John Joseph Adams's Blog, page 39

2012 World Fantasy Awards Nomination Period Closes May 31

This year’s World Fantasy Award nomination period is still open. The 2011World Fantasy  Awards will be presented in Toronto, Ontario during the World Fantasy Convention (November 1-4). Deadline for nominating is May 31.

Anyone who has a supporting or full membership from the 2011 World Fantasy Convention, or the upcoming 2012 World Fantasy Convention may nominate works. If you didn’t attend World Fantasy last year, and you don’t plan to attend this year, you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership.

Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite works! Here’s a link to the PDF of the nomination ballot. (Note: You may email your ballot to the award administrator, Rodger Turner, to the email address listed on the ballot.)

Here’s a list of works published in Fantasy Magazine in 2011 that are eligible for the World Fantasy Award this year. (Note that the World Fantasy categories are slightly different than the Nebulas and Hugos in regard to word counts: World Fantasy considers a Novella to be 10,000-40,000 words and Short Story to be 10,000 words or less, whereas the Nebulas and Hugos divide those categories differently, and have a third category [Novelette] in between.)

Short Fiction (under 10,000 words)

March 2011

The Sandal-Bride by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
The God Orkrem by Tanith Lee (Fantasy)

April 2011

Choose Your Own Adventure by Kat Howard (Fantasy)
The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon by Peter S. Beagle (first appeared in Beagle’s collection Sleight of Hand, reprinted in Fantasy)
House of Gears by Jonathan Howard (Fantasy)

May 2011

Study, for Solo Piano by Genevieve Valentine (Fantasy)
The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek by Sarah Monette (Fantasy)

June 2011

The Prince of Thirteen Days by Alaya Dawn Johnson (first appeared in Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black & Ellen Kushner, reprinted in Fantasy)
The Immortality Game by Cat Rambo (Fantasy)
You Have Been Turned Into a Zombie by a Friend by Jeremiah Tolbert (Fantasy)

July 2011

Union Falls by J. S. Breukelaar (Fantasy)
The Wolves of Brooklyn by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy)

August 2011

The World is Cruel, My Daughter by Cory Skerry (Fantasy)
Crossroads by Laura Anne Gilman (Fantasy)

September 2011

Lessons From a Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg (Fantasy)
Three Damnations: A Fugue by James Alan Gardner (Fantasy)

October 2011

The Secret Beach by Tim Pratt (Fantasy)
Absolute Zero by Nadia Bulkin (first appeared in Creatures, edited by John Langan & Paul Tremblay, reprinted in Fantasy)
Unnatural Disaster by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Fantasy)

November 2011

Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western by Lavie Tidhar (Fantasy)
Seven Spells to Sever the Heart by K. M. Ferebee (Fantasy)
Christopher Raven by Theodora Goss (first appeared in Ghosts by Gaslight, edited by Jack Dann & Nick Gevers, reprinted in Fantasy)

December 2011

Her Lover’s Golden Hair by Nike Sulway (Fantasy)
Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)

Additionally, I published one story in Lightspeed in 2011 that I feel could be interpreted as fantasy, or at least is close enough to be considered for the award:

November 2011

How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars by Lisa Nohealani Morton (Lightspeed)

And, finally, as usual, I am also eligible for:

Special Award, Professional

John Joseph Adams (for editing & Fantasy Magazine)

Kickstarting NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE

Today, I launched a Kickstarter for a new online horror magazine to be edited by me, called NIGHTMARE.

About the Magazine

In Nightmare‘s pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror. No subject is off-limits, and we will be encouraging our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, every month Nightmare will bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Nightmare, it is our hope that you’ll see where horror comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Nightmare will also include nonfiction, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories. Our planned publication schedule each month will include two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with a feature interview and an artist gallery showcasing our cover artist. We will publish ebook issues on the first of every month, which will be available for sale in ePub format via our website and also available in other formats such as Kindle and Nook. We will also offer subscriptions to our ebook edition in a variety of formats. Each issue’s contents will be serialized on our website throughout the month, with new features publishing on the first four Wednesdays of every month.

About Issue #1

As described above Nightmare will typically feature two original stories and two reprints in every issue. For our debut issue, however, we will be bringing you four all-new, never before published horror stories. Issue #1 will feature stories by the following authors:

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including the short story collections The Imago Sequence and Occultation, and the novel The Croning. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Inferno, Lovecraft Unbound, Sci Fiction, Supernatural Noir, The Book of Cthluhu, Creatures, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, and Best Horror of the Year. He is a three-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and a three-time finalist for the Stoker Award. His work has also been nominated for the Crawford, World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, and Locus awards.

