Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #6

Blogger and Internet Explorer 8 (my browser of choice) were not playing together nicely for nearly all of Friday, so this blog post is a day later than I had anticipated. However, I'm still on target to complete 26 blog posts, at one post per week, to introduce the 26 stories to be included in my Alien Contact anthology, forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November. My rather loose introduction to this anthology was posted on April 25 and would be a good place to start, if you are new to this blog.

"I Am the Doorway" by Stephen King

Night Shift, I believe, was Stephen King's first short story collection. I had to obtain permission for the use of "I Am the Doorway" through Random House, who owns the publishing rights to Night Shift, which includes this story. So that's why you're seeing the first edition of the book pictured to the left. And also because this story was originally published in the March 1971 issue of Cavalier, a so-called "men's magazine," and the cover is a bit too risqué to reprint here.¹ But that was the magazine Stephen King was selling his stories to at the time.

"I Am the Doorway" is the oldest story included in Alien Contact, and is approximately 5,000 words in length. I had not intended to include in this anthology any stories that were published prior to about 1980 or so. But during my second meeting with Jeremy Lassen, Editor in Chief at Night Shade Books, in which we discussed the contents of the anthology, he suggested King's "I Am the Doorway." And, when the editor in chief recommends a story to this editor -- considering that the anthology had not as yet been accepted for publication by said editor in chief -- well, this editor in particular listens!

In my own library I have King's Dark Tower series as well as the Green Mile series; and I have also read the "complete and uncut" edition of The Stand (which endowed me with a near-divine appreciation for the art and skill of editing). And I am also eagerly awaiting King's forthcoming novel 11/22/63. But I haven't read much of King's short fiction, so for this reason alone I appreciated Jeremy's suggestion.

I then asked Jeremy for some thoughts on this particular story; I had assumed he had read it many, many years ago and yet the story remained fully in mind, enough so that he was easily able to state the title, and some basic content, during our meeting. Here's what Jeremy had to say:

A couple of years ago, I went through a Stephen King short fiction re-read...reading through Night Shift and Skeleton Crew back to back.

What struck me at the time was how incredibly political, and grounded in the politics of the Vietnam war, much of Stephen King's early short fiction was. "I Am the Doorway" is, to my mind, no exception to this. It reads now as alternate history, with an extrapolated space program...but at the time, I think it was a great metaphor for the failure of American Imperialism. Despite our technology, we were defeated...infiltrated even, by an alien enemy we didn't really understand. Science Fiction. It's not about the future, it's about the time it was written. And to me, "I am the Doorway" is a perfect expression of the era in which it was written. And it is a lesson...a metaphor that is even more horribly appropriate now than it was then.

Neil Young's "Grey Riders"

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this musical interlude:

As many of you know, Neil Young is my main music man. Period. This live version of "Grey Riders" is from his forthcoming (June 14) album entitled A Treasure (CD), recorded with legendary band The International Harvesters while on tour in 1984. The song is courtesy of SoundCloud and Neil Young Official. Feel free to visit the Neil Young website for more info, music, vids, etc.

Writing 101: Thog's Masterclass at BayCon

If you've attended any of my convention panels having to do with the craft of writing, then you have undoubtedly heard me refer to Thog's Masterclass.

Who is Thog? According to Thog.org, "Thog the Mighty, a not terribly bright barbarian hero, is the creation of John Grant (Paul Barnett) in his 'Lone Wolf' fantasy novels. Thog first appeared in The Claws of the Helgedad (1991)."

Thog's Masterclass is a regular feature of David Langford's zine Ansible, enshrining prose gems primarily from science fiction and fantasy publications: "It is to be assumed that the chosen selections are stuff which brutish Thog really likes." The site goes on to explain how the tradition began at the 1993 UK EasterCon, when David edited the con's daily newsletter with Paul Barnett's assistance. I'll leave you to further investigate Thog's history should you so desire.... (and more on Ansible¹ later in this blog post.)

Over Memorial Day Weekend I attended BayCon, an annual San Francisco Bay Area convention that is now in its twenty-ninth year. And this year I participated once again in the Iron Editors workshop: writers present the first 2 pages of a story or novel for review and critique by the panel of editors. The author's name need not be included on the pages, so while the writing may be anonymous, the critique is public. This allows other writers to learn from the critiques as well. In fact, writers may attend the workshop without having submitted anything for review.

Along with moderator Kent Brewster, this year's panel of editors also included Jeremy Lassen, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, the Kollin Brothers, and Dario Ciriello. The review process is quite hectic, to say the least. Kent likes to keep things moving so that a marked up submission is always on the display screen and open to discussion. Often I'll be working on one submission and have to stop what I'm doing to comment on my mark ups on the submission that is being presented. Consequently not all submissions are reviewed by every editor.

Usually a Thog's Masterclass-worthy sentence will arise from the heaps of paper, which will provide me with the opportunity to introduce the audience to Ansible and Thog. Due to the hectic nature of the workshop I didn't have an opportunity to write down the specific sentence, so this one will have to do (it is similar in content). This sentence is from a previously published story that was part of a collection that I acquired and published with Golden Gryphon Press. The author and story shall remain anonymous, to protect the guilty.

...his face: a strong jaw, cheekbones ruddy with cold, softened by a well-proportioned nose, and eyes which skipped from aisle to counter to shelf like pebbles glancing over water.

The boldface is, of course, my addition to highlight the content that I know Thog would really like. When I brought this sentence, and Thog's Masterclass, to the author's attention, the author chose to rewrite the text before including the story in the collection. But this isn't always the case. In Liz Williams's Detective Inspector Chen series of novels, you'll find sentences like this one:

Sung's eyebrows crawled slowly up his broad forehead.

In the Chen novels, Liz wants that stylized, exaggerated content; a better word might be "campy." And as the editor for all five (so far) of her Detective Inspector Chen novels, I'm right there with Liz on this. So story content is dependent on your style, your goal, what you wish to create within the story. Just be aware that these types of sentences just may find themselves in some future entry of Thog's Masterclass.

Ursula K. Le Guin on Genre and "Literary" Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin is writing a series of essays for Book View Café, a site in which she is one of the founding members. The essays fall under the heading "Petty Expectations," and Part One is entitled: "Critical Expectation: Genre and 'Literary' Fiction."

I'll leave you to read the essay(s) in it entirety if you so choose, but I did want to share with you a quote from the essay, and hopefully intrigue you enough to seek out Book View Café. To set the stage, Ms. Le Guin is responding to a quote by Terence Rafferty from the New York Times Sunday Book Review on February 4, 2011:

The distinction Mr Rafferty draws between literary and genre fiction, though cherished by many critics and teachers, was never very useful and is by now worse than useless. The opposition — genre rushing hell-for-leather and plotbound to resolution, literature meandering sweetly like a brainless tot in a folktale forest — is absurd.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

It's always a pleasure to see someone of Ms. Le Guin's reputation not pulling any punches when it comes to this pointless dichotomy between genre and literary. In fact, speaking of not pulling any punches, was that a right hook or a left hook?

