Matthew Hughes update

 According to the SF Signal blog , Matthew Hughes's Luff Imbry novel, The Other, is on a short list of three titles for the inaugural A.E. Van Vogt Award. The other two finalists are Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder and Alphanauts by Brian J. Clarke. The award is presented by the Winnipeg Science Fiction Association and is named for Canada's only SFWA grandmaster.
http://www.matthewhughes.org/excerpt-from-the-other/

 Paul Di Filippo has reviewed Matt's PS Publishing novella, "The Yellow Cabochon," in the current Asimov's. He says: "Hughes’s facility with ornate, roccoco language has never been more polished, and his plotting is sharp and twisty. His evocation of a faded age of wonders piles high the frissons of a factitious but effective nostalgia that is all the more piquant for being manufactured from mere allusions, rather than actual touchstones of our consensual past."

The whole review is here: (scroll down) http://www.asimovs.com/2013_02/onbooks.shtml

Meanwhile Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine is running the first half of  Matt's space-opera novelette, "And Then Some," as a free sample.  http://www.asimovs.com/2013_02/exc_story1.shtml
Locus Magazine's online short-fiction reviewer, Lois Tilton, calls "And Then Some" recommended reading in her review of the February Asimov's, and notes that the universe in which it's set is "complex and fascinating."

T

Let's Think Small

by Matthew Hughes

(Reprinted from The Lonely Cry newsletter, Issue no. 21 )

In 1951, an editor considering buying J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings worried that it might lose the publisher a thousand pounds. His boss told him, "If you think it's a work of genius, then you may lose a thousand."

Fifty-five years later, no major publisher takes such a risk. Today, numbers rule. The decision to publish a new author is based strictly on the "P&L" -- industry shorthand for "profit-and-loss statement."

The P&L minimizes potential loss while maximizing potential profit. Its formula can be massaged to produce minimal risk by adjusting such factors as type size (thus altering the number of pages and therefore the cost of ink and paper), the number of copies printed, and whether to go hard cover or mass-market paperback. If the editor can make the formula work, the book is published. If not, it isn't.

The P&L is why major publishers now routinely launch SF authors in hardcover, though with print runs of only 5,000 copies and scant promotion. Thirty years ago, SF debuts usually appeared as cheap paperbacks with print runs above 50,000. Today, the hardcover is preferred; it stays on bookstore shelves longer, and unsold copies returned to the publisher can be reshipped to fill new orders. Ultimately, unsold copies are remaindered for a dollar each, recouping part of the manufacturing cost. But mass-markets are neither returned nor resold. After a few weeks on the shelves, booksellers rip off the covers (returning them for credit), while the defaced book goes to the recycler.

Promotion is a favourite for cost-cutters massaging the first-timer's P&L. Most new SF authors receive no more nurturing from the major publishers than baby sea turtles get from their absent mother. The result: every year the big houses launch a new flock of first-timers in hard cover, but most do not make it to the surf -- i.e., they don’t sell enough copies to justify a second book. The days are long gone when major publishers allowed a new author two or three books to develop a readership.

For niche authors (and I'm one), the big houses are no longer a good fit. Fortunately, SF is now seeing a flowering of high-quality small presses, such as Night Shade and and PS Publishing (both of which, by an uncanny coincidence, have published my works), plus Small Beer, Tachyon, Golden Gryphon, Prime/Wildside,  and Edge Publishing of Calgary.. Many of their new authors are launched in affordable trade paperbacks.

If you're looking for new SF authors -- or for a second book by one of last year's little turtles -- why not take a look at what the small presses are doing? Among these publishers who are willing to lose a thousand, future Tolkiens may be found.

Casey Wolf has a few pieces of writerly news:

Casey's short story "The Brídeog", (Escape Clause, ed. Clélie Rich. 2009), has been reprinted on the Brigit-related blog Brigit's Sparkling Flame .  Her short story "Eating Our Young" was sold to Chase Publications for their upcoming horror anthology The Speed of Dark. (There is still time to submit to this paying market. Deadline 30 December.   Read the guidelines here. )

And finally, Casey answered Susan McCaslin's call for tree poems, to be used as a part of the effort to save the trees of Glen Valley, BC. Please consider sending your own tree poems for posting on the threatened trees. For details, and to read Casey's poem "making way" go to http://cjunewolfden.blogspot.ca/2012/12/urgent-call-for-poems-about-trees-from.html

Rhea Rose on smashwords

 Rhea Rose writes, "Continuing in my trial indie publishing vein, I’ve ‘freed’ up a story of mine over at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/172003

On the Pleasures of Antiquity

 
I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow -
Where below another sky
Parrot islands anchored lie…
…Where among the deserts sands
Some deserted city stands…
("Travel")

R.L. Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses was the first book I ever owned, and it inspired a life-long fascination with exotic, far-off places. My tattered copy has survived to this day, along with A. Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar and L.Sprague de Camp's Lost Continents. Long vanished are the hand-me-down copies of Weird Tales.. In those faded 1930's pulps, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard wrote about worlds where (to quote Sprague de Camp) "gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars; sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk crumbled ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords…" Worlds of mystery, lost in the deepest reaches of antiquity.

