Ghost Writer – All I Need is a Flaming Bike

[<--Ghost Rider ... Ghost Writer? Get the pun?!?]

I’m a vain person.

I’m either slowing coming to grips with this reality or am re-discovering the depths of this truth anew. Now, to be straight, part of “living the writer’s life” is an act of ego and vanity. Ego to believe that something we’ve written ought (DEMANDS!) to be read by others and vain enough to want to see our name on our work. How many of us day dream about walking into a library or a book store and seeing our name on the shelves?

This moment of revelation has been brought to you by elance.com. You see, I’ve been on the site grabbing up the occasional bit of freelance work. I’m about to submit a bid on another ghostwriting job. And once again, my mind is calculating how much time and effort I am going to spend, how many (good) words I am going to use … for someone else’s name to go on it. Then Sally reminds me that bills are due and I prepare the proposal.

Continued on the Apex Blog.

A Couple New Story Sales

Because I can't just find a genre and stick to it (aka, why I'll probably never sell a short story collection), here are my latest story sales. First up, I have a story in an anthology of weird western stories entitled “Dead West:13 Tales of Murder and Mayhem” (cover art by Bob Freeman) from Bandersnatch Books due out around Halloween 2010:


Jerrod Balzer - A Show of Rage

Steve Vernon - Border Crossing

Hunter Lambright - Things Worse Than Ghosts

Daniel I. Russell - Rainchild and the Trickster

Rick Hautala - Screaming Head

Steve Rasnic Tem - Sleeping Ute

Lisa Morton - St. Thomas of El Paso

Harry Shannon - The Reckoning

Martel Sardina - The Turtle's Only Friend

Michael Knost - Thinning the Herd

Maurice Broaddus - Trails End

Steven Shrewsbury - Boston Corbet:: Castro Gunfighter

Matthew Pizzolato - Windigo

By the way, that marks my third weird western. The first was in Dark Dreams II. The second was sold to Inhuman Magazine (hmm, a sale I don't think I'd announced yet, but, there you go) and now this one. They are somewhat connected, in that they have recurring characters.

The second story is for an anthology of dystopic SF for Dark Quest books called Dark Futures (art by Alexey Andreye). It comes out in the second quarter of 2010 but is available here for pre-order:

“Black Hole Sun” by Alethea Kontis & Kelli Dunlap
“For Restful Death I Cry” by Geoffrey Girard
“Tasting Green Grass” by Elaine Blose
“Endangered” by Robby Sparks
“Nostalgia” by Gene O’Neill
“Beautiful Girl” by Angeline Hawkes
“Father’s Flesh, Mother’s Blood” by Aliette De Bodard
“Terra Tango 3″ by James Reilly
“Love Kills” by Gill Ainsworth
“Memories of Hope City” by Maggie Jamison
“Do You Want That in Blonde, Brunette, or Auburn” by Glenn Lewis Gillette
“Marketing Proposal” by Sarah M. Harvey
“The Monastery of the Seven Hands” by Natania Barron
“A Futile Gesture Toward Truth” by Paul Jessup
“Hydraulic” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Alien Spaces” by Deb Taber
“A Stone Cast into Stillness” by Maurice Broaddus
“Personal Jesus” by Jennifer Pelland
“Meat World” by Michele Lee

I like to keep diverse company.

I Suck at Titles

I admit it, I do. I suck at naming things.*

For example, when it came to naming children, I was allowed to come up with boy names, with Sally getting a veto option, and she would get to name the girls, with me having a veto option. When it came to naming my firstborn, I went with what I knew. I named him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Second (whom we’d call “Reese” as not to confuse the two of us). It worked for a couple of reasons: I got to retroactively declare myself “Maurice the Great” and I got to declare my son the beginning of my dynasty. When son number two came along, my original plan was to name him Maurice Gerald Broaddus the Third. My reasoning, follow me on this, was that in case something happened to Reese, I’d still have someone to carry on the dynasty. And we could call him “Tre”. Solid, solid reasoning on my behalf … vetoed by the wife.**

It’s rare that I start with a good title. “Pimp My Airship” might have been the last time I was perfectly happy with a title and even then I had the title before I had the story. In the end, I don’t know if the tone of the story matched the title, but I kept it anyway.

Most times I have working titles, a place holder while I come up with something that will work. To pull back the curtain on my creative process, I have a story which sold (which I’ll announce later) that had the working title “Virtual Babies.” Shock of all shocks, it’s about virtual babies. Eventually the title became “A Stone Cast into Stillness”, but my editor has been beating me to death with my working title. Just a subtle reminder that I don’t crap gold. *** Which means it’s probably a good idea that I never let my Angry Robot editors know that my original working title for King Maker wasn’t “The Knights of Breton Court” but “Black Camelot” (hey! I was watching “Black Caesar” at the time. DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!!!).

This originally was meant to be a random tweet. But I couldn’t figure out a way to reduce my rant to 140 characters. That’s why God created blogs.


*This is an entirely different conversation than the one about Pen Names. Though it ends the same: me making the mistake of sharing said name with a “friend” and that friend then beating me to death with it.

**Instead, we end up naming him Malcolm Xavier, after one of my heroes, Malcolm X. Sally wanted the “X” to stand for something, and I could live with the allusion to Professor X of the X-Men. This was also before my Malcolm X came out blonde and blue-eyed.

***In fact, our running IM discussion while I was writing this blog went like this:

Me: I'm two paragraphs into my latest blog and haven't had a WHIFF of a point yet.
HatedEditorWhichShallRemainNameless: sounds like your short story first drafts. ZING!!!

Cause he’s got jokes.

On Setting (aka King Arthur in Indianapolis?)

I ran across a blog entry the other day which seemed to take issue with my series The Knights of Breton Court. First off, here’s the book description (from the Angry Robot website): On the streets of Indianapolis, the ancient Arthurian cycle is replaying in the lives of rival street gangs. Told through the eyes of King, as he gathers like-minded friends and warriors around him to venture into the fastness of Dred, the notorious crime lord, this is a stunning mix of myth and harsh reality. A truly remarkable novel.

I understand this book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, after all, what's a few pimps, trolls, drug dealers, elementals, homeless teenagers, and the occasional dragon between friends? However, that was the element of disbelief said blog writer couldn’t suspend. His issue was the setting. Indianapolis, specifically selling Indianapolis to British readers.

When it comes to American cities, Indianapolis is nothing special. My apologies to the Hoosiers but it's true. It may be the 14th biggest US city but in terms of defining characteristics or geography or culture, there isn't a lot to talk about.

(It’s a great blog, btw. The author goes on to do an informal survey asking people what their impressions of various big cities were. Indianapolis is … yellow and average.)

I debated briefly about whether or not the story would fly in Indianapolis. But considering what all inspired the story, it was ultimately a no brainer. And I’ll admit, I’m a lazy researcher. I had to go all of around the corner to find this tag:
(This really was taken around the corner from my house. If you know what you're looking at, you know exactly which gang sets, or which gangs someone is claiming to be tagging for, are represented)

Now, the Indianapolis I write about is not the Indianapolis of the tourist brochures. I'm not trying to do anything exploitative or take folks slumming, either. One of the theses of the story is that any city has a shadow side. An invisible side to it that most people choose not to see, a whole world which may be playing out right under our noses that we have no idea is going on. Sometimes that world is poverty or homelessness. Sometimes that world is magic. Sometimes that world is filled with monsters. But it’s our world to explore.

Indianapolis is actually a perfect place to set the story. It’s a blank enough canvas that I’m betting even native readers will have their eyes opened by much of the story’s locales. And frankly, be it Indianapolis, The Shire, or Gallifrey, the important isn’t how familiar the world is to us, but how real the author makes it to us. Here’s hoping I made the Indianapolis haunting, real, and terrifying. If not, you at least have a gorgeous cover to enjoy.

EDITED TO ADD:

Here is the response from Stomping on Yeti and a King Maker inspired contest from them.

