James Dorr's Blog, page 43

Surprise From Her Purse, Publication Arrives; Royalties Galore

Two shortish surprises. The first . . . “Surprise!” No, that actually is the name of the story, “Surprise! (A Fable for Our Time),” some 400 words of punkish dark humor and now it’s been published and, quite by, um, surprise, landed Monday afternoon in the computer cave mailbox.

The book it’s in, IT CAME FROM HER PURSE! (see September 13 2020), or, as the blurb has it, [w]e have enjoyed peering into all of these literal and figurative purses, not to mention a variety of containment systems! Viewing the contents of a woman’s purse can be a frightening experience, or so I’ve been told . . . We would extend this fright to include men’s satchels, go-bags, and such. Please join us in thanking all the artists, poets, and storywriters for reaching into their collective psyches to bring forth these oft quirky, occasionally demented, and definitely fantastical tales! Lots of exclamation points, this one. For those who are curious, or to order, more can be found via Amazon by pressing here.

And then one more shortie, it being the season, another monster-mash royalty has been announced for June. Retaining anonymity to avoid embarrassment all around, let us simply say the amount was conducive to being saved for a gala multiple-royalty release from the publisher sometime in the future. But let us say also, remembering that single story amounts from anthologies are almost always small, the take being shared by many contributing writers, this is one that has been around, yet still sees sales in continuing if modest amounts (reporting quarterly, including another bit just last March), which is not bad.

Wormy, Crunchy Ketchup Marks First Sale for June

Aha! A sale! The first for the summer as e-announced today by Editor/Publisher Carol Hightshoe: I’m happy to tell you that your story has been accepted for the CRUNCHY WITH KETCHUP anthology.

I’ve attached a contract – if all meets with your approval – please sign and return a copy – either via email or regular mail.

I will also need a short bio (approximately 250 words) to accompany your story – written in 3rd person please.

CRUNCHY WITH KETCHUP? Yes, it’s a real book to come from WolfSinger Publications on the subject of . . . dragons! That is, quoting from the initial call, really badass dragons — they can be evil or good — or somewhere in between. The point is they need to live up to the power and strength we picture when we imagine a dragon. . . . Show us why you should never meddle in the affairs of dragons as they may consider you crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Yes, that kind of dragon and, as fate would have it, I happened to have a tale that seemed like it might do, “The Bala Worm,” about a worsening shortage of virgins — or at least young women — in a modern day town in Wales, and how a myth from the Middle Ages just might offer an explanation. With or without condiments.

It’s a longish story at something over 7000 words, as perhaps its subject matter deserves, and has seen print before, initially in BLACK DRAGON, WHITE DRAGON (Ricasso Press, 2008), as well as in my 2013 collection THE TEARS OF ISIS (for more on which one may press its image in the center column). While for the dragon, it has received good reviews both in terms of the book(s) as well as singled out as a story, and probably deserves to be seen again.

So, Ms. Hightshoe apparently agreeing, the bio and signed contract went back today.

Assassin Kickstarter Scheduled for June, Author Portrait Sent Back

Another quick note, this one from Smart Rhino Editor/Publisher Weldon Burge: I’m currently pulling together the content for the ASININE ASSASSINS Kickstarter campaign, which I’ll launch next month. A section of the content will include your bios and the first few sentences of your stories, just to give folks a “taste” of what the anthology buffet will “serve” to the readers.

So the beat goes on. The email continued: I like to add photos to the bios for these campaigns — people like to see the faces of the writers. So that went back earlier this evening, a slightly more recent portrait than the one on my Amazon Author Page, this one also used on the second (post Stoker nomination) cover of THE TEARS OF ISIS, the one posted in the center column. But on the back cover, of course, not the front, though if curious one may gain a peek by going to the Amazon page for TEARS and finding it there.

Or else just keep watch here for a link to the kickstarter when it’s announced.

4th Sunday for Writers Guild “Difficult” 3rd Sunday Write?

Well not really, actually. The Writers Guild “Third Sunday Write” prompts were on time, it’s just that I didn’t get around myself to looking for them until yesterday. And even then, the essay I wrote is disappointing (along with short, but I was wrestling a recalcitrant pen as well) but, it being ten days or something since the last entry here, I’ll share it anyway.

