Marty Halpern's Blog, page 25

Book Received...The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2

The second project I worked on this year was The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two , edited by Gordon Van Gelder -- and the first project for this year for Tachyon Publications.
Reading this volume of The Very Best of F&SF is like peering into a time capsule of the history (well, at least as far back as the '50s) of fantasy and science fiction short stories, from "The Third Level" by Jack Finney, published in 1952, to the most recent story, "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu, published in 2011.
My blog post of January 24 lists the full table of contents, along with some personal thoughts on the stories themselves.
And if this "very best of" Volume Two intrigues you, then please check out the previous volume, The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which I worked on in early 2009. I didn't post the table of contents at that time, but the stories range from "Of Time and Third Avenue" by Alfred Bester (1951) to "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang (2007). This first volume also includes the original Hugo Award-winning novella "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, who passed away on June 15.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 Mini Tower

In the fall of 2011, my old Compaq laptop finally gave up the ghost. I won't touch any Dell hardware (in fact, Dell couldn't give me a laptop for free -- I wouldn't accept it; I used a Dell laptop when I worked at LSI Logic and it always seemed to have one hardware problem after another); and as for HP, well, not only do their laptops run exceedingly hot, one never knows from day to day whether HP will still be in the PC business. So, I had heard good things about Lenovo (a Chinese-based company that had bought the IBM ThinkPad name and division), did some research -- and I ended up purchasing a Lenovo IdeaPad Z575, which I unboxed in this blog post on November 5, 2011.
The Z575 is a beautiful piece of hardware, with its 15.6-inch backlit HD display, and has performed superbly these past two-and-a-half years (knock on wood!). So, when it came time to replace my XP box (now that Microsoft is no longer supporting XP), I looked to Lenovo for that replacement.
Of course, I'm not one to purchase an off-the-shelf box. I had to put this one together, option by option, from the Lenovo website. I checked out the K-series towers, but eventually decided on the M-series. I had initially settled on the M93p tower, and had it completely configured, when I figuratively slapped my hand, realizing that I didn't need that much power. So I settled for the ThinkCentre M73 mini tower instead. But, within that tower, I selected some special goodies.
I placed the order on March 27 with the understanding that delivery could be a minimum of 5 weeks; that's correct: 5 weeks. On April 8 I received a follow-up email that my order has been delayed and will be delivered within 30 days. Unfortunately, I had an open window in my schedule at the end of the 5 weeks, but not within that 30-day-delay window. Finally, on May 2, I received a shipment confirmation email. The box arrived on Friday, May 9, and has been sitting in a back room, still sealed, ever since.
Like I said, I didn't have an open window in my schedule at the end of those additional 30 days. See my recent blog posts on BayCon 2014 (which included the Writers Workshop and meeting with Matt Maxwell, upon my completing work on his novel Blue Highway) and the Kate Elliott "best of" collection (actually the "very best of"!).
But you're probably thinking, Just unpack the box, take out the bloody tower, and hook it up....
Unfortunately, the tower only came with Microsoft Office 2013 and Adobe Acrobat XI. If those were the only applications I needed to do my work, well, then, I could indeed have hooked everything up within a day. But then there were the Windows 7 drivers I had to track down for my Canoscan 4200F scanner. I had to install more than forty additional applications, some from discs (Acronis True Image Premium 2014 [and then create a bootable recovery disc], Epson WorkForce WF-3540 drivers and apps, FileMaker Pro 11, OmniPage Pro 18, and Webroot Personal Security, just to name a few), but most from online sources, too many to list fully, but here are a few: Google Chrome, Google Keep, Mozilla Firefox, 7Zip, Belarc Advisor, Evernote, FileZilla FTP, Greenshot, Homebase 3, Secunia PSI, TeamViewer 9, and five different cloud services. And, as I said, these are just a few.
Not to mention the fact that I've been using Microsoft Office 2003 for more than ten years; Microsoft Office 2010 only occasionally, when I use my ASUS Zenbook (see this blog post), which is typically when I'm traveling. But this new Lenovo box comes with Microsoft Office 2013, and I'm still trying to find the "x" to close just the document in MS Word without having to close the entire app. So, if I'm going to use this new tower for my day-to-day work, then I'm going to need a few days to familiarize myself with all the new apps (Greenshot, for one; since the previous screen capture utility I used doesn't work on Win7) and capabilities.Which brings me to what's inside the box, which I finally unpacked this weekend, nearly four weeks since it actually arrived:

