Marty Halpern's Blog, page 27

A few words from Steve Wozniak

If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it's within your reach. And it'll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It'll be worth it, I promise. ~ Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer

March 5, 1975: The Homebrew Computer Club had its first meeting 39 years ago today. Steve Wozniak was a founding member of this group of Silicon Valley computer hobbyists and he says that it inspired the design and development of the Apple I. (quote courtesy of Goodreads)

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 2

To recap Step 1: Last fall I suggested to my friend, the author Judith Moffett, that she publish her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story Tiny Tango as a Kindle ebook.
Of course, I knew up front that by making this suggestion I would be doing most of the technical heavy lifting on this project. And, for the most part, I thrive on this type of tech stuff, as Judy well knows. Except, that is, on those rare occasions when the hardware and/or software seems to be getting the better of me. Then it comes down to Man (me!) vs. Machine -- and I'm not going to lose to a machine! [And it would probably be best to not be within hearing range of me when such occasions arise.]
At this point in the process we had a full-size (2164 x 1755 pixels) JPG file of the "Tiny Tango" artwork by Janet Aulisio that graced the story's opening pages in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Our task was to somehow fit this two-page illo onto an ebook-sized cover -- with the appropriate typography -- and make it intriguing enough that readers just might want to purchase the ebook itself. So, I needed to find a quality graphic designer.
The first person I thought to contact was author Bradley P. Beaulieu. I worked for Brad on his self-published short fiction collection, Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories (which I blogged about here). Brad recommended Jenn Reese, of Tiger Bright Studios: "She has a great eye for covers, charges a reasonable fee, and would have all the answers your friend needs in terms of direction for the cover." I couldn't ask for a better recommendation than that. Plus, when I checked out the Tiger Bright Studios website, I discovered a number of book titles by authors whom I knew personally, so that influenced my decision as well.

I made the initial contact with Jenn Reese, explained our need, and provided her with the b&w JPG file. Shortly thereafter, Judy took over the discussion, since she was the one to agree to terms and make all the final cover decisions.

Jenn first provided us with three options for how we might tackle the cover, keeping in mind that the graphic was much wider than a standard ebook cover. So to fit the entire illo on the cover, the graphic would have to be reduced in size considerably. Here are the three initial mockups that Jenn sent us:

Mockup #1
Mockup #2
Mockup #3
Though we wanted the full illustration on the cover, we certainly couldn't have all the white space that would entail; plus, all the fine detail that Janet Aulisio crafted into the illustration would be lost at this smaller scale. So, Judy opted for mockup #1, but with a change: the cover would feature just the reaper, but needed to include the reaper's scythe in full. And I then suggested that we include the full illustration within the ebook itself, after the title page.
Proof #1
Proof #2
Proof #3Obviously, since you've seen the ebook cover at the beginning of this blog post, you know we decided on Proof #3. There was no discussion needed. When I first contacted Jenn about this project, and mentioned that the graphic we wanted to use was a black & white illustration, she responded:

I should point out that B/W illustrations are perhaps not the best choice for ebook covers -- unless they are incredibly striking, they won't be as vibrant as the full color covers. And a detailed B/W drawing is a very bad choice, since it will lose impact when shrunk to thumbnail size. But again, I'm speculating wildly without having seen the art!

Well, Jenn took that b&w graphic, added the right touch -- and the right shade -- of red, along with a black border to focus the eyes on the center, and made it stunning; and by featuring just the reaper, no detail was lost. I first contacted Jenn on January 27; and we had our cover art on February 1. So if you are in need of an ebook cover, whether or not you have artwork initially, I highly recommend Jenn Reese and Tiger Bright Studios.

Judy and I now had our cover, with plans to place the full black & white illustration within the ebook. Now, it was up to me to create the ebook itself....