The fall of the Indus valley civilization is one of the great unanswered questions of archaeology. Were the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa destroyed by climactic change? A shift in the course of the Indus River? Invasion? Over-grazing? As far as I can tell, few writers of fiction have explored the subject. Many years ago, in a used bookstore, I stumbled across a small self-published monograph by John Newberry of Victoria BC. It turned out to be the first in an ongoing series: Newberry's exhaustive though little-known efforts to decode the Indus Valley seal inscriptions. I bought the pamphlet. Here was a world lost in antiquity, and an unsolved mystery. I had the subject for a novel.

Alternate histories ask "What if?" Those of us whose fantasies play out in real historic time like to explore the "how" and the "why" - always keeping in mind that if you travel far enough back in antiquity, you may find sorcerers, baleful spirits, magical kingdoms and spells that actually work.

Eileen Kernaghan  (reprinted from The Lonely Cry newsletter)

(Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a Novel of Mohenjo-daro is available from amazon.com and amazon.ca)

Dave Duncan: "All Fiction is Impossible"

(Reprinted from The Lonely Cry newsletter)

Even today, in our data-choked world, people are impressed when they meet a writer."What do you write?" they ask.

"Fantasy. You know -- dragons and stuff." Nine times out of ten they look puzzled and embarrassed. People who don't read Fantasy simply cannot understand why any adult would write it, let alone read it.

The answer involves a curious paradox. All fiction is impossible. Real people don't speak in prose, let alone think in it. Real life is never so tidy, although we like to believe it may be, with lovers strong and true, and little old ladies outsmarting Scotland Yard. In most genres, if we try hard we can ignore the unreality and pretend that this could happen.

But Fantasy is fiction with the gloves off, set in a completely unbelievable world. The challenge for the writer is to keep the people believable. The paradox is that, as the setting becomes less credible, the characters matter more; the thread of "universality" that all good stories require becomes more evident. This, I am sure, is why J.R.R. Tolkien was repeatedly forced to deny that his Lord of the Rings was an allegory. It is obviously not true, and yet it feels true because the people are true. That is the test of good Fantasy.

For example, suppose an employee is instructed to do something that feels unethical. Not illegal, just shady. I have seen this happen, and probably you have -- it is not a rare occurrence. In the real world a refusal risks no more than a paycheck or future promotion, balanced against the loss of self-respect. But when I make the employee a swordsman and the employer a sometimes tyrannical king, then the stakes become liberty and life itself. Now the problem is more focussed. It matters.

Foxes don't really eat grapes, you know.

© Copyright Dave Duncan

Coming soon: Dave Duncan's " The Starfolk" is a light-hearted two-book fantasy to be published by 47North in 2013.

 

Nineteen of Dave's books are now available on audio. To see the list visit www.audible.com and search for Dave Duncan. 

Where do you get your ideas?

 Every author of fiction has been asked the question, as if story ideas were rare earths revealed only to a select few. But stories are all around us, all the time. To see one, you just need to know what to look for.

Some people say there are only seven basic plots in fiction. I think it's even simpler -- there is only one story, but we keep telling it in endless variations.

It goes like this. First, we have a character -- a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, an animal, an alien, a machine -- who lives in a place and time that may be real or fanciful.

Then something happens that pulls the character out of his everyday circumstances. Maybe a robot shows him an image of a princess who needs help, or a tornado lifts her house over a rainbow, or he meets a sultry blonde who asks him to find her missing baby sister.

>From that point on, the hero(ine) struggles against mounting opposition toward a moment of decision: trust the force, accept that there's no place like home, avenge your partner by turning in that sultry blonde who shot him.

The hero chooses, and finds himself transformed by the choice and by the struggle that led to it. Then maybe they all live happily ever after, or maybe the hero returns to his former life sadder but wiser. Not every story needs a happy ending.

So you want a story? Think about something that might happen -- you witness a crime, you find a payphone that lets you call 1935, you discover your neighbour is not what she seems -- then think about a choice that that unusual event might lead you to. Then decide which way you would choose.

