Laird Barron's Blog, page 25

Read This: Cover & ToC of Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2

Editor Kathe Koja has finalized her table of contents for the��Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 2. Congratulations to her, Mike Kelly, and the authors. I’m looking forward to this beauty in the fall.

Blackwood’s Baby Prowls Again

Here is a portrait of Blackwood’s Baby. Here, he’s knocking about Wolfvale, looking for some poor, hapless trophy hunter to murder. Thank you to Milwaukee artist��Vincent Maslowski��for permitting me to share this beautiful thing that awaits certain damned souls who venture too far into the woods.

art courtesy Vincent Maslowski

Could It Be…Satan?

I provided the foreword to a reissue of��The Case Against Satan��by Ray Russell. Coming from Penguin Classics in time for Halloween. Damned creepy book, written with a chilling, stripped to the bone style.��Highly recommended.

Blizzard of 2015

Still cloudy, still breezy, but only a few inches of new snow. Other areas are getting hammered, so be careful out there.

I caught bits of the 24 hour news stations–this is an apocalypse of historic proportions, of course. My blood has thinned over the years and I’m not as impervious to cold weather as I used to be. Even during my youth when I spent 10-16 hours a day in the weather, there were moments that reminded me that our reactions to adversity are relative.

One of the most extraordinary human moments I ever witnessed happened during the 91 Iditarod. I pulled my team into��Unalakleet��during a whiteout. The temperature was well below zero Fahrenheit with a steady 15-20 knot wind and gusts savage enough to push you around on the ice. In the winter in Unalakleet, everything is ice or dirt. I took care of the dogs and went into a house to change some gear and fetch water. The bay window in the living room thrummed like a portal into the lowest, frozen circle of hell. Between gusts, an outline of a building appeared across the way–a school. Gradually, piece by piece, playground equipment came into focus. Little kids, bundled in snowsuits and parkas, were having recess. Another big gust came off the Norton Sound and buried them again.

Here is a photo of me with the team in Unalakleet that day.

image via AlaskaStockImage

Read This: Bitter Water Blues

My pre-Snowpocalypse 2015 (AKA typical January weather in SE Alaska) book recommendation is a nasty, brutal, and thoroughly entertaining novel called��Bitter Water Blues��by Patrick Shawn Bagley.

A former contract hitter tries to go straight, but it’s never that simple…Readers who enjoyed A��History of Violence��will dig this, although matters in BWB are a bit more complicated and an ever escalating sense of doom propels the narrative. Bagley is a sure-footed stylist and his depictions of the underworld and its denizens is compelling. Raw, unfiltered noir.

Thank You to Marly Rusoff

Marly Rusoff’s name pinged my radar today. It made me realize I owe her a public thank you.

Many years ago before I’d ever sold anything, I did some transcription work for a non-fiction writer. His agent was Marly Rusoff. She ultimately got him signed to a major book deal. At the time I was working on an epic fantasy novel, something Ms. Rusoff didn’t represent. Nonetheless, one thing led to another and she red-lined the first five pages of that novel. Her advice clicked and I experienced a painful moment of crystal clear enlightenment regarding my flaws as a stylist. Sort of an intellectual rebirth, except I didn’t require a doctor to slap me on the ass to start crying.

These days she heads her own��agency��and I have no doubt her clients are in excellent hands. Thank you for taking the time to help a new writer out, Ms. Rusoff. It was a small thing, those five pages of red slashes and scribbled notes you performed as a courtesy, but it turned out to be much bigger for me.

On Writing: Know Your Value

In the interest of making a public service announcement:

Best practices are common enough. While not everyone agrees regarding particulars, there is a general consensus among working writers–money flows to the writer; be mindful of boilerplate and your rights as a creator, and so forth.

It’s more difficult to receive guidance in the gray areas of this business. My experience is that at some point, especially after you’ve amassed a portfolio, it’s time to decide, in broad terms, what you’re worth. It’s a perilous assessment–err too far in either direction, you’ll wind up in the rough. Nonetheless, we writers already find ourselves in the tall grass all too often. Mentors can help; agents are useful; but ultimately, it’s on us to make the call, draw the line, and sign it, or not.

