DL Snell

Starbucks holiday cup satire

2015-11-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

How dare Starbucks depict a mermaid WITH TWO TAILS! David Jacob Knight's timely satire on the controversy.

"Starbucks, or any company for that matter, has no right to put whatever branding they want on their products if it violates my mermaid religion."

Read the full article at davidjacobknight.com.

Zombies Love Italian

2015-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

According to a dietary study conducted by Ivan Pavlov of ZED Institute, eight in every ten zombies prefer Italian over other human, uh, cuisine. In light of these findings, Thom Brannan and I would like to introduce our bestselling book Pavlov’s Dogs in Italian.

Thanks to Dunwich Edizioni for the translation and the awesome cover.

To celebrate, the first novella in the Dog Years series, prequel to Pavlov’s Dogs, is free on Amazon.

Warner Bros. hacked, data held for ransom

2014-12-20T10:51:00.000-08:00

Warner Bros. Entertainment was hacked this morning in retaliation to the depiction of Smaug in its new blockbuster film The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

When WB employees arrived this morning for work, they noticed a poorly written warning on their computer screens. The warning depicted what at first appeared to be a skull with long skeletal fingers, but upon closer examination turned out to be Smeagol, another character from the film. “This is just a beginning,” the warning states. “We continue till our request be met.” The poor grammar and other digital clues point to Orcs as the likely attackers.

Using backdoor malware, a time-bomb virus, and Ghash (an Orc word for “fire”), the hackers stole private emails, employee information, and Bilbo Baggins’ home address in the Shire. The hacker team, which calls itself #SMOWG, threatens to release WB’s sensitive data unless Warner Bros. mothballs The Hobbit trilogy and Peter Jackson issues a public apology to Smaug, pledging absolute allegiance to Sauron. Mr. Jackson must also return the ring of power, or else.

Smaug, a fearsome fire-breathing dragon (a little on the heavy side), conquered the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor 150 years ago for its treasure. In the Peter Jackson film, the dragon is depicted as a “most specially greedy, strong, and wicked worm” who suspects everything as being edible. Smaug, incensed by this portrayal, revealed to Stephen Colbert that he blames “typical liberal Hollywood bias” for a dragon being cast as the villain in the film. Also, the camera adds ten tons. Everyone knows that.

Furthering the insult, Smaug, in Peter Jackson’s depiction, has only one weak spot in his armor, a missing scale that broke off during his attack on Dale. This, Smaug contends, is not true to his real-life weak spot, which is actually a gap in the gems and gold embedded in his belly (although gold, being heavy and malleable, makes for terrible armor; a missing scale makes way more sense as a sole weak spot).

President Obama cautions WB not to give in to the hackers’ demands. “I have yet to see The Hobbit. If we as a nation allow despots such as Smaug to dictate what we can and cannot watch, how am I supposed to know what happens to poor Bilbo Baggins?”

If the trilogy remains available, the hackers threaten Helm’s Deep-style attacks on theaters that are still showing the film. Anyone watching a bootlegged copy of the movie will become visible to the eye of Sauron, and Ringwraiths will be dispatched to their location.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is playing now in a theater near you.

New Thriller - The Phone Company

2014-11-28T14:59:00.003-08:00

Today, we announced the release of David Jacob Knight's newest thriller, The Phone Company. The book will be 99 cents on Amazon today. We're also hosting a giveaway for a signed copy on Goodreads.

Thanks to everyone who made the release a great success!

Inhuman Monsters: A Review of Doctor Sleep

2014-11-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Stephen King’s novel Doctor Sleep, child of The Shining, is a fun, inventive book that falls short of the abject terror for which its father is hailed.

The Shining terrified me when I first read it years ago, and it terrified me again when I reread it recently in preparation for the sequel. King has a knack for making human monsters, and often he makes monsters out of people we normally trust: fathers, neighbors, cops. The Shining does this traumatically, turning Jack Torrance, beloved father, into a ravening murderer thirsting for his family’s blood—but this is where Doctor Sleep ultimately fails: its monsters aren’t scary; they’re no longer even human.

The antagonists of Doctor Sleep call themselves the “True Knot”: a nomadic band of vampires that feed off the psychic force of children gifted with the shining, which the True call “steam.” At first the True Knot seem terrifying, what with their cult-like bond and special paranormal abilities, like locating people, or making people fall asleep on command. They also like to torture their young, gifted victims to maximize the harvest, and they practice a bizarre induction ritual: to become one of the True, you have to inhale steam; you have to die and be reborn by “cycling” between our world and . . . somewhere else. The descriptions of this cycling are particularly disturbing, as the different layers of the inductee’s body become transparent; sometimes all you see is her skeleton, or her eyes and brain.

As the novel progresses, we learn more about the True. They travel around the world in RVs, and here King makes a chilling point: no one pays attention to the RV people. We see them all the time—coming into town, heading out of town, at local diners and campgrounds—but they’re almost invisible to us. It’s this very camouflage that allows the True to kidnap gifted children without sounding any alarms. And if they do raise suspicion, the True simply leaves town. So instead of making us fear the people we’re supposed to trust, King attempts to make us dread the people we don’t see. And it works. The idea is truly unsettling, and I’ve been keeping an eye on real-life RV people ever since. But another concept ultimately saps the True of their potential horror, because, despite looking human, they aren’t.

Unlike the murderous Jack Torrance in The Shining, the True Knot aren’t people; they’re vampires. The characters make this point very clearly: humans don’t cycle in and out and disappear when you kill them. Unfortunately, vampires aren’t nearly as scary as people, because as far as we know, vampires are make-believe, whereas humans, as far as we know, are real. Ghosts aside, this is what makes Jack Torrance so terrifying in The Shining. He’s a real warm-blooded human being with understandable, if not relatable, human flaws. Not only that, Jack is someone we know, someone we’re close to—someone we’re supposed to trust. We already know we shouldn’t trust vampires, so the fact that they’re child-murdering steamaholics is no surprise. Even the human touches King gives the True—loyalty, familial bonding, human frailties, and human stupidity—fail at rendering them human enough to keep me up at night, praying Daddy isn’t out doing the Bad Thing.

In the end, while Doctor Sleep isn’t entirely terrifying, it is a fun novel containing some of King’s most ingenious inventions: steam and its deathly counterpart; death flies; mental lockboxes for ghosts; and tons of psychic shenanigans. The novel also has a great cast of characters, endearing yet flawed, and it develops interesting themes of addiction, heredity, and the inescapable darker side of human nature found even in good people. All in all, you should crack Doctor Sleep expecting to be, if not totally traumatized, then at least thoroughly entertained.

#5 in Kindle Horror

2013-12-21T01:55:00.000-08:00

King, Koontz, and Knight: THE PEN NAME is currently in the top 5 horror books on Kindle!

Final BREAKING BAD theory

2013-09-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

With pictures.

As shown most dramatically in "Granite State," Walt wants all that he's done to actually mean something. I'm almost certain the machine gun is for the Nazis. Not sure who the ricin is for--Lydia? Jesse? WALT JR's PANCAKES?!--but I'm fairly certain the climax of the show will center in some way around the conflict between Jesse and Walt. I'm not sure how that will all shake out, but... that still leaves the falling action and the resolution... and an important loose end.

The blood money.

Both Walt and Jesse's money has been a huge device this season in nearly every episode--getting rid of the money, hiding the money, trying to save the money, sleeping on the money...

... losing most of it to the Nazis, and trying to put what's left of the money to real use. I don't think it's any coincidence the first of the final 8 episodes is titled "Blood Money"--a concept that stretches back to this little thing called weregild. Basically there is a physical value to every human life, so if you kill someone, or hurt someone, you have to pay restitution.

By the weregild concept, Walt should pay back all those that he's hurt. He desperately wants to. But since his family refuses the money... who's left? All those poor faces of meth, right?

The show hasn't focused on this much, if at all, but Walt is contributing to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives. Not until Eliot and Gretchen set up the meth recovery program, that is. Only then does the show imply the full scope of Walt's metastasis.

So what if Heisenberg successfully reclaims his millions from the Nazis... and then donates it all to that meth fund Eliot and Gretchen set up? You know, to show them up and prove he's done something truly great with his life? And kinda sorta atone? It's not like using the money as charity hasn't been foreshadowed...

Okay, so how does he donate it, you might say. Well first, he's got to turn himself in to the DEA. And maybe he cuts a deal: "I'll tell you where the money is, IF..." Drug money has been donated to anti-drug causes before--there's real-life precedence for this. And what better way for the world to...

It'd be all over the news!!!

So, you might ask, are you saying Walt goes to prison then? Not necessarily. Because I lied. The FIRST thing he does isn't turn himself in to the DEA. The FIRST thing he does is... INGEST THIS.

Three days later, the end.

The Pen Name, by David Jacob Knight

2013-09-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Grab a copy of the new supernatural thriller readers are calling fascinating, brilliant, claustrophobic, and nail-biting!

"A fascinating thriller. It's the book I wish I had written."
--Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author

"A writer's dream becomes his worst nightmare ... THE PEN NAME is a sadistic thriller with a slow-burning fuse."
--Craig DiLouie, author of THE KILLING FLOOR

Head over to the DJK blog for an interview with the Audible narrator and to enter the Goodreads Giveaway. You could win a signed copy of THE PEN NAME!

Learn more at davidjacobknight.com.

99-cent Amazon Bestseller

2013-09-08T02:37:00.001-07:00

The 99-cent sale is going well.

Pavlov's Dogs is currently #14 in Horror. Dog Years 1 is #17 in Science Fiction > Adventure. And Dog Years 2 & 3 are #2,194 and #2,241 respectively. And MY Amazon rank is, drum roll please...

"Grab this with both hands!"--Johnathan Maberry

Here's the link! http://amzn.to/1f2W9H9

MAD MEN - "The Crash" reconstructed

2013-05-21T05:08:00.000-07:00

*SPOILERS for MAD MEN thru Season 6 "The Crash"

After watching an episode of my favorite show, I’ll often read reviews online--and just as a woman can’t not remark on her husband’s secretary... I am compelled to say something about this deconstruction of Mad Men’s “The Crash.” Posted on The Hollywood Reporter, the analysis overlooks two major themes in its critique of Don’s inexplicable “love” for Sylvia.

First… if you haven't seen this episode or read the deconstruction, the following paragraphs will probably confuse you worse than “The Crash” confused the Twits... Anyway.

“I’ve got this great message,” Don says, “and it has to do with what holds people together. What is that thing that draws them? It’s a history. And it may not even be with that person…”

He says this because the oatmeal mother in the ad is inspired by Aimee, the prostitute who became Don’s surrogate mother (and first girlfriend). Don has focused on this ad because, in his mind, he has conflated Aimee and Sylvia. But it’s even bigger than that, bigger than just these two women. Bigger than Chevy.

Now, flashback to “The Doorway” at the beginning of this season, when Don describes love: “We want that electric jolt to the body,” he says. “We want Eros. It’s like a drug (hint, hint). It’s not domestic. What’s the difference between a husband knocking on a door and a sailor getting off a ship? About ten thousand volts.”

Don’s calling it love, but what he’s describing is much more chemical than that. It’s much more transitory (like a shot in the glutes). This is a feeling he’s become addicted to. He doesn’t understand what love truly is, how it abides, how it ages. He’s confusing love with… a chemical dependency. A dependency that, for Don, stretches back years. Decades.

From Aimee to Betty to Rachel and Midge, from Midge to Bobbie and Mrs. Farrell and Faye, and finally from Megan to Sylvia: any one of these women could be a stand-in for the whore mother feeding oatmeal to her son. Don has built up a history of loves, of dependencies. Henry Francis once said there are no fresh starts. Lives go on. So every time Don becomes addicted to a lady, he brings with him a whole sexual history. That’s the theme of his pitch he planned to give Sylvia: you’re every woman I’ve ever had this feeling for. It’s why he’s so attached to her. It’s not for love but the electric jolt, shocking his damaged heart back to life, if only for a while.

That’s what this deconstruction in the Reporter overlooks. It forgets that it’s bigger than Sylvia. Bigger than oatmeal even.

(It also would’ve been nice to see the article mention Kenny’s line about where he learned to tap dance: “My mother… No, my first girlfriend.” Because that, too, was really a line about Don.)

The Next Big Thing

2012-12-05T13:11:00.000-08:00

Editor and author Brian Sammons tagged me to participate in an interesting blog hop called The Next Big Thing. So did C. Dulaney. It’s essentially an interview that gives writers a chance to talk about their current project and also an opportunity to promote fellow writers.

Before I get to my interview, I'd like to say a little about the writers I've chosen to tag.

Scott Baker
I met Scott at Crypticon 2012 in Seattle. I got to know him over some "sweetened Coke," provided by Maker's Mark fanatic Tony Faville. Scott has written the only other novel I know about that combines zombies and vampires, and he also helped sell my books at the convention when I wasn't at my table. He's beta-read one of my novels, and has helped me with technical questions quite a few times. Thank you, Scott. Looking forward to your interview!

Thom Brannan
I actually have never met Thom in person, but he and I have written nearly four books together. Thom has written I don't know how many books solo, but I know of at least six. He's a serious talent, and he writes so fast I sometimes refer to him as Barry Allen. Thank you, Thom, for your hard and excellent work on our series, and for your contributions to the genre.

Now on to the interview...

What is the working title of your next book?
It’s tentatively titled DOG YEARS. It’s a collection of novellas set in the PAVLOV’S DOGS universe, co-authored with Thom Brannan.

What genre does your book fall under?
Action horror in general. It also blends in sci-fi, and pits the zombie and werewolf subgenres against each other.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
When Thom and I wrote PAVLOV’S DOGS, we left certain narrative gaps. For example, we never fully describe where the zombies come from because we felt it had no bearing on the story. Zombie origins are now generally well known, so... we didn’t want to beat that particular dead horse if we could just show someone raising the club.

The author of THE WALKING DEAD comics has a similar philosophy: “I have ideas [about the cause of the zombie plague]...but it's nothing set in stone because I never plan on writing it.”

But PAVLOV’S DOGS does hint at the undead origins, and now in DOG YEARS we’re exploring where both the zombies and the werewolves came from. We also explore the backstory of their creator, Dr. Crispin.

So the idea for DOG YEARS came from narrative gaps left in the first book.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I’ll leave this up to the readers. I try not to think in terms of who I would cast because, well… have you ever seen a movie before reading the book? Then you actually read the book and you can’t picture the characters as anything other than the actors who portrayed them? Robert Langdon is forever Tom Hanks. Stu Redman is forever Gary Sinise.

I like my image of the characters to remain pristine as I write them. I don’t want Daniel Radcliffe running around nude in my imagination.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
From breakouts in the monster lab to his role in the zombie apocalypse, follow Dr. Crispin and his team of werewolves through three eras of mad scientists, abominations, and a frightening new adversary.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Permuted Press will publish the collection.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
We are still working on the last two novellas, but the first novella took us probably a month. Thom, for one, works incredibly fast. That’s a rare talent among writers.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
That’s a hard one. A reviewer compared PAVLOV’S DOGS to Peter Clines’ bestselling zombies vs. superhero novel, EX-HEROES. But DOG YEARS, specifically? It still revolves around a central versus concept, but it’s probably more comparable to THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Two things: our publisher’s idea to offer free content, and the fans of PAVLOV’S DOGS.

When the publisher suggested that we offer a free short story or novella in the same universe, we started thinking about stories we could tell. I looked at what the fans were asking for in their reviews, and that turned out to be more backstory.

So Thom and I thought, why give them backstory when we could give them a full-fledged story? Why give them just a novella when we could give them a collection?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Well... we plan to offer it for free. And, as many of our fans like to say, it’s zombies versus werewolves. What else could you want?

Werewolves... made of Legos?!

2012-07-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

Fans are great. So is fan art. But collaborating with an artist who's also a fan? That has got to be the greatest.

When our zombie vs. werewolf novel, PAVLOV'S DOGS, first came out, Thom Brannan and I were very pleased with a review of the story over at Bricksofthedead.com. The reviewer, Evan Roy, favorably compared the book to one of Permuted Press's bestsellers, EX-Heroes by Peter Clines. He had some very nice things to say.

"PAVLOV'S DOGS is high quality entertainment well worth your dollar, and a needed break from the mundane."--Evan Roy

Bricksofthedead.com, for the uninitiated, mainly consists of zombie comics... in Lego form. Evan, our reviewer, has had much practice at building Lego dioramas. In fact, he has created several based on scenes from Permuted books. So imagine our surprise (and nerdy elation) when Evan offered to create a comic strip for the first chapter of our story.