ThinkCentre M73 - Mini Tower - 10B0CTO1WW

4YR Onsite + Keep Your Drive + Tech Support Warranty
Core i7-4770S 3.1GHz 8M Cache
500GB+8GB_Hybrid HDD_2.5"_SATA HDD Drive
8GBx1_PC3-12800_DDR3_UDIMM Memory
NVIDIA 620_1GB_DP+VGA_FH Graphic Card
DVD Recordable_W7 Optical Drive
Integrated Audio
Integrated_Intel GIGA Ethernet
Wireless Combo N6235_FH
OS Windows 7 Professional 64
Microsoft Office MSOF2013B+AdobeAcrobat XI_NA

With the hybrid drive I'm able to boot up Win7Pro in under 60 seconds, which is nearly as fast as the Zenbook (30 seconds) with its solid state drive.
Now compare this M73 to my first Windows PC, purchased in April 1995, which I blogged about here:Windows 3.11, a huge 1GB hard drive, and a whopping 8 megs of RAM. And that old 1995 Windows tower was a lot more expensive, too!
My only complaint so far with the M73 is that it is louder than I had anticipated; the fans are very noisy, though this may be due in part to the fact that there are vents on both the front and the left side of the tower, both of which face me when I'm sitting at my desk.
Market Watch currently has an article online entitled "10 things not to buy in 2014." Included in this list, in addition to cable TV and DVD and Blu-ray players, are desktop and laptop computers. Now, maybe the author of this list, AnnaMaria Andriotis, has no need for a desktop, or even a laptop, in order to do her job, but if I'm going to scan in 75,000 words of fiction, and then clean up the formatting and scanning errors in those 8 files, I want to be comfortable doing so -- especially when I'm spending 6-plus hours at a time at this -- with a full keyboard, a 22-inch flat-screen HD display, and all the conveniences a desktop provides, including two stand-alone backup drives for redundancy.

Editing in Process...The Very Best of Kate Elliott

Cover Art by Julie DillionThe beauty of any "best of" collection is that it allows the reader to experience the full expanse of the author's writing and story telling. And, if the collection is indeed worth its (literal) weight, then the book will hopefully have some small treasure, a story unfamiliar to the reader, even if the reader is one of the author's biggest fans. That was true of The Very Best of Tad Williams (see my November 13, 2013 blog post); and it holds true on my most recent project, The Very Best of Kate Elliott , both from Tachyon Publications.
My commitment for Kate Elliott project was to have the entire 113,000-word collection reviewed and copy edited by "early June." At issue, though, was that two-thirds of the overall word count -- approximately 75,000 words -- needed to be scanned in, and then the scanned files cleaned up (formatting problems, scanning errors, etc.). I completed all the scanning, and emailed the completed files to Tachyon on May 15. I then used the following week to prepare for BayCon 2014, held on the Memorial Day weekend, which I blogged about at length here. After recovering from the con, I then proceeded to work on the Kate Elliott manuscript files, all of which were completed -- on schedule -- the first week of June. (A bit of work had to be done during the intervening weekend as well to ensure that I completed the project by "early June.")
Given the sources of their original publication, the majority of these Kate Elliott (the pseudonym of Alis A. Rasmussen) stories were new to me. Six of the twelve stories, for example, were originally published in anthologies from DAW Books, only one of which, the DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Elizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert (2003), was known to me. Of the other six stories, one previously appeared online only on KateElliott.com, and another -- "On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New" -- is original to this collection.
Regardless of the source of these stories, they are all as varied, and finely crafted, as the anthologies in which they originally appeared. My favorite story would have to be "A Simple Act of Kindness," which originally appeared in The Shimmering Door, edited by Katharine Kerr (HarperPrism, 1996). The story of Daniella, a young girl who, in some ways, feels safer out in a storm at night -- even a night and a storm such as this -- searching for lost sheep, than at home with her family (not the least of which is "her cousin Robert, who had been pestering her for months now, ever since her first bleeding came on her"). To set the scene:

Clouds massed, black and brooding, over the hills and the great length of forest that bordered the village of Sant Laon. They sat, almost as if they were waiting, and the wind died down and tendrils of mist and spatterings of rain were all that came of them through the day. At evening mass, at a twilight brought early by the lowering clouds, Deacon Joceran spoke solemnly of storms called up by unnatural means, and she warned all the villagers to bar their doors and shutters that night and to hang an iron knife or pot above the door and a sprig of rosemary above the window.

Unknown creatures, dark shapes, darker than the night, pass Daniella as she searches for the lost ewe. The thing the creatures seek takes refuge with its horse in the church, and Daniella follows it inside.

...by the light of seven candles lit round the altar and protected by glass jars, Daniella saw it was no Thing at all but a young woman, dark-haired and dark eyed, her skin dusky colored like bread baked too long in the oven.... The horse was a fine beast, big-boned but not enormous, with an intelligent head—a nobleman's mount. Tied on beside the saddlebags were a tasselled bowcase of leather embossed with griffins and a quiver full of arrows. A small shield painted black hung from the saddle. The woman wore a sword at her belt.

Since this is a spoiler-free post, I'll only say that Daniella's selfless act that night brings her to the attention of these dark creatures, and you'll need to read the story (if you haven't done so previously) to learn the ripple effect this has on Daniella, her family, and the village of Sant Laon. It's certainly not a "happily ever after" story, at least for Daniella.
Here are the twelve stories:

The Gates of Joriun Leaf and Branch and Grass and VineThe Queen's GardenOn the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the NewThe Memory of PeaceWith God to Guard HerRiding the Shore of the River of Death My Voice Is in My SwordSunseekerA Simple Act of KindnessTo Be a ManMaking the World Live Again

In addition to these stories, the author has also included four essays, all in print for the first time: two originally appeared on KateElliott.com, a third appeared on SF Signal , and the fourth essay on Tor.com . Here are the four essays:

The Omniscient Breasts: The Male Gaze through Female EyesThe Narrative of Women in Fear and PainAnd Pharaoh's Heart HardenedThe Status Quo Does Not Need World Building

These essays are an added bonus, and provide the reader with some insight into Kate Elliott the person as well as a foundation for much of her story-telling.
Lastly, I hope you are as knocked out by Julie Dillon's cover art as I am. In a one-pager entitled "About the Cover Art" in the book, Kate Elliott states that Dillon's art illustrates a passage from Cold Steel (Book 3 in the author's Spiritwalker Trilogy).

[Update, about two hours later]
I realized that I neglected to mention the introduction that Ms. Elliott wrote specifically for this collection. Subtitled "The Landscape That Surrounds Us," this new intro clocks in at nearly 3100 words and ten manuscript pages -- and sets the tone for the entire volume. The author writes at length about her childhood, growing up in rural Oregon, and how the life she led influenced her writing.

Book Received...James Morrow

Last fall I had the pleasure of working on yet another James Morrow novella from Tachyon Publications: The Madonna and the Starship . You can read about my work on this book in my blog post dated November 24, 2013.
But all you really need to know about James Morrow -- and all of his stories -- are these six words I used to describe him in that blog post: James Morrow is an absolute master of the sardonic.
But don't take my word for it, read this novella for yourself. The Madonna and the Starship is now available from you favorite store, physical or virtual -- and I have the proof, since my contributor's copy arrived this week.
Here's an excerpt from the Publishers Weekly starred review:

Jonathan Swift meets Buck Rogers in this hilarious send-up of the golden ages of television and pulp sci-fi.... [L]obster-like extraterrestrials get wind of "Sitting Shivah for Jesus," an upcoming episode of a Sunday-morning religious program written by Kurt's love interest, Connie Osborne. The crustacean "logical positivists" propose to use their death ray to annihilate the show's two million devout, "irrational" viewers. Can Kurt and Connie refashion her script into a satirical, sacrilegious screed, forestalling mass slaughter? This delightful romp from Morrow provides the breathless answer in short order; no need to wait for next week to tune in and find out.

News of the Day:

BayCon 2014 Recap

This was the first year that I volunteered to participate in the BayCon Writers Workshop. My group was scheduled for Saturday, May 24, from 2:00-5:00pm. I had three stories to critique, so I set aside the weekdays prior to BayCon to read -- and reread -- mark up, and then critique the three stories.
The other "Pros" in my workshop group were Jennifer Carson and Candy Lowe; the three "Writer Participants" were Dana Ardis ("Whetstone"), Susan Mittmann ("Perceiving Gabi"), and Francesco Radicati ("A Fistful of Brifgars").
I understand that the BayCon Writers Workshop follows the Clarion format, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with said format. Each of the three writers was critiqued by the five other workshop participants. We had three minutes apiece, I believe, to provide feedback to the respective writer. That means each writer had to listen to input for fifteen minutes (and from five different people) before responding. Fifteen minutes yields a lot of input. If the writer jots down notes, then the note-taking process interferes with the ongoing critique: one cannot write down what has just been said, or a question in response to what has just been said, and listen to new input at the same time. Fifteen minutes of input is simply overwhelming. Regardless, that is the process, and a writer who participates in the BayCon Writers Workshop must work with it.
The story "A Fistful of Brifgars" by Francesco Radicati was a takeoff, an homage, of the movie A Fistful of Dollars. A delightful story with a surprise ending. Our review of the story yielded a couple of specific improvements that would have given it a rock-solid plot, at which point we felt the story could be submitted for publication. Unfortunately, Francesco had already sent out the story to every print and online magazine we suggested, and the story had been rejected by all of them. (Remember, this was prior to our suggested improvements.) Francesco will now have to dig a bit deeper into second- and even third-tier venues in his effort to have this story published. The lesson learned here? If you are going to have a story critiqued -- workshopped -- do it before you submit the story for publication, not after. Of course, the caveat is that you may not realize the story needs work before you send it out. In that case, once the story has been rejected by two, or even three venues, consider that it might need some rework before sending it out to every venue you can think of.
The fifteen-minute critiquing format aside, the workshop was both an enjoyable experience as well as a learning experience for me and I would be willing to participate again next year, if they'll have me.

Before going any further, I need to give a shout out to the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara Hotel. When I reserve a hotel room, I specifically request a quiet room as well as a feather-free room. I can handle a feather comforter, but I have to avoid feather pillows, otherwise I will experience breathing difficulties throughout the night. So, when I first enter a hotel room, the first thing I do is check the pillows to make sure they are foam, and not feather. Unfortunately, this time around, I neglected to perform that critical check. We (my wife Diane and I) checked in around 11:00am on Saturday, and once in the room immediately unpacked and then prepared to meet someone for lunch (more on this in a bit). We were just about ready to leave the room when the phone rang: the front desk had called. Evidently the staff person realized I had checked in early and the room still had feather pillows and blanket. I requested that just the pillows need to be swapped out and before we had left the room for lunch, housekeeping had shown up to remove the feather pillows. Had the front desk not caught my negligence, I probably wouldn't have discovered the feather pillows until late that night when we were readying for bed, and I would have had to deal with getting foam pillow replacements from the hotel's night shift. So, thank you Hyatt Regency for being aware of your guests' special requests.
My other shout out goes to the staff of the TusCA Restaurant, located within the hotel. I will admit it, I am a chocolate freak. When I travel, I typically take some chocolate with me; but this time I forgot. By Sunday afternoon Diane and I were both craving chocolate, and there was none to be found. So we planned to have some chocolate dessert after dinner. Unfortunately, the dessert menu only had a couple items with a chocolate sauce; we wanted chocolate! When the waiter (my apologies but I do not recall his name) (I seem to be forgetting a lot lately...hmm....) returned to our table for our dessert order, I explained the problem -- chocolate sauce, but no actual chocolate dessert. He said that he just may be able to get us a slice of chocolate cake: Would that do? YES! And, of course, he returned a short while later with a huge, and wonderful, slice of chocolate cake, which Diane and I shared. (Actually, I think she took a couple bites and said enough, and I ate all the rest; remember, I'm the chocolate freak.) Now the waiter could have said something like, I'm sorry that we don't have the dessert you want; I'll bring you your check. But he made the extra effort, which was the icing -- literally and figuratively -- on an excellent meal.

As an aside, the Hyatt Regency provides free parking for all of its guests (and convention attendees) with a fairly large parking area in front of the hotel and a three-level (or is it four?) parking structure in the back. My concern for future BayCons: Will this parking remain free once the new San Francisco 49ers stadium opens in August?
I also want to take this opportunity to offer kudos to the convention staff for putting together one of the best BayCons in years. I don't have access to the numbers, but it appeared, at least to me, that there were more people in attendance than in recent years. If so, then I have to believe that choosing David Weber as the Writer Guest of Honor had a lot to do with that increase in attendance, as his appearance at the con no doubt brought in a large contingent of military SF readers and fans. Having the St. Michael's Salle d'Armes members on hand, performing fencing demonstrations, and acting out fight scenes from published novels, was an added plus. I'm hoping BayCon 2015 will be just as successful, with Writer GOH Seanan McGuire and Artist GOH Julie Dillon. (You'll see Julie Dillon's name again in a forthcoming blog post here.)

Back in March, I signed an agreement with author Matt Maxwell to review, critique, and mark up his 115,000-word novel Blue Highway. Matt and I had first crossed paths, albeit briefly, at WesterCon 66 in Sacramento last July. Since he was planning to attend BayCon as well, I set aside the necessary time, and made the effort to complete the manuscript in time to be able to hand it off to him at the convention. But before we met to discuss business, I wanted us to have an opportunity to simply get to know one another first. So, we arranged to meet for lunch at noon on Saturday. We snagged a table after a short wait in the Evolution Café (just off the lobby area), and over various sandwiches, we chatted about writing, movies, architecture, families, and more. Matt and I then arranged to meet (just the two of us this time, no Diane) in the lobby at 2:00pm the following day, Sunday, to review the manuscript.
On Sunday afternoon, Matt and I met in the lobby at the specified time, and then sought out an empty table at which to sit and work on the second-floor mezzanine. I reviewed the copy editing symbols I use to insure that Matt understood my markups; I discussed some content issues that I had found; and then I reviewed the overall manuscript. Lastly, I shared with Matt the plot questions/issues that I had upon completing the novel. All of these questions were actually in sync with Matt's intentions in Blue Highway as this was to be the first volume in a trilogy. Matt has published his own comics, game-related projects, and short stories, but I believe this is his first novel. But don't let that stop you from adding the name Matt Maxwell to your list of authors to watch. Here's the opening paragraph to Chapter 11: [Note: Authors always share the opening chapter to their novels. Why? Because Chapter 1 is the most worked/reworked chapter in the entire book. But, will the rest of the book reflect the same quality of prose, stand up to the same scrutiny?]

New Saigon was built like a house of cards too tall for its own good, ready to topple in a stiff wind, raining jokers all the way. Tall spires needled from the tops of the apartment towers and impaled the perfect blue sky. Pennants and banners made up a fragmented rainbow that rippled in the breeze lazing off the nearby Pacific. The skyline was a bizarre juxtaposition of Khmeresque towers and sterile ultra-modernity. Detail and crenellation and ornament staring down blank and featureless curves lined with mirrored carbon glass. There was no continuity, just leaps in style from the florid and exotic to suggestive flatness and back again.

And that is a brief introduction to Blue Highway's New Saigon.


Saturday evening, around 7:00pm, Diane and I met up with Amy Sterling Casil for dinner at the TusCA Restaurant. Amy has launched a new publishing venture -- Chameleon Publishing -- and since we have spoken about my involvement in the press, I wanted to learn more about Amy's publishing philosophy, the authors whom she will be initially publishing, etc. I think Amy spent more time talking than she did eating, which is unfortunate because the TusCA food is always excellent. Diane and I each had a mini Margarita Pizza, while Amy chose the dinner buffet. Chameleon Publishing will be showcasing some top authors when those first books start hitting the shelves, both real and virtual -- but since I'm not sure how much of this is public knowledge, I'll refrain from mentioning any of those names for now. I'm looking forward to this future opportunity, and I will definitely post here when opportunity becomes reality.

And what would a science fiction & fantasy convention be without panels, and panels, and more panels. Though I participated in two other panels, and attended a few others, I'm going to use this remaining time (The meter is still running, right?) to focus on only one: "How to Develop Your Marketing as an Author." Aside from yours truly, the other panelists included Kyle Aisteach, A. E. Marling, and Tony N. Todaro, the panel moderator. Kyle and Tony and I have shared many a panel in the past; and A. E. Marling and I have now met and shared a panel as well.
Authorial self-promotion is sort of like chocolate: you gotta have some every day. This panel was an hour and fifteen minutes in length, and could easily have run another half hour or more. I had hoped to talk about the special (what I believe to be unique) promotional project I undertook for the publication of my Alien Contact anthology, which is why I signed up to participate on this panel. Sadly, even at one and a quarter hours, there was insufficient time for me to even mention the project. [You can read about it here.] However we did learn everything (and more) that there is to know about the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (and its various writers conferences), of which Tony is the president. Kyle spoke briefly about his many pseudonyms and the problems this presents for self-promotion. [Note to BayCon and other cons: How about a panel on "Pseudonyms and Self-promotion/Marketing" -- and please make sure all the panelists have published under pseudonyms.] A. E. Marling has self-published a number of fantasy titles and was able to share his hands-on experiences with these titles.
Bottom line: I encourage all new, novice, and/or self-publishing authors to seek out these types of panels and attend them as often as possible. We see how quickly social media can change. Self-promotion/marketing opportunities and resources for authors change just as quickly. And an open forum such as this panel at an SF/F convention can provide a myriad of ideas, resources, connections, etc. For example, did you know: If you have a Goodreads account, you can sign up for the "Author Program" to promote yourself and your books. As part of the sign-up process, you can link your blog to your Goodreads profile. When you publish a blog post, it gets posted to your Goodreads profile as well.
Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll see you next year at BayCon 2015.

Book Received...Barbara J. Webb

As I have previously mentioned, I work directly with writers on their unpublished manuscripts. Some of these writers plan to self-publish their work; others want an edited manuscript to submit to an agent/publisher.
Toward the end of last year, I worked with author Barbara J. Webb on her soon-to-be-self-published novel City of Burning Shadows : the first volume in her new series, Apocrypha: The Dying World.
My "Editing in Process" blog entry was posted on January 12, and included a very brief excerpt (just a few paragraphs) from the novel. City of Burning Shadows was published shortly thereafter in March, in both Kindle and trade paperback editions.
About a week ago I received my comp copy of the trade paperback from Barbara. As to that gap in time from March, when the book was published, until now, well, Barbara shared a few life-happenings with me and, with her permission, I'll share them with you as well. But just a quick recap:
Barbara was invited to participate in the Rio Hondo Writers Workshop, hosted by Walter Jon Williams and held in northern New Mexico in the Taos Ski Valley. I don't have a complete roster, but I've seen a few photos posted on Facebook and recognized Nina Kiriki Hoffman, James Patrick Kelly, David D. Levine, and Rick Wilber in attendance. Now, you would expect a writer to attend a writing workshop, but Barbara is also a professional violinist, and a member of the Columbia Civic Orchestra. And the demand for orchestras -- and violinists -- is at its highest during the April/May Easter season and the Christmas holiday season. So, while Barbara played her violin, and then wrote fiction at a ski lodge (and ate fancy food, and hung out in the hot tub with other writers), I waited patiently for my copy of City of Burning Shadows.

But you won't have to wait: City of Burning Shadows is available now for your reading pleasure.

Book Received...The Very Best of Tad Williams

Short story collection The Very Best of Tad Williams has recently been published by Tachyon Publications and should now be available in bookstores, real and virtual, at this time.

This post is to acknowledge receipt of my comp copy of the book, as I copy edited the 135,000-word manuscript last fall. In fact, should you so desire, you can read my "Editing in Process" blog post from November 13, 2013 -- assuming you haven't done so already.

Here's a brief excerpt from the Publishers Weekly starred review:

This marvelous short fiction retrospective testifies to the breadth of Williams's creativity...."A Stark and Wormy Knight," a linguistic tour de force, shows without one misplaced word just how clever dragons can be. Williams's sensitivity to atmosphere and trademark attention to telling detail shine through most of the selections in this varied collection of little gems.

Editing in Process...The Children of Old Leech

Cover design by Matthew RevertWhen a publisher self-destructs, all that remains are the books that were published -- and I'll be the first to admit that the original Night Shade Books published some amazing, even awe-inspiring, books.1
Three such books were written by Laird Barron. But, now that I think about it, maybe "amazing, even awe-inspiring" aren't the appropriate words to use to describe a Laird Barron book. I had read a few of his stories in various anthologies, and then in April 2007 I had the opportunity to copy edit his collection: The Imago Sequence and Other Stories . I was excited to work on this, the author's first collection, but that excitement was tempered with trepidation. You'll know what I mean if you've ever read a Laird Barron story. His writing is difficult to describe; his stories are categorized as "horror" and "dark fantasy," but neither of those terms aptly describes what the reader experiences. A Laird Barron story isn't scary, nor is it shocking; the best word that immediately comes to mind is "dread": a feeling of impending doom that permeates throughout the entirety of a Laird Barron story. And even though no doom may befall the protagonist, the feeling persists nonetheless -- even after the story has been read, the book closed and put away.
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories was followed by Occultation and Other Stories , a second collection that I worked on in January 2010. All of which paved the way for Laird's first novel, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All , one of the last books that I worked on (December 2012) before opting out of Night Shade Books (before they kicked me out).
Laird Barron typically writes novella-length stories: they are long, like 25,000-35,000 words long, but while reading one, I can still see the light at the end of the tunnel; I know that if I hang in there for another 20 or so pages, I'll get to the end, be able to finally take a breath without that feeling of dread directly pressing down upon me. But a novel? A book-length story? Would I be able to hold my breath, as it were, through an entire novel? Obviously, but certainly not unscathed....

