DLSnell.com

Fungi antho

2012-01-21T18:25:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Fungi
Editor(s): Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Pay Rate: 1¢ per word (CAD)
Response Time: Varies
Reading Period: Until February 15, 2012
Description: Speculative fiction anthology with fungi as a central theme
Submission Guidelines: www.innsmouthfreepress.com

THE SCOOP

1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?
SMG: Oh, a whole lot of people. Nabokov, Tanith Lee. They have to have some flair. That certain style which pulls at you.

OG: Man, as Silvia says above, lots of people. I'm personally a huge fan of Mike Mignola, who's known more for his art than his writing, though he's amazing at both. I'm a fan of a lot of the turn-of-the-century guys and the #Weird Tales authors like Lovecraft, Leiber, Hodgson, etc. And of course I'm a really big fan of M.R. James and E.F. Benson and a lot of other guys with two first initials and then a last name.

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?
SMG: We are looking for all kinds of speculative fiction. Mushroom noir. Steamfungus. Whatever floats your mushroom. I'm actually very serious about mushroom noir. And there's stuff that should just write itself, like some #Alice in Wonderland variation because of the whole mushroom consumption in that.

OG: Again, as Silvia says, there's no one genre we're looking for in #Fungi, but I'm personally partial to weirder supernatural stories, something a little spooky, a little haunting. Hard sci-fi or high fantasy is going to be a harder sell for me than something that's got a little creep to it.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
SMG: I wouldn't call it exotic, but I want to see stuff that's not set in the USA. The world is bigger than one country. If we don't get a story set in China with Chinese characters, that would be unforgivable, for example. The country has over 200 species of mushrooms and they have been used in traditional medicine for many, many years.

OG: While I love a good story set in a decaying New England town (and we've gotten a few good ones already), I'd second the notion that we'd like to see stuff set all over the world.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
SMG: I'm for slow, but that doesn't mean you are allowed to bore me to tears. You've got to catch our attention somehow. It doesn't have to be with a fistfight, but give me something.

OG: I love a good slow burn, though what works best varies from story to story. I think if you're going to go with a slow start, though, then something like atmosphere or tone is absolutely imperative right up front.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?
SMG: Ones who are not stupid? Seriously, I get to read many stories in which the protagonists seem to have been banged on the head with a big hammer.

OG: I remember the old guidelines for #Weird Tales used to ask for "protagonists who protag," and yeah, I'd like to see some of those. I prefer characters who're taking an active role and at least trying to do something, rather than passive victims succumbing to their fate. (Not that the active characters can't still fail, or be attempting something harmful, but I'd like them to be at least attempting something.)

6) Is there a specific tone you'd like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?
SMG: I like weird stuff. Stuff that isn't afraid to play with form.

OG: Again, I like stuff that's a little on the macabre or spooky side, so I'm going to gravitate toward that.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
SMG: Whatever works for the story. However, violence for the sake of violence is bo-ring. Also, this is not an erotica anthology.

OG: I don't think I have anything to add to that.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?
SMG: Body horror. Stories without plots. Stories that are not third-person POV. Hero’s journey? Not my cup of tea. Stories with good science.

With that said, I don't want it to be all people turning into mushrooms. How about mushroom as a tool for murder? You know, poison. A society interested in the cultivation of mushrooms. A mushroom deity. One of the largest organisms on earth is a fungi. Or, think of penicillin.

OG: I'm a big believer in people turning into mushrooms, it's true, but we're going to get, and have already gotten, a lot of those stories. Also, we're getting a lot of stories with overt Lovecraft references. I'm not averse to a good Lovecraftian fungus story, but I definitely don't want this anthology to be all Lovecraft all the time.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?
SMG: Whatever works for the story.

OG: Ditto.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?
SMG: Please provide a cover letter with your most relevant credits. Do not summarize the story for me.

OG: And please, please put the word count in your cover letter!

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth thrice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Extreme Planets antho

2012-01-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Extreme Planets
Editor(s): David Conyers, David Kernot and Jeff Harris
Pay Rate: US 3¢/word plus three copies
Response Time: Acceptances after closing date. Rejects during and after submission period.
Reading Period: Until 30 June 2012
Description: A science fiction anthology of short stories set on or about alien worlds that push the limits of what we believe is possible in a planetary environment. To be published by Chaosium Inc.
Submission Guidelines: www.david-conyers.com

THE SCOOP

1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?
The science fiction authors that I have enjoyed whose ideas and style are relevant to the Extreme Planets anthology include Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan, Peter F. Hamilton, David Brin, Neal Asher, Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, Robert Reed and Greg Bear. These authors can write tales with a pace, have good characters and most of all leave me with a sense of wonder. When I finish reading their works I feel like the universe is bigger and more wondrous than I had ever imagined, and that the scale of space is just huge. They also get the science and technology right, creating believable futures.

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?
I like thrillers, stories with a sense of will or won’t the protagonist get through to the end of the story in one piece after facing numerous obstacles, dangers and antagonists out to stop them. I also like a sense of adventure. For example, in Extreme Planets, a story might involve a group of planetary explorers working together to determine the best way to alter a planet’s atmosphere to make it breathable for them. This might be an okay story on its own, but if there was a time frame to solve the problem because the only air recycler on their spaceship has failed, and that someone in the team is deliberately sabotaging their efforts, then this adds extra tension, pace and mystery that a story would otherwise lack. We’ve set story lengths up to 10,000 words so authors get the opportunity to play with and develop their ideas.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
This is an anthology about planets that push the boundaries of what is possible in an alien environment, so my co-editors (David Kernot and Jeff Harris) are looking for stories set on or about these kinds of worlds, what it would be like for humans to observe, explore or live there (or fight wars or plunder its resources for that matter), and how the environment might affect any life that might have evolved there. So if this is an anthology about alien worlds, then we want far future science fiction stories involving spaceships (or equivalent) and the technology that goes with it, or the technology to observe these worlds from afar. Technology similarly needs to be sufficiently developed to create a believable future.

We are also interested in stories about pantropy (re-engineering humans to survive in alien environments) and terraforming.

We are not interested in steampunk or fantasy extreme worlds.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
I want to see action unfolding as the story is being told, not recounts of what has happened in the past, or detailed essays as to why the characters are where they are or how technology works. Details like that should come out in the narrative. Lastly, I want to see dialogue. Stories without any dialogue at all really don’t work for us. And stories have a pace, don’t get bogged down with too much description when it is not needed and don’t race through scenes that need a little more description to set the scene.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?
Science fiction is about problem solving, so I want characters that at least try to solve problems facing them. They may not succeed but I want to see them give it a go. Protagonists hold more appeal to readers when they are active, not passive. They don’t wait for things to happen, or for someone else to take the lead, they drive the action themselves. If a spaceship is going to crash into a black hole, then the main character in this particular story is the one working very hard to ensure this rather unpleasant end doesn’t come to be, even though she or he might be faced by a whole host of secondary events or characters, willingly or unwillingly, trying to see her or him fail.

Also, I like characters that care about something, and stand up for what they believe in. I like characters that are also human, in that they have failings as much as they have positive traits. I like to see characters evolve, learn something about themselves and come out the other end of a story as a better person.

6) Is there a specific tone you'd like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?
I said earlier I like the thriller style, where there is a sense of action and danger. I like stories where I am compelled to turn the next page because I want to know what happens next. I want to be surprised by twists and turns that I didn’t see coming.

I’m a huge fan of Alastair Reynolds––now he knows how to write a story with pace and energy that grabs my attention. If submitters can write a story as good as his, then they will be in for sure.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
Violence towards children and minors will be extremely hard to sell. Vulgarity, violence or sexual content just for the sake of shock value isn’t appropriate. I don’t care if your story has words like ‘fuck’ in it, or there are sex scenes or bloody demises of characters, but we’re not after gory horror tales either. There is one main rule to follow: make vulgarity, violence and sexual content appropriate to the story. If in doubt, less is definitely preferable to more. Implication is better than graphic description.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?
Simply, we want stories about the most bizarre but plausible (in a science fiction setting) world that can be imagined. Then we want to see what life is like on these worlds and how humans would survive there, or stories about observing or discovering these worlds.

There are so many speculative worlds out there, both in science and science fiction literature. We want stories about super-sized ocean worlds with sea hundreds of kilometers thick and deeper layers of hot ice, carbon worlds with diamond mountains and petrochemical seas, iron worlds with extreme magnetic fields and alien life forms that have evolved with iron in their biochemical makeup, and planets with super gravities and atmospheres so thick it is like walking in liquid. But we’re also keen to see artificial worlds along the same vein as Larry Niven’s Ringworld, the lattice structure in Alastair Reynold’s Pushing Ice, artificial Jupiter sized spaceships like Robert Reed’s Marrow, Shellworlds like in Iain M. Bank’s Matter, Alderson Disks like in Charles Stross’ “Missile Gap,” and anything else anyone out there has the imagination to conjure up.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?
Don’t care, so long as I’m dragged into the story because I’m enjoying it and I want to see how it ends. Protagonists should fight the good fight. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. The main criterion is that they fight for what they believe in.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?
Be a fan and avid reader of science fiction, otherwise you are unlikely to understand the nuances that make the genre what it is, and what we are looking for. Also, read current works out there, because science fiction changes a lot, even in a decade. Some good examples of recommended reading are Asimov’s Interzone and Analog magazines, and anthologies such as The New Space Opera by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, and Mindblowing SF by Mike Ashley, but there are plenty of other examples out there, such as the works by authors I recommended earlier. Also, science magazines like Cosmos, New Scientists and Scientific America also have lots of great articles to kick-start the imagination.

A critical point: if your only understanding of science fiction comes from watching science fiction movies and television series, then you are doing yourself a huge disservice, because the ideas in the visual media pale in comparison to the ideas in the literature and are about 50 years behind in their concepts. If this is your only influence, your stories will look amateurish in comparison to those who read in the genre.

Critical do not’s, that’s easy. Ensure that your story does not include any of the following: vampires, elves, fairies, werewolves, unicorns, magic, religious stories where god is a real person, Lovecraftian monsters, medieval settings, immortal godlike humans calling themselves ‘Thor’ or equivalent, superhero stories and stories set in universes with a similar set-up to Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. No horror unless it is a science fiction story with horrific elements, and no fantasy.

Very few science fiction anthologies appear in the open submission market, so we ask authors to make their work count. We want good science fiction stories about worlds that push the limit of what we think is possible.

One last note, we will consider reprints from professional authors, but they are going to be really hard to sell if we get really good original tales to compare them against. Query if you think you have a reprint story for us, we won’t discount them. Query if you have any idea that you think might interest us.

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Dark Faith 2 antho

2011-12-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Dark Faith 2
Editor(s): Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon
Pay Rate: 5 cents/word
Response Time: 90 after deadline
Reading Period: January 1st – January 31st
Description: Everyone believes in something and we want you to put those beliefs to the test. We’re looking for the story only you could write, something deeply personal and at the same time universal. We’re looking for smart, literate stories that don’t proselytize or stereotype. Stories that make you think, that comment on the human condition and the social order. Stories that are rich in their use of language.
Submission Guidelines: http://mauricebroaddus.com/?p=3224

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth thrice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Live Free or Never Die antho

2011-11-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Live Free or Never Die: Speculative Fiction from the Granite State to the Stars
Editor(s): Rick Broussard
Pay Rate: $50
Response Time: 3 months
Description: Pulp-style short fiction in the genre of science fiction and strange tales, all set in New Hampshire
Submission Guidelines: www.nhpulpfiction.com

THE SCOOP

1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?
I enjoy reading the works of writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury who have distinctive voices and who can make words do tricks at their command. On the other hand, I really admire the imaginative scope and durability of classic science fiction writers like Robert Heinlein and the rebel spirit of fantasists like Harlan Ellison.

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?
My very favorite genres are precisely the genres that this anthology covers: science fiction and strange Twilight Zone-style tales.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
I'm most intrigued by the workings of the human mind. After all, that's the setting where the story really takes place no matter if the environment is exotic or quotidian.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
Short story pacing has to conform to an equation based the density of the story's essential plot points and the length of a sustainable arc for the narrative.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?
I prefer protagonists who are somewhat out of their depth in whatever the situation is that they find themselves. I identify best with them. Other characters should possess more than one dimension unless it's a character from a place where there only is one dimension.

6) Is there a specific tone you'd like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?
I want the tone to be colorful and alluring and maybe a little tawdry.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
I'll edit out anything too extreme. I think shooting for PG 13 is probably a good idea but I'm always willing to bend rules for good writing. Past volumes have had their share of all of the above.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?
Science fiction invites high concepts and I welcome those, but writers get extra points for actually taking the NH portion of the title seriously. The Granite State should be at least a secondary or parallel theme in every story.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?
No preference.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?
Put your contact information on the manuscript.

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 3 of 3

2011-10-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

READ: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

In a ballroom full of rabid zombie fans now actually turned into zombies, there were two people in particular whom I would want by my side. One of them was there in the ballroom already: Eloise J. Knapp—novelist, photographer, graphic designer… and one heck of a hardcore survivalist.

The other person was Jonathan Maberry. Not only was he an eighth-degree black belt in traditional Japanese jujitsu, and a fifth-degree black belt in kenjutsu (the Japanese art of swordplay), he also had published, like, fifteen books in five years, plus a bunch of Marvel comic books and short stories. Guy like that, he must have had some type of superpower equal to Peter Clines’s denial. And on top of everything, he was a super nice guy, always willing to read books from Permuted, always willing to help promote. Super nice guy. That, too, was one of his powers.

Alas, I hadn’t seen Maberry but in passing the entire zomBcon. Jacob, Eloise, and I really could have used him there in the ballroom.

“Locked,” Jacob Kier said as he hobbled away from yet another door leading out of the room. “Or maybe blocked or something.”

We had tried three doors already. They hadn’t been shut when I had first barged into the ballroom to save my friend and publisher Jacob Kier from suffering a game-over at the hands of a zombified Super Mario.

“Last one,” Ellie said.

We all looked down the outside aisle to where more and more zombies were pouring into the ballroom. It was the only open door, and we had been trying to avoid it because of the incoming horde.

I looked behind us at the gory mess Ellie’s minigun had left behind. There were still a few twitching hands here and there, a few blinking eyes on partially severed heads. But aside from this new influx of the undead ahead of us, we had pretty much cleared the room. Nevertheless, the incoming zombies had already started circling around behind us, and we could hear them back there, closing in.

There were so many. I wondered why they were all coming into the ballroom. Was there no one else out there alive?

“I’m running out of ammo,” Ellie said as she fed in her last belt of cartridges.

“Me too,” I said, plucking the last few shotgun shells from my bandolier. Jacob had already run out of rounds for his handgun, and he looked like maybe he was starting to hyperventilate, all sweaty and pale and trying to catch his breath. He was clutching his ZombAlert necklace as if it were helping him stay upright. I was proud of him: he hadn’t yet lain down and cried. Well... maybe for like a second he had.

Somehow Ellie had managed to get him back on his feet. “Think of your family,” she’d said. “There’s plenty to live for, but you have to fight for it, do you understand me?”

Now, as Ellie continued to load the minigun, I said, “Should we go back to your booth, get more ammo, different guns?”

She shook her head. “They’ve already circled around that far. We’d never make it to the cache, not with the ammo we’ve got left. We’d just be wasting our last chance.”

She finished loading the minigun for the last time. “Okay,” she said, “make every round count. D.L., you’re the cleanup crew. You get the ones I don’t.”

I nodded, and she set up her shot.

Watching her operate the minigun was like watching a construction worker using a jackhammer. It certainly was just as loud.

Jacob and I watched as she mowed down the bodies that were streaming through the doorway, watched as knees just disappeared in a bloody haze, and heads exploded. Jacob looked like he might puke as entrails slid out everywhere and the newcomer zombies got tripped up on them, slipping around in the rest of the carnage too.

The smell almost made me vomit in sympathy with Jacob. The smell of blood and raw muscle and guts, and the stinking, steaming brown and black sludge inside them. It kind of looked and reeked like the men’s room from right before the outbreak.

I looked back the way we’d come. “They’re coming up behind us!” I shouted over the minigun.

Ellie glanced back but then just kept shooting. She had to. If we couldn’t clear the doorway…

Behind me, the two leaders of the zombie pack got within range. Zombie Scully and zombie Mulder in their special agent suits and FBI laminates.

My shotgun turned zombie Mulder’s head into mist, and his tongue wagged in the meaty, gurgling stump before he fell over dead.

“Jacob,” I said, “watch out!”

He had been so steeped in shock he hadn’t noticed the undead Scully moving in on him. I couldn’t shoot—not a shotgun. Not with Jacob and my target in such close proximity. And as I raised the shotgun to strike the special agent with the butt, I wondered… could I really hit a girl? At least she wasn’t wearing glasses.

She latched onto Jacob’s arm and pulled him in for the bite… but got a mouthful of the shotgun stock instead. It was like hitting a tree with a baseball bat. The impact hurt my arms. And I could hear her teeth cracking, could feel the ragged remnants of them scraping the stock.

I shoved her away from my friend and blasted her neck and lower jaw so that the top of her head went flying, staring at us and tracking us with its eyes as it flew back into the oncoming mob.

