The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 1

Occasionally, I'll come up with a fairly cool idea. Not one that I've necessarily thought through completely, of course, but a cool idea nonetheless. The most recent instance of such a cool idea occurred this past fall when I contacted author Judith Moffett and suggested she publish her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story "Tiny Tango" as an ebook.

[Additional award note: And I have no doubt that, had the James Tiptree, Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (for works published in 1989), "Tiny Tango" would also have made that award's short list, if not won the award outright.]

I blogged about Judith Moffett and her novels and stories back in 2010 (here). At the time I referenced -- and quoted from -- Matthew Cheney's Mumpsimus blog post in which he wrote about "Mindblowing" stories that affected him as both a reader and writer. One such story was "Tiny Tango."

Then, most recently, writer/critic/reviewer Ian Sales posted his list of "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women," which also included "Tiny Tango." And that list was what pushed me over the edge, so to speak, and into said cool idea.

If you click on the Tiny Tango cover graphic pictured above, or the text link in this sentence, you will be swept away to Amazon's World of Kindle and to the Tiny Tango ebook listing: we were, in fact, successful in our efforts to publish the story as an ebook. But the path to get there, well, that's the story I'm about to tell you....

When "Tiny Tango" originally appeared in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, a black-and-white illustration by Janet Aulisio accompanied the opening pages of the story. Judith informed me that she owns the original illustration, which is currently mounted on the wall above her desk. She purchased it from the artist shortly after the story was published -- and assuming she can obtain permission to do so, she wants to use the illo for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.

So began our task of tracking down Janet Aulisio in order to obtain her permission. Following a lengthy online search on both our parts, we discovered that Ms. Aulisio has no online presence whatsoever: no website, no blog, no Facebook page, no storefront. Judith then contacted ASFA -- the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists -- only to learn that they were unable to help either: Janet Aulisio was not a member and they had no record of her contact information. A further web search yielded a 2012 interview with Ms. Aulisio, conducted by Scott Taylor for Black Gate magazine. So I emailed John O'Neill, the BG publisher, who put me in touch with Scott Taylor, who in turn passed on my contact info to Janet Aulisio. After Janet contacted me, I forwarded her email to Judith, and she obtained the artist's permission to use the illustration for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.

Judith then had the original b&w illustration scanned into a PDF, and I used a conversion tool to covert the PDF to a JPG file. So far so good.

copyright ©1989 by Janet Aulisio

Then one day, maybe a couple months or so after that cool idea first hit me, the light bulb finally lit: I have a black-and-white illustration to use for the book cover, an illustration that encompassed two facing pages when it appeared in Asimov's. But an ebook only has a front cover; there is no wrap-around cover art on an ebook, no landscape layout. How was I going to fit this illustration on the cover? And even if I could figure that out somehow, I didn't have the appropriate tools (e.g PaintShop or its equivalent), nor do I know how to use such tools, to create such a cover, and with the necessary typography, too. I will be the first to admit: I am not a graphic designer.

Though I didn't know how to do this myself, I did know people who could help me, or at least who could point me in the right direction.

To be continued:
The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 2

Editing in Process...Daryl Gregory

Tachyon Publications has been making a name for itself over the past few years with the publication of award-nominated -- and award-winning -- novellas. Most recently, Nancy Kress's After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Nebula Award and a finalist for the Hugo Award; and Brandon Sanderson's The Emperor's Soul (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Hugo Award. And forthcoming in June, The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow, the master of the sardonic (here).

And, I suspect, my latest project for Tachyon Pubs -- novella We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory -- will be no exception, and we'll be seeing this sharp-edged story on many awards lists beginning in early 2015.

Gregory's troubling tale centers around a therapy group, all of whom have experienced EXTREME -- in bold and in caps extreme! -- trauma. Five "patients": three men and two women, plus their therapist, Dr. Jan Sayer (who is far more than she seems).

There's Harrison, the former Boy Hero of Dunnsmouth, the Monster Detective, who has survived the Scrimshander, and the Abysmal, and many another freak show, most of whom are barely even hinted at. Wheelchair-bound Stan -- no arms, no legs -- who barely survived the Weaver family (aka the Arkansas Cannibals, aka the Spiderfolk) and lives to constantly tell everyone about it. And Martin, who wouldn't be caught dead without his "frames": virtual-reality glasses, because they enable him to see the Dwellers (or so he believes), and if he can't see the Dwellers, well, he will, in fact, be caught dead. Barbara is the middle-aged, pantsuit-attired, married one -- and mother of two boys; the calm one, the rational one, the one whose body holds the secret of the Scrimshander's message. And last is the striking young blonde Greta, the quiet one, who Harrison believes just might be the craziest one of them all. Her body was a document, a calling card, as it were, to a Hidden One, from the other side.

We were a team of professional insomniacs. Once you know there are monsters under the bed, closing your eyes becomes a foolhardy act. So, we paced. We stared into the dark. We listened for the creak of the opening door.

