Nathan Walpow's Blog, page 4

Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Pushin’ and Shovin’

In which I admit my life-long affection for professional wrestling and explain how it tied me to Joyce Carol Oates.

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Fame Is Rot; Daughters Are the Thing

I try to increase my readership and find out I can't even give my work away ... at least at Amazon.

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Occupied Earth Takes Off

If Jefferson Airplane had been called Occupied Earth, this would have been the title of their first album.

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Win a Copy of Occupied Earth

Everybody like free books, and everybody will like Occupied Earth. Get yourself over to GoodReads for a chance to win a copy.

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Notes on a Countdown

When an Amazon countdown fails to kickstart dreadful e-book sales, Walpow investigates tawdry alternatives and finds one that suits his genetic makeup.

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Cheap Push

For a couple of days, get "Push," based on a short story selected for the Year's Best Mystery series, for a paltry 99 cents.

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Something Completely Different

Let's talk about dogs. And dog owners. Most dogs are good dogs, if you give them a chance. Some owners are good, a few bad. Then there are those who don't have a clue.

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Coming Soon: Occupied Earth

So after not posting anything since October (I won’t bore you with my lame excuses), here I am. Maybe at some point I’ll tell you what happened in the interim (the non-electronic version of Logan’s Young Guns, Bouchercon, my story “A Good Day’s Work” being optioned for a movie), but for now I want to plug a crime fiction/science fiction anthology coming soon. It’s called Occupied Earth, and my story “Johnny and the Warehouse Women” is in it.

OE, which comes out October 13 in trade paper and electronic editions, is edited by Richard Brewer and Gary Phillips. Its conceit is that in 2020 invaders from outer space conquered Earth. Twenty years later, they’re still here, though they’ve kind of lost interest. Most of what happened pre-invasion still goes on, and that includes crime.

The Johnny of the story’s title is Johnny P. Jones, who some of you will remember from Logan’s Young Guns. Annie Kevorkian, also from Logan’s, also appears. The two of them are no longer Young, but they’re still Guns, and now they’re dealing with miscreants both human and alien.

Visit the Occupied Earth website (which, by the way, I designed) to find out more … info about the alien Mahk-Ra, a list of contributors, links to places you can pre-order. There are also bonus stories, set in the OE universe but not in the book. The first is “Ghost,” by OE co-editor Richard Brewer; there’ll be one from me soon.

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This Gun For Hire

Though (at the moment) this site is focused on my fiction writing, most of my income comes from other sorts of fiddling with words. I do copywriting, produce web content, and write newsletters. As an editor, I work on both fiction and nonfiction, the latter for clients ranging from non-native-English-speakers applying to MBA schools in the U.S. and U.K. to medical marijuana dispensary consultants.

I’m listed over on Thumbtack, and they recently made made me the subject of a Spotlight interview. Though I haven’t seen it yet, just answering the questions somehow boosted my ranking, and they’re offering perks if I highlight my profile there on my blog. Which is what I’m doing here:

[image error]Writers, Santa Monica, CA

 

(I show up as a “Content Writer,” and I can’t figure out how to change that, but rest assured I do all the stuff I listed above.)

So if you’re in the market for a writer and/or editor, please click on the badge above and check out what I do in the real world, or contact me through this site and let me know how I can help.

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The Urban Scribe Strikes Again

If you’ve been following my writing and editing adventures, you may know that my path and Gary Phillips’ have crossed more than a couple of times. Gary was one of our regular contributors at FourStory, the magazine-style social justice website I editor-in-chiefed from 2007 to 2012. Among his contributions were The Underbelly, a novella which started as a serial on the site and later became a book, as well as Bicycle Cop Dave, a webcomic that formed part of the graphic novel Beat L.A.

In 2010 we switched roles for “A Good Day’s Work,” a short story I wrote for Orange County Noir, an anthology Gary edited for Akashic Books’ acclaimed Noir Series.

I’m pleased to be working with Gary again on The Dixon Family Chronicles, another web serial, this one running at Capital & Main. I’m his editor again, a job that has three major duties: checking for consistency, rooting out typos, and arguing about commas.

The first chunk of Dixon, “The Sink Man,” is up now. There’ll be a new chapter every Wednesday. There’s also a video interview with Gary. Check them both out.

(Illustration by Jeffrey K. Fisher.)

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