Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond, page 23

My Old Mars story -- half a free read

With the retro anthology Old Mars scheduled for release in three days time, the publisher has posted the first fifty pages here.

Since my story, "The Ugly Duckling," starts on page 35, its first half is included in the free-read excerpt.

I'm pleased by the story, for two reasons. First, I was not supposed to be included in the invitation-only antho, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. But one of the initial invitees apparently dropped out, and I was asked shortly before turn-in date, if I could fill in. I was delighted to do so.

The second reason: I wanted to write a Mars story that had some of that wondrous sense of mood and tone that I remembered from my reading of Ray Bradbury's stories back in my teens and early twenties. I wanted it to be an homage to one of the favorite authors of my youth, and would have been delighted if he'd read the story and approved of it. But I had just gotten started on the first draft when word came that Bradbury had died.

So now it wasn't an homage; it was a tribute.

Shifting my ebooks to Amazon

Six months into the self-publishing experiment, ebook sales through my own webstore have not come up to expectations. So for the next three months, at least, I'm going to try letting Amazon handle the sales exclusively through their Kindle Select program. Paperbacks will continue to be sold through the Archonate Bookstore as well as on Amazon.

So on we go.

"And Then Some" podcast on StarShip Sofa

"And Then Some," the opening episode of The Kaslo Chronicles, my science-fantasy novel now being serialized in Lightspeed Magazine , is also the main fiction in the latest edition of StarShip Sofa's podcast.

The narrator is Barry J. Northern, whose accent belies his name by being definitely from the south of England. That makes the podcast an interesting experience for me, because the voices I hear in my head when I'm writing Kaslo episodes (I've done five so far) come straight out of 1940s American noir -- Humphrey Bogart, Van Heflin, Dan Duryea -- with that flat, mid-west intonation. Hearing it done in "English" English adds a dfferent element.

I was quite taken with it.

Another two stories sold

A couple of sales to report:

"Avianca's Bezel," a 15,000-word novelet, is another in a series of tales about Raffalon, my Dying Earthesque thief, sold to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction;

"The Village," the fifth episode in the serialized novel, The Kaslo Chronicles, sold to John Joseph Adams at Lightspeed magazine.

Review of Hell to Pay

Here's a thoughtful review of Hell to Pay, the concluding volume in the To Hell and Back urban fantasy trilogy. David Marshall says, "Overall, Hell to Pay is a very satisfying conclusion to an immensely pleasing trilogy. I suspect even Christians would enjoy it."

Update on my unusual life

I’ve settled into a seven-week sit in the little village of Tala, just outside Paphos in the Republic of Cyprus. The population is a mixture of Greek Cypriots and British expats. The scenery is stunning, the architecture is generic eastern-Mediterranean, and the climate is hot and relatively humid. They not only grow olives and figs, but little sweet bananas.

I’m looking after two rescue dogs – that is dogs that have been abandoned and rescued, not St Bernards with brandy casks, although one of them is coincidentally named Brandy. The other one, Bailey, had a spinal break late last year that has left her back legs mostly paralyzed. Still, I take them for a walk every morning, before the heat gets too heated. Bailey has a custom-fitted pair of wheels that take the place of her back legs, and she rattles along like Ben Hur.

She also has no bladder or bowel control, so there’s a certain amount of cleaning up to be done – although I’ve learned how to position her over an enamel chamber pot and squeeze her abdomen to express urine before she leaves a puddle.

And you thought being a world-wandering author/housesitter was all beer and skittles. Actually, the beer here is good and cheap, a euro or so for a half-liter bottle and I’m still trying to figure out how they can sell a liter bottle of Jim Beam bourbon for less than it retails for in the States.

In authoring news, before I finished the last sit in Athens – three months in Exarchia, the anarchists’ quarter – I wrote a 15,000-word novelette featuring my Dying Earth-era thief, Raffalon, and sent it to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He’s just sent me a note to say that he’s buying it. When it runs, it will be my twenty-fifth appearance in F&SF, which when I think about how I used to buy used copies of the mag to read in the early sixties (couldn’t afford a subscription, and we were always moving house), always amazes me.

During the week since I arrived in Tala, I have done the first draft of the fifth episode of The Kaslo Chronicles, the serialized novel about my hardboiled PI who becomes a wizard’s assistant when the universe’s operating system abruptly switches from rational cause-and-effect to will-powered magic.