...

Harrison had been right; this was no hero's journey they were on. [Joseph] Campbell didn't understand the other stories in the world. The group knew the truth:

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or nameless tentacled thing. It is the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

We Are All Completely Fine will be published in August, and is now available for preorder.

And don't be afraid to look under the bed...or open the closet door....

[If you've made it this far, a brief note: My apologies for the lack of content on this blog during the past month. A workout mishap ended up placing me at the sharp end of a surgeon's blade. I'm now in week two of recovery, and hope to be at full speed just in time to complete my taxes before the April 15 deadline.]

The 2014 Campbellian Anthology

I typically don't promote and/or feature a book with which I am not involved. I have many reasons for this, the main one being my professional responsibility: Unless I'm involved with a book, I can't speak honestly to the quality of that book, and I would prefer to not recommend a book that wasn't up to my professional editorial standards. But, this book warrants breaking that rule.

If you are a regular voter, or even an occasional voter, for the Hugo Awards, then you are most likely familiar with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. However, if you are not familiar with this award, then please check out the entry in Wikipedia. You may recognize a few of the past winners of this award: C. J. Cherryh, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lucius Shepard, Karen Joy Fowler, Judith Moffett, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Ted Chiang, Cory Doctorow, Jay Lake, John Scalzi, Seanan McGuire, and Lev Grossman, just to name a few. Talk about name dropping!

Well, the folks at Stupefying Stories have put together the second annual collection of representative stories from authors who are eligible this year for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Now, SS wasn't able to get permission from all of the eligible writers, but they managed to acquire rights to stories from most of the eligible writers.

Are you ready for this? How does 860,000-plus words of fiction -- that's right, more than 860K words! -- from 111 different authors sound? And even better, this volume is available for free in epub and mobi ebook formats. Don't have an ereader? You can install Kindle for PC or Mac to read the mobi format, or Adobe Digital Editions for the epub format. If you prefer PDF, then check out Calibre ebook management software because you can use that tool to convert either of these DRM-free formats to PDF.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction by M. David Blake, curator of Stupefying Stories:

A little over a year ago, a small group of us had a crazy idea. "What if," we said, "there was a way everyone eligible for the Campbell could publicize their work at the same time, so that readers might have some idea of who we are?"

...

There will be some stories in this volume that you dislike, perhaps even strongly, and that’s okay. Every writer whose work is represented herein still accomplished something remarkable in attaining a specific level of publication, and by doing so earned a place within these pages. I encourage you to investigate each and every one, but I make no promise about how you'll feel about the stories that landed them here, or the works they elected to share.

Here's a secret: You don't have to read this entire anthology for it to serve a purpose and be valuable to you. You're allowed to skip around.

...

Here's another secret: If you do read every word in this anthology, and investigate all the links for those currently known to be eligible, you'll probably discover a new favorite. At least one. And if you do—if you, as a reader, connect with even a single new writer—then I will feel very, very good about this year's installment of the Annual Campbellian Anthology.

You can read the full introduction on the Stupefying Stories website, which is where you will also find the download links for the ebooks.

As M. David Blake says at the end of his intro: "Now, go make a friend. Your writers are waiting."

Editing in Process...The Very Best of F&SF, Volume Two

After completing my copy edit of the Kameron Hurley novelette, I resumed work on my current project for Tachyon Publications -- volume two of anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

Back in 2009, in celebration of sixty years of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tachyon Publications released the anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which contained 23 stories from some of the best names in the genre: Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chiang, and Roger Zelazny, to name just a few. I copy edited this initial F&SF anthology in March 2009 -- and now, nearly four years later, I had the opportunity to work on volume two.

Here's the Volume Two table of contents:

Introduction by Michael Dirda
"The Third Level" by Jack Finney (1952)
"The Cosmic Charge Account" by C. M. Kornbluth (1956)
"The Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight (1956)
"The Anything Box" by Zenna Henderson (1956)
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley (1958)
"'—All You Zombies—'" by Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
"A Kind of Artistry" by Brian Aldiss (1962)
"Green Magic" by Jack Vance (1963)
"Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty (1966)
"Sundance" by Robert Silverberg (1969)
"The Attack of the Giant Baby" by Kit Reed (1976)
"The Hundredth Dove" by Jane Yolen (1977)
"Jeffty Is Five" by Harlan Ellison® (1977)
"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard (1984)
"The Aliens Who Knew, I mean, Everything"
      by George Alec Effinger (1984)
"Rat" by James P. Kelly (1986)
"The Friendship Light" by Gene Wolfe (1989)
"The Bone Woman" by Charles de Lint (1993)
"The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh (1995)
"Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling (1998)
"Winemaster" by Robert Reed (1999)
"Suicide Coast" by M. John Harrison (1999)
"Have Not Have" by Geoff Ryman (2001)
"The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi (2004)
"Echo" by Elizabeth Hand (2005)
"The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates"
      by Stephen King (2008)
"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (2011)

Each of these 26 stories is a classic in its own right.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, then you know I have a penchant for the humorous, sardonic story -- and R. A. Lafferty's "Narrow Valley" fits this requirement perfectly.

In 1893 the remaining 821 Pawnee Indians were given land allotments of exactly 160 acres; they were to live on the land and pay taxes, "the same as the White-Eyes did." But Clarence Big-Saddle had other ideas, and performed a Pawnee chant over his land: he had no plans to ever pay any taxes.

"Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid no taxes. Intruders were unable to come down to his place. The land was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it. Finally, it was carried as open land on the books. Homesteaders filed on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of living on the land."

Then one day, many decades later, the Rampart family arrived in town and filed paperwork on this one tract of land that still remained open. After filing the paperwork at the courthouse, they climbed back into their camper and headed to the property, all 160 acres of it.

The easiest route to the property was through the short pasture belonging to cattle and wheat farmer Charley Dublin. So the Ramparts stopped at Dublin's house, and he escorted them to their property:

"Well, Rampart, this is the fence and the end of my land. Yours is just beyond."

"Is that ditch on my land?" Rampart asked.

"That ditch is your land."

And that's just the beginning of this 5,300-word treasure.

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two will be published in July, but why wait: preorder your copy now.

Editing in Process...Kameron Hurley

Sometimes, everything -- well, almost everything -- just seems to work out, or so I like to believe hope. For example: I worked for Night Shade Books for nine years (which I blogged about here, including a list of the 125 books I worked on during that time period), and then dealt with the demise -- and resale -- of the company. By the summer of 2013, with no new incoming projects from Night Shade, my workload had decreased dramatically, a huge concern for me as a full-time freelancer. But then Bradley P. Beaulieu, a former Night Shade author with whom I had never worked before, contacted me about a book project. He wanted me to line edit and copy edit his collection, Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories -- financed through a Kickstarter campaign -- which he planned to self-publish. My blog post on Brad's collection is here. Brad later referred me to Barbara Webb, who contracted with me to copy edit her novel City of Burning Shadows (here) -- a novel worthy of your "watchlist" -- which Barbara also plans to self-publish. Those were two of my one-on-one author projects in 2013 that came about from my work with Night Shade Books.

Enter 2014: Most recently, I had the opportunity to work with another former Night Shade author, Kameron Hurley. Her new novelette is "The Body Project": a story in her Bel Dame Apocrypha series, which includes the novels God's War (a 2012 Nebula Award nominee for best novel), Infidel, and Rapture. I was fortunate to have worked with Kameron on this trilogy during my stint at Night Shade.

So I was thrilled when I received Kameron's email regarding this new project: we freelancers are always thrilled when a new income opportunity presents itself, but -- and more importantly -- I was especially thrilled because I would have an opportunity, albeit briefly, to work with Kameron once again (a true pro) and to visit once more, as it were, the world of Nyx, Rhys, Anneke, and the bel dames.

Kameron informed me that the story takes place during the seven-year gap between chapters 4 and 5 of God's War; the novelette is meant to be a sort of introduction for those who haven't yet read the trilogy. And for those of us who have read the books, the story provides further insight in to what drives the protagonist, Nyxnissa so Dasheem.

Here are the two opening paragraphs to "The Body Project":

The man's rugged visage—hanging from the upper window of the tenement building—was captivating. The rest of him was less so, as it was a mangled wreck of shattered limbs and shredded torso strewn all over the street at Nyx's feet.

Nyx toed at the burst flesh of his admittedly once-fine form, now split and oozing a sour blend of offal that brought to mind the pungent stink of rotten bodies at the front. That memory, paired with the profile of the man's head, sparked a sudden familiarity. She had a powerful feeling that she knew him.

This brief excerpt is typical of the gritty, hard-edged writing of the entire trilogy. For me, upon first reading God's War, it was like a breath of fresh air had come in across from the desert.... Different, but not unlike when I read William Gibson's Neuromancer, shortly after the book was first published.

"The Body Project" has been posted online for your reading pleasure courtesy of publisher Del Rey UK, to help promote the UK publication of the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. In addition, the novelette has been published as an ebook on both the Amazon US and Amazon UK sites. If you're going to buy the ebook, don't hesitate: the current promotional price of 99¢ will increase on February 1.

After I had completed the copy edits -- and Kameron had had sufficient time to review them -- she sent out the following two Twitter posts, on January 10 and 14, respectively...

...Which obviously provide me the opportunity to toot (tweet?) my own horn.

And don't forget: the ebook is only 99¢ (£0.77 in the UK) until February 1.

Editing in Process...Barbara J. Webb

My latest project is by author Barbara J. Webb and is not the novel pictured to the left. The novel I worked on is entitled City of Burning Shadows, which the author plans to self-publish. In the meantime, I'm pointing you to her previous novel, Midnight in St. Petersburg, volume one in The Invisible War series. But I'll be sure to post here when City of Burning Shadows is published. The wait will certainly be worth it.

