So we shot the poster.

A team of three went down to the beach at the very end of a sunny day. This was the team: Nathalie klein Selle, the supremely talented Dutch actress who plays one of the two leading roles in the film; Oren Hasson, who is, among other things, both a professional photographer and my father; and myself (writer and director).

The Indestructibles Poster

The concept for the poster was simple: Nathalie is a superhero who, though practically dead, cannot actually die. She’s been swept away by the seas and wound up on the shore. The original concept for the poster had her lying in the sea, half her face in the water, half out, eyes open wide, body dead. Working off the concept, Oren could start trying different alternatives to see what would work and what wouldn’t.

Oren picked the location. He chose a piece of beach that was almost completely covered with seaweed. It looks amazing in the photograph, but was actually pretty disgusting in reality. Though the day was scorching, the sea was freezing.  Nathalie got into the dress and into the water, quickly getting her head into position, half in and half out.

We spent the next hour putting her in different positions, putting the camera in different positions, trying out different lenses and variations, until we felt we had enough good shots to choose from.

We tried different angles and lenses

At a certain point I found myself grabbing two fistfuls of seaweed saying, “I want to put this in her hair. Can I put this in your hair? Can I put this in her hair now?” Okay, I may not have phrased it exactly like that. It may have been phrased with more poise: “I think we should put more seaweed in her hair. Nathalie, do you mind? Dad, will it work in the picture?” But I wanted to say it like a six-year-old.

Nathalie was a complete pro. She never complained about the freezing water and the wind, didn’t ask once to stop, and was completely there, emoting as her character, whenever the camera was shooting.

I think she had fun

During the following week, Oren went over the pictures, tweaked them, and sent me the best ones to choose from. I picked the one you see in the poster above, wrote the texts for the poster, and then met with Oran Almog, a gifted graphic designer. He turned the picture into a poster, and what a great job he did!

The Element of Luck in Shooting the Poster

As you can see, Nathalie’s red dress, which she brought from home, worked supremely well against the color of the seaweed, which neither she nor I knew would be there.

Luck plays a huge role when creating a work of art, whether it’s a film, a poster, a theater show, etc. I’m a big believer in the magical appearance of good luck. It’s not that I think luck goes my way in life or that good things are more likely to happen to me than not, it’s that when you’re working on art and you’ve done all your homework and you work with talented people, suddenly almost everything falls into place in a better way than you would have ever expected.

Here’s another angle. Looks great, but not what we were looking for.

I’ve seen this happen again and again. When we shot Heart of Stone, my last film, the actors were so talented and so prepared, that it seemed, magically, as if everywhere I put the camera was the perfect place to shoot from. In fact, we created an environment for the actors in which it seemed like every new choice they made was good, in character, and helped tell the story. It was a shock to a couple of them, when the shooting was over and they moved on to their next projects, that suddenly not every decision they made was a good one.

It was the same thing with shooting the poster. I didn’t get a chance to see Nathalie in the dresses ahead of time (remember: The Indestructibles is low budget, people are also working for a living, and free time is scarce). She picked a few, emailed me pictures of the dresses on a bed, and we picked three to bring to the location. I didn’t know what the beach would look like ahead of time, either. But this is why it worked: the original concept was good and represented the film; Nathalie is talented and completely grokked her role; and Oren is talented and understood the concept completely, but wanted to add his own element to it.

It’s not easy sitting in green…

So when we got to the beach we discovered that the red dress worked best with the seaweed green, and, as if by magic, everything clicked better than expected. I wasn’t worried, because I was certain that if the red-green coincidence hadn’t occurred, something else would have happened to make the photo shoot magical. When you’ve got the right people, magic happens every time.

Close Encounters of the Urban Kind by Jennifer Brozek
Themed anthology infusing urban myths with alien origins.
Print: $8.98  Digital: $2.50

When Darkness Loves Us by Elizabeth Engstrom
Two-novella collection that twists together the beauty and horror underlying the simplicty of small town life.
Print: $7.98  Digital: $1.50

Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel
Collection of horror and dark fantasy containing Fran’s tour-de-force novella “Mama’s Boy.” Stoker Award-nominated.
Print: $7.98  Digital: $2.50

Taste of Tenderloin by Gene O’Neill
Stoker Award-winning collection of dark fantasy and horror set in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco.
Print: $7.98

The doors open at noon on Friday and close at 4pm on Sunday.

