Alan Baxter's Blog, page 62

Stephen King with a truthy truth

Anywhere But Earth now available direct from the publisher

You’ll remember me talking a lot about this book when it was published. I’m very proud to have a story in it – my deep space horror story, Unexpected Launch. And personal bias notwithstanding, I think this is one of the best science fiction anthologies money can buy. It’s a huge book, 728 pages and around 30 stories of excellent science fiction. The range of style and subject included is mind-blowing. It’s great for sci-fi fans and it’s a brilliant introduction for people who don’t read much sci-fi. Editor, Keith Stevenson, has really done an amazing job with this volume.

It includes stories by luminaries such as Margo Lanagan, Sean McMullen, Richard Harland and Kim Westwood, and includes Robert Stephenson’s Aurealis Award winning short story Rains of La Strange.

Anyway, just buy a copy. Or two. You won’t regret it. And now you can buy the print or ebook edition directly from the publisher, Coeur De Lion. Go on, you won’t regret it.

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Top-earning authors

Forbes yesterday released its list of the top-earning authors of 2011. Good to see a lot of genre authors dominating the list, taking 9 of the 15 slots. There are 6 women and 9 men on the list. The big money writers are listed below. The parts in italics are quotes directly from the Forbes list.

1. James Patterson: $94 million
Unlike many of the authors on this list, Patterson earns nearly all his money from his gargantuan book sales and relatively little from TV and film royalties. He published 14 new titles in 2011 – of course, that’s what you can achieve when you’re in charge of a book writing factory.

2. Stephen King: $39 million
“11/22/63″ and a new installment of his “Dark Tower” series made good for King, but he also sells well on a massive backlist.

3. Janet Evanovich: $33 million
The author of the Stephanie Plum suspense series told Forbes’s Jenna Goudreau she finds the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon “strange” and worries that it might encourage abusive relationships. Interesting.

4. John Grisham: $26 million
With the baseball novel “Calico Joe,” Grisham proved he could write bestsellers that aren’t legal thrillers. But let’s be honest – the name of John Gisham is going to sell pretty much anything initially. Still, if he pulled off a good book outside of the genre he’s famous for, it bodes well for J K Rowling’s career shift. (She’s a bit further down the list.)

5. Jeff Kinney, $25 million
“Cabin Fever,” the latest installment of the “Wimpy Kid” series, was the top-selling book of 2011, with 3.3 million copies sold. The movie version of “Dog Days” made $15 million at the box office in its opening weekend. Not a bad run.

6. Bill O’Reilly: $24 million
You know him primarily as a Fox News host, but these days O’Reilly is making almost as much from his historical books, including “Killing Lincoln” and “Killing Kennedy.”

7. Nora Roberts: $23 million
Are you sitting down? Nora Roberts has written more than 200 books. Think about that for a second. She also writes under the pen name J.D. Robb. 200 books! Dies and is dead.

8. Danielle Steel: $23 million
Although she’s spent more time on The New York Times bestsellers list than any other author, Steel’s earnings seem to have peaked. The romance novelist made $35 million last year. Personally, I’d be happy with just one year of Steel’s earnings. Even this year’s paltry $23 mill.

9. Suzanne Collins: $20 million
The odds are ever in Collins’s favor, with royalties from the blockbuster “Hunger Games” movie swelling her earnings and two more films still in the pipeline. I think we might see her rise in the ranks next year.

10. Dean Koontz: $19 million
This Shippensburg State College alumnus has two current hit franchises, “Frankenstein” and “Odd Thomas.”

11. J.K. Rowling: $17 million
Five years after “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” Rowling is branching out, with an $8 million advance for her first adult novel and the online store Pottermore, where the boy wizard books are finally on sale in electronic form. Wait, let’s just back up a bit there. AN $8 MILLION DOLLAR ADVANCE!? Dies and is dead again.

12. George R.R. Martin: $15 million
Martin’s fans wish he would spend more time writing new “Game of Thrones” books, or at least episodes for the HBO adaptation, and less time blogging about the New York Jets. He took six years to write “A Dance With Dragons,” the fifth of seven planned installments. Let’s hope the TV series catches up and he HAS to write the last two books. Don’t do a Robert Jordan on us, George, please!

13. Stephenie Meyer: $14 million
With “Twilight” behind her, Meyer’s no longer riding quite so high, but the phenomenon she started lives on in “Fifty Shades of Grey,” which originated as fan fiction modeled on her vampire romance. Shame Meyer isn’t going to see a penny of that cash factory.

