Archives for February 2008
My Short Story “The Skull-Faced Boy” to Appear in the Anthology The Living Dead
Back in 2002, my offbeat zombie horror story “The Skull-Faced Boy” was published on Gothic.net. The story disappeared off their site a long time ago, but now the story is coming back. You might even say back from the dead. “The Skull-Faced Boy” is set to be reprinted in a Night Shade Books anthology titled The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams, whose previous Night Shade project, Wastelands, is getting some great buzz. The Living Dead will feature a real powerhouse lineup, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Laurell K. Hamilton, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison & Robert Silverberg, Poppy Z. Brite, Kelly Link, and Joe Hill. |
Alpha Writing Workshop Students Among Winners in 2008 Dell Magazines Award
For a number of years now I’ve helped out with Alpha, a summer fantasy & science fiction writing workshop for younger writers. Graduates of the workshop were very well-represented among the winners of this year’s Dell Magazines Award for undergraduate science fiction. Congrats to Seth Dickinson, Rebekah White, Sarah Miller, and Emily Tersoff for placing stories in the contest.
By the way, the application deadline for this summer’s Alpha workshop is March 1st, so there’s still time to apply.
I can’t help but be struck by how much of a difference Alpha (and the internet in general) has made for new writers. During my freshman year of college, I placed first in this contest. At that time I had been writing and submitting fiction for years and had never met or even corresponded with anyone who was serious about writing fantasy & science fiction. I actually didn’t even know anyone who was serious about reading fantasy & science fiction. After I got the call telling me I’d won, I strolled down to the frozen pond behind my dorm to play pick-up hockey. My best friend at college was there, and I told him I’d won this contest, and he was kind of like, “Um, that’s cool,” and that was the extent of my plaudits. These days, all the Alpha students (even the ones who attended during different years and have never met) keep in touch and congratulate each other.
I sometimes wonder if people who grew up with the internet can really appreciate how profoundly it used to suck, pre-internet, to be even the slightest bit noncomformist or to have interests that were even the tiniest bit esoteric. Before the internet, my only glimpse into the world of fantasy & science fiction writers was through coming across the very rare author’s introduction that would discuss the writer’s life. These were: An introduction by Isaac Asimov — which appeared in several of his robot novels — in which he discussed the history of robots in science fiction and also how he came up with his Three Laws of Robotics; Robert Asprin’s introduction to his novel Myth Inc Link, in which he discussed the origins of his Myth series, as well as his appendix to the first Thieves World anthology, in which he discussed how he came up with the concept of a shared-world anthology; and the introduction to Larry Niven’s The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton (in which Niven discusses the history of science fiction/mystery stories), and also some of his essays on writing that were included in his N-Space collection. And that was it.
I probably read each of those introductions more than a hundred times. They were all I had … until one day when I discovered, in my high school library, a few massive hardcover tomes that contained a few pages of autobiographical / bibliographical / critical notes on a variety of authors. I photocopied all the entries about science fiction writers — which took forever — and slowly began to assemble a filing-cabinet full of these articles at home, so that I could peruse them at will. Today, of course, you could probably spend a solid year online doing nothing but reading interviews with and reviews of fantasy & science fiction writers and still have barely scratched the surface.
Anyway, yay for the internet, and again, yay for everyone who placed stories in this year’s Dell Magazines Award.
My Short Story “Red Road” to Appear on Intergalactic Medicine Show
I just got word that my short story “Red Road” will be appearing on Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.
“Red Road” is an animal quest fantasy / political allegory … with a twist. Think Lord of the Rings meets Animal Farm. Thanks to John Joseph Adams for inadvertently inspiring me to write this story. (He recommended a book to me, but cautioned that the book contained talking animals. I said, “No, that’s cool. I like talking animals.” Then later I thought: Hey, yeah, I do like talking animals … and yet I’ve never written about talking animals. I should write a story that has some talking animals. Then my mind flashed back to a joke I made involving talking animal stories years ago at the CSSF writing workshop, and I thought: You know what, I’m going to turn that joke into a story. It’s so crazy, it just might work. “Red Road” is the result.)
