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The Business of Writing: Joining the Community

The Business of Writing: Joining the Community

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communityI spoke to some creative writing students at a local university last Friday and I tried to tell them something it took me a long time to understand: when you begin your writing career, you’re joining a community.

By writing career,  I mean your first published work. In my case, I was first printed in a ‘zine titled Gauntlet. Before I submitted my story to the magazine, about the only thing I knew about Gauntlet was that it was open to heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery. I was making a common mistake — I didn’t know  the market.

It’s hard to know ALL the markets, especially when, in those bygone days of yore, to know about the magazine you had to buy an issue. (Most of those little magazines couldn’t be leafed through at local bookstores because they weren’t carried.) Today we submitters have it a little simpler because most magazines have web sites where fiction can be sampled. And, of course, an increasingly large number of magazines ARE e-zines.

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Why I Stopped Reading Granta

Why I Stopped Reading Granta

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granta-117-smallI used to subscribe to Granta when I was in grad school. It’s a literary magazine published in the UK, originally produced by students at Cambridge University (where it offered early work by Ted Hughes, A. A. Milne, Sylvia Plath, and many others). It was relaunched as a wider journal of “New Writing” in 1979; since then it’s published work by Mario Vargas Llosa, Richard Ford, Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Gabriel García Márquez, and lots more.

But while Granta showcased some terrific writing — when it wasn’t focused on an odd mix of memoir and photojournalism — too often the fiction left me cold. On their website the editorial team writes convincingly of their “belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real.” But what I frequently read in Granta weren’t so much stories as brief literary fireworks: dazzling to watch, but ultimately empty. For someone looking for love in the crowded literary scene, Granta seemed a bit too smitten with beauty and a bit too scornful of personality.

So I let my subscription lapse. But I did pick up the odd issue now and then. Not because of all that beauty or anything. Just, you know, for the articles.

Granta’s changed management a few times since we hung out together in grad school. The owner of The New York Review of Books took a controlling stake in 1994; in 2005 it changed hands again. I’ve lost track of how many editors it’s had over the same period. But it still does themed issues, and not very predictable themes, either. Granta #69 was The Assassin issue, and #74, Summer 2001, was Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater (“Perhaps no truth is more momentous, as none more difficult to face, than the blackest, most abject one about oneself. My son supplies me with drugs, with Ecstasy.”)

In tune with that unpredictability, the theme of last year’s Autumn issue was Horror. This was intriguing enough for me to buy a copy, just to see what happened when Granta wandered into my neighborhood. The issue has an impressive table of contents, featuring original fiction by Don DeLillo, Sarah Hall, Rajesh Parameswaran, and Stephen King, and others. Of course there’s also the usual mix of non-fiction, from Will Self, Paul Auster, and Santiago Roncagliolo, among others.

And as a perfect metaphor for this awkward meeting of literature and genre, Mark Doty’s memoir-slash-essay “Insatiable” opens with the odd assertion, from a 2003 Walt Whitman bio, that “Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on Walt Whitman.”

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Black Gate to Publish Online Fiction Starting Sunday, September 30

Black Gate to Publish Online Fiction Starting Sunday, September 30

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black-gate-4-smallWe are very pleased to announce that Black Gate magazine, your home for the finest in adventure fantasy, will begin publishing original online fiction starting Sunday, September 30.

Holy crap, that’s tomorrow.

Wow. Uh, well, into the breach. Best way to do this is to jump right in, and figure it out as we go.

New fiction will be published right here on our website every Sunday, starting tomorrow. Here’s what’s coming in the next two months:

  • “The Duelist,” by Jason Thummel
  • “The Quintessence of Absence,” by Sean McLachlan
  • “The Daughter’s Dowry,” by Aaron Bradford Starr
  • “A Phoenix in Darkness,” by Donald S. Crankshaw
  • Novel excerpt: Queen of Thorns, by Dave Gross
  • “Godmother Lizard,” by C.S.E. Cooney
  • “The Poison Well” by Judith Berman
  • Novel excerpt: Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones
  • Novel excerpt: The Black Fire Concerto, by Mike Allen

What can you expect from online fiction at Black Gate? We will be presenting original fiction from some of our most popular contributors, as well as exciting new authors and many of the best writers in the industry. All stories are presented completely free of charge.