14. Ken Follett: $14 million
Follett is set for a huge autumn, with the next installment of his “Century” trilogy coming out in September and a TV miniseries based on “Fall of Giants” airing.

15. Rick Riordan: $13 million
If your adolescent kids know suspiciously a lot about Greek and Egyptian mythology, it’s probably because of Riordan’s books. Either that or they’re weird cultists. Now I want to read Riordan’s books!

Pretty good earnings for pen monkeys. I think we’ll see E L James pretty high on this list next year, if not at the top, with the “50 Shades of Grey” phenomenon. It became the UK’s best-selling novel of all time if you can believe that. And the movie has been optioned. There will be a certain delicious irony if E L James ends up out-earning Stephanie Meyer over the long term.

For the entire list, with pictures, see the Forbes website.

In the meantime, I’m working on a new book. It’s a thriller about a time-travelling crime investigator, who used to be a pro baseball player, but is now a failed lawyer. He was a wimpy kid, but grew up to be right-wing news commentator reporting on death. He has a love affair with the producer of a violent reality television series and they have a very odd son who ends up going to wizard school. There, he encounters stange political machinations and the return of the dragons. He controls the dragons by hiring sparkly vampires to ride them and they bring down a race of giants. Oh, and it’s all set in ancient Greece and Egypt. And they all have nervous, exploratory, abusive sex all the time. Fuck yeah! This can’t possibly fail.

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Batman action figure animation

You know how much I love a bit of Batman action. Well, thanks to @RedBakersen on Twitter for pointing this one out to me. It’s a 6 minute film using action figures and toys from Christopher Nolan’s Batman films (and a cameo from somewhere else). It’s some pretty clever work, even if it does go a bit haywire in terms of story! Enjoy.

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2012 World Fantasy Awards Ballot announced

The ballot has been announced for the 2012 World Fantasy Awards and it’s a fine selection of stuff. I’m particularly excited for a couple of Aussie friends who made it onto the lists. Congratulations to all the nominees!

2012 World Fantasy Awards Ballot

The World Fantasy Convention 2012 will be held in Toronto, Canada.

Life Achievement

winner Alan Garner
winner George R.R. Martin

Novel
Those Across the River, Christopher Buehlman (Ace)
11/22/63, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton as 11.22.63)
A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin (Bantam; Harper Voyager UK)
Osama, Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)

Novella
“Near Zennor”, Elizabeth Hand (A Book of Horrors)
“A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, K.J. Parker (Subterranean Winter 2011)
“Alice Through the Plastic Sheet”, Robert Shearman (A Book of Horrors)
“Rose Street Attractors”, Lucius Shepard (Ghosts by Gaslight)
“Silently and Very Fast”, Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA Press; Clarkesworld)

Short Story
“X for Demetrious”, Steve Duffy (Blood and Other Cravings)
“Younger Women”, Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Summer 2011)
“The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu (F&SF 3-4/11)
“A Journey of Only Two Paces”, Tim Powers (The Bible Repairman and Other Stories)
“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld 4/11)

Anthology
Blood and Other Cravings, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)
A Book of Horrors, Stephen Jones, ed. (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Harper Voyager US)
The Weird, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Corvus; Tor, published May 2012)
Gutshot, Conrad Williams, ed. (PS Publishing)

Collection
Bluegrass Symphony, Lisa L. Hannett (Ticonderoga) (AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!)
Two Worlds and In Between, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press)
After the Apocalypse, Maureen F. McHugh (Small Beer)
Mrs Midnight and Other Stories, Reggie Oliver (Tartarus)
The Bible Repairman and Other Stories, Tim Powers (Tachyon)

Artist
John Coulthart
Julie Dillon
Jon Foster
Kathleen Jennings (AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE!)
John Picacio

Special Award—Professional
John Joseph Adams, for editing – anthology and magazine
Jo Fletcher, for editing – Jo Fletcher Books
Eric Lane, for publishing in translation – Dedalus books
Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi, for ChiZine Publications
Jeff VanderMeer & S.J. Chambers, for The Steampunk Bible

Special Award—Non-professional
Kate Baker, Neil Clarke, Cheryl Morgan & Sean Wallace, for Clarkesworld
Cat Rambo, for Fantasy
Raymond Russell & Rosalie Parker, for Tartarus Press
Charles Tan, for Bibliophile Stalker blog
Mark Valentine, for Wormwood

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Tales From The Top Shelf interview

Talie Helene has started a thing on her blog called Tales From The Top Shelf, an interview series looking at individual stories from The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror (Ticonderoga Publications), edited by Liz Gryzb and Talie Helene. Why? As Talie says:

…while you may correctly surmise that in the process of editing, I’ve read all the anthology stories over, and over, and over… there’s still a lot for me to learn about them! Because between what we bring as readers, and a writer’s intentions – that spooky space of story is mysterious and always open to interpretation.