Unfortunately I don't pimp myself as much as I should. In addition to the work I do with publishers, I also work directly with writers: new and novice writers, self-published writers, and contract writers who understand the value of an editor and copy editor. I'd like to point you to one such project, Bradley P. Beaulieu's self-published short fiction collection Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories. If you have an interest in chatting with me about a project, you'll find my email address listed under my blog profile. I don't attend as many conventions as I used to, but should you see me at a con, please feel free to come up to me and introduce yourself, and let me know you would like to talk about a project. And this should up my pimp quota somewhat....

But back to this project: Barbara Webb sent me the first chapter of City of Burning Shadows prior to our signing an agreement to work together on this project. I was impressed with the quality of her writing in this opening chapter and didn't come upon any obvious editorial issues through my initial read. But more important, this one chapter presaged a great novel that I wanted to read further. Here's the end of that first chapter:

...I couldn't afford to lose this job.

Getting myself killed provoking fights was one thing. Starving to death in the street was a whole other. Not that I'd probably live long enough to starve. I'd be another headline: former priest of Kaifail beaten to death, or burned alive, or strung up with his intestines hanging out for the crows. People in this city were nothing if not creative in their punishments for those of us they blamed for the state of things.

All this was still fresh in my mind when the intercom on my desk pinged. "Mr. Drake?" The security guard. "There's a man down here asking for you."

Was there any way this could be good? "Who is he? What does he want?"

"Says he needs to see you. Says you know each other." The guard's voice dropped, whispering into his microphone: "He says he was a priest."

Just like that, I was back on my feet. "I'll be right down." Because I hadn't learned my lesson yet about getting involved. Because I didn't have enough to worry about these days. Most of all, because I thought it would be good to see a friend.

In other words, I hurried back downstairs because I was an idiot.

The blunt, choppy sentence structure hints of the noir detective story. The priests have the ability to perform magic, but the kind of magic present in this story brings to mind Charles Stross's Laundry Files stories: magic via technology. There are conspiracies, and plots within plots.

Whatever tool you use to make notes to yourself -- a journal, Google Keep, MS OneNote, Evernote, or just plain old sticky notes -- make this note: Barbara J. Webb and City of Burning Shadows. As I previously said, I'll post on this blog when the book is available.

Added March 14, 2014:

Book Cover Revealed

Dear Indie Author Community:

An open letter from author J. M. Gregoire to all indie authors.
A must read.

Dear Indie Author Community,

Something bad is happening in the Indie Author Community. Several bad things, in fact, and if something isn't said to you, you're going to ruin your writing career before it ever gets started. What is about to follow in this letter is not an "I know everything" bomb. This letter is to serve as what should be common sense for all of us. All of this I have learned through experience as a jaded reader, a disappointed fangirl, a pissed off book blogger, a screwed over event planner, a disgusted indie author PR rep, and a fellow indie author who wants to see the community as a whole succeed. This is an Open Letter meant to try to bring the Indie Author Community back to respectable place where we can all be taken seriously.

There are a good many indies out there I no longer have respect for. Now, to understand the gravity of that statement, you must understand this: I absolutely love indie authors. I love the basic idea — you can tell your story without the media or some suit telling you what to write and when to write it. The "we don't need them" mentality is one of the factors that kept me from even considering publishing years ago. When the self-publishing boom hit, I thought it was a fantastic idea! Take out the middle man and bring stories down to what it really should be — a relationship between the storyteller and their audience.

All of that being said, I have become all those things I have listed up above. A jaded reader because the market is being flooded with books that are not ready to be published. A disappointed fangirl because of all the authors that feel just because they're published, they are somehow above everyone else...and treat them as such. A pissed off book blogger because once upon a time, writing reviews was FUN and now if I don't like a book, I can't just SAY SO (even POLITELY, mind you) without running the chance of having the author flat-out attack me and drag my name and the name of my book blog through every mud puddle they can find. A disgusted indie author PR rep because I keep watching indies spit in the face of the people who are the very reason they exist. A screwed over event planner because there are so many authors out there booking themselves for events and then not following through on their commitments. An indie author who is just sick of seeing her community drown itself....

If you've gotten this far, you need to read the entire open letter on J. M.'s blog.

John Steinbeck

"If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last." ~John Steinbeck

Book Received...Peter Watts

Arriving on my doorstep (actually, the mail carrier rang the doorbell, as he always does when there is a package to be delivered) is the most recent release from Tachyon Publications: the short story collection from Canadian SF writer Peter Watts.

I worked on Beyond the Rift back in June, and you can read more about that in my blog post entitled "Wattsworld," published on June 25, 2013.

The collection includes 13 of the author's most notable stories, including the Hugo Award-winning novelette "The Island." In "This Fall's Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books," Annalee Newitz for io9 writes:

A new book from crazy genius Watts is always cause for celebration — and this collection of short stories brings together some of his greatest work, including his mind-altering retelling of The Thing called "The Things." Known for his pitch-black views on human nature, and a breathtaking ability to explore the weird side of evolution and animal behavior, Watts is one of those writers who gets into your brain and remains lodged there like an angry, sentient tumor.

And author Paul Di Filippo, in his book review column for Barnes & Noble, had this to say about Beyond the Rift:

Canadian author Peter Watts is a biologist by training and a visionary by inclination. His novels are hard-edged yet coolly psychedelic extrapolations of our gene-modded future. Possessing the stern moral acuity of James Tiptree, he also exhibits the intellectual zest of Arthur C. Clarke. His afterword to his new story collection, Beyond the Rift, is one of the best essays in recent memory about the nature of the kind of science fiction that mates these qualities. Watts is expert at inhabiting the mind of the Other, whether it's a Cambellian shape-shifting alien in "The Things," a future soldier high on techno Rapture in "A Word for Heathens," or a deep-sea dweller with mysterious origins in "Home." His killer opening sentences ("First Contact was supposed to solve everything"; "Wescott was glad when it finally stopped breathing") are rabbit holes to strange futures.

Libraries for Booklovers Everywhere

The Escorial Library, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain

This is only one of the many exquisite photographs of libraries from around the world in a recently published coffee-table book entitled The Library: A World History by James W. P. Campbell and Will Pryce, from University of Chicago Press.

Campbell, from Cambridge University, provides the extensive history of library buildings, each accompanied by Pryce's amazing photographs. But, the book ain't cheap: the hardcover retails for $75.00 and Amazon has it listed for $50.03. But don't let that dissuade you...

Courtesy of CNN.com, you can take a sneak peek at 15 of these awe-inspiring photographs.

(via Hacker News)

Book Received...Kage Baker

I had actually received my contributor's copy of Kage Baker's In the Company of Thieves nearly a month ago, but I was right in the middle of a deadline project, so I set the book aside for later. When I realized I still hadn't posted the book on this blog, I was in the middle of yet another project (actually two deadline projects, back-to-back). I'm not complaining, mind you, especially when the work involves books by Tad Williams, James Morrow, and Barbara Webb. But now those projects are complete --

In the Company of Thieves may be one of the last -- if not the last -- short story collections by Kage Baker, who passed away at the too-young age of 57 on January 31, 2010.

I worked on this collection this past May for publisher Tachyon Publications and, in fact, I wrote up some notes and thoughts and whatnot that I posted to this blog on May 14. So if you want to read a bit more about the collection, other than what is available on the publisher's website, that's the link to click on.

The collection was compiled by Kage's sister, Kathleen Bartholomew, and the one story original to the collection, "Hollywood Ikons," is a collaboration, as it were, between Kage and Kathleen.

Kage and Kathleen and I go way back... You can read my tribute to Kage, "In the Company of Kage Baker," which I posted on January 27, 2010.

The Rhesus Chart Revealed

In my blog post on October 15, at which time I was working on Charles Stross's forthcoming Laundry Files novel The Rhesus Chart, I stated that I had seen the preliminary cover art but was not permitted to post it at the time.

Well, the final cover art has been released -- so, behold, The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross, to be published by Ace Books in July 2014:

You'll note that at the bottom of the front cover, below the book title, the text reads: "Bob Howard, the vampire slayer?" So I won't be spoiling anything if I present here the novel's opening sentence (which the author himself has posted online as well):

"Don't be silly, Bob," said Mo, "everybody knows vampires don't exist."

 

But in Bob Howard's world of Applied Computational Demonology, can we be so sure?...

Editing in Process...James Morrow

Cover Art & Design by
Elizabeth Story

My working relationship with author James Morrow dates back a good ten-plus years. In 2003 I included a reprint of his story "Auspicious Eggs" in my co-edited anthology Witpunk (with Claude Lalumière). Then in August 2008 I line/copy edited Morrow's novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima, which was published by Tachyon Publications the following year. Shambling received critical praise, winning the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2010, as well as being named a finalist for both the Nebula and Hugo awards. Also in 2010, my original Fermi paradox anthology, Is Anybody Out There? (co-edited with Nick Gevers) was published, for which Morrow wrote "The Vampires of Paradox," one of the more celebrated stories in the book.¹

James Morrow is an absolute master of the sardonic, which was one of the reasons Claude and I selected his story for inclusion in Witpunk. (The other, primary reason, being that he is a master craftsman.) But a reader wouldn't need an anthology like Witpunk to know about the sardonic side of James Morrow: simply look at the individual titles of his stories -- "Auspicious Eggs," "The Vampires of Paradox," and "Shambling Towards Hiroshima." And his new book is no exception. The title? The Madonna and the Starship, forthcoming from Tachyon Pubs in early 2014.

I recall the book launch event for Is Anybody Out There? at ReaderCon in Boston in July, 2010. In addition to James Morrow, authors Yves Meynard and Paul Di Filippo were on hand to read from their stories. My blog post "Readercon Recap," published on July 27, 2010, covers the details, but to quote from that post: "About five or so minutes into his reading, Jim [Morrow] reached under the table and -- surprising us all (myself included) -- brought forth a purplish brainlike thing with long tentacles, which he perched upon his shoulder as a visual representation of the parasitic cacodaemons in his story. Great bouts of laughter ensued."

Fast forward three years.... In late September I received an email from Jill Roberts at Tachyon Pubs informing me that James Morrow had requested that I work on his new novella. And two days later I received an email from the author himself: he would send me "a version of the file with a few new nips and tucks and tweaks" when I was ready....

So, here I am working on The Madonna and the Starship, a story that takes place in the early 1950s, the decade in which commercial television was finally affordable for mainstream America. Television sets first appeared in the Sears Roebuck catalog in 1949, and by 1950 nine percent of U.S. households could boast of owning a television set. By 1951 the television networks broadcast a total of twenty-seven hours of children's shows each week, and promoted the educational aspects of television to parents.² Which brings me to Kurt Jastrow, the protagonist of our story. who is the head writer for the NBC children's program Brock Barton and His Rocket Rangers. In addition to cranking out weekly episodes of Brock Barton, Jastrow was also tasked with writing -- and starring in -- a ten-minute segment at the end of each episode: Uncle Wonder's Attic. Wearing a cardigan sweater and hiding behind a fake grizzled beard and equally fake eyebrows, Uncle Wonder would rummage around in his attic until he found just the right materials to perform some experiment related to the Brock Barton universe. Here's Kurt:

I liked my job. Just as our show enabled kids to fantasize that they were star sailors, so did my scripting duties allow me to imagine that I was a playwright, though I knew perfectly well that nobody was about to confuse a space schooner called the Triton with a streetcar named Desire.

But, Jastrow's day-to-day normalcy was interrupted by the arrival of two lobster-like aliens -- Wulawand and Volavont, from the planet Qualimosa in the Procyon system: a planet of "logical positivists." Unfortunately, this didn't bode well for Kurt Jastrow's love interest, Connie Osborne, who wrote and produced a Sunday morning religious program called Not By Bread Alone. Certain that the program's audience represented "a hive of irrationalist vermin," the Qualimosans planned to piggyback their death-ray onto the broadcast signal of Not By Bread Alone, to every NBC affiliate. Come Sunday morning, at ten minutes past ten o'clock, the Earth would be cleansed of nearly two million irrationalists.

Kurt and Connie now had less that two days to write, cast, and rehearse a replacement episode of Not By Bread Alone, one that was so perfectly rational and utterly absurd as to foil the Qualimosans' plans.

The Madonna and the Starship is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

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Footnotes:

1. This blog also has a dedicated Is Anybody Out There? page, which includes the complete text of six of the anthology's stories.

2. "Television History - A Timeline: 1878-2005," The University of Texas School of Law, Tarlton Law Library, Jamail Center for Legal Research.

Some Thoughts on the Winter in the City Kickstarter

Art by Kip Ayers

If you read this blog even irregularly -- which is pretty much how I post to it anyhow -- then you've undoubtedly seen the two or three "teasers" I've posted about a Kickstarter project entitled Winter in the City.

Winter in the City is -- will be -- an anthology of urban fantasy stories about real cities. The Kickstarter campaign launched on November 1, which means we're now at the halfway point.

Though I will be editing this anthology, the idea for the project -- and the management of the Kickstarter -- belongs to authors R. B. Wood and M. J. King. The idea came about during R. B.'s and M. J.'s attendance at ReaderCon in Boston this past July. If you would like to read more about the actual genesis of the Kickstarter project, please read R. B. Wood's guest blog post on Fantasy Book Critic. But for now, and in their own words, they share some thoughts on Winter in the City. (I'm surprised they even asked me to join the team... I don't have any initials in my name!)

* * * * *

R. B. Wood: Ever since I was old enough to hide a copy of Analog or the now defunct Amazing Stories in a random text book, I've loved short stories. My library is filled with anthologies of the fantastical dating back to the 1970s, and I continue to collect, read, and reread them to this day.

The Winter in the City Kickstarter project is a culmination of decades-worth of adoration for the short story. And for one boy's obsession for more worlds to explore.

M. J. King: The awesome thing about urban fantasy, for me, is that it takes the familiar and makes it fantastic. The places that each of us sees every day made magical. Or perhaps urban fantasy taps into the magic inherent in these places, allowing us to see it more clearly.

Urban fantasy is just sideways of everything we know and experience in our waking lives. There's always this niggling wonder in the back of my mind: What if it were real? What if the magic of fey, and gods, and demons joined our everyday sort of magic?