Case in point: A while back, I sold a novella to a terrific publisher for a deluxe anthology with a tiny print run. The stories were solicited by a major editor. Mine was commissioned for a flat fee. The anthology sold well. Pleased with his success, the editor decided to approach other publishers for a paperback/electronic release. A new publisher expressed interest and offered the editor terms to reprint the anthology.

I can’t speak for the other writers; what follows describes my experience only.

The editor had only secured the right to publish my novella in the original limited anthology. As the book was a limited edition, there wouldn’t be any further print runs in hardcover.To use my material in the paperback/electronic edition, he required me to sign a brand new contract. And therein lay the rub. The new terms (in a nutshell) had twenty+ authors splitting (based on word count) about five hundred dollars of advance money plus whatever royalties might be earned through pb/electronic sales. I did not like the terms or the money on offer, so I counter-offered for industry standard reprint rates which typically run between 1-3 cents per word.

My reasoning? Most anthologies I’ve participated in sell thousands of copies during their original run and so the reprint value of individual stories is debatable. Additionally, I’ve also usually signed a contract giving the anthologist pb and electronic rights for a certain duration. In other words, any new money is somewhat of a bonus and not subject to negotiation. This case is trickier–fewer than 500 readers have seen this novella–if I retained the rights to reprint it, I’d have scant difficulty placing it any number of places for a fair reprint price.

Long story short, we didn’t reach an agreement and so I regretfully pulled my novella from future incarnations of the anthology.

I hold no animus toward the editor. It was purely a business decision. Whether this will lead to future difficulties, only the magic eight-ball knows. My point isn’t that one of us was right and the other wrong, it’s simply this–if you write professionally and do it long enough, you’re going to come up against these situations. Everything in this business is negotiable. Right, wrong, or indifferent, years ago I made up my mind where the lines are drawn and what value I assign my labor.

It may be something for you to ponder.

New Cthulhu 2

Thank you to Paula Guran for reprinting��Mysterium Tremendum��in��New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird. This anthology is a big old beast with tales by Wilum Pugmire, John Langan, Elizabeth Bear and many others.

Paula has also purchased another story of mine called “A Clutch” for an upcoming anthology. I’m slowly working on a sequence featured in the quasi medieval setting of the first chapter of The Croning. Antiquity is��a twilight world of talking animals, black magicians, and the Cult of the Leech. More to come.

Licence Expired

Fleming’s Bond novels were fixtures in my family’s library. During my early teens I came across��License Renewed��by John Gardner. It was difficult to wrap my head around the notion of a new author working in Fleming’s universe (I was yet innocent of Lin Carter’s and August Derleth’s literary incursions upon Howard and Lovecraft).

Then a light clicked on in my brain–maybe I’d write a Bond novel someday. Perhaps that’s in the cards, perhaps not. Meanwhile, I sure as hell plan to write a short story about 007.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ChiZine Publications to Publish Unauthorized James Bond Anthology

TORONTO, Ontario (January 19, 2015) ��� Independent Toronto publisher ChiZine Publications announces they will be publishing a new anthology of short stories featuring James Bond now that Ian Fleming���s work has entered the public domain in Canada. The anthology, titled Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond, will be edited by Toronto authors Madeline Ashby (vN, iD; Company Town) and David Nickle (Knife Fight and Other Struggles,The ���Geisters, Eutopia).

���We want to feature original, transformative stories set in the world of Secret Agent 007,��� says Nickle. ���We’re hoping our contributors will combine the guilty-pleasure excitement of the vintage Fleming experience with a modern critique of it.���

���This is an opportunity to comment on the Bond universe from within it,��� adds Ashby. ���We’re specifically looking for writers and stories that would make Fleming roll in his grave.���

Since only Fleming���s Bond novels have entered the public domain, the stories won’t reference the films, subsequent novels written by others, or any media tie-ins. However, within Fleming���s works are well-known villains Rosa Klebb, Oddjob, Dr. No, SMERSH, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE. Familiar allies include Moneypenny, Honey Rider, Pussy Galore, Felix Leiter and Quarrel. The story authors will be able to call on any of these characters and organizations along with the many others that have appeared in Fleming���s stories.

Authors who have confirmed their appearance in Licence Expired include:

Tony Burgess

Corey Redekop

Robert J. Wiersema

Laird Barron

Nathan Ballingrud

Kelly Robson

A.M. Dellamonica

Ian Rogers

Licence Expired is scheduled to be published in November 2015.