Sarah Langan is the author of the novels The Keeper and The Missing, and her most recent novel, Audrey’s Door, won the 2009 Stoker for best novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Cemetery Dance, Phantom, and Chiaroscuro, and in the anthologies Brave New Worlds, Darkness on the Edge, and Unspeakable Horror. She is currently working on a post-apocalyptic young adult series called Kids and two adult novels: Empty Houses, which was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and My Father’s Ghost, which was inspired by Hamlet. Her work has been translated into ten languages and optioned by the Weinstein Company for film. It has also garnered three Bram Stoker Awards, an American Library Association Award, two Dark Scribe Awards, a New York Times Book Review editor’s pick, and a Publishers Weekly favorite book of the year selection.

Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer.  He’s the author of many novels including Assassin’s Code, Flesh & Bone Dead of Night, Patient Zero and Rot & Ruin; and the editor of V-Wars: A Chronicle of the Vampire Wars.  His nonfiction books on topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop-culture. Since 1978 he has sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, two plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, poetry, and textbooks. Jonathan continues to teach the celebrated Experimental Writing for Teens class, which he created. He founded the Writers Coffeehouse and co-founded The Liars Club; and is a frequent speaker at schools and libraries, as well as a keynote speaker and guest of honor at major writers and genre conferences.

Genevieve Valentine is the author of the novel, Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti. Her short fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from magazines such as Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod, and in many anthologies, including Armored, Under the Moons of Mars, Running with the Pack, The Living Dead 2, The Way of the Wizard, Federations, Teeth, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, among others. Her writing has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award.

About the Publishers

Nightmare will be a joint venture between John Joseph Adams (who is also editing the magazine) and Creeping Hemlock Press.

About John Joseph Adams: John Joseph Adams—called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble—is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. Forthcoming work includes Other Worlds Than These (July 2012), Epic (November 2012), The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (January 2013), and Robot Uprisings (2013). He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a three-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine, and is the co-host of Wired’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Learn more at www.johnjosephadams.com.

About Creeping Hemlock Press: Creeping Hemlock Press was founded in Gretna, Louisiana by the husband-and-wife creative duo R.J. and Julia Sevin (seh-VAN). As sometime writers, oftentime readers, they found themselves frustrated with the scarcity of generous-paying, atmospheric and bizarre short story anthologies. They took matters into their own hands in late 2004 when they began to accept submissions for their own anthology. Many months, one baby, two hurricanes, and one soggy home later, Corpse Blossoms was born to critical success and a nomination for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker award. As their post-Katrina wanderings carried them to Texas and back, the Sevins published many fine editions from such authors at Tom Piccirilli, Adam-Troy Castro, Tim Lebbon, and Lawrence Block. In 2011, they unveiled Print Is Dead, an imprint devoted to zombie fiction and endorsed by none other than George A. Romero. After nearly a decade in the business, they’re just getting started. Learn more at www.creepinghemlock.com.

For more information, and to see the Kickstarter rewards, visit the Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/JPr0uu.

Other Worlds Than These table of contents

Here’s the table of contents and cover copy for Other Worlds Than These. (In case you missed it, we just recently revealed the cover.)

Cover Copy

What if you could not only travel any location in the world, but to any possible world?

We can all imagine such “other worlds”—be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder—but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from The Golden Compass to The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume—until now.

Table of Contents

Foreword — Lev Grossman
Introduction — John Joseph Adams
Moon Six — Stephen Baxter
A Brief Guide to Other Histories — Paul McAuley
Crystal Halloway and the Forgotten Passage — Seanan McGuire
An Empty House With Many Doors — Michael Swanwick
Twenty-Two Centimeters — Gregory Benford
Ana’s Tag — William Alexander
Nothing Personal — Pat Cadigan
The Rose Wall — Joyce Carol Oates
The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria — John R. Fultz
Ruminations in an Alien Tongue — Vandana Singh
Ten Sigmas — Paul Melko
Magic for Beginners — Kelly Link
[A Ghost Samba] — Ian McDonald
The Cristobal Effect — Simon McCaffery
Beyond Porch and Portal — E. Catherine Tobler
Signal to Noise — Alastair Reynolds
Porridge on Islac — Ursula K. Le Guin
Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut — Stephen King
The Ontological Factor — David Barr Kirtley
Dear Annabehls — Mercurio D. Rivera
The Goat Variations — Jeff Vandermeer
The Lonely Songs of Laren Door — George R. R. Martin
Of Swords and Horses — Carrie Vaughn
Impossible Dreams — Tim Pratt
Like Minds — Robert Reed
The City of Blind Delight — Catherynne M. Valente
Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain — Yoon Ha Lee
Angles — Orson Scott Card
The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories — Christie Yant
Trips — Robert Silverberg
For Further Reading — Ross Lockhart

Other Worlds Than These cover

Here’s the cover for my anthology, Other Worlds Than These, forthcoming from Night Shade Books in July 2012. The cover and design is by the amazing Cody Tilson (who also designed and illustrated my Brave New Worlds anthology.)

