Lorina Stephens's Blog, page 62

Five Rivers Signs Two-book Deal with Matthew Hughes

Matt Hughes

Late last week an agreement was reached between Five Rivers Publishing and well-known Canadian author, Matthew Hughes, to reprint his 1997 crime mystery, Downshift, and to release the unpublished sequel, Old Growth.



"We're very pleased to give Matt's work a home here," says Lorina Stephens, publisher at Five Rivers.



Hughes writes fantasy and science fiction under the name Matthew Hughes, and Matt Hughes for crime fiction. He's won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, and has in the past been
shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, and Derringer Awards.




Originally from Liverpool, England, Hughes moved to
Canada with his family when he was a boy, and struggled as one of Canada's many working poor. In his adolescence he served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians. Later, university education was cut short, and he took a factory job making school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, and for a time was a night janitor in a GM dealership and even worked as an orderly in a private psychiatric hospital.



As an adult, he's plied the trade of writing
first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of
Justice and Environment. From 1979 until a few years ago he worked as a
freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia. He is a
former director of the Federation of British Columbia Writers and used to
belong to Mensa Canada. He says, "These days I'm conserving my energies to write
fiction." He goes on to say, "I've been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three
grown sons."




At the moment Matt and his wife are house-sitting in France, and hope to return to Canada late this year.



Downshift is slated for release late in 2012 in both print and digital formats, with Old Growth appearing early spring of 2013.

Commerce as censor

Once again I find myself stunned by the increasingly moralistic, repressive response we seem to be experiencing in Western society. My astonishment is centred around PayPal's recent McCarthyistic bullying of Smashwords, among others. The crux of the issue is either Smashwords and other specifically named distributors and aggregators of literary content, revise their censorship policies to comply with PayPal's views, or face having their accounts shut down.


While I personally am not a lover of the material in question (literature involving incest, bestiality and rape), neither do I feel business and commerce has the right to impose censorship and bully tactics on business partners. As so many have said, this is the slippery slope. First censor writers of erotica. Next filter the arts for any hint of potentially offensive material. Allow this precedent, and we face banning of Nabokov's Lolita, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and for some extremists Chaucer's The Miller's Tale.





'The Rape of Leda', Roman relief, c 2nd century B.C.

And hell, if we're going to start banning books dealing with incest, bestiality and rape, and sellers of such literature, we might as well start purging libraries of books like Sophocles' Oedipus Rex , smash ancient Roman sculpture and relief, or for that matter rewrite the Bible to eliminate Noah's concourse with his daughters, or for that matter the entire Biblical book, Song of Solomon. Why stop there? Why not ban study, or even demand destruction of, ancient Hindu temples which are a testament to the virility and sexuality of the human species?





Hindu temple in Khajuraho


The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) issued a press release, as did the combined bodies of NCAC (National Coalition Against Censorship) and ABFFE (American Booksellers For Free Enterprise) issue press releases on this issue.

What can you do? To quote from Mark Coker's (founder and head of Smashwords) notice to publishers and authors:

Tell the credit card companies you want them to give
PayPal permission to sell your ebooks without censorship or discrimination. Let them know that PayPal's policies are out of step with the major online ebook
retailers who already accept your books as they are. Address your calls, emails (if you can find the email) and paper letters (yes paper!) to the executives. Post open letters to them on your blog, then Tweet and Facebook hyperlinks to your
letters. Force the credit card companies to join the discussion about
censorship. And yes, express your feelings and opinions to PayPal as well. Ask them to work on your behalf to protect you and your readers
from censorship. Tell them how their proposed censorship will harm you and your
fellow writers.

Visa: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=V+Profile

American Express: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AXP+Profile


MasterCard: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MA+Profile


Discover: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=DFS+Profile


Ebay (owns PayPal):  http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ebay+Profile

John Poulsen to publish Shakespeare for Reader's Theatre

John Poulsen

University of Lethbridge professor, John Poulsen, and Five Rivers have reached an agreement to publish Shakespeare for Readers' Theatre.



