Browsed by
Category: Writing

Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

Electric Velocipede Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Publish 4 Issues in 2013

Comments 0 Comment

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

Comments 9 comments

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.

…

Read More Read More

Self Publishing 101

Self Publishing 101

Comments 5 comments

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.

…

Read More Read More

Worldcon Wrap-up

Worldcon Wrap-up

Comments 15 comments
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!)

…

Read More Read More

My surprise date with Amber Benson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Terry Brooks

My surprise date with Amber Benson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and Terry Brooks

Comments 3 comments

So yesterday afternoon I got a phone call. It was from the Madison, WI area and I was like: I don’t know anyone in Madison. So I let it go to voicemail.

A few minutes later, I get a private message on FaceBook…

Cool surprise number 1: It was Pat Rothfuss. He’s like: give me a buzz. So I do (realizing that the missed phone call was probably from him). Pat answers and says there’s been a bit of a mix-up and he’s sorry for the short notice, but would I like to be on his new Geek & Sundry show, The Story Board.

What follows is a dramatic presentation of the two seconds that followed that question:

Me to anyone watching at that moment: O.o

Me in my head: Hell yeah, I’ll be on your show.

Me on the phone: I’d be delighted.

So we exchange all the details. I knew about his new show. A few weeks ago, I’d watched part of Episode 1 with urban fantasists Diana Rowland, Emma Bull, and Jim Butcher. And back then, I was all like: man it’d be cool to be on a show like that.

Little did I know…

…

Read More Read More

Lord of the Crooked Paths: A Novel’s Odyssey from Print to Ebook

Lord of the Crooked Paths: A Novel’s Odyssey from Print to Ebook

Comments 1 comment

lord-of-the-crooked-paths-smallThe electronic publishing revolution not only promises convenience, low prices, and the availability of “every book ever published in every language” (in the words of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos), but also offers writers like myself the opportunity to undo past missteps in the print-publishing world.

Lord of the Crooked Paths, a fantasy of adventure, love, and intrigue set among the elder gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, certainly had its share of mishaps on its journey from manuscript to paperback to ebook.

The novel began with the intersection of two ideas: Greek mythology and the historical novel. I’ve loved Greek myths since I discovered Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in high school. A college course in Classics deepened that affection, and over the following years I found myself slowly seeking out the original sources in translation. Around the same time, I began reading Alexandre Dumas’ wonderful, action- and suspense-filled historical novels.

What would happen, I wondered, if one applied the techniques of the historical novel to the mythology of ancient Greece? Not retelling familiar hero tales, but fresh, new fictional stories the reader could not already know, set against a background of accurate (“historical”) myth, with fantasy elements treated as fact and the gods themselves as the principal characters?

The obvious place to begin was as near the beginning as possible, during the Age of the Titans, and my prior reading probably represented a generous portion of the required research. In my more grandiose moments, I envisioned a sequence of perhaps ten long novels that would present the entire range of divine myth, from the Titans to the death of Pan in Roman times.

My 600-page manuscript took a year and a half to write. During the nearly three years that followed, I queried some twenty-five publishers (mostly “mainstream”) who were in solid agreement that the story wasn’t for them.

…

Read More Read More

The Bones of the Old Ones Inches Closer to December Publication Date

The Bones of the Old Ones Inches Closer to December Publication Date

Comments 6 comments

bones-of-the-old-onesThis week the most exciting item to arrive at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters, bar none, was the Advance Reading Copy of Howard Andrew Jones’s The Bones of the Old Ones, the sequel to his breakout fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls.

I read The Bones of the Old Ones the instant I could get my hands on it, and it was everything I hoped it would be. A rollicking adventure that follows our heroes Dabir and Asim in a daring quest across the landscape of 8th Century Arabia, Bones is packed with ancient secrets, underground lairs, dread pacts, mysterious sorcery, desperate heroism, and moments of laugh-out-loud humor. The cast is much larger than The Desert of Souls, and the stakes are higher, as Dabir and Asim race against time to prevent an ancient sorcerous cabal from plunging the world into eternal winter:

Combining the masterful fantasy of Robert E . Howard with the high-speed action of Bernard Cornwell, Howard Andrew Jones breathes new life into the glittering tradition of sword-and-sorcery with the latest tale of Dabir and Asim’s adventures. As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