On World Building

I am in the throes of one of my favorite parts of writing: world building. It’s one of the things I love most about science fiction and fantasy writing (my second favorite thing is actually a subset of this: character building). My plate is full at the moment as I have two universes I’m building and playing in:

1. My alt-history, steampunk universe of Pimp My Airship. I am revisiting and expanding this universe because I have another short story I’ve been asked to write for an anthology that’s too early to talk much more about. Plus, I’m in the beginning stages of expanding “Pimp My Airship” into a novel length work. Ironically, one of the criticisms I heard pretty consistently about the story was that there was a lot of world-building that went into the story that then made it feel like part of a much greater piece. So obviously I was having too much fun.

2. Then there’s my Knights of Breton Court universe as I plot out the final arc of the series. Okay, admittedly, that universe keeps growing, to the point where I even my series Bible is full of flow charts and maps attempting to keep track of that universe.

3. I’m strictly at the worldbuilding stage for an apocalyptic novel project with Wrath James White. I need to be prepared for when he sends me the first pages and I see what he’s done to the planet. (no, we don’t coordinate these things: half of the fun of writing together is the game of oneupsmanship we like to play).

Admittedly, I may have a bit of a God complex. As writers, we’re gods after a fashion: we create worlds, people it, and often direct the characters actions as much as the characters take on lives of their own and do their own thing. We’re not exactly creating ex nihilo (out of nothing): with Pimp My Airship, part of the fun is turning history on its head; and with Knights, I still have the Arthurian legends to muck about with.

Our job as writers is to out-imagine our readers. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re paid to “make shit up”, thing is, we can’t just make it up as you go along. Your story will suffer if you do so. On the other hand, while doing the actual writing, there are times when you have to make it up as you go along, then once you’re done, you go back and revise so that the rules are consistent. So I have some basic issues I have to think through, a world building checklist:

-rules of magic. Actually, you make up the rules to anything, the key is that once you’ve made them up, you play within them. Magic may seem like one of those areas where you can just make it up as you go along, which means it’s one of the first areas a reader will call foul on when you blow the internal consistency.

-history. Not my strongest suit, but a place should have the feel of being lived in for a while. We’re all swept up in the story of what came before us.

-customs. We would we be without the niceties of society? Then again, I love a good tea ceremony.

-religion. Regardless of your own (a)religious beliefs, you can’t argue that faith has doesn’t have an impact on a person or society. It can be a vital backdrop to your world.

-dress. I’ll tell you right now, if you ever have any wardrobe questions, you need to have Kathy Sedia on speed dial. If there’s a piece of clothing that she hasn’t heard of, the folks on Project Runway simply haven’t designed it yet. And she’d be the first to remind you that dress tells a lot about a character and their culture.

-commerce. Business must get done. The entire set up of the Pimp My Airship world ultimate spins on the commerce system and the world it creates.

-language. Now, I’ll admit to a fantasy heresy: I couldn’t get into The Lord of the Rings. Now look, I loved The Hobbit, but I was barely 100 pages into the “hey dude, I got this ring. We need to drop it in a volcano. We can’t just fly there because we need three books worth of chase scenes to get there” plot when I got sick of the elf songs and trips down language lane. Got it. You spent lots of time putting together maps, languages, and history and you want to make sure we know you did your homework. BUT NO MORE SINGING. Then there was another song and I put down the book. Um, but you do need to know how your characters speak and how to differentiate them.

There’s a great world building checklist on the SFWA website.

The 40 Year Old Virgin (Writer)

I have a so-called writer friend who shall remain nameless (Brian Keene says what?) who loves to remind me of the fact that this year I turn forty. Forty. Four Zero. That milestone of angst and turmoil, even for the most secure of us … and we all know how stable writer/creative types are. Thing is, this year marks my debut turn as a novelist. Yes, yes, yes. I’ve had short stories, an anthology, and novellas published,* but I hadn’t had a novel see the light of day. Now while I find myself ready to choke the next person forwarding me a headline about the latest pre-/teen offered a six figure book deal, there are some very practical reasons why it has taken me so long to find my way to novel print.

1) Writing is long and hard.** I decided in 1993 to write a novel. I was all of 23. The world was full of hope and I could dare to dream. I finally typed “the end” in 2000. For the record, this is the first lesson of being a writer: writers finish things. When I set out to write a novel, I had NO IDEA how to write one. Sure, I’d read quite a few (and read the Cliffs Notes of many more during high school). Sure, I had thought to myself “this is easy. Anyone can do this. I can certainly do this better than (fill in the blank).” Seven years and 140K words later, I learned that 23 year olds aren’t always that bright.

2) Just because you’ve written a novel doesn’t mean you have written a sellable novel. My first novel is a horror novel called “Strange Fruit.” My second novel is an urban fantasy called “Pantheon of Dreams”. I would tell you the name of my third novel, an African American romance, but my so-called writer friend would join with another so-called writer friend (Wrath James White says what?) to beat me to death with their taunts because I made the mistake of telling them the pen name I planned on using. My fourth novel was a sword and sorcery collab with Steven L. Shrewsbury entitled “Black Son Rising”. My fifth novel is an urban fantasy/crime novel called Knights of Breton Court: King maker (with the sixth being Knights of Breton Court: King’s Justice). There are a few lessons I can take home from my lack of sales.

-One, there are no wasted words. My romance novel will never, no never, see the light of day. However, one of the story lines in it was incorporated into Kingmaker. Just like there were scenes from Pantheon of Dreams that made it into King’s Justice.

-Two, some books have their time. “Strange Fruit” and “Black Son Rising” are simply waiting on the whims of market demands. For example, should a Conan movie go into production, the market for old school sword and sorcery novels will heat up. Also, I still stand by “Strange Fruit”. First time novels typically suck. That’s why God created second drafts. Or, in its case fifth drafts (as it is now down to 90K words).

-Three, while it took seven years to write “Strange Fruit”, it took six months to write “Pantheon of Dreams”, one to write the first draft of “Kingmaker” (yay NaNoWriMo), and three months to write “King’s Justice”.

3) Just because you’ve written a novel doesn’t mean you can sell a novel. It’s one reason why so many first time novelists turn to self-publishing. But, for me, FOR ME (as in the decisions I’VE made for how I want MY career to go), I believe that there are worse fates than being non-published. Plus, if I’d gone the self-publishing route, well, then my so-called friends would be beating me to death with physical copies of a book.

The selling of a book can age a person. Spending time developing contacts, learning the business, finding an agent … all of these things take time. You query a batch of agents, you wait on their replies. You/your agent sends your brilliant, I say, brilliant manuscript to a publisher and you wait on their replies. And that’s IF you can bypass the developmental hell known as the slushpile.

It’s hard to factor in luck or being in the right time at the right place (depending on how your quantum universe works), but I do believe in being prepared for when your opportunities do arise. In short, fifth time’s the charm.

4) Publishing a novel takes time. I won’t lie, Angry Robot has spoiled me on publishing. They’ve been a delight to work with. But here’s another bit of time consumption: they accepted my manuscript in August of 2009 for a book that will be released in March 2010 (U.K. release date). That is a breakneck pace. The contract stuff had been worked out by then (a couple months), but that gives us months to go through the editing process, work up a cover (and allow me to show you this cover again), get my input for marketing ideas, and slotting it in their release schedule. Only then does the novel see the market. And like I said, Angry Robot is moving very quickly. I could very easily be a 43 year old virgin writer.

I say all this to encourage my fellow aspiring scribes of all ages. Writing takes time. Publishing takes time. All you can do is keep writing. You’re never too old to write.



*I also have a so-called publisher/editor friend who shall remain nameless (Jason Sizemore says what?) who loves to remind me that I “ain’t no virgin.”

**THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID! Ok, I’m turning 40, but I’m afraid my sense of humor is perfectly 8 year old boy.