New NASA Photo Proves Bigfoot Lives on Mars!
Holy Crap! Courtesy of NASA, incontrovertible photographic evidence that Bigfoot lives on Mars!
This story is getting some serious television coverage, including FOX News, so I’m sure the odds of this turning out to actually be Bigfoot and not, say, a rock are roughly one hundred percent. Possibly one-ten.
Geez, doesn’t NASA normally censor this stuff? Someone must’ve slipped up big time. Why, next thing you know word is going to leak out that there are aliens at Area 51. (This is currently a closely-guarded secret known only to NASA, the CIA, me, and a few other people.)
Close analysis of the complete NASA Mars image reveals a few facts about Bigfoot that were not previously known. For example, he is approximately one inch tall, and instead of legs he possesses only a solid, rocklike mass below the waist — just what you’d expect from a creature named for leaving enormous footprints everywhere he goes.
This all reminds me of a time when I was watching TLC (The Learning Channel — possibly the most inaccurately named television channel in all of human history), and they had on this program about a Bigfoot convention. According to the show, there is a schism in the Bigfoot community between the old-school Bigfootologists, who believe that Bigfoot is merely a rare primate, and the new-wave Bigfootologists, who believe that Bigfoot is a supernatural creature who lives aboard a UFO. Old-school Bigfootologists really resent seeing the rigorously scientific discipline of Bigfootology invaded by a bunch of kooks who just believe stuff for which there’s no evidence whatsoever. New-wave Bigfootologists retort that if Bigfoot were simply an ordinary primate then we would have long ago found definitive proof of his existence, and the fact that we haven’t must mean that — duh — he lives on a UFO.
So answer me this all you stuck-up old school Bigfootologists. If Bigfoot doesn’t live on a UFO, then how did he get to Mars?!
Pwned.
Award-Winning Author Robert J. Sawyer Speaks About the Importance of Science Fiction
Award-Winning Author Robert J. Sawyer Speaks About the Importance of Science Fiction
This is a great keynote speech by Robert J. Sawyer in which he explains to a general audience the vital importance of science fiction. His points are probably not news to anyone reading this, but the world would certainly be a much better place if everyone were required to listen to this speech (or something like it) at least once.
My Grandfather Roger Barr Profiled by UUSS
My Grandfather, Roger Barr, was profiled in this month’s UUSS newsletter (Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento). Here’s a sample:
“To many of us he is legendary. Roger Barr, this month’s UUSSer, is truly an amazing man. After all, how many people start snowboarding when they’re 80 years old? Roger did, and he hiked from Yosemite Valley to the top of Mt. Whitney (43 days of solo hiking) to celebrate his 80th birthday. When he was 55, he did the same hike in only seven days, 35 miles per day. His 85th birthday celebration was hiking all 200+ miles of the Lake Tahoe Rim Trail. One summer, after his 80th year, he climbed the 10,000+ ft. Pyramid Peak 25 times!! This writer went on one of those climbs and decided at the end that she would rather be shot than try it again! Some of us in the congregation have talked about getting T-shirts stating, “I survived a hike with Roger Barr.” Clair Urness once likened a hike to some mountain top with Roger to The Bataan Death March! No, no, we all really do enjoy being with Roger on an outdoor adventure. He knows so much about the mountains, the topography, the flora, and fauna; and he definitely knows how to survive in the wilderness. Roger can regale you with his fascinating adventure stories like falling through the ice in a mountain lake, or being eyeball to eyeball with a bear (while naked!), or crossing paths with a cougar, or ending up in a snow-created tree well upside down with cross country skis—still attached—across the hole, or snow camping in blizzards, and near misses of falling off cliffs. Among Roger’s outdoor activities are backpacking, skiing (downhill, cross country, and snowboarding), rock climbing, windsurfing, trout fishing, and camping. He has traveled extensively over the North American continent, Costa Rica to Alaska, pursuing those interests. There’s no one who loves, knows, and appreciates the Sierra Mountains more than Roger; they’re his G.O.D. (Great Out Doors).