We will be offering fiction at all lengths, including short stories, novellas, and novel excerpts. It’s just like reading an issue of Black Gate, except you can do it from the comfort of your couch. Or that uncomfortable chair in front of the computer, whatever.

Join us tomorrow as Jason Thummel brings us a riveting tale of a talented swordsman who finds himself caught up in a web of deceit and far-reaching ambition in a fast-paced tale of action in a violent city, “The Duelist.”

New Treasures: City Under the Moon by Hugh Sterbakov

New Treasures: City Under the Moon by Hugh Sterbakov

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city-under-the-moonConfession time.

I love a good book. I also love a well-marketed book. As someone who’s been a publisher in this industry for over a decade, it gives me real pleasure to see someone bring a new title to market with genuine energy, enthusiasm, and inventiveness. It’s even better — and frankly, much rarer — to see a small press or self-published book get anything like a real marketing campaign.

Hugh Sterbakov’s City Under the Moon may be the best marketed self-published book I’ve ever seen. Anyone trying to publish a fantasy novel in America could learn from this man.

Now, I’m not 100% certain it’s self-published. But when the publisher (Ben & Derek Ink Inc.) neglects to have a website, publish other books, mention their address, or even put their name on the cover, that’s frequently a big clue.

Admittedly, Mr. Sterbakov has resources most aspiring self-publishers don’t. He’s a writer for Marvel Comics and Seth Green’s Robot Chicken, and in the latter capacity he’s been nominated for two Emmys. His animated comedy script Hell & Back is now in production, staring Mila Kunis and Susan Sarandon.

How does any of this help him? Here are just a sample of the blurbs for his novel:

Bioweapon catastrophes, government conspiracies, military sieges, historical revelations, psychological warfare and werewolves. You want more thrill from a thriller? — Seth Green

Fast-paced, action packed and terrifying. — Mila Kunis

Superpowered teens, angst, action and comedy… I don’t get it. –– Joss Whedon

When you get blurbs from Joss Whedon, Mila Kunis and Seth Green on your self-published novel, you’re doing something right.

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Electric Velocipede Kickstarter Funded! Started First Stretch Goal!

Electric Velocipede Kickstarter Funded! Started First Stretch Goal!

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Less than a week ago, we posted here to talk about the Kickstarter campaign we launched to fund next year’s Electric Velocipede issues. We hit our $5,000 goal with two weeks to go.

Wow.

I guess people want to see more Electric Velocipede! Once you hit your goal on Kickstarter, in a lot of ways you’re done. However, since people can cancel their pledge at any time before your campaign ends, you want to keep talking it up so that more people pledge to cover the chance that a few might drop out. Also, with so much time left, it felt wasteful to just do nothing.

A lot of Kickstarter campaigns will run stretch goals once they reach their initial funding request. That way, there’s a reason for people who want to give to keep giving (you’d hate for someone who wanted to donate to feel like they missed their chance).

With that in mind, we’ve started our first stretch goal: we want to digitize all of Electric Velocipede‘s back issues (you can see the glorious cover to issue #1 on the right) and make them available as epubs, mobi files, and PDFs so that people can read them on whatever device they want to. We’ve had a number of people asking about it, often international backers, and we think it’s a good idea. We’ll need about $2,500 to do this, and we’re already more than $1,o00 of the way there!

It will take some doing for this; we need to get electronic rights from the first thirteen/fourteen issues’ worth of authors and then we need to convert the files. Neither of which is terribly complicated, but it is time-consuming. But it will be worth the effort. We’ve got a lot of fans that have come to us recently who have never been able to read copies of older issues since we always really small print runs.