Writing Goals 2010

My blog traditions this time of year begin with a look back and then with a look ahead. First let me begin by grading how I did as far as last year’s goals:

As for new goals for 2009, I want to write 6 new short stories, revise a screenplay, write a new novel (the problem is that I have three bubbling around in the back of my head with no clear favorite), write a new novella, and revise my second novel (Pantheon of Dreams) down to a novella. With any luck, I’ll be able to get back to doing more reviews and blogs so it should be a good year.

Six new short stories: Closer Than They Appear (Shroud Magazine #7), Pimp My Airship (Apex Magazine), Trouble Among the Yearlings (Harlan County Horrors), Virtual Lamentations (for an anthology I can’t announce yet). Four written, four sold. Other stories sold this year include: House of Blue Lights (All Hallows), Hootchie Coochie Man (Black Static #14), Uncle Boogeyman (Dark Recesses #11), Shadow Boxing (an anthology I can’t announce yet).

Revise a screenplay: didn’t even dust it off.

A new novella: Bleed With Me. Though I did sell a novella, Devil’s Marionette (Shroud Publishing)

Revise my second novel: nope.

I’d declare it a B- year, but a few things popped up that I hadn’t planned on:

Sold a novel. The Knights of Breton Court. Turns out, fifth novel’s the charm. That novel then became a trilogy: Book One – King Maker, Book Two – King’s Justice, and Book Three – King’s War.

Wrote a novel. Um, I had to write Book Two – King’s Justice.

Edited an anthology. There’s no such thing as good or bad timing when it comes to publishing. You pretty much just have to grab onto your opportunities when they came up. So the idea of doing an anthology related to Mo*Con took off and I put out the guidelines for Dark Faith. Here is the final line up.

Heck, those last three alone would have made this an A+ year.

So my goals for next year? I need to do any revisions required for King Maker and King’s Justice as well as write King’s War. Currently, I have eight stories out and about searching for homes. I’d like to write a half dozen more (Jason Sizemore and I have this challenge that we’re to keep at least dozen stories in circulation at all times). I have other novels I hope to write (one a collaboration, one an expansion on a short story). I’d still like to revise that screenplay. I have two novellas percolating in the back of my head). And I’d like to make a comic book pitch.

Lofty , yes, but not entirely unrealistic. It’s good to challenge yourself.*







*Though I’m trying to keep in mind the words of a dear friend: “Try not to mentally overbook yourself, okay? I understand better than you realize about the voices in your head that drive you to accomplish more and more and to prove that nothing interferes with your ability to do your thing. But you're only human, despite rumors to the contrary.”

Palate Cleansing (aka I’m made of random writing related thoughts)

Okay, so I’ve needed to not write for a while. The last couple weeks I’ve gone largely blog dark as I had to get my novel done (Knights of Breton Court Book Two: King’s Justice). Once I get locked into fiction writing, I’m pretty much stuck there. Then after wrapping that up, I just wanted to not write or think about writing for a while ... mostly because my brain is made of mush right now.

But I suck at breaks.

Already I’m thinking of stuff I want to do in another pass through of my novel manuscript. I also realized that I have six stories to work on (three are now done), before the novel projects I have lined up for January (more on that in my writing goals for 2010 blog). All of which is fine because I think of short stories are mental palate cleansers. They give me a chance to get out of the universe of my novel for a bit and experiment with some different kinds of writing. Some of the stories have been requested by editors, some I’m just doing for me because I’m running low on stories “out there” making the rounds to markets. I’ll write them first then worry about where to send them, which brings us to …

… the fact that I missed out on commenting on PayRateFail (see Scalzi, Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, Scalzi, Mamatas, and a different perspective) and HarlequinHorizonsFail (luckily, my nemesis was on the job here, here, and here) while I’ve had my head down, buried in writing. So I’ll have to wait til next time this comes up (if we all set our watches now, we can agree that 2010 we’re due for another racefail conversation before we get to another “you realize we don’t make crap writing short stories” discussion).

-I have a lot of free time on my hands these days, so I’m catching up on other mental palate cleansing activities. Stories from friends I’ve needed to read (yay the return of reading for fun and not slush or research!).

-I’ve also come to the conclusion that arguing your genre label (slipstream, bizarro, new weird, etc) is like arguing theological doctrinal/denominational positions. After a while, I don’t care.

-I’ve got a lot of reviews to catch up on.

-and there’s always real life getting in the way. But I can still tie that back to writing through the magic of IM chat:

me: okay, my son (malcolm) is learning how to be an editor: he comes up with a cool idea (fixing mommy breakfast in bed) and then enlists the best folks to do the job (daddy, um, you need to fix the food)
nicole: lol he's learning how to delegate! if he's like most small press editors, he won't pay you for the task, either

Now back to my hobbit writing hole.

On “Killing teh Genre” and the In Crowd

Like all good cycles, every so often in horror community there arises the discussion about the death of the genre (say for example this discussion over at Shocklines) and how all the truly “good” horror is to be found in, yet ignored by, the small press. Of course this discussion is a matter of perspective, as over on the Horror Writers Association, they are arguing/wondering why the nominees for their Bram Stoker Awards are so heavily weighted towards the small press while ignoring the fact that there is so much horror to be found on the New York Times best sellers list. The scapegoat of this atrocity, of course, is that group of writers in between, the mid-listers. THOSE BASTARDS!!!

Every so often I find a quote or comment that I just like to preserve for the ages (against the perils of thread deletion), and there’s this bit of cogent sanity from Mary SanGiovanni (who I’d refer to as “the lovely and talented”* but I don’t want to offend any of my feminist friends, so instead I will refer to her as one of those many women ignored by the genre when the other cyclical discussion of “are there any women who write horror” comes up.):

I mean all this with the utmost respect.

I find that many conversations about the "death of the genre" trot out uninformed opinion, tired or inaccurate statistics, or narrow views and definitions to back their claim. And this has been going on for decades.

A hundred people could say the genre isn't dying and people who like debate and/or controversy or even, to be fair, just have a genuine desire to fix what they see are failings in a community they love are simply never going to hear it.

The fact is that until one knows what goes into writing for a living, or completing novels, etc., one can't really say whether the people doing those things are giving it everything they have or not. They don't know if illness, divorce, death in the family, financial troubles, a wedding, a new baby, a new job, a new house, etc. etc. etc have contributed to a time crunch on a contracted project. They can't tell if a person spent three years plotting out an idea they loved, and executed it at night while the new baby slept or the husband went out with the guys or the wife went to bed angry again that he wasn't joining her. Writers are people, and many of the full-time working writers I know give everything they have every time they can, not for publishers or critics or decriers of the genre, but for themselves and their fans.

Also, seriously, this idea of an in-crowd ought to be put to rest. This is an entertainment field. You might get a chance because of who you know. But you only hold up to the fans, the critics, the test of time if you have the capacity to be good. I've been in the business for about a decade. Most of the people who didn't have either talent or persistence when I started out and yet somehow made it through faded away. Even some very good folks fade away. It's a tough life, rejection and publication. But you ask Tom or Paul or Rick or Doug how many folks they've seen come and go, and I'll bet they'll tell you the chaff falls away after a while. The wheat keeps growing. There's this pervasive and only passive-aggressively hinted idea that Keene and Mamatas hold secret candlelight meetings of hand-picked minions, and we all get together in black robes, make fun of the little people until our thirst for meanness is quenched, have orgies to strengthen our power, and then plot and plan ways to destroy people's careers and keep down all these folks with talent who keep struggling from the primordial sledge of slushdom to the sweet air of publication.

It doesn't happen. Ramsey Campbell is not holding you down. Doug Clegg is not holding you down. Mort Castle is not holding you down. That sounds paranoid. The cold, hard truth about publishing is that you keep working at writing until you're good enough to be published. Then you learn the markets and see where your work might fit. Sometimes you get a hit. Sometimes you don't. But you keep at it. That's how it works.