“Eloise!” I shouted as Jacob and I backed up against her.

Just then the rapid fire stopped, and the minigun’s barrel wound down.

“All right,” she said, and she started forward, leaving the minigun on the floor.

I blasted a few more zombies behind us, and then slung Jacob’s arm over my shoulder and helped him along. We could hear shouting from out in the hall where we had been signing books. Someone shouting at the zombies and grunting, as if working hard at something.

“Hear that, Beavis? There’s someone alive out there!”

Jacob perked up a little and nodded. “Uh huh.”

He seemed to be feeling a little better about the whole thing now that we weren’t mercilessly slaughtering everyone.

There were only a couple zombies left standing. One looked completely intact, except for a vicious belt of gunshot wounds along his belly, and the other was missing a leg. Ellie pushed the intact one, and he slid apart at the belt of wounds. His top half hit the one-legged zombie, who toppled too, unable to keep his balance.

“Clear!” Ellie called.

Then she threw down a segment of pipe and draping to cover the mess she’d made. It would help keep our shoes somewhat clean.

Ellie walked across it, drapery squishing beneath her boots, and when she reached the threshold of the door…

I heard more shouting from in the hall, and Ellie started backing up, actually looking surprised for the first time that evening.

Permuted Press author Bowie Ibarra came stumbling in over the lumpy drapery, carrying an almost empty bottle of Dead Man Ale. Once he’d caught his balance, he immediately locked in on Eloise.

“Uhhhh…”

The sound actually came from behind us. I leaned Jacob against the wall and turned to blast more zombies.

Bowie, either drunk off his ass or infected with full-blown zombie AIDS, swiped at Eloise, who nimbly arched away while also swiping the bottle from his outstretched hand. She danced back a few steps and then, swinging the almost-empty bottle up so that the bottom pointed right at Bowie’s face, she slammed her palm hard against the glass mouth. The pressure, combined with the dregs left in the bottle, caused the bottom to explode. There was a loud pop as it shattered right into Bowie’s eyes. Shards stuck out of his face, and he staggered around, blind.

“Yeow!” he cried, clutching at his eyes. “I was just… offering you a toast—yeow!”

He tripped and fell face-first into the wettest part of the drapery. There was a squishing sound of blood pushing up through the fabric… directly into Bowie’s injured eyes.

Eloise looked horrified. “Bowie!”

She raced to his side and helped him up. He was crying blood. His and everyone else’s.

“Please…” he said, and then he vomited off to one side. “Please…”

BOOM!

I shot my last shell as one of the zombies finally reached our group from the rear. The blast only took off the bottom left half of his face, and didn’t put him down.

“I’m out!” I screamed, and then Jacob and I started backing up away from our approaching doom—all those hungry mouths.

“Please,” Bowie said again.

“I’m so sorry,” Ellie said. “I’m so sorry, Bowie.”

“Just—” He vomited up blood this time. “Just...”

Then he stopped talking.

Slowly, deliberately, he raised his head toward the sound of Ellie’s voice.

“I’m so sorry,” she said one last time before jabbing the long shard of the beer bottle through Bowie’s eye socket, into his brain. She caught him as he fell, and laid him gently down.

Then she stood up, and with a steely look in her eyes, she said, “Let’s go.”

I followed her, helping a weak and weeping Jacob out over the black-drapery funeral shroud as the zombies behind us followed too.

The hallway was almost completely deserted, except for Peter Clines and the group of twenty-or-so survivors huddled in his safe zone of deniability; he was leading them out the front doors, just chatting with them casually, like nothing was going on—as if he weren’t walking across a slaughterhouse floor; he stepped on a stomach, which deflated under his foot like a whoopee cushion.

“Oh hey, you guys!” he said, waving at us cheerfully.

Craig DiLouie was out in the hall too. He held a long metal pole with a U-shaped yoke welded onto one end, and he was catching the last few zombies by the neck with the yoke so that he could steer them into the ballroom. He was shouting and grunting as he worked.

Suddenly it all made sense: the locked doors, the sudden influx of the undead; the yelling.

“Oh jeez,” DiLouie said, struggling with the zombie trapped in his yoke. “I didn’t… I didn’t realize there was anyone else alive in there!”

“Bowie was alive,” I said.

“Oh my G—really? I didn’t… I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay,” Ellie said, “neither did I...”

Craig shoved the zombie into the ballroom and spotted the horde coming through. He tried to shut the doors, but couldn’t because of all the bodies lying just inside.

He turned to us, and I realized just how pale and sickly he looked. “You should go.”

“Huh-uh,” Jacob said, still leaning on me.

“Yeah, Craig,” I said, “we’re not leaving anyone behind.”

He shook his head and started rolling up his sleeve. “You don’t understand. One of them, it…” He didn’t have to finish. We could see the nasty teeth marks indenting his skin.

Jacob started crying.

Eloise stared at Craig with a glazed look.

The zombies made it to the threshold and Craig jumped into action, holding them back with his yoke. “Go!” he said. “Go before I can’t hold them any longer!”

I nodded. “Ellie, Jacob, remember… there’s plenty to live for. We just have to—”

“We just have to fight for it,” Ellie finished. And then she was helping me pack Jacob to the elevator. We easily dodged the stray zombies Craig hadn’t cleared from the hall; he’d saved the slowest for last.

We took the elevator down to the second-floor parking garage, where Ellie was parked. I kept an eye on Jacob from my peripheral vision. He had stopped weeping and was just staring at the elevator doors.

DING!

The doors slid open onto the parking garage.

Black belt, prolific author, and super nice guy Jonathan Maberry suddenly stepped inside. “Not this way!” he said, repeatedly jabbing the button to close the doors.

I caught only a brief glimpse into the parking garage, but the way looked clear. It made me wonder what Maberry was running from.

“We’ll go to the first floor,” he said, pressing the button.

The elevator started to move, and Maberry glanced over his shoulder at us. I noticed a huge bloody fingerprint on the back of his coat. A red slash, like the imprint of an incision, seemed to cut into the large fingerprint, and it reminded me of something. Something I had seen in the men’s room earlier that day…

I started to ask Maberry if he’d seen Big Daddy anywhere, when suddenly he was pressing the emergency stop button. The elevator jerked a little as it stopped somewhere between floors. Jacob almost collapsed, and while Ellie and I were struggling to stay upright beneath his dead weight, Maberry took advantage.

He grabbed Jacob and spun him around, then locked him in some kind of one-arm chokehold that only a superhuman could maintain.

“Get back!” he told us, pointing a Glock at Ellie and me. Then he pressed the gun to Jacob’s head. “I’m sick of you foiling my plans. So let me tell you all about them conveniently…”

“Mr. Maberry, don’t you think that’s a bit—”

“I’ve been planning this for years, you see, building up a fan base, for myself and the entire genre. Working tirelessly for five years. In fact, where do you think I got the idea for Patient Zero, hmm? It wasn’t just fiction… it was a plan. And now with zomBcon and Occupy Seattle getting people out on the streets and vulnerable... I knew the timing was right.”

As he kept talking, I glanced at Jacob.

“Why, you might ask? Hah! There is no reason! It’s simply because… I want to. Because… I’m not even human.”

That got my attention. “Not human?”

He chuckled. “Yes. Haven’t you ever wondered how I’m able to write so many books?”

Jacob said, “Uh-huh…” and then suddenly he started puking. It poured over Maberry’s arm and all down the front of Jacob’s Permuted tee.

Maberry reacted, shoving Jacob away and flinging vomit off his sleeve.

“He’s infected!” Maberry screamed, and then he marched forward, aiming the gun at Jacob’s head.

“No!”

Ellie and I both ran forward, pushing Maberry into Jacob, shoving until the two were practically hugging. We felt Maberry’s muscles wind up in his back as he coiled to spin himself around. But then Jacob was sinking his teeth into Maberry’s neck, clamping down and then pulling back, tearing off a huge chunk of muscle and stretchy strips of skin.

“ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!”

As it turns out… Maberry was most definitely human. But I could see it in his eyes as Ellie and I held him against Jacob and let our friend rip out his throat: I could see that the man had just realized for the first time in his life that he was not, in fact, anything more than mortal flesh and bone.

I hit the button to resume our elevator ride to the first floor.

Jonathan Maberry gurgled one last time and then…

DING!

… Jacob let him drop.

Ellie and I backed out of the car, backing away from Jacob. His face was completely painted with Maberry’s blood. He came toward us.

“No gun,” Ellie said, patting the pockets of her black tactical vest. “Not even a knife.”

I stood there, staring at Jacob, thinking about what he’d said he’d do if his wife ever turned into a zombie.

“He’s got a… thingy…” I said, gesturing at the ZombAlert necklace around his neck. Maberry’s chokehold had kept it clean and free of vomit.

Quickly, nimbly, Eloise snatched the necklace from Jacob’s neck, snapping the chain. She looked at it and then handed it to me.

On the back I found Jacob’s custom engraving, his last wish if he ever were to be turned. It almost made me laugh and sob, all at the same time.

“Molest me,” I read aloud.

Jacob looked at me with sad eyes even as he came forward, groping for my throat. He moaned. Moaned like someone who had just lost everything that meant anything in the world.

I met his eyes, and, despite his abject plea, I didn’t see anything. No spark.

“Beavis...” I said.

I heard glass shattering behind me, and before I could even turn around, Ellie was beside me with a fire axe. She stepped forward, but I stopped her. Without a word, I took the axe from her. Then I stepped forward as Jacob stepped forward too…

“Uhhh…”

_________

I sat at the bottom of the parking lot stairs, just staring at the two corpses that had fallen out the window: Timothy Long and the coconut-bra castaway. They were hugging even as they lay practically flattened and burst on the pavement.

“Come on, D.L.,” Ellie said. “We can get to the parking garage from here. It’s clear.” She reached out for my hand to help me up.

I shook my head. “Ellie, I heard what you said. During the Permuted panel. What you’d do in the instance of a zombie outbreak. You should go… be with your family on the farm. Protect them. They need you.”

“No,” she said, “no way. I’m not just leaving you here.”

I shook my head. “Well, I can’t leave. I need to… I need to go find the other Permuted guys. Tony Faville, Jason Hornsby… Iain McKinnon. Jacob would want… they weren’t at the table when this all started, and he would want them to be safe too.”

Ellie nodded and considered something for a few seconds. “Then we’ll go get them together,” she said. “And then…”

“And then I can lie down and cry.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we all will. But in the meantime… let’s go save Jacob’s press.”

And so she helped me up, and we went, knowing that neither of us was likely to survive, but knowing that it didn’t matter so long as we died in service to our second family…

Permuted Press.

“God,” I said, “I hope Crypticon 2012 is nothing like this…”

And Ellie said, “Actually... I’ve heard it’s way worse…”

The End! (Until Next Year... Duhn-Duhn-Duhn!)

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 2 of 3

2011-10-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

READ: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

At dinner, the night before the outbreak, editor Felicia A. Tiller-Sullivan had asked Jacob Kier, “What would you do if your wife got turned?”

Jacob looked down at his burger. He was kind of hunched over the table, ready to take a bite.

“Would you be able to…?” She trailed off when she saw the look on his face.

Still staring at his burger, Jacob said, “I would probably just lie down and cry.” Then he took a big old juicy bite, and I laughed.

I laughed until tears were streaming down my face. The laughter was infectious, and Jacob, chuckling, said, “I’m glad my grief amuses you.” The truth is, he was sincere in his answer to Felicia’s question. You could hear it in the way his voice broke.

Now, as I bolted into the ballroom at zomBcon, following the direction of Jacob’s voice, I prayed he was alive.

The ballroom was chaos. Tables were overturned, and zombies and survivors were running everywhere, trampling discarded comic books and crunching over zombie figurines. I glanced around, trying to spot my tall friend. My eye caught somebody in a red-and-white striped sweatshirt and beanie: how was it that Jacob was somehow more difficult to find than Where’s Waldo?

“Beavis!” I cried, hoping he would once more answer to his true name.

Then I heard him, shouting for help.

He was lying on the ground near the Optimystical Studios booth where they sold ZombAlert necklaces, stamped with customized final wishes to let your family know what to do with you in the event that you get turned into a zombie. Stuff like “Shoot Me” or “Kiss Me.” A zombified Super Mario was jumping on Jacob’s head as if Jacob were some sort of Koopa or Goomba he could squash for points, or perhaps extra lives.

I didn’t have a weapon.

Luckily panel moderator Marshall Popham had told me about the Zombie Tools booth, where they sold very long and very sharp blades, and killing instruments of all kinds. I hurried over to their booth, a dark space with a blackened metal roof, some old looking furniture, and a naked zombie bust nailed atop a column of wooden planks, which also served as a display wall for all the different knives.

The blades were all gone.

Every single one.

People had ransacked the entire booth and were using the Zombie Tools to hack their way out of the ballroom. All that was left were some T-shirts that said, “A Fist Full of Fuck Yeah.” I grabbed a bunch and ran toward Super Mario, who was still pouncing on my friend’s head.

“Hey, Mario!” I shouted.

He looked up midair, and I threw a fistful of fuck yeah right into his pale moon of a face.

He landed and stumbled back, caught up in the shirts, pawing at them. I ran and kicked him hard in the chest, and he went reeling. But he quickly recovered, and when the shirts fell away from his face… he snarled and came back running.

“Here!” Jacob said, holding up some sort of machete he’d gotten from Zombie Tools.

I snatched it up and charged headlong toward the classic videogame character. As we met in the middle, I slid like a runner at a ball game and swung the blade as hard as I could. I cut Mario down at the knees and he suddenly shrank.

“Jacob,” I said, running over to help him up and drag him behind a rack of magazines where we’d have a second to regroup.

His glasses were crooked on his face. I straightened them for him. “Are you all right? Were you bitten?”

The first thing Jacob said was, “The other Permuted authors. Are they… ?”

“Well, Timothy Long is... um... Craig DiLouie was still alive last I saw him, and he’s out there fighting the infection tooth and nail. Peter Clines is in denial, and—”

“Yeah, I know about Peter’s power.”

“You mean you knew about his secret identity and you didn’t tell me?”

Jacob looked away.

“I thought we told each other everything.”

“Hey,” he suddenly said, “did you see my necklace?” He held up his ZombAlert necklace from Optimystical Studios.

“Yeah, that’s pretty,” I said, and then I changed the subject; the current one just hurt too much. “I’m not sure where the other Permuted guys are. Hornsby and Faville and McKinnon… I’m not sure. Bowie I’m pretty positive is a dead man. And… you never answered me, are you all right?”

Jacob looked off into the ballroom with a frightened look on his face, like he had just remembered he’d left the stove on at home.

“Ellie,” he said.

“What?”

“She had her own booth, away from the Permuted table.”

Suddenly I understood. Eloise J. Knapp, the very first female Permuted novelist, had gotten a booth inside the ballroom. She was sharing her space with Lyle Perez, the guy from Undead in the Head Book Reviews.

Without another word, Jacob started off in her direction. He was limping badly.

I followed him, and some zombies lurched out at us. I decapitated a few cheerleaders and a few survivalists who hadn’t survived. I knew Eloise dressed in Blackhawk tactical gear, but none of these newly undead survivalists were women—all men.

Jacob rounded the corner to Ellie’s booth first, and I could see his face when he saw what was there. I hurried up and pulled my machete out of the neck of a Boba Fett zombie, then scurried to catch up with Jacob.

“Oh my God,” I said when I saw the remains of Eloise Knapp’s booth.

The banners promoting her first book The Undead Situation still hung there, looking great, and it looked as if she had sold out of books. She still had a few copies of Z Magazine—for zombies, by zombies—but even that had almost sold out.

However, not everything in her booth looked quite as pristine.

A corpse was slouched in one of two chairs. A zombie figurine stuck out of the body’s head where someone had jammed it. It looked as if the little zombie were ripping and climbing its way out of the skull.

“Lyle…” Jacob said. “Lyle Perez.”

“Where’s Ellie?”

We glanced around, but this aisle was almost vacant. We could see survivors screaming past as they ran around the outside perimeter of the room, escaping zombies.

I spotted Carmen Sandiego, just briefly, and then she was gone.

“Where in the world is Ellie?” Jacob said. I could see tears in his eyes now.

For Lyle. For everything.

I tapped him on the shoulder as a zombie caught sight of us and turned up our aisle. “We’ve got to go. Maybe the other Permuted authors have seen her?”

He nodded, and we turned to leave, but then one of the pipe-and-drape walls that separated the aisles toppled, and a horde of zombies came rushing at us: construction workers, Pocahontas, Alice in Wonderland, a few zomBcon volunteers in white shirts.

Jacob and I turned to flee up the aisle, but another group of zombies was closing in on us from that direction as well.

We glanced at each other. I tightened my grip on the machete, knowing I wouldn’t let us go down without taking out at least twice our number in zombies.

The closest one growled. Her eye was covered in some sort of black fabric to make it look as if the eyeball were missing; the surrounding makeup made the socket look like a ragged, bloody hole. I swung out at her, but she caught my arm and pulled me in for a deadly kiss.

BLAM!

BLAM BLAM!