Shakespeare
for Readers' Theatre is a Readers' Theatre collection of three of
Shakespeare's most beloved plays in abridged form. Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, as
well as Midsummer Night's Dream have been trimmed while keeping Shakespeare's
beautiful language.



Hamlet can run more than four hours but this Hamlet will run less
than 45 minutes while keeping most of the great lines. Not short enough? The
book contains an even shorter version of Hamlet that should run less than 20
minutes. That is, each of the Shakespeare plays have two Readers' Theatre
versions, the long version intended to run 45 minutes and the short version
intended to run about 20 minutes.




Shakespeare
for Readers' Theatre also includes an introduction to the each of the plays
including probable original sources, first production dates, and important
historical information. Further, each of the Readers' Theatre long versions
have attached suggested director's notes. These notes include interpretations
of the text, definitions, blocking suggestions, and character recommendations.



The
book is intended as an important practical resource for theatre practitioners,
directors, and teachers.



John Poulsen comes well-equipped to create this excellent resource. He is an academic, performer, director
and writer. As a specialist in Drama
Education his research examines diverse fields such as affective attunement,
teacher as performer, theatre direction, history of Drama Education, and
Shakespeare.



John is a founding member of two performing companies, masQuirx and
Loose Moose Theatre Company (from which came Theatre Sports). He has directed over 50 productions with a
focus on classics including Shakespeare and Theatre for Young Audiences
collective creation.



Shakespeare for Readers' Theatre will be available for the fall semester (targeting for August 1, 2012) as three separate eBooks (one for each of the plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream), and as a print omnibus that includes all three plays.

Cover for Things Falling Apart

[image error]
The cover for J.W. Schnarr's forthcoming collection Things Falling Apart has just landed in our In Box. Have to say we're pleasantly creeped out by it.



The artist, Gavro Krackovic, is a 22 year old native of Podgorica, Montenegro. From the time he was a boy he's been in love with visual arts, and while still in secondary school, at the age of 17, branched out into freelance work. Can't help but admire that kind of entrepreneurship and artistic chutzpah.



Later, he studied at the Faculty of Visual Arts in Podgorica. He now continues to work as a freelance graphic artist, web designer, illustrator and photographer, with clients across the globe.



You can find out more about Gavro at www.gk-design.co.cc



Gavro Krackovic

J.W. Schnarr 5-Star review to North by 2000+

As posted on Goodreads, by J.W. Schnarr




[image error]
If you are like every other Canadian spec fic writer out there and has ever read a science fiction story about places like New York, London, or Hong Kong, and ever wondered what it might be like, just once, to read a story set in a place you actually felt an affinity with...North by 2000+ by H.A. Hargreaves is the book you need to read.

In this reprint "+" of Hargreaves work spanning decades, you can see what an apocalyptic Alberta might look like. You can see how the justice system evolves according to our own sense of self. And in a nightmare scenario, you see every Canadian's real nightmare--The formation of the Americanada super country. That's right kids, they finally won.

There is something else in this book of great value to science fiction fans--the book is loaded with all the stuff that makes classic SF such a pleasure to read. It's full of robots and computers and wonderfully Canadian dystopias (imagine Saskatchewan! And Saskatchewan in winter!)

Imagine the great punchcard computer making a mistake that causes the robotic world to believe you are dead...how would you handle all the freedom? Check out "Dead to the World" for one possible answer.

Imagine coming out of prison rehabilitated and restarting your life only to find your sentence has just begun. The story "Cainn" was heartbreaking, and Hargreaves wrote it masterfully.
Fore...Eight...Sixteen... tells the story of some golf buddies who come up with a way to revolutionize the game for future players. Golf and Science Fiction, you ask? Hey, it's Edmonton, pal. Anything can happen.

My favourite story in the collection was quite possibly 2020 Vision, about an apocalyptic wasteland in central Alberta. The story had a definite Mad Max quality to it, and the main character was just as doomed: after years of surviving the wastelands of Alberta and riding the #2 Highway he one day comes face to face with the realization he's no better than the crazies he's been fighting all these years. How much more Canadian can you get?