I used to post tirelessly about how so many writers who are successful, who are full-time, putting-food-on-the-table types are genuinely good, genuinely helpful, genuinely folks who would go out of their way to give you every possible benefit of their knowledge. But they, like me, are tired of getting bitten in the hand for it. So maybe what folks think is elitism is maybe just exhaustion, frustration, or even self-preservation. Cut them a break.

Yes, I know, all of this could just be avoided if I'd simply skip going to message boards. But, hey, I am supposed to be writing and I have to keep coming up with new ways to procrastinate. Plus, as you all know, my life goal is to become a mid-list writer who exists to keep other writers down.


*For the record, we now only refer to Brian Keene and Gary Braunbeck as “the lovely and talented”.

Checking in on My Arch-Enemy

Long time readers of my blog will remember that as part of the up and coming writer code, it’s important that you do one of two things: 1) randomly attack either Brian Keene or Nick Mamatas or 2) get an arch-enemy. Though I had temporarily resigned, it has been a while since I’ve checked in on my arch-enemy, Nick Kaufmann. So I’ve decided to check in and see what he’s up to (after all, you should always know where your enemies are and if they are being more successful than you. Remember, you’re only doing well if your friends and enemies are doing worse than you.)

Crap, his short story, "Mysteries of the Cure" from the Shivers V anthology, is getting decent buzz. I have been away for too long and neglecting my duties. As all young writers must know, there is a cabal of writers, the 'circle jerk' of in-crowd mid-list authors who are killing teh genre, who exists to keep them down. I have only recently received my ticket to the cool kids table, and I will be kicked out if Kaufmann isn’t successfully oppressed. I must learn more! Luckily he makes it easy to catch up on him with an interview over at FearZone.

His “State of the Genre” column for FearZone has become "Dead Air" for The Internet Review of Science Fiction. (And in his wise as a serpent way, he has not once mentioned me. NOT THAT I’VE BEEN READING IT!!!!) Double crap! Chizine sold out the limited edition of his new novella, Chasing the Dragon, which will be published in December. And now he has a mass market novel, Hunt at World's End, out (it’s a new series of pulp adventures written by different authors under the pseudonym of "Gabriel Hunt”, but we know this one is Kaufmann).

HE’S DOING WELL?!?

*drops to knees and yells in best Shatner-esque voice*

NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!



Um, on the personal pimpage front, my story “Uncle Boogeyman” is now live in the Dark Recesses Press PDF Issue #11 with some special art from their featured artist Dholl. (Note, I made the cover of yet another magazine, writing under my pseudonym “Plus So Much More”).

I was also interviewed for the Flashes in the Dark website and I forgot to plug the seven question interview I had with the Writing Raw website.

[BIB/ReadersRoom] The Fear

So I’ve been signed to a three book deal. Now how does it feel?

This is a common question that I’ve gotten and the honest answer is that I’m excited and terrified. Of course there’s the requisite celebration, after all, it’s a three book deal. To date, I’ve written five novels. After years of struggling to sell one novel, I’ve finally sold one plus two I haven’t written yet. Fifth times a charm.

And it’s terrifying. This is it. This is the dream I’ve been working toward. What I’ve sacrificed for. What I’ve thought about and through for so long. I’ve often said that it takes ten years to become an overnight success and that getting published is 90% persistence. During that time you are preparing yourself for the eventual opportunity. Honing your craft. Disciplining yourself. Broadening your contacts. Developing your professionalism. Learning to meet deadlines. All the while, you remain open to opportunities that come along. And when that opportunity comes along, it can be frightening.

This is a variation of the fear of success that many of us suffer from. Generally speaking, every stage of your writing career is filled with fear. Fear of the blank page and beginning to write. Fear of finishing, after all, writers finish things. Fear of editing and being critiqued (our stories are our children and we don’t want anyone to hurt our precious). Fear of submitting (eventually we have to send our children, hopefully prepared or at least fully edited, out into the world).

Now I have deadlines, that feeling of writing under the gun. Of feeling rushed (yet, ironically, realizing at the same time knowing I’m doing and writing exactly the same way I’ve been writing, except more focused and disciplined). I have 18 months to write 300K words. That’s a lot of words. That’s also no way to think of the project, but the part of you that nurtures that nervous ball in the pit of your belly rolls that fact around in your head. Part of you begins to second guess and doubt yourself.

Because you don’t want to fail. The fear creeps back in, reminding you that this is your big chance, that this is what you’ve dreamed of. To not blow it. Nor do you want to let down the writing, the craft, itself. Nor your readers, neither the ones you’ve accumulated up to this point or the new ones you hope to gain with each new project . There there are your publisher and other folks who’ve believed in you or gambled on you with the opportunity (understanding that when all is said and done, this a business).

And I know for me, I don’t want to disappoint my wife. She’s sacrificed and believed in me and I want to show her that it was worth it even though I know she doesn’t care how “big” I get as long as I’m using my gifts and talents.

And yes, I want to succeed. I’m not imagining that I’ll be the next King of Rowling (no more than we all dream of that kind of success). But even the idea of success fills me with the kind of dread that has me reaching for the covers to crawl under and hide for a while.

So you stare down the mocking blank page.

And you remember to take it one word, one paragraph, one scene at a time. If nothing else mindful of the sacrifices, the hard work; knowing that you want this and that you’ve got this. Letting the looming deadline (and in my case, the voice of a lady at my church who read the first novel and is demanding that I finish the second so that she can read the next part) help you conquer your fear.

Never let them see you sweat. And you start to write.*



*Right after you’re done procrastinating by blogging.

Oddest Places - A Spirit & Place Essay

The Spirit and Place Festival invited me to write an essay on its theme of "Inspirational Places." The essay is up on their site but I thought I'd preserve here also:

The terrible secret of my writing is that I don’t have a great
imagination. I have to go to a place, soak in its atmosphere, its
nuance, and let it speak to me. I’m sitting in a rear corner booth in
a bar/café in downtown Indianapolis, a known haunt for
prostitutes and strippers when they are “off shift.” Under the
crimson glare of the bar’s lights, I stare out at a sea of empty lives.
Women clinging to men to fill a void they might not even be aware
that they have; men searching for the momentary distraction of
bedroom companionship to numb themselves from the pain of
their reality. The décor reeks of a pervasive hopelessness that has
settled even into the formica tables; an air of desperation as thick
as the fumes of spent Scotch from the nearby table.

And here I find inspiration.

I’m a horror author, not a genre often associated with spiritual
musings. I have a novel to write—three, in fact, over the next
eighteen months—and some might not think what I choose to
write about honors God. It’s like we have come to believe that the
only thing that makes art redeemable is if it’s a set up for our
proselytizing sales pitches. But I believe that using your gifts to
your fullest—and bringing yourself to Him in worship—is what
pleases God.

My faith informs my writing, that secret alchemy of creation, that
strange union of art and spirituality. What we believe, why we
believe—from nihilistic to religious—are a part of us and thus a
part of our writing. We all have stories, mine is no better than
anyone else’s, all of us leading broken lives to one degree or
another. And I find inspiration writing about redemption, about
wringing hope from hopelessness.

To think, as I sit here drumming my fingers along this table waiting
for inspiration to hit, all I need is a pad and a pen and a place for
something mystical and profound, yet simple and ordinary, to
happen. I believe that we’re called to creative purpose. I write
because I have to, in order to still the voices in my head. Because
something in the core of my being crawls up and takes hold of me
and makes me move pen to paper. The Creative Spirit’s work, the
good news of grace, drives me into mission, to use my gifts to be a
blessing to others.

My notepad has been like my security blanket, since I never know
when a good idea will strike. My notepad is also my act of worship.
It contains my attempts to join in with the Holy Spirit by
participating in creation. I carve out places to write in the same
way that I carve out places to worship. We often think of church
as the building we go to in order to worship God. Yet, it’s just a
structure. There is nothing “sacred” about it until a sacred space is
carved out … by the people. The church is people, a sanctuary set
apart where heaven and earth meet and we can connect to God
… not a building. In the same way, I find my places of inspiration, to
get into that mental place, where I can capture the ever-elusive
ideas and words and wrestle them to this blank page which scares
me with its sheer … emptiness.