This entire physical prowess is surely enough to make Roger an amazing man, but his intellect is as keen as his outdoor IQ. He reads avidly and can expound on ideas from science to literature, making a conversation with Roger thought-provoking and intriguing. He says he has had a lifetime interest in natural history, all the arts, classical music, sculpture, painting, and language. Several times he has offered Adult Education classes at UUSS on heady subjects. Roger says that membership at UUSS enhances his life socially, intellectually, and spiritually. It’s definitely a two-way street because UUSS has been greatly enhanced by Roger’s presence.
Roger and his wife of over 63 years, Ruth, have been UUs since 1949 when they joined the UU church in Berkeley, where Roger was a student. They had both been brought up in more conventional religions that they decided weren’t right for them. They liked the motto of the Berkeley church, “Deed not Creed;” and when the minister there told them he thought the church was just what they were looking for, they decided to join. They are among the longest-term members of UUSS, active in our congregation for over 50 years.”
The Internet for Fiction Writers: An Introduction
Hi. I’m David Barr Kirtley, a fiction writer. You can learn more about me at my website: www.davidbarrkirtley.com |
This past fall, I took a creative writing class at USC with one of my favorite writers, T.C. Boyle. During his office hours, I ended up talking a lot about some of the ways that writers I know are using the internet to get their names out there. T.C. Boyle was really intrigued by this, and kept saying that I should be filling in the other students about this stuff. But there really wasn’t time during the class to do much more than scratch the surface.
So I thought I’d put together this article, so that my fellow students and anyone else who’s interested can find out what I’ve learned about how fiction writers can make use of the internet. First of all, all fiction writers should have websites. Try to make your site as distinctive and memorable as possible, so that people who visit it will remember your name and a bit about who you are. (Any graphics you can add — an author photo, book or magazine covers, illustrations — are a big plus here.) Most importantly, make sure that your site makes it easy for people to contact you. If your contact info is absent or difficult to find, you may be missing out on big opportunities — invitations to submit your work, offers to reprint your work, invitations to speak, offers for film options. You may be saying, “I don’t need a website. I haven’t published anything,” but it’s never too early to start building an audience. Say it’s going to be ten years before your first novel comes out. If you set up a website now, even if only one person a day visits it, by the time your novel comes out that’s about 3,500 more people who’ve heard of you. And hopefully you’ll be getting a lot more than one visitor per day, especially if you start publishing short stories or articles, or if you start up a blog. By the way, make sure that your blog and other web presences list your actual name. Or at least, the name that you actually plan to publish under. If you’re concerned about your privacy, then blog and publish under a pseudonym. But I can’t believe how many author blogs I come across where I can’t even tell whose blog it is. I really enjoy going to bookstores to see authors read their work. Any kind of author, any kind of book. I typically go to two or three such events per week, so over the past few years I’ve probably been to over a hundred author appearances. Most are sparsely attended. An audience of a dozen is about average, and it’s not at all unusual for me to be the only person in the audience who isn’t a close friend or relative of the author. Even fairly well-known writers are unlikely to draw more than thirty or so attendees, and that’s in the most densely populated of American cities (New York and Los Angeles), where I’ve lived. But some authors are different. |
Neil Gaiman readings draw hundreds of attendees. I don’t even know how many hundreds. More people than you can count. Three hundred at least, and easily many more. More than any other author I’ve ever seen. The bookstores always have to stay open for hours after closing time so that everyone who showed up can get their books signed. Neil Gaiman is obviously a well-known writer, but probably not better known than many other writers I’ve seen who draw only a few dozen people. (Certainly not that much better known.) It probably doesn’t hurt that in person he’s charming and clever and photogenic and gives a great performance, but even that can’t explain the numbers. But here’s the thing: Neil Gaiman has a blog — one of the most popular single-author blogs on the internet.