To be continued:The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 3

The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 1

Occasionally, I'll come up with a fairly cool idea. Not one that I've necessarily thought through completely, of course, but a cool idea nonetheless. The most recent instance of such a cool idea occurred this past fall when I contacted author Judith Moffett and suggested she publish her Hugo and Nebula award-nominated story "Tiny Tango" as an ebook.

[Additional award note: And I have no doubt that, had the James Tiptree, Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (for works published in 1989), "Tiny Tango" would also have made that award's short list, if not won the award outright.]
I blogged about Judith Moffett and her novels and stories back in 2010 (here). At the time I referenced -- and quoted from -- Matthew Cheney's Mumpsimus blog post in which he wrote about "Mindblowing" stories that affected him as both a reader and writer. One such story was "Tiny Tango."
Then, most recently, writer/critic/reviewer Ian Sales posted his list of "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women," which also included "Tiny Tango." And that list was what pushed me over the edge, so to speak, and into said cool idea.
If you click on the Tiny Tango cover graphic pictured above, or the text link in this sentence, you will be swept away to Amazon's World of Kindle and to the Tiny Tango ebook listing: we were, in fact, successful in our efforts to publish the story as an ebook. But the path to get there, well, that's the story I'm about to tell you....

When "Tiny Tango" originally appeared in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, a black-and-white illustration by Janet Aulisio accompanied the opening pages of the story. Judith informed me that she owns the original illustration, which is currently mounted on the wall above her desk. She purchased it from the artist shortly after the story was published -- and assuming she can obtain permission to do so, she wants to use the illo for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.
So began our task of tracking down Janet Aulisio in order to obtain her permission. Following a lengthy online search on both our parts, we discovered that Ms. Aulisio has no online presence whatsoever: no website, no blog, no Facebook page, no storefront. Judith then contacted ASFA -- the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists -- only to learn that they were unable to help either: Janet Aulisio was not a member and they had no record of her contact information. A further web search yielded a 2012 interview with Ms. Aulisio, conducted by Scott Taylor for Black Gate magazine. So I emailed John O'Neill, the BG publisher, who put me in touch with Scott Taylor, who in turn passed on my contact info to Janet Aulisio. After Janet contacted me, I forwarded her email to Judith, and she obtained the artist's permission to use the illustration for the cover of the Tiny Tango ebook.
Judith then had the original b&w illustration scanned into a PDF, and I used a conversion tool to covert the PDF to a JPG file. So far so good.
copyright ©1989 by Janet Aulisio
Then one day, maybe a couple months or so after that cool idea first hit me, the light bulb finally lit: I have a black-and-white illustration to use for the book cover, an illustration that encompassed two facing pages when it appeared in Asimov's. But an ebook only has a front cover; there is no wrap-around cover art on an ebook, no landscape layout. How was I going to fit this illustration on the cover? And even if I could figure that out somehow, I didn't have the appropriate tools (e.g PaintShop or its equivalent), nor do I know how to use such tools, to create such a cover, and with the necessary typography, too. I will be the first to admit: I am not a graphic designer.
Though I didn't know how to do this myself, I did know people who could help me, or at least who could point me in the right direction.