I love working on my stories at church, even (especially!) the
darker ones. Surrounding myself with reminders of who the
ultimate Author is, whose work I join in, I’m working out my
spiritual journey as much through my art as through my faith. So
it’s okay if we pursue art for art’s sake because creating beauty is
its own pursuit of truth and all truth points to God. I was born
with the gift to write and when you are doing what you were
created to do, you are doing God’s work.

Life is wondrous, even the dark sides of it, and there is a beauty
not only to Creation but in the act of creation. So be it a seedy
bar, a poorly lit street corner at 2 a.m., a neighborhood left
forgotten and abandoned by folks who lock their car doors while
speeding through them, or the other sides of a city hidden in
shadows, I carve out places to find inspiration. It’s no Walden Pond,
but it works for me.

Interview with Coach Culbertson

I had a chance to catch up with the uber-busy Coach Culbertson of Relief: A Christian Literary Expression as well as, of special interest to me as a horror writer, Coach's Midnight Diner.

What is Relief and how does it relate to the Midnight Diner?

Relief: A Christian Literary Expression (often just called Relief Journal) is currently a bi-annual literary journal that publishes literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. In our first reading submission period back in 2006, we received a lot of great genre submissions, but the editorial team thought that Relief should remain literary in scope. So instead, we decided to launch Coach's Midnight Diner, a genre anthology made up of hardboiled genre works with a Christian slant. Both publications have an uncensored edge.

What do you see as your mission? How would you describe it?

We started Relief and the Diner after my wife and I both left the inner city where we taught high school. Kimberly wanted to be able to write about our experiences at the high school, but the question quickly became, "Where would it get published?" There were way too many amazing interactions with God for her stuff to be published in the secular markets, and way too much reality that shouldn't be censored as it would diminish the power of God's interactions with the students we took care of. So we ended up creating a venue for writing that falls in the gap between the Christian publishing markets and secular publishing markets.

Christian writing has long since been criticized as being too censored, too fluffy, lacking in artistic excellence, and way too preachy. We wanted to create an outlet where authors can have the freedom just write the damn story--to practice excellent craft, use authentic dialog (not - "gee whiz, Beav, what are we going to do with all this swell crack? Oh fiddlesticks, they just busted a cap in my rear end." ) have characters talk about and have sex (and yes, Song of Solomon is not just symbolic--it really is about sex), wrestle with doubts and huge questions, interact with God, all in an authentic and real fashion.

Life is messy, rough, and difficult. It's also wondrous, amazing, and sublime. Our writing should reflect reality, not sugarcoat it. No one lives in a "perfect" world, and neither should our words. We bridge the gap for writers who want to write real stories, poems, and creative nonfiction about real characters in real situations with a real God, without compromising the work's integrity.

How hard is it living in the tension between ministry, art, and commerce?

Overall, the Relief and Diner projects have met with a very warm reception. So many authors and readers have said, "Oh wow, what a relief," (pun intended, once they discover what we're about. We find that overall Christians and non-Christians find a sense of understanding and acceptance when they read our books. They feel like they can breathe again.

We have yet to be condemned to hell or called the whore of Babylon, so I guess that's good. Issues of Relief and the Diner have been known to show up in church libraries occasionally. Every once in a while we'll get a standard "Oh, Christians shouldn't write like the world," or "All Christians should only write so the lost can get saved" argument, but not very often. We publish the kind of stuff that hits people where they really live, and that's the artistic impact we're out to make.

The commerce side is a little more difficult. Most people don't know what a literary journal is, and many Christians think that a Christian horror story is an oxymoron. So we have a small, loyal audience at this point in time who appreciates what we're doing, but I still have to reach into my own pocket every once in a while to pay the tab when sales are sucking. The economic downturn doesn't help, but we're making it through anyway.

We're a 501c3 nonprofit, and part of the reason we can continue to exist is that the Relief and Diner communities pony up dollars to make these projects possible. Nobody's making any money on this deal, our staff is completely volunteer, including me, which does make it a little easier to stretch the dollars way further than they might stretch in a different company.

Where do you see yourself in the genre/marketplace?

I see the Diner and Relief as a launching pad for authors (and editors and cover artists, etc.) who write brilliant unrelenting works who have very few (if any) outlets for it. We're in the small press/micropress segment. But an interesting bit of trivia: we have editors from both big Christian publishing houses and big secular publishing houses on our customer and subscriber lists.

What sort of stories are you looking for?

I've actually hung up my spatula and retired from my position as Head Fry Cook of the Diner. Michelle Pendergrass now has the keys to the Diner as the new Editor-In-Chief (or Midnight Waitress, if you will), so that question might be better asked to her and the team for the 3rd Diner. But I can tell you that the team will be looking for stories of horror, crime, and the paranormal that do not suck. Michelle just posted up the specs for the next Diner up on http://www.themidnightdiner.com, so go take a look.

Who would you like to see submit to you? Beginning writers? Pro/name writers?

Ummm, I'd say Michelle and the Diner team will looking for (italics)good(italics) writers. Name recognition doesn't mean much when it comes to what we publish. It's nice when we get a well-known name on the menu, but as a company, writers who are starting out have just as much of a chance to get published as the "big names." It's about writing a great story.

Writers who think that every word they write are drops of God's holy grace to the world, however, need not submit. We're looking for authors who are easy to work with, and understand that "the relationship between editor and author is sacrosanct" (thanks to Relief author Anthony Connelly for that statement).

Some might see the midnight diner as somewhere between a 4theluv type market (paying writers in exposure) and a semi-pro (with 5 cents/word being the demarcation between pro and semi-pro). Could you explain the thought process behind your policy of paying a few writers vs. giving all an equal, if only token, payment?

It's not so much a thought process as it is a matter of economics. Hell, I'd love to pay every author a hundred bucks or more for their work, but that's not a feasible option with our current financial situation. The Horror Writers Association requires a paid publication of at least $70, so great authors like Kevin Lucia who are just starting out can get their foot in the door, so we can at least help a couple folks take another step in their careers per issue. I didn't really plan that initially, I just wanted to get people to write Jesus Vs. Cthulhu stories, but it was a nice side effect.

How do you see yourself growing in the market place and building your base audience? Where would you like to be 5 years from now?

5 years from now, I'd like to be sipping margaritas in Cancun on a beach for a living, but seeing that's probably not going to be the case, I'd like to see the Diner be the go-to publication for new talent and fresh writing, an almost sure-fire ticket to furthering an author's career.

But largely, the future of the Diner will be in the hands of the new team. I've built the sandbox, with the help of Vennessa Ng, Mike Duran, Melody Graves, Adrian Rivero (the cover artist for the 2nd Diner), Robert Garbacz, Matt Mikalatos, and of course Relief's Editor-In-Chief (who also happens to be my lovely wife) Kimberly Culbertson, but now it's time for other folks to play in it. The Diner's in good hands with Michelle at the grill.

What story have you put out that you're the most proud of?

Damn, that's a good question. Just the fact that we've put out the Diner at all is a miracle, and the fact that the quality has been so high has been due to the fact that there's Christian and non-Christian authors who have been willing to go to that place of tough symbolic reality with me. So I'm going to cop out and say all of them.

When can we expect the next volume?

Michelle and her new crew (which is also made of some of the old Kitchen Staff as well) plan on getting the next one out sometime next year, I think. Watch http://themidnightdiner.com and http://www.reliefjournal.com for news about it.

Uncle Boogeyman Now Up on Dark Recesses

Back in college, I began to seriously consider pursuing writing. I took a few creative writing stories and the end result was three stories, more or less. The first was my story which became Soul Food, a tale of a sin-eater in the hood, published in the inaugural issue of Hoodz magazine (after a convoluted path to print).