We’re experiencing record heat in Lexington. In fact, the high on Saturday has been forecast to be 94 degrees. If you’re in the area, why not come out and have some geekly fun? Day passes are only $10. Getting into the vendor area is FREE!

Come by the Apex table and you’ll meet Apex owner and publisher Jason Sizemore. Senior editor Janet Harriett will be running the show and charming our visitors. We hope to see you this weekend!

http://www.facebook.com/events/310140272389092/

http://forgecon.ning.com/

This month I thought I’d talk about character creation. In thinking of this, I’ve found myself comparing this to the creation of gaming characters. While it’s quite similar, there are differences, of course, just as there are in everything and everyone. I suppose one could say the biggest difference is that dice aren’t involved in writing. But that might or mightn’t be true. I know I’ve gotten out the trusty old dice bag and made a few rolls to help with decision making. I know others who do the same and still others who use Tarot cards, astrology … The list is long and broad.

My character creation with Destiny Bradford is a bit different than it was for her mother. See, I’ve been with Destiny since her conception, and I have her story right up through midlife. Through the eyes of her mother. Turning everything around to see Destiny through her own eyes as a teenager has been altogether different. Finding out who she is, her likes and dislikes, her fears, how she interacts with her peers, etc, took searching into her core and rattling things around a bit. I even had to rejigger my character sheet for this current way of thinking, discovery, and recording.

True, I already knew basics such as the color of her hair and eyes, her facial shape and features, how she carries herself, that she plays piano and grew up to be a music teacher, and what her religion is. What I didn’t know was her e-mail address, how and where (or if!) she keeps a diary, how she prefers to dress, how things are for her at school (away from home), and such. I didn’t know what she thinks about love, marriage, and sex or what her most wonderful and most painful moments (so far) in her life have been.

When a person creates a character for a game, he expects that character to grow through the development of skills, traits, and other things gained through experience. A writer expects the same of his character, but a writer has to have most of this stuff up front before the story can ever be started. The writer has to create the events and other things that are going to propel that character’s growth; the gamer makes decisions based on what he’s told in-game by the storyteller. It’s not like the writer can go to a wiki and research what’s already happened in-game and search for hints and clues the storyteller may have dropped here and there (such as avoiding that damnable door in the far dungeon marked MT). The writer has to create all of this and more.

The things I mentioned above that I didn’t know about Destiny? Some of them I still don’t know. Like in a game, those things will unfold in time. With some of them, though, I’m going to have to do some hard thinking and researching because those particular things are going to come into play in the writing process soon – and I need to know them!

By now I’m sure you’re wondering, “But how do you figure that stuff out?” Well, this is the part where banging my head on the desk or nearest brick wall comes into play. Well, this is the part where making lists and stuff like ‘interviewing the character’ come into play.

Last summer, when I was first starting my journey down this Young Adult path, I read a lot of blogs about YA fiction, including character creation, story flow and resolution, what was popular just then, and so forth. I created a list and saved it; it will work with adult fiction, too. Also, I was able to use my list for a panel I participated in at a convention last year:

1. How do you feel when someone disappoints you?
2. What scares you? What are you the most afraid of?
3. What would you do in this situation?
4. The character is what you do when no one is watching
5. Read the obituaries. Real people have interesting histories.
6. Read a telephone book.
7. Real characters have weaknesses and make mistakes. If your character is doing something stupid, give him a good reason for doing it!

I like the first four in that the writer lists his own reactions to these things. Once they’re on paper, they’re easily adapted to the character, such as when I must move while listening to my mp3 player when I’m down in the laundry room doing the weekly wash. I can totally see Destiny doing that while doing her own clothes.

