Monthly Archives: September 2011

Hereafter, and After

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This was my first limited edition. Naturally, I was proud of it, just as I was proud of the novella itself. It got good reviews and made the longlist for the British Fantasy Award (though not a finalist, darnit). As is normal for PS Publishing in the UK, the book was actually done in two separate limited editions–the regular limited (500 copies) signed by me, and the numbered, jacketed hardcover (300 copies) signed by both me and Andy Duncan, who did the introduction. A few weeks ago the numbered edition sold out. Late yesterday the publisher’s web site reported that now the 500 copy edition is also gone. They can still be found through a few dealers, but the publisher no longer has copies.

I’m of course happy about this. No one likes the idea of being the proud author of a limited edition that no one wants. But it’s a little sad, too. Sort of like saying good-bye.

More Incarnations Than Your Average Buddha

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You can read the press releases and such here, but the upshot is that a fan has acquired the trademark to Amazing Stories™ that its most recent owner, Hasbro, abandoned. The plan is to revive the magazine in some form which, if it happens, will probably cement Amazing’s record, not only as the oldest, but the most re-incarnated magazine the field has ever seen.

I’m nowhere near old enough to have been around during its original incarnation, the acknowledged first magazine ever devoted to science fiction, but I personally can remember four…no, make that five revivals (six if you count the short-lived TV series), though I’m not sure the most recent version should count. Regardless, it’s safe to say that Amazing has died and been reborn…a lot. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but there’s something about the field, nostalgia or blind optimism, that simply refuses to let it go. You can see some of the same dynamic in place with the venerable Weird Tales, which has gone away and come back almost as many times. Continue reading →

It All Begins at The End

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There was much buzz at the World Fantasy Convention a few years ago about a book containing, shall we say, an unfortunate turn of phrase. I haven’t read the book in question so I don’t know if this was a lapse or par for the course, but surely there’s nothing worse than a passage written with serious intent turning out to be unintentionally hilarious?

Well, yeah. There is. Continue reading →

Something Wonderful

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Yesterday’s email brought an offer to reprint a story of mine in an anthology that will also include several of my writing heroes. I’ll give details when I’m free to do so, but right now that’s not the point. The thing is, reprint offers and especially sharing a Table of Contents with other writers I enjoy and respect are a couple of my favorite things. My very first professional sale had me sharing a ToC with Roger Zelazny, and how cool was that? Then there was this most recent touch of something fine.

Which got me thinking, or more precisely, remembering. I’ve worked with and without writer’s groups, mostly without. One thing you sometimes get from a writer’s group that you don’t get as often working strictly alone is a little dash of perspective. In an earlier version of the Writer’s Group With No Name we had a member who was working on a romance novel. We’d read parts of it and thought it promising, but the story wasn’t coming quickly or easily for her. In the meantime, most of the other members of the group were working on short fiction, and a few of us were selling. At times the meetings would turn into gripe sessions about slow markets, slower payments, incomprehensible editorial decisions, the usual. All true and the bane of writers for practically ever, but our romance writer, working hard but still with nothing in shape to show an editor, was not impressed with the bitching.

She: “I can’t imagine what that’s like.” Continue reading →

In Which I Am Self-Indulgent and So Should You

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Well, sort of. I can fool myself sometimes that this isn’t what I’m doing when I’m reading an unsold story of mine. Re-reading a story is an activity that at least resembles useful work, and I proceed on the theory that I’m doing a light edit. Yeah, that’s the ticket. A light edit. Making improvements. But the fact of the matter is that I’m simply re-reading a story. Specifically, one of mine. A story that hasn’t found a home yet.

I know writers who have great difficulty re-reading their own work. I understand that. After fifteen or so passes to get everything right, it’s natural that the bloom would be just a tad off the rose by then. Yet even time and perspective don’t seem to change their attitude. I’m a little different there, and it seems more than a bit egotistical, but the only time a re-read of one of my own stories causes psychic pain is when I, to be blunt, screwed up. A failed story is painful to read, always. A failed story that you simply do not know how to fix is even worse. Sometimes I eventually sort out what to do, sometimes not, but the process hurts, whatever the outcome.

This one is different. Continue reading →