To be continued:
The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Step 2

Editing in Process...Daryl Gregory

Tachyon Publications has been making a name for itself over the past few years with the publication of award-nominated -- and award-winning -- novellas. Most recently, Nancy Kress's After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Nebula Award and a finalist for the Hugo Award; and Brandon Sanderson's The Emperor's Soul (which I blogged about here) -- winner of the 2013 Hugo Award. And forthcoming in June, The Madonna and the Starship by James Morrow, the master of the sardonic (here).
And, I suspect, my latest project for Tachyon Pubs -- novella We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory -- will be no exception, and we'll be seeing this sharp-edged story on many awards lists beginning in early 2015.
Gregory's troubling tale centers around a therapy group, all of whom have experienced EXTREME -- in bold and in caps extreme! -- trauma. Five "patients": three men and two women, plus their therapist, Dr. Jan Sayer (who is far more than she seems).
There's Harrison, the former Boy Hero of Dunnsmouth, the Monster Detective, who has survived the Scrimshander, and the Abysmal, and many another freak show, most of whom are barely even hinted at. Wheelchair-bound Stan -- no arms, no legs -- who barely survived the Weaver family (aka the Arkansas Cannibals, aka the Spiderfolk) and lives to constantly tell everyone about it. And Martin, who wouldn't be caught dead without his "frames": virtual-reality glasses, because they enable him to see the Dwellers (or so he believes), and if he can't see the Dwellers, well, he will, in fact, be caught dead. Barbara is the middle-aged, pantsuit-attired, married one -- and mother of two boys; the calm one, the rational one, the one whose body holds the secret of the Scrimshander's message. And last is the striking young blonde Greta, the quiet one, who Harrison believes just might be the craziest one of them all. Her body was a document, a calling card, as it were, to a Hidden One, from the other side.

We were a team of professional insomniacs. Once you know there are monsters under the bed, closing your eyes becomes a foolhardy act. So, we paced. We stared into the dark. We listened for the creak of the opening door.

...

Harrison had been right; this was no hero's journey they were on. [Joseph] Campbell didn't understand the other stories in the world. The group knew the truth:

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it's no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster's final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn't dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or nameless tentacled thing. It is the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

We Are All Completely Fine will be published in August, and is now available for preorder.
And don't be afraid to look under the bed...or open the closet door....

[If you've made it this far, a brief note: My apologies for the lack of content on this blog during the past month. A workout mishap ended up placing me at the sharp end of a surgeon's blade. I'm now in week two of recovery, and hope to be at full speed just in time to complete my taxes before the April 15 deadline.]

The 2014 Campbellian Anthology

I typically don't promote and/or feature a book with which I am not involved. I have many reasons for this, the main one being my professional responsibility: Unless I'm involved with a book, I can't speak honestly to the quality of that book, and I would prefer to not recommend a book that wasn't up to my professional editorial standards. But, this book warrants breaking that rule.
If you are a regular voter, or even an occasional voter, for the Hugo Awards, then you are most likely familiar with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. However, if you are not familiar with this award, then please check out the entry in Wikipedia. You may recognize a few of the past winners of this award: C. J. Cherryh, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lucius Shepard, Karen Joy Fowler, Judith Moffett, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Ted Chiang, Cory Doctorow, Jay Lake, John Scalzi, Seanan McGuire, and Lev Grossman, just to name a few. Talk about name dropping!
Well, the folks at Stupefying Stories have put together the second annual collection of representative stories from authors who are eligible this year for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Now, SS wasn't able to get permission from all of the eligible writers, but they managed to acquire rights to stories from most of the eligible writers.
Are you ready for this? How does 860,000-plus words of fiction -- that's right, more than 860K words! -- from 111 different authors sound? And even better, this volume is available for free in epub and mobi ebook formats. Don't have an ereader? You can install Kindle for PC or Mac to read the mobi format, or Adobe Digital Editions for the epub format. If you prefer PDF, then check out Calibre ebook management software because you can use that tool to convert either of these DRM-free formats to PDF.
Here's an excerpt from the introduction by M. David Blake, curator of Stupefying Stories:

A little over a year ago, a small group of us had a crazy idea. "What if," we said, "there was a way everyone eligible for the Campbell could publicize their work at the same time, so that readers might have some idea of who we are?"

...

There will be some stories in this volume that you dislike, perhaps even strongly, and that’s okay. Every writer whose work is represented herein still accomplished something remarkable in attaining a specific level of publication, and by doing so earned a place within these pages. I encourage you to investigate each and every one, but I make no promise about how you'll feel about the stories that landed them here, or the works they elected to share.

Here's a secret: You don't have to read this entire anthology for it to serve a purpose and be valuable to you. You're allowed to skip around.

...

Here's another secret: If you do read every word in this anthology, and investigate all the links for those currently known to be eligible, you'll probably discover a new favorite. At least one. And if you do—if you, as a reader, connect with even a single new writer—then I will feel very, very good about this year's installment of the Annual Campbellian Anthology.

You can read the full introduction on the Stupefying Stories website, which is where you will also find the download links for the ebooks.
As M. David Drake says at the end of his intro: "Now, go make a friend. Your writers are waiting."

Editing in Process...The Very Best of F&SF, Volume Two

After completing my copy edit of the Kameron Hurley novelette, I resumed work on my current project for Tachyon Publications -- volume two of anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction , edited by Gordon Van Gelder.
Back in 2009, in celebration of sixty years of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tachyon Publications released the anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction , which contained 23 stories from some of the best names in the genre: Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chiang, and Roger Zelazny, to name just a few. I copy edited this initial F&SF anthology in March 2009 -- and now, nearly four years later, I had the opportunity to work on volume two.
Here's the Volume Two table of contents:

Introduction by Michael Dirda
"The Third Level" by Jack Finney (1952)
"The Cosmic Charge Account" by C. M. Kornbluth (1956)
"The Country of the Kind" by Damon Knight (1956)
"The Anything Box" by Zenna Henderson (1956)
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley (1958)
"'—All You Zombies—'" by Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
"A Kind of Artistry" by Brian Aldiss (1962)
"Green Magic" by Jack Vance (1963)
"Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty (1966)
"Sundance" by Robert Silverberg (1969)
"The Attack of the Giant Baby" by Kit Reed (1976)
"The Hundredth Dove" by Jane Yolen (1977)
"Jeffty Is Five" by Harlan Ellison® (1977)
"Salvador" by Lucius Shepard (1984)
"The Aliens Who Knew, I mean, Everything"
      by George Alec Effinger (1984)
"Rat" by James P. Kelly (1986)
"The Friendship Light" by Gene Wolfe (1989)
"The Bone Woman" by Charles de Lint (1993)
"The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh (1995)
"Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling (1998)
"Winemaster" by Robert Reed (1999)
"Suicide Coast" by M. John Harrison (1999)
"Have Not Have" by Geoff Ryman (2001)
"The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi (2004)
"Echo" by Elizabeth Hand (2005)
"The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates"
      by Stephen King (2008)
"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (2011)

Each of these 26 stories is a classic in its own right.
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, then you know I have a penchant for the humorous, sardonic story -- and R. A. Lafferty's "Narrow Valley" fits this requirement perfectly.
In 1893 the remaining 821 Pawnee Indians were given land allotments of exactly 160 acres; they were to live on the land and pay taxes, "the same as the White-Eyes did." But Clarence Big-Saddle had other ideas, and performed a Pawnee chant over his land: he had no plans to ever pay any taxes.
"Clarence Big-Saddle lived on his land for many years, and he paid no taxes. Intruders were unable to come down to his place. The land was sold for taxes three times, but nobody ever came down to claim it. Finally, it was carried as open land on the books. Homesteaders filed on it several times, but none of them fulfilled the qualification of living on the land."
Then one day, many decades later, the Rampart family arrived in town and filed paperwork on this one tract of land that still remained open. After filing the paperwork at the courthouse, they climbed back into their camper and headed to the property, all 160 acres of it.
The easiest route to the property was through the short pasture belonging to cattle and wheat farmer Charley Dublin. So the Ramparts stopped at Dublin's house, and he escorted them to their property:

"Well, Rampart, this is the fence and the end of my land. Yours is just beyond."

"Is that ditch on my land?" Rampart asked.

"That ditch is your land."

And that's just the beginning of this 5,300-word treasure.
The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two will be published in July, but why wait: preorder your copy now.