Number five freaked out some people, both on the panel and in the audience. But think about it. A person’s life history is written in his obituary, even if he never set foot outside his hometown. By way of example, my grandmother got her nursing degree when she was 38 (I was 3) and worked as an LPN at the old Corbin hospital until she had to retire due to illness in 1981. Over the course of her life, she touched a lot of people’s lives, and when she passed twelve years ago, the funeral home was packed with people whose children she’d helped deliver. Also, this sort of reflection gives you some insight into how a character copes with things like death, the end of relationships, bad news, disappointment, and so forth (and also the positive side: births, good news, achievement, etc). It also can shed light on quirks, weaknesses, attitudes, habits, and the like.

Number six also freaked out some people, but they failed to hear the part where I said, “You get a book from ten or twenty years ago and take a first name from one end and a last name from another.” Just don’t go into a telephone directory and lift someone’s name and address whole hog. That’s just asking for a whole host of complications no writer needs. Now, I use a Harlan County, Kentucky, book because that’s where my stories are set. I do this because a lot of  surnames are particular to that area or if not particular, extremely rare elsewhere. Also, there’s a huge proliferation of Celtic and Biblical first and second names. But it’s prudent for me to keep in the back of my mind that people in Harlan County don’t name their children offbeat names like Sierra, Jaleel, or whatever is popular right now. (There’s probably few, if any, children named Destiny.) As more technology infiltrates the area, I look for this to change.

Number seven made me laugh, but it’s true. Characters aren’t perfect and shouldn’t be. If one wakes up covered in zits the morning of the senior prom, so be it. If one falls out of a tree and breaks an arm because he was spying on a neighbor with binoculars because he thought the neighbor had the answers to the upcoming Big Test, that’s the consequence (not that spying on neighbors in hopes of getting exam answers is ever a good idea, that’s why it’s called “doing something stupid”). The point is, a writer can’t just have a character throw himself under a bus out of sheer boredom or because that’s the only thought he had inside his skull at the time. “Oh, I think I’ll just throw myself off this cliff because I don’t have anything else to do right now.” Thud. The end. If he’s going to walk a tightrope, he needs a reason to cross it, and the writer needs a reason for the rope to be there in the first place. Charlotte wrote words in her web so humans could see how exceptional Wilbur was, for example. Jess and Leslie built the bridge across the creek to reach Terrabithia. Frodo walked into an active volcano to destroy the One Ring.

Which brings me back around to avoiding that damnable door in the far dungeon marked MT. The storyteller had labeled the door MT because there wasn’t anything in the room. The whole door thing was nothing more than a ploy, something to distract the players from their quest. Writers do that, too. Red herrings crop up in some of the craziest places in some of the craziest ways. Do the characters fall for them? Do they ignore them? Do they take note of them at all? It’s how the character reacts to small stuff (as well as the big stuff, but sometimes the small stuff is what’s important) that builds that character, that makes him who he is. Just as a whole is the sum of all its parts, the character is the sum of all the choices he makes.

Now. Who would like to have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper?

Folly Blaine – Imprinting the Odd
Jo Olluyn – Exploring the Edge
Damien Walters Grintalis – Genre Redefined, The Uncommon Side of Genre
Dennis Michael Lane – Your Guide to Surviving the Future, Tomorrow Today, Read; or they Win, 26 Letters Infinite Possibilities
Ian Sales – The Best Books Live at the Edges
Shadodottir – Erasing the Boundaries of Imagination
Patrick Derrickson – Our Evolution Realized
Rick – For Infinite Imaginations
Robby Hilliard – Uncommon Dreams
kfortin – Reality Derailed, Between the Stars and the Fears
Laura Long – Unbind Your Mind
olddarth – All Possibilities Explored
WeirdArchives – It’s only your imagination
Megan – Escape Reality

I’ve decided to pick a runner up. This comes from Chris Einhaus.
World domination one book at a time 

I dig this because ties into our unofficial theme of global domination we’ve toyed with since the inception of the company. I don’t feel the tag works as an effective description of our books, but it will make a nifty phrase on our next set of coffee mugs (or other merchandise).

And the winning tag line comes from creative mind of Mae Empson.
Strange. Beautiful. Shocking. Surreal.

