Category Archives: Publishing

Discussions about the business of publishing.

Can of Worms? Meet Can Opener

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There exists, somewhere on the net, a small old-fashioned (seems odd to say it, but it’s true) discussion board. An eddy in the current of the internet, if you will, or rather a backwater. It was designed before blogging was a twinkle in the would-be pundits’ eyes, and hardly anyone goes there anymore. Except me, and  a few other die-hards. We’re a self-selected and dwindling group at this point, but we hang on, and the reason we hang on is that we can talk about things there that no one in his or her right mind would put out on the internet. This place isn’t secret, but it isn’t indexed either, and the discussions there don’t propagate or get linked, and that’s how we like it. All as a preamble to a question that rather threw me. So much so that I’ve decided to consider it here.

The question was simple: “Do you, as a male fantasy writer, ever feel isolated in a field dominated by women?” Continue reading →

Love in the Time of Trunk Stories

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If you follow the field at all, every now and then you’ll hear disparaging remarks about something called a “trunk story.” An editor for a new magazine or anthology (or a new editor for an old magazine) will usually make it part of the submission guidelines: “Send me your best. I don’t want your trunk stories.” For the perhaps two of you at most who don’t know what that means, a trunk story is just one that hasn’t sold, and hasn’t sold in a persistent or dramatic fashion, to the point that the writer either loses confidence in it—if they ever had any—or simply, for want of another suitable market possibility, files it away. Sort of a “time out.” The “trunk” part was probably always metaphorical, unless one had enough manuscripts of that type that they required a physical trunk to contain them. Back in the days of paper subs, I found that a cardboard box worked just fine. Continue reading →

Review – The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche by Peter S. Beagle

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The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances by Peter S. Beagle, Tachyon Publications, 1997

My first acquaintance with Peter Beagle’s work, like a lot of other people’s, was the classic The Last Unicorn. I was hooked, and sought out everything else I could find, which at that time was I See By My Outfit and A Fine and Private Place, a non-fiction account of a cross-country trip on a motor scooter and Beagle’s first novel, respectively. I didn’t even know that he did any work at less than novel length until I stumbled upon the one-two pairing of “Come Lady Death” and “Lila the Werewolf” in The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle back in 1978.

The Tachyon collection came along a good deal later, in 1997, and even though it also included the above two stories, I snapped it up for what else was there, including the title story which I had managed to miss in its first print appearance, plus “The Naga” (likewise) and a story original to this volume, “Julie’s Unicorn.”

Continue reading →

Another Such Weekend and I Am Undone

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Bill Eakin at Yuletide Souls Fest

My social and business calendars were pretty much filled this weekend, though on Saturday it was hard to tell where business ended and social began, since it was such a mixture of both. My primary event on Saturday was the Yuletide Souls Fest at the Vicksburg Public Library. Besides the locals, William R.(Bill) Eakin had come down from Arkansas. He’s the author of Redgunk Tales and another frequent contributor to Realms of Fantasy. I hadn’t seen Bill in years and we had to mourn a bit together for magazines past. Continue reading →

Review — The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant by Jeffrey Ford

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The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford.  Golden Gryphon Press, 2002

“Creation” is about what it says it’s about: A young boy undergoing religious training gives in to an impulse to create as God did, and succeeds…after a fashion. The rest of the story concerns the aftermath and the young boy coming to terms with the implications and responsibilities of his action. It’s one of Ford’s better known stories, and I’ve even heard claims that it “transcends genre fantasy.”  Sorry, no. This is what fantasy does. It’s the fun-house mirror that we hold up so we can see ourselves more clearly, and “Creation” does it very well. As for the “genre” part, well, genre is a marketing category, and to say something “transcends” a marketing category is pretty much a meaningless phrase. “Creation” is a damn fine fantasy story, and that’s more than enough. Continue reading →