There are a lot of reasons for an author to have a blog, and Neil Gaiman demonstrates one of them pretty well: If you want anyone to show up to your public appearances. If you as an author rely on people to randomly hear from their bookstore newsletter that you’re coming to town, you’re going to be pretty lonely when you show up. But if you have a large number of people who regularly visit your blog to see what funny or interesting thing you’re on about that day, they’re much more likely to notice and care when you mention that you’ll be stopping by their hometown. |
Cory Doctorow gives away free digital copies (both text and audio files) of his work as fast as he can, and he encourages everyone who comes across his work to likewise copy and distribute it. Conventional wisdom indicates that authors wouldn’t make money if they gave away their work for free, but sales of Cory’s printed books actually seem to benefit. What gives?
It may be, as some have argued, that Cory has benefited from the novelty and publicity of “giving books away for free,” and that this is not a viable long-term strategy for all authors. It’s probably the case that people are more comfortable reading a printed book, so that once they’ve sampled the digital version they’re willing to pay to read the whole thing in print. In that case, the strategy of giving away complete digital works might stop being an effective marketing strategy if the audience becomes more willing to read entire books in digital format. Or it may be the case, as Cory argues, that people are willing to pay to support an author that they know and like, so that Cory comes out ahead by making his work as widely known as possible, even if that means that large numbers of readers do choose to read his work without paying him anything. Note that Cory (as I understand it) typically only gives away work online that is simultaneously being distributed through traditional outlets. Therefore, the free content supplements and serves as publicity for an existing profit-making entity (i.e., a publisher or magazine). This is not exactly the same as someone simply posting previously unpublished work online for free. Though that seems to work out for some people too. Major publishers are inundated with submissions, most of them awful, and it’s not unusual for a manuscript from an unknown writer to languish unread for years before being summarily rejected after a quick glance by an intern. So say you’ve written a book that you think is pretty good. What do you do? |
If you’re Scott Lynch, you post the first few chapters on your blog so that your friends can read it, and so that you can see if anyone likes it. If you’re mind-bogglingly lucky, an editor at a major publisher just happens to run across it, reads it, and sends you a note saying, “This is good. Can I read the rest of it?”, and then, having read the manuscript, offers you a book contract.
Note that this is pretty unusual, so don’t just post a couple chapters on your blog and then sit back and wait for the offers to roll in, but it certainly seems to me that it’s not a bad idea for writers to have websites and blogs where they make available a sample of their work. You never know who might stumble across your page. What and how much to post is a little tricky. Some publishers are less/not interested in work that’s already appeared online, though this attitude seems to be changing fast. Still, for the moment I would avoid posting the complete text of a short story or more than a few chapters of a novel that I hoped to sell later. (If you do want to post the complete text of a short story, either pick one that you don’t expect to sell or pick one that’s already been published — with reprints it doesn’t matter so much where it’s already appeared.) So far I’ve discussed making work available online in the context of cooperation with or in hopes of attracting traditional publishers. But are there models that don’t involve a traditional publisher at all? |
John Scalzi was a successful nonfiction writer whose long-running blog had developed a substantial following. For fun he wrote a novel and posted it on his blog, and asked readers to send him a few bucks if they liked it. He ended up receiving several thousand dollars, which is at least comparable to what he probably would have gotten from a major publisher as a new writer for an advance on a first novel. Obviously this is a gamble, and it’s only feasible if you already have a large following, but it’s an interesting experiment, as it demonstrates an alternative model for publishing — give your work away for free and then solicit contributions from those who enjoy it.
More on this in a bit. |
John Scalzi also posted an article on his blog about what made Robert Heinlein’s young adult science fiction novels work so well. The piece was seen by editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who expressed an interest in reading — and who subsequently published — the novel in which John Scalzi put these theories into practice, Old Man’s War. In a recent podcast, Patrick Nielsen Hayden noted that he’s had better luck finding good new novelists by seeking out internet writers who are smart and funny and who have built up followings and then asking those writers if they also write fiction than he has by digging through the publisher’s slush pile (unsolicited manuscripts), and it seems likely that more and more new novelists will be discovered this way.