We have a bunch of different things in mind for stretch goals, but this felt the most important, given how much it will benefit our readers. If we achieve this stretch goal, anyone who’s backed at $25 or more will receive electronic copies of all back issues of Electric Velocipede. That’ll be issues #1 – #21/22. That’s almost $1 an issue! Plus, at $25 you’ll get a print copy of a back issue, and a electronic four-issue subscription starting with issue #25. You’ll get almost the entire issue run for your $25 investment. You won’t regret it.

Steampunk Spotlight: City of Iron Board Game on Kickstarter

Steampunk Spotlight: City of Iron Board Game on Kickstarter

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cityofiron-boxLast winter, I saw an excellent game on Kickstarter called Empires of the Void (Amazon). I was fairly new to Kickstarter, however, so didn’t actually back it at the time because I was hesitant about how the whole process worked. When I caught a glimpse of the game at GenCon, however, I was very impressed with the production values and wish I’d gotten it … because the Kickstarter discount turns out to be nearly 50%.

I’m not going to make that mistake again. Empires of the Void‘s creators, Red Raven Games, now has a second Kickstarter going. City of Iron is a steampunk-themed board game, complete with bizarre races, exotic lands (including floating islands), airships, and yes, even bottled demons. That’s right: one of the game’s many resources are bottled demons.

The goal of the game is to build up your civilization’s resource levels to surpass those of your competing civilizations. There are a variety of different ways you can proceed, with each turn allowing for three actions chosen from the following:

  • Build using a Building card
  • Buy Science tokens
  • Play a Citizen or Military card
  • Store a Building
  • Draw a card
  • Tax to gain coins
  • Attack a town

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Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

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electric-velocipede-24John O’Neill gave me the opportunity to write here and talk a little bit about a Kickstarter campaign that I launched in the week leading up to Worldcon for my magazine Electric Velocipede, an eclectic, speculative fiction magazine. The magazine was founded in 2001 and has published at least two issues (and the occasional double issue) every year since. In 2009, it won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. It’s also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four times and had several of its stories reprinted in year’s best anthologies.

In addition to its critical acclaim, Electric Velocipede has been a place for people to encounter excellent writing that’s just a little different. We particularly pride ourselves on finding new short fiction voices in the field. Among the writers who published early work with Electric Velocipede are Catherynne M. Valente, Hal Duncan, Aliette de Bodard, Rachel Swirsky, Shira Lipkin, and many more.

And it’s not just new voices; established writers have also graced Electric Velocipede‘s pages. Jeffrey Ford, Jeff VanderMeer, Liz Williams, Jay Lake, Alex Irvine, Marly Youmans, Chris Roberson, Genevieve Valentine, Ken Liu, and others have all been here. Here, check out some examples of what we’ve published:

We’re looking to raise $5,000 to cover the costs of publishing four issues of the magazine in 2013. We’re putting out two issues in the second half of 2012 (most of issue #24 has come out already), so we’ll already be on a quarterly schedule and ready to continue that pace next year. At the time of writing this, we’ve raised almost 85% of our funding with more than two weeks to go. While reaching our goal looks very much in our grasp, we don’t want to lose our early momentum and miss out on the chance to bring great content to our current and future readers.

You can view complete details on the Kickstarter campaign here.

Death and the Book Deal

Death and the Book Deal

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eowynI realized yesterday that my hard learned lesson about publishing (“it’s a long distance run, not a sprint”) can’t help someone dying of cancer. What do you say to someone who will mostly likely be dead before she reaches the age you were when you first got a book contract?

I have a friend who’s been dying of cancer for a long time. Since she was in her teens, in fact. She keeps beating back Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and sometimes she even manages to kill off subsidiary cancers that bloom up in the meantime. But here’s the thing about Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It might go into remission but it never really goes away. And now it’s stopped responding to treatment. Because Non-Hodgkin’s can go slow, or fast, or change its mind about where it pops up or how fast it wants to develop, there’s really no telling how much longer my friend has. It could be months, or it could be years.