Contact

Sandra Kasturi, Co-Publisher

ChiZine Publications

http://www.chizinepub.com

sandra@chizinepub.com

About ChiZine Publications

ChiZine Publications (CZP) is British Fantasy Award-winning and three-time World Fantasy Award-nominated independent publisher of surreal, subtle, and disturbing dark literary fiction hand-picked by co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, Bram Stoker Award-winning editors.

About the Editors

David Nickle is a journalist, co-editor of the forthcoming Exile Book of New Canadian Noir (with Claude Lalumi��re), the author of the cold-war novel of psychic espionage Rasputin’s Bastards and the eugenics horror novel, Eutopia. Madeline Ashby is a columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, a futurist, and the author of the Machine Dynasty series of science fiction novels, as well as Company Town, forthcoming from Tor Books. They live together in Toronto.

More info on public domain & Bond:

http://io9.com/what-does-it-mean-now-that-james-bonds-in-ca���

From the Jessica Mace Files

I’m wrapping up several projects. One of these is a prequel to my Jessica Mace stories.��Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle��is set in the late 1970s and features Jessica’s parents as recent high school grads trying to survive the attacks of a serial killer with ties to the CIA. It’s a slasher inflected by Ludlum and MR James. For interested JM fans, here’s a peek:

Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle

August, 1979. Palmer, Alaska. I���m going to kill you all.��

Lucius pulled on her dress again, then the knee high go-go boots. Esteban lay spread eagle across the mattress like he���d gotten flattened by a truck. He didn���t even bitch that she was screwing and booking.

She lit a cigarette (Player No. 6, no substitutes) and glanced at her watch. The watch was a high school graduation present to herself swiped from a tourist-trap gift shop during a spring trip to Eagle Talon. A real watch with a quartz face, stainless steel butt plate (water-resistant to 50 meters!), and a band of interlocking metal links you could wrap around a snow tire. Not the prissy filament-thin chain girls always wore on their delicate fucking wrists. The kind of timepiece construction foremen and steely-nerved execs strapped on the way gladiators did it up with iron bracers and spiked cestuses. Backhand a fool in the chops with this baby and he or she was going down, minus teeth.

Save your life one day, Dad said when he saw it. Dad was the king of foreshadowing. His wedding ring had kept his finger attached after a piebald stallion chomped it in his horse-breaking days of yore. He was keen on serendipity and Jim Beam.

Lucius finished the cigarette. She slid on five rings���three costume gemstones on her right hand; a mood ring and a silver death���s head on the left. She scooped her clutch (black vinyl with a small bronze clasp of a bald eagle descending, talons out) and strode through the doorway without saying goodbye. I don���t say goodbye, ever, she���d told Esteban during their sophomore year when they started knocking boots. Especially to you.

Naturally, she stashed a switchblade in her purse alongside the compact and black cherry lipstick. The switchblade recently belonged to a gangster wannabe, ass-grabbing hick named Steve Morrow. Morrow didn���t come around town much since senior prom. The gemstone dents and death���s head tattoos on his greasy face were possibly permanent.

���Hi, Mrs. Mace,��� she said to Esteban���s mom as they passed on the stairs.

���Hello, dear.��� The older woman wore a kimono with a red heron stitched on the breast. Her hair was bound in green curlers at half past 10pm. ���I miss anything?���

���Not a damned thing.���

���His father���s son.���

Meanwhile:

It was finally dark enough.

Butch Tooms slumped low in the backseat of the stolen Pontiac. Nobody ever looks in the backseat until it���s too late. He wore his dead mother���s nylon stocking over his face. He twisted its mate into a garrote. Mo-Town played in the background. Friday Night Countdown. Across the way, Lucius Lochinvar left the Mace house and walked north toward Main Street. She tromped along, mouth set stern as hell, arms swinging like she was on her weekend job as roller derby enforcer down at the Hippodrome North. Tough little broad. He evaluated her the way a mongoose assesses a cobra. Kill now, or kill later? He decided to kill her tomorrow night at the party. Easier to keep the bodies in one pile, right?

Watching those hips switch stirred his ambition. If the death gods were with him he���d get a little freak on, too. After he���d let the air out of her tires, for safety���s sake.

The Jackson 5 came on the radio to agree. ABC, baby! OneTwoThree, baby!