The first Kaslo episode, “And Then Some,” originally ran in Asimov’s and is now appearing as a reprint in Lightspeed Magazine. Future episodes will run every two months. I’m going to be very interested to see where the story goes (I can’t outline; I just start and out it comes, a thousand words a day).

A week or so ago, I set the price for my 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn story collection ebook to zero, just to see if it leads to more sales of the other ebooks. If you’d like to pick one up for nothing, check Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, or the Archonate bookstore.

New Raffalon story coming in F&SF

Gordon van Gelder, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, tells me that "Stones and Glass," a novelet featuring my Dying Earth-era thief, Raffalon, will run in the November/December issue.

And now for something completely different: I have a piece in today's online Globe & Mail about a sneaky way to abolish the corrupt and largely unuseful Canadian Senate.

9 Tales, 99 Cents

To draw new readers, I'm reduced the price of 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn to 99 cents on Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, and in my own webstore.

I would have dropped it to a pure freebie, but Amazon makes that difficult.

It's an experiment. The Hapthorn short stories are actually the best-selling of the nine ebooks I've put out so far, so I'm thinking that cutting the already-low price should draw more trade.

We'll see. The cut-price offer will go on for as long as it takes for me to see how it works out, but that will be at least a week as I now have to depart Athens and set up at the next housesit in Cyprus.

Please tell your friends.

Some inspiration for the writers

Back in 2001, I was invited to give the keynote speech at the opening of the annual Surrey International Writers Conference. I thought I would bring it out of mothballs because it offers some inspiration to beginner writers.

Good morning.

I thought I would tell you the story of my life as a writer. It's meant to be inspiring, though for emerging writers, parts of it may be terrifying.

I was born in a council house in Liverpool. My father was a laborer and sometimes salesman from Yorkshire. My mother was the daughter of a Liverpool Irish taxi driver.

We came to Canada but we didn't strike it rich. We were what is politely called the working poor.

But that was only a partially accurate description. We were always poor, but sometimes there was no work.

We moved around a lot, which is a natural consequence of not being able to pay the rent. Sometimes we landed in neighborhoods that were full of people like us.

So at a rather tender age I learned to fight. I didn't have much natural advantage when it came to fighting. I was only averagely coordinated but I was not large, and after I skipped a grade I was usually the smallest kid in the class.

But, except for the time one of my brothers knocked me unconscious, I never lost a fight.

The reason was simple: I wouldn't quit. No matter how many times I got knocked down, I would get up and go in again. Sometimes I would prevail.

Other times I would make no real impact but the other kid would get scared of this little monster who wouldn't say uncle and wouldn't stay down. And the fight would just stop.

So I didn't always win. But the way I saw it, as long as I was on my feet and still punching, I hadn't lost.

This was a philosophy that came in handy when I became a writer.

Actually, in one very important sense, as a writer, I have been a winner. I have made my living by writing, sometimes a good living, sometimes well...

But for the past twenty-two years, I haven't had to call anybody boss or work for wages.

I've written speeches, well over a thousand of them, for corporate executives and cabinet ministers.

But I never wanted to write speeches. I wanted to write creatively.

In my mid-twenties, before I was a speechwriter, I wrote a fantasy novel. A truly awful fantasy novel. Which has not been out of its box since 1976.

But that didn't stop me.

In my late twenties, I sent some unsolicited sketches to the producer of the Dr. Bundolo comedy show on CBC Radio. He liked my stuff so much he gave me an unheard of deal -- instead of paying me for what they broadcast, he paid me for every line I wrote.

Then the next year show went to television, with an all new staff, and died there. So I went back to writing speeches.

In my mid thirties, I was commissioned by a Canadian pay-tv service two write a feature film screenplay. I got paid ten thousand dollars.

But the producer who was supposed to make the movie couldn't put the budget together. The project died, and I went back to writing speeches.

A couple of years later I finished another fantasy novel. A major New York literary agent loved the book, sent it around to every possible publisher. Editors loved the book -- they sent letters that said so -- but they declined to publish it because it was not "a typical fantasy novel."

So I kept writing speeches.

I was also involved with a group of partners in developing an idea for a game based on male and female stereotypes.