My short stories have appeared on two science fiction podcasts — MechMuse and Escape Pod, each of which attempted a very different business model. The MechMuse plan was to set up a really nice-looking website with professional illustrations, and to have contributions from big-name New York Times Bestsellers like David Farland and Kevin J. Anderson, and to charge people a small fee to download each issue. The Escape Pod plan was to have a very simple layout (no illustrations) and to provide a new story each week by (at least initially) writers who were not particularly well-known, and (as with the John Scalzi example above) to give away the fiction for free and then solicit donations from listeners who enjoyed the show. I don’t know the exact figures, but MechMuse only lasted two issues, and Escape Pod just passed episode 144, so I’m forced to conclude, much as I like having illustrations for my stories, that the Escape Pod model is the way to go. (Escape Pod now receives enough in contributions to pay $100 per story — and these are reprints — and also now broadcasts fiction from some of the best-known writers around.) It seems to me that people on the internet are extremely reluctant to pay up-front for content. (The fact that it’s such a technical headache for most people to pay for anything online may be a big part of this, and the situation may change if it ever becomes hassle-free for people to make small payments online.) At least for the moment, it seems to me that writers are much better off building up a loyal following with free content and then nicely asking for financial support. Demanding payment up front — the traditional magazine model — seems at least for now to be a complete non-starter on the internet. |
A few years ago I met Brad Listi, a graduate of my writing program at USC. He had recently sold his first novel, and had been faced with the prospect of watching the book sink without a trace, since he was unknown and he knew there’d be no publicity. His agent told him that he had to get on Myspace (which was less well-known at the time). So Brad got on Myspace, friended as many people as he could, and started a Myspace blog. He quickly realized that most of the blogs on Myspace weren’t very good, and that it should be possible to rise to the top, so he blogged every day — posts that were light on text, heavy on graphics, and even heavier on humor and whimsy. It worked. He got his blog onto the list of top blogs on Myspace, where it started receiving 10,000+ views per day, and his online following was enough to get his novel onto the L.A. Times Bestseller List.
Brad’s success shows the potential of using a social networking site to build an audience (though my impression is that this has gotten harder as Myspace has attracted more and more people — and more and more spammers). Having seen the potential of blogging, Brad started up thenervousbreakdown.com, which is similar in tone to his Myspace blog, but collaborative. Blog readers tend to disappear fast if there isn’t a continuous stream of new content, and a group blog makes it easier to provide that amount of content. Cory Doctorow, mentioned earlier, helped start up Boing Boing, a collaborative blog that’s become one of the most popular blogs on the internet, and which, while not focused on fiction, obviously brings a lot of attention to his novels. |
Another group blog that does focus on fiction is sfnovelists.com, founded by Tobias S. Buckell. Among the younger generation of writers, Tobias is among the most savvy about using the internet to build a following and get his work seen. He runs a popular blog, in which he encourages an unusually high level of reader participation in his projects, and he also uses technology in ways that are unusual for an author, such as posting trailers for his books on YouTube.
Aside from him, it seems to me that YouTube is being underutilized by writers. There are a fair number of clips in which popular authors give interviews or readings, but that’s about it, as far as I can tell. One of the more popular videos I’ve seen is They’re Made Out Of Meat, an adaptation of a short story by Terry Bisson. This video has at least 100,000 views on YouTube. When you consider that most American fiction magazines have circulations of fewer than 15,000 (usually much fewer), and that each story in them is probably actually viewed by only a fraction of that, 100,000 views on YouTube looks pretty significant. (Though of course, there’s no guarantee that any of the YouTube viewers will take an interest in the author. But you never know.) |
One other author who’s doing something interesting with YouTube is David Barr Kirtley, an extremely talented young writer who … hey, wait! That’s me again! Oh well, it’s my article, I can put my face in as many times as I want to. Besides, I’m running out of material. Anyway, I wanted to post something on YouTube relating to my fiction, and a live action short film is a little too ambitious for me right now, so I put together a little “video picture book” treatment of the first scene of my short story “Save Me Plz.” It’s an experiment. Hopefully it’ll pique people’s interest and then they’ll go and read the whole story. This is something I think most authors could do. I taught myself the software and did the graphics and everything in a few days. The fact that after only a few hours my video started showing up on YouTube as one of the top results for “short story” is a testament to how little there currently is on YouTube of a literary nature.