Editing in Process...Kameron Hurley

Sometimes, everything -- well, almost everything -- just seems to work out, or so I like to believe hope. For example: I worked for Night Shade Books for nine years (which I blogged about here, including a list of the 125 books I worked on during that time period), and then dealt with the demise -- and resale -- of the company. By the summer of 2013, with no new incoming projects from Night Shade, my workload had decreased dramatically, a huge concern for me as a full-time freelancer. But then Bradley P. Beaulieu, a former Night Shade author with whom I had never worked before, contacted me about a book project. He wanted me to line edit and copy edit his collection, Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories -- financed through a Kickstarter campaign -- which he planned to self-publish. My blog post on Brad's collection is here. Brad later referred me to Barbara Webb, who contracted with me to copy edit her novel City of Burning Shadows (here) -- a novel worthy of your "watchlist" -- which Barbara also plans to self-publish. Those were two of my one-on-one author projects in 2013 that came about from my work with Night Shade Books.
Enter 2014: Most recently, I had the opportunity to work with another former Night Shade author, Kameron Hurley. Her new novelette is "The Body Project": a story in her Bel Dame Apocrypha series, which includes the novels God's War (a 2012 Nebula Award nominee for best novel), Infidel , and Rapture . I was fortunate to have worked with Kameron on this trilogy during my stint at Night Shade.
So I was thrilled when I received Kameron's email regarding this new project: we freelancers are always thrilled when a new income opportunity presents itself, but -- and more importantly -- I was especially thrilled because I would have an opportunity, albeit briefly, to work with Kameron once again (a true pro) and to visit once more, as it were, the world of Nyx, Rhys, Anneke, and the bel dames.
Kameron informed me that the story takes place during the seven-year gap between chapters 4 and 5 of God's War; the novelette is meant to be a sort of introduction for those who haven't yet read the trilogy. And for those of us who have read the books, the story provides further insight in to what drives the protagonist, Nyxnissa so Dasheem.
Here are the two opening paragraphs to "The Body Project":

The man's rugged visage—hanging from the upper window of the tenement building—was captivating. The rest of him was less so, as it was a mangled wreck of shattered limbs and shredded torso strewn all over the street at Nyx's feet.

Nyx toed at the burst flesh of his admittedly once-fine form, now split and oozing a sour blend of offal that brought to mind the pungent stink of rotten bodies at the front. That memory, paired with the profile of the man's head, sparked a sudden familiarity. She had a powerful feeling that she knew him.

This brief excerpt is typical of the gritty, hard-edged writing of the entire trilogy. For me, upon first reading God's War, it was like a breath of fresh air had come in across from the desert.... Different, but not unlike when I read William Gibson's Neuromancer, shortly after the book was first published.
"The Body Project" has been posted online for your reading pleasure courtesy of publisher Del Rey UK, to help promote the UK publication of the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy. In addition, the novelette has been published as an ebook on both the Amazon US and Amazon UK sites. If you're going to buy the ebook, don't hesitate: the current promotional price of 99¢ will increase on February 1.
After I had completed the copy edits -- and Kameron had had sufficient time to review them -- she sent out the following two Twitter posts, on January 10 and 14, respectively...



...Which obviously provide me the opportunity to toot (tweet?) my own horn.

And don't forget: the ebook is only 99¢ (£0.77 in the UK) until February 1.

Editing in Process...Barbara J. Webb

My latest project is by author Barbara J. Webb and is not the novel pictured to the left. The novel I worked on is entitled City of Burning Shadows, which the author plans to self-publish. In the meantime, I'm pointing you to her previous novel, Midnight in St. Petersburg , volume one in The Invisible War series. But I'll be sure to post here when City of Burning Shadows is published. The wait will certainly be worth it.
Unfortunately I don't pimp myself as much as I should. In addition to the work I do with publishers, I also work directly with writers: new and novice writers, self-published writers, and contract writers who understand the value of an editor and copy editor. I'd like to point you to one such project, Bradley P. Beaulieu's self-published short fiction collection Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories. If you have an interest in chatting with me about a project, you'll find my email address listed under my blog profile. I don't attend as many conventions as I used to, but should you see me at a con, please feel free to come up to me and introduce yourself, and let me know you would like to talk about a project. And this should up my pimp quota somewhat....
But back to this project: Barbara Webb sent me the first chapter of City of Burning Shadows prior to our signing an agreement to work together on this project. I was impressed with the quality of her writing in this opening chapter and didn't come upon any obvious editorial issues through my initial read. But more important, this one chapter presaged a great novel that I wanted to read further. Here's the end of that first chapter:

...I couldn't afford to lose this job.
Getting myself killed provoking fights was one thing. Starving to death in the street was a whole other. Not that I'd probably live long enough to starve. I'd be another headline: former priest of Kaifail beaten to death, or burned alive, or strung up with his intestines hanging out for the crows. People in this city were nothing if not creative in their punishments for those of us they blamed for the state of things.
All this was still fresh in my mind when the intercom on my desk pinged. "Mr. Drake?" The security guard. "There's a man down here asking for you."
Was there any way this could be good? "Who is he? What does he want?"
"Says he needs to see you. Says you know each other." The guard's voice dropped, whispering into his microphone: "He says he was a priest."
Just like that, I was back on my feet. "I'll be right down." Because I hadn't learned my lesson yet about getting involved. Because I didn't have enough to worry about these days. Most of all, because I thought it would be good to see a friend.
In other words, I hurried back downstairs because I was an idiot.

The blunt, choppy sentence structure hints of the noir detective story. The priests have the ability to perform magic, but the kind of magic present in this story brings to mind Charles Stross's Laundry Files stories: magic via technology. There are conspiracies, and plots within plots.
Whatever tool you use to make notes to yourself -- a journal, Google Keep, MS OneNote, Evernote, or just plain old sticky notes -- make this note: Barbara J. Webb and City of Burning Shadows. As I previously said, I'll post on this blog when the book is available.

Dear Indie Author Community:

An open letter from author J. M. Gregoire to all indie authors.
A must read.

Dear Indie Author Community,
Something bad is happening in the Indie Author Community. Several bad things, in fact, and if something isn't said to you, you're going to ruin your writing career before it ever gets started. What is about to follow in this letter is not an "I know everything" bomb. This letter is to serve as what should be common sense for all of us. All of this I have learned through experience as a jaded reader, a disappointed fangirl, a pissed off book blogger, a screwed over event planner, a disgusted indie author PR rep, and a fellow indie author who wants to see the community as a whole succeed. This is an Open Letter meant to try to bring the Indie Author Community back to respectable place where we can all be taken seriously.

There are a good many indies out there I no longer have respect for. Now, to understand the gravity of that statement, you must understand this: I absolutely love indie authors. I love the basic idea — you can tell your story without the media or some suit telling you what to write and when to write it. The "we don't need them" mentality is one of the factors that kept me from even considering publishing years ago. When the self-publishing boom hit, I thought it was a fantastic idea! Take out the middle man and bring stories down to what it really should be — a relationship between the storyteller and their audience.

All of that being said, I have become all those things I have listed up above. A jaded reader because the market is being flooded with books that are not ready to be published. A disappointed fangirl because of all the authors that feel just because they're published, they are somehow above everyone else...and treat them as such. A pissed off book blogger because once upon a time, writing reviews was FUN and now if I don't like a book, I can't just SAY SO (even POLITELY, mind you) without running the chance of having the author flat-out attack me and drag my name and the name of my book blog through every mud puddle they can find. A disgusted indie author PR rep because I keep watching indies spit in the face of the people who are the very reason they exist. A screwed over event planner because there are so many authors out there booking themselves for events and then not following through on their commitments. An indie author who is just sick of seeing her community drown itself....

If you've gotten this far, you need to read the entire open letter on J. M.'s blog.

John Steinbeck

"If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last." ~John Steinbeck