We entered into a product management agreement with the creators of Trivial Pursuit who licensed our game to the company that made Pictionary. We were their next big game.

We launched it at the 1989 New York Toy Fair and that year we sold 115,000 units. In 1990, along came Nintendo and I went back to writing speeches.

At the age of forty-five I sold my not-typical fantasy novel to a Canadian publisher.

But the week it came out the publisher was taken over by a conglomerate and dissolved.

More speeches.

Two years later, I sold a thriller to Doubleday Canada. But the editor who signed me did so only after a five-month argument with the marketing department, which didn't want another genre author.

A few months before the book came out, the editor went to another publishing house. I got to find out what it's like to be an orphan in a Charles Dickens story.

That experience coincided with the collapse of the Asian economies, so there weren't even that many speeches around.

But then a couple more years went by and I was standing at a magazine rack looking at a copy of Writers Digest, thinking it might be useful for some of the students I was teaching how to write at North Island College.

And there was an interview with Betsy Mitchell, of Time Warner books, saying how she was sick and tired of reading typical fantasy novels.

I sent her my strange little book. She bought it and commissioned a sequel.

Now they're both out and the reviews have been very good, though I don't know what the sales numbers are like. I do know they haven't asked for a third book... yet.

[and they never did, but I kept on keeping on]

Now, you might see a pattern in my experiences: along come these wonderful, career-making opportunities -- radio, movies, games, novels -- which, when I reach to seize them, fall to pieces in my hands.

I told you some of this might be terrifying.

But I see another pattern, and it's one I'm familiar with. Each time I get knocked down, I get up and I get back in there.

Now, those of you who have heard Don McQuinn talk about what it takes to make it as a writer know that the one quality he recommends above all is persistence.

Well I'm here to confirm that recommendation. You've got to keep on punching.

You may remember I said at the beginning that I'm a mixed breed of English and Irish. That means that at all the great battles and risings and massacres that have scourged Ireland for centuries, I had ancestors on both sides.

So I figure that entitles me to take, without prejudice, the motto from one side. I don't care for bigots and fanatics, but I have to tell you that the Protestants in Northern Ireland have a great battle cry for writers.

No surrender.

Isn't that a great motto for writers? Try it out. Let me hear you say it.

I want you to write that down, print it out, big letters. Put it on the wall over your typewriter or on the top rim of your monitor.

And when you're sitting there and you get the letter from the agent and it says, "Your work just didn't get us excited..." I want you to look up at that piece of paper and say, "No surrender."

And when you get the letter from the editor that says, "Unfortunately, we've just published a story similar to yours," then you look up and you say, "No surrender."

And when people ask you what you do and you say, "I'm a writer," and they say, "No, I mean what do for a living?" you look them in the eye and what do you say?

And when the love of your life says, "Are you going to spend the whole damn day at that fucking keyboard?" you grit your teeth and say it under your breath. No surrender.

Because that's what it means to be a writer in this world. It means they're going to knock us down, and the only thing we can do is get back up and get back in there.

That's why you're here today. So you can throw a better punch -- by learning more about how to write it, how to sell it.

That's good. This is training camp. This is where you spar with the pros. So I want you to grab hold of this conference. Make it work for you.

Listen hard, don't be afraid to ask questions, get into those one-on-ones with the editors and agents and pitch as hard as you can.

And for god's sake, schmooze with everybody, at lunch, in the corridors, in the bar -- make those contacts, and use them.

Do whatever the hell you can to move yourself towards that day when you hold in your hand the book you wrote.

Yeah, you're going to get knocked down. And yeah, it's going to hurt. But you get back up and you throw another punch.

When they say, "Had enough?" you tell them, "We're just getting started."

When they say, "What makes you think you can make it?" you tell them, "Because I won't quit."

It doesn't matter what they throw at us. This is what it means to be writers. We will not give up. We will not stay down. We will not say uncle.

We’ll get back up on our feet, we'll look the world in the eye, and we'll tell them, "No surrender."

[And then I had them yell it and keep yelling it, as I left the podium.]

Now on Smashwords

I'm gradually extending my foray into self-pubbing. Having started with Amazon, Kobo, and my own webstore, I'm now selling ebooks via Smashwords. Here's my author page there: