Close Encounters with the Contributing Authors of Alien Contact!

This was the headline as it appeared on SFSignal.com on Tuesday, October 25, 2011, a few minutes past midnight. Actually, the words "Starting Today" prefaced that headline, but that was Tuesday, and today is Sunday -- nearly a week later....

In support of the release this week of Alien Contact from Night Shade Books, SFSignal is hosting a series of guest blog posts and interviews with a number of the authors who contributed to the anthology.

World Fantasy Award nominee Charles Tan conducts all the interviews, in which the authors answer questions like: "What's the appeal of alien contact stories for you?" and "What was the first alien contact story you read that made a lasting impression?" as well as a question or two specific to their story. The authors also discuss their current projects.

The guest blog posts revolve around each author's story in the Alien Contact anthology. Readers will gain some insight into the genesis of each of these stories.

The blog posts and interviews will be posted at approximately 2:00 PM (Central time) each weekday (well, almost), from Tuesday, October 25, through Monday, November 14. Here's the schedule; links have been provided for the first four entries, which have already been posted:

* Tue, 10/25: Nancy Kress, Guest Blog post: "Building a Story from Fortuitously Nearby Construction Materials"
* Wed, 10/26: Mike Resnick: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 10/27: Mark W. Tiedemann, Guest Blog post: "It's Not About the Buttons"
* Fri, 10/28: Adam-Troy Castro: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 10/31: Nancy Kress: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Tue, 11/1: Ernest Hogan, Guest Blog post: "Once Upon a Time in SoCal: The Making of 'Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song'"
* Wed, 11/2: Paul McAuley: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 11/3: Jack Skillingstead, Guest Blog post: "Thermalling"
* Fri, 11/4: Mark W. Tiedemann: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 11/7: Ernest Hogan: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Tue, 11/8: Barbara Hambly, Guest Blog post: "George Alec Effinger and the Aliens Who Knew Everything"
* Wed, 11/9: Jack Skillingstead: The "Alien Contact" Interview
* Thu, 11/10: Bruce McAllister: The "Alien Contact" Interview

* Mon, 11/14: Pat Cadigan: The "Alien Contact" Interview

Remember, you can check in with SFSignal.com at approximately 2:00 PM every weekday -- that's 3:00 PM on the east coast and 12-noon on the west coast -- or, you could just check back here at More Red Ink each weekday for the next two weeks and I'll provide each forthcoming link in a new, albeit very brief, blog post.

Mark Teppo's Codex of Souls Seeks the Light

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marty Halpern Interview

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

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

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

June-End Links & Things

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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