James Dorr's Blog, page 175

THE TEARS OF ISIS — 20 Percent Off Sale Through Black Friday; Flightless Rats Land on T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog

This one’s hot off the griddle, from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing’s Max Booth III:

Starting now until Saturday we will be having a Black Friday sale on our web store. So, if you have a book with us or you’re in one of our anthologies, some promo is in order.

20% off all titles, paperback and ebook

Promo code: BLACK14

This means THE TEARS OF ISIS (“named for the goddess, no relation to current Mideastern news events”) will be on sale at a twenty percent off discount for the next two days.  Plenty of time for Christmas gifting — or for one’s self if you don’t have it already.  And plenty of time for delivery too!  To take advantage, just click on the book’s picture in the center column, or go directly to the THE TEARS OF ISIS’s page on the PMMP site by pressing here, then add the promotion code, BLACK14, when you check out.

Of course when you’ve done that (are you sure you don’t want a second copy while you’re at it, perhaps for some special relative or friend?) you might want to browse the PMMP store for other titles.  These can be reached from the page for THE TEARS OF ISIS or, to go directly to the general PMMP store page, by pressing here, where you might also check out the Kurt Vonnegut tribute anthology SO IT GOES with my story of modern mores, “Dead Girls, Dying Girls.”

Also just in, one site to watch out for is T. GENE DAVIS’S SPECULATIVE BLOG, which “releases a family-friendly speculative story every Monday, mostly by guest authors.”  Rather like DAILY SCIENCE FICTION it can be subscribed to for free and, offering a flat rate of $50.00 per story, the quality is generally high.  So, literally less than an hour ago as I write this, came the word on a story I’d sent earlier in the month, “Congratulations! I love your story, ‘Flightless Rats’, and want to publish it on my blog and in the annual anthology.”

“Flightless Rats” is a tale of the vampiress Aimée (who we’ve met before in “Casket Girls,” cf. April 17, et al.), a night in 19th century New Orleans, and a bit of Biblical apocrypha.  More will be reported as it becomes known, but in the meantime those who wish to can check out what will become her new home, and maybe sign up to follow it as well, by pressing here.

For an Odd Pre-Thanksgiving: Listverse Presents Ten Terrifying YouTube Videos (That Will Keep You Awake at Night)

But night is the best time to be awake, or, depending on one’s day job, perhaps the only time to be awake.  (Full disclosure:  I’m doing a first draft of this about six hours after returning from a checkup at the clinic I used to have a day job at — so maybe I’m still a bit dotty myself?)   Anyhow, this is a site my middle niece Jodie put me on to Tuesday evening and, as to the insomniac part of it, I make no guarantees either way.  But some of the videos are horrible fun!

So at your own risk, if you’d like to see in lieu of reviews a mini-film festival of your own (and then if you’d like to, send me a review of your favorite as a comment), please to press here.  (Listing is courtesy of Chris Tanner, originally posted on Listverse April 29 2014.)

Untreed Reads Cyber Monday December 1 Sale Includes Peds, Vanitas, Others. . . ?

The question mark is because I’m unsure whether my specific titles, PEDS, VANITAS, I’M DREAMING OF A. . . ., and the YEAR’S END New Year’s Eve horror anthology with my lead story “Appointment in Time” are to be included in the “nearly 1000 titles” announced in Untreed Reads Publishing’s Cyber Monday sale.  Here’s what they say about it:  “We’re giving you something to look forward to.  Survive the holiday and spend CyberMonday, December 1st shopping The Untreed Reads Store.  You’ll find 40% off nearly 1,000 titles from 17 great publishers.  Keep ‘em all for yourself or gift some to others. And remember: you get all ebook versions, Kindle, PDF and EPUB on your bookshelf to download whenever you want.”  They also say they’ll take 25 percent off all paperbacks (and throw in an ecopy free as well), but I think those are mostly more recent titles than any of mine.

However, on Monday, December 1 only, one way to find out is to click on any of the pictures in the center column of the three stand-alone titles noted above (which will bring you to the anthology too) — or if you’d rather, just press here.  And if it happens they’re not on the discount list, there’s a way to get from there to the Untreed Reads Store to see which titles are, or, better yet, just consider that even at the full price they’re still a bargain.

Last Sunday Poetry Missed, Post-Halloween Monsters Discovered Instead

Today I played hooky from the Writers Guild’s Last Sunday Poetry Readings (cf. September 29, et al. — and apologies to this month’s featured poets Tony Brewer and Erin Livingston) in part for poor weather, the end of a warm spell but with lots of rain and my feeling a possible touch of a cold, but in larger part to complete a story I’d been working on.  However, perusing my email afterward, I ran across an article from ELECTRIC LITERATURE, courtesy of Tim Waggoner via the Horror Writers Association Facebook page, that in its own way could be just as much fun.  Erudite, fascinating, the piece by J. W. McCormack, originally published on October 30, is titled “31 Fairly Obscure Literary Monsters.”  It can be found (albeit with a slightly, in my opinion, overly long introduction, but scroll down, scroll down!) by pressing here.

Try it, it’s worth reading (and the introduction, if longish, is fun in itself too).

Bradbury Memorabilia Finds Home(s) in Midwest

This comes a bit circuitously via the Science Fiction Poetry Society from a few days ago, but Ray Bradbury is one of four writers I routinely claim as important influences on my own writing (the others:  Edgar Allan Poe, Allen Ginsberg, Bertolt Brecht), not to mention that it’s practically local news, so I think it worth sharing for those who might wonder.

As of last year, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis became the new home for a large portion of Bradbury’s papers and office library.  To quote from the announcement:  “Mr. Bradbury, who passed away in June 2012, left his manuscripts and author’s copies of his books to his long-time friend and principal bibliographer, Professor Donn Albright of the Pratt Institute.  Albright, a native Hoosier, has graciously donated most of these books and papers to the Bradbury Center.  The Bradbury-Albright Collection will be the centerpiece of the Center’s Bradbury Memorial Archive, a simultaneous gift from the Bradbury family that includes the furnishings, correspondence, awards and mementoes from Mr. Bradbury’s home office.  Both gifts arrived at IUPUI on October 23 [2013], almost exactly sixty years after the publication of Bradbury’s classic novel, FAHRENHEIT 451.”  For those who wish, the entire announcement can be found by pressing here.

A more complete press release, dated October 30 2013, can also be found here, adding that “’[t]he Ray Bradbury items are a tremendous addition to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, one of five scholarly editions that are part of the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI,’ IUPUI Chancellor Charles R. Bantz said.  ‘Recently named an IUPUI Signature Center, the Institute for American Thought is internationally recognized for the work of the faculty and staff to preserve, research and publish authoritative texts by important American writers.  Being able to display the Ray Bradbury artifacts from his office library will present Bradbury in a compelling way for countless readers and students of his work.’

“The IU School of Liberal Arts will catalog and store most of the items until the Bradbury center is able to expand its space to accommodate the new holdings.  A few items will be on display in the center offices until then.”

For those across the border in Illinois, Bradbury’s birthplace on August 22 1920 and where he grew up, the latter release also notes that “[s]hipment of the Bradbury items to the IUPUI campus this month coincided with a shipment of Bradbury’s home library and related materials to the Waukegan Public Library in Illinois, a donation representing the author’s wish to leave his hometown with a significant portion of his literary legacy.  Waukegan Library staff and the IUPUI center worked closely throughout the summer to coordinate the shipments from Bradbury’s Los Angeles home.”

For those interested, there is also an unrelated official Ray Bradbury website that can be found here.

Speaking of Eldritch Press . . . Spider Heat Accepted for Our World of Horror

Speaking of Eldritch Press, which we met in the post just below as sponsor of the HWA’s new Dark Poetry scholarship, they also, of course, publish books themselves.  One of which has been mentioned just yesterday on their Facebook site via press owner Michael Randolph:  “Update to OUR WORLD OF HORROR Anthology.  All submissions have been answered.  If you have an outstanding response from us, check your bulk folders, your Email accounts that no longer exist, behind your ears and let us know if we have not gotten back to you.

”Final tally was 1374 submissions with 31 (roughly, we’re all tired) submissions being chosen, plus poetry.  Final word count should be roughly 100,000. . . .

”We had enough to fill a few anthos and passed over seasoned pro’s simply because we liked a different story better or the theme fit perfectly.

”We will be releasing a final TOC next week, minus the solicited stories we are waiting on.”

Well, the whole statement can be found by pressing here.  But to the point, yesterday evening my email was graced by Chief Editor Kevin Knowles:  “James, we are inquiring if your story ‘Spider Heat’ is available, if so we’d love to include it in OUR WORLD OF HORROR anthology.”  So it’s been five months, but they’d said their response times might be slow (and this is one where I’d sent the submission well before deadline).  And, as I sent back in the wee hours of a mildly snowy morning (first real snow of the coming winter, though we’d had some flurries around Halloween!), you bet “Spider Heat” — a summer story itself, set in Memphis Tennessee — is available and, at a good pay rate to boot, happy and anxious to be in its new home.