Though I haven't written specifically about genre vs. literary, I have written a lengthy blog post on genre (specifically science fiction) and mainstream with regards to the fiction of Judith Moffett.

I'm also quite please to say that an Ursula K. Le Guin story will be included in my forthcoming Alien Contact anthology, but I'm not in a position at this time to reveal any further details about the story. You'll need to return to this blog in seven weeks when I discuss that particular story (i.e. 26 stories over 26 weeks -- see this link).

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #5

My rather loose introduction to the forthcoming Alien Contact anthology (Night Shade Books, November) was posted on April 25 and would be a good place to start, if you are new to this blog.

"The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything"
by George Alec Effinger

This story was originally published in the October 1984 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and is approximately 6,100 words in length.

I have a bit of history with this story, and with it's author -- George Alec Effinger -- in particular. Though George and I had met, albeit briefly, at various ArmadilloCon conventions during the late '80s and early '90s, we actually began communicating via email in July 2001 with the purpose of getting his long-out-of-print stories back into print. I acquired and edited three volumes of Effinger's work for Golden Gryphon Press; the first volume, Budayeen Nights, was assembled with George's contributions and assistance, though he passed away before the collection was published in 2003. The latter two volumes were done as tributes to the author himself. I've written extensively about these three books, which included content from emails George had sent me. If you are not familiar with GAE's work, I would encourage you to read my blog posts, beginning with the first in the series.

But back to "The Aliens Who Knew...": When I was compiling the stories for the second Effinger collection, Live! from Planet Earth, I posted a letter on Locus Online, asking readers for their favorite GAE story; I also contacted many of George's friends -- authors and editors alike -- for their input as well. By far, the most requested story was "The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything." Author Michael Bishop was not only one of the individuals to recommend the story to me, he also wrote the introduction to the story in the collection itself. And with Michael's kind permission¹, I'd like to share with you a small bit of that introduction to "The Aliens Who Knew...":

Upon our first meeting in 1976 or '77 at a small convention in Rome, Georgia, [Effinger] gave me the impression of a visitor from a continuum aslant our own, as if he had wafted in through a magic heating duct or tiptoed through the wall via a process of somatic intermolecularization. He complained of not having slept in days....When he wrote, however, he focused all his shattered attention, depleted energy, and tireless self-effacing wit on the words at his command. And, by so doing, he produced a host of literary marvels worthy of our attention, energy, and laughter today.

     Among the downright funniest of George Alec Effinger's marvels, I reckon, is [this] short story....I could write a scholarly paper about this story, dissecting its techniques of understatement, awe-free character presentation, and science-fictional self-referentialism, throwing in allusions to low-budget alien-invasion films from the 1950s and 1960s and to the influential Cold War satires of Robert Sheckley and William Tenn, but an introduction to a funny story should no doubt refrain from that sort of analysis. For one thing, it would spoil the jokes. For another, it would strike the author as overblown, tone deaf, and beside the point, for in this story George's primary purpose was to amuse – indeed, to prompt one to Laugh Out Loud.

May Links & Things

As I've previously mentioned, I backup my working data daily and the entire "My Computer" weekly, all to an external hard drive; that external hard drive, in turn, is also backed up daily and weekly to another external drive. But all of that means very little when the power supply decides to give up the ghost. Early Saturday morning, just prior to leaving the house for Baycon, I realized that I needed one more piece of information in preparation for my interview/chat and slide show presentation with Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio later that afternoon. I went to turn on the PC and, well, there was no "on" -- not even any noise, other than the click of the on/off button. So I snagged the info I needed from a book that just happened to be handy, and left for the con, knowing I would have to deal with a dead PC come Tuesday morning. Long story short, a new OEM power supply was ordered Tuesday, installed Wednesday (yesterday), and by last night all was as it should be (or should have been).

This is my monthly wrap-up of May's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. If you are new to this blog, and wish to catch up on my previous month-end posts, just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column.

• Advertisement of the month:
  
  
  
  
  What concerns me in the ad are the words: "Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed." If anybody responds to the ad successfully, I would surely appreciate your sharing with us in the Comments section! (ad courtesy of Libi Kavanah's Facebook page)

If you haven't yet subscribed to mediabistro.com's eBookNewser and GalleyCat blogs, which are delivered daily to your email inbox, then what are you waiting for?

• Links by the number:
  
  From GalleyCat: "10 Nontraditional Ways To Promote Your Book." GalleyCat has collected 10 tips on self-promotion from a thread on the Amazon discussion boards. The tips, in turn, are linked to the author's specific explanation.
  
  From GalleyCat: "5 Free Formatting Guides on How To Publish Your eBook." This brief article mentions these five guides along with their respective links: Smashwords Style Guide, Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, Barnes & Noble ePub Formatting Guide, Apple iBookstore Style Guidelines, and Calibre User Manual.
  
  Now that you have the guides, here are the tools, from eBookNewser: "Six eBook Formatting Tools." These six tools are mentioned, with their respective links: Calibre, Aspose, Mobi Pocket, Jutoh, Feedbooks.com, and BookGlutton.
  
  Okay, you have the formatting guides, the formatting tools, now you need to know how to publish -- from eBookNewser: "Five Tools For Self-Publishing Your eBook." Explained in this article, with links, are these self-publishing options: Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble PubIt, iTunes Connect, Smashwords, and Lulu.com.

There are undoubtedly more eBook formatting guides and tools and eBook publishing sites, but these are worth serious consideration, and at least provide a baseline for further research.

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #4

The rather loose introduction to my Alien Contact anthology, which I posted on April 25, would be a good place to start, if you haven't already done so....

"The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove

This story was originally published in the November 1985 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, which has been edited by Stanley Schmidt since December 1978. (Now that is a legacy!) The story is approximately 9,300 words in length.

When first published, "The Road Not Taken" was listed as being written by "Eric G. Iverson." According to Harry's website, his first two novels were published in 1979 by Belmont Towers, and his editor "did not think people would believe the author's real name was 'Turtledove' and suggested that he come up with something more Nordic." However, by 1986, he was publishing under his real name.

Toward the beginning of September 2008 I submitted a bit of PR to various online SF info and news sites, in which I requested that readers recommend their favorite alien contact story. As an added incentive, I turned the request into a contest: at the end of the month I selected three names at random and sent them a signed, numbered, limited edition chapbook from an earlier project in which I had been involved. One of the three winners was Steven H. Silver, whose name may be familiar to some as he is the administrator of the annual Sidewise Award for Alternate History; Steven also serves as one of the award's judges. And, it just so happened that Steven had also recommended "The Road Not Taken," for which I was quite pleased given that I have little knowledge of Analog stories, which tend to gain little recognition: they aren't typically nominated for awards or selected for year's best anthologies.

I've read quite a bit of Harry Turtledove's novel-length work, The Guns of the South being one of my favorites; I also proofed and copyedited his novel After the Downfall for Night Shade Books in 2008. So I was intrigued by this story of alien contact, from one of the premier writers of alternate history.

Each of us, at least once in our lives -- if not more often -- becomes so involved in something (or someone!), so focused -- let's call it extreme tunnel vision -- to the exclusion of all else. Now, extrapolate that to an entire culture, and then to an entire race of beings. And you have the alien Roxolani in the story "The Road Not Taken."

Captain Togram was using the chamberpot when the Indomitable broke out of hyperdrive....

...he stowed the chamberpot in its niche. The metal cover he slid over it did little to relieve the stench. After sixteen days in space, the Indomitable reeked of ordure, stale food, and staler bodies. It was no better in any other ship of the Roxolan fleet, or any other. Travel between the stars was simply like that. Stinks and darkness were part of the price the soldiers paid to make the kingdom grow.

Togram picked up a lantern and shook it to rouse the glowmites inside. They flashed silver in alarm. Some races, the captain knew, lit their ships with torches or candles, but glowmites used less air, even if they could only shine intermittently.

Ever the careful soldier, Togram checked his weapons while the light lasted. He always kept all four of his pistols loaded and ready to use; when landing operations began, one pair would go on his belt, the other in his boottops. He was more worried about his sword. The perpetually moist air aboard ship was not good for the blade. Sure enough, he found a spot of rust to scour away.

Savoring Baycon with Picacio

I briefly recounted my initial meeting with artist John Picacio in a previous blog post, in which I share some thoughts on the 2000 World Fantasy Convention.

However, if you'd like to hear that story -- and a few others -- up close and personal, come join John and me at BayCon 2011, Memorial Day weekend, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara (next to the Santa Clara Convention Center and across the street from Great America).

I have the honor and privilege of interviewing and chatting one-on-one with Artist Guest of Honor John Picacio on Saturday, May 28, beginning at 2:30PM in the Grand Ballroom E & F. (I've never interviewed a GOH before so I'm a wee bit nervous about this, but let's not tell anyone, okay?)

John and I have worked together, as artist and editor, respectively, on nearly a dozen projects for books by Richard Bowes, Jeffrey Ford, George Alec Effinger, Bruce McAllister, and Lucius Shepard.

So if you're in the neighborhood, come join us for an artistic treat!



Full artwork for Two Trains Running by Lucius Shepard
(Golden Gryphon Press, 2004)
copyright © 2003 by John Picacio

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #3

The introduction to my Alien Contact anthology, which I posted on April 25, would be a good place to start, if you haven't already done so....

"Face Value" by Karen Joy Fowler

This story originally appeared in the November 1986 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited then by Edward L. Ferman, and is approximately 5,000 words in length.

I first read "Face Value" in Karen Joy Fowler's short story collection Artificial Things (Bantam Spectra, 1986), which is, sadly, out of print, but can easily be purchased from the secondary market. I believe that Artificial Things was also Karen's first book -- a rarity in publishing, to have a genre collection as a first book, particularly from a New York publisher. Genre collections as first books are quite common among small/independent publishers -- e.g authors Paul Di Filippo, Andy Duncan, M. Rickert, to name but three -- but, again, not so with NY publishers. This obviously speaks to the quality of Karen's short fiction.

I recall my writing class in college... The instructor was discussing humor in fiction, and how difficult it was to write a truly serious humorous story, if that makes sense -- i.e. not slapstick, not zany, not "doh!" humor, but serious humor. And, of course, our assignment was to write such a story ourselves. At the next class session I brought in a copy of Karen Joy Fowler's story "The Faithful Companion at Forty" (a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards), handed it to the instructor at the end of class, asked her to please take it home and read it, and then let me know next week what she thought of the story. The instructor was so impressed with the story that the following week she read it out loud to the entire class. You have to understand, too, that the instructor was not a fan of science fiction/fantasy, and was rather vexed to learn that that was my interest when I introduced myself during the first day of class. Again, the instructor reading this SF story to the class is simply a testament to the quality of Karen's writing. I felt absolved in the class from that point, through to the end of the semester. [Thanks, Karen!]

Though I had been a reader and fan of Karen's work for many (many) years, my first professional encounter with her occurred in 1999: she wrote the introduction to the very first book I acquired and edited -- Richard Paul Russo's collection Terminal Visions (Golden Gryphon Press, 2000). Richard and Karen went way back in their writing careers, and he had requested that she write the introduction to his first collection.

Given all that, I was determined to include a Karen Joy Fowler story in this anthology. I chose this particular story because of the intersection of art and communication, a theme you will find in at least one other story in the anthology. With regards to art and communication, Karen has this to share about the story:

"Face Value" is a story I wrote shortly after my stories began to sell and I began to imagine that I might actually have a career as a writer. It's probably no coincidence then that it deals so directly with issues of art and of privacy and of the difficulties of trying to communicate anything with mere words. I have written a lot about how hard it is for men and women to talk to one another. My current novel-under-construction is about that childhood dream, never achieved, of talking to (non-human) animals. With that as context, to think we might someday understand and be understood by anyone with whom we share no DNA and no history is as great a leap as any a science fiction writer could take. My story is about what happens when we meet members of an alien species who share every thought perfectly and effortlessly. As we try to talk with them, which will matter more -- will it be their abilities or will it be our limitations?

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #2

As noted in the introduction, which I posted on April 25, I plan to blog about the contents of my forthcoming anthology Alien Contact -- one story each week, in order of appearance; my first post was last week and I will continue through the next 24 weeks. Assuming all goes well, I hope to complete this project by the end of October, just in time for the anthology's publication in November from Night Shade Books. Here is the second story in the anthology:

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties" by Neil Gaiman

This story was originally published in 2006 in Neil's collection Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, from publisher HarperCollins/Morrow, and is approximately 5,100 words in length.

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties" was a "gift," so to speak, from Neil Gaiman to his readers and fans -- a time-honored authorial tradition of including an original story in a short story collection or with a previously published novel.¹ Sort of like the bonus track on a CD, or a DVD extra.

I first read this story in the year it was published, two years before I had even proposed the Alien Contact anthology; but it was one of those stories that stuck with me, so -- two years later, when I was brainstorming stories for the anthology, I immediately recalled "How to Talk to Girls at Parties." I had worked very briefly with Neil Gaiman a few years earlier, when he wrote an introduction for me to George Alec Effinger's story "Seven Nights in Slumberland," which was included in George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth -- which I acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press.² And I was hopeful that Neil would grant me permission to use this story.

So why did this story resonate with me? I spent three years at UCLA, before transferring to the University Without Walls program at UMass in Amherst, where I finally graduated a year and a half later. While at UCLA, when I wasn't in class or attending a musical performance (I'm sure I spent more time at rock clubs and concerts than I did in class -- and, during my freshman year, I also did the 10pm-2am radio show Friday and Saturday nights at the campus radio station, KLA), I was usually out partying, or at least looking for a party. Oh, and I did a bit of studying, too.

Flannery O'Connor Quote

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

-- Flannery O'Connor, American novelist,
    March 25, 1925–August 3, 1964

I don't know when O'Connor spoke these words, though obviously before her passing on August 3, 1964. Regardless, these words are as pertinent then as they are now, nearly 50 years later -- especially when I see so much drivel make it to the bestseller list. I keep asking myself: "Who reads this crap?"

This quote is courtesy of Derek Austin Johnson's Facebook page. And on Twitter: @daj42. So thanks, Derek!

Alien Contact Anthology -- Story #1

As noted in the introduction, which I posted on April 25, I plan to blog about the contents of my forthcoming anthology Alien Contact -- one story each week, in order of appearance, beginning this week and for the next 25 weeks. Assuming all goes well, I hope to complete this project by the end of October, just in time for the anthology's publication in November from Night Shade Books. Here is the first story in the anthology:

"The Thought War" by Paul McAuley

This story originally appeared in Postscripts¹ magazine (Summer 2008, Number 15) and is approximately 2,900 words in length. Indeed, a short story. I first read "The Thought War" when I copyedited The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Three for anthology editor Jonathan Strahan and publisher Night Shade Books. I finished working on the anthology page proofs on December 18, 2008 -- a week before Christmas.

As I noted previously, in August I had met with Jeremy Lassen, Editor-in-Chief at Night Shade Books, at which time I proposed my "alien contact" anthology -- so I was actively seeking stories at the time I was working on this copyediting project.

When reading a story for my own pleasure, I typically buzz right through any editorial introduction to that story. If the introduction (and/or afterword) is written by the author her/himself, then I consider that an essential part of the story and will read it accordingly; not so with editorial introductions, as I said. But, since I was copyediting the page proofs, and I edit linearly, I tackled the introduction first, and then approached the story.

And I was struck by the very first word of this story. In fact, the first word is its own sentence, its own paragraph:

Listen:

That's it -- a one-word beginning: "Listen:" -- How could I not be intrigued?

And then the colon following the word "Listen" immediately pulled me into the very next sentence/line:

Listen:

Don't try to speak. Don't try to move. Listen to me. Listen to my story.

If you haven't read this story by Paul McAuley previously, then I hope I've intrigued you as well, enough to seek out this story in the anthology. About "The Thought War," Paul writes: "Where do writers get their ideas? In the case of this little alien invasion story, it was from the pages of New Scientist -- an article about a theory that posits an extreme solution to the case of the well-established effect that observers have on collapsing super-imposed states of quantum particles, and my discovery of an old, history-steeped cemetery in a corner of North London."

A cemetery? Just what kind of aliens are these? And don't let that bit about "collapsing super-imposed states of quantum particles" scare you away: this is not what I would consider a "hard SF" story. On the contrary, in less than 2,900 words Paul has written a little marvel -- a tense, first-person account of how he -- the story's protagonist, that is -- and the world around him, evolved to the present circumstances, with a bit of speculation thrown in for good measure. Though it is a one-way conversation [Listen:], he is, at the same time, testing the individual to whom he is speaking. What we discover, as readers, is how the present has affected the speaker's perception of reality, which, in turn, has altered his memories of the past, leaving us to question just what is real. And possibly even who should be testing whom.

Oh, and there's a nifty bit in the story on Bolzmann brains, too. From Wikipedia: "a hypothesized self-aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of chaos." Boltzmann brains, cemeteries.... Are you catching the drift of this story yet?

Paul has also created a neologism in the story that may be more familiar to U.K. readers than those of us here in the States; the word is "menezesing." So with the author's permission, I'll provide the context in which the word is used:

Soldiers everywhere on the streets. Security checks and sirens and a constant low-level dread. Lynch mobs. Public hangings and burnings. Ten or twenty menezesings in London alone, each and every day.

and then share Paul's alternate sentence for us U.S. readers:

Soldiers everywhere on the streets. Security checks and sirens and a constant low-level dread. Lynch mobs. Public hangings and burnings. Ten or twenty people accidentally shot by police in London alone, each and every day.

The word "menezesing" is derived from Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian who was shot on the London Underground by the Metropolitan police, in a case of mistaken identity, in July 2005. At the time, the police were hunting suspects in a failed terrorist bombing. Further details on Menezes and the shooting can be found, once again, on Wikipedia.

[Continue to Story #2]

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

1. Postscripts was first published in 2004 by editor and publisher Peter Crowther of PS Publishing in the U.K. The publication recently changed from a quarterly periodical to a twice-yearly anthology, co-edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers.

April Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of April's Links & Things. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. Hopefully, you will find some value in what follows; if you are new to this blog, and wish to catch up on my previous month-end posts: just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column of this blog; there are 29 previous blog posts.