The zombie with the fake missing eye, now truly missing her eye, suddenly fell back, along with a few other walking corpses nearest us.

Eloise J. Knapp, in full Blackhawk tactical gear, strode out from behind another segment of pipe and drape, gun in hand.

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Before the outbreak, Jacob and I had taken an elevator with Ellie, and she had told us how one time the power had gone out in her town. She had gotten geared up and had grabbed her baseball bat. She thought, if there were zombies out there, she wanted to be there to help put them down. “This is my time,” she had told her family before heading out the door.

Here in the ballroom, where everyone else was running and screaming and being victimized, Eloise Knapp looked totally in her element.

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

She emptied her magazine into the rest of the zombies surrounding us, and then, still striding toward us, she ejected the spent mag and slammed in a new one.

She tossed the gun to Jacob and said, “Cover me.” Then she vaulted over the table into her booth.

“We need to go!” I said. “What are you doing? They’re just boxes!”

She was opening one of the tubs she had brought with her to the convention. I had assumed they were full of supplies like bookmarks and stuff, but then I saw just how big of a badass Ellie truly was.

“Is that a Gatling gun?” I asked.

“A minigun,” she said as she hefted it up onto the table. I saw a ton of other pistols and rifles and shotguns inside, plus a few stacks of various ammos.

“They’re coming,” Jacob said, raising the pistol.

Ellie looked up. Then, as if she’d planned for this, she walked right over, grabbed a stack of Z Magazines, and threw them out into the shambling horde.

The zombies stopped and looked down at the magazines.

Then they looked up at Ellie.

Then they looked at me.

Then at Ellie.

Then at the gun in Jacob’s hand.

Then at his ZombAlert necklace, or maybe his throat.

One of them farted.

And then they all fell to the ground and started fighting over the few issues of Z Magazine.

Ellie looked at us and said, “For zombies, by zombies,” and then she continued to pull out a few weapons from her tub. The last thing she grabbed was a go-bag.

She handed a shotgun to me, plus a bandolier of shells. To Jacob, she gave extra magazines.

“D.L., you’re close quarters—keep them off us. Jacob, you pick off the ones behind, keep them from ever getting to us.”

“And what are you going to do?” Jacob asked.

Ellie picked up the minigun and said, “Why, I’m wholesale crowd control. Now let’s go find the other Permuted authors.”

And then, like it was any other day, Eloise J. Knapp was on the move.

READ PART 3!
Featuring Jonathan Maberry (for real this time), Jacob Kier, Eloise Knapp, and more!

Find out who dies and who… prolongs the inevitable…

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 1 of 3

2011-10-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say zomBcon 2011 went well.

Held in rainy Seattle, the event had all the elements for a successful zombie horror convention: a group of seven fellow Permuted Press authors, plus owner/publisher Jacob Kier; a great volunteer staff who tended to the exhibitors like waiters who deserve big tips; guests like Tom Savini, Judith O’Dea, Sam Trammel, and Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead; tons of people dressed up like walking corpses and zombie survivalists; and of course… cupcakes decorated like brains.

It should have been great.

But the moment I saw the actor who plays Romero’s Big Daddy tending to a cut finger in the men’s restroom… I knew something was wrong.

Earlier, I had been joking with Jacob Kier about the best place to release the zombie virus, if you were some kind of weirdo who wanted to engineer the outbreak. Sure, you could release it at an airport and it would travel all the way around the world, but… wouldn’t it be way cooler to release it at a zombie convention? If you think about it, everyone there’s already disguised as a zombie, right? Like a wolf in wolf’s clothing—obviously fake and zippered wolf’s clothing.

There was one costumed fan in particular, a blonde dressed in a bloody nurse’s uniform, her jaw ripped off and her tongue hanging out far enough to rival Kiss’s lead singer. She was fully in character when she shambled toward the table I was sharing with Permuted authors Craig DiLouie and Peter Clines.

The table was set up in a long hallway right outside the doors to the ballroom, which served as a giant exhibition space for the other vendors of horror comics, frightening sculptures, counterculture T-shirts, and all other kinds of scary wares.

Most people at conventions, when they approach my table, have their eyes fixed on my books. If they make initial eye contact, it’s usually just to say hello, but then their attention goes right back to my covers. This nurse... she didn’t even glance at the cover of DiLouie’s The Infection as she picked up speed, dragging behind her a Land of the Dead poster she’d just gotten signed by the guy who played Big Daddy.

“Hi,” DiLouie said, engaging the nurse like the great salesman and exuberant author he was. “Can I tell you about my work?”

The jawless nurse let out a shrill cry, and Craig suddenly looked very terrified.

The nurse lunged… only to snatch up a copy of The Infection.

“Oh my gosh—oh my gosh!” she said. “Mr. DiLouie, I’m a rabid fan!”

On the other side of Craig, Peter Clines sat down in his chair after having jumped up, ready to tear open his overshirt for some reason, as if to bear the chest of his black tee underneath. He kept an eye on the blond nurse as he continued to sign and sell copies of Ex-Heroes to his fans. If it’s one thing people love, it’s superheroes vs. zombies.

After practically giving DiLouie a five-star review right then and there for The Infection—the kind of review where the reader openly wishes that the rating system allowed for, like, infinity stars—the tongue-wagging nurse went on to ask about his first book, Tooth and Nail. DiLouie forgot all about his own mortality.

“Well, my book asks the question, what happened to the military during the zombie apocalypse? You know, in most zombie books the military is either cannon fodder or… they go insane and ruthless and take rule over everyone around. But in Tooth and Nail they—”

Craig stopped when he spotted a bloody hand reaching from behind the blond nurse, reaching for her mouth. She noticed it a second too late, going cross-eyed as she glanced down at it.

It grabbed her by the fake tongue and yanked her around.

A man dressed like Captain America stood behind her, zombified, his mask ripped, his cheeks and shield bloodied.

The nurse screamed.

The captain opened his mouth, and, groaning, letting gory pieces of someone else’s throat tumble out over his teeth, he moved in for the bite.

“This is not happening, this is not happening,” Peter Clines was saying.

“Peter, what are you doing?!” I shouted as I reached for the three-pound copy of my newest epic thriller, just something to throw at the star-spangled monster. “Get up and help!”

I threw the thriller and scored a headshot, dinging the captain’s eyebrow with the edge of my book’s spine. It opened a gaping wound in his eyebrow, which didn’t bleed.

I groped for anything else I could throw, but came up with a handful of marshmallow eyes we’d been handing out as freebies.

“This is not happening, this is not—”

“Peter!”

Clines turned on me then, ripping open his overshirt to finally reveal the black tee underneath. I was surprised to see an insignia emblazoned on his chest, a big silver stylized “D” in an even bigger silver oval.

I couldn’t believe I had never recognized him before, even without the mask. He was a real-life super hero, like Phoenix Jones. In the Permuted Press panel earlier that weekend, Clines had even said his weapon of choice against zombies was denial. I just hadn’t put two and two together. I hadn’t realized he was talking about...

His superpower.

“This is not happening!” the King of Denial shouted one last time, and the dead captain exploded like some kind of plague bomb, splattering everyone in the vicinity with bits of flesh and gore, and shards of bone that cut into them like shrapnel.

One girl picked the captain’s eyeball off her cheek and stared into its glassy black hole while she screamed.

Then she vomited.

And everyone around her started vomiting too.

Everyone who had been tainted by the captain’s explosion, at least.

They all started vomiting blood.

Clines, realizing his mistake too late, slicked his hair back in shock and disbelief. The real-life superhero sank down in his chair behind the table, slipping into a force field of complete and utter denial.

The blood-splattered zombie fans stopped vomiting and started turning on the rest of the crowd. They moaned. One lunged forward, biting.

Screams erupted. A few of the survivalists, acting on instinct, raised their guns... and threw the useless pieces of plastic at the infected.

“Craig!” I shouted at DiLouie.

He looked at me, and I indicated that we should corral as many healthy fans as we could into Peter Clines’s growing shield of denial.

DiLouie knew instantly what to do. He started tossing out the marshmallow eyeballs as bait.

The infected glanced down at the crinkly packages thrown at their feet.

They looked up at Craig.

Then down again.

Then up.

Then they looked at me.

I looked at them.

They looked at my book.

I told them what it was about.

They seemed interested and I thought I was going to make some sales. But then they all fell to the ground and started clawing for the eyeballs, fighting each other for them, growling.

While DiLouie reached into a box for more eyeballs, I hurdled our table and started helping people over into Clines’s personal bubble. One girl was dressed as a zombie castaway in a coconut bra.

“Are these bites?!” I asked her, pointing out the nasty, realistic looking wounds on her forearm and throat.

“No, I swear!”

I didn’t know what to do.

So I snatched up the fake severed arm that one of the other Permuted authors, Timothy Long, had left sitting on his table next to mine.

Earlier, DiLouie had stuffed the fake arm down his blazer sleeve and had extended the hand to shake with another fellow novelist, Jason Hornsby. Hornsby had gotten quite the shock when he’d ripped off the arm of one of Permuted’s bestselling authors!

I dangled the fake limb in front of the castaway’s face like I was teasing a dog.

She glanced at it.

Then glanced at me.

Then glanced back at the arm again.

Then glanced at my book, but there was no time for a sales pitch.

I launched into one anyway.

“Hey!” Timothy Long—who, for whatever reason, had been standing there the whole time just laughing at everyone getting killed—grabbed his fake arm from me and whopped the female castaway over the head with it.

“Ow!” she said. “What was that for?!”

“Nothing,” I replied as I lifted her over the table into Timothy Long’s capable arms. She hugged him around the neck, and her grass skirt dangled over his powerful, manly guns.

With her secured, I started glancing up and down the long hallway outside the ballroom, trying desperately to spot our publisher and my good friend Jacob Kier. Jacob was tall, about as tall as the guy who played Big Daddy. About as tall as the titular character in that horror movie Jacob. I couldn’t see him.

I formed a megaphone with my hands and shouted his true name: “Beavis! Beavis!”

Nothing.

But then… from deep in the ballroom, where there was nothing but screams and the sound of fighting and things falling down, I heard…

“Butthead?!”

“Beavis!”

I went running after my friend Jacob.

I only looked back once.

Behind me, back at our table, the castaway in Timothy Long’s arms leaned in as if to kiss him on the cheek, but then suddenly she was vomiting in his face and all down his front, and Tim went stumbling backward with her still in his arms, and they both crashed through the big windows of the convention center, and they went tumbling down three stories to the parking lot below while the Seattle rain blew in.

“Tim!” DiLouie screamed… and Peter Clines’s field of denial grew more and more...

READ PART 2!
Featuring Jonathan Maberry, Jacob Kier, Lyle Perez, Eloise Knapp, and more!

Find out who dies and who… prolongs the inevitable…

White Cat Magazine

2011-10-04T12:06:00.001-07:00

THE MARKET

Zine: White Cat Magazine
Editor(s): Charles P. Zaglanis, Ferrel Moore
Pay Rate: 5¢ / word
Response Time: 2 months
Reading Period: quarterly
Description: Online quarterly web magazine, eBook and print publisher.
Submission Guidelines: www.whitecatpublications.com

Penumbra e-zine

2011-09-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Zine: Penumbra
Editor(s): C A Summers
Pay Rate: pro rates, 5¢ a word
Response Time: 2-3 weeks at the moment; will probably change
Reading Period: the 1st through the 10th of each month
Description: Penumbra is a speculative fiction pro-rates paying ezine seeking science fiction, fantasy and horror under 3k.
Submission Guidelines: www.penumbra.musapublishing.com

Apocalypse Hope antho

2011-08-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Apocalypse Hope
Editor(s): Tehani Wessely
Pay Rate: AUD $50.00 per story plus ebook royalties
Response Time: Up to six weeks
Reading Period: Ends September 30, 2011
Description: The world is ending: climate change, natural disaster, war and disease threaten to destroy all we know. Predictions of the future are bleak. But does the apocalypse really mean the end of the world? Is there no hope for a future that follows?
Submission Guidelines: fablecroft.com.au

A.J. French’s Satyrs antho

2011-07-25T17:05:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: A.J. French’s Satyrs (Title TBA)
Publisher: Wicked East Press
Editor(s): A.J. French
Pay Rate: One contributor’s copy, $25 for three editor’s pick, one 5 cents a word payment for a well-known, established writer
Response Time: 1 month
Reading Period: Open until filled
Description: Anthology of stories about satyrs (mythic half-goat/half-man companions of Pan and Dionysus) with an emphasis on horror and dark fantasy
Submission Guidelines: sites.google.com/a/wickedeastpress.com

Machine of Death, Vol 2

2011-06-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Machine of Death, Vol 2
Editor(s): Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, David Malki !
Pay Rate: $200 flat fee
Response Time: We will respond by October 31, 2011
Reading Period: submissions are due May 1 - Jul 15
Description: Sequel anthology to Machine of Death (released Oct 2010). Every story has a shared premise: a machine that uses a blood test to predict with total accuracy how a person will die.
Submission Guidelines: machineofdeath.net

NOTE: Some questions in this interview were purposefully skipped. Unlike most markets, Machine of Death is looking for EVERYTHING (or almost everything). So the editor only answered the questions where he felt he had productive guidance to give.

THE SCOOP
2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?
We’re looking for EVERY genre—or as many as possible. Every story in the book shares the same premise (a machine that uses a blood test to predict with total accuracy how a person will die), so we’re looking for writers who can interpret that concept in new and creative ways. Part of that is figuring out how this invention works in other genres that we haven’t printed yet.

We have yet to find the story that we decided to exclude on the basis of its genre or setting. So surprise us!

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
We love locations that feel “real”. We like a story that gives us a sense of place and time, no matter where or when that might be. We love it when writers draw on their own experiences, research, or expertise to create a vivid, compelling, “lived-in” world. Write about what interests you, or what you know best. But the more you can place your story in a specific time and place, the better. Invented settings are fine too, but generic settings don’t excite us.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
The pacing should match the story you’re trying to tell. We’re planning to publish stories that cover the gamut. But make sure that something happens in your story. Events must occur, characters must grow, ideas must be shared. (At least one of those—but more is better.)

Regardless of pacing, when the end comes, the reader should be satisfied. It’s okay to have loose ends or even ambiguity, but the main plot or character arc should be resolved. Don’t simply present a premise and end the story with the main character embarking on an adventure. Tell the story. Share the adventure with us.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?
We’re looking for characters that the reader will want to spend time with. They don’t need to be likeable or virtuous all the time (or any of the time), but there should be some reason why we like being with them. We’re looking for all types of characters with all types of backgrounds, but in general we like to read about people who try to solve the problems they face and who can make us understand what they want and why.

We don’t like reading stories about unpleasant people who do nothing but complain, mock, argue, procrastinate, lecture, or cower. We do pass on stories if we can’t find any characters we like or care about.

6) Is there a specific tone you’d like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?
Every story in the anthology is about death in one way or another. But we don’t want this to be a book full of nothing but grim, sad tales. We’re looking for stories that contain a dash (or more!) of life. Give us humor, adventure, romance, excitement, compassion, big ideas, vivid settings, and memorable characters.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
We don’t have any strict prohibitions regarding content. But we’d like this book to be something that the majority of adults would recommend to their friends. For that reason, we’ll be considering whether the handling of any vulgarity, violence, and sexual content would be unpleasant, offensive, or disturbing to most adults. If it is, we might have to think twice.

It’s important to add that this policy doesn’t extend to accommodating prejudices. We welcome stories with characters of any sex, race, nationality, religion, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and whatever else you can think of.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do’s or do not’s?
Make sure to read our submission guidelines, and check out the free PDF of the first book to get a sense of the shared premise. But above all: surprise us!

Mirror Shards, Vol 1 antho

2011-06-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Mirror Shards, Vol 1
Editor(s): Thomas K. Carpenter
Pay Rate: 2¢ to 5¢ per word
Response Time: less than one week
Reading Period: until July 8th
Description: Augmented reality holds the promise of great social change in both the near and far-flung futures. It’s also a wonderful medium for storytelling as information and graphics overlain eye-screens challenges the doors of perception and creates mixed-reality worlds to work and play. The stories can be set in any place, time, or genre, as long as the story cannot exist bereft of augmented reality. Feel free to explore the edges of the technology.
Submission Guidelines: blackmoonbooks.com

The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunter II antho

2011-05-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunter II
Editor(s): Miles Boothe
Pay Rate: ¼ cent per word
Response Time: Under 1 Month
Reading Period: Open Until Filled
Description: More hair-raising, Hell-bent stories about the people that take the monsters down.
Submission Guidelines: www.pillhillpress.com

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Editor Miles Boothe interview

2011-05-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Miles Boothe is the kid that always got sent home with a note from his teacher because he was daydreaming and he didn’t turn in his homework. He’s the goof that walked into the display at the bookstore because his nose was buried in one. He was all ears whenever there was a campfire and a spooky tale to be told, and later, when most kids were praying for something to not crawl out from under their bed, he was wishing really, really hard that something would.

As it turns out, the only way to make that happen is to write about it, so he does.

Miles lives in Atlanta, GA. He grew up in the woods, and misses them whenever he’s in an office for too long. He lives with his wife, son, and an ever-growing roster of dogs.

