James Dorr's Blog, page 126

You Win Some, You Lose Some: Octopus Out for CCQ, In Last Day of March for Terrify Podcast

It happens sometimes.  It’s usually not reported here, but sometimes a magazine or book that’s accepted a story fails to be published.  But life must go on, yes?  Such has been the fate of “In The Octopus’s Garden,” originally published in 69 FLAVORS OF PARANOIA, March-April 1999, which we might recall [image error]had been accepted as a reprint for CREEPY CAMPFIRE QUARTERLY for publication later this year (see June 5 2016).  But then in November . . . well, these things happen.

Fast forward to this month, lots going on, but for thirty solid days in March no new acceptances, story or poetry, to be reported until Friday afternoon, March 31, and an email time-stamped 2:45 p.m.:  Thank you for submitting “In the Octopus’s Garden” to TALES TO TERRIFY.  We loved this story and would like to accept it for publication.  So you lose one, you win it back.  TALES TO TERRIFY is a podcast with “In the Octopus’s Garden” tentatively set to air “somewhere around July-December 2017,” but for those who can’t wait or would like to read it in print as well, it’s also lead story in THE TEARS OF ISIS which can be ordered by clicking its picture in the center column or pressing here.

More on TOMBS: It Began With a Map, 2nd Heidi Angell Guest Essay Posted

Hello Lovelies,

 

We have another awesome guest post from author James Dorr, as he shares with us the inspiration for TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, which releases in May.  I have to be honest, it has been a true pleasure reading James’ insightful posts, and I am definitely excited to read TOMBS!  Without further ado, let’s turn the time over to James!

So begins today’s blog from Heidi Angell, with one small correction:  TOMBS is listed by Amazon for release on June 1, though that’s close to May (and if you would like to see for yourself, or perhaps pre-order, one can press here).  But given her next sentence, how can I resist quoting exactly the words she uses?  This, then, is the second guest essay on TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH on Heidi’s blog, the first on “What Is a Novel-In-Stories?” posted on February 9 (for which, below, see February 13).  While the first told about the structure of the novel itself, this one, titled “It Began With a Map,” is more on the [image error]structure of the world depicted within the novel and how it was developed.  To quote myself:  The original planning for TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH began with a map — different areas were defined in terms of the people who lived there.  More or less “normal” people lived in the New City and the Tombs; ghouls, the eaters of the dead, were in the Old City; boat gypsies lived on the river — they were mostly normal, but prone to disease from the river’s poisons, thus leading short but more intense lives; more or less normal people again lived in the Port City, far down the river, but had a higher proportion of mutants. . . .  And so I continued by wondering what various people did for their livings, social relations between males and females (some of which may seem a reflection on where we might be heading now), and end the post with a sort of portrait of a “typical” night in the Tombs itself, the necropolis just to west of New City across the great river.  Or, better, read it yourself by pressing here.

So, probably around the end of April/beginning of May I hope to have a third essay for Heidi, hopefully ramping up interest in the book itself when it’s out in June.  And I might mention also that this series really began with Heidi’s interviewing me at the start of the year (cf. January 10).  Those late to this blog can catch the interview by pressing here, or if interested in the novel’s structure, my first guest essay can be found here.

Godzilla/King Kong Rhysling Showcase on April 19, Plus a Poetry Lagniappe

Something new indeed!  So said the email from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA):  We would like to try something new this year to get our members excited about and more involved in the Rhysling Award:  to post about the poets behind the poetry on our blog “SpecPo”.  We would like to post a brief bio, a picture and links to your poems online.  If your poem(s) is/are only available in print, please consider posting them to your own blog or website or an author’s website to which we could link.  Otherwise, we have access to the information and there’s no need to send a picture, bio or the links.  The idea is that six poets per day will be showcased starting on April 1 (which one hopes will not be a foolish omen) and continuing [image error]every other day for about six weeks with, if I’ve read the schedule right, my fifteen minutes of fame, or fraction thereof, on April 19.  At that time — or now as well, I suppose — the SpecPo blog will be able to be reached by pressing here.

Who knows, then, what picture of me they’ll have to post!  What biographical secrets they’ll reveal!  (Of the latter, just in case they’re out of date, don’t forget [*ahem*] I have a novel, TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, coming out in June.)  Or, more to the point, my poem in this pea patch, “Godzilla vs. King Kong,” was published in the print-only journal DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES so where will they find the link to publish?  And so, for that last, why not . . . here (and note a small correction to lines 10-11 should you have the D&N copy with you).

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GODZILLA VS. KING KONG

It came down to this, finally,

the fight of all fights,

Godzilla against the King,

armed with his radioactive bad breath

and his lizard cunning,

while what could a monkey do?

“Do what you do best,”

Kong’s trainer, Fay Wray, told him,

“climb if you can, or else throw feces at him.”

Well, climbing was pretty much out of the question

unless he climbed up Godzilla himself,

the skyscrapers of Tokyo already demolished,

but, vis-a-vis Kong, ‘Zilla wasn’t that tall

and the other plan didn’t seem sanitary.

So Kong made sure he’d had a good night’s sleep,

a hearty breakfast of bananas by the bunch,

then stood his ground in the city’s ruins

delighted when Godzilla, stomping nearer,

slipped suddenly on his breakfast’s discarded peels,

taking a dive, backward, into the harbor.

Godzilla could also breathe under water

so, soon enough, he was climbing back out

dripping mud and dead crabs,

except Kong, by then, had already accepted

the winner’s purse,

and was halfway back to his Skull Island home.

(Speaking of Which) Amazon Special: Tombs Pre-Order for $10.37

Such is the spirit of serendipity, the things we discover.  As, last night, re-checking URLs for Saturday’s post, what should I find out but that Amazon is running a fairly hefty discount for pr[image error]e-ordered copies of TOMBS.  I haven’t the foggiest idea of how long this is for — best to hurry, just in case! — but as of right now the pre-order price for the print edition of TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH is only $10.37, with publication planned for June 1.  I’m not going to do the arithmetic to find the percentage, but the full price is listed as $14.95, giving a savings of $4.58 a copy which seems like a pretty good deal to me.  So to check for yourself, just push on TOMBS’s picture on the center column or, if you prefer, press here.  And please tell your friends — not to mention, when it arrives in June and after you’ve read it, if you like it please consider giving Amazon back a review!

It Began with A Map, the World of the TOMBS Set for Thursday, March 30

Hark us back to a Thursday seven weeks ago, February 9, and recall that I had a guest blog published by Heidi Angell, “What Is a Novel-In-Stories?” (see February 13*), nakedly pimping — guess what? — my own mosiac novel, TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH.  You thought it was over?  But now it comes out:  “What Is a Novel-In-Stories?” was only the first of a series of three essays planned for Ms. Angell’s blog, and word came today that the second of these, “It Began with a [image error]Map,” is scheduled for Thursday next week, March 30.  So what will the third be?  Well, most likely to come out in early to mid-May, anticipating the novel’s debut from Elder Signs Press on the first of June . . . well, I haven’t officially made up my mind yet, but we shall see then.  Perhaps you have some ideas?

Meanwhile, for Thursday, “It Began With a Map” will touch a bit on the geography and peoples of the world of the “Tombs,” hopefully whetting appetites further.  While I, having received an advance PDF just a few days ago, have begun the slog of proofreading the thing — another part of the thrill-a-minute life of the writer!

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*In fact, if you haven’t read “What Is a Novel-in-Stories,” why not do it now by pressing here?  Or better yet, if you would like to pre-order TOMBS, you can click on its picture or press here.

It’s Come to Our Attention: Chocolat In Running for VERA

We would like to announce our third annual VESTAL REVIEW Award (The VERA).

Please feel free to nominate one story under 500 words published by your magazine in print or online in 2016.  The w inning selection receives a prize of $100 and a publication in VESTAL REVIEW, and the runner-up entry gets publication in VESTAL REVIEW at our usual terms.  There is no nomination fee .  O [image error] nly a magazine editor is eligible to submit a nomination.  One story per magazine, please.

Thus the VERA award, from VESTAL REVIEW, “the oldest magazine dedicated exclusively to flash fiction” as their subtitle has it, and yesterday came the news:  Third Flatiron Anthologies editor Juliana Rew wanted to check if it was okay by me for a story, “Chocolat” (yes, that’s how it’s spelled), that appeared in their spring 2016 IT’S COME TO OUR ATTENTION (cf. February 21 2016, et al., including for special story background December 11 2015) to be nominated.  “Chocolat” is the tale of a beleaguered Frenchman protesting a recent (really, though by now a few years past) European Union Financial Council change in the legal definition of chocolate — which is to say, chocolat in French — and what became of him.

When the winners will be announced is not known by me (I think stories can be nominated through September 30, which would mean not soon) and the chances, of course, of actually winning are probably not great, but Third Flatiron puts out a pretty good series of quarterly themed anthologies (for more information on which one may click here), including offering professional rates.  Or in other words, just being singled out by them is itself an honor, and so I’ve said “oui!”

Plus Ça Change: SF Poetry Association (SFPA) Name Changed to . . . SFPA

No, it isn’t an early April Fool’s trick and it is a new name (slightly), but the name was especially voted on to keep the initials the same.  And so, as announced today, by fairly hefty vote margins the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) has become the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA, though there was a minority vote to add an extra F for SFFPA).  The change is simply a long-time-coming recognition that a lot of SFPA members

50% Off All Horrified Press Ebooks Through June, Includes Stalkers, Apocalypse

This comes to us today via Nathan Rowark on Facebook, a sale through June 30 from Horrified Press to include all e-titles.  Other than that I know no details, nor does the publisher’s Facebook page provide any more, except that all anthology titles are [image error]thus priced at $3.00 or less.  And, as it happens, I have several stories published by them although one, “Lobster Boy and the Hand of Satan” in HOW TO TRICK THE DEVIL (cf. October 14 2015, et al.) appears to be available in print only, at least on Amazon, and hence doesn’t count. Two others, though, do:  “Tunnels,” concerning familial love in an underground post-apocalyptic world, in UNTIL THE END (see June 15 2014, et al.) on sale for $2.99; and “Flesh,” of a man who strives to get fat (but, when all is said and done, perhaps not enough), in NIGHTMARE STALKERS & DREAM WALKERS (see October 14 2015, December 21 2014, et al.) for an even $3.00.  For more, for UNTIL THE END press here; and for NIGHTMARE STALKERS here.

For Inappropriate St. Patrick’s Day Chills, How About Real Life Zombies?

Some fungi, viruses and bacteria have evolved a spine-chilling way of being transmitted from one host to another. They turn their hosts into witless zombies.  Say what?  But this is the subtitle of a decidedly non-fictional article,”Real-Life Zombies that Are Stranger than Fiction” by Chris Baraniuk, published earlier this week on BBC.COM.  To quote Baraniuk further:  The zombies we know from fiction are ferocious, flesh-eating post-humans.  And while such stories have never come true, nature is full of disturbingly similar cases of zombification among plants and animals.  Sometimes the parallels are striking.  And moreover this isn’t something new.  While the “victims” thus far seem to be confined to such lower life forms as insects and [image error]spiders, at least one zombie-inducing parasite will attack frogs.

So are humans next?  I have a story, “Swarms,” coming out on Earth Day, April 22, in MOTHER’S REVENGE (Scary Dairy Press, see March 8, et al.), that takes a similar spin from presumably mutated ichneumon wasps — another insect of interest in itself.  But according to Baraniuk, some ants, at least, have been so affected for 48 million years.

Interest whetted?  Then gird your stomach and take another big swig of green beer, then check it out by pressing here.  But do so at your own risk as, to quote its author once more, [t]here is something particularly disconcerting about the idea that an animal’s behaviour could be drastically changed by an infection or parasite, but it is a phenomenon well-established in nature.

St. Patrick’s Day Eve: Elder Signs Sale for Dark Horizons, Street Magick Has One Week to Go

Here’s one I blundered on via Facebook’s ELDER SIGNS PRESS site, dated March 9 and touting a two-week only sale on Amazon.  Today being the 16th, I think that would mean there’s a week to go, ending March 23.  So for a happy Saint Patrick’s Day Eve, check out these deals for DARK HORIZONS (Amazon’s price is 12.95, but individual new copy offers start at $9.67 as of this writing) and STREET MAGICK (Amazon price $9.21) and, as a bonus, give the figure on STREET MAGICK’s cover a green suit and hat, and it could look a little bit like a leprechaun.

To check it all out, press here for the ELDER SIGNS PRESS Facebook site, then scroll down just a tad for the sale

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“. . . give the figure a green suit and hat, and it could look a bit like a leprechaun.”

announcement with links to Amazon for both books — just under the listing for early orders for TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, in fact, with its own link to Amazon should you wish to indulge while you’re at it!  My dogs in these donnybrooks are “Bottles” for STREET MAGICK, of vampiric doings in the late 1950s Boston area, complete with Cold War paranoia, and “Dark of the Moon” in DARK HORIZONS, of an international expedition to the Moon’s back side, combined with a dollop of H.P. Lovecraft and Russian myth to become dark indeed.  Also (ahem!) while the books haven’t gotten too many reviews on Amazon yet — and let this be a *hint* to readers, if you like a book you do your favorite authors a favor by sending reviews in — one review under each title (cf. “Mr. Vlesco” for the one for STREET MAGICK) singles my stories out for special mention.