The second was my story which became Dark Night of the Soul, a piece I’d been tinkering with since high school about a man who falls in love with the goddess Kali. It saw print in last year’s anthology, Dark Harvest (which also reprinted Soul Food).

The third story was my 10K word opus reflecting on my days as a Certified Nursing Assistant. Eventually, I realized that I was actually telling two stories and I split the story into two. The former, the story of an assistant working in a nursing home of demon possessed elderly patients, was published in Dark Dreams III (Nurses Requiem). The latter, a tale of corrupt nursing assistants abusing patients to serve a greater darkness, has been published on Dark Recesses.

I hope you enjoy Uncle Boogeyman (plus, it's another free read, so you have no excuse not to read it).

When Do You Find Time to Write?

It’s that most magical time of the year: BACK TO SCHOOL.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my kids and love the time I get to spend with them. I’m luckier than many dads in that I have a work schedule that allows me to offset my schedule with my wife’s such that I’m home by the time she has to go to work. So, for good or ill, I’ve always been around my boys during their formative years.

But, despite my lazy parenting style, I can’t say that I get a lot of writing done while we’re clowning, I mean, I’m busy parenting. With many deadlines looming, I was asked when do I find time to write. Honestly, I have no idea. I always have a notepad with me, so I thought through my day.

Early-late morning
-I get to work early and do some free writing (allow me to be clear, since my boss often reads my blog, this is as stuff comes to me while I’m working).
-I listen to books on CD while at work (which loads my brain with words, keeps me in the flow of language, if that makes sense).
-I constantly jot down ideas, plot points, snatches of dialogue (my job has fairly repetitive moments leaving me with a lot of brain time. Which again, to be clear, O boss of nearly twenty years, is part of why l love my job).

Afternoon
-When the kids are home, I flat out bribe them for an hour of quiet time (alternately, read: on non-pay weeks, I randomly ground them ... for an hour of quiet time).
-I can usually work in some reading and writing time. This is actually my most productive time (probably because I've primed my brain all morning with ideas and words so I'm ready to dive in and know exactly where I want to go).

Evening
-During the summer, Sally will sometimes take the boys swimming or simply let me disappear for an hour or so. This is my second most productive time (in terms of word output). Unless the boys are doing exactly what they are doing now: fighting. Course, that’s matched by my ability to tune them out and keep blogging.

Late night
-I can get some work done, I'm not as productive during this time because it's the only time Sally and I have relatively undisturbed. Once she goes to bed, however, I can usually squeeze in another hour or so.

So that’s it. The current iteration of how I’m a productive writer. Or try to be. I could probably attack those deadlines harder if I wasn’t, you know, blogging right now.

Will Edit for Food

Dreams of writing that huge hit novels and soaring to the heights of a Stephen King or JK Rowling aside, it’s hard to make it as a full-time writer. The question I have been asked repeatedly lately is “when are you going to quit your day job?” The answer is: “when my writing can provide full health care benefits. And dental.” So not anytime soon. (Plus, my day job allows me a flexible schedule which lets me get my work done, have time for my family, and time for writing and ministry work while paying the bills of my life. I know a good situation when I see it.)

Not everyone has this luxury. In this economic climate, I’d be especially loathe to give up a steady paying gig. Some folks, however, have those gigs taken from them or their significant others (the other way to be a full-time writer, as unglamourous as this may seem, is to marry someone who can has a job which can provide things like insurance). So you have to do what you have to in order to make ends meet. Ain’t no shame in that, especially if you can do what you love to do or at least something tangential to it. Such is what has happened to a few friends of mine.

Uber-talented Catherynne Valente has begun a novel online supported by donations. Similarly, Tim Pratt, who co-authored with Nick Mamatas, one of my favorite short stories of last year, The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft, is also writing a prequel novel also for donations. Who knows, this may be the way of the future for all writers who have accumulated a following.

Editor, Jason Sizemore, publisher of Apex Magazine and books (a stable which includes my own Orgy of Souls and my future anthology, Dark Faith) is also in need of economic stimulus, offering to sell his services as a freelance editor. It’s not easy to finance your dream, no matter what that dream is. Labors of love still cost money as well as sweat equity.

The advice I give to newbie writers all the time is "learn as much as you can about the business side of writing and how to handle your money." Here are a few blogs which I have found interesting which discuss the reality of money and writing full-time which I have found quite informative:

-John Scalzi’s Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money and On Writers, Marriages, and NYC/LA/SF.

-Jeff Vandermeer's The Full-Time Writing Life: If It Doesn’t Kill You First, It’ll Kill You Second

-Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Freelancer’s Survival Guide, Money, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four

Know what you're getting into before you go quitting that day job. The dream is one thing, it's another thing when that dream runs over you with a bus.

Enjoying My Cigar

Ok, I don’t smoke, but I need some sort of after the novel ritual. I’m only in a quasi-honeymoon period. To catch those playing along at home up, I signed a three book deal with Angry Robot (HarperCollins UK), for an urban fantasy series entitled The Knights of Breton Court (a re-telling of the legend of King Arthur set in the streets of modern America). Imagine The Wire meets Excalibur. I just turned in Book One: Kingmaker. By December, I need to have Book Two: King’s Justice written as well as my anthology, Dark Faith, edited. Not to mention the inevitable re-writes (unless I can successfully convince my publisher that I indeed can crap gold).



(I love this "A Man and His Muse" photo taken by Surreal Photography)

So far I’m on schedule. Actually, I’m ahead of schedule (why editors love me). Then take a month to finish researching and plotting out the second one. Then I’ll take a couple months to do the writing. In the mean time, I’m allowing myself a couple weeks off. Probably catch up on a few blogs I have been intending to write.

So if you notice the blog postings getting a little erratic, you’ll know why. I may have the occasional guest blogger take over (anyone interested, drop me an e-mail) since I tend to go blog silent during the final push on a project. I get all focused on crossing the finish line.

Did I miss anything good?

Writerly Type Stuff

So my head’s been down as I have a looming deadline that I have officially run out of ways to procrastinate from (except for me Tweeting). In the mean time, I probably ought to do some sort of writerly type update about things going on:

1) For those who missed my interview on the Funky Werepig podcast, it has been archived.

Is there a better way to spend your Sunday than with the Sinister Minister, MAURICE BROADDUS? A favorite of the critics, he mixes his strong beliefs with a love of horror! From his numerous publication and books to creating his own festival Mo-Con, the Werepig will do his best to fit it all into just 90 minutes!




2) Harlan County Horrors will be debuting later this year. It will kick off with a special signing event at The Morris Book Shop in Lexington, KY on October 24th from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. Team Broaddus will be making an appearance there. Here’s a sneak peak at the Table of Contents:

Introduction by Mari Adkins
Harlan Moon TL Trevaskis
The Witch of Black Mountain Alethea Kontis
Trouble Among the Yearlings Maurice Broaddus
Greater of Two Evils Steven L. Shrewsbury
Hiding Mountain: Our Future in Apples Earl P. Dean
Spirit Fire Robby Sparks
The Power of Moonlight Debbie Kuhn
The Thing at the Side of the Road Ronald Kelly
Kingdom Come Jeremy C. Shipp
Yellow Warblers Jason Sizemore
Psychomachia Geoffrey Girard
Inheritance Stephanie Lenz
Afterword: Harlan County: A Short History by Preston Halcomb

3) For a sampling of all sorts of Apex Books stuff, from Alethea Kontis’ Beauty and Dynamite to my own Orgy of Souls, there are all sorts of goodies here.

4) For those wondering how <-- this picture of me recounting a story might tie into any upcoming releases, you’ll have to wait a few more months for Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues. -->

Tales from the Slush Pile

I’ve always imagined what life would be like for an editor. I imagined that editors reading a slush pile probably do sound a lot like Simon Cowell from American Idol. Faced with mountains of slush, sifting for gold among the lumps of rocks; each writer, myself included, convinced of their own story’s greatness, sometimes presuming to tell the editor so (uh, I don’t do that).