Four strong adjectives, each one fitting a broad majority of our titles. The line stirs the imagination with four distinctive moods. Well done, Mae!

I want to thank all the contestants for entering!

Tansy Rayner Roberts returns as our nonfiction contributor this month and argues in “Girl Meets House” that the gothic novel is well overdue for a comeback, with a feminist deconstructive twist. Geoff Ryman also discusses his writing process, writing the other, and managing research in an interview with Maggie Slater.

It’s summer and SF/F convention season again, which means you can find me at several upcoming conventions as I attend readings, participate in panels, and generally hang out.

WisCon, this coming weekend,  will have gone by in a whirl of crunchy feminist SF/F convention goodness by the time the issue debuts. I hope to see you there.

In mid-to-late June, I’ll be part of the discussion going on at Fourth Street Fantasy Conversation,  one of my favorite events for intimate, literature-centric discussions with lots of writers, editors, publishers, scholars and fans. Fourth Street features single-track programming on thoughtful topics with a great group of people, including some of my favorite writers.

July 5-8, you can find me at CONvergence, which is just as much fun as Fourth Street, but with a very differentfocus. I was one of their Guests of Honor last year, and this year I will be enjoying a slate of “Wonder Women” GOHs. CONvergence celebrates SF/F and geekery in all different modes and mediums in a wonderfully energetic manner, with some of the best parties around.

Finally, WorldCon (Chicon 7) one of the biggest shindigs in SF/F, will be held this year in Chicago on Labor Day weekend. This is the big one. Jason Sizemore (the intrepid publisher of this lovely magazine) and I will finally get to meet in person. Oh, and then we get to attend the Hugo Award Ceremony, where we will learn our fate as a nominated semiprozine.

It’s going to be a busy summer.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the June issue of Apex Magazine.

Lynne M. Thomas

Editor-in-Chief

This month’s issue of Apex Magazine was something of a special treat for me. In Blood on Vellum, Apex Editor-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas said, “In this issue, things fall apart: Relationships, societies, religious systems. Dreams and hopes, bodies and minds all pay the price for the choices we make to try to get ahead.” Boy, do they ever. The commonalities don’t stop there, though. Taken together, Rachel Swirsky’s Decomposition, Rahul Kanakia’s Tomorrow’s Dictator, Nnedi Okorafor’s  The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set, and Tim Akers’ nonfiction piece Faith in the Fantastic hint at something even larger. Like Tim, I have a strange fascination with religion, so the combination of the treatise on religion in SF/F/H and the prominence of magic in all three stories seems to be a bit of an elephant in the room to me.

Like science, religion is mankind’s way of exploring and understanding the universe and our place in it. For all our vast stores of information, there is still so much we don’t know. General thought today holds that priests and scientists are as far removed from one another as they could possibly be; both approaching the great unknown, but from opposite viewpoints. That wasn’t always the case. Once upon a time, the healers of a community, with their strange chants and herbal concoctions, were thought to hold some magical powers or some divine connection the rest of the society lacked. Today, healing is done by doctors, their knowledge explained by sound scientific principles, and religious incantation is reserved for clergy.

Once upon a time, healers would administer foxglove for heart problems or willow bark for pain, and they might pray over their patient, thanking their divine spirit for the healing powers of the world around them. Patients would recover, and tales of powerful magi with strange potions would be strengthened. Today, chemists extract digitalis from the foxglove, and aspirin’s active ingredients come from willow bark – or the synthetic reproduction of the same chemicals. Science has explained away these particular mysteries of the magi.

In each of the three stories in this month’s Apex Magazine, there are powerful forces at work that cannot be explained by the societies in which the stories are set. In Decomposition, a man with some bare knowledge of magic but not much faith has made it his mission to have revenge upon the man who led a religious war against the mages who once prospered in the community. Using charms even he himself did not fully understand, revenge was had, but it could never be the justice he had imagined. In Tomorrow’s Dictator, what once may have been thought of as an enchantment is pulled into the world of the present, as Sasha Boretsky uses psychology to brainwash the members of the cult to which she belongs. Where once society would have seen evil sorcery, today we know the power even the simplest of ideas can wield. Finally, in The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set, science and magic are shown for what they are as a young girl plays with forces she does not understand, bringing the world around her to life in much the same way as the sorcerer’s apprentice did in the Disney film Fantasia. Here, the young girl learns that the only real difference between science and chaos magic is the orderly way the practitioner does or does not go about his business.