RB: What if all the things in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or even Dracula were transported into the real world of city life?

And how could you use the complexities inherent when large populations of thinking and feeling people live in close quarters with the supernatural?

This is at the core of the anthology. Exploring different cities from around the world and how monsters, faeries, magic, and ghosts play with the millions of city dwellers.

MJ: As a new writer, the opportunity to work with a project with so much potential has been awesomely staggering. To go from talking over the concept with R. B. to this stage has been a huge learning curve, and I'm sure it will only grow steeper from here.

RB: The response to WitC has been overwhelming and exciting, while also being a bit daunting. Key for us was engaging with an editor that not only is the consummate professional, but has the industry experience to take this project to an entirely new level than even I had imagined. I've known Marty Halpern for a number of years -- and not only was he perfect for the role, he was excited to join the team. His guidance and support has been invaluable.

MJ: Marty has been fantastic, and because of his involvement, this project has already become so much more than I imagined it could be.

RB: The authors -- many of whom I am a fan-boy of -- responded to their project invitation with not only the response we were looking for, but with offers to help with things like reward levels and advice for the Kickstarter. These storytellers have begun to share ideas, and more specifically the cities in which they want to set their Winter-tales.

MJ: We owe a giant thank you to all the Kickstarter backers, because without them, this project won't happen. I can't wait to read the submissions and discover what magic the authors find in their cities!

RB: Our goal, really, is very basic: great stories that focus on the one constant in Urban Fantasy (no matter what definition of the genre you subscribe to) -- The City.

Because, in the middle of the night, we all know that the unexplained and fantastic will walk, crawl, slither, and fly amongst the concrete, steel, and glass of the metropolis.

* * * * *

A brief explanation of Kickstarter if you're not familiar with the term, or these types of projects: Kickstarter is a website that supports crowd-funded projects. Readers of this blog, for example, help make up the "crowd." A Kickstarter project will offer rewards, or incentives, hopefully intriguing enough -- or at least interesting enough -- to compel the "crowd" to part with some amount of their hard-earned $$$ to help support the project. No matter how much money any one individual "invests" in the project, no money actually changes hands -- and no rewards/incentives are sent out -- unless the project is fully funded. And that, of course, is the goal: Winter in the City needs to be fully funded for this anthology to happen.

Our Kickstarter project website lists the authors who plan to submit stories to the anthology, but I'll just throw out a few names here: Kevin J. Anderson, Brad Beaulieu, Pat Cadigan (a 2013 Hugo Award winner for best novelette), Alex Irvine, Gini Koch, Nick Mamatas, James Morrow, Pat Murphy, Shauna Roberts, and Harry Turtledove -- and that's just a very few names that come immediately to mind.

Winter in the City has a goal of $15,000, of which nearly one-half is earmarked for the authors so that they may receive professional rates for their work. Kickstarter works when a lot of people know about the project: the more people who know about the project the larger the support pool becomes. Even if you don't choose to participate in the project, if you think it's a worthy endeavor, then helping to spread the word will aid the project in the long run.

We hope you'll join us in this endeavor to help make Winter in the City a reality. And please share the link to the Kickstarter campaign with others as well.

"The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters." ~Guillermo del Toro

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R. B. Wood (@rbwood) is a technology consultant and a writer of Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction and quite frankly anything else that strikes his fancy. His first novel, The Prodigal's Foole, was released to critical acclaim in 2012. Mr. Wood is currently working on the second volume of his Arcana Chronicles series, The Young Practitioner, as well as numerous short stories, a graphic novel, and a science fiction trilogy that he dusts off every few years. Along with his writing passion, R. B. is host of The Word Count Podcast: a show that features talent from around the globe reading original flash-fiction stories.

M. J. King (@mjkingwrites) currently lives on the Maine coast with her husband. Her urban fantasy short story, "A Trick of Shadows," can be found in the Kickstarter-funded anthology Fight Like a Girl. She is an occasional contributor to The Word Count Podcast and is one of the three women behind Anxiety Ink.

Editing in Process...The Very Best of Tad Williams

Art by Kerem Beyit

My latest copy editing project is a hefty collection of Tad Williams stories, 135,000 words (including front and back matter) to be exact, titled The Very Best of Tad Williams, forthcoming from Tachyon Publications in May 2014.

I have Tad's four-volume Otherland series in my library, but except for the Otherland novella, "The Happiest Dead Boy in the World" (included in Legends II: New Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Robert Silverberg, Tor Books, 2003), I've not read any of the author's other short fiction --

Until now. And my excuse for not having read any of Tad Williams's other short stories? Well, can I plead insanity? As I must have been insane to have overlooked some of these stories.

I was pleased to see that this collection contained the more recent Otherland story, "The Boy Detective of Oz" (originally published in Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, 47North, 2013), which I hadn't previously read -- so now my Otherland series is complete.