Well, that’s about everything I can think of right now about what fiction writers should know about the publicity potential of the internet. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little article. If you have any feedback, you can find my contact info over at www.davidbarrkirtley.com. Thanks! |
Is The Golden Compass an Antiwar Movie?
Earlier I linked to this Wall Street Journal article about David Gemmell. I thought the article was interesting, particularly the part about fantasy literature inspiring acts of real-life heroism. I did feel that the article featured some pretty gratuitous right-wing editorializing, which I guess isn’t surprising now that I see that the writer, John J. Miller, works for The National Review, but I let it slide. Though the more I think about it, the more bothered I am by this statement:
“Whereas antiwar films flop at the box office, those that celebrate military heroism, such as last year’s ‘300,’ ring up sales. If Hollywood wants to find a new book-based, war-filled fantasy franchise that repeats the success of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ — and avoids the disaster of ‘The Golden Compass’ — it may want to look to Gemmell for inspiration.”
Of course, there are a lot of assumptions packed into this paragraph that I might take issue with, but the thing that really keeps bugging me is: In what sense is The Golden Compass an “antiwar” movie? (Or, at any rate, insufficiently celebratory of the martial?) I mean, the story gets rolling with the Gyptians blowing away a few Gobblers. Then the movie introduces Iorek Byrnison, a bear who has devoted his whole life to glorious battle, and who redeems himself by kicking the crap out of an evil bear-warrior, thereby saving the day. Then at the end a whole army of witches flies in and kicks the crap out of an army of bad guys and their wolves. So it seems to me that The Golden Compass glorifies military heroism to about the same degree that the Narnia movie or The Lord of the Rings movies do.
So, has this article writer just not seen The Golden Compass? Is it just that The Golden Compass is viewed as anti-Christian, and therefore by association Liberal, and therefore by association antiwar, regardless of the film’s actual contents? Or am I missing something here?
YouTube Video: USC Students vs. Riot Police
There are a bunch of videos on YouTube now of a recent incident in which LAPD riot police were called in to disperse USC students at a block party that apparently got rather spectacularly out of hand.
Since I’m not on campus much these days, I don’t know anything more about this than is apparent from the video, so at this point my only comment is: Man, I’m glad I don’t live on that street anymore.
Editor Horace Gold’s Advice to Daniel Keyes on “Flowers for Algernon”
Holy crap. Worst editorial advice EVER.
I’d never heard this story before (or if I had I’d forgotten), but here’s Daniel Keyes talking about his short story “Flowers for Algernon.” This anecdote was mentioned on StarShipSofa, and I tracked down the quote at Locus Online:
“…So I wrote the story. I called Horace Gold, and he said, ‘Bring it over. I’ll read it while you’re here. Have a cup of coffee, read a magazine.’ Horace was an agoraphobic who ran poker games Friday night to Saturday dawn in his First Avenue apartment, and his office for Galaxy was there too. I was kind of nervous, because Horace was an important editor, and that was only my fifth short story I was submitting for publication. Horace came in from the other room and said, ‘Dan, this is a good story, but I’m gonna tell you how to make it a great story: Charlie does not lose his intelligence; he remains a super-genius, and he and Alice fall in love, they get married, and live happily ever after.’…”
Angry Teenage Boy on YouTube Explains Why Fiction Books Suck, Including Harry Potter
Are you in a publishing office and you’re totally bewildered about why 15-year-old boys don’t read fiction books? Well, your prayers have been answered, in the form of this young man, who possesses a charming English accent and also a striking inability to focus his attention for more than five seconds, who’s here to provide a from-the-trenches report on this urgent issue, in a bold piece of investigative journalism entitled: Fiction books suck, including harry potter.