• On April 29, renowned feminist SF author and critic Joanna Russ -- best known for her novel The Female Man -- passed away, following a series of strokes. PW's Rose Fox shares some personal thoughts on Joanna Russ on the Genreville blog, which includes a link to Ms. Russ's still-powerful, Nebula Award-winning story, "When It Changed," originally published in 1972 in Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison®.
• Short story collection George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth, which I originally acquired and edited for Golden Gryphon Press in 2005, has now been released in eBook format courtesy of E-Reads. This collection was a joy to compile: I contacted George's friends and former editors, including Michael Bishop, Bradley Denton, Gardner Dozois, Neil Gaiman, and Howard Waldrop, to name but a few, and asked them to select their fave Effinger story -- and once they did, I then asked each of them to write an introduction to the story for this collection. A wonderful tribute, indeed, to Effinger's unique work.
• SFSignal.com (@sfsignal) reports the return of Michael Moorcock's New Worlds Magazine. The website is slated to go live in June/July, with the first issue scheduled to appear this September/October. The magazine is currently open to submissions from authors and artists.
• You gotta love this title for a blog post: "Premature Plot Ejaculation" -- written by Benjamin Tate on the Apex Publications blog. Tate writes: "I have just recently finished up the first book in a new series and I experienced something toward the end that *ahem* authors don't like to talk about. It's a little... embarrassing. We all experience it, but it's... awkward to talk about, and we'd rather our fans think we're perfect, that 'accidents' don't happen.... But 'accidents' do happen. To the best of us. And it's time someone talked about it. Yes, yes, I'm talking about premature plot ejaculation. There, I said it! It's out there! Now let's deal with it." (via Danny O’Dare's Facebook page)
• I would recommend this next blog even more so if it weren't for the nag "Follow Us" link that's glued to the left side of the window, constantly covering the text so that I must scroll, and scroll, and scroll to maintain the text at eye-level, yet move it from under the nag link. So be forewarned unless, that is, you enjoy being nagged. The blog is courtesy of the Novel Publishing Group, LLC (@novelpublicity), and the blogger, Emlyn, shares with us "The Importance of Editing: 6 Tips to Help Make the Most of Your Manuscript": 1) Write through your first draft; 2) Learn to pinpoint your most common mistakes; 3) Your beta reader is your new best friend; 4) Never underestimate the usefulness of Ctrl+F; 5) Don’t box yourself in by insisting upon a precise number of drafts; and 6) When you think you're finished, you're probably not.
• Another by-the-numbers blog post that should intrigue you, especially if you are a serious reader and wish to support your favorite authors -- this one by Keith Brooke (@keithbrooke) entitled "Seven things you can do to help an author": 1) Play tag; 2) Customer reviews; 3) Other reviews; 4) Like us; 5) Follow us; 6) Engage; and 7) Word of mouth. Some of these bullet points aren't directly intuitive, like "Play tag" so you'll need to check out the blog post for the details.
• If your book is published by a typical New York publisher, you most likely have little, if any, say in the cover art. Some independent publishers will allow the author to provide feedback on the cover art (although there is no guarantee the publisher will do anything with that feedback); a few indie publishers will even work directly with the author. But what if you are self-publishing your book? Author Steve Thomas provides us with a 3-part in-depth discussion on his cover art experience. In Part 1, Steve chooses a cover artist; Part 2 follows the progress from description to final cover; and in Part 3, we get to hear from the artist himself. Extremely well-done series, especially if you are planning on self-publishing -- and don't think that real cover art matters. The link above takes you to part 3, but the first paragraph contains links to parts 1 and 2. (via @indiebookblogge)
• You've written your novel, you've got the cover art, and now you are ready to publish. What do you do? Joanna Penn (@thecreativepenn), on her blog The Creative Penn, provides us with a detailed breakdown of her book launch for her novel Pentecost. From book trailers to guest blogging to launch day competitions, Joanna tells all, including the costs. She then does a postmortem, looking at what she did well, and what could have been done better. Excellent.

Alien Contact, the Anthology: Beginnings...

Science fiction has always had a love affair with aliens, as far back as the early days of the pulps, with their BEM¹ covers and stories such as John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?"² (written as by Don A. Stuart in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938 -- pictured left) and Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945 -- pictured below).

I don't recall my age at the time, but I had the misfortune to be home alone on a Saturday afternoon when the movie Invaders from Mars was the featured matinee movie on television. And to tell you the truth, I've not watched the movie again since! I'm going strictly by memory here, so bear with me if all the details in this brief recap aren't completely accurate (though I did look up the characters names on the Internet Movie Database).

As I recall, ten-year-old David MacLean wakes up one morning to a loud noise and bright lights outside. He rushes to his bedroom window in time to see a flying saucer land in the sand dunes just beyond the fence. He tells his father, who goes outside to investigate, but his father doesn't return home until the following day -- and when he does, he behaves differently: moody, sullen, quick to anger. And, David spots an unusual, albeit small, scar on the back of his father's neck. Soon, the same personality change (and scar) affects his mother, the police chief, and other townspeople. David finally turns to, and confides in, a local doctor, Pat Blake, and she, in turn, confides in a local astronomer, Stuart Kelston. Together, they convince the Army of the danger, and the Army intercedes. The good doctor is captured by the aliens, but she is rescued just before the mind-controlling device is inserted in the back of her neck. At the climax of the film, the Army endeavors to blow up the UFO bunker, as the UFO itself attempts to lift-off. David, Doctor Pat, and others are racing down the hill, away from the UFO and the pending explosion -- while the recent events pass before David's mind's eye -- and then...

David awakes as from a dream, to a loud noise and bright lights outside. He rushes to his bedroom window in time to see a flying saucer land in the sand dunes just beyond the fence.

Whew! That was a creepy ending. Dream becomes reality? -- not something I had ever seen in a movie, at least at that point in my young life. I can't say I had actual nightmares of that movie, but certain images were burned in my mind for many years, particularly the evil-looking alien head with the wriggling tentacles, encased in a large glass bubble, carried by two Martians: green, seven-foot-tall, primitive-looking creatures with insect-like eyes. As I said, I haven't seen Invaders from Mars probably since I was around David's age, but the images, and feelings, still remain. (I will also admit that I haven't seen the movie Alien, either, since its original theater run -- and a midnight showing at that; but I'll never shake the image of the alien bursting out of Kane's [John Hurt] chest.)

For me personally, it's a love/hate relationship with alien tales: they can freak the bejesus out of me -- particularly movies -- but I keep coming back for more. Something about the unknown, and the unknown possibilities -- and the hope that, just maybe, there really is an ET out there somewhere.

This is why, in 2007, after Nick Gevers and I decided to work together on an original anthology project, I jumped at the prospect of doing Fermi Paradox-themed Is Anybody Out There?³ -- even though Nick presented me with a number of excellent ideas.

And this is also why, on August 27, 2008, when I visited the house of Night Shade in San Francisco, and met with Jeremy Lassen, Editor-in-Chief, to discuss ongoing and future projects, I proposed an anthology of previously published "alien contact" stories. In the course of contacting authors for Is Anybody Out There? a few had expressed to me the fact that they had already written their Fermi Paradox story, or their first contact story, and thus weren't particularly interested in writing yet another such story. This got me to thinking: Classic Golden Age stories like Leinster's "First Contact" and Campbell's "Who Goes There?" have been collected in numerous anthologies [I strongly recommend The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology series], but not so these "contemporary classics" from, say, the past 30 years or so. Periodicals are ephemeral, and online 'zines even more so (if SCI FICTION⁴ is any example). So, it falls on editors and anthologists to ensure these stories are collected for present as well as future readers.

Author James Gunn, professor emeritus of English, and director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, both at the University of Kansas, postulates that "humanity/the individual and the alien" is one of the 14 Basic SF Plot Elements.⁵ Right up there with time travel, AIs, dystopian SF, space travel, etc. -- though Gunn has a far more elegant way of stating these in his list.