Thom and I jumped all over this opportunity. We wrote the script, and Evan did a brilliant job fleshing it out... with Legos.

The strip will be eight episodes long, and there will be an associated giveaway for signed copies of the novel... and it's all starting today!

Read Episode 1...

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE – Roundtable 4

2012-05-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE edited by Kevin J. Anderson (Gallery Books)

The third book in the hilarious and horrifying national bestselling anthology series from the Horror Writers Association—a frightfest of sidesplitting stories from such New York Times bestselling authors as Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Heather Graham, L.A. Banks, Kelley Armstrong, and many more!

Horror fiction explores the dark side of human nature, often pushing the limits of violence, graphic gore, and extreme emotions. Blood Lite III: Aftertaste puts the fun back into dark fiction, featuring a wide range of humorous and highly entertaining horror-filled tales.

After my interview with Kevin J. Anderson, the Blood Lite editor, I tapped a bunch of the authors to talk about why humor is so important in the horror genre, and what inspired their horrifically hilarious tales. This is part four of four.

What led you to write the story that appears in BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE?

Lisa Morton: It’s about animals taking over. My cats ordered me to write it.

JG Faherty: Other than the desire to be in a popular anthology that actually has a chance to earn royalties for its contributors? Probably a yen to try and write something that was funny. I don’t normally do straight-out comedy; I will sometimes work it into a story or novel, a funny line or scene here and there, but I’m not per say a ‘funny’ writer in the way Jeff Strand can be, for example. He can make you roll on the floor with laughter while dumping a bucket of guts on you. And it has nothing to do with sense of humor—lots of funny people can’t write funny stories. It’s all how you’re wired as a writer. For me, writing something humorous is much harder than writing something frightening or sad. I really had to work at my story for this collection (point of fact—I didn’t make it into the first two Blood Lite books, which tells you A) I had to learn to write funny and B) Kevin only chooses the very best for this series). As for how the story actually came about, I just always felt that if you mix horror and hillbillies together, you’re going to get something comical. Actually, mix hillbillies and anything together and the results are usually comical. Just watch any reality show that takes place in the South.

Mike Baron: I don’t know where “Mint In Box” came from. Somewhere in my skull.

Jeff Ryan: My Blood Lite: Overbite story went for the gross-out, so I tried to do something with a repellant character, instead of nice characters doing repellant things.

David Sakmyster: While out house-hunting and hating every second of the experience, deciding finally in the midst of being shown a house that all this wasn’t worth it and we were just going to stay put, I just started asking the real estate agent ridiculous questions, like: “In full disclosure, how many bodies are buried out back? And where are the secret trap doors? How big is the dungeon?” And that kind of led to this story…

John Alfred Taylor: I kept seeing awful prefab steeples tacked on churches everywhere, and wondered where they came from. Then I googled a few of the manufacturers. As soon as I imagined each steeple shipping with a resident demon I had my story. All I had to do was develop the workings of the company. Online catalogs helped. All the demons are traditional, named in one source or another. To the best of my knowledge Gorgo’s hairdresser is not listed in the yellow pages.

Adrian Ludens: I think most readers will recognize what inspired me. This is not so much a parody as it is an homage. At least that was my intention. I think an entire book would be fun to write (and read!) from a ‘Grown Up’ perspective and in this style.

It’s like that classic question: ‘Door number one, two or three?’ I’m the guy who wants to go back and find out what I missed; see what’s behind ALL the doors! For me this story was a fun romp through what would be a terrible, harrowing situation in real life.

Chris Abbey: That story would be longer than the story itself. I was originally going to do a zombie story, but I figured Kevin would be overrun with them. At the time, every time I turned on the news there was something about Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars. I kept joking about that to my wife, who suggested I write it down instead of annoying her. Add in the fact that I couldn’t think of anything to write about, but I kept having this Donny and Marie parody from an old Mad Magazine running through my head. Then Phyllis Diller from Mad Monster Party, and I knew I had to try being cartoonist Jack Davis for a while. What I didn’t count on is that I’d actually have to watch Dancing with the Stars, so I have suffered for my art.

On the technical side, it was strange because I didn’t write it in order. All the scenes were first, then it was, “Here’s your scene, what’s your joke?” The last line written was a) my favorite [Rehearse the krakken!] and b) near the middle. I ditched a scene with a siren as the musical guest that I just couldn’t make work.

I didn’t finish until right near the deadline, which once again proves that comedy is all about timi...

Christopher Golden: If I remember correctly, Kevin Anderson asked me to do something for the second volume, but I told him I wasn’t funny. My friend John McIlveen asked me to do something for a humorous horror anthology as well, and I said the same thing. When Kevin came back to me for Blood Lite 3, I insisted I wasn’t funny, but he was doing a story for my anthology THE MONSTER’S CORNER, and I felt like I had to give it a shot. I can tell a joke as well as the next guy (unless the next guy is Jeff Strand), but to WRITE something funny is entirely different. So I turned my doubts inward, and wrote a story about a guy who will do almost anything to be funny, but just isn’t. I won’t say more about it, but I smiled a lot while writing it, so hopefully that counts for something.

Jeff Strand: Self-plagiarism! One of my first novels, HOW TO RESCUE A DEAD PRINCESS (published shortly after the Y2K bug destroyed most of the earth) has a “Jack and the Beanstalk” spoof with a throwaway line about the ridiculous idea of grinding bones to make bread. A little over a decade later, I thought “What if somebody actually tried to do that?” and that led to “Scrumptious Bone Bread.”

Kelley Armstrong: It was sparked by the usual thing: just another "what if?" question. In my book series, I gave custody of two young adult werewolves to a secondary Pack member. In "V Plates," my Pack guy is persuaded to help the younger boy lose his virginity by taking him to a whorehouse. That's probably never a wise idea, but given the characters involved, this is guaranteed to go wrong. Horribly wrong.

Related Articles
- Kevin J. Anderson interview

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE AUTHORS

Lisa Morton has written six movies, four books of non-fiction, two novellas, one novel, and somewhere around fifty short stories. She’s a three-time Stoker Award winner, a recipient of the Black Quill Award, and her cats think she’s awesome. She lives online at www.lisamorton.com.

JG Faherty is an Active Member in the Horror Writers Association. His first novel, CARNIVAL OF FEAR, was published in 2010. His second book, GHOSTS OF CORONADO BAY, was released in 2011, and his third will be coming out in late 2011 as well. His other credits include Cemetery Dance, Shroud Magazine, and several major anthologies, among them Appalachian Winter Hauntings, Legends of the Mountain State 3 & 4, Bound for Evil, Dark Territories, Horror Library IV, and the upcoming Beast Within 2 and Best New Zombie Tales 3.

A freelance writer with over 15 years of experience, his varied background includes working as a laboratory manager, accident scene photographer, zoo keeper, research scientist, and resume writer. When it comes to humor, he enjoys teaching bad words to small children, watching Married with Children, wearing ugly Hawaiian shirts, and trading insults with his friends.

Mike Baron broke into comics with Nexus, his groundbreaking science fiction title co-created with illustrator Steve Rude. He has written for Creem, The Boston Globe, Isthmus, AARP Magazine, Oui, Madison, Fusion, Poudre Magazine, Argosy and many others. Nexus is currently being published in hardcover by Dark Horse. Baron has won two Eisners and an Inkpot for his work on Nexus, now being published in five languages including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Baron’s revamp of DC’s The Flash continues to garner great reviews. Marvel recently published two collections of Baron’s Work, The Essential Punisher Vol. II and The Essential Punisher Vol. III.

A prolific creator, Baron is at least partly responsible for The Badger, Spyke, Feud, The Hook, and The Architect. The latter is available as a graphic novel from Big Head Press. www.bloodyredbaron.net

Photo by
Mikkel Paige

Jeff Ryan is the author of Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. He first got interested in mixing comedy and horror when a clown murdered his dog.
twitter.com/#!/dailymario | supermariobook.com

David Sakmyster is an award-winning author and screenwriter whose short stories have appeared in The Writers of the Future Anthology, ChiZine, Horrorworld, Black Static, Talebones, Abyss & Apex and others. THE PHAROS OBJECTIVE and forthcoming THE MONGOL OBJECTIVE are the first two novels in a series about psychic archaeologists. He’s also written the horror novel CRESCENT LAKE, and the historical fiction epic, SILVER AND GOLD. You can step into his mind at www.sakmyster.com.