I’m lucky enough to be first cab off the rank in this new series, talking about my story, The King’s Accord, which was reprinted in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2010.

Talie asks some great questions, about the story itself and about the themes explored in the story, the nature of fantasy and horror as genres and much more. It’s a good piece – you can find the whole thing here. Check it out.

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The Writing Process in diagrammatic simplicity

My friend and fellow scribe of the highest order (and I mean the very highest) Angela Slatter posted this on her blog today, perfectly describing the correct process of writing. I, within moments, have stolen it. For it is truth, clearly presented. As Angela says, “I have to keep reminding myself of first principles.” We all do, and she’s nailed them here. Whether you’re writing a novel, a short story, non-fiction, anything, this applies.

Brilliant, no?

Go read what Angela has to say about it here, wherein she mentions metaphorical boobs.

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Genre fiction and the advancing world

I’ve jumped into this one at the last minute, so a bit short notice, but if you’re anywhere near Sydney you might want to come along. I’ll be giving a talk at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts about Genre fiction and the advancing world. The talk is open to the public and free, so you can’t really go wrong. Here’s the blurb:

Many of the most popular novels today are genre fiction.

Covering everything from historical romance, hard-boiled crime and science fiction, through to urban fantasy and horror, genre writing is sometimes the victim of literary snobbery. But is that fair?

Alan Baxter, an author and independent publisher, will talk about what genre writing is and what it entails.

He will also explore how writing and publishing in all forms is changing in today’s rapidly advancing world, and what that means for a genre writer in the modern arena.

It’s on Tuesday, 7th August 2012, 12:30pm – 1:30pm, in the Mitchell Theatre. All the details here.

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Judge Dredd: Countdown Sector 106

This is a new one for me and it seems very cool. Aussie voiceover artist and friend, Kevin Powe (@voiceover_au), put me onto this as he has the incredible honour of supplying the voice of Judge Dredd himself in this new gamebook for iOS. Dredd! It’s the first Dredd iOS gamebook and it comes from Tin Man Games. Here’s the official blurb:

Drokk! It’s an adventure game. It’s an interactive book. It’s an RPG. You are Judge Dredd, the toughest judge to patrol Mega-City One, a vast futuristic city, set in the 22nd Century!

Sector 106 of Mega-City One is short of senior Street Judges and only the most experienced Judges have been reassigned to fill this shortfall… foremost among them yourself, Dredd! What begins as a routine patrol arresting juves and skysurfers, turns into a race against time, as mysterious “Voices of Dredd” find their way into the hands of the local perps. Riding your Lawmaster bike and armed with your trusty Lawgiver, you must pit yourself against Sector 106′s brutal criminal underworld. Quick Dredd! The countdown has begun…

It’s basically an interactive story where you play the role of Dredd and choose your path. Remember the old “Choose your own adventure” books from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone? This is the modern incarnation of those. With voiceover by a local boy, no less. Sounds brilliant.

It looks like loads of fun – I’ll be checking it out. I have to say, I’m pretty pleased to see the current resurgence in Dredd and 2000AD. I read the comic throughout my teens and still read it to this day, and have a deep affinity with many of the characters. My friends and I have spent many hours playing the Judge Dredd: The Roleplaying Game as well. This iPhone app strikes me as a sweet little nostalgic revisit to those days. And the new mnovie looks like it’s a pretty solid homage to the original vibe of the comic stories, so I’m cautiously hopeful about that too.

You can learn more about the game here: http://gamebookadventures.com/gamebooks/judge-dredd-countdown-sector-106/

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The cost of being a superhero

Thanks to Stan Yip for pointing this one out to me. Those folks over at Mashable have shared some infographics, created by MoneySupermarket.com. They prove why only rich industrialists and philanthropist billionaire playboys can really take superherodom seriously. Batman, apparently, would cost a cool $682 million. But he pales into financial insignificance compared to Iron Man, who clocks in a price tag of more than $1.6 billion!

The Mashable posts have full infographic breakdowns of the costings, so check them out:

The Batman one is here.

And the Iron Man one is here.

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