May in general, in fact, seems to be not that creative a month for others as well as me. COVID-19 fatigue? On the other hand, summer seems finally to be here, which is a nice thing. And there’s also cicadas — I saw the first yesterday, apparently resting on top of a wall in front of my house, me looking down at it with its little red eyes looking back up at me. And then — only then, when I recognized it for what it was — did I hear the buzzing from its more active companions from trees all around.

It didn’t seem as loud to me as what I remember from seventeen years back, but then maybe more are coming to join them even as I write this today. And — who knows? — June may come too as a month that is more creative, as well as cicada-filled!

Nevertheless, now is now. Here is the prompt I chose Saturday afternoon, #4 “How to meet the difficult…” And my title and essay:

MEETING THE DIFFICULT

It isn’t the how of the meeting, but why? The meeting is easy — the difficult meets YOU! It seeks you in shadows, in dank, hidden corners. It sneaks in on silent feet, as a cat to its prey, even perhaps purring its delight trapping you. Pouncing, unwanted, uncaring, not expected, always surprising you. Always disgusting, unkempt, terrifying — it lurks in the crevices. Always there anyhow, wanted or not.

So do not ask how the difficult can be met; ponder, instead, how it might be avoided!

Shooting Fish Proof Copy Read, Returned; Appointment Contract Renewed

Two quickies today for the “writing life” in an otherwise fairly dead, still-pandemic mid-month May. But then that’s how it goes: the feast, then the famine — not that it’s not that way sometimes even without COVID-19.

The first comes from ASININE ASSASSINS Editor Weldon Burge: I’ve attached an edited, formatted proof of your story. Please look it over and make sure you agree with any changes that have been made. If this draft meets your approval, please let me know and we’ll move on to the next production phase. The work will next go to a proofreader/copy editor, so other minor changes are likely to be made before the book goes to print. The story in question, “Shooting Fish” (see March 3, below), a saga of alien would-be invasion originally published in the UK in FORGOTTEN WORLDS, Autumn 2006.

Then the second, a trip to a slightly more distant past regarding CURIOSITIES/CURIOUS GALLERY and “Appointment in Time” (cf. May 4 and 1, 2019), this for a podcast as well as print and e-publication of a New Year’s Eve story of clockpunk horror. Thus delays plague us all, in this case requiring a contract extension for, hopefully, the appearance soon of another reprint, this one from Untreed Reads’ 2012 anthology, YEARS END: 14 TALES OF HOLIDAY HORROR.

‘Tis the Season: Royalties Beyond Riches or Reason

“Beyond,” that is, in the sense of “less than” or “lower.” But everything counts, yes?

You probably know the ground rules by now, that a story that appears in an anthology, for instance, will get only a fraction when a pittance is divided between twenty or more writers. And even single-author collections and novels, well . . . how soon it is a book may be forgotten when so many other glossy, exciting titles, shining in newness, come into the marketplace every day! Yet especially in a time of plague when imaginations may be held in check and wallets closed, is it not worth at least a minor “hurrah!” when one’s work continues to move at all?

Thus the first of winter/early spring royalties have just been reported with, as is my custom, both publisher and exact amounts left unrevealed to avoid a possible sense of bragging on either side. Or is that embarrassment? Suffice to say, though, that what is reported is, nevertheless, a positive number. It is not zero. Copies are still being bought and read, even if not so many — this for one that’s been out for the better part of a decade.

And that’s worth something.

Alliterative Poetry Proof Received and Okayed

Remember “The Worm in the Wood” and “The Westfarer” (cf. March 28 and February 5)? These were the poems initially published about a quarter of a century back, but with much earlier stylistic roots, to be published anew in a scholarly book. And so the writing life continues, this received today from author/compiler Dennis Wise: Here’s the text of your poems as currently laid out for the anthology, including headnote and footnotes. The only thing I need is your year of birth (for the headnote). . . . The text of the poems themselves should be fine, since I took them directly from the .rtf file you so helpfully sent me earlier.

The book itself is SPECULATIVE POETRY AND THE MODERN ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL, to come out from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers around mid-2022, with the two poems themselves originally published in STAR*LINE, May/June 2001, and DARK DESTINY: PROPRIETORS OF FATE (White Wolf, 1995), respectively. And so this evening I gave the poems, notes, et al. a final check and returned my okay along with the information requested — one more step taken on the road to print.