HWA New Member Perk for Aspiring Dark Poets

A short bit to note that the Horror Writers Association has announced its establishment of a Dark Poetry Scholarship program for member-poets.  Sponsored by Eldritch Press, this is intended as a supplement to its already existing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Horror Writers Association Scholarships.

To quote their announcement:  “The first Dark Poetry Scholarship will be awarded in 2015.  Thereafter, the scholarship is given annually.  The scholarship is designed to assist in the professional development of our members writing Horror and/or Dark Fiction Poetry

“HWA President Rocky Wood explained that the intent of the Dark Poetry Scholarship is to bring into prominence the very real importance and influence Dark Poetry has had on the Horror genre, ‘It is very clear to the HWA that there are real barriers limiting the amount of Dark Poetry being published.  At the same time the HWA exists to extend the horror genre in all its aspects, so we are establishing the Dark Poetry Scholarship, which is open to all our members.’”

More information on the new scholarship, including a link to the rules for those interested in applying, can be found by pressing here.

 

Vampire Poems Published in November Bloodbond

It was a year ago when they first set out, five vampire poems off into the world, brave and hopeful, and today they finally returned to my mailbox, resplendent in their new home.  Or, more to the point, the November issue of BLOODBOND arrived from Alban Lake Publishing (cf. September 3, June 25), with all five poems in it.  The poems themselves are offered in two groups: “Section I” presenting ”Entertain the Concept, or, A Vampire’s Dilemma,” “The Vampire’s Suggestion (Don’t Forget Breath Mints),” and “The Vampire Muses,” and “Section II” with “Valentine Vamp (‘And So to Bed’)” and “Sinister,” the first three addressed to the vamp herself offering philosophy and advice, and the latter two more objective in describing her methodology and practice.  More information, including a listing of other stories and poems in the issue, can be found here.

Poison Garden Exposed in Smithsonian Magazine

Ah, the smell of autumn flowers — or spring or summer or even winter — some of which can be deadly!  Such is revealed by Natasha Geiling in an article in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE on England’s Alnwick Garden, “Step Inside the World’s Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare),”  brought to us via ScienceAlert.com courtesy of Bruce Boston via the Horror Writers Association on Facebook.  To discover all — including an unexpected connection to Harry Potter — you can eliminate all these middlemen by pressing here.

But then the ScienceAlert précis has its own charms, including links to sidebars for such things as buying tickets (a discount is available for internet purchases) should you be in northeastern England anytime soon, and even a short video, all of which can be reached by pressing here.

Labyrinth Cops Sixteenth Spot in Insidious Assassins ToC

Editor Weldon Burge has announced a preliminary table of contents for the upcoming INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS anthology (cf. November 7, September 9) from Smart Rhino Publications.  But let’s let him put it into his own words:

“The Table of Contents of the INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS anthology is now complete!  I accepted ‘The Absinthe Assassin’ by JM Reinbold earlier this week, and just accepted ‘Tantse So Smert’Yu (Dancing With Death)’ by Ernestus Jiminy Chald . . .  The antho will include 24 stories (with a mix of suspense, thriller, horror, fantasy, science fiction) and will be more than 400 pages!

“Here’s the current TOC . . . we may shuffle things around before the book goes to press.”

Those Rockports Won’t Get You Into Heaven — Jack Ketchum

Dead Bill — Shaun Meeks

Worse Ways — Meghan Arcuri

No One of Consequence — Christine Morgan

And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’ — Doug Rinaldi

The Night Gordon Was Set Free — Billie Sue Mosiman

Almost Everybody Wins — Lisa Mannetti

Friends From Way Back — Dennis Lawson

The Repo Girl — Patrick Derrickson

Letter for You — Carson Buckingham

The Rock — Joseph Badal

The Handmaiden’s Touch — Doug Blakeslee

The Bitter and the Sweet — D.B. Corey

Influence — Martin Zeigler

Agnus Dei — Jezzy Wolfe

Labyrinth — James Dorr

Blenders — J. Gregory Smith

One of Us — Austin S. Camacho

The Absinthe Assassin — JM Reinbold

Slay It Forward — Adrian Ludens

Tantse So Smert’Yu (Dancing With Death) — Ernestus Jiminy Chald

What the Blender Saw — L.L. Soares

Code Name Trine — Martin Rose

Bestsellers Guaranteed — Joe Lansdale

My outing here, “Labyrinth,” takes place on the island of Crete and melds modern-day politics with the myths of the Ancient Greeks.  And for you hard-core assassination fans, there’s also a previous Smart Rhino anthology, UNCOMMON ASSASSINS, available, more on which can be found here.  My story in this one, “The Wellmaster’s Daughter,” is set a bit farther south in the Sahara Desert and has to do with family relations (see also August 16 2012, et al.).