I know I left the guidelines for my Dark Faith anthology purposefully vague to allow writers room to interpret as they need to, but I’ve been a little bothered by those who, I don’t know, didn’t read them at all. The most egregious offenders have:

-pitched me a novel
-submitted a comic book
-passed off thinly disguised fanfic
-sent stories that are on the front page of the sender’s website (yes, we do look you people up)
-submitted the “white woman gets raped by a black guy then goes on a killing spree” stories

And though I have appreciated the go-getter spirit of some of the artists (the cover and interior artists have already been lined up, thanks).

Some cover letters have made me laugh and caused their stories to jump to the top of the TBR stack. Others have intrigued me enough with their personal story to do the same. This is not an encouragement to do likewise. Others have put me off just as much.

For the most part, folks have been extremely professional. If I do say so myself, the competition is VERY stiff (though I’m sure that won’t stop the eternal writer’s grouse: “my story was better than that one” when the anthology comes out).

Wait, this just in which certainly qualifies at unprofessional behavior: if you’re going to simultaneously submit to us (which I’m on record as saying that I don’t mind), be sure to let us know if you sell the story elsewhere. At least before we read said story in the magazine of, I don’t know, the same company publishing the anthology. That’s not a way to make friends across the board.

If nothing else, this is another take home lesson: editors talk to each other.

[BIB/ReadersRoom] Our Bi-Directional Assumption of Trust

When a publisher of any repute buys a book from you, it’s a bi-directional assumption of trust. The author trusts that the publisher will do their best to edit, publish, and market your title. The publisher trusts that the author will do their very best to see that their book is a success by taking it on themselves to do a respectable amount of self-promotion.

We tend to forget that when we get published, we writers join with our presumptive publishers in a peculiar relationship, this “bi-directional assumption of trust”. There are certain things I want the publisher to do for me, the things I might not necessarily be capable of doing for myself (or which they can do better) as we partner in the promotional efforts for our project. Because, indeed, my book becomes “our” book, as their advance indicates an investment in me/it.

Small press or large press, when you are considering who to go with as a publisher (especially if you are weighing the traditional route vs. self-publishing) there are several things you want to consider. Better said, there are certain things you want the publisher to do for you.

Here are some of the things I expect from my Publisher (even small press ones):

-distribution (my book into as many venues as possible)
-getting my book into libraries
-getting my book into book clubs (especially not forgetting urban book clubs)
-trade advertising (Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Shroud, Publisher’s Weekly, etc)
-press releases (Gila Queen, FearZone, Weird Fiction News, Hellnotes, HorrorWeb, etc.)
-advertising on book specialty web sites (CushCity is a site recently brought to my attention)
-full support on the publisher’s web site (you think would be a given, yet …)
-sending out review copies
-in house street team efforts (for instance, message board announcements)
-tip in sheets, bookmarks, postcards, and other promotional materials.

Basically, I want to see that I’m being taken seriously as a product. On my end, I tend to bring my marketing plans to the table so that the publisher knows what to expect from me. Even when I publish with the small press, I put in the work:

-I will make convention appearances, schmooze and do signings
-I specifically target black bookstores with my marketing efforts
-I give full platform support (my blog, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter)
-I personally send out review copies (again, with a focus on black reviewers and places my publisher my have missed/not thought about)
-I do podcasts and interviews.

Ultimately, it’s about protecting your brand. And yes, cries of the struggling artist aside, you are a brand. One that deserves to be treated specially and promoted seriously, by you and your publisher.

It's Official

ANGRY ROBOT IS PRESENTED TODAY BY THE LETTER “M”

Hide us! Something seriously spooky just happened. Today, the planets all being in the correct alignment, we are announcing the signing of not one, not two, but three authors whose names begin with M. Only our devious Robot overlord master (you know, him, whose name begins with… M! Aye caramba!) knows how the hell that happened, but check this trio out:

Maurice Broaddus* is one of the real good guys, so why the hell his fiction is so terrifying is beyond our understanding. The three books of the KNIGHTS OF BRETON COURT series is a modern retelling of the King Arthur cycle, set among the drug gangs of inner city America. Told through the eyes of King, as he tries to unite the crack dealers and do the right thing, it’s a stunning, edgy work, genuinely unlike anything we’ve ever read. Cheap movie analogy for you: Gilliam’s Fisher King meets The Wire. The first volume will be published by Angry Robot in summer 2010, with the remaining parts at six month intervals. Extraordinary.

continue reading to see whose company I'm privileged to be joining!

*All author pics taken by Surreal Image Photography

RaceFail '09 - Feedback II

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from a comment left on my blog a while back which I wanted to give further exposure to. As always, I look forward to your comments:

Hello, Mr. Broaddus,

I have been keeping a somewhat distant eye on Racefail '09 and found your blog and the relevant bingo cards via a simple google search. I am not a writer of any professional leaning, nor am I immediately aiming to be.

What I am is a woman of the Indian/Caribbean diaspora who spent some time teaching in Japan. While I was there I was immediately adopted into a tea ceremony club when the teacher decided I was just the right size for her to practice tying kimono with. She gave me lessons and my first yukata and I gave her saris in return. I wear my yukata on occasion and my teacher wept tears of joy when I gave her the first sari, so there's no doubt about appreciation on her part. I can eat with chopsticks, knife and fork or just my fingers and view the respective table manners as useful skills under my belt.

There are things on that Bingo card that I might say myself and racefail has raised uncomfortable issues for me. Is it only cultural appropriation if it involves caucasians? If there's a history of exploitation between groups? How much effort must go into understanding another group before people can agree it is actual cultural exchange and understanding rather than appropriation? Where is the line drawn, who draws it and why? Should I have said something to that African American girl I saw on the bus during college, wearing a bindi upside down?

My own heritage is a mishmash and a jumble, thrown together on an island and forced through a sieve of colonialism. For better or worse, borrowing and lending, adopting and sharing, adapting and evolving has been my cultural experience. Everything I am says there must be some avenue to explore this varied earth, that an upside-down bindi is a chance to educate rather than rail, but the sentiments arising from Racefail seem to acknowledge no possibility at all. Along with that is the sneaking suspicion that my post-colonial education brainwashed me better than I thought.

I hardly expect that you'd have all the answers but I am interested in any thoughts you might have on the matter. Thank you for your time.

RaceFail '09 - Feedback I

I've received a couple of really interesting responses to my RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant blog. I thought I'd share a couple. Today is from the mailbag. As always, I look forward to your comments:

My name's Hunter Eden, and I'm a young writer just new at this whole "forging the English language into something meaningful" thing. You and I corresponded very briefly a year or two ago on this same issue of race and horror, but I think I dropped the ball in responding to you, for which I humbly apologize. Point is, I had no idea that there was some kind of speculative fiction-based dust-up over race (or perhaps lack thereof).

Facts up front: I'm a white male of mixed Jewish/German-Norwegian (Hebrew Viking) descent. I don't actually write about that many white characters, though. I finished a novel (currently with an agent but no publisher) describing the war between two ancient Mexican gods in a world where Europe didn't conquer the Americas and Aztec gangsters smuggle contraband alcohol into Incan Cuzco. The only white character is the reanimated corpse of Charles Darwin, who probably isn't (within the context of the story) actually human. My first story appeared in City Slab and was written from the perspective of a Mexican cabbie in a very Cancun-like city. I've got a story due out in Weird Tales about samurai fighting dinosaurs.