Most recently he has edited a monster-hunter anthology, Leather, Denim & Silver, for Pill Hill Press.

- SYNOPSIS

A twig snaps in the mist behind you, and you turn to see lantern eyes hanging over slavering jaws…

Most would panic, run, and within moments, die. But not the Monster Hunter.

Reflexes like coiled springs unleash with fury into the beast, and the never-ending struggle between hunter and nightmare begins with blood…

Behold Leather, Denim & Silver, a collection of monster hunting tales ranging from the frozen halls of a Russian orphanage to the steamy jungles of the Congo. Hunt the foggy streets of London, moonlit New Orleans, and prowl the Old West as hunters square off against bloodthirsty werewolves, vampires, demonic spirits, and devils escaped from legend.

Creatures will die. Hunters will die. But no one will go without a fight…

- TOC

The Werewolf Hunters

"Reasons to Kill" by Shelley Ontis
"The Artist as Wolf" by Joshua Reynolds
"Wolfers" by Matthew Baugh
"The Message of the Wolf" by Gary Buettner
"Wolf’s Pawn" by Chris Lewis Carter
"The Hunter’s Moon" by James Ossuary
"The Artist as Wolf" by Joshua Reynolds
"Antler & Eye" by Kate Shaw
"Black Horse Trading Company" by Miles Boothe

The Vampire Hunters

"The Vampire Hunter’s Requiem" by John X. Grey
"Alderwood and Old Lace" by Aleta Clegg
"The Rookie" by Jennifer L. Barnes
"Two-For-One Chinese Special" by Derek M. Koch
"The Fullness of Your Truth" by Eric Pollarine

The Spirit Hunters

"Spirit in Black" by Thom Brannan
"Nadya’s Nights: Frost" by Indy McDaniel
"The Oni" by Heather Whittington
"Murder in Thy Name" by Elisa F. B. Ramirez
"Weeping Woman" by H.J. Hill

The Monster Hunters

"Tentacles & Petticoats" by T. W. Garland
"Kudzu Jesus" by Edward McKeon
"Windigo Dreams" by E.M. Macallum
"Godspore" by Marc Sorondo
"Fish Out of Water" by Liam Cadey
"The Carpetbagger" by A. J. French
"The Gargoyle’s Curse" by Mhairi Shaw
"Finally, the Source" by Chris Nadeau
"Capital Vices" by Lina Branter
"Asanbosam" by Angela Meadon
"The Last Payday of the Killibrew Mine" by John M. Whalen

D.L. Snell: Thanks for joining us, Miles! I see you on the Permuted Press forum all the time but have never taken the chance to really chat with you. It’s great to have you on!

Miles Boothe: Thanks! I’m a huge fan of Permuted, and it’s one of the forums I haunt on a regular basis. heh

DLS: To start, I’d like to solicit something self-serving.

Earlier in the year, you filled out a Market Scoop for Leather, Denim & Silver (LD&S). How do you think your scoop influenced the submissions you received afterward, both in quality and quantity, and accuracy to the theme? And… I heard the scoop helped garner something especially cool for the antho, is that right?

MB: The Market Scoop was absolutely vital to this book in a couple of ways. First, you listed it on Dark Markets, and up to that point I had only posted it on Ralan’s and Duotrope. A good number of folks who wound up in the book learned about it from Dark Markets, including—and this was beyond cool—Brian P. Easton.

In the Scoop, I had mentioned how much I had enjoyed both of Brian’s novels (Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter and Heart of Scars). I also mentioned how much those books inspired me to create a monster-hunting themed anthology.

Brian saw the scoop on Dark markets, and when all was said and done, very generously wrote the Foreword for the book!

So, in a nutshell, your Market Scoop was how the Godfather of Monster Hunting wound up writing the Foreword for this book, which makes both of you some of the coolest cats in the business!

DLS: Thanks, Miles! So is Leather, Denim & Silver the first thing you’ve edited, or have you done other projects before that?

MB: This is my first official editing job. I’ve had a few stories published, edited a few friends works, and participated in a couple of shoot-outs with Pill Hill Press. But, last year, after reading Brian’s books and searching for more monster hunting stories, I realized that it was time for a monster hunting antho. I knew Jessy from Pill Hill from the shootouts, and we talked about it a bit, then launched it.

DLS: LD&S is subtitled Legends of the Monster Hunter. What inspired the theme of the anthology?

MB: Simply put, the absence of monster hunting stories! With the advent of e-books, you really can scratch an itch for almost anything whenever you want, which is cool. But, if you get hungry for a monster-hunting tale, there’s just not a lot out there, and I figured it was time for more.

DLS: Looking at the table of contents for LD&S, I can see you have a promising stable of authors, and some interesting titles. What kind of monsters get corralled here?

MB: We’ve got all sorts of creatures in this one—I started with Werewolves as a nod to Brian, and because the theme of the cover is Werewolf-Western. Next is the Vampire section, and those two make up the first half of the book. Demon hunting was very popular, so the next section is dedicated to spirits, and this includes Ghosts, Bog Mummies, and some other spooky stuff. Then, we finish up with a rogues-gallery of creatures, ranging from a Thing-like plant monster, an African folklore nightmare, and a Lovecraftian-Steampunk story.

All in all, the monster-hunting bases are well covered!

DLS: If you could be any one of these monsters, which one would it be? Why?

MB: I have to go with the Werewolf from Joshua Reynolds’ “The Artist as Wolf.” The story is amazing, and the Werewolf is smooth, twisted, and comes across like he has a very, very good time with his life.

DLS: Introduce us to some of the notable hunters in the anthology. Any recognizable public domain characters?

MB: You know, we asked for, and got, some really original stuff. But, there are a few folks you may recognize. Ded Moroz of Russian Mythology and a thinly veiled Odin and sons from Norse mythology are a few.

DLS: If you were a hunter, which monster in this anthology would you pursue and why?

MB: That’s easy – the Asanbosam, from the story titled “Asanbosam” by Jennifer Barnes. It takes me back to my safari days, and even though the ending to this one is tragic, I loved the hunt and the memories.

DLS: A few questions about the editing process: What’s your method? How many drafts do you and the writers go through? Do you use Track Changes?

MB: I went through multiple drafts myself, this being my first antho. I tried to use Track Changes in the beginning, but had a few problems with it, so I wound up just bolding all of the edits so that the authors could compare it to what they had written.

DLS: You’re a writer as well. How did you get into it, and where can we find your work?

MB: I think I’m like most other writers in that I started reading when I was very young, then started messing around with writing after that. I kept reading, but put writing on hold for a while, then, a few years ago, I just started back into it and kind of haven’t stopped, heh.

DLS: Last question—what’s in your near future? Any writing projects? A Leather, Denim & Silver 2? And—a more pressing issue—when and where can we get a copy of the first LD&S?

MB: A second volume has just been given the green light! It will be titled The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunters II, and the call for submissions has just been posted at PillHillPress.com!

For personal projects, I’ve got a couple of novels I want to finish this year, a few shorts I want to submit, and a website in desperate need of an update.

But for now, Leather, Denim & Silver is available at www.PillHillPress.com, Amazon, and BN.com

DLS: Thanks, Miles—it’s been fun! We’ll definitely be doing a Market Scoop for The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunters II.

MB: It’s been a blast! Thank you again for everything!

Grand Mal Press

2011-05-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Publisher: Grand Mal Press
Editor(s): Darren Heath
Pay Rate: Token advance, 15% of ebook, 10% on paperback
Response Time: 2-3 months (for novels)
Reading Period: currently open to all
Description: Grand Mal Press is a new publisher of speculative fiction, including horror, sci-fi, mystery, and more
Submission Guidelines: grandmalpress.com

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2011

2011-05-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

Historically, I have been to only two horror conventions, both of them Horror Realm. Each time, I was a guest, vendor, and panelist.

In October I will add a fourth convention to the list: zomBcon! I'll be attending with guests like:

Jonathan Maberry
Tom Savini
Sid Haig
Bill Moseley
Rose McGowan
Sam Trammell
and loads of other cool stars!

"But wait," you might be thinking. "Snell just said he's only been to two conventions in his life. How can zomBcon possibly be his fourth?! Did he simply not proofread? Or could his two years at Horror Realm possibly be cool enough to count as three cons? And why am I paying that much attention to Snell's post???"

Before you offer to edit my blog for a steep, unrealistic price... look at the first word of this post. It's a qualifier. Because recently—in fact, just this weekend—I attended my third horror con (the red below is supposed to be blood; just imagine it in Chiller font):

TEXAS FRIGHTMARE WEEKEND

NOTE: These videos say "by dlsnell," but YouTube's lying

This time around, I was only an attendee, not a guest. But as usual I went with Jacob Kier from Permuted Press; he's kind of my sidekick. I arrived at the airport alone, and had to wait thirty minutes for the hotel's courtesy van—or, as we now call it, the "no courtesy" van. Jacob, who had also taken the shuttle earlier that night, told me it would be quicker just to walk. "It's only like 9 miles," he'd texted.

At about 1 a.m. I arrived at the hotel.

I didn't tip.

That whole weekend, Jacob and I just kind of wandered around the vendor rooms, dressed like two clean-cut college kids at a rave for furry Mogwai, Cenobites, and humanoid pigs (everyone was dressed up, mostly in their own bare skin, sometimes in Freddy Krueger's). We also ate at Denny's more than any self-respecting insomniac Goth; stayed up till 5 a.m. every night, watching episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace; avoided the creepy Dieter Laser, and the greasy-paint Sid Haig; and once, we even gladly waited to use a restroom temporarily reserved for a VIP who shall remain nameless. Okay, okay, I'll give you a hint: this person is English and had polyps, not cancer, removed from his throat. I repeat, it was NOT cancer. Which was such a relief to hear.

Don Coscarelli

All right, you get one last hint: the VIP was not writer, director, producer Don Coscarelli. But Jacob and I did meet Don as well. This is the guy who brought us Phantasm and The Beastmaster. He's also the guy who's making a film out of John Dies at the End, an old Permuted title by David Wong. Jacob, of course, published the book. And I edited it. So we went to hassle Don at his vendor table. He's a nice guy! And... do you want to know how he really found John Dies at the End? No, he didn't smoke some of Wong's nasty, multidimensional hallucinogen, "soy sauce," which enables you to know every fact in the universe. Actually, as it turns out... he's a big fan of Permuted Press!

Keep up the good work, Don Coscarelli!

On Saturday, Jacob and I attended Robert "Freddy" Englund's Q&A, which was awesome—even if I had tinnitus afterward. Englund had lots of funny and interesting things to say at excruciating volume, but one thing in particular really rung in my ears. He was talking about Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married. Englund says a lot of actors are very concerned about portraying the truth of their own character. But sometimes—and this is something Englund says Nick Cage got absolutely right in Peggy Sue—sometimes it's more important to portray your character through the eyes of another character. This same point is so important for a writer to understand. And any great writer gets it. But it's so important to be reminded, so I'll reiterate:

Sometimes it's not about portraying the truth of a character, but the truth of that character through the eyes of someone else.

Thank you, Freddy Krueger, for reminding me how important perspective is.

"You're welcome."

Other than that, Jacob and I wined, dined (at a Mexican restaurant that let you bring your own beer), and partied with friends like author and Texan Rhiannaon Frater, Kody Boye, editor Felicia Tiller, Laura and Robert R. Best (who we're now calling "The Best"), Patrick "Unoshato" Rooney, The Vic, and so many more. I also got to meet a few new guys, like Tony Faville and Lyle Perez-Tinics. Great guys. And Tony even lives near me, so there might be some author events in our future.

Overall, we had a blast!

Oh... one last thing: snagged in the carpet of the room I shared with Jacob was someone's used safety pin. Everyone who's read Heart-Shaped Box or anyone who knows how long hepatitis can live outside the human body will understand why I'm a bit paranoid after stepping on that pin. But no matter what Jacob Kier tells you...

No, I don't now have AIDS.

If anyone else wishes to share their Texas Frightmare experience, please sound off in the comments below!

One Buck Horror ebook antho series

2011-04-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Zine: One Buck Horror
Editor(s): Christopher Hawkins, Kris M. Hawkins
Pay Rate: 5¢ per word
Response Time: 1-2 months
Reading Period: Open
Description: One Buck Horror is an ebook anthology series dedicated to showcasing the best in horror short fiction from new and established writers. Each issue will feature four to six short stories, and will be available in a variety of formats (including Kindle, ePub and others) for the low price of one dollar per issue.
Submission Guidelines: www.onebuckhorror.com

Diabetes, Best-selling Authors, Kevin Bacon, and DLSnell.com

2011-04-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

For the longest time, I have wanted the domain name dlsnell.com. But since the beginning of time, it has been parked. Which means someone else owned it, but wasn't using it. I wanted it so badly--most respectable authors brand their sites with their name--but a lot stood in my way: doubt that I would hear back from the domain owner... procrastination... laziness... I could go on, but... meh, I'm lazy.

Anyway, a few months ago I decided I really wanted the dlsnell.com domain. Really really. So I got off my butt and did a Whois lookup, and I discovered that the name belonged to one Dianna Love Snell. There was an email address. Not expecting to get a reply, in fact totally expecting the email to bounce back undeliverable, I sent Dianna a message.

That same day she replied.

Never in a million years did I expect to hear back... let alone from another writer! But as it turns out, Dianna Love is a best-selling author, and a really cool lady.

Best-selling author Dianna Love

Not only does Dianna share my last name and my occupation, she also co-authors with Sherrilyn Kenyon--I have been in two Blood Lite anthologies with Sherrilyn. It was such a small world, I started to wonder how Kevin Bacon fit into all this... He doesn't. At least I don't think...

In my initial email to Dianna, not knowing who she was, I had offered to purchase her a new domain name for one year, in exchange for dlsnell.com. But she had a different offer in mind. She would give the domain name to me on one condition...

No, I didn't have to trace our family tree back to Kevin Bacon--that doesn't make any sense. Why would you even think that? Dianna simply asked that I donate a $50 gift certificate and a copy of my book to the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes.

She said (and other writers might want to take note):

"[The auction] is a major event many authors, agents, publishers and others support each year. Brenda is all about promoting authors so... it would be great exposure for you as well (she gets a tremendous flow of traffic on the auction site).... I’ve picked up a lot of readers from the auction."

I jumped at the opportunity, of course. Not only would I get the domain name I wanted, all while promoting my book to a new readership via the auction, I would also be supporting diabetes research. Some of my close family members have diabetes. Like Dianna said, it was a win-win; or a win-win-... win?

But, of course, as with most things that seem too good to be true, there were problems. Not with the auction. And not with Dianna Love. She and her web master were prompt, efficient, and pleasant to work with. The problem was with transferring the domain name from Dianna's registrar to mine. We initiated the transfer with no problem, but then it quickly unraveled into a confusing mess of authentication numbers and security codes and approval processes and arcane symbols... Dianna Love admits she's not good with technology on her best days, but even I was scratching my head... and my day job revolves around technology.

Finally, after a little initiative on my part, and a whole heck of a lot of patience and kindness on the reciprocating end, we got it figured out. And now, after years and years of wanting this domain but doing absolutely nothing for it, I am proud to announce that this blog has officially become DLSnell.com!

A big thanks goes out to Dianna Love and her web master, and to the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes. You guys are the best!

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Future Lovecraft antho

2011-04-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Future Lovecraft
Publisher: Innsmouth Free Press
Editor(s): Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles
Pay Rate: Penny a word, Canadian
Response Time: Final selections announced at the end of July.
Reading Period: May-June 2011
Description: Science-fiction meets Lovecraft.
Submission Guidelines: www.innsmouthfreepress.com

NOTE: Author D.L. Snell conducted the following interview to give writers a better idea of what the editors of this specific market are seeking; however, most editors are open to ideas outside of the preferences discussed here, as long as they fit the basic submission guidelines.

THE SCOOP
1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you? 

SMG: Aside from Lovecraft? If you’re talking science fiction, I’d say I really liked C.L. Moore’s space opera stories about Northwest Smith. I’d be interested in seeing a Jirel of Joiry-like character in space. I like almost anything Tanith Lee writes. She’s quite versatile. James Tiptree, Jr., loved some of her stuff like “Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death”. Horror of all stripes. There’s a story called “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner that still scares the crap out of me. It’s probably one of the best Lovecraftian stories I’ve read.

PRS: Beyond (obviously) being a Lovecraft fan, I’ve always been a fan of the classic “feminist” authors: C.L. Moore for her Jirel of Joiry stuff, Leigh Brackett for her Mars and interplanetary stories, Tanith Lee for pretty much anything, Joanna Russ for her Alys sword and sorcery, Lois McMaster Bujold for the Vorkosigan saga. But I also love Charles R. Saunders for his Dossouye stories, Robert Heinlein (though I tend to prefer the earlier stuff, before he got long-winded and preachy), Samuel R. Delaney for Babel 17, Theodore Sturgeon, Poe (of course), Philip K. Dick, Robert E. Howard, Stephen King, Alfred Bester for The Stars My Destination. I think my favourite short story ever is “Fondly Fahrenheit”. But I think the scariest short story (at least in SF) I’ve ever read is Asimov’s “Nightfall”. And lately, I’ve been getting into Thomas Sniegoski for his angels and Simon R. Green for his edgy detective protag in London’s Darkside.