Okay, I admit it’s a bit incoherent at times. For example, how does he know that all the fiction books being published these days suck if he’s only read one in the past four years? And does he really want more books based on real life when his real life apparently consists of posting tirades about his English homework on YouTube? And yeah, maybe it’s true that he’s just venting his personal feelings about a subject that he knows nothing about (in which case maybe he has a bright future ahead of him reviewing horror or science fiction for The New York Times). Still, I have to say that I’m with this kid on some of this stuff. Like when authors “bog us down with all this description … ‘while translucent golden light filled the landscape.'” Yeah, I hate that crap too. Also, I agree that it really wouldn’t be a bad idea if more authors would stop wasting our time and would just go ahead and kill someone on page one.
Wall Street Journal Profiles David Gemmell
Here’s a Wall Street Journal Profile of David Gemmell (link via Locus).
I thought this part was interesting: “When Gemmell was a boy, a teacher read The Hobbit to his class, turning Gemmell into a lifelong fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose characters became his role models. On a train platform one evening, Gemmell — a big-and-tall fellow who once worked as a bouncer — saw three men beating up a fourth. As he told the Independent, ‘A voice inside my head said, “What would Boromir do?”‘ He jumped into the fray and fought off the assailants. Years later, Gemmell told a New Zealand newspaper about receiving a letter from a fan who had gone out for a walk with his dog when he saw two men attacking a woman. He charged in and they ran off. ‘He said he did not think he would have done it if he hadn’t been reading one of my books about heroes,’ said Gemmell. ‘That’s the kind of thing that I shall carry with me, not making millions or whatever.'”
Kina Grannis Sings in Super Bowl Commercial
Hey, I know her! During my first semester at USC, I was a regular at the meetings of the Secular Alliance, a club for students of any or no religious affiliation to meet up and discuss the role of religion in society. The group was a really interesting mix of smart, iconoclastic people, with a wide variety of ages, from first-year undergrads to forty-something grad students, a wide variety of fields of study, from music to neuroscience, and a wide variety of religious views, from hardcore atheists to evangelical Christians. The weekly meetings were one of the highlights of my time at USC. One of the other regulars was singer-songwriter Kina Grannis, who was a junior. I saw her perform around campus maybe three or four times, and I liked her music enough to buy some of her songs off iTunes. So I was startled and delighted to see that she was featured singing during the frickin’ Super Bowl. Wow.
My Short Story “Save Me Plz” on 2007 Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List
Hey, cool! My short story “Save Me Plz,” first published in Realms of Fantasy magazine, made this year’s Locus Magazine Recommended Reading, the first of my stories ever to do so. (Though two anthologies I was in, New Voices in Science Fiction and Empire of Dreams and Miracles, previously made the list.) Thanks to the slushmaster for noticing this. And again, “Save Me Plz” is currently available in text, podcast, and even YouTube video form.
The Tudors; George R. R. Martin Updates His “From My Readers” Page
I’ve really been enjoying The Tudors, of which I just finished watching the first season. (I don’t watch TV shows until they come out on DVD, so sorry if this is old news for people.) Though I’m probably a bad person to be offering an opinion, since I’m a sucker for any kind of historical drama — anything involving swords, outlandish costumes, honorifics, and casual bloodshed — and I seem to like ’em all, even the ones that everyone else despises. I think I’m the perfect audience for historical dramas because I love historical settings and don’t care whether or not they’re historically accurate, which seems to be a rare combination. The Tudors is conspicuously low-rent compared to Rome, which was the last series I watched, and as with Rome they made the first episode basically a soft-core porn flick to grab people’s attention and then toned the sex way down in most subsequent episodes, so don’t let the first episode put you off the show (or, depending on your disposition, don’t let it set your expectations too high). Anyway, until HBO gets around to making their A Song of Ice and Fire series (if they ever do), The Tudors is probably the closest I’m going to get to seeing that sort of story on TV.