To stop the cabal and save Najya, Dabir and Asim venture into the worst winter in human memory, hunted by a shape-changing assassin. The stalwart Asim is drawn irresistibly toward the beautiful Persian even as Dabir realizes she may be far more dangerous a threat than anyone who pursues them, for her enchantment worsens with the winter. As their opposition grows, Dabir and Asim have no choice but to ally with their deadliest enemy, the treacherous Greek necromancer, Lydia. But even if they can trust one another long enough to escape their foes, it may be too late for Najya, whose soul is bound up with a vengeful spirit intent on sheathing the world in ice for a thousand years…

The Bones of the Old Ones will be released in hardcover and eBook by Thomas Dunne Books on December 11. It is 307 pages of non-stop action for $24.99 ($12.99 digital), and gets my highest recommendation. Place your advance order now.

Writing Business: Web Design

Writing Business: Web Design

Comments 3 comments
Image created by jameson9101322.
Image created by jameson9101322.

The other day, I shared a tactic I often use to keep myself on task when writing, the McCoy test. In honor of my favorite Star Fleet surgeon, I ask myself if I’m a writer, or a blank, the blank being whatever I’m doing instead of writing (sorting laundry, eating spinach, performing one-handed push-ups, bear wrasslin’). If I have to ask myself that question during my scheduled writing time, then I put down the spinach fork or the bear and get to work.

Well, I haven’t written or revised any of my fiction now for the last week. That admittedly drives me a little crazy, but I’m still a writer because part of the business of writing is business. It took me a long time to finally admit that a writer is a small business owner with a product. I discovered that I have to make the promotion of my work a central part of my job if I’m going to be able to afford spinach and bear wrasslin’ lessons.

…

Read More Read More

Forbes Publishes List of World’s Top-Earning Authors

Forbes Publishes List of World’s Top-Earning Authors

Comments 10 comments

maximum-rideForbes magazine has released its annual list of the top-earning authors on the planet. The list is dominated by science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers, including Stephen King, Suzanne Collins, Dean Koontz, and George R.R. Martin. Here are the 10 authors on the list who write genre fiction, and their total earnings in 2011:

1. James Patterson (Maximum Ride); $94 million
2. Stephen King (11/22/63; Dark Tower) $39 million
5. Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), $25 million
7. Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb (In Death): $23 million
9. Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games); $20 million
10. Dean Koontz (Frankenstein, Odd Thomas);  $19 million
11. J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter); $17 million
12. George R.R. Martin (The Game of Thrones); $15 million
13. Stephenie Meyer (Twilight); $14 million
15. Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians); $13 million

Virtually all of the authors on the list, including Stephen King, Jeff Kinney, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling, and George R.R. Martin, made the list due at least in part to revenue from film adaptations of their work.

The notable exception is the top-selling author James Patterson, who earned nearly all his income from his massive book sales. Patterson published an astounding 14 new titles in 2011 alone.

You can find the complete list here.

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch Announce Fiction River

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch Announce Fiction River

Comments 2 comments

pulphouse-fantasyPulphouse publishers Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn have announced a new genre market, Fiction River:

Fiction River will be a bimonthly anthology series starting in April next year. Each anthology will be theme-focused and cross-genre containing all original fiction written by some of the top writers in fiction, including big names and names you might have never heard of.

Each anthology will be published in an electronic edition, a trade paper edition, and a very limited and numbered and signed hardback edition. (Signed by all authors and editors.) Readers will be able to buy each anthology individually or subscribe to the anthology series like a magazine.

As many of you know, Kris and I, in 1987, started Pulphouse Publishing with Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine. We published those anthologies every three months. Fiction River will be like Pulphouse and Orbit and Universe and other major original fiction anthology series of the past. It will focus on top quality short fiction of all types, in a themed-anthology format.

Pulphouse was one of the most respected fantasy and science fiction markets of the 80s and 90s. They published twelve thick issues of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine from 1988 through 1993, and 19 issues of a weekly fiction magazine, also called Pulphouse (which was never quite weekly). They were nominated for a Hugo three times, and won the World Fantasy Award in 1989. After closing down Pulphouse Kristine Kathryn Rusch was the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for six years (1991 to 1997), and Dean Wesley Smith edited the anthology series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

To fund the project Smith and Rusch announced a Kickstarter project. By August 7, with 20 days still to go, they have surpassed their original $6,000 goal, with nearly $9,300 pledged.

You can read more about Fiction River here.