This book is more than just classic science fiction with familiar names and places. The stories feel Canadian, and Hargreaves is a hell of a writer to so beautifully package what that means.

Ann Marston Signs Nine Book Deal with Five Rivers

[image error]
Ann Marston

Former Harper Collins fantasy author, Ann
Marston, finalized a nine book agreement late last week with Five Rivers.
The agreement includes Marston's popular Sword Series (Kingmaker's Sword, The Western King, Broken Blade, Cloudbearer's
Shadow, King of Shadows and Sword and
Shadow), a new novella for the series, tentatively titled Keylan's Story, as well as another two, new,
unrelated novels: A Still and Bitter
Grave, and Diamonds in Black Sand.


Marston, who besides being an author, has
worked as a teacher, a flight instructor, an airline pilot, airport manager and
literacy coordinator, has also been writing most of her adult life. Together
with her friend Barb Galler-Smith, she teaches writing fantasy at Grant McEwan
University in Edmonton, and mentors up-and-coming writers in a writers' group
that grew out of the writing classes, and currently lives in Edmonton.


"I'm quite
excited about this," says Marston, citing Five Rivers' commitment to keeping
authors in publication in perpetuity, as well as their environmental mandate.




Stephens
comments, "Ann is exactly the kind of author that fits perfectly into what we're
trying to achieve here at Five Rivers. We believe in our authors, even if the
former giants didn't, and feel it's possible to build a cohesive collective of
unique individuals all working toward celebrating books, whether those books
are physical or virtual."

The re-launch
of the Sword Series will take place
late summer 2012 with the release of Keylan's
Story, to be quickly followed by the remainder of the books.

Five Rivers to Publish A Method To the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil

Villains rejoice!



Five Rivers has reached an agreement with co-editors, Michell Plested and Jeffrey Hite to publish the anthology, A Method To the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil.



A Method To the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil will be a tongue-in-cheek anthology of short essays aimed to guide the up-and-coming mad scientist to success in a career of supervillainry.



A Method To the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil is a for-love anthology, accepting submissions until May 31, 2012. The anthology is scheduled for release Spring 2013 in both print and digital formats, and will be available globally through online booksellers.



Guidelines for the anthology can be found at: http://madscientistanthology.wordpress.com/.



We have, for your convenience, posted the guidelines below, and will also have them on our website.


Submission Guidelines

We are looking for articles and essays written from the perspective of mad scientists, evil doctors, crazed super-villains and the like that provide advice for the up-and-coming super villain. Think Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies or Megamind, Gru from Despicable Me or even Agatha Heterodyne from Girl Genius.



We are looking for the best advice from your own experience you can give the up and coming supervillain.



Each article or essay should cover one aspect of being a mad scientist. The handbook is meant to be humorous and associated work should be written in that vein. Article length must be 2,000 to 7,500 words and submitted in standard manuscript format (http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html).

It needs to be original, we don't want to print the same advice over and over again.



General Guidelines:

Original work

No reprints or simultaneous submissions.

This is an Open Submission.

Multiple submissions allowed, but must be sent in separate emails.

Include your mad scientist/evil doctor/super-villain bio as well as your actual bio. All stories will be printed using your alter-ego name with your bio added to the back of the book.



Key Dates:
Submission Period: January 1 – May 31, 2012. (Late submissions will not be accepted)
Reading Period: June 1 – August 31, 2012.
Target Publication Date: March 1 2013



What we buy:

We are accepting world-wide submissions for the anthology (this is NOT exclusive to Canadian writers as are some of Five Rivers' other publications).

We are purchasing First World Rights exclusive electronic text, print and audio rights, and an exclusive perpetual license.



What we pay:

The Method to the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil anthology will be published by Five Rivers Publishing http://www.5rivers.org. Authors will get royalties based on the books sales and will receive a free eBook and print copy of the anthology which will be available after publication.