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market? 

SMG: Future Lovecraft is looking for stories that combine Lovecraftian horror with science fiction. We want all types of science fiction, from space opera to cyberpunk. I’d like to see some biopunk in there. Personally, I am very fond of magic realism, but that’s neither here nor there for this anthology.

PRS: Oh, damn, do I have to pick? Look, if it’s genre, I’m there. Pretty much anything but “literary” or what I call “pseudo-genre”. There’s nothing worse than a pretentious author who hates a genre and then writes something in it, not having a clue about the tropes and clichés, and thinks what he/she wrote is God’s gift to the genre. I won’t name names, but I’m sure we can all think of a few. Anyway, my tastes vary a lot, but I guess I’d go with horror and mystery, SF and then fantasy, if I had to choose. Romance isn’t my favourite, but I won’t turn up my nose at a good cross-genre (like romance/urban fantasy) or historical romance, and have been known to review a few for the zine.

For the antho, I’d like to see some cosmic horror that doesn’t take place in the usual locations. Space opera, otherworldly living cities that have been built upon for ten thousand years. Stuff in the Oort Cloud, stuff on the Moon. I want to see stuff like that. I’ve also thought that some future steampunk would be fun in Lovecraft’s world. You could go so far into the future that you have that feudal, dying-sun, Brian Aldiss vibe going.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future? 

SMG: Honestly, it depends on the anthology. For this one, we are looking for anything set in the future, be it near future or far future. We both like to explore unusual settings. Why should aliens only land in the United States? Why not in New Delhi? There are many vast locations which would be great for science fiction stories and are often passed over.

PRS: Non-western settings, mostly. In this antho, we’re looking for future. I tend to like real and somewhat gritty, but nicely written. Not really into near-future postapocalyptic, to be honest. It’s lazy and a bit self-indulgent.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc. 

SMG: Again, it depends on the story. I’m partial to a slow build, but it better build to something. Very often we see good stories that are just too bloated. They’re 1,000 or more words longer than they ought to be. The longer it is, the better it ought to be. I appreciate compact, well-told flash fiction.

PRS: You need to grab me in the beginning—a strong image, quirky/beautiful language, a unique setting or culture, something original like that—and you need to have a strong ending. Too often, we get stuff that peters out. Not every story has to end unhappily or with a big twist, but spare me long epilogues. Which is not to say interesting things need not happen in the middle, just that I’m okay with non-standard story structure as long as you begin and end well and have worth-reading stuff in the middle.

I will warn you that, in addition to my being naturally more impatient than Silvia regarding pacing, I also read the story with an eye to the fact that I’ll be copy editing the thing very soon. And if that prospect fills me with dread, I won’t be going thumbs-up on your tale.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples? 

SMG: Again, it depends. I don’t like reading about annoying characters. The teenage yuppies who are being chased by monsters is … ugh. I want compelling people that keep me reading. I’d like to see more regular people. We get a lot of rich and upper-class characters. Where are the people who work in the factories? They can also have interesting stories.

I’d be happy to see more heroic characters who do the right thing without being corny. Also, complex characters who are multi-faceted, smart and cunning without being total ass-hats.

PRS: Probably my favourite character type is the mentally disturbed protagonist who is dangerous to himself and others, but is sympathetic and active, even heroic, in dealing with the storyline while essentially cracking up. Delapore from “The Rats in the Walls”, Blake in “The Haunter of the Dark”, Vandaleur in “Fondly Fahrenheit”, Dean Winchester in Supernatural. Like that. However, you should avoid “weak” protags, especially if they’re female (Alyx in Picnic on Paradise, I want to see. “The Yellow Wallpaper, part 17”, no). Your protag should be an otherwise vivid, even strong, personality who has an excellent reason (or maybe 12) for losing his mind. No “I saw Cthulhu naked in the bathtub and it drove me insane” stories.

More women who aren’t young, beautiful and stupid, and/or being chased by evil boyfriends would be nice, too. Ditto with Silvia on the lack of regular folk. We need more of those. What’s up with all the rich, white folk in our slush, sometimes? We need more people from non-western cultures who are both sympathetic and not white folk in drag. We got far too many stories for Historical Lovecraft, especially, where a white man (usually from Victorian England) visits a “savage” culture and borderline-racist shenanigans ensue. That’s just lazy writing and a refusal to get inside the head of a different culture. There’s a place for Outsider/Colonial fiction, sure, but not every freakin’ story. I sure hope we won’t get the Spaceman Spiff version of that.

And for those who send us stories set in Ye Old Road Eyeland or some twee Cape Cod, look, Silvia and I have both spent many years in that area and half my relatives are Old New England. So, if you don’t know the area well enough to give us something more original than Hollywood New England, just don’t. Set your story somewhere you know well enough to do originally, with characters that aren’t cardboard.

6) Is there a specific tone you’d like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples? 

SMG: We are open to all kinds of tones and voices. I don’t mind experimentation and will read a lot of weird stuff if it keeps me entertained.

PRS: Ditto. And I’m going to say this straight out—I LIKE unusual POVs. Just remember you have to do them well, because head-hopping simply because you never thought out your POV is annoying. Head-hopping because your protag is a crazy guy with a crazy, serial-killing android, now, that can be lots of fun.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos? 

SMG: If it fits the story, it’s fine. Torture porn is not going to do it for us. There has to be something more than just shock value in a submission. Plus, there is very little you can do to shock us due to the sheer amount of stories we’ve both read. With that said, we are not a market for erotica.

PRS: We’ve bought stuff with profanity, quite a lot of violence and weird sexual shenanigans going on. I will say, though, that I’ve not much enjoyed subs that begin right off with the characters shedding body fluids, and continuing on with “look at my booger!” grossness. Please don’t start the story with the protag peeing on my shoes and cursing me out. We’ve only just met. Ditto on torture porn, which is boring and not really horror, in my mind.

Regarding sexual content, I don’t care as long as it fits the story. I will say, though, that I am even less fond of rape motifs than Silvia (and she’s not fond of it) and rape-as-hot-sex makes me very angry. We’ve bought a few stories that had rape in them, but it tended to be offstage and something where we bought the story in spite of the presence of rape in it. It’s a squick for us. Plus, tentacles in non-standard places scare Silvia and not in a good way.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you? 

SMG: We’re very open. We’d like to see stuff that strays from the default settings. Stuff that interests me: the integration of machines with biological parts, parasitism, space opera with smart and capable heroines, tales that create a sense of dread. Insanity and obsession. Body horror. Lovecraft had a lot of sci-fi in his stories and you can milk him for tons of inspiration, from the brain cylinders to that Tillinghast device.

PRS: I’d love to see some space opera. I don’t think we ever get that. Insanity, definitely. Body snatcher type stuff, too. It would be really fun to see some of Lovecraft’s SF stuff projected into the future. Like, what would happen if a probe like Voyager ran across the Mi-Go? Whatever happened to The Shining Trapezohedron? What are the physics involved with, say, trying to predict the appearance of Hounds of Tindalos? Like that. People tend to forget that an awful lot of Lovecraft’s horror was also SF.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings? 

SMG: Lovecraft is pretty downbeat, but we don’t mind straying from that mold.

PRS: Normally, I like to see a protag survive a story. However, horror can be a bit different and a lot of Lovecraft is pretty bleak. I will say that you should avoid writing a lazy downbeat ending. Upbeat and still horrific is hard, but it’s also more original. “Everybody dies” has already been done a million times. I especially dislike downbeat endings where an outcast protag dies and order (corrupt or otherwise) is restored. That’s just cynical. Give me a sympathetic monster as your protag and have him/her live to monster another day. Don’t be afraid to leave things in a mess.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do’s or do not’s? 

SMG: Please include a cover letter with a word count. It’s your virtual handshake and the word count is very important to me once I’m inputting stuff into our spreadsheets and I need all the basic information without having to dig for it. If you don’t have writing credits, please don’t put stuff just for the sake of stuff. It’s fine to say here’s the story and it’s 5,000 words rather than drafting a long justification of why you haven’t sold a story. Don’t be afraid to try wild, different stuff that strays from the old school Lovecraft. The anthology is called Future Lovecraft, after all. We are accepting submissions in English, Spanish and French. We are also looking at poetry. We’ll look at reprints, but include original publication information.

PRS: Cover letter with your contact info (not your phone number), word count, story title, author, whether the story’s an original or reprint. The story itself should have your contact info and word count in the top left-hand corner, and start with your title and byline. No, putting the title as your file name is NOT enough. William Shunn is your friend, people. We want the usual standard format (though you don’t need to double-space between sentences).

For more scoops, go to marketscoops.blogspot.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth three times, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.exit66.net.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Kevin J. Anderson Interview

2011-04-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of more than one hundred novels, 47 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists. He has over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader's Choice Award, the American Physics Society's Forum Award, and New York Times Notable Book. By any measure, he is one of the most popular writers currently working in the science fiction genre.

D.L. Snell: Hey, Kevin! Thanks for joining us!!!

Kevin J. Anderson: Thanks, David—I’m on a radio interview right now, with 5-minute commercial breaks at (in)appropriate times, so I can type answers to the questions during the breaks.

DLS: Kevin, you have been working as an author for a long time, and have produced volumes upon volumes. But… what about your first story? Not the first one you ever published, but the first one you ever put to paper. What about that story? Was it crappy? Or the best thing you ever wrote?

KJA: Oh, it was delightful—I wrote it in fourth grade about a mad scientist who invents an injection that can bring anything to life, but when the other scientists don’t believe him, he breaks into the wax museum and brings all the monster figures to life, and then goes to the natural history museum and reanimates a dinosaur skeleton, all of which go on a rampage. The writing wasn’t very skilled, but the story was pretty cool.

DLS: You’re an editor as well. What projects have you worked on? Who are some of the authors you have edited?

KJA: My first anthologies were for Star Wars, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales from Jabba’s Palace, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, and those are still (I believe) the best-selling SF anthologies of all time, so not a bad way to start. Then I did War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, spinoff stories about the Wells Martian invasion. I thought I had given it up for good, but HWA asked me to come up with another anthology, and I suggested Blood Lite…humorous horror stories. That’s been a lot of fun, allowing me to work with some of the biggest names in the genre—Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kelley Armstrong, Heather Graham, LA Banks, Sharyn McCrumb. Of course, when someone is at that point in their career, they don’t need me to edit them; they turn in good stories in the first place.

DLS: I’m an editor, too, and have had a couple… “funny” experiences. The funniest had to be when someone publically accused me of inserting rape into a novel. What’s the “funniest” editing experience you’ve ever had?

KJA: Sad more than funny, I suppose. I had one person submit the same (awful) story to all three Blood Lite anthologies, as if I wouldn’t remember it. They think I have skyscraper offices with dozens of staff…I have a house and the stories come through the mailbox, and I read them. I’m not senile yet; my memory lasts more than a few months.

DLS: I found the following in your bio: “Practically unheard-of in the field, Anderson released all seven large volumes [of The Saga of Seven Suns] on time, year after year, and he completed the series with Book #7.” Many writers struggle to be prolific, let alone punctual. How do you do it?! Can you describe your typical work schedule?

KJA: Due to a confluence of deadlines, I recently found myself finishing three book manuscripts in two weeks—The Key to Creation (Orbit/Hachette—172,000 words), The Sisterhood of Dune, with Brian Herbert (Tor—181,000 words), and a YA space adventure Star Challengers with Rebecca Moesta (Catalyst). Two solid weeks of 12-hour days, 7 days a week. Not quite the stereotypical image of a writer lounging around all day.

I have an office in my home, or I occasionally take the laptop and hide in a local coffee shop. When I have a particularly heavy slate of writing/editing to do, I’ll go to an out-of-the way lodge where I can work uninterrupted. The workload changes all the time, depending on the projects, but I generally write a couple of new chapters in the morning, edit in the afternoon, do correspondence, blogs, etc. throughout the day and in the evening. Everybody else with a high-end career—doctors, lawyers, restaurant managers, business CEOs—has to put in a full day at work. Why shouldn’t an author?

DLS: Okay, here’s something a little different—a question from a horror writer familiar with your work…

Bobbie Metevier: Kevin, how has publishing . . . the process . . . changed since you started?

KJA: It took them quite a while, but they finally take my computer files and typeset from that, rather than retyping the whole manuscript. The physical production process is a lot more efficient. The business side, however, is what’s changed the most, with distribution being completely scrambled, online bookstores, authors being expected to do the lion’s share of publicity.

DLS: Dean Koontz was one of my biggest writing influences growing up—and this was back when he was Dean R. Koontz. We’d love to hear about the novel you co-authored with him, and about your co-authoring process in general. How do you make collaboration work?

KJA: Dean had written a script for his own version of the Frankenstein story, which was made into a TV movie so awful that he took his name off of it and wanted it released as a book instead. He asked me to help him novelize the script as the start of his series. Ed Gorman worked with him on the second book, and then he has gone off to finish the series on his own. That was different from my usual collaborating method, because Dean had already written the story and much of the dialog. For my work with Brian Herbert, Rebecca Moesta, and Doug Beason, it’s much more interactive from the start: we brainstorm the whole book together, develop the chapter-by-chapter outline together, and then write our separate chapters, before combining it all into one manuscript and then editing it repeatedly.

DLS: It seems like every time I do a book signing, I run into at least one… “interesting” person. For example, this lady in a muumuu—she took one look at my book cover and started backing off, saying, “That book’s from the dark side.” You’ve been on national book tours and have attended countless conventions. Any interesting people you can tell us about?

KJA: Oh, always interesting people. I have plenty of unique fans, some eccentric, some a little odd or intense, but they’re still my fans and readers, so I’m happy to have all of them. They come in costume, some have even named their children after my characters, and it’s great to see the impact my stories have had. I’ve written over a hundred books, and it’s amusing sometimes that someone will come up and ask me about a minor detail in a novel I wrote 15 years ago…I really don’t remember!

DLS: Your new novel Hellhole, co-authored with Brian Herbert, looks stellar. What’s it about?

KJA: Hellhole is a big SF colonization epic, about a rugged world that’s nearly been destroyed by a massive asteroid impact. Not a pleasant place, earthquakes, volcanoes, terrible storms, the whole ecosystem wrecked, yet a bunch of misfits try to make a new home there…and they find remnants of an alien race wiped out in the impact. Lots of characters, adventures, politics, a very big story.

Hellhole (The Hell Hole Trilogy)

DLS: Let’s say you committed a crime that landed you in Hellhole. What kind of crime would it be? I mean, if you were a criminal in the Hellhole universe, what kind of criminal would you hope to be?

KJA: In true Hollywood fashion, I would be innocent, I swear! Falsely accused, wrongfully convicted, but because of my heart of gold, I will work to make life better for my fellow colonists. (Fortunately, the characters in the novel itself aren’t so clichéd.)

DLS: Here’s another question from the outside, this one also from another writer…

Zombie Zak: Kevin, I understand you carried on from AE van Vogt's work with Slan Hunter (2007); what was that like for you?

KJA: My collaborations with Brian Herbert have led to a great resurgence in the popularity of Frank Herbert’s works. Van Vogt was also very popular with me when I was younger, and I was thrilled when Van’s widow Lydia got in touch with me to ask if I would be interested in finishing the last book her husband had begun before his death. Slan is such a classic, with such an impact on the whole SF genre (you’ve seen it copied a million times, though Van doesn’t always get credit). That one didn’t take off as much as the Dune books did, but it did lead to the reprinting of other van Vogt classics and a new readership for Slan.

DLS: Any upcoming writing or editing projects?

KJA: I’m just wrapping up the manuscript and starting the boring production parts of Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste, and that’s the only editing project I have going right now. Next month, Tor will release this year’s Nebula Awards Showcase, which I also edited. In coming months I will be releasing a lot of my short story catalog as mini ebook collections, three stories for three bucks; most of those stories have never been seen beyond their original magazine publication, so it’ll be new stuff for most readers. I’ll also be giving away free stories and book excerpts on our website, www.wordfire.com—check there in a couple of weeks (as soon as the web guy gets all the details fixed).

DLS: Thanks for humoring us, Kevin—it was great to have you!!!

KJA: Thanks for being humored.