John Alfred Taylor is a retired professor of English in Southwest Pennsylvania, and has been writing science fiction and horror for years. He has been published in GALAXY, GALILEO, GRUE, OCEANS OF THE MIND, and ASIMOV’S, and had stories reprinted in YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES. A collection of Taylor’s horror stories, HELL IS MURKY, is available from Ash-Tree Press.

Adrian Ludens is a radio personality and program director for a classic rock station in the Black Hills of South Dakota. His fiction has appeared in Morpheus Tales, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and a number of small press horror anthologies. Recent appearances include stories in Made You Flinch 2: Two For Flinching (edited by Bill Tucker, Library of Horror Press) and in Zombie Kong (edited by James Roy Daley, Books of the Dead Press). Adrian first short story collection is available on Amazon.

Chris Abbey was created in the 60s during a bad thunderstorm and someone’s bad trip. His hobbies are grave-robbing, sewer-lurking, and macrame. He is considering a job offer from a major magazine, and will consider it further if the offer ever actually happens. The picture is a still from a YouTube video in which he discusses how to tell a joke (true).

Christopher Golden is an award-winning, bestselling author of novels for adults and teens, as well as a comic book writer, screenwriter, and editor. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family, and his original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. His is not funny. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com

Jeff Strand: Stories by Jeff Strand have appeared in all three BLOOD LITE volumes. He’s written a bunch of novels, including stuff like WOLF HUNT and FANGBOY, and he’ll give you a great big hug if you visit his website at www.jeffstrand.com.

Kelley Armstrong: Kelley Armstrong has been telling stories since before she could write. Her earliest written efforts were disastrous. If asked for a story about girls and dolls, hers would invariably feature undead girls and evil dolls, much to her teachers' dismay. All efforts to make her produce "normal" stories failed. Today, she continues to spin tales of ghosts and demons and werewolves, while safely locked away in her basement writing dungeon. She's the author of the "Women of the Otherworld" paranormal suspense series, "Darkest Powers" young adult urban fantasy trilogy, and Nadia Stafford crime series. She lives in southwestern Ontario with her husband, kids and far too many pets. www.KelleyArmstrong.com

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE – Roundtable 3

2012-05-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE edited by Kevin J. Anderson (Gallery Books)

Disembowelment—how is that funny?

Lisa Morton: Oh, easy: It’s only three syllables removed from “bowel movement”.

JG Faherty: It depends how it’s done, just like anything else. Write it or film it with a sense of humor, and it’s hilarious. A perfect example is the scene in Machete where Machete rappels out a window and down the hospital wall, using a victim’s intestines as a rope. Ask Quentin Tarantino or the folks from Monty Python what’s funny about disembowelment and they’ll probably say, ‘What isn’t?’ Ask your local pastor (or veteran) and they’ll probably tell you you’re a sick bastard.

Mike Baron: It’s funny when you slip in the guts and do a pratfall.

Jeff Ryan: The word itself is funny, like “defenestrate” or “keelhaul.”

John Alfred Taylor: It’s not, but I can think of a movie short that might make it funny. Perhaps best animated.

Adrian Ludens: Disembowelment is NOT funny, with one exception. It all hinges on the lower intestines. I envision a victim whose pride or sense of decorum compels them to stagger around, unsuccessfully trying to hold their lower intestines in to no avail. Instead they unspool or unravel like film in an old Hollywood camera.

Chris Abbey: I actually overheard someone say, “Did you hear they’ve figured out a way to make Damascus Steel without the blood of slaves?” Doesn’t get any funnier than that.

Christopher Golden: It’s not. Though I’m confident Jeff Strand could make it funny.

Jeff Strand: It’s not. Why would you even suggest otherwise? What are you, some kind of disembowelment-enjoying sicko? For God’s sake, this is people’s intestines being yanked out that we’re talking about! Here, point your tummy this way and we’ll see how much you like it, you twisted bastard.

Kelley Armstrong: There is something surreally absurd about intestines tumbling out, and the writer can play with that--and the readers can acknowledge--particularly if the victim is someone the reader doesn't care about...or is happy to see disemboweled.

Part 4 coming next week!

Related Articles
- Kevin J. Anderson interview

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE AUTHORS

Photo by
Mikkel Paige

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE – Roundtable 2

2012-05-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE edited by Kevin J. Anderson (Gallery Books)

What’s the most horrific thing you have seen, heard, or read that made you laugh even though you weren’t supposed to?

Lisa Morton: I once laughed at a nutcase who was threatening me. Probably not my smartest move, but it just came out...and it was worth it for the look on the whackjob’s face (who did leave me alone).

JG Faherty: Well, I know I’m not alone in my habit of laughing at funerals and wakes. Again, it’s an unconscious need to release tension, to make the horrific more palatable. Not unlike my habit of cracking a joke or wise comment when driving past a terrible accident. People often call it a morbid sense of humor, but it’s simply a defense mechanism. Make it funny and you don’t have to think about the reality of a situation. It also happens in bad movies, like the Saw series, where the gore is so outlandish and over the top that it simply stops being scary and just ends up being stupid. Although I have to admit, years ago while working as a photographer I did accident scene photo work for the local police and one time I had to take pictures after someone was run over by a train. There was a single eyeball sitting on a rail. I still have that photo someplace, and it still makes me laugh. I love bringing it out at parties.

Mike Baron: A tale. I was talking to Snake yesterday. He said, some years ago he was riding with his club, when the lead bike struck a deer. The rider struck the deer in such a way that the antler pierced the forehead of the unfortunate. It entered his forehead and protruded from the top of his skull. Snake went to the aid of his fallen bro. Grabbed hold of the deer which was thrashing about with the impaled in tow. Snake reached for his knife and wrestled the deer down and slit its throat. The rest of the gang then hog piled on the deer as it went through its death throes. They then decapitated the deer. The ambulance arrives, is stunned by the blood and gore, not to mention the pierced biker, saws off the antler and transports the wounded.

Jeff Ryan: My younger brother was in second grade. He had a mean lunch lady who I’ll call Ida. None of the kids liked her. One morning the principal announced that, sadly, Ida had died last night. Silence, then...a cheer. Then another, from another classroom. Soon the entire elementary schoolful of young children was celebrating an old lady’s death. The principal was stuck saying “this isn’t an appropriate response.” A teacher friend of mine said that was the worst thing he’d ever heard.

David Sakmyster: I know I’m not alone, but I thought what was supposed to be so horrific about The Human Centipede was actually hilarious. I guess for me there’s just no conceivable way to depict the consumption of human waste and not leave a… (ahem)… funny taste in the mouth.

John Alfred Taylor: The last words of vulcanologist David Johnson watching Mt. St. Helens March 20, 1980: “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” Pyroclastic flow isn’t anything to laugh at, but how right he was.

The First and Second Defenstrations of Prague: the first bunch out the window were saved by a convenient dung heap below, the second bunch years later died because of improved sanitation.

Adrian Ludens: I’m glad you asked because I need to get this off my chest. When I was a junior in high school, we watched a documentary about Nazi Germany in a history class. This documentary focused on the atrocities of the concentration camps. The images and footage really shook me up. And the feeling of sadness and horror continued to mount. On the TV screen, we’re watching Nazi soldiers tossing bodies into a mass grave. Just a tangle of limbs down a massive hole. Then they’re carrying what is obviously a little kid and they stop on the lip of the hole. As they let the body slide down the side of the pit someone in class audibly said: “Wheeee!”

That someone was me. Several other students gasped and looked at me with disgust. But I don’t think any of them understood what made me do it. I couldn’t take the horror any more. I HAD to lighten the mood. A person can only take so much sadness before they start joking around. That’s what happened to me that day.

Chris Abbey: Cop Rock.

Christopher Golden: I’m sure the list is long and...just wrong. I can’t even begin to come up with the number one thing on that list, but just yesterday I cracked up when I saw video of one of the assholes who rioted in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Bruins. Thanks to riot police, the poor bastard got a flashbang to the crotch. Essentially a small explosion, followed by fire. It shouldn’t be funny, but it so is. Though I laughed much harder watching this video, mainly because of the scream and the commentator’s amused sympathy.