How to Submit:

Email submissions to: madscientist@5rivers.org Include your submission in the body of one email. No attachments.
Please put SUBMISSION, followed by the title of the story, and word count, in the subject line of your email.

Five Rivers to re-issue Schnarr's horror collection

[image error]
In
an agreement reached this week between J.W. Schnarr and
Lorina Stephens,Five Rivers has acquired the publishing
rights to Schnarr's collection of 22 horror short stories, entitled Things Falling Apart.




Although
Schnarr originally self-published the collection under his imprint, Northern
Frights Publishing, work commitments became such that he was pulled in too many
directions. "It's really all about time and fatigue," he says. "I've been
finding there really isn't time enough in the day to handle all the extra work
publishers put in sending off emails, review copies, promoting multiple books
at once, etc. I finally decided enough is enough."



Schnarr
and Stephens were introduced through Five Rivers' Editor in Chief, Dr. Robert
Runté, when Schnarr and Runté met at When
Words Collide 2011.



"Having
J.W. Schnarr join Five Rivers' authors is very exciting," says Lorina Stephens.
"His work deserves an audience. He writes very much in the tradition of classic
greats such as Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, but of course with a
completely modern, fresh voice. With Schnarr it's not so much about gore and
splatter, as it is about sliding like a scalpel inside your head and lodging
there. His characters are very believable, ordinary people who are hurtled into
horrific situations, sometimes of their own making whether through love or
stupidity, sometimes not."



Cover
art has been assigned to Schnarr's long-time artist colleague, Gavro Krackovic,
who lives and works in Podgorica, Montenegro.



Things Falling Apart is scheduled for release
August 1, 2012 in both print and digital formats.

Second Week in Update

Things are cooking along here at Five Rivers, and just two weeks into 2012.




[image error]
North by 2000+ by H.A. Hargreaves is now available for preorder in print from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and available from them and Smashwords immediately in digital format. It is soon to be available through Apple and Kobo. It can also be ordered directly through Five Rivers.



Discounts are available for class sets for schools and universities, as well as to indie bookstores wishing to circumnavigate the distribution chain. Email us for more information.



Review copies are now also available.



The collection officially releases March 1, 2012.



H.A. Hargreaves is one of Canada's remarkable, one might even say legendary, speculative fiction writers. He is a retired professor of English, formerly at the University of Alberta (Edmonton), and was twice nominated (1982 and 1983) for the Lifetime Contributions category in the Prix Auroras. His collection of short stories, North by 2000, in its time received wide critical acclaim from both peers and periodicals.

Five Rivers is pleased to announce the rebirth of that remarkable collection of short stories by Hargreaves. This new edition, entitled North by 2000+, features not only all the quintessentially Canadian stories of the first edition, but five additional published short works, along with a foreword from the author, and an introduction by Dr. Robert Runte.  




[image error]
Growing Up Bronx also by H.A. Hargreaves, is now waiting upon proofed galleys, which should land here sometime next week, and is scheduled for release April 1, 2012.



Growing Up Bronx, allows readers a poignant insight into the mentors
and influences that shaped one of Canada's brilliant writers of science fiction.
Hargreaves takes you through the Great Depression and WWII, in his native Bronx
neighbourhood, into the lives of shopkeepers and family, heartache and triumph.





This is definitely a must-have collection of short stories to complete the
canon of H.A. Hargreaves' work.     


[image error]
John Lennon: a biography, by Nate Hendley, is now in Barb Geiger's capable editorial hands, and scheduled for release September 1, 2012.





The celebrated singer and pop-culture sage is profiled in an
objective, fact-based account of John Lennon's rocky ride to glory.



As always Nate Hendley brings to his biographies the human side of
the figures he examines, lifting them off the pages of history.







[image error]

Butterfly Stitching author, Shermin Nahid Kruse touched base with us last week, updating us on her progress revising her debut novel. How she's managing to juggle her career as a partner in a major law firm, a mom of twins, as well as author is quite remarkable. Sher assures us, however, she's steadily polishing the story.