Bookish Boy Story for 3rd Sunday Write

It’s that time again, the Bloomington Writers Guild’s “Third Sunday Write” sessions (see March 24, et al.) for essays, poems, even short pseudo stories, with Facebooked COVID-19 responses rarely on that day exactly. In this case, however, I think I did come in on Monday, though busy, busy, I’ve not gotten around to offering it here until Wednesday.

So it goes.

But today’s (this week’s? month’s? Sunday’s-ish?) is also an actual story, sort of, about a young scholar’s struggles with mathematics — although with an inane sort of coda added. But it fits the prompt which was, from Coordinator Shana Ritter: Choose one of these terms from the Oxford Dictionary of Physics (yes I do keep it on my desk) and run with it *delay line *hypercharge *noncommutative geometry *polar molecule *supergravity.

And so, this month’s Third Sunday Lagniappe (and don’t forget the second, short paragraph at the end):

A BOY AND HIS BOOKS

Supergravity, yes! the boy thought, taking a moment off from his homework. That must be what they had on the planet Krypton, where Superman lived before he came to Earth, where he fools people now into thinking he’s Clark Kent just by putting on a pair of glasses. He’d always thought something was fishy about that — like maybe it was Fake News, that special news the President was always on about. Or was that the previous President? He didn’t follow politics that much — the boy, that is — but his problem was he was naive about math too, coming back to his homework. English, using big words, that was something else. He got a hypercharge out of that. But with his math assignments he didn’t understand the first thing his teacher was saying. It was so bad in fact, he’d even made up his own name for the class: Noncommunicative Geometry.

(Polar Molecules, of course, are the smallest elves in Santa’s workshop. How’s that for a delayed line?)

Black Infinity, Renegade Robots Received in Mailbox

Actually the package was on the porch floor, beneath the mailbox. It wouldn’t have fit. And a large package it was (well, for a magazine anyway), two copies of a book-thick publication in a padded envelope at just over 225 pages each.

The magazine is the Summer edition of BLACK INFINITY (cf. March 22, 9, et al.) with my part of it taking up only four pages, starting second in the lineup (opening editorial excepted) on page 43. Some other stories, of course, are longer. The magazine’s theme is RENEGADE ROBOTS — given its size, it could almost be thought of an anthology on its own — with both old and new fiction including classics by authors like Robert Sheckley and Philip K. Dick. Plus two “Special Features” (one a reminiscence of “Robby the Robot”), Departments, and closing the issue an eight-page comic.

My story in this is itself a reprint from some time back, “Scavenger,” originally published in FANTASTIC COLLECTIBLES for November 1994. It’s a noirish tale of a future city with its human population gone, but with various robots left behind, hoping to keep it — and themselves — as best they can against a time its original builders might return.

And there’s 221-plus pages more, more on which can be found, with ordering info as well if desired, by pressing here.

Weirdbook Vampire Proof Copy Received, Aimée and Les Filles Hopefully Soon to See Light

“Death and the Vampire” runs at about 1000 words and concerns a late night meeting on Rampart Street, in front of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, between Aimée and a tall, gaunt gentleman claiming to be Death. But if, as the saying goes, Death cannot be delayed, the issue he’s to be a guest star in apparently can.

Thus I wrote when the contract was signed with WEIRDBOOK (see August 18 2019, et al.), for a story originally planned to be published in mid-2020. But then a special issue intervened, and then . . . well it has been a rough year. Plus that publication times in general, as one is often reminded, are rarely described as brisk. However WEIRDBOOK is a respected publication that’s been around for a long, long time, however infrequently it might seem on occasion, and Aimée and les filles, also known as the “Casket Girls” of New Orleanian vampiric fame, are proud to be included in this upcoming issue.

So, to cases, Thursday afternoon the proof arrived and, just before supper, I sent it back noting that it looked perfect! While as for the issue as a whole, as Editor Doug Draa tells us, I can promise that there is something for every-one in this issue with thrills and chills for all! Including, I might add, starting on page 160 “Death and the Vampire,” third from last in the fiction column of what seems to be a well-filled magazine.

More to appear here as it becomes known.