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.

Kage Baker's In the Company of Thieves

In May 2001, I contacted Kage Baker via email about a collection of Company stories; at the time I was acquiring and editing for Golden Gryphon Press. Kage responded the very same day, stating that she was intrigued with my proposal and that she has forwarded my letter to her agent, Linn Prentis. On May 9 I received a response from Linn: the collection was a "go."

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers premiered at the San Jose WorldCon on August 29, 2002. The book was even more successful than I had anticipated: Publishers Weekly gave the collection a starred review; the first printing of 3,000 copies sold out in only two months; there was a second hardcover printing, and the trade paperback edition was published in October 2004. In a blog post dated January 27, 2010 -- just four days before Kage Baker passed away -- I detailed how Kage and I worked together on this book, how it all came together.

And now, nearly to the day and twelve years later, I have the good fortune to be able to work on what will, unfortunately, be the last new collection of Company stories by Kage Baker: In the Company of Thieves, forthcoming from Tachyon Publications.

Working on these stories is like meeting up with old friends again, like the immortal cyborg Joseph (in "Hollywood Ikons," a new story original to the collection; more on this in a bit), Edward Bell Fairfax and Lady Beatrice, of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society and Ladies Auxiliary, respectively (in "The Women of Nell Gwynne's" and "The Unfortunate Gytt"), and the evil Labienus and his Plague Cabal (in "Mother Aegypt"). Note that I didn't say they were all "good" friends....

So many memories have come flooding back since I began work on this collection of stories: working on Black Projects, White Knights and then the limited edition chapbook story The Angel in the Darkness; meeting up with Kage at cons -- she was always with her sister Kathleen and I was usually with my wife Diane -- which typically entailed a long chat over lunch or dinner. Did you know Kage's favorite drink is (was) a mojito? Meeting niece "Emma Rose" (read the novel The Hotel Under the Sand, also from Tachyon Pubs) at Kage's appearance at SF in SF on July 25, 2009. And... I could go on, but you get the drift. We were friends, and I always looked forward to the next meeting/lunch/dinner at the next con.... And now we (Diane and I) get to continue that friendship with Kathleen, hopefully sharing a meal at BayCon over the Memorial Day weekend.

Only six stories make up In the Company of Thieves, but those six stories entail more than 100,000 words of very fine fiction. Three of the stories are novella length, at 25,000-plus words. Two additional stories clock in at around the 12,000-word mark. And one story ("The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park"), one of my very favorites, is a mere 3,700 words. I am constantly amazed at what Kage can accomplish in so few words.

Previously I mentioned a new story, "Hollywood Ikons" (one of the 12,000-word stories mentioned above), to be published in this collection for the first time. The story is a collaboration, as it were, between Kage and her sister Kathleen Bartholomew. From the draft copy of Kathleen's story notes:

Before Kage died in 2010, this was one of the stories she told me to look at first....Kage had already assigned Joseph as the hero of this one, so all I had to do was channel her and connect the gold-limned dots."

So I can only hope that Kage has left behind piles of notes and outlines and that Kathleen is able to continue channeling Kage into new stories of the Company, of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, of the Gentlemen's Speculative Society... Or, better yet, I can hope that Kathleen eventually graces us with her own unique tales of wonder.

August Links & Things (Part Two)

Part Two of my "August Links & Things" blog post is of a more personal nature, primarily on authors with whom I have worked, books I have edited. You can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern -- but here, in addition to the links themselves, I include more detail and occasional comments.

• RTBookReviews.com [Romantic Times] has "Kage Baker Remembered" -- heartfelt memories of the author as seen "through the eyes of her younger sister, Kathleen Bartholomew." I would like to add that in all the years I've known Kage -- and through lunches, dinners, bookstore readings, convention panels, hotel lobby chats, etc. -- she and Kathleen were inseparable. Reading about Kage through Kathleen's eyes is a pure joy. [Note: I have written my own remembrance of working with Kage Baker.]

Kage, age 6, with her first typewriter,
and her godfather, Irish actor Sean McClory

• And if you are a reader and/or fan of Kage's writings, then you'll want to be following Kathleen's blog: Kathleen, Kage and the Company, in which Kathleen is -- to use her word -- "channeling" Kage. In between her fiction writing, Kathleen tells many wonderful stories of growing up with Kage, the two of them living together in various locales, their travels, their hobbies, the food they loved, and more. Kathleen has tons of Kage's notes, and years and years of long discussions with Kage about her stories and characters -- and Kathleen plans to write the novels that Kage was unable to complete. She is currently working on the sequel to The Women of Nell Gwynne's.
  

Kage Baker Redux

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

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

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


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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

Marty Halpern


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Footnotes

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

In the Company of Kage Baker

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

**********

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Perfect Sentence

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

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

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

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