Before any rumors or speculations start flying, I’m not talking about anyone here on the Black Gate staff. For the sake of my friend’s privacy, let’s call her Eowyn, because she’s smart, gutsy, and beautiful.

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Self Publishing 101

Self Publishing 101

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in-savage-landsWhen I first read about self-publishing, I certainly didn’t think it was for me. I was busy trying to break into the market, working on my skills, celebrating a few acceptances here and there, and collecting a ton of rejections. It was what I had been told to expect, so everything seemed to be moving along just fine. At that time, with my limited understanding of what it meant, self-publishing would have been an admission of defeat, and was being self-published even really being published?

But the idea took hold and germinated in the recesses of my mind. I continued to read up on it, perusing blogs such as J.A. Konrath’s and Dean Wesley Smith’s and lurking on forums like the Kindle Boards Writer’s Café — even as I kept submitting to markets. I didn’t have consistent access to the Internet at that time, so my opportunities to keep informed were limited and infrequent. But over time, one thing became clear: there were people actually making a go of it, getting read, and a few outliers were actually making a living.

Which led me to ask what it was that I wanted to accomplish with my writing in the first place. Make a ton of cash, pay off the mortgage and retire, you bet. But that wasn’t really the reason, because if it was, I wouldn’t be writing. There are far more profitable ways to spend that time. No, I write because I take pleasure in it; I like the idea that something I’ve done might entertain someone for a while; that a stranger might read it and enjoy it. Yes, it’s all ego! I want to be read.

Well, that and make a million dollars.

A quick glance on the old hard drive showed over a hundred stories just sitting there, doing nothing. Some had already been published, but the rights had reverted to me. Others had been accepted by publishers that had, for whatever reason, folded before putting the story in print. Still others had been rejected by their intended markets, but I liked them anyway. And lastly, there were those that sat there because they deserved to. They weren’t all that good. So I selected a tentative table of contents for a collection and started researching the nuts and bolts of publishing in earnest.

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Worldcon Wrap-up

Worldcon Wrap-up

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black-gate-booth
The Black Gate booth. From left to right: John O’Neill, Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge, and part of Donald Crankshaw’s head. Also, the back of Peadar Ó Guilín. Click for bigger version.

I was almost to Chicago last Thursday when I realized I’d gotten so wrapped up in the audio book of The Name of the Wind that I’d missed my turn. Fortunately, I found another way to Interstate 90 and the Hyatt Regency. And when I finally reached the dealer’s room, I was able to lodge a personal complaint with Patrick Rothfuss himself for writing so well that I got distracted.

It wasn’t long ago that I’d arrive at a convention and be surrounded by strangers or literary luminaries I was too nervous to approach. When I turn up these days, there are still a lot of strangers, but there are plenty of familiar faces as well. Before I’d even checked in, I bumped into Tom Doyle, and shortly after registering my complaint with Patrick Rothfuss, I was welcomed by Arin Komins and Rich Warren  to their used books booth, Starfarer’s Dispatch.

Rich showed me a rare Harold Lamb book, then, as I noticed it contained an insert about Lamb I had no knowledge of, he handed me a CD with scans of the material. That was incredibly kind of him. I then signed a complete set of the Harold Lamb books I’d edited and personalized Arin’s copy of The Desert of Souls, which she had liked so much that I gifted her with an ARC of The Bones of the Old Ones.

Purely by chance, I kept down the aisle to the left and came instantly to the Black Gate booth where John O’Neill, (now with beard) occupied a booth surrounded by old but well-cared for paperbacks and stacks of Black Gate magazines. The booth remained a gathering spot for friends, acquaintances, and staff members throughout the convention, which is why the talented Peadar Ó Guilín and Donald Crankshaw were manning the booth with O’Neill. I’d never had the chance to meet Peadar before, but his gentle humor put me immediately at ease. We chatted for a while and then James Enge wandered up with his brother Patrick. While the Mighty Enge was settling into the room we shared, I retrieved a box of The Desert of Souls hardbacks to sell at the Black Gate booth. (We sold ’em all before the end of the convention!)

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