Speaking of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin has updated the “From My Readers” section of his website, in which people send him fan art as well as photos of pets and/or children that they’ve named after his characters, such as young Nymeria Daenerys Cersei Smidgrodski. (I think it would be awesome if George would name some minor character “Smidgrodski.” Then all four of this girl’s names would be straight out of ASOIAF.) Many of these kids have learned to walk and talk and have gone off to school in the time that George has been working on A Dance with Dragons (Book 5). He remarks, “Have we really been doing this fan page for four years??? That’s scary. Next thing I know these kids are going to be going to college. I do hope I’ve finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by then, at least.” It’s good to see that he’s not losing his sense of humor about it. Man, time does fly, doesn’t it? Has it really been seven years that we’ve been waiting to find out who Coldhands is? Why, it seems like only yesterday that … actually, no, wait, holy crap, it’s been a really long time. You’ve also got to love the fan with the Asshai Girls Make It Hotter T-shirt.
My New Podcast at the iTunes Store
I set up a podcast feed and got it listed over at the iTunes store. I don’t have any huge plans for this. Mostly I was just curious to see if I could figure out how to set this up, and now that I have I’ll have to start thinking about how I want to use it. I went ahead and posted two of my stories to it, “Veil of Ignorance” and “Blood of Virgins.” These are recordings of me reading the stories on the the radio. These stories have been podcast before, but not with me reading them, so if you’re curious about how I imagine the characters’ voices, pop over to the iTunes store and download the files. In the future, I’ll probably be uploading whatever readings and interviews I do, plus whatever else occurs to me.
Link (opens in iTunes): David Barr Kirtley’s Podcast at the iTunes store
Intergalactic Medicine Show Free Fiction
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, an online fiction magazine, is doing a promotion this month where they’re making one story from each of their first four issues available as a free sample. Readers of this blog may be interested to note that the first free story, “Trill and the Beanstalk,” features a character named Colonel Kirtley, and as you’d expect he’s basically a giant dick, e.g.:
“Let me put this in terms that your tiny mind can grasp,” Kirtley said. “You can either put that thing out of commission and come home a hero, or you can die trying. Frankly I don’t care which. But if you come back here and their elevator is still functioning, I’m going to drop a bomb on their station — and it’s going to be duct-taped to your ass. The Chinese government will not claim Mars. Do I make myself clear?”
The site looks like this:
Here’s a letter from the editor giving the lowdown:
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To Readers of Science Fiction and Fantasy everywhere,
When you have something great, you want everyone to know. So you tell people about it. You share it. You pass it along to friends everywhere. Well, that’s what we’re doing with InterGalactic Medicine Show. We want to make sure everyone has had a chance to check out what we’re doing, so we’re offering up a sampling of our stories – for free.
During the month of February we are going to make one story from each of our first four issues available at no charge. Two stories will be set free on February 1st, and two more on February 15th. Just visit www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com and explore the table of contents; the free stories will be clearly marked.
Issue one’s free story will be “Trill and The Beanstalk” by Edmund R. Schubert, issue two’s will be “Yazoo Queen” by Orson Scott Card (from his Alvin Maker series), issue three’s “Xoco’s Fire” by Oliver Dale, and issue four’s “Tabloid Reporter To The Stars” by Eric James Stone. Each story is fully illustrated by artists who were commissioned to create artwork to accompany that tale — as is every story published in IGMS.
“Tabloid Reporter To The Stars” will also be featured in the upcoming InterGalactic Medicine Show anthology from Tor, which will be out this August (we wanted you to get a sneak peek of the anthology, too). However, the other three stories aren’t available anywhere except the online version of IGMS.
It’s really quite simple. Great stories. Custom illustrations. Free. We’re pleased with and proud of the magazine we’re publishing; now we’re passing it along to our friends and telling them about it. We hope you’ll enjoy it and do the same.
Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com
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