The rest is just writing. --  Matthew Hughes ( from The Lonely Cry newsletter, Issue 15)


Matthew Hughes has launched a new web page at http://www.matthewhughes.org with
excerpts from his work, review quotes, news, and some practical how-to
advice for writers.

Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin are putting together Old Venus, another of their wonderful themed anthologies, this one collecting stories set in the swampy, rainy Venus that used to exist in science fiction, before real scientists sent probes that proved what a dry, searing, poisonous hellhole it really is. Matt Hughes' contribution is a Jeeves and Bertie story involving a 1920s-vintage rocket trip to Venus. To avoid copyright complications Matt has changed the characters' names, so the story is entitled "Greeves and the Evening Star." The anthology should be out next year.

Meanwhile be sure to visit Matt's new Archonate website. 

Electronic publishing rights to the anthology Like Water for Quarks (MVP Publishing, Elton Elliott and Bruce Taylor, eds.,) which includes Mary E. Choo's story "The Man Who Loved Lightning," have gone to Tony Daniel at Baen Books.

We're delighted to announce that When the Saints by Dave Duncan is shortlisted for the Endeavour Award.

Meanwhile, the Barnes and Noble bookclub site has posted a great review of Dave Duncan's  new SF novel, Wildcatter,  from Edge Publishing. " Science fiction fans who enjoy their literary fare character-driven and action packed need look to further than this entertaining new old school science fiction novel. Readers, in particular, who were weaned on Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, etc. will find this novel to be reminiscent of the classics they grew up with." Read more.

The Death of Nnanji, Book Four of  Dave Duncan's "The Seventh Sword" series (published 1989) is now out on Amazon as e-book and POD, and soon to be available on other outlets.

HarperCollins has started a month-long e-book promotion which includes Dave's novel  The Gilded Chain.. That's Book One of  the "King's Blades" series, which eventually ran to seven books. If you don't know those stories, you now have a chance to buy the first book for $3.28 on Kindle. Here's the URL:

As well, twenty-seven (27!) of  Dave's  titles are to be issued in audio editions by Audible, the world's largest audio publisher.

Linda DeMeulemeester's story "The Worry Doctor" appears in the new anthology Under the Needle's Eye: stories by the Clarion West  Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop, class of 2001. The kindle edition is available from Amazon.com

New printing of The Alchemist's Daughter

Eileen Kernaghan's historical fantasy The Alchemist's Daughter, which has been sold out for some time, is now available in a 5th printing.. You can find it online at ChaptersIndigo.

Second To Hell and Back novel now available

Costume Not Included, the second novel in Matthew Hughes'  To Hell and Back series, is now in stores.The hero, Chesney Arnstruther, is a high-functioning, autistic insurance actuary who moonlights as a costumed crimefighter. Matt has  posted an excerpt from the opening chapters on his web page: http://www.archonate.com/costume   Matt talks about  Costume Not Included, in an  interview with the 42webs blog.

And breaking news!

Three poems by Rhea Rose, "Zombie Wedding Chant", "Funeral Chant" and "Sleeping Beauty and The Vampire Rose"have been accepted for publication by ChiZine. You can read "Zombie Wedding Chant" on the ChiZine website.  

Dave Duncan's When the Saints  is included in  Kirkus Review's Best Fiction of 2011 list  as one of the year's  ten best fantasy and science fiction title. Dave's new standalone fantasy, Against the Light, will be released by 47North on Tuesday, January 24.
In other recent news,  Dave's November 2010 novel Pock's World is now available in various  e-book formats as a joint venture of  Edge Publishing and E-Reads.


Meanwhile, Matthew  Hughes' Luff  Imbry novel The Other  has made the December Locus's list of  "New and Notable", and is one of seven nominees for the 2011 Philip K. Dick Award.

The critic and Jack Vance aficionado, Russell Letson, has given Matt's  The Other a long and positive review in Locus Magazine, and put it on his recommended reading list. He says the novel ". . . is as convincingly and pleasingly Vancean as Hughes's earlier Archonate stories -- together they constitute an homage that manages to maintain its own particular flavor and sensibility."

I "The Yellow Cabochon," the second of  Matt Hughes' three Luff Imbry novellas (the first was "Quartet and Triptych") is now available for preorder from PS Publishing.  You can read the first 5,000 words on Matt's web page at http://www.archonate.com Casey Wolf reads her  story "Claude and the Henry Moores" at Beam Me Up! And you can read Casey's  story "Invicta", wherein a love of books carries a woman through all the difficult days of her life,  in the November-December issue of  The Link. Casey says, "Invicta" was inspired by my mother's tales of her thirst for books at a young age and her first visit to a library when she was in her early twenties. She vowed to read every book on the shelves and made a very good go of. it."