What if you could not only travel any location in the world, but to any possible world?

We can all imagine such “other worlds”—be they worlds just slightly different than our own or worlds full of magic and wonder—but it is only in fiction that we can travel to them. From The Wizard of Oz to The Dark Tower, from Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a rich tradition of this kind of fiction, but never before have the best parallel world stories and portal fantasies been collected in a single volume—until now.

Hugo Award Nominations

Good news, everyone! Lightspeed and I are again both nominated for the Hugo Award. Lightspeed is again up for best semiprozine and I am again up for best editor (short form). Thanks to everyone who thought my work was worth nominating, and congratulations (and best of luck!) to all of the other nominees. [The other nominees.]

Voting is set to open today (Monday, April 9) and closes on July 31, which also happens to be my birthday. (And you know what would make a really great birthday gift? A HUGO AWARD. Just sayin'!) If you're a full or supporting member of this year's Worldcon, you can vote your favorites in each category. [Vote!]

My eligible works last year include my anthologies Brave New Worlds and Lightspeed: Year One, and, of course, Lightspeed Magazine itself. If you want to do some reading before you vote (and you should!), you can still read everything published in Lightspeed online, plus Worldcon will also have our July 2011 issue available for free as part of the Hugo Voter Packet, in a variety of ebook formats. Brave New Worlds will also be be available in the Voter Packet, so huzzah for lots of great free reading!

And if you still can't decide whether or not to vote for Lightspeed after reading all that, please consider the environment; if Apex, Locus, or NYSRF wins the award for best semiprozine, the Worldcon committee will have to produce THREE Hugos for the winner, whereas if Lightspeed (or Interzone, to be fair!) wins, only one will be necessary. [I kid! Well, I mean, that's all true! But I kid about you basing your decision on that at all. :)]

 

ARMORED is Also Available in Ebook Format

A lot of people have been asking about the ebook edition of ARMORED, so I thought that question warranted its own post, even though that information is on the ARMORED site. ARMORED is available in ebook format, but it is only available via Baen's ebook site, www.baenebooks.com. Baen's ebooks are all DRM-free, provided in multiple formats (and all are available to you via a single purchase), and should work on all ebook reading devices, including iPad, Nook, and Kindle.

ARMORED Now on Sale!

Armored is now available at traditional brick and mortar bookstores nationwide (i.e., via Barnes & Noble or various independent booksellers), via online retailers such as Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com, or from various other vendors. It is also available as an ebook via Baen Ebooks.

Armored

PART HUMAN. PART MACHINE. ALL SOLDIER.

Decades ago, Starship Troopers captivated readers with its vision of a future war in which power armored soldiers battled giant insects on hostile alien planets. Today, with the success of Iron Man, Halo, and Mechwarrior—and with real robotic exoskeletons just around the corner—the idea of super-powered combat armor and giant mecha has never been more exciting and relevant.

Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams brings you the first-ever original anthology of power armor fiction. Join leading SF authors Jack Campbell, Brandon Sanderson, Tanya Huff, Daniel H. Wilson, Alastair Reynolds, Carrie Vaughn, and others as they explore the limits of what a soldier of the future might become—with the aid of the right equipment.

Imagine power armored warriors battling at the bottom of the sea, or on nightmarish alien worlds, or in the darkest depths of space. Imagine armor that's as smart as you are, armor that might keep on fighting even after you're no longer willing … or able.

The possibilities are endless, but some facts remain constant: The soldier of the future will be fast. The soldier of the future will be deadly. The soldier of the future will be ARMORED.

Publisher: Baen Books

Publication Date: March 27, 2012

FOGcon Schedule

I'll be attending FOGcon this weekend (March 30 – April 1), which takes place in the San Francisco area. Here's my convention schedule:

Saturday    10:30 a.m.    Reading

I'll be reading from my new anthology, ARMORED.

Saturday    4:30 p.m.    You Are Not Your Rejection Slips

Learn techniques for coping with the inevitable ups and downs of a writing career. How can you maintain a sense of self-worth after a hundred rejection slips? How do you handle the feelings of being simultaneously the most brilliant writer ever and the biggest pile of s*** in the field?

Sunday    10:30 a.m.    Anthology Pitch-a-Thon

Editors with anthologies will sit on the panel, and describe their books-to-be, along with the hopes and fears of the slush pile; the audience will bounce ideas off the editors, ask questions, and learn about how each panelist makes their selections.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

2pm @ Mysterious Galaxy (#372)

Autographing

Los Angeles, CA

Learn More