Which brings me to Laird Barron (sort of) and Word Horde, a relatively new publisher, headed by Ross E. Lockhart. As some of you may know, Ross wore many hats during his five years with Night Shade Books. He was the "go to" guy for books, hardcopies, files, questions, whatever. Ross did the majority of book layouts and then worked with the authors directly once I completed my edits.2 He even edited quite a few titles himself as well. After departing NSB, Ross formed Word Horde and published his first book in August 2013: Tales of Jack the Ripper , an anthology which Ross himself edited. Ross and I signed an agreement on May 13, 2013, and shortly thereafter I began copy editing Tales of Jack the Ripper, which I wrote about last year in a blog post on June 5.
Now Ross and Word Horde is gearing up to publish his second anthology, this one co-edited with Justin Steele, entitled The Children of Old Leech -- pictured above. But it is the subtitle that's the clincher: "A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron." Imagine, 17 stories (by 19 authors) and more than 100,000 words of fiction, written using characters, situations, and locales created by Laird Barron. It gave me the willies just thinking about it... And that was even before I worked on the book!
Here's the table of contents for The Children of Old Leech, an anthology of original fiction:

Introduction: Of Whisky and Doppelgängers — Justin Steele
The Harrow — Gemma Files
Pale Apostle — J. T. Glover & Jesse Bullington
Walpurgisnacht — Orrin Grey
Learn to Kill — Michael Cisco
Good Lord, Show Me the Way — Molly Tanzer
Snake Wine — Jeffrey Thomas
Love Songs from the Hydrogen Jukebox — T.E. Grau
The Old Pageant — Richard Gavin
Notes for "The Barn in the Wild" — Paul Tremblay
Firedancing — Michael Griffin
The Golden Stars at Night — Allyson Bird
The Last Crossroads on a Calendar of Yesterdays — Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
The Woman in the Wood — Daniel Mills
Brushdogs — Stephen Graham Jones
Ymir — John Langan
Of a Thousand Cuts — Cody Goodfellow
Tenebrionidae — Scott Nicolay & Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay
Afterword — Ross E. Lockhart

Now here's the deal that Word Horde and Ross Lockhart are offering readers: Preorder The Children of Old Leech Deluxe Pack, and in addition to the anthology itself, you'll receive a copy of the ebook (choose your format) and an exclusive, limited edition chapbook. Word Horde went all out on the deluxe package for Tales of Jack the Ripper last year; here's my unboxing blog post. The TCoOL deluxe pack won't be as elaborate -- remember, Ripper was the press's first book -- but if you're going to purchase The Children of Old Leech anyhow, you may as well opt for the other goodies, too. As to that exclusive, limited edition chapbook, here's what contributing author Paul Tremblay had to say about it:

"So, if you preorder The Children of Old Leech, you'll also get an exclusive chapbook of my story 'Notes for "The Barn in the Wild."' The story is a found-notebook story. The chapbook will be comprised of scans of the actual notebook pages I wrote longhand, so there are fun sketches and chicken-scratched notes in the margins all of which help tell the story of a journalist investigating a disappearance and the odd history of a barn in the middle of nowhere (Labrador). A digital version of the story will be in the antho, but only in the limited/exclusive chapbook will you get the re-creation of the actual notebook. You want the chapbook, you know you do...."

The Children of Old Leech Deluxe Pack is available on the Word Horde website. Preorders will ship in July after the books arrive from the printer. I don't know how long this deluxe pack will be available, probably only until the publisher runs out of the exclusive chapbooks. So, as "they" say, order now and order often.
I'll leave you with this final excerpt from co-editor Justin Steele's introduction to The Children of Old Leech:

If you're still reading this you must now know that it's too late for you too. You've started to twist the handle, and the opening of the door is soon to follow. You're going to meet the dwellers on the other side. The Children of Old Leech will soon be whispering in your ear, and they will whisper the same thing they whispered to me, "There are frightful things. We who crawl in the dark love you."

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Footnotes:
1. About a year ago, on May 6, 2013, I wrote a blog post entitled "Doin' Hard Time at Night Shade Books," in which I spewed a bit of vitriol, but I also listed all 125 books I worked on during my nearly nine years of freelancing for this publisher. If you wish to read this post, and in particular the list of books, you can click here.
2. That is, until Night Shade added three more individuals into the mix. I'm sure Ross was pleased to have had some of his workload reduced, but from my perspective I then never knew who to ask what of whom. But that's a story for another time or, more likely, not at all, ever.

One more from Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

"If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.”