For more scoops, go to marketscoops.blogspot.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth three times, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney for Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.exit66.net.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Darwin's Evolutions: A Journal of Speculative Fiction

2011-04-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Zine: Darwin's Evolutions: A Journal of Speculative Fiction
Editor(s): Darwin A. Garrison
Pay Rate: $50 plus royalties upon earn out
Response Time: 2 to 4 weeks
Reading Period: Continuous
Description: Science fiction and fantasy adventure entertainment novelettes and novellas.
Submission Guidelines: darwinsevolutions.com

For more scoops, go to marketscoops.blogspot.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.exit66.net.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Live Free or Die, Die, Die! antho

2011-03-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Zine: NH Pulp Fiction Volume 2: "Live Free or Die, Die, Die!"
Editor(s): Rick Broussard
Pay Rate: $50 and two copies of the book
Response Time: By May
Reading Period: till March 31, 2011
Description: Pulp fiction-style short stories in the mystery genre. All must be set in New Hampshire
Submission Guidelines: www.nhpulpfiction.com

Bigfoot Among Us antho

2011-03-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Bigfoot Among Us
Editor(s): A.P. Fuchs and Eric S Brown
Pay Rate: 1¢ a word
Response Time: ASAP
Reading Period: Until filled
Description: This is anthology inspired by my book Bigfoot War and it is intended to give Bigfoot fans the kind horror tales that low budget movies have been doing for decades just in a literary fashion. There's not a lot of Bigfoot horror fiction out there and this book seeks to help change that.
Submission Guidelines: coscomentertainment.blogspot.com

Box of Delights antho

2011-03-04T09:46:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Box of Delights
Publisher: Aeon Press
Editor(s): John Kenny
Pay Rate: €10 advance against royalties, plus a copy of the book
Response Time: 7-28 days
Reading Period: Up until 31 May, unless filled before then
Description: Original horror short stories, no specific theme
Submission Guidelines: aeonpressbooks.com

2010 Bram Stoker Award Nominees

2011-03-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

From the Horror Writers Association:

Each year, the Horror Writers Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in the field of horror writing, named in honor of Bram Stoker, author of the seminal horror work /Dracula./ Since 1987, the approximately 500 members of the HWA have recommended, nominated and voted on the greatest works of horror and dark fantasy of the previous calendar year, making the Stokers the most prestigious award in the field of horror literature.

Currently the awards are presented in eight categories: Novel, First Novel, Long Fiction, Short Fiction, Fiction Collection, Anthology, Non-fiction, and Poetry Collection The organization's Active members will select the winners from this ballot, and the awards will be presented this year at a gala banquet as part of HWA’s Stoker Weekend, held June 16-19, 2011 in Long Island.

This year’s nominees in each category are:

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL
HORNS by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
ROT AND RUIN by Jonathan Maberry (Simon & Schuster)
DEAD LOVE by Linda Watanabe McFerrin (Stone Bridge Press)
APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD by Joe McKinney (Pinnacle)
DWELLER by Jeff Strand (Leisure/Dark Regions Press)
A DARK MATTER by Peter Straub (Doubleday)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A FIRST NOVEL
BLACK AND ORANGE by Benjamin Kane Ethridge (Bad Moon Books)
A BOOK OF TONGUES by Gemma Files (Chizine Publications)
THE CASTLE OF LOS ANGELES by Lisa Morton (Gray Friar Press)
SPELLBENT by Lucy Snyder (Del Rey)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN LONG FICTION*
THE PAINTED DARKNESS by Brian James Freeman (Cemetery Dance)
DISSOLUTION by Lisa Mannetti (/Deathwatch/)
MONSTERS AMONG US by Kirstyn McDermott (Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears/)
THE SAMHANACH by Lisa Morton (Bad Moon Books)
INVISIBLE FENCES by Norman Prentiss (Cemetery Dance)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN SHORT FICTION
RETURN TO MARIABRONN by Gary Braunbeck (/Haunted Legends/)
THE FOLDING MAN by Joe R Lansdale (/Haunted Legends/)
1925: A FALL RIVER HALLOWEEN by Lisa Mannetti (/Shroud Magazine/ #10)
IN THE MIDDLE OF POPLAR STREET by Nate Southard (/Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology/)
FINAL DRAFT by Mark W. Worthen (/Horror Library IV/)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN FICTION COLLECTION
OCCULTATION by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
BLOOD AND GRISTLE by Michael Louis Calvillo (Bad Moon Books)
THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY by Stephen Graham Jones (Prime Books)
FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King (Simon and Schuster)
A HOST OF SHADOWS by Harry Shannon (Dark Regions Press)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN ANTHOLOGY (EDITING)
DARK FAITH edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon (Apex Publications)
HORROR LIBRARY IV edited by R.J. Cavender and Boyd E. Harris (Cutting Block Press)
MACABRE: A JOURNEY THROUGH AUSTRALIA’S DARKEST FEARS* edited by Angela Challis and Marty Young (Brimstone Press)
HAUNTED LEGENDS edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas (Tor)
THE NEW DEAD edited by Christopher Golden (St. Martin's Griffin)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN NONFICTION
TO EACH THEIR DARKNESS by Gary A. Braunbeck (Apex Publications)
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE by Thomas Ligotti (Hippocampus Press)
WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE by Jonathan Maberry and Janice Gable Bashman (Citadel)
LISTEN TO THE ECHOES: THE RAY BRADBURY INTERVIEWS by Sam Weller (Melville House Publications)

SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN POETRY COLLECTION
DARK MATTERS by Bruce Boston (Bad Moon Books)
WILD HUNT OF THE STARS by Ann K. Schwader (Sam's Dot)
DIARY OF A GENTLEMAN DIABOLIST by Robin Spriggs (Anomalous Books)
VICIOUS ROMANTIC by Wrath James White (Needfire Poetry)

For more information on the 2011 Stoker Weekend, please visit http://www.stokerweekend2011.org/

Transtories antho

2011-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Transtories
Publisher: Aeon Press
Editor(s): Colin Harvey
Pay Rate: Minimum £10 per story, possible bonus, plus royalties
Response Time: 1 - 2 months - ish
Reading Period: March 1st - 31st
Description: Stories based on words prefaced by 'Trans' in dictionary, from 'transact' to 'Transylvania' (but this last is not recommended).
Submission Guidelines: www.ralan.com

Unspeakable Horror 2: Abominations of Desire

2011-02-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Unspeakable Horror 2: Abominations of Desire
Editor(s): Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder
Pay Rate: 5¢ per word
Response Time: 30-60 days
Reading Period: April 1st through June 30th (2011)
Description: In this sequel to the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology, editors Liaguno and Helder are exploring the dark underbelly of desire — whether contained and constricted or unleashed and unrestricted. They are looking for stories that stress the force of physical appetite or emotional need, tales that explore the strong, envious longing for the unattainable. This is a collection of queer horror — meaning that stories must contain a central gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender focus.
Submission Guidelines: darkscribepress.com

Necrotic Tissue shutting down

2011-02-22T09:57:00.000-08:00

From R. Scott McCoy at the Stygian Publications blog:

I've decided to shut down Necrotic Tissue. There are a lot of reasons, but the main one is financial. I've always known that NT would never be a huge moneymaker, but I did hope that I could at least make it self-sustaining. It hasn't, and I can't continue to take the loss.

Stygian Publications, which is my publishing company, will remain open and I still plan on doing one or two projects a year.

I want to thank everyone that has supported NT over the years by sending us stories and buying subscriptions. Despite the fact that I couldn't reach the financial goal, I don't feel that NT failed. It is an excellent product and I am immensely proud of the issues we've put out.

I've decided to end NT with the upcoming issue #14, coming out in April. All of the writers that submitted stories to us in January will be getting them back. I only made the decision last week, and I'm sorry I held on to those stories. I hope those writers will find other homes for them.

I am considering putting out a Best of Necrotic Tissue later in the year. It isn't a done deal, but if the writers want to be a part of it, I would like to put it out.

Unlike other magazine closings I've seen in the past, all the writers will get paid and get their contributor copies. All of the subscribers are also going to get a refund for issues they haven't received. It may take me until May to get all the subscribers their money back, but they will all get refunds.

Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to share your stories and make something that brought me so much joy.

Scott…

Best New Werewolf Tales Volume One antho

2011-02-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Best New Werewolf Tales Volume One
Publisher: Books of the Dead
Editor(s): James Roy Daley
Pay Rate: 1¢ a word/reprints
Response Time: I respond to everyone after all the stories have been submitted and read.
Reading Period: Ends March 31/2011
Description: This interview applies to both the anthology and the press itself. For the anthology, Books of the Dead Press is seeking reprints of werewolf stories. More in guidelines.
Submission Guidelines: booksofthedead.blogspot.com

Captain Kirk was sitting inside a bar. He had both elbows on the table and a pint of Romulan ale in his hand. On his left, his best friend Spock was trying to reason with him.

Spock said, “It is highly illogical for you to get so inebriated, Captain.”

Kirk grunted, mumbling something about being trapped inside the worst story ever told and feeling the need to drink his troubles away.

This is good. The writing itself isn’t great—well, frankly it’s pretty bad—but this is how you tell a story. If you want to dress it up, put some fancy words in there, add some deep thoughts and some poetry flare, great! This is all good stuff. It works. And sure, there’s more to writing than this. But within a few words this little Star Trek tale has already established who, what, where, why, and how. You know who your characters are, where they are, what they’re doing, how they are doing it, and why. This is basic storytelling 101. This is what Books of the Dead is looking for.

And often times, this is what I find:

Some would allege that a misinterpretation of the Romulans, who were an illustrious many people from the incalculable solar system known as the second sun from the third dominion, and the creator of Romulan ale, was something that only the dimmest and the slowest from the race known as the Vulcans, of the Vulcan empire, would ever succumb to. Vulcans—a species with elongated, pointy ears, and a comprehensive lack of comedic ethics—had a genetic hereditary that was thought to be among some of the most gifted of the known universe, which was incessantly being explored and investigated by Captain Kirk and the rest of his crew aboard to S. S. Enterprise. Spock, a Vulcan, and colleague to Kirk—

Awful. The reader might know who, but the where, why, when, how—these things are missing. Complex words don’t make a story enjoyable. The right words do. And when a story starts out like this one does, it never ends well.

Story is character.
Story is plot.

Don’t try to force a universe of ideas into a few convoluted paragraphs. Know what your story is about, and explain what happens to your character. Once you’re done, make it pretty.

Simple.

In film they called it the KISS system.

KISS stands for ‘Keep It Simple Stupid.’ And it applies to writing as well.

Writing Advice:

Read everything you can. If you don’t have time to read you don’t have the necessary skills to write.
Edit everything 10 times.
Omit needless words. This means that a sentence such as: ‘The man that was holding the gun in his hand was getting ready to fire off a shot.’ Becomes something like: ‘The man with the gun was ready to fire.’
Read Stephen King’s book On Writing, whether you like his work or not.
Don’t trust the editor to edit your work properly. Assume they’ll fuck it up, meaning: try to find your own editor.
Ten-time all-star goalie Martin Brodeur says (and I quote): “Any time I see something that will be good for my game I steal it. Hey, fair game.” I have this quote beside my writing station and I figure it applies to literature as well.
80,000 words sitting pointlessly together is not a novel. It’s shit.
It’s not about getting noticed. It’s about writing something worth noticing.
Writing is like painting a picture. Make sure you put in enough details to do it right. So, in your story, if you have a man walking across the street, make sure the reader knows what the man is like AND what the street is like.
Write what you know; fill in the blanks.
Don't use the same word repeatedly. Example: The guy was likeable enough, like that guy I like in that television show Like Father, Like Son.

Albedo One magazine

2011-02-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Zine: Albedo One
Editor(s): John Kenny, Robert Neilson, David Murphy, Frank Ludlow & Peter Loftus
Pay Rate: €3 per 1,000 words
Response Time: Up to 3 months
Reading Period: Ongoing
Description: Award winning Irish magazine of SF, fantasy and horror
Submission Guidelines: www.albedo1.com

International Aeon Award Short Fiction Contest, 2011

2011-02-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Press Release:

Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, is proud to announce the Sixth International Aeon Award Short Fiction Contest, for 2011. Grand prize is 1000 euro and publication in Albedo One. Second and third place prizes are 200 and 100 euro, respectively, alongside publication in Albedo One.

This year we have an added bonus prize for the winning story courtesy of the respected Authorlink.com. The winning story will have the option of free one-year publication in the Storywire section, where authors earn royalties from online readers of their work. Authorlink.com is a news, information and marketing site for editors, agents, writers, and readers with more than 50,000 unique visitors a month and a social network of 6,000+ friends.

The contest is open to stories of up to 10,000 words in any speculative genre, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, or anything in between or unclassifiable. The judges have a very broad definition of what constitutes a genre story. The contest is also open to writers of all nationalities, and the three winning stories will be decided upon by our Grand Judges (whom we will announce shortly). Last year’s Grand Judges were renowned speculative fiction author Ian Watson, Hugo award winning SF author Anne McCaffrey, multiple award winning SF author Mike Resnick and respected Irish horror and crime author, Sam Millar.

The contest is open from 1^st of January 2011 until November 30^th 2011, and runs in four rounds, at the end of which the interim judges (comprising the editorial team of Albedo One) will announce on the Albedo One website (www.albedo1.com) a shortlist of those entries they feel worthy of further consideration. The 1^st round ends March 31st, the second round, June 30th, the third round September 30th and the final round November 30^th.

The aim of the contest is to promote new writers and writing in the speculative fiction genres, and previous contests have certainly shown us that speculative fiction at the shorter lengths is alive and well, despite its many detractors and those who would pronounce the decline of SF, horror, fantasy etc. or the death of the short story.

Previous winners have been announced at the World Science Fiction Convention and European SF Convention, they have been reprinted or received Honourable Mentions in the prestigious Year’s Best Science Fiction and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror volumes, and have been translated into other European languages and published in their national magazines (e.g. Galaxies SF, in France, and Phase X in Germany). So entering the Aeon Award will certainly get some attention for the respective authors and their work, never mind the prize money and publication in Albedo One.

A modest entry fee of 7 euro applies to all entries, and can be paid easily and securely via PayPal at the Albedo One website. Entries may be submitted to fraslaw@yahoo.co.uk Full details may be found at the following link: http://www.albedo1.com/aeon_award.html

Zombie Zak's House of Pain antho

2011-02-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Zombie Zak's House of Pain
Editor(s): Zombie Zak and Bill Tucker
Pay Rate: 1 cent per word, and 1 contributor copy
Response Time: Varies, But not until after the reading period has ended
Reading Period: April 30, 2011
Description: Seeking previously unpublished contemporary creative tales of dark horror/dark fiction to fill up the House of Pain.
Submission Guidelines: libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com

Bram Stoker Award Preliminary Ballot 2010

2011-02-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

Congrats to everyone who made the Bram Stoker Award PRELIMINARY BALLOT!

Please note that the works below have been recommended, not nominated, for the award. The titles on the preliminary ballot that do get nominated (by voting HWA members) will be on the Final Ballot.

Superior Achievement in a NOVEL

VIPERS by Lawrence C. Connolly (Fantasist Enterprises)
SIREN by John Everson (Leisure)
HORNS by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
IT CAME FROM DEL RIO by Stephen Graham Jones (Trapdoor Books)
SPARROW ROCK by Nate Kenyon (Leisure Books)
DESPERATE SOULS by Gregory Lamberson (Medallion Press)
THE FRENZY WAY by Gregory Lamberson (Medallion Press)
ROT AND RUIN by Jonathan Maberry (Simon & Schuster)
APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD by Joe McKinney (Pinnacle)
EMPIRE OF SALT by Weston Ochse (Abaddon)
DWELLER by Jeff Strand (Leisure/Dark Regions Press)
A DARK MATTER by Peter Straub (DoubleDay)

Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL

MR. SHIVERS by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
FREEK CAMP by Steve Burt (Steve Burt Creations)
THE MAN OF MYSTERY HILL by Tracy L. Carbone (Echelon Quake)
BLACK AND ORANGE by Benjamin Kane Ethridge (Bad Moon Books)
CARNIVAL OF FEAR by J.G. Faherty (Graveside Tales)
A BOOK OF TONGUES by Gemma Files (Chizine Publications)
AT THE END OF CHURCH STREET by Gregory Hall (Belfire Press)
MADIGAN MINE by Kirstyn McDermott (Picador Australia)
CASTLE OF LOS ANGELES by Lisa Morton (Gray Friar Press)
SPELLBENT by Lucy Snyder (Del Rey)

Superior Achievement in LONG FICTION

THE DOCTOR, THE KID, AND THE GHOSTS IN THE LAKE by Mort Castle (F Magazine)
REQUIEM FOR THE BURNING GOD by Shane Jiraiya Cummings (Cthulhu's Dark Cults)
THE PAINTED DARKNESS by Brian James Freeman (Cemetery Dance)
CHASING THE DRAGON by Nicholas Kaufmann (Chizine)
DREAMS IN BLACK AND WHITE by John R. Little (Morning Star)
DISSOLUTION by Lisa Mannetti (Deathwatch)
BLEMISH by Joe McKinney (Dark Recesses #1)
THE SAMHANACH by Lisa Morton (Bad Moon Books)
JADE by Gene O'Neill (Bad Moon Books)
INVISIBLE FENCES by Norman Prentiss (Cemetery Dance)

Superior Achievement in SHORT FICTION

THE BEHELD by Paul Bens (Dark Discoveries #160)
RETURN TO MARIABRONN by Gary Braunbeck (Haunted Legends)
SURPRISE! by G.O. Clark (Dark Valentine 2)
SEMINAR Z by J. Comeau (Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology)
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS by Brock Cooper (The New Bedlam Project)
THE FOLDING MAN by Joe R. Lansdale (Haunted Legends)
1925: A FALL RIVER HALLOWEEN by Lisa Mannetti (Shroud Magazine #10)
SURVIVORS by Joe McKinney (Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology)
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN by Weston Ochse (Dark Discoveries #16)
ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE by David Sakmyster (Horror World)
TROOT by Margaret B. Simon (Null Immortalis)
THE DAYS OF FLAMING MOTORCYCLES by Catherynne Valente (Dark Faith)
FINAL DRAFT by Mark W. Worthen (Horror Library IV)