Jeff Strand: When I laugh inappropriately, it’s usually over something immature rather than something horrific. Though when I was in high school I was at a friend’s house watching BLOOD FEAST, and when the woman got her tongue ripped out my friend’s little brother let out a horrified “Oooohhh” which I thought was absolutely hilarious. The poor kid is probably traumatized to this day. I’m a bad person.

Part 3 coming next week!

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- Kevin J. Anderson interview

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE AUTHORS

Photo by
Mikkel Paige

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE – Roundtable 1

2012-05-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE edited by Kevin J. Anderson (Gallery Books)

“[W]ith the popularity of shows and movies such as The Walking Dead, True Blood, Twilight, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, audiences have demonstrated their love for [horror]—especially accompanied with a dose of humor to tone down the terror.”

This above quote is from the synopsis of Blood Lite: Aftertaste. Why do you think humor is so important in a horror story?

Lisa Morton: Horror and humor go together like blood and band-aids—one helps to relieve the other.

JG Faherty: First off, I don’t think humor is ‘important’ in a horror story per say; it’s just that horror with a touch of humor is a very popular subset of the horror genre, just as it is with any other genre. Romantic comedies do better than dramatic romance movies; action movies with a shot of the funnies often do better than hard action. People like to laugh—it’s a universal. Not everyone enjoys being scared, or having a good cry, or sitting through impossible car chases. But show me someone who hates to laugh and I’ll show you a Vulcan. Or a serial killer. When it comes to horror, I think there is a second factor as well: it takes the edge off the scares. Instead of having x-number of hours of intense fear, you have spurts of it broken up by the laughs. It is a tension release, and you actually look forward to it coming. The horror is more palatable when you know it’s only temporary.

Mike Baron: Any good story has an element of humor in it. When we confront the inexplicable or the terrifying humor serves as an escape valve to help us handle the situation.

Jeff Ryan: There are a million ways to tell a dramatic story and make it work. If you’re reading a funny story and you don’t chuckle, it doesn’t work. Ditto for scary stories. And there’s an overlap in emotions, since fright makes you tense, and laughter releases the tension. Really, comedy and horror are opposite sides of the same coin. Mel Brooks said it best: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.”

David Sakmyster: Simply put, it provides the necessary spark of humanity in the face of the inhuman, and reminds us that even when all seems bleakest, sometimes a little chuckle is all it takes to prove that IT (whatever horror ‘it’ is)—while it may kill us in horrifying ways—will never truly get the best of us.

John Alfred Taylor: It isn’t always. But in entertainments like those cited the humor reminds the audience that horror is entertainment, fun with tropes, so to speak. Hoary old tropes that deserve mockery. Zombies are boring, and vampires metabolically unconvincing. But one can have knowing fun with the tropes, as in Scream or The Rocky Horror Show, so you can have your horror cake and eat it too—simultaneously be scared and laugh at it.

But humor does other things for horror. For instance it can damp down the pressure just enough. Think of watching a horror movie in a crowded theatre—the tension raised instant by instant till a young man somewhere can’t stand it and bursts into braying laughter. A little sprinkle of humor at the right moment might prevent that. And sometimes humor and horror are inseparable: in L. P. Hartley’s “The Traveling Grave” the protagonist’s misunderstanding of what his host collects (baby carriages instead of coffins) is part of the fun. Or in stories by M. R, James the humor helps construct the comfortable tissue of normality that the revenant rips through: as examples see the choleric Colonel Wilson in “O Whistle, and I’ll Come to You” or the estate bailiff spouting malapropisms in “Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance.”

Adrian Ludens: My brother-in-law pointed out that whenever we go through a Halloween spook house, I’m the one who’s always laughing. I think there’s something fun about being scared while knowing you are safe. With a humorous horror story, I think the author is saying to the reader: ‘Hey, come with me on this crazy adventure... you’re going to experience some things that are scary or even awful, but don’t worry; you’ll have fun and maybe even laugh about it.’

Chris Abbey: Horror is a way to distance oneself from the things of which we are afraid. A second way to distance is to laugh at them. In “Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” for instance, we laughed at Costello partly because he was so much more frightened of these monsters than we like to think we’d be. Wes Craven understands the absurdity of the monster within.

Christopher Golden: A good laugh is cathartic, and so is a good scare. Put the two together, and it’s even better. Both humor and horror bring us to a physically agitated state. They give us a rush. And when we start coming down from that, it’s exhilarating.

Jeff Strand: Often I like to use humor to soften the reader for the kill. Make them laugh, lower their defenses, and then hit them with something much more horrific than they were expecting! Humor can also be used to create empathy for a character—we like people who make us laugh—and it can also make a story more realistic because, after all, real life is funny!

Kelley Armstrong: I don't think it's critical for horror to have humor, but it does provide tension relief, which can make it a more emotionally satisfying read. As the sense of dread mounts, those little "oases" of humor give the reader breathing space, which can give the next shot of horror an even bigger jolt.

Part 2 coming next week!

Related Articles
- Kevin J. Anderson interview

BLOOD LITE: AFTERTASTE AUTHORS

Photo by
Mikkel Paige

Steampunk Cthulhu antho

2012-02-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Steampunk Cthulhu
Editor(s): Brian M. Sammons & Glynn Owen Barrass
Pay Rate: 3¢ / word + 3 contributor copies
Response Time: variable
Reading Period: now until July 31
Description: The age of steam meets the age of Cthulhu, in a past where technology unbound warps Victorian Britain and the world at large into a dark Steampunk reality.
Submission Guidelines: www.freewebs.com/batglynn/

THE SCOOP

1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?

GB: Gawd there are so many… let’s see now! Two favourites: Raymond Chandler, because of his attention to detail and the rawness of his prose, and of course, H.P. Lovecraft, so rich with imagination and darkness, I couldn’t imagine a world without his sinister vision.

BMS: Lovecraft, for his original vision of horror. Stephen King for being the first author of adult books I ever read and introducing me to the joys of reading. Robert Bloch and Joe R. Lansdale for doing both bleak horror and black comedy so well. Richard Matheson for being the most consistently good and enjoyable over such a long career. And I can’t forget Robert E. Howard for his manly badassery.

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?

GB: My genres, cyberpunk, and horror, for the most part. For this book, with immense clues in the title, we want to see the Cthulhu Mythos mixed with Steampunk, and are quite happy to see elements of fantasy, sci-fi, and even comedy within the subs.

BMS: Horror first and foremost, with various flavours of sci-fi and the occasional sword and sorcery fantasy, as long as it’s not too cute and fluffy. As for what I’d like to see for this book, a real blend of Lovecraftian nihilistic and inescapable horror with the often “future is bright” feel of steampunk. Also, I’d like to see some tales outside of the Victorian Britain setting.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
GB: I very much like alternate reality settings, whether it be past, present or future. Imagination can really soar when the world and reality have no boundaries.

BMS: I go through cycles. I’ll be into historical fiction for a while and then switch to something futuristic. However I always return to stories set in the modern world where reality clashes with the horrific or fantastic.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
GB: Any really, though it is good sometimes to read something slow paced, that suddenly goes ‘boom’ at a mile a minute near the end.

BMS: While arguments can be made for any type of story, the majority of short stories I really like are fast paced. I like the sense of action they impart. Conversely when it comes to novels or horror movies, I prefer creeping dread. Yeah that’s weird, I know.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?

GB: Those that feel helpless against an overpowering Evil/Government/Religion, but fight back nonetheless. Doomed protagonists also read very well in a story.

BMS: I always like strong capable characters that nonetheless come up against things they just can’t overcome. It’s the whole feeling of yeah, you might be a bad ass (in whatever field) but compared to this you’re still nothing.

6) Is there a specific tone you'd like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?

GB: Dark for the most part, dystopian too. Steampunk tales in a grimy, polluted world with nothing shiny but the glint in the antagonist’s eye.

BMS: I’d be happy to run the gambit. From a few (but only a few) silly, humorous tales to the darkest, most feel bad stories imaginable, and everything in between. As long as it’s 100% steampunk and 100% Lovecraftian (or would that be 50% of both?) I’ll be happy.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?