I'm not trying to brag or show off when I say all this, just that I wrote these characters because I wanted to. I hate when writers pull the Last Samurai card and go to the trouble of researching a whole different culture, but then don't have the courage to actually go ahead and write someone from that culture as the main character (The Last Samurai particularly pissed me off in this regard because Tom Cruise becomes a better samurai than the Japanese characters).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm conscious of race (who in today's world isn't?), but I think the key (and I'm really not trying to land on any bingo squares here) is to remember that in the end we're all human. That's not to whitewash, but just to say that whether I'm writing a character who's Mexican or American or even a Jewish Aztec mob boss, we're all motivated by the same needs. I think a lot of speculative fiction pussyfoots around race. I especially hate the way that fantasy, even fantasy written by American authors, always seems to go back to the same Anglo/Norse/Celtic pseudo-culture. Reading Imaro by Charles Saunders was great not because it made me feel like a Racially-Enlightened Young American but because it was something new. I loved the fact that somebody had taken a part of the world as vibrant and culturally complex as Africa and given it a fantasy treatment. (The fact that Imaro is a hardcore Maasai bad-ass who fights demons and necromancers was just icing on the cake).

I think a lot of speculative fiction's difficulty with confronting race is based on two factors in writers and readers very much contrary to the spirit of the genres--cowardice and laziness. I guess these points have been made before, but they bear repeating. I think a lot of white authors and readers are scared to step out and confront the Elephant because they don't want to be labeled as racist themselves. But then, there's also the tendency to fall back on the same garbage we've grown used to. If there's a fantasy culture, it'll be based off somewhere in northern Europe because Tolkien did that. If there's a non-white culture, it'll probably be based off Japan or China or some fusion of the two. Maybe, if we're really working, we'll get some kind of distillation of the Arab world filtered through a heavily fantasized verneer with genies and carpets and sultans with veiled concubines. But Zanzibaris or Aztecs or Australian Aborigines? Not a chance. If Aztecs appear, they exist to either be heinous blood-sacrificers or a conquered and oppressed people (don't get me started on Apocalypto). It angers me profoundly as a writer, and I'm not in the least bit Hispanic in my descent. It's an affront to the imagination, and frankly, an extreme marginalization of a powerful and advanced culture.

Extreme words, I realize (and don't get me started on Ancient Astronauts, either). I guess the reason I feel strongly about this is because it's just more evidence of total lack of imagination in what is supposed to be the most imaginative set of genres we have. I guess my thoughts on writing the Other is that this doesn't need to be some sort of birdwatching exercise. I've got friends from a wide spectrum of religious and racial backgrounds and I don't stay friends with any of them so I can write minority X better.

Sorry to carpet-bomb you with this, but I'm glad somebody is confronting the whole issue and doing it without kidgloves. Personally, I'd love to see more speculative fiction written by people who aren't white and JewCatholiProtestant. Thanks for confronting the elephant (or shoggoth?) in the room.

Sincerely,
Hunter C. Eden

Harlan County Horrors (Now with Reviews!)

The Harlan County Horrors anthology is out. Its line up includes:

“The Witch of Black Mountain” – Alethea Kontis

“The Power of Moonlight” – Debbie Kuhn
“Hiding Mountain: Our Future in Apples” – Earl Dean
“Psychomachia” – Geoffrey Girard
“Yellow Warbler” – Jason Sizemore
“Kingdom Come” – Jeremy C. Shipp
“Trouble Among the Yearlings” – Maurice Broaddus “Spirit Fire” – Robby Sparks
“The Thing at the Side of the Road” – Ronald Kelly
“Inheritance” – Stephanie Lenz
“Greater of Two Evils” – Steven Shrewsbury
“Harlan Moon” – TL Trevaskis

Afterword: Harlan County: A Short History by Preston Halcomb

Cover art by Billy Tackett

REVIEWS:

Bookgasms

Jeff Cutler

University Chronicle

Monster Librarian

Paladin Freelance

Amazon Reviews

Shroud Magazine

RaceFail '09 - Why Horror Ignores the Elephant

A few years ago, I was speaking to a fellow black horror writer and she told me that she didn’t write characters of color in her work. She didn’t think it was important, even as a black writer, for her to write black characters (and descriptions of characters with dark hair and brown eyes was enough). It was more important for her to write for her chosen audience, who she perceived as white and she didn’t want to in anyway alienate them.

This is how badly issues of race have infected and confused some people.

Yes, there is a current brouhaha brewing in speculative fiction that has since been dubbed RaceFail ’09. It started when Elizabeth Bear wrote a piece on writing the other which was then openly disagreed with. The hilarity ensued (catalogued here). I, too, wrote a piece on writing the other (in a response to something Jay Lake had written, mind you, both pieces came out a few YEARS ago) and have stayed out of this round of self-examination except to offer up a play along cultural appropriation bingo card to go along with the “fantasy/science fiction no racism edition” bingo card. And yet, as Chesya Burke laments, such a discussion has largely not reared its head in the horror community. I don’t expect it to, frankly. Not to be too pointed about a race discussion in horror, but the genre largely amounts to white folks writing about white folks for the consumption of white folks. In other words, horror circumvents the issue of “writing the other” by … not.

With a few exceptions, race isn’t discussed much in the horror genre. Most folks are afraid to discuss it or admit there is a problem. With good cause: the last horror brand RaceFail discussion involved the release of Brandon Massey’s anthology series, Dark Dreams. The bulk of the discussion revolved around the series being the equivalent of reverse discrimination (because, you know, there are no all white, even more specifically, all white male, horror anthology series) or writer affirmative action (because obviously writers like Tananarive Due, L.A. Banks, Wrath James White, Eric Jerome Dickey, Zane, or, I humbly submit, myself, can’t be published elsewhere).

In some ways, I can see why RaceFail has gone on within the science fiction and fantasy genre/communities. By the nature of those genres, they explore (and are allowed to explore) big ideas. Horror too often prides itself on being the “lowest common denominator” genre, not built for rigorous idea exploration. “I’m doing an analysis of man’s inhumanity to man” usually amounts to puerile masturbatory fantasies of rape and torture justified by someone getting their comeuppance in the end.

Let’s be honest, there are two kinds of writers/readers. The first don’t want to be challenged. They essentially want Stephen King redux, rearranging the deck chairs on a familiar cruise. They cling to their comfort zone of base elements, slaves to the tropes, as they await the playing out of the ensuing hilarity. Rarely is there an examination of the human condition, existence, or the exploration of a big idea. For every Gary Braunbeck there are hundreds of … pick your blood splattered cover.

The other kind looks for a new experience. They want to go to a new place and think about things they haven’t before. Yet, when I hear horror writers talking about their craft in term of such artistic terms, there is a chorus decrying such lofty literary ideas or critical analysis. How many times have even best of the mid-list writers complained about their publisher neutering their work for the sake of reaching their market? Their lowest common denominator audience.

Right now, the genre can barely handle a discussion on women in the genre. That discussion breaks one of two ways: who are the women who write in the genre (so the discussion becomes a listing of women writers) or it centers around “can women be scary writers?” (and yes, that discussion is as ignorant as it sounds). And that's before we talk in general about sexism in the genre or its conventions.

I was reading Kelli Dunlap’s post on diversity in the genre. Normally, when someone tells me “they don’t see race” it sets off a red flag of suspicion with me because that typically means “as long as all the people of color act and think like me, we have no race problem.” But I’m in her peer group, I look around our close circle of writer friends and I see the guests for Mo*Con, and I, too, see the diversity. I’m tempted not to engage in a discussion about women in the genre because I’m surrounded by fierce women whose talent I’d question at my own peril. But then I have to wonder if this is a chicken or egg dilemma: was there diversity in the genre to begin with or did we, The Others adrift in the sea of The Majority, simply reach out to each other?

So could horror handle a conversation involving cultural appropriation, the concept of white privilege, or even the idea of racism in the genre (much less among its writers)? The fact of the matter is that I could probably name the prominent writers of color in the horror genre, know most if not all of them, and I don’t often hear them discussed in the various horror communities. What I hear is how race doesn’t matter, all readers care about is a good yarn. Though I suspect that’s true as long as that yarn doesn’t stretch them too far. And that’s the ultimate RaceFail.


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