Superior Achievement in an ANTHOLOGY

DARK FAITH edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon (Apex Publications)
HORROR LIBRARY IV edited by R.J. Cavender and, Boyd E. Harris (Cutting Block Press)
CTHULHU'S DARK CULTS edited by David Conyers (Chaosium)
HAUNTED LEGENDS edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas (Tor)
THE NEW DEAD edited by Christopher Golden (St. Martin's Griffin)
BLACK WINGS edited S.T. Joshi (PS Publishing)
EVOLVE: VAMPIRE STORIES OF THE NEW UNDEAD edited by Nancy Kilpatrick (Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing)
NULL IMMORTALIS edited by D.F. Lewis (Megazanthus Press)
DEAD SET: A ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY edited by Michelle McCrary and Joe McKinney (23 House Publishing)
SCENES FROM THE SECOND STOREY by Amanda Pillar and Pete Kempshall (Morrigan Books)

Superior Achievement in a COLLECTION

OCCULTATION by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
BLOOD AND GRISTLE by Michael Louis Calvillo (Bad Moon Books)
THIS WAY TO EGRESS by Lawrence C. Connolly (Ash-Tree Press)
WHAT WILL COME AFTER by Scott Edelman (PS Publishing)
FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King (Simon and Schuster)
LITTLE THINGS by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
A HELL OF A JOB by Michael McCarty (Damnation Books)
A HOST OF SHADOWS by Harry Shannon (Dark Regions Press)
FUNGUS OF THE HEART by Jeremy Shipp (Raw Dog (Screaming Press)
HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION by Connie Corcoran Wilson (Sam's Dot)

Superior Achievement in NONFICTION

WEIRD ENCOUNTERS by Joanne M. Austin (Sterling Publishing)
TO EACH THEIR DARKNESS by Gary A. Braunbeck (Apex Publications)
SHADOWS OVER FLORIDA by David Goudsward and Scott T. Goudsward (Bear Manor Media)
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE by Thomas Ligotti (Hippocampus Press)
WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE by Jonathan Maberry and Janice Gable Bashman (Citadel)
MASTERS OF IMAGINATION by Michael McCarty (Bear Manor Media)
LISTEN TO THE ECHOES: THE RAY BRADBURY INTERVIEWS by Sam Weller (Melville House Publications)

Superior Achievement in a POETRY collection

DARK MATTERS by Bruce Boston (Bad Moon Books)
LOVE CRAFT by Bryan Dietrich (Finishing Line Press)
CHEMICKAL REACTIONS by Karen L. Newman (Naked Snake Press)
WOOD LIFE by Rich Ristow (Snuff Books)
WILD HUNT OF THE STARS by Ann K. Schwader (Sam's Dot)
DIARY OF A GENTLEMAN DIABOLIST by Robin Spriggs (Anomalous Books)
SAVAGE MENACE AND OTHER POEMS OF HORROR by Richard L. Tierney (P'rea Press)
VICIOUS ROMANTIC by Wrath James White (Bandersnatch Books)

Cosmos Magazine

2011-02-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Zine: Cosmos
Editor(s): Editor-In-Chief Wilson da Silva, Fiction Editor Cat Sparks
Pay Rate: AUS $300 for print, AUS $75.00 for web
Response Time: varies
Reading Period: open all year
Description: Seeks short stories of between 2,000 and 4,000 words in length. They should be literature first: well written pieces, stylistically and imaginatively executed, polished works, involving some element of science at its heart.
Submission Guidelines: www.cosmosmagazine.com

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
Yes. Cosmos has a wide readership, so please avoid profanity, explicit sex or gratuitous
violence.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?
Popular science themes. Stuff that is in the news. How humans adapt to and respond to technology and the changes being wrought upon our cultures. The great 'what if?', the question behind all good science fiction, IMHO.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?
I like both, but I suspect Cosmos readers may prefer the upbeat ones.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?
Keep your cover letters simple. I don't care where you've been published before—I'm only interested in the story you're trying to sell me.

Read the submission guidelines. No, really. You'd be surprised how many stories I receive that are of an inappropriate length.

Read the stories that have been previously published by Cosmos Magazine. They're available free online and will give you an idea of the sort of stories favoured by the Editor-In-Chief.

Snell's January Update

2011-01-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

New Year, Upcoming Books
So far, this year is off to a great start. One of my short stories made the finalists for a very big market; I don't want to say too much about that yet, but I'm stoked nonetheless.

Carrying over from 2010, I've put the final touches on a Cthulhu novella for a Permuted Press anthology edited by David Conyers and Brian M. Sammons. All I can say at this point is that I'll be joined by the likes of Cody Goodfellow and Tim Curran. I can't wait till I can tell you more!!!

"ELEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is definitely one to pick up in the New Year."—Horror Fiction Review

To continue with the good news this year, Permuted's anthology Elements of the Apocalypse, which features my novella about apocalypse by spontaneous human combustion, is faring well with reviewers: The Horror Fiction Review, HorrorScope, and one of my favorite independent reviewers of small press lit Patrick D’Orazio all gave the entire anthology well-rounded praise. Looking forward to more in the months to come.

Market Scoops
I'm hoping to best my record number of Market Scoops from last year. I did something like 23, so... I'm hoping for at least 23.5!!! I already have another scoop ready to post at the beginning of February, this one for the new sci-fi zine Cosmos.

Games
I reinstated the link to the Flash game I developed for my novel, Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines. You get to shoot me in the head because I'm a zombie!!! Check it out by clicking the "Game" link at the top of my blog (above the slideshow).

Hope everyone's New Years is off to an equally promising start!!!

Bride of the Golem antho

2011-01-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Bride of the Golem
Editor(s): Gus Ginsburg
Pay Rate: $500 US
Response Time: 2 weeks to one month
Reading Period: Until April 4
Description: A collection of humorous Jewish horror stories.
Submission Guidelines: mimeticdeclination.blogspot.com

New Interview – PJ Holden (2000AD)

2011-01-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

As a lifelong fan of the magazine, Wayne Simmons is delighted to interview fellow Belfastian and thrillseeker, PJ Holden! PJ has been a droid with 2000AD for some time, drawing the likes of the mighty Judge Dredd *cue fanboy grovelling* …

Enjoy the interview!

WS: Who are you and how do you contribute towards the sci-fi/ horror genre?

PJ: I’m PJ Holden and I’ve been drawing comics for a very long time. The past 10 years has seen me work on the Galaxy’s Greatest Comics (or 2000AD as most would know it).

WS: What attracted you to the genre?

PJ: I’ve been reading 2000AD since I was 7 years old. At that time, big action movies would come out once a year, TV comprised of three channels mainly broadcasting testcards and video games comprised of one fast moving giant white square moving between two rectangular white squares while making BLORPING noises. So, comics were my only way to escape. War comics were my gateway into sci-fi, and my dad, trawling through oxfam and picking up Lion, Tigers and Century 21 (sadly no bears) when I were a nipper cemented my love of comics and sci-fi.

WS: You are currently working on the Judge Dredd strip for 2000AD. How scary is it to follow in the footsteps of veteran Dredd artists like Carlos Ezquerra and Colin MacNeill?

PJ: I kind of relish it. I’m convinced I should feel humbled, instead I feel like someone has given me their toys and said, “Go ahead, doesn’t matter if you break them.” No matter what I do to Dredd, those great works by Carlos, Colin (and many, many others) are unchanged. I get to dip in and out of that incredible world, refining my take on Dredd each time. I still haven’t nailed it, but I love getting another go.

WS: How much room for developing a story is the artist afforded?

PJ: Scripts tend to be straightforward and many of the story telling decisions are down to the artist. Wagner’s scripts have been described as ‘Very Exciting Telegrams’ – when your panel description is “Dredd looks grim”, there’s a LOT of ways to play that.

WS:What inspires your artwork?

Read more...

For more interviews and book reviews by Wayne Simmons, go to www.waynesimmons.org

Belfast born, Wayne Simmons, has been loitering with intent around the horror genre for some years. Having scribbled reviews and interviews for various zines, Wayne released his debut horror novel, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS, through PERMUTED PRESS. The book was received well by both fans of the genre and reviewers alike. In April 2010, the rights to DROP DEAD GORGEOUS reverted back to Wayne. An extended version of DDG will be released through SNOWBOOKS in 2011.

Wayne released the zombie apocalyptic horror novel, FLU, through SNOWBOOKS in April 2010.

In what little spare time he has left, Wayne enjoys running, getting tattooed and listening to all manner of unseemly screeches on his BOOM-BOOM Box…

Leather, Denim & Silver antho

2011-01-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Leather, Denim & Silver – Legends of the Monster Hunter
Editor(s): Miles Boothe
Pay Rate: ¼ ¢ / word. Anything over 5,000 words includes a contributor’s copy.
Response Time: Under 1 Month
Reading Period: Open Until Filled
Description: Hair-raising, Hell-bent stories about the people that take the monsters down.
Submission Guidelines: www.pillhillpress.com

Through the Eyes of the Undead 2 antho

2011-01-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Through the Eyes of the Undead 2
Editor(s): Robert Essig
Pay Rate: 1¢ / word and one contributor copy
Response Time: Up to two months
Reading Period: Until April/May 2011
Description: This is an anthology of stories based upon the zombie perspective.
Submission Guidelines: http://undeadeyes2.blogspot.com/

Mortis Operandi antho

2010-12-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Mortis Operandi
Editor(s): Kfir Luzzatto & Dru Pagliassotti
Pay Rate: $50/story
Response Time: Around 30 days
Reading Period: Jan. 1, 2011 until filled
Description: Criminal investigation stories with a supernatural twist
Submission Guidelines: theharrowpress.com

Interview – Wrath James White, author of The Resurrectionist (Leisure Books)

2010-12-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

by Wayne Simmons

Wayne Simmons: I'm absolutely delighted to get the chance to talk with a very fine horror writer, Mr. Wrath James White. This is a man not shy of unsettling a few vicars – he’s Wrath by name and Wrath by nature! Enjoy.

WS: Who are you and what contribution do you make to the sci-fi/ horror genre?

WJW: I am a recently retired kickboxer and mixed martial arts trainer who has been writing horror for more than a decade. I write stories to make you think, question your reality, make you cringe, and occasionally even gag. I write stories that terrify, titillate, arouse and unnerve. I write horror, pure undiluted horror at it’s most extreme.

WS: You’ve gained a reputation as being the man to go to if looking for uncompromising horror. Jack Ketchum, well known for a similar quality of storytelling, has praised your writing for being pretty much as viceral as it gets. Is this style of writing something you set out to create or is it just how each story tells itself?

WJW: I write the stories that I would want to read. I let the story take me where it will and I never put the brakes on. I don’t shy away from anything. I always hated watching those old horror movies from the fifties and sixties where they never showed you the monster until the end and sometimes not even then. And when they did finally show it to you they never showed it doing anything particularly horrific. They would show you a monster with big fangs and claws and then it would strangle someone or just toss them around. They never showed any blood. I always felt let down. I don’t do that. I show you the monster and the blood.

I hate reading writers who feel restrained. I don’t restrain or censor myself. I don’t believe in leaving anything to the reader’s imagination. It is my belief or perhaps my conceit, that the reader is paying me for my imagination. They want to see how I see things and so I show them. I show them all of it.

When I first began writing horror in the late nineties I hadn’t actually read a horror novel in nearly a decade. I just assumed that since music, movies, pornography and everything else had gotten more graphic and uncensored that surely horror must have followed suit. It wasn’t until I’d already published a few stories that I realized that I was writing something a bit more intense then what was being published. By then it was working so I saw no need to change.

WS: What attracts you to the horror genre?

WJW: Horror is all encompassing. It includes the full range of human emotion and crosses almost every other genre from Thrillers to Romance to Fantasy to Science Fiction. There are even horror Westerns. I like it because there are no limitations in horror and I have always lived my life free of restraints. The way I write (in its style not its subject matter) mirrors my life.

WS: Your most recent novel, The Resurrectionist, offers a celebration of sex and sexuality, within lead character Sarah, almost mirrored against the sexual violence of another character, Dale. Was it difficult, as the author, to write about such a wide spectrum of sexuality within the one novel?

Read more...

Snell's December Update

2010-12-11T19:04:00.000-08:00

New Release
Permuted Press recently published the anthology Elements of the Apocalypse, four novellas that destroy us all with water, earth, fire, and wind. My novella, "Remains," follows a young man through a world plagued with spontaneous human combustion.

FAVORITE DEC. FORUM POST
Hell, the day after tomorrow could hit, and paper books could be burnt to keep us warm. As far as I can tell, a Kindle won't start a fire worth a shit compared to Stephen King's Firestarter.

Short Stories
"House of Flesh" is due at the end of this month. So far, the story has received great feedback from all beta readers. I'd suggest that the title says it all, but it doesn't. Not even close. But I don't want to spoil it.

"Dick, and Larry Too," the sequel to my story in Blood Lite: Overbite, is finished, but too interconnected to work for Blood Lite 3. So I'll be writing another submission for that antho, which also closes by the end of this month.

HOUSE OF FLESH FEEDBACK
"I really loved this story.... I found your writing and insights very literary and very important."

Book Signing
Awhile ago, I wrote about disasters and goodwill. Earthquakes happen. Fires. People need help. Next Saturday, I will be signing books to benefit a local family who deserves a nice Christmas. I think that's important, helping others when you can. I can't even fathom how much others have helped me.

This Christmas, I would encourage everyone to donate something to someone. There's no reason that, in a land of plenty, we should have any dearth.

Happy Holidays!

Grand Mal Press

2010-12-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Publisher: Grand Mal Press
Editor(s): Darren Heath
Pay Rate: token advance, 8% royalties on print, 15% on ebook
Response Time: 3 months at the latest
Reading Period: until closed
Description: sci-fi, horror, mystery, et al
Submission Guidelines: www.grandmalpress.com

Clones and Crucifixes antho

2010-11-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Clones and Crucifixes
Editor(s): Christopher Allan Death
Pay Rate: 1 cent/word
Response Time: 5-30 days
Reading Period: November 6-December 20
Description: An anthology of futuristic horror
Submission Guidelines: corpulentinsanitypress.com

Snell's November Update

2010-11-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

BOOK SIGNING
While I was signing copies of BLOOD LITE: OVERBITE at Barnes & Noble, a man with a tripod and a big black bag approached my table. He started talking to me as he slowly set up his tripod. I figured he was from the TV station, but he never introduced himself beyond his first name. So I started worrying that he might be some weirdo making a personal video of some sort. He attached the camera to the tripod, and its lens dilated like a huge alien eye. Here's the footage it captured... (WARNING: Not for the faint of heart!)

SHORT STORIES
I've been working on a few short stories here and there: a sequel to my story in BLOOD LITE: OVERBITE, "Dick & Larry"; a submission for Michael Knost's MOTHMAN FILES anthology; and a submission for a lesbian/gay/bi/transsexual antho, open only to members of the Horror Writers Association. Haven't submitted any of them yet, and have only finished one--so wish me luck!!!

MARKET SCOOPS & NEW BLOG TEMPLATE
A quick update on Market Scoops: I have one interview in the queue, and several requests floating around. I should have some content for everyone soon.

As for the blog template, I think this one is a little more modern and streamlined compared to the torn parchment of yore. Comment below if you like it, or if you have any ideas on how to improve the layout and navigation, or whatever...

Interview – Simon Logan, author of KATJA FROM THE PUNK BAND (ChiZine Publications)

2010-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

Next up for Wayne Simmons’s interview treatment is author Simon Logan. Simon’s latest release is KATJA FROM THE PUNK BAND – an excellent novel released through Dark Fiction’s new champions, Chizine Publications.

WS: So, who are you and what contribution are you making to the sci-fi/ horror genre?

SL: I’m Simon Logan, author of the novels Katja From The Punk Band and Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void and the short story collections Nothing Is Inflammable, Rohypnol Brides and I-O. I started off writing in the UK/US horror small presses but quickly became bored by the apparently self-imposed restrictions on a lot of horror writers. I decided therefore to draw more on the things which interested me rather than paying any attention to what everyone else was doing or what I thought I should do. So I turned to things like music (industrial initially but now more punk) and movies as well as my interest in subcultures: body modifications, fetish, psychology, politics etc, and started doing my own thing. The initial result was I-O (so called because it was the input of my interests to create the output of my stories) which was pretty experimental and very rough. However, I quickly found the direction I wanted to go in. I felt it was important that if I were going to spend so much time writing and creating something and then expecting people to spend their own time consuming it, then it should be worthwhile doing so. I didn’t just want to do what everyone else did.

WS: Your first release (Input-Output) was a collection of short stories set against an industrial backdrop. What inspires your fascination with all things mechanical and industrial?