I have noticed that many stories set in the future have no magic and no religion, unless it is a post-apocalyptic world in which people are once again forced to find their place. Science has explained it all away. There are no more scary tricks. Every wonder in the world is either mechanized or the result of a chemical reaction. Of course, this has always been the case; the only thing that is truly different is the mystery and wonder involved.

As we grow into a world society, some of us look to priests and some of us look to science to explain the world around us. Every time science makes a new discovery, the religious must figure out how this fits into their religious paradigm. Many are successful; many are not. More and more people claim science as their god, and label themselves Atheist or Agnostic. As human beings, though, we have a craving for the wonder we knew in childhood. We love to be awed, to be astounded and amazed. The mysteries of the magi appeal to this side of us as few other things can. Those who dwell in the realms of SF/F/H have the advantage over those of the past; the boundaries of their powers extend as far as their writer desires. They are not bound by the laws of physics. As such, they retain the ability to suspend our disbelief, if even only for a short time. They stoke our imaginations and open us up to possibilities science has yet to explore.

The only difference between magic and science is knowledge of the mechanism by which it works. The only difference between science fiction and science fact is time. Science fact feeds our hunger for knowledge; science fiction our need to keep wondering. Without wonder, there is no growth. There lies our obsession with the mysteries of the magi.

Note: If you look up the words mage and magi, you may find they are not necessarily considered synonymous, but after reading this, I hope you will see how they can be. Removal of religious context can change everything. From magic to science, from magi to mage. This is not to hold one above the other; it is only to illustrate the dual nature of mankind, and how our various perspectives are the only thing that keep us from truly understanding ourselves. When each side looks only at one piece of this great puzzle that is life, no one gets to see the whole picture.

Jessica Nelson has been writing since girlhood. She started out writing short stories for herself, usually centering around something like a unicorn and Pegasus prancing along the top of a rainbow, causing glitter to fall from the sky. As she grew, so did her love of words. She filled blank volumes faster than she could get her hands on them, teaching her the true value of napkins, menus, skin, and even her blue jeans.Jessica has since found her niche in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She keeps a blog of bookish things and miscellaneous bric-a-brac she thinks readers might find interesting athttp://allwaysunmended.com and writes book reviews for The Future Fire. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, two daughters, and a slew of critters, spending her days reading, crafting, tapping at the keyboard, and picking up fur balls. Follow her on Twitter @AllwaysUnmended.

Sarah will join the ranks of our posse of other Sarah-named blog editors (Sarah Peduzzi and Sarah Brandel). While having the name of Sarah was not a requirement of the job, it certainly didn’t hurt (or help, to be fair).

Sarah Olson has been working as a submissions editor for Apex Magazine the past two years.  She is a software developer by trade, who also happens to know a lot about WordPress and line editing while maintaining impeccable organization skills. I am delighted to have her step into the position of blog editor and look forward to the new editorial direction she takes us!

Please feel free to send Sarah a hearty congratulations at her new email address: saraholson@apexbookcompany.com.

I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the candidates. Every single candidate had an amazing amount of skills and smarts. It made the final decision quite difficult… I felt like a kid in a candy shop. This will probably come of as a bit weird (but so be it)… but I felt… honored that so many highly skilled and qualified individuals applied for the position. It is when things like that happens when I feel like I must be doing something right.

But this isn’t about me. This is about Sarah Olson.

Go here to learn more about Sarah. There are pictures of her wearing a funny hat, another photo of her giving the ol’ Palpatine shock treatment to her child, and yet another where she’s dressed as a creepy old woman scaring a kid.

Oh yes, the new Madame Blog Editor will fit in well around these parts…