J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes Simone de Beauvoir

I've just watched a two-part video that has recently been released by the BBC; the video was originally broadcast in March 1968 as part of the BBC series In Their Own Words British Authors and features J. R. R. Tolkien, with comments from Oxford students who reflect on his work. It's quite a treat (if you can overlook the overly spacey soundtrack).

I had some difficulty understanding Tolkien himself, at times; he speaks quietly and quite rapidly, and with the accent, well, there were a few phrases that got past me.

Toward the latter part of part two, Tolkien reads from a quote by Simone de Beauvoir, French existential philosopher and social theorist. Since Tolkien felt this quote significant enough to read in its entirety, I thought I would share the quote with you here, and then embed below the two videos, should you choose to view them. [It is actually a single 26½-minute video that has been split into two parts.] Now, the quote:

"There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation."

—Simone de Beauvoir

Part 1; time 13:46 --

Part 2; time 12:48 --

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SpaceX Keeps the Dream Alive

Tuesday, April 12, marks the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight: the fully automated, 108-minute orbital flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

There was a time, indeed, when I was young and naive. Regardless of what you may think, yes, 'tis true. When Apollo 11 landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, I assumed that this was just the beginning: science fiction had become reality. Satellites were one thing, but people on the moon? How cool was that! I imagined that more missions to the moon would be scheduled, eventually leading to the construction of a moon base. And with the moon base as a launch platform, the next target would be Mars. On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, I actually believed that within 25 or 30 years -- definitely by the turn of the century -- we would have astronauts landing on Mars.

Unfortunately, few of those imaginings have come to pass. A handful of additional moon landings later, and then, between budget cuts and politics, the US chose to go no farther in space. The Space Shuttle program, along with the International Space Station, provided some possibilities for further space exploration, but my imagination had already been crushed. And now, only two shuttle flights remain until yet another US space program becomes enshrined in the National Air and Space Museum.

That is, until SpaceX unveiled the Heavy Falcon launch vehicle during a press conference on April 5, 2011: "Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, represents SpaceX's entry into the heavy lift launch vehicle category. With the ability to carry satellites or interplanetary spacecraft weighing over 53 metric tons (117,000 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Falcon Heavy can lift nearly twice the payload of the next closest vehicle, the US Space Shuttle, and more than twice the payload of the Delta IV Heavy."

If you are intrigued by the possibilities of space flight, and you have a spare 1 minute and 24 seconds, please watch the SpaceX Heavy Falcon animated video that I've embedded below:

According to the press release, "the liftoff thrust of the Falcon Heavy equals fifteen Boeing 747 aircraft at full power." And that is a lot of power. The Falcon Heavy is certainly no Saturn V -- the launch vehicle for the Apollo project -- but it will do the necessary job of getting spacecraft to low earth orbit. And from there? We can only dream again.

I don't know if, in my lifetime, I'll ever see a manned space mission go beyond the moon, but I can hope the dream stays alive for future generations.


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Writing (& Publishing) 101: A Conversation Between J.A. Konrath & Barry Eisler

March was a busy month for writing and publishing links and resources, which is why I split up my March Links & Things blog post (April 5), devoting one post on April 4 to "Writing 101: Don't Respond to Negative Reviews" and this post to a second set of links.

In my March Links & Things, I noted that best-selling author Barry Eisler had turned down a two-book, one-half-million-dollar deal with St. Martin's Press in order to self-publish his future books himself. And I linked to an interview in The Daily Beast in which Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) asks Barry Eisler (@barryeisler) why he decided to self-publish.

But there is more to this Eisler/self-publishing, a lot more....

Barry Eisler is not your typical author: He graduated from Cornell Law School, joined the CIA in a covert operations position, and then left the CIA after a few years to work as a technology lawyer and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan. He began writing full-time in 2002, and is the author of two best-selling series, both thrillers: one features anti-hero John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin, and the second features black ops soldier Ben Treven.

I checked out Barry Eisler's website and I was totally knocked out. Obviously, I expected the website to be in English; what I didn't expect was to find his website available in 8 other languages. Now that is impressive! And an incredible means to reach a global audience.

But I can't talk about Eisler's move to self-publishing without mentioning his friend and fellow author, J. A. Konrath (@jakonrath). After nearly 500 rejections and 9 unpublished novels, Joe Konrath finally scored with his tenth novel, Whiskey Sour, the first in his continuing series featuring Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. Joe has stated that he discovered the Amazon Kindle in 2009, and since has self-published his novels in eBook format. And, in fact, on December 20, 2010, he published a blog post entitled "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing" in which he begins his post with "You Should Self-Publish." In this post, Joe Konrath tells why he felt, for many years, that traditional publishing was the only way to go. But once he discovered the Kindle, and is now selling 1,000 eBooks a day, he is reversing this one long-held belief about writing and publishing.

Anyhow, my purpose with this blog post is to bring to your attention a recent conversation between Konrath and Eisler on the subject of eBooks and self-publishing. The conversation itself was originally done as a live Google Docs discussion, and then later was edited and posted on Barry Eisler's blog. What's even more significant is that the authors made the conversation available in downloadable, mobile platforms: "doc, pdf, epub, and mobi formats, so it can be uploaded to Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers, Kobos, and pretty much any other device." In the third paragraph of the conversation you'll find a link to a zip file that contains all of these formats. Be aware that this is not a light conversation, nor a short one either; it clocks in at about 13,000 words and is 35 pages on my Sony eReader.

But if you are an author and/or publisher, if you are considering eBooks and self-publishing, then you need to read this conversation, which "examines the history and mechanics of the publishing industry as it exists today, analyzes the way the digital revolution reflects recent events in Egypt and the Maghreb," and more.

Here's some samples from just the first few pages of the conversation:

Barry: ...my general point was that digital was going to become more and more attractive relative to paper. First, because the price of digital readers would continue to drop while the functionality would continue to increase; second, because more and more titles would become available for digital download at the same time more brick and mortar stores were closing. In other words, everything about paper represented a static defense, while everything about digital represented a dynamic offense. Not hard to predict how a battle like that is going to end....

Barry: ...Lots of people, and I'm one of them, love the way a book feels. I used to like the way books smelled, too, before publishers started using cheap paper. And you can see books on your shelf, etc... those are real advantages, but they're only niche advantages. Think candles vs electric lights. There are still people making a living today selling candles, and that's because there's nothing like candlelight -- but what matters is that the advent of the electric light changed the candle business into a niche. Originally, candlemakers were in the lighting business; today, they're in the candlelight business. The latter is tiny by comparison to the former....

Joe: I also love print books. I have 5000 of them. But print is just a delivery system. It gets a story from the writer to the reader. For centuries, publishers controlled this system, because they did the printing, and they were plugged into distribution. But with retailers like Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords, the story can get to the reader in a faster, cheaper way. And publishers aren't needed. Do you think publishers are aware of that?