GB: Swears are okay, as long as they are part of the story, but I don’t see our protagonists lowering themselves to such vulgarities. Violence, no problem where it is a necessary part of the story and not gratuitous. And sex… nothing X-Rated.

BMS: I’m fine with vulgarity; it’s a form of expression I’m fairly familiar with, as long as it’s warranted. Violence, I like violent horror. While not essential to tell a good story, I grew up in the 1980s reading plenty of splatterpunk. Sex, as long as it’s not just tossed in to be titillating and nothing more, I’m fine with it. As for taboos, for me it would be the victimization and sexualisation of children. No one wants to read that, and if you do, then this is not the book for you.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?

GB: Again, darkness in the Steampunk world, sinister conspiracies and things beyond comprehension breaking through into our reality.

BMS: Technology mixed with black magic or just going too far. Famous characters (fictional or real) from the era would be a good addition, as long as there’s a solid reason for them to be in the story. Perhaps pulpy adventure mixed with the darkest horror.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?

GB: Either, and if it’s downbeat for the heroes and upbeat for the bad guys, that’s fine! The protagonist discovering the hopelessness of the human condition in the face of the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos would be a good (but not totally necessary) ending to a Steampunk Cthulhu tale.

BMS: Either, but if I had to lean one way or the other, I’d lean toward downbeat. Not only does it feel more Lovecraftian to me, but I think too many of today’s horror stories have happy endings.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?

GB: DO NOT pay lip service to the Mythos, as in throwing in a few names here and there just to make something Cthulhu Mythos when it’s not. We want the stories rich with the elements of both genres, blended seamlessly.

BMS: Let me stress that again, DO NOT play lip service to the Lovecraftian element. I’ve recently put together a number of Lovecraftian anthologies and you’d be surprised how many authors think that namedropping Cthulhu or the Necronomicon is sufficient. Well it’s not. The same should be said about the steampunk genre. If you’re not completely comfortable with one side of this genre blending experiment or the other, it will show.

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth thrice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 3 of 3

2011-10-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

READ: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

In a ballroom full of rabid zombie fans now actually turned into zombies, there were two people in particular whom I would want by my side. One of them was there in the ballroom already: Eloise J. Knapp—novelist, photographer, graphic designer… and one heck of a hardcore survivalist.

The other person was Jonathan Maberry. Not only was he an eighth-degree black belt in traditional Japanese jujitsu, and a fifth-degree black belt in kenjutsu (the Japanese art of swordplay), he also had published, like, fifteen books in five years, plus a bunch of Marvel comic books and short stories. Guy like that, he must have had some type of superpower equal to Peter Clines’s denial. And on top of everything, he was a super nice guy, always willing to read books from Permuted, always willing to help promote. Super nice guy. That, too, was one of his powers.

Alas, I hadn’t seen Maberry but in passing the entire zomBcon. Jacob, Eloise, and I really could have used him there in the ballroom.

“Locked,” Jacob Kier said as he hobbled away from yet another door leading out of the room. “Or maybe blocked or something.”

We had tried three doors already. They hadn’t been shut when I had first barged into the ballroom to save my friend and publisher Jacob Kier from suffering a game-over at the hands of a zombified Super Mario.

“Last one,” Ellie said.

We all looked down the outside aisle to where more and more zombies were pouring into the ballroom. It was the only open door, and we had been trying to avoid it because of the incoming horde.

I looked behind us at the gory mess Ellie’s minigun had left behind. There were still a few twitching hands here and there, a few blinking eyes on partially severed heads. But aside from this new influx of the undead ahead of us, we had pretty much cleared the room. Nevertheless, the incoming zombies had already started circling around behind us, and we could hear them back there, closing in.

There were so many. I wondered why they were all coming into the ballroom. Was there no one else out there alive?

“I’m running out of ammo,” Ellie said as she fed in her last belt of cartridges.

“Me too,” I said, plucking the last few shotgun shells from my bandolier. Jacob had already run out of rounds for his handgun, and he looked like maybe he was starting to hyperventilate, all sweaty and pale and trying to catch his breath. He was clutching his ZombAlert necklace as if it were helping him stay upright. I was proud of him: he hadn’t yet lain down and cried. Well... maybe for like a second he had.

Somehow Ellie had managed to get him back on his feet. “Think of your family,” she’d said. “There’s plenty to live for, but you have to fight for it, do you understand me?”

Now, as Ellie continued to load the minigun, I said, “Should we go back to your booth, get more ammo, different guns?”

She shook her head. “They’ve already circled around that far. We’d never make it to the cache, not with the ammo we’ve got left. We’d just be wasting our last chance.”

She finished loading the minigun for the last time. “Okay,” she said, “make every round count. D.L., you’re the cleanup crew. You get the ones I don’t.”

I nodded, and she set up her shot.

Watching her operate the minigun was like watching a construction worker using a jackhammer. It certainly was just as loud.

Jacob and I watched as she mowed down the bodies that were streaming through the doorway, watched as knees just disappeared in a bloody haze, and heads exploded. Jacob looked like he might puke as entrails slid out everywhere and the newcomer zombies got tripped up on them, slipping around in the rest of the carnage too.

The smell almost made me vomit in sympathy with Jacob. The smell of blood and raw muscle and guts, and the stinking, steaming brown and black sludge inside them. It kind of looked and reeked like the men’s room from right before the outbreak.

I looked back the way we’d come. “They’re coming up behind us!” I shouted over the minigun.

Ellie glanced back but then just kept shooting. She had to. If we couldn’t clear the doorway…

Behind me, the two leaders of the zombie pack got within range. Zombie Scully and zombie Mulder in their special agent suits and FBI laminates.

My shotgun turned zombie Mulder’s head into mist, and his tongue wagged in the meaty, gurgling stump before he fell over dead.

“Jacob,” I said, “watch out!”

He had been so steeped in shock he hadn’t noticed the undead Scully moving in on him. I couldn’t shoot—not a shotgun. Not with Jacob and my target in such close proximity. And as I raised the shotgun to strike the special agent with the butt, I wondered… could I really hit a girl? At least she wasn’t wearing glasses.

She latched onto Jacob’s arm and pulled him in for the bite… but got a mouthful of the shotgun stock instead. It was like hitting a tree with a baseball bat. The impact hurt my arms. And I could hear her teeth cracking, could feel the ragged remnants of them scraping the stock.

I shoved her away from my friend and blasted her neck and lower jaw so that the top of her head went flying, staring at us and tracking us with its eyes as it flew back into the oncoming mob.

“Eloise!” I shouted as Jacob and I backed up against her.

Just then the rapid fire stopped, and the minigun’s barrel wound down.

“All right,” she said, and she started forward, leaving the minigun on the floor.

I blasted a few more zombies behind us, and then slung Jacob’s arm over my shoulder and helped him along. We could hear shouting from out in the hall where we had been signing books. Someone shouting at the zombies and grunting, as if working hard at something.

“Hear that, Beavis? There’s someone alive out there!”

Jacob perked up a little and nodded. “Uh huh.”

He seemed to be feeling a little better about the whole thing now that we weren’t mercilessly slaughtering everyone.

There were only a couple zombies left standing. One looked completely intact, except for a vicious belt of gunshot wounds along his belly, and the other was missing a leg. Ellie pushed the intact one, and he slid apart at the belt of wounds. His top half hit the one-legged zombie, who toppled too, unable to keep his balance.

“Clear!” Ellie called.

Then she threw down a segment of pipe and draping to cover the mess she’d made. It would help keep our shoes somewhat clean.

Ellie walked across it, drapery squishing beneath her boots, and when she reached the threshold of the door…

I heard more shouting from in the hall, and Ellie started backing up, actually looking surprised for the first time that evening.

Permuted Press author Bowie Ibarra came stumbling in over the lumpy drapery, carrying an almost empty bottle of Dead Man Ale. Once he’d caught his balance, he immediately locked in on Eloise.

“Uhhhh…”

The sound actually came from behind us. I leaned Jacob against the wall and turned to blast more zombies.

Bowie, either drunk off his ass or infected with full-blown zombie AIDS, swiped at Eloise, who nimbly arched away while also swiping the bottle from his outstretched hand. She danced back a few steps and then, swinging the almost-empty bottle up so that the bottom pointed right at Bowie’s face, she slammed her palm hard against the glass mouth. The pressure, combined with the dregs left in the bottle, caused the bottom to explode. There was a loud pop as it shattered right into Bowie’s eyes. Shards stuck out of his face, and he staggered around, blind.

