Firstly, I'm up to my eyeballs in work right now. I'm writing a series for Asimov's SF which will turn into a fix-up novel [Accelerando, Ace 2005], I'm working on book #2 of a contract for Ace [Iron Sunrise, 2004], and my agent is hoping to sell a tetralogy [Merchant Princes series] -- only one book of which is written so far! -- in the next couple of months. (Meaning, yet another big fat novel to write.) Therefore I almost certainly won't have time to write an original novella for you before March of next year.... However, if you're willing to settle for slightly-less-than-100%-original.... There's a second possibility, but this one is slightly offbeat. You may have seen my short novel "The Atrocity Archive", which Paul Fraser is currently serialising in Spectrum SF. It's 76,000 words long; he's running it in issues #7 through #9. Book rights to this short novel have not been sold; my agent is focusing on my SF work... [this is] a borderline horror/SF/thriller crossover... If you'd like to look at it I'd be happy to send you a copy and if necessary get [my agent] Caitlin Blasdell to talk to you about rights.... let's meet up and chat about things at ConJose."

It just so happened that I already had issues #1 through #8 of Spectrum SF, but issue #9, containing part three of "The Atrocity Archive," hadn't been published as yet. So, Charlie graciously sent me a file version of the complete novel for my reading pleasure. But what intrigued me even more so about "The Atrocity Archive" -- enough to request the full novel file from Charlie (remember, I hadn't yet read the final part 3) -- was Nick Gevers's review in the August 2002 issue of Locus Magazine. Nick concluded his review with the following paragraph:

"The climactic scenes of The Atrocity Archive -- battles in the snow beneath a galaxy of dying red suns -- form one of the most compelling and intellectually engaging narrative sequences in the SF canon, the logics of demonology and physics in astonishing tandem. Sequels are possible; they surely must come; but for the time being, the priority should simply be to see The Atrocity Archive published in proper book form after the limited availability of its serialization in Spectrum SF."

After reading that first sentence, re: "one of the most compelling and intellectually engaging narrative sequences in the SF canon," there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to be the one to acquire and publish this novel. However, I typically acquired books that were between 90,000 and 120,000 words, and Charlie had told me that "TAA" clocked in at about 76K words. So on August 19 [I know, I'm getting way ahead of myself, as this is after the WorldCon] I emailed Charlie and asked if he would be agreeable to writing an afterword -- I was thinking in terms of a two- or three-page afterword on the genesis of the novel; I also asked Charlie if he could recommend a fellow author to pen an introduction to the book. Charlie suggested Ken MacLeod for the introduction, and he also responded that "An afterword is possible." Fortunately, Ken agreed to contribute an introduction, and Charlie did indeed write an afterword -- a 5,550-word afterword entitled "Inside the Fear Factory," in which he made a case for the thriller novel as horror; he also wrote about British author Len Deighton, famous for his spy thrillers (e.g. The Ipcress File), and the influence behind the writing of "The Atrocity Archive."

But one thing still concerned me: in addition to an introduction and afterword, I felt the book still needed some new fiction; I told Charlie that I believed his hardcore fanbase/readers would have already obtained the three issues of Spectrum SF that contained the serialized "TAA." I wanted to be able to offer these folks something more than just the fine quality of a Golden Gryphon Press hardcover: preferably some new fiction. In his email response on August 19, Charlie made the following suggestion:

"Alternatively, can I interest you in a stand-alone novella about Bob, set not too long after the events of 'The Atrocity Archive'? I was going to write it for Spectrum SF, and would still like a chance to throw it at Paul, but if you insist on some 100% original content my arm can be twisted.³

Background: ...the novella, 'The Concrete Jungle', is a separate part of the story: it falls naturally between novels #1 and #2. It's about basilisks, the mystical significance of the Milton Keynes bicycle path network, Bob's evil scheming line manager, and what the British government is really spending money on in place of ballistic missile defense. 'The Concrete Jungle' is about 25% written, with a design length of 25,000 words, and was basically waiting for me to have an excuse -- and time -- to finish it."

Okay, before I go any further, for those of you not familiar with Charles Stross's Laundry Files, I guess a bit of an introduction is in order. From the dust jacket copy I wrote for The Atrocity Archives (note the plural from of "archives"; more about this in a bit), which was published in 2004:

In the world of "The Atrocity Archive," Alan Turing, the Father of Modern Computer Science, did in fact complete his theorem on "Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning." Turing's work paved the way for esoteric mathematical computations that, when carried out, had side effects that would leak through the platonic realm of pure mathematics underlying the structure of the Cosmos. Out there in the multiverse there were "listeners" -- and sometimes these listeners could be coerced into opening gates. Small gates through which minds could be transferred and, occasionally, large gates through which objects could be moved.