SL: I’m not sure where most of my obsessions come from, to be honest, but I often latch onto subjects quite intensely. I love viruses, I love quantum physics, I love just learning how things work, whether that’s machines or biological systems or whether it’s people. The stories in I-O, and pretty much everything since then, have a very industrial backdrop, like you say, and part of that came from the music I was listening to at the time – Nine Inch Nails and Pitchshifter. I’ve always been interested in people or places that don’t function properly, that aren’t the best of the best. That’s why I always liked Star Wars but not Star Trek. Star Wars was about rebels struggling with shoddy equipment, oppressed people fighting back against a tyranny. Star Trek, on the other hand, with its best-of-the-best of everything, always sat uncomfortably with me precisely because they were so elite. I’ve always been more interested in people who aren’t the best at what they do, who don’t have everything at their disposal and the same goes for settings. Plus it’s just fun to describe.

WS: Katja from the Punk Band is your latest release with Canadian publisher, ChiZine. The book has been stocked by numerous stores throughout Canada and N. America. How does it feel to find your name on the shelves of brick and mortar stores?

SL: Well I’m not sure about the distribution leap for Katja from my other books. I’ve certainly not seen any copies in my local Waterstones (though to be honest I’ve not been in one for ages) so if they are in bookstores across the pond then it’s a fairly abstract idea for me. From what I’ve heard, CZP are doing a fantastic job of getting it into stores and getting it a bit of a wider audience on the whole. I’m under no illusions that I’m anything more than a clique author in that I have a fairly small audience, at least at the moment, but those that do like my stuff seem to really like it. I do feel I can reach a wider audience and I guess I’ll just keep writing and see what happens.

WS: What writers inspire you?

SL: I actually take more inspiration from other sources, like music and movies. For whatever reason Deftones lyrics have inspired several short stories I’ve written: there’s just something about them which seems to trigger something in me. Movies like Inception, Mulholland Drive, Triangle and Cache all inspire me with how they play with convention and form, and how they challenge the audience. But certainly authors like Chuck Palahnuik, Will Christopher Baer and Jack O’Connell appeal to me because they show me how you can push things. I’m reading John Ajvide Lindqvist’s HANDLING THE UNDEAD right now and am loving that: it’s so full of compassion and a really fresh take on zombie horror. I often find myself more inspired by sentences or small snippets of dialogue rather than entire books. Another book I’ve read and loved recently is The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson which is a viral horror set in Mexico City and manages to blur genres handsomely. I also recently re-read the short story called “Foot Work” which forms a part of Chuck Palahnuik’s novel “Haunted” and I think that is just the most perfect short story. It’s about the dark side of alternative therapies, about women who turn to the dark side and become assassins, using their skills for evil. It’s fairly short but sometimes that’s when stories work best. It has a great idea at its heart, explores such ideally fully, and then ends.

WS: How important have conventions been to your writing career? What other ways do you promote yourself?

SL: Conventions are basically my idea of a waking nightmare. I was meant to attend the recent World Horror Convention in Brighton to launch my book but had to pull out for financial reasons. However, even if I had made it I think I would have spent most of the time fighting back panic attacks J I’m not necessarily antisocial, I’m just not that bothered about being around other people. I’ve never been to a writing convention, never attended any workshops, never been to a writing group – the only reason I’d do anything like that would be for self-promotion. I get on fine in my own company and don’t feel the need to have others around me. When there are others there then you have to start worrying about what to say and how to behave J In terms of promotion I do what I can: working in the indy press means that you have to fight so hard to even be noticed – although ChiZine have done a great job so far. I maintain my own website and I promote myself via the usual social networking outlets as best I can. As I say, I’m not great at the whole personal interaction thing so to be in a position where someone is doing that for me is reason enough for me to want to be successful! Perhaps I could just do the old Harper Lee recluse thing and pretend I’m some sort of mysterious artiste rather than just a social misfit.

WS: Would you describe your writing as character-driven? What inspires your characters? What attracts you to characters from the fringes of society?

Read more...

Joe McKinney Interview

2010-11-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Joe McKinney is the author of the novels Dead City and Quarantined, and more than thirty short stories and novellas. He has a Masters Degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and has worked as a homicide detective and as a disaster mitigation specialist for the San Antonio Police Department. He lives in Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio.

D.L. Snell: Hi, Joe! Thanks for joining us.

Joe McKinney: My pleasure, David. Thanks for having me.

DS: I think one of the most interesting things about your background is your day job. So, what is it that you do when you're not writing?

JM: Well, up until a few days ago I was a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department, where I specialized in investigating vehicular homicides. (And yeah, vehicular homicide happens often enough that we have detectives who specialize in it. Go figure.) Before that, I was a member of the SAPD’s Critical Incident Management Team, where I helped coordinate San Antonio’s official response to natural and manmade disasters—everything from floods to building collapses to the mass evacuations of the Gulf Coast due to hurricanes, or train wrecks with hazardous materials spills. Several of my books, including Dead City and Quarantined, have had some sort of large scale natural disaster going on in the background, and much of the official response to those disasters was based on my training as a disaster mitigation specialist. I just got promoted to sergeant last week, so now I’m in charge of the 911 system for the San Antonio metropolitan area.

DS: I remember first seeing your name on the horror scene back in 2006. What are your literary achievements to date?

JM: The last few years have been kind to me. I’ve published three novels, edited a short story collection, and sold about sixty short stories and non-fiction articles. I’ve also joined the faculty of Gemini Ink, where I teach a course called Writing Modern Horror. Quarantined, my second book, was nominated for the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2009. My third book, Dodging Bullets, was the debut publication for the Indie crime fiction publisher, Gutter Books. I’ve got two novels coming out for Bad Moon Books in 2011, and I’m finishing up the four part series that began with Dead City. The next book in that series, Apocalypse of the Dead, comes out November 2nd.

DS: In your first novel, Dead City, the main character is a police officer. How much of Joe McKinney is in that character? What would you do differently than him if you were facing a zombie apocalypse?

JM: Eddie Hudson was fun to write for a number of reasons, as he’s sort of an Everyman character. He’s a father, a husband, a well-meaning if not totally effective cop, and, let’s face it, far from the brightest bulb in the box. So, in that respect, I guess there’s a good amount of Joe McKinney in Eddie Hudson. I loved J.L. Bourne’s Day by Day Armageddon and Jonathan Maberry’s Patient Zero, but I didn’t want to write about a character who was a Billy Badass, like in those novels. I wanted to write about an average guy struggling to survive and reunite with the people he loves. The world has suddenly grown very complicated and Eddie Hudson is simply doing the best he can. He has little grasp of what’s going on in the big picture. All he knows is that the rug has been pulled out from underneath him and now he has to fall back on his limited resources. I’ve read a few reader responses on Amazon and other places where people seem to think this is a problem. I don’t see that. Quite the opposite, actually. Not everybody who wades into a zombie apocalypse is a Special Forces badass. If something like that really happened, an awful lot of us would feel like Eddie feels. We would muddle through, as Eddie does. That’s what I was trying to capture with Dead City, and I think it comes across pretty well.

And, in light of the second half of your question...what would any of us do, really? If we managed to avoid getting munched in the first few hours of a zombie apocalypse, we’d run for our families and go to ground, looking for shelter. I know that’s what I’d be doing.

DS: In your second novel, Quarantined--a finalist in the Bram Stoker Awards--you put some of your real-world knowledge to work. What would you do in the event of a bird flu pandemic? Or worse, what would do you if you were inside the quarantine?

JM: The really scary thing about a pandemic flu outbreak is how fast it spreads. Within weeks, maybe even less in our modern era of international flights, a particularly virulent strain of the flu could touch every corner of the planet. Generally, flu pandemics kill the very young and the very old. If you were to graph mortality by age groups, you’d get a sinkhole in the middle of the graph, where the 20- to 50-year-olds are. But a flu pandemic like the one in 1918 did just the opposite. Some bugs are just unpredictable, and that’s what makes the possibility of a flu pandemic so terrifying.

When I was with the Critical Incident Management Team one of the things we trained for but thankfully never had to implement was our response to one of these pandemics. How would we distribute vaccines? How would we handle the massive numbers of sick people? How would our own ranks be affected? None of the answers we came up with did the problem justice, I’m afraid.

And then came George W. Bush. I was listening to a speech of his one day, and I heard him suggest that it might become necessary to quarantine a major metropolitan area in order to prevent such a pandemic outbreak. The cop in me said, “Oh my God, what an incredibly stupid disaster that would be.” And then the horror writer in me said, “Oh my God, what a magnificent disaster that would be!” Quarantined jumped into my head nearly fully formed at that moment.

But you asked what I would do if it happened in real life. That, I’m afraid, I can’t answer truthfully. I just don’t know. I suspect my first instinct would be to send my family away as quickly as possible. Would I stay? I don’t know. I do have an awful lot of vacation time saved up...

DS: Speaking of the Bram Stoker Awards, I know many authors campaign to get their work into the hands of voters, the members of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). So, for all the writers out there, I've got to ask: what was the best way you found to get your book noticed by the HWA?

JM: You know, I’ve seen writers do all kinds of things, all kinds of shameless things, to garner votes. But what a good many of them fail to realize is that approach just makes you come across as a sleazy used car salesman. It’s hard to take writers seriously when they pander and plead for votes because, well, really, doesn’t it say something about the quality of the writing if they have to resort to those kinds of tactics?

But you do have to get people to notice you, and that’s the trick. The good stuff will usually rise to the top on its own merits, of course, but you can help it along by having your publisher mail out advance reader copies to HWA members and by making appearances at conventions, and by utilizing the HWA message board and internet mailer. Back when I was doing the publicity for Quarantined, I did a combination of all those things. I also hit Shocklines and advertised in the HWA newsletter that I could send electronic and print review copies of the book to interested members. There are other ways too, but the main thing is to have some dignity about it. Shameless self-promoters may get a smattering of votes during the general recommendation period, but that won’t help them make the final ballot. For that, the work will have to stand on its own two feet.

DS: Also for the writers out there, what is the best advice you can give for landing a novel deal over at Kensington, or any big market for that matter?

JM: On the one hand, that question is pretty easy. On the other, well... You see, Kensington only reads submissions from agents, so the easy part of your answer is to get an agent and have them shop the novel to Kensington. But I suspect your question is hinging more on the other part, the substance. What kind of book is Kensington looking to buy? Well, horror with an X-Files-type mystery element always does well. So, too, do big action horror novels. Kensington is also fond of books that can turn into a series, like Jonathan Maberry’s Ghost Road Blues, or my Dead City series. Scalability is the name of the game with big publishers these days. Take it one book at a time, but keep yourself open for the potential to turn that one book into more books. This is a good time for Kensington. With Leisure circling the drain, Kensington is set to take over a good deal of their mass market audience.

DS: Tell us a little about your newest book, Apocalypse of the Dead.

JM: Apocalypse of the Dead is the sequel to Dead City—though not your conventional type of sequel. I’ve always hated the traditional sequel that follows the same cast of characters around through five or six books. For me, the magic wears off after the second book. Sure, Lord of the Rings was cool, but that was about it as far as series go...at least for me. So I knew when I sat down to do books of my own, I wasn’t going to do that kind of series. I wanted each book in the series to share a common world, yet feature different characters. That way, I could make each book fresh, and still allow readers the freedom of reading any of the four books in any order without fear of missing something.

Here’s how I did it. In Dead City, I created this background of five massive hurricanes striking Houston within a few weeks of each other. The city was flooded. All the refineries and chemical plants spilled their product into the flood waters. Dead bodies floated around for weeks in this miasma while the federal government botched the evacuation. Millions were trapped in the flooded city as that soup of chemicals and putrescence turned into the necrosis filovirus, the virus responsible for turning the infected into zombies. Many of these infected persons were evacuated to San Antonio, where we pick up Eddie Hudson’s story. Eventually, the government manages to contain the outbreak by closing off much of the Gulf Coast behind a quarantine wall, just like George W. might suggest. In the process they trap nearly two million people within the Houston area.

Apocalypse of the Dead starts off two years after that. Life outside of the quarantine wall has pretty much returned to normal. Most Americans have gone back to their lives, though the fate of those remaining behind the quarantine wall is still a hot button issue. And then a small group of those people trapped within Houston manage to steal a shrimp boat and slip through the line of Coast Guard cutters patrolling the Gulf. They plan to head to Florida. Unfortunately, one of them is infected, and from there the necrosis filovirus goes global. In the midst of this global outbreak, six groups of characters from different corners of the country converge on the North Dakota Grasslands, where a preacher named Jasper Sewell has set up a community that just might be the answer they’ve all been looking for.

I don’t want to give away too much, but let me just say that I researched everything I could find on Jonestown to write this book.

Book 3, called The Ninth Plague, takes place in Houston as the hurricanes mentioned in Dead City make landfall. The first zombie encounters happen here, in this book, and if you were looking to place it chronologically I guess you could call it a prequel to Dead City. Book 4, called The Zombie King, takes place eight years after the events in Apocalypse of the Dead, and shows what happens as the zombies (who are, you may remember, living people infected with a disease) begin to regain some of their mental faculties.

DS: And now to ask a question for Jonathan Maberry (though he didn't request it): why zombies? More importantly, why cults?

JM: The “why zombies” part is easy. I love them, always have. I remember watching Night of the Living Dead back when I was a kid and being completely and utterly entranced. That movie grabbed me like no other horror movie ever had. And it remains one of my all-time favorites, horror or otherwise. As my interests expanded I noticed how incredibly flexible zombies were when it came to delivering a message with a horror story, and so when I was looking for a way to express my own anxiety over becoming a father, well, the zombie was a natural place to turn.

I combined zombies with a cult in Apocalypse of the Dead for a related reason. These days, the world is a scary place. Even without zombies, our journey from day to day is fraught with doubts about our place in the world and fears over the stability and security of our futures. Though I’ve never been in a cult myself, I suspect that many people who join cults join them because the organization offers some security against the doubts and fears I just mentioned. Apocalypse of the Dead was written to be a huge book, both in scope and sheer number of pages. The cast is huge, but their fears are the same. Bringing them together was essential for their survival, and to do that, I needed something capable of sheltering them. Enter the novel’s cult, called The Family. Plus, Apocalypse of the Dead gave me the chance to show how such a diverse group of normal, intelligent people could suddenly find themselves members of a cult. How would they react to the knowledge that they have become the people they used to pity, and even laugh at, before the zombie apocalypse? I wanted to know.

DS: Apocalypse of the Dead, as an epic, has an ensemble cast. Give us a sketch of your favorite character from that book. Or maybe the most important one.

JM: Well, I guess the most important character is Jasper Sewell, the leader of The Family. He’s the one who brings all the other characters together. Jasper started out in life as a used car salesman. Though he is passionate about his faith, he is nonetheless a thoroughly insane narcissist. The natural career choice for someone like Jasper is cult leader, and that most certainly is what he becomes. But despite his frightening beliefs, Jasper is not without his strong points. He is, for example, a natural leader. Like a modern day Moses he leads thousands of refugees safely through an apocalyptic landscape populated with flesh-eating zombies. And he has an uncanny ability to sum a person up and figure out what it is they were meant to do with their lives. Several of the more intelligent characters in the novel, who, before the zombie apocalypse, would have never joined something as crazy as a cult, do so in this book because Jasper sums them up so perfectly. They respond to him in ways that genuinely surprise them. Based on what I told you earlier, you’ve probably figured out that Jasper’s character was inspired, in many ways, by Jim Jones.

DS: So, what else do you have planned? Any more Dead City books or anthologies?

JM: Actually, yeah. As I mentioned, I’ve expanded Dead City into a four part series. The first is, of course, Dead City, which has just been rereleased by Kensington with a new cover and some new material. Apocalypse of the Dead comes out November 2nd. The third book in the series, called The Ninth Plague, comes out April 5th, 2011, and the fourth and final book, called The Zombie King, comes out in November, 2011. I’ve also got a novella in John Joseph Adams’ The Living Dead 2 that features Andrew Hudson as the narrator. Andrew, you may remember, was Eddie Hudson’s son in Dead City.

Getting away from zombies for a bit, I’ve got a crime novel called Dodging Bullets that just came out, and I’ll be publishing two other novels in 2011, both from Bad Moon Books. The first is a story of super intelligent, super large fire ants called The Red Empire and the second is a collaboration with Michael McCarty called Lost Girl of the Lake. I’ll also be editing an anthology of stories about abandoned buildings with Mark Onspaugh. Look for that one, called The Forsaken, in April 2011.

I’m also working on a reader’s guide to the Dead City series that should be up on my blog, Old Major’s Dream, right around the release of Apocalypse of the Dead. Anybody who wants an inside look at how the series came about, and how all the related novels and short stories fit together, should check it out. It’ll be called The Dead World: A Reader’s Guide.

DS: Thanks, Joe--it was great talking with you!

JM: Always a pleasure, David. Next time, first round’s on me!

Permuted Press

2010-10-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

THE MARKET

Publisher: Permuted Press
Editor(s): Jacob Kier
Pay Rate: Varies, advance paying
Response Time: 30 days for query, 6 months for manuscripts
Reading Period: Until filled
Description: Seeking apocalyptic, time travel, Cthulhu Mythos, and other genre novels.
Submission Guidelines: permutedpress.com