The novel is an honest, at times heart-breaking, window into the world of
Samira, an Iranian woman caught in the contradictory and eventually
revolutionary world of 1979 Tehran. Ultimately a very female novel, we feel very
strongly this story will resonate not only with women on a global scale, but
people who struggle daily for balance and sanity in an often radical and
repressive world.




We originally hoped for a release in March 2012; however, given the demands on Sher's time, we're looking to a release later this year. It will be well worth the wait.




[image error] Mik Murdoch: Boy Superhero, by Michell Plested, is now back in Mike's hands for a final polish after being edited by Robert Runte and Amy Bright.




We can't begin to express how excited we are about this hilarious and touching YA novel. A debut novel it may be, but we have very great expectations about this book, and the entire Mik Murdoch series.




In a nutshell we can tell you this is a delightful and truly Canadian tale of a 12 year old boy's quest to protect his
prairie town of Cranberry Flats, and in his search to acquire super-powers finds
the most awesome power of all lies within his own inherent integrity.




Think of W.O. Mitchell meets Spiderman




We're hoping for a release in late summer, maybe even in time for When Words Collide.




[image error]

The Insistence of Memory by YA author Simon Rose, is in the revision and editorial process.





The novel takes readers into the schemes and subterfuge of the Cold War era, through the time-slipping of Max, who finds out an imaginary childhood friend was more than an overactive imagination.




We're hoping for a release sometime late in 2012.










88 author, Michael Fletcher, popped off an email to editor Barb Geiger regarding his progress on the revision of his debut SF novel. Apparently he's slashing and refining like a madman, and is on schedule to have the revision back to Barb by the close of April. Another debut novel, this one is a dark forray into a dystopian world where children are harvested for the quality of their brains.




We're hoping for a release late summer to early fall 2012.




[image error]

Caliban by Lorina Stephens is currently in revision and slated for editing by the close of January. This is a speculative fiction novella, dealing with the concepts of reality and beauty, through the voice of an alien
creature known as Tine. Several agents and diplomats have gone missing on the planet of Edain, a bastion
of the arts and home of the legendary Dreamweavers. Tine is sent in to
investigate, and while doing so uncovers an abomination so vast it threatens
reality itself.




The novella is slated for release late summer to early fall of 2012.

Looking toward 2012

It's been a profoundly busy year at Five Rivers, with some profound changes in the publishing industry, not the least of which was Indigo's retail restructuring. While that impacted us, it also challenged us to develop new markets and strategies.



We welcomed to our editorial team Amy Bright and Barb Geiger.



We also signed several new authors (Mike Fletcher, H.A. Hargreaves, and Susan J. Forest), and released five new books:


Crystal Death: Methamphetamine, North America's Most Dangerous Drug, by Nate Hendley
Dutch Schultz: brazen beer baron of New York, by Nate Hendley
The Organic Home Garden, by Patrick Lima and John Scanlan
Memories, Mother and a Christmas Addiction, by Lorina Stephens
Stonehouse Cooks, by Lorina Stephens

Next year we'll launch 10 new titles by eight authors:


88, by Mike Fletcher (debut science fiction novel)
Notice, by Susan J. Forest (collection of speculative short fiction)
Growing Up Bronx, by H.A. Hargreaves (short fiction collection, part memoir)
North by 2000+, by H. A. Hargreaves (collection of speculative short fiction)
John Lennon, by Nate Hendley (biography)
Steven Truscott, by Nate Hendley (biography)
Butterfly Stitching, by Shermin Nahid Kruse (mainstream debut novel)
Mik Murdock, Boy Superhero, by Michell Plested (YA fiction)
The Insistence of Memory, by Simon Rose (YA fiction)
Caliban, by Lorina Stephens (speculative fiction)

We're also planning on having a presence at When Words Collide in Calgary, in August. Robert and Barb will be there waving the Five Rivers flag.



Beyond that, we're looking forward to reading more submissions from Canadian authors. We'll continue to develop markets and marketing strategies, possibly expanding into audio books, maybe even screen rights if things align propitiously.



All things considered, we're cautiously optimistic. Oh hell, we're outright excited!