Barry: I think they're extremely aware of it, but they don't understand what it really means.

Joe: I believe they've gotten their business model mixed-up. They should be connecting readers with the written word. Instead, they're insisting on selling paper.

Joe: ...The agency model is an attempt to slow the transition from paper to digital. Windowing titles is another one. So are insanely high ebook prices....

Barry: Well, again, I think they're taking it into account, but they're drawing the wrong conclusions. The wrong conclusion is: I'm in the paper business, paper keeps me essential, therefore I must do all I can to retard the transition from paper to digital. The right conclusion would be: digital offers huge cost, time-to-market, and other advantages over paper. How can I leverage those advantages to make my business even stronger?

Joe: We figured out that the 25% royalty on ebooks they offer is actually 14.9% to the writer after everyone gets their cut. 14.9% on a price the publisher sets.

Barry: Gracious of you to say "we." You're the first one to point out that a 25% royalty on the net revenue produced by an ebook equals 17.5% of the retail price after Amazon takes its 30% cut, and 14.9% after the agent takes 15% of the 17.5%.

Like I said, you really need to read this conversation. And there's no excuse, because you can download it in a variety of formats, for print, mobile devices, or even read it online.

Addendum: I neglected to mention that at the end of the conversation, there are more than 425 comments, so you've definitely got your reading cut out for you. Note, though, that the comments are only available on the blog post; they are not included in the downloadable files.

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March Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of March's Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. Hopefully, you will find some value in what follows; and if you are new to my blog, you may want to catch up on my previous month-end posts: just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column of this blog; there are 28 previous blog posts.

• I've blogged previously (here, here, and here) about Liz Williams's fifth, and most recent, Detective Inspector Chen novel, The Iron Khan. But this is the first time I've come upon a review of a Chen book in which the reviewer so succinctly sums up what is so special about these novels. The reviewer's name is "Paul," the review is on Goodreads.com, and this is merely one of Paul's 836 (as of this writing) reviewed books. Paul writes: "As is usual for the Chen books, the narrative not only focuses on Chen, Zhu Irzh and their friends and allies, but new characters, whose goals, desires and needs bloom like a flower quickly coming into full season. Both the titular antagonist, the Iron Khan, other antagonists, and those who oppose their efforts, such as the Japanese warrior Omi, have their narrative threads intersect with our main characters. They have pasts, presents and futures of their own, and never serve to act for the benefit of the main characters. If anything, these characters draw our main characters and their talents into their stories, for ill or will." [Note: I edited all 5 volumes, so far, of the Detective Inspector Chen series; the first 4 titles for Night Shade Books, the most recent title for Morrigan Books UK.]

• The Jacqueline Howett meltdown may have been the major controversy this past month, but there were no shortages of others. Mediabistro.com's @ebooknewser reported that publisher HarperCollins plans to limit the number of checkouts to 26 that their eBooks may have at the public library. This means that after 26 checkouts the library is required to purchase another copy of the eBook. The Pioneer Library System, Norman, Oklahoma, responded with a video showing various HarperCollins print books, their condition, and the number of times each has been checked out; had there been a limit on these print copies, hundreds of readers would never have read these books because the library simply cannot afford to replace a book unless it is both in demand and severely damaged. The HarperCollins decision has led to numerous libraries throughout the country boycotting HarperCollins eBooks. So if you cannot find a HarperCollins eBook at your library, don't blame the messenger (your public library), blame HC. In fact, feel free to send HC some feedback right now!

• Two Very Big Names in publishing were in the news this past month: Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking. NYT bestselling author Barry Eisler turned down a two-book, one-half-million-dollar deal with St. Martin's Press in order to self-publish his future books himself. On the other hand, bestselling self-published author Amanda Hocking has gone New York, signing a four-book, two-million-plus deal, after a very heated bidding war, with St. Martin's for her next series of books.
  
  Via The Daily Beast, Jason Pinter (@jasonpinter) interviews Barry Eisler to find out just why the author decided to self-publish. In the interview Eisler explains the numbers and reasons behind his decision. Here's a taste: "What happens whenever I hit that point [the earn out point] is that I'll have 'beaten' the contract, and then I'll go on beating it for the rest of my life. If I don't earn out the legacy contract, the only money I'll ever see from it is $142,000 per year for three years. Even if I do earn out, I'll only see 14.9% of each digital sale thereafter. But once I beat the contract in digital, even if it takes longer than three years, I go on earning 70% of each digital sale forever thereafter. And, as my friend Joe Konrath likes to point out, forever is a long time."
  
  As to Amanda Hocking, the St. Martin's deal was announced in the New York Times, which stated that Ms. Hocking explained herself to her readers, via her blog, thusly: "I want to be a writer," she said. "I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation." (via mediabistro.com)

• Self-Publishing Review (@selfpubreview), whom I have linked to on numerous occasions, has a follow-up piece on Amanda Hocking, noting that though she has garnered all the attention recently as a self-published author -- and she may indeed be one of the wealthiest – she certainly isn’t a self-pub pioneer. But who are said pioneers you may ask? Boyd Morrison, Lisa Genova, Zoe Winters, and Dean Wesley Smith. You can read their stories on the Self-Pub Review link.

Writing 101: Don't Respond to Negative Reviews

I had just begun my month-end Links & Things wrap-up when I realized that the following item would take quite a few more words and space than a single paragraph, so I'm going to post this one point, and then follow with the monthly Links & Things blog post.

The major editing/publishing controversy this past month surrounded author Jacqueline Howett. The controversy began innocently enough when BigAl's Books and Pals website reviewed Howett's self-published novel The Greek Seaman. The entire review, including the title and author of the book, and the fact that it received two stars, only came to a total of 355 words... But those 355 words generated almost as many comments -- 309 before the blog owner cut off comments. The reviewer stated that readers would "find the story compelling and interesting"; it was the caveat that upset the author so much: "the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant."

The author posted multiple comments to the review, accusing the reviewer of not downloading the correct/current version of her eBook. She accused him of not responding to her personal emails. She accused him of not understanding her writing because she is, and writes, British English. She even went so far as to post other, positive reviews of her book in the comments section, I assume to prove her point and to counteract his review. The reviewer, in turn, posted a couple of the author's more egregiously written sentences as examples -- you judge for yourself:

"She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs."

"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."

And then the ultimate sin: when other readers began commenting as well, in support of the review, which was, as I said, positive except for the negative grammar aspects, the author, Jacqueline Howett, told everyone to "Fuck off!" Not the best way to make friends and influence readers to purchase your book. After that, the blog went viral, and the comment section became little more than an author pile-on. After seeing a photo of the author on her blog, and reading about her worldly travels, one would think that her life experience would have yielded more maturity than what she displayed in the comments section.