In 1945, Nazi Germany's Ahnenerbe-SS, in an attempt to escape the Allied onslaught, performed just such a summoning on the souls of more than six million. They opened a gate to an alternate universe through which the SS could move men and matériel. But their summoning brought forth more than the SS had bargained for -- an Evil, patiently waiting for countless eons, now poised to lunch on our galaxy, on our very own Earth.

The protagonist in these novels and stories is Bob Howard (not his real name; and I'll leave you to determine the origin of this alias) -- a geekish demonology hacker extraordinaire -- who works for a supersecret intelligence organization known as "the Laundry," formerly the Q Department in Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE). Whereas the SOE was officially disbanded in 1945, following World War II, the Laundry was secretly maintained and exists to this day. When Bob's not trying to save the world from unearthly horrors, he has time sheets to complete and field liaison meetings to attend. The Laundry Files are a unique mix of the British espionage thriller, Lovecraftian horrors, non-Euclidian mathematics, computer hackerdom, and Dilbert-style office management.

November Links & Things

I'll be offline throughout the Thanksgiving weekend -- and the following week I'll be finishing my current project. So, I decided to post this month's Links & Things now, as opposed to later.

About this current project: I'm editing/copyediting the forthcoming (third) "Bob Howard/Laundry" novel by Charles Stross, entitled The Fuller Memorandum, to be published by Ace Books next year. The first two titles in this series are The Atrocity Archives (2004) and The Jennifer Morgue (2006), which I had acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press. And thanks to Charlie Stross's recommendation, I am able to work on this third title as well. I'm on target to complete my work on this book next week, after which I hope to blog about how this project came about.

Until next post... Here are my links and such for the month of November. 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.

• For those of us who bemoaned the demise of Firefly on Fox seven years ago -- and must now content ourselves by watching the series on DVD -- the writers of ABC's Castle, which stars Nathan Fillion, gave a bit of a shout-out to Captain Mal Reynolds with this opening clip from the Halloween episode. This is just pure fun!


• And in the same spirit, here is Jimmy Fallon with a spot-on impersonation of 1970s Neil Young, singing "The Prince of Bel-Air." I am a die-hard Neil Young fan, and if I was just listening to the audio of this performance, I would swear it's the man himself. The only thing missing would be the myriad patches on Neil's/Jimmy's jeans. A wonderful performance.


• Every month there's always some big blowup in the world of writing and publishing; last month it was the new Federal Trade Commission guidelines, and this month it is the new Harlequin Horizons imprint. Essentially, Harlequin announced a new imprint for self-publishing. When they reject an author's submission -- a work that's not good enough to be published by the Harlequin name -- they will suggest/recommend the Horizons imprint through which the author can self-publish said book that wasn't good enough for Harlequin. Unfortunately, the author will pay to have this book self-published, get only 50% of the NET (not cover price) of each copy sold, and Harlequin makes all the rest of the money. In response, the Romance Writers of America (RWA) have dropped Harlequin from their "approved" publishers list. Jackie Kessler, an author of dark fantasy and paranormal romance ficition, has done a line-by-line breakdown of Harlequin's response in her current blog post; as of this writing there are more than 125 comments.
  
  Update: In an article in the San Francisco Examiner, Harlequin has announced that they will rename this self-publishing imprint, thus removing the Harlequin name. And, the Mystery Writers of America have also threatened sanctions against Harlequin, removing their name from MWA's list of approved publishers as well, if Harlequin does not respond to accusations by December 15.


• If you are a fan of cover art, web site io9.com presents "A History of Science Fiction Classics, Told in Book Covers." The books include 1984, Brave New World, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Fahrenheit 451, I, Robot, Neuromancer, Stranger in a Strange Land, and War of the Worlds, to name but half of the titles. From hardcover dust jackets to paperback covers, with a few foreign editions thrown in for good measure, the covers are all here. Some great cover art, to be sure.


• For all you Fantasy geeks: on SciFi Scanner author Mary Robinette Kowal (@MaryRobinette) talks about "The Eight Worst Anachronisms in Fantasy" movies. For example, in Kate and Leopold (2001), Leopold, Duke of Albany (Hugh Jackman) knows the plot for the opera La Boheme -- a play that didn't premier until 1896, yet the movie takes place in 1876. In King Arthur (2001) barbed wire is used, but it doesn't get invented until 1874. The comments provide additional examples. So, words of wisdom for all Fantasy writers: Do you homework! Fact-check!


• According to TheBookseller.com, "A group of US authors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, is bypassing the traditional publishing process by publishing direct on Amazon's Kindle and Sony's e-reader. Book View Press was founded earlier this year by members of Book View Café, a co-operative of 27 award-winning and bestselling authors." Other authors in the collective include Vonda McIntyre, Sarah Zettel, and Laura Ann Gilman. In fact, Ms. McIntyre is serializing her novel Superluminal (Houghton Mifflin, 1983) on Book View Café, with free weekly downloads. Chapters 1 through 11 are currently available.

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).

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.

* * *

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!

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.

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.