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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

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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…

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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

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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.

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

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

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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

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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.

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Forbes Publishes List of World’s Top-Earning Authors

Forbes Publishes List of World’s Top-Earning Authors

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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

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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.

The Thrill of the Unexpected: Why I Edit Clockwork Phoenix

The Thrill of the Unexpected: Why I Edit Clockwork Phoenix

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Hi, folks! Mike Allen here. When I last came through, I blogged about monsters. I want to thank Black Gate overlord John O’Neill for granting me leave to return to this space and shill my new project.

Among the many things I do, I’m the editor of a series of fantasy anthologies called Clockwork Phoenix. At least, the first three books were marketed as fantasy by my previous publisher, even though I included some strange science fiction in their pages as well. (Though I’m someone who sees science fiction as a subset of fantasy rather than a whole separate thing, one of the reasons I’ll use them if they’re odd enough.)

One of the rewards were offering is a signed, numbered, limited edition chapbook of Cherie Priests fantasy tale The Immigrant.
One of the rewards we're offering is a signed, numbered, limited edition chapbook of Cherie Priest's fantasy tale "The Immigrant."

And I’m going to be editing and publishing a fourth volume in the series, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign that’s still underway. As of this writing I’m closing in on an $8,000 goal that will let me for the first time pay five cents a word for fiction – we’re going pro. If we keep going past that, I hope to launch a webzine that will be a companion to Clockwork Phoenix and the poetry journal I also edit and publish, Mythic Delirium, creating even more space for the kind of writing I love to thrive. But we’ll blow up that bridge when we come to it, eh?

John suggested I talk to you folks about how Clockwork Phoenix functions as a fantasy market, and I think that’s a fair question, given what Black Gate is all about.

Put bluntly, Clockwork Phoenix is a market for those who want to push the boundaries of what fantasy can be. I encourage stylistic experiments but insist the stories should also be compelling.

I want to point out that this gives me also sorts of freedom to include material that can’t be easily classified, I wouldn’t call it a break with long standing tradition in our field, at least as I’ve experienced said traditions.

I want to tell you how I was first introduced to short fiction that carries the fantasy label. I’m pretty sure then you’ll see what I mean.

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Genre Prejudice

Genre Prejudice

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genreIt’s a lot easier for me to be generous about other genres than it used to be. I’m trying to decide if that has something to do with me mellowing with age, or if it’s because there’s a whole lot more sword-and-sorcery available than there was ten years ago … or if it’s simply that I don’t feel shut out anymore now that I’m writing sword-and-sorcery stories for a living.

Fantasy seems a lot more popular even among the mainstream readers than it used to be, although the dividing line between fantasy and sword-and-sorcery still seems pretty blurry. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years trying to define the difference, but I often feel like I’m shouting in the wind. The common conception remains that if it’s got swords and magic, it must be sword-and-sorcery, regardless of pacing or the focus of the plot. But let’s set another discussion of sword-and-sorcery aside for the nonce and focus instead on genre prejudice.

I think a lot of science fiction and fantasy writers and readers feel like low faces on the totem pole because their favorite fiction is sneered at by people in the know. A while ago, I started to realize that MOST writers felt like their genre was being kicked to the curb. Horror writers have been going through a hard time now for a good long while. YA writers, well, they “only write YA,” and God help the urban fantasy people, whom are in fashion to be hated. As writers and readers, we all turn up our noses at all the things we find wrong with some one else’s genre. Really, that’s all that’s happening with the literary criticism of genre work. It’s easy for us genre people to detail the things we find annoying about literary fiction, but it turns out lit fic writers feel harried themselves.

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Self Sabotage is Easier than Writing

Self Sabotage is Easier than Writing

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snoopyA lot of writers I know are pretty good at self-sabotage. It’s not that writing is hard, exactly, except that it is. Physical labor and exercise isn’t required, and it sure doesn’t look like you’re doing much when you’re staring at that screen and pecking away at a keyboard. But getting good work, consistently, means constant effort. And constant effort = work. I’d like to have those moments where an entire chapter writes itself and stays virtually unchanged through every draft because I can hear, see, and picture it so clearly the first time; but it just doesn’t happen very often. The trick is sticking with the process so that the reader can’t tell which chapters you labored over and which chapters flowed naturally the first time. And that takes time, and effort, and sometimes it’s easier to do nothing.

I’ve learned different ways to practice self sabotage over the years, and different ways to fight my tendencies. Never keeping computer games on my computer, no matter how great they look, for instance. I won that battle. But there are two others that cropped up this last month. One is an old enemy. The other one is new.

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Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

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best-of-robert-e-howard-grim-lands2When I tell people what a great writer Robert E. Howard was, a lot of them don’t seem to believe me. If they only know him through depictions of Conan or, worse, rip-offs, then they think Howard’s writing is all about a dull guy in a loin cloth fighting monsters and lots of straining bosoms. It’s not that Robert E. Howard thought himself above describing a lithesome waist or a wilting beauty, especially if he needed to make a quick buck, it’s just that there’s a lot more going on in a Conan story than his imitators took away.

It’s easy to pull some samples of great action writing from Robert E. Howard. I’ve done it before, and I could easily do it again here. Only a handful of writers can approach him in that field, and almost none are his equal.

He was also a master of headlong, driving pace. That can be hard to showcase without insisting you read an entire story, so today I want to show readers who seem unaware of his work (or those who are uninterested) a few more reasons why those of us in the know revere him so highly.

Here in one of his historical stories, ”Lord of Samarcand,” is the Scotsman, or Frank, as the easterners call any from Europe, Donald MacDeesa, riding to the court of Tamarlane the Great. See how swiftly, how easily, Howard conjures the scene in all its splendor with just a few well-chosen words, as though he’s panning a camera as MacDeesa rides.

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