My favorite story, by far, in the collection is "The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of" -- a story of stage magicians, a locked-door mystery, and a missing book of memoirs. This novelette is pure gold, written in the style of the noir detective story, with just the right touch of sardonic wit provided by the occasionally drunk protagonist, one Dalton Pinnard -- also known as "Pinardo the Magnificent." And, of course, we have Pinnard's receptionist Tilly, and the requisite damsel, Ms. Emily Heltenbocker.

Second favorite would have to be another novelette, "And Ministers of Grace" (originally published in Warriors, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, Tor Books, 2010). A heady tale of two religious factions: the Rationalists of Archimedes and the Abramites of Covenant. An assasin's beliefs are so ingrained that he completely closes off the ability to even listen to, let alone consider, the beliefs of others.

Here's the table of contents:

The Old Scale Game
The Storm Door
The Stranger's Hands
Child of an Ancient City
The Boy Detective of Oz
Three Duets for Virgin and Nosehorn
Diary of a Dragon
Not with a Whimper, Either
Some Thoughts Re: Dark Destroyer
Z is for...
Monsieur Vergalant's Canard
The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of
A Fish Between Three Friends
Every Fuzzy Beast of the Earth, Every Pink Fowl of the Air
A Stark and Wormy Knight
Black Sunshine
And Ministers of Grace
Omnitron, What Ho!

The last story, "Omnitron, What Ho!" is original to this collection. It's the tale of Werner Von Secondstage Booster, his Aunt Jabbatha, and how "Wernie" first met his robot servant Omnitron. As I read this story, I pictured Jeeves and Wooster....only instead of Jeeves rescuing Wooster from one of his typical hijinks, Omnitron saves Wernie from a more deadly romantic liaison.

And the longest story in the collection, "Black Sunshine," which clocks in at nearly 28,000 words, is written as a screenplay. Five friends, Brent, Eric, Janice, Kimmy, and Topher, party down on the last Saturday night of the summer, before school begins. Then, twenty-five years later, on the last Saturday night before school begins, they all meet once again, and slowly begin to realize exactly what happened that night, twenty-five years ago -- except that it is happening right now.

Winter in the City

"The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters." ~Guillermo del Toro

Is there any hope, Gandalf?

The main reason I don't post on Blogger more often:

Books Received...Stephen R. Donaldson and K. W. Jeter

The long-awaited tenth and final volume, The Last Dark (G. P. Putnam's Sons), in Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, has finally been published.

I remember when I first started reading the first volume, Lord Foul's Bane, shortly after the book was published in 1977. I was expecting a fantasy -- you know, some medieval land, or faery land, or bewitched land -- and here was some guy walking down the street on his way to pay his electric bill! So the community started paying his bills for him, and sending him food so that he didn't have to come into town for any reason. But one of those thoughtful meals, a sandwich, contained ground glass. And all of this was being done for, and to, the man because he had leprosy! WTF?

I was so taken aback by the setting -- it was so NOT what I had been expecting -- that I couldn't get into it, and I put the book back on the shelf.

For whatever reason I no longer recall, more than ten years later I picked the book back up and started to read it once again. Now that I knew what to expect, I got sucked in to the story and couldn't put the book(s) down. And by now, of course, there were six volumes to consume! I was working as a technical instructor at the time for a high-tech company. (The hapless company shall remain nameless to protect their innocence.) I would make my way to the classroom as early as possible to prepare for class, and as soon as all the setup was complete, I'd pull out whatever Thomas Covenant volume I was on at the time and continue my reading; and it always seemed to take longer to clean up after class, too.

It's now been more than twenty years since I've read the first six books in this series. Gawd, twenty-plus years.... I've now purchased all four books in The Last Chronicles, but I haven't started reading them yet. First, I don't like to read a series until I have all the volumes in the series in hand; and second, I'm seriously considering starting with book one, Lord Foul's Bane, and reading all ten volumes.

The second book I purchased was another long-awaited title: K. W. Jeter's Fiendish Schemes (Tor Books), sequel to his Steampunk novel Infernal Devices, originally published by St. Martin's Press in 1987. Jeter, by the way, is credited with coining the term "Steampunk" in a letter to Locus magazine, printed in the April 1987 issue.

In October 1988 I was on my way to ArmadilloCon 10, at which K. W. Jeter was the Author Guest of Honor, and the other author guests included James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers. I flew American Airlines from San Jose to Dallas/Fort Worth, and from there to Austin, Texas. Upon boarding the plane to Austin, as I was walking down the aisle to my seat, I spied someone reading a copy of Infernal Devices. I stopped, and made some type of comment like, If you're reading Jeter's novel, then you must be going to ArmadilloCon, too -- to which she responded in the affirmative. That individual was Spike Parsons, well known among Bay Area fandom, whom I met for the first time on that plane. [Hi, Spike!]

You can read a bit more about my attendance at Armadillocon 10 in my blog post entitled "Philip K. Dick & Rudy Rucker's Warez," posted on August 30, 2010.