The lack of quality in her writing unfortunately supports the generalized notion that most self-published books are crap -- and a lot of them are, so we have to rely on reviews like those from BigAl's and other review sites to sift the wheat from the chaff. There are also a lot of lessons to be learned here: It is not the reviewer's responsibility to find/track down the current/correct copy of the book to be reviewed. The book that the reviewer is sent, or the one the reviewer buys off the shelf, or online, is the book that gets reviewed. If you, as the author, do not want a lesser quality book to be reviewed, then don't put it out there! And, as an author, you must learn to accept the good reviews with the bad; you don't necessarily have to like it, but you absolutely must learn to accept it, or shine it on as one bad reviewer's personal opinion, or whatever it takes to get past that negative review. Enjoy the positive reviews when you can, and try to learn and improve your writing and/or the quality of your book from the negative ones.

The link above to BigAl's will allow you to read the review and comment section at your leisure. I doubt that most will read more than the first 50 or so comments; after that, it really does become tiresome. But you'll get the point: Writing 101 -- Don't respond to negative reviews. Simply grin and bear it (and try to learn from the review if you can).


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March Status

I had been fairly consistent here for a while, updating this blog at least twice a week, if not more often. Alas, that all came to a grinding halt about three weeks ago. I attended Potlatch 20 the first weekend in March, and then the first FOGcon the following weekend; and last weekend was devoted to taxes (more on that in a bit); taxes can be a definite downer after two con weekends in a row! I typically use my weekends to get caught up: on my own projects (this blog), on watching movies, on household chores (laundry, mowing the lawn, hedging, etc.) -- but none of that gets done when I'm attending a convention, and then the weekend work carries over into the following week, or the catch-up work simply doesn't get done at all, which was the case with this blog. Of course, with this March rain -- like 21 days of rain out of the past 27 -- not a lot of yardwork was going to get done regardless, weekdays or weekends.

But I have been doing my part, helping to pay the bills -- honest.

The Monday after Potlatch, I began work (copyediting) on the June issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine. The June issue marks the 100th issue, and the third issue under new publisher Damnation Books. In addition to the 100 pages of content for this "centennial" issue, the publisher has some special goodies planned as well, but I'm sworn to secrecy. (Well, at least my bribe price hasn't been met yet!) So you'll have to wait until the June issue ships (or offer me more money, whichever comes first); better yet, why not subscribe to the magazine. In addition to those extra goodies, Damnation Books has some (if you'll pardon the expression) damn fine stories in issue #100 as well.

In the middle of working on the copyedits for the June issue, I was sent the PDF layout file of the April issue for my review, which I did, as did magazine editor Douglas Cohen. Quite a few hours were invested in this review. April is the "Dark Fantasy" special issue, and the cover art is pictured here. The issue has already gone to print -- so look for it in the mail if you are a subscriber, or online or at bookstores or wherever you purchase your magazines. But back to the June issue: I can tell you that I copyedited 7 fiction files, 11 nonfiction files, and 4 of those "special" files. And I'm serious; I was really knocked out by the fiction in this issue. In fact, I want to bring the June issue to the attention of all the year's best anthologists; they just might find a worthy story (or two) for consideration in this particular issue.

Regardless of my personal involvement with RoF, I was pleased to see the magazine achieve some recognition recently. On February 22, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced the nominees for the 2010 Nebula Awards. The link will take you to the official SFWA press release. I just wanted to bring to your attention the two stories from RoF that were nominated for this award: "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" by Harlan Ellison® (February 2010 issue) in the short story category; and "The Fortuitous Meeting of Gerard van Oost and Oludara" by Christopher Kastensmidt (April 2010 issue) in the novelette category.

To continue... My next project was to finalize our taxes. I had completed all the input, but wanted to let the forms and data set for a bit, before I did my final review, after which I would file the Federal taxes electronically, and then print out and mail the State taxes. I made a couple minor changes that didn't affect the bottom-line numbers on Saturday, March 19. When I opened the tax file the next day for my final review, the file wouldn't open. I tried at least 3 times but all to no avail. I thought that possibly it was the TurboTax application itself, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the program, but the file would still not load. Thank gawd I had a backup on an external drive from the previous week; I did not want to be entering my tax data from the beginning, yet again. I made another copy of the backup before continuing; I then redid the 2 minor changes from the previous day, completed my review, printed out, I think it was, four replacement pages, filed the Feds electronically, and all was well with the world. I made the trip to the copy center and post office the following day, so by Monday (March 21) my 2010 tax year was complete. (I have spoken on previous occasions about my redundant backups, so I won't bore you with details other than to say that I automatically back up to an external drive my working files daily, my entire hard drive weekly; and these in turn are backed up to a second external drive.)

But speaking of TurboTax: I always have some kind of problem with the application every single year, and I've been using TT for 10+ years. I always write in my numbers on copies of the forms, do some of the basic calculations, and double-check TT's results every step of the way. I do not inherently trust any of the program's numbers; I've found too many calculation errors in past years. I know, I know, yet I still keep using the bloody program. So, who has a better alternative?

Once I got our taxes out of the way I was able to move on to the next project: the Future Media anthology, edited by Rick Wilber for Tachyon Publications. I had responsibility for copyediting the front matter, all the fiction, as well as the mini introductions to each of the fiction and nonfiction pieces. The project wasn't difficult, but it was time consuming as I had to double-check the text of each manuscript against the "official" published version of the story (or excerpt, in the case of novels by Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, and Norman Spinrad). Some of the authors included in Future Media were quite prescient in their ability to predict the impact of technology on media, as well as the overwhelming impact of media technology on our lives. After reading the min intros to the nonfiction articles, I'm looking forward to some fine reading when the book is published in July.

In between all of the above, I have been dutifully working on finalizing the contents for my Alien Contact anthology forthcoming in November from Night Shade Books. But that's for another blog post...soon.

I also want to write a blog post about a panel/interview/talk that renowned editor Alan Rinzler did at Potlatch 20, but I need to put some thought and time into this first. Rinzler may have edited some exceptional books in years past -- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, to name only three -- but his current thinking and opinions on the state of publishing do not always mesh with mine. I think he skirted some issues during the talk, specifically avoiding answering my question in particular with some sleight-of-hand comments. More later....

[Update: 29 March: I've reviewed my sparse notes regarding the Rinzler event at Potlatch 20 and, unfortunately, I realize that too much time has passed -- and I've been involved in other projects since that event, read too many stories, and articles, and tweets, and Facebook posts, etc. -- to write a cogent discussion. So I'll simply move on to something else. I'm sure that Alan Rinzler doesn't care, one way or the other.]