“Yeow!” he cried, clutching at his eyes. “I was just… offering you a toast—yeow!”

He tripped and fell face-first into the wettest part of the drapery. There was a squishing sound of blood pushing up through the fabric… directly into Bowie’s injured eyes.

Eloise looked horrified. “Bowie!”

She raced to his side and helped him up. He was crying blood. His and everyone else’s.

“Please…” he said, and then he vomited off to one side. “Please…”

BOOM!

I shot my last shell as one of the zombies finally reached our group from the rear. The blast only took off the bottom left half of his face, and didn’t put him down.

“I’m out!” I screamed, and then Jacob and I started backing up away from our approaching doom—all those hungry mouths.

“Please,” Bowie said again.

“I’m so sorry,” Ellie said. “I’m so sorry, Bowie.”

“Just—” He vomited up blood this time. “Just...”

Then he stopped talking.

Slowly, deliberately, he raised his head toward the sound of Ellie’s voice.

“I’m so sorry,” she said one last time before jabbing the long shard of the beer bottle through Bowie’s eye socket, into his brain. She caught him as he fell, and laid him gently down.

Then she stood up, and with a steely look in her eyes, she said, “Let’s go.”

I followed her, helping a weak and weeping Jacob out over the black-drapery funeral shroud as the zombies behind us followed too.

The hallway was almost completely deserted, except for Peter Clines and the group of twenty-or-so survivors huddled in his safe zone of deniability; he was leading them out the front doors, just chatting with them casually, like nothing was going on—as if he weren’t walking across a slaughterhouse floor; he stepped on a stomach, which deflated under his foot like a whoopee cushion.

“Oh hey, you guys!” he said, waving at us cheerfully.

Craig DiLouie was out in the hall too. He held a long metal pole with a U-shaped yoke welded onto one end, and he was catching the last few zombies by the neck with the yoke so that he could steer them into the ballroom. He was shouting and grunting as he worked.

Suddenly it all made sense: the locked doors, the sudden influx of the undead; the yelling.

“Oh jeez,” DiLouie said, struggling with the zombie trapped in his yoke. “I didn’t… I didn’t realize there was anyone else alive in there!”

“Bowie was alive,” I said.

“Oh my G—really? I didn’t… I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay,” Ellie said, “neither did I...”

Craig shoved the zombie into the ballroom and spotted the horde coming through. He tried to shut the doors, but couldn’t because of all the bodies lying just inside.

He turned to us, and I realized just how pale and sickly he looked. “You should go.”

“Huh-uh,” Jacob said, still leaning on me.

“Yeah, Craig,” I said, “we’re not leaving anyone behind.”

He shook his head and started rolling up his sleeve. “You don’t understand. One of them, it…” He didn’t have to finish. We could see the nasty teeth marks indenting his skin.

Jacob started crying.

Eloise stared at Craig with a glazed look.

The zombies made it to the threshold and Craig jumped into action, holding them back with his yoke. “Go!” he said. “Go before I can’t hold them any longer!”

I nodded. “Ellie, Jacob, remember… there’s plenty to live for. We just have to—”

“We just have to fight for it,” Ellie finished. And then she was helping me pack Jacob to the elevator. We easily dodged the stray zombies Craig hadn’t cleared from the hall; he’d saved the slowest for last.

We took the elevator down to the second-floor parking garage, where Ellie was parked. I kept an eye on Jacob from my peripheral vision. He had stopped weeping and was just staring at the elevator doors.

DING!

The doors slid open onto the parking garage.

Black belt, prolific author, and super nice guy Jonathan Maberry suddenly stepped inside. “Not this way!” he said, repeatedly jabbing the button to close the doors.

I caught only a brief glimpse into the parking garage, but the way looked clear. It made me wonder what Maberry was running from.

“We’ll go to the first floor,” he said, pressing the button.

The elevator started to move, and Maberry glanced over his shoulder at us. I noticed a huge bloody fingerprint on the back of his coat. A red slash, like the imprint of an incision, seemed to cut into the large fingerprint, and it reminded me of something. Something I had seen in the men’s room earlier that day…

I started to ask Maberry if he’d seen Big Daddy anywhere, when suddenly he was pressing the emergency stop button. The elevator jerked a little as it stopped somewhere between floors. Jacob almost collapsed, and while Ellie and I were struggling to stay upright beneath his dead weight, Maberry took advantage.

He grabbed Jacob and spun him around, then locked him in some kind of one-arm chokehold that only a superhuman could maintain.

“Get back!” he told us, pointing a Glock at Ellie and me. Then he pressed the gun to Jacob’s head. “I’m sick of you foiling my plans. So let me tell you all about them conveniently…”

“Mr. Maberry, don’t you think that’s a bit—”

“I’ve been planning this for years, you see, building up a fan base, for myself and the entire genre. Working tirelessly for five years. In fact, where do you think I got the idea for Patient Zero, hmm? It wasn’t just fiction… it was a plan. And now with zomBcon and Occupy Seattle getting people out on the streets and vulnerable... I knew the timing was right.”

As he kept talking, I glanced at Jacob.

“Why, you might ask? Hah! There is no reason! It’s simply because… I want to. Because… I’m not even human.”

That got my attention. “Not human?”

He chuckled. “Yes. Haven’t you ever wondered how I’m able to write so many books?”

Jacob said, “Uh-huh…” and then suddenly he started puking. It poured over Maberry’s arm and all down the front of Jacob’s Permuted tee.

Maberry reacted, shoving Jacob away and flinging vomit off his sleeve.

“He’s infected!” Maberry screamed, and then he marched forward, aiming the gun at Jacob’s head.

“No!”

Ellie and I both ran forward, pushing Maberry into Jacob, shoving until the two were practically hugging. We felt Maberry’s muscles wind up in his back as he coiled to spin himself around. But then Jacob was sinking his teeth into Maberry’s neck, clamping down and then pulling back, tearing off a huge chunk of muscle and stretchy strips of skin.

“ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!”

As it turns out… Maberry was most definitely human. But I could see it in his eyes as Ellie and I held him against Jacob and let our friend rip out his throat: I could see that the man had just realized for the first time in his life that he was not, in fact, anything more than mortal flesh and bone.

I hit the button to resume our elevator ride to the first floor.

Jonathan Maberry gurgled one last time and then…

DING!

… Jacob let him drop.

Ellie and I backed out of the car, backing away from Jacob. His face was completely painted with Maberry’s blood. He came toward us.

“No gun,” Ellie said, patting the pockets of her black tactical vest. “Not even a knife.”

I stood there, staring at Jacob, thinking about what he’d said he’d do if his wife ever turned into a zombie.

“He’s got a… thingy…” I said, gesturing at the ZombAlert necklace around his neck. Maberry’s chokehold had kept it clean and free of vomit.

Quickly, nimbly, Eloise snatched the necklace from Jacob’s neck, snapping the chain. She looked at it and then handed it to me.

On the back I found Jacob’s custom engraving, his last wish if he ever were to be turned. It almost made me laugh and sob, all at the same time.

“Molest me,” I read aloud.

Jacob looked at me with sad eyes even as he came forward, groping for my throat. He moaned. Moaned like someone who had just lost everything that meant anything in the world.

I met his eyes, and, despite his abject plea, I didn’t see anything. No spark.

“Beavis...” I said.

I heard glass shattering behind me, and before I could even turn around, Ellie was beside me with a fire axe. She stepped forward, but I stopped her. Without a word, I took the axe from her. Then I stepped forward as Jacob stepped forward too…

“Uhhh…”

_________

I sat at the bottom of the parking lot stairs, just staring at the two corpses that had fallen out the window: Timothy Long and the coconut-bra castaway. They were hugging even as they lay practically flattened and burst on the pavement.

“Come on, D.L.,” Ellie said. “We can get to the parking garage from here. It’s clear.” She reached out for my hand to help me up.

I shook my head. “Ellie, I heard what you said. During the Permuted panel. What you’d do in the instance of a zombie outbreak. You should go… be with your family on the farm. Protect them. They need you.”

“No,” she said, “no way. I’m not just leaving you here.”

I shook my head. “Well, I can’t leave. I need to… I need to go find the other Permuted guys. Tony Faville, Jason Hornsby… Iain McKinnon. Jacob would want… they weren’t at the table when this all started, and he would want them to be safe too.”

Ellie nodded and considered something for a few seconds. “Then we’ll go get them together,” she said. “And then…”

“And then I can lie down and cry.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we all will. But in the meantime… let’s go save Jacob’s press.”

And so she helped me up, and we went, knowing that neither of us was likely to survive, but knowing that it didn’t matter so long as we died in service to our second family…

Permuted Press.

“God,” I said, “I hope Crypticon 2012 is nothing like this…”

And Ellie said, “Actually... I’ve heard it’s way worse…”

The End! (Until Next Year... Duhn-Duhn-Duhn!)

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 2 of 3

2011-10-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

READ: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

At dinner, the night before the outbreak, editor Felicia A. Tiller-Sullivan had asked Jacob Kier, “What would you do if your wife got turned?”

Jacob looked down at his burger. He was kind of hunched over the table, ready to take a bite.

“Would you be able to…?” She trailed off when she saw the look on his face.

Still staring at his burger, Jacob said, “I would probably just lie down and cry.” Then he took a big old juicy bite, and I laughed.

I laughed until tears were streaming down my face. The laughter was infectious, and Jacob, chuckling, said, “I’m glad my grief amuses you.” The truth is, he was sincere in his answer to Felicia’s question. You could hear it in the way his voice broke.

Now, as I bolted into the ballroom at zomBcon, following the direction of Jacob’s voice, I prayed he was alive.

The ballroom was chaos. Tables were overturned, and zombies and survivors were running everywhere, trampling discarded comic books and crunching over zombie figurines. I glanced around, trying to spot my tall friend. My eye caught somebody in a red-and-white striped sweatshirt and beanie: how was it that Jacob was somehow more difficult to find than Where’s Waldo?

“Beavis!” I cried, hoping he would once more answer to his true name.

Then I heard him, shouting for help.

He was lying on the ground near the Optimystical Studios booth where they sold ZombAlert necklaces, stamped with customized final wishes to let your family know what to do with you in the event that you get turned into a zombie. Stuff like “Shoot Me” or “Kiss Me.” A zombified Super Mario was jumping on Jacob’s head as if Jacob were some sort of Koopa or Goomba he could squash for points, or perhaps extra lives.

I didn’t have a weapon.

Luckily panel moderator Marshall Popham had told me about the Zombie Tools booth, where they sold very long and very sharp blades, and killing instruments of all kinds. I hurried over to their booth, a dark space with a blackened metal roof, some old looking furniture, and a naked zombie bust nailed atop a column of wooden planks, which also served as a display wall for all the different knives.

The blades were all gone.

Every single one.

People had ransacked the entire booth and were using the Zombie Tools to hack their way out of the ballroom. All that was left were some T-shirts that said, “A Fist Full of Fuck Yeah.” I grabbed a bunch and ran toward Super Mario, who was still pouncing on my friend’s head.

“Hey, Mario!” I shouted.

He looked up midair, and I threw a fistful of fuck yeah right into his pale moon of a face.

He landed and stumbled back, caught up in the shirts, pawing at them. I ran and kicked him hard in the chest, and he went reeling. But he quickly recovered, and when the shirts fell away from his face… he snarled and came back running.

“Here!” Jacob said, holding up some sort of machete he’d gotten from Zombie Tools.

I snatched it up and charged headlong toward the classic videogame character. As we met in the middle, I slid like a runner at a ball game and swung the blade as hard as I could. I cut Mario down at the knees and he suddenly shrank.

“Jacob,” I said, running over to help him up and drag him behind a rack of magazines where we’d have a second to regroup.

His glasses were crooked on his face. I straightened them for him. “Are you all right? Were you bitten?”

The first thing Jacob said was, “The other Permuted authors. Are they… ?”

“Well, Timothy Long is... um... Craig DiLouie was still alive last I saw him, and he’s out there fighting the infection tooth and nail. Peter Clines is in denial, and—”

“Yeah, I know about Peter’s power.”

“You mean you knew about his secret identity and you didn’t tell me?”

Jacob looked away.

“I thought we told each other everything.”

“Hey,” he suddenly said, “did you see my necklace?” He held up his ZombAlert necklace from Optimystical Studios.

“Yeah, that’s pretty,” I said, and then I changed the subject; the current one just hurt too much. “I’m not sure where the other Permuted guys are. Hornsby and Faville and McKinnon… I’m not sure. Bowie I’m pretty positive is a dead man. And… you never answered me, are you all right?”

Jacob looked off into the ballroom with a frightened look on his face, like he had just remembered he’d left the stove on at home.

“Ellie,” he said.

“What?”

“She had her own booth, away from the Permuted table.”

Suddenly I understood. Eloise J. Knapp, the very first female Permuted novelist, had gotten a booth inside the ballroom. She was sharing her space with Lyle Perez, the guy from Undead in the Head Book Reviews.

Without another word, Jacob started off in her direction. He was limping badly.

I followed him, and some zombies lurched out at us. I decapitated a few cheerleaders and a few survivalists who hadn’t survived. I knew Eloise dressed in Blackhawk tactical gear, but none of these newly undead survivalists were women—all men.

Jacob rounded the corner to Ellie’s booth first, and I could see his face when he saw what was there. I hurried up and pulled my machete out of the neck of a Boba Fett zombie, then scurried to catch up with Jacob.

“Oh my God,” I said when I saw the remains of Eloise Knapp’s booth.

The banners promoting her first book The Undead Situation still hung there, looking great, and it looked as if she had sold out of books. She still had a few copies of Z Magazine—for zombies, by zombies—but even that had almost sold out.

However, not everything in her booth looked quite as pristine.

A corpse was slouched in one of two chairs. A zombie figurine stuck out of the body’s head where someone had jammed it. It looked as if the little zombie were ripping and climbing its way out of the skull.

“Lyle…” Jacob said. “Lyle Perez.”

“Where’s Ellie?”

We glanced around, but this aisle was almost vacant. We could see survivors screaming past as they ran around the outside perimeter of the room, escaping zombies.

I spotted Carmen Sandiego, just briefly, and then she was gone.

“Where in the world is Ellie?” Jacob said. I could see tears in his eyes now.

For Lyle. For everything.

I tapped him on the shoulder as a zombie caught sight of us and turned up our aisle. “We’ve got to go. Maybe the other Permuted authors have seen her?”

He nodded, and we turned to leave, but then one of the pipe-and-drape walls that separated the aisles toppled, and a horde of zombies came rushing at us: construction workers, Pocahontas, Alice in Wonderland, a few zomBcon volunteers in white shirts.

Jacob and I turned to flee up the aisle, but another group of zombies was closing in on us from that direction as well.

We glanced at each other. I tightened my grip on the machete, knowing I wouldn’t let us go down without taking out at least twice our number in zombies.

The closest one growled. Her eye was covered in some sort of black fabric to make it look as if the eyeball were missing; the surrounding makeup made the socket look like a ragged, bloody hole. I swung out at her, but she caught my arm and pulled me in for a deadly kiss.

BLAM!

BLAM BLAM!

The zombie with the fake missing eye, now truly missing her eye, suddenly fell back, along with a few other walking corpses nearest us.

Eloise J. Knapp, in full Blackhawk tactical gear, strode out from behind another segment of pipe and drape, gun in hand.

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Before the outbreak, Jacob and I had taken an elevator with Ellie, and she had told us how one time the power had gone out in her town. She had gotten geared up and had grabbed her baseball bat. She thought, if there were zombies out there, she wanted to be there to help put them down. “This is my time,” she had told her family before heading out the door.

Here in the ballroom, where everyone else was running and screaming and being victimized, Eloise Knapp looked totally in her element.

BLAM BLAM BLAM!

She emptied her magazine into the rest of the zombies surrounding us, and then, still striding toward us, she ejected the spent mag and slammed in a new one.

She tossed the gun to Jacob and said, “Cover me.” Then she vaulted over the table into her booth.

“We need to go!” I said. “What are you doing? They’re just boxes!”

She was opening one of the tubs she had brought with her to the convention. I had assumed they were full of supplies like bookmarks and stuff, but then I saw just how big of a badass Ellie truly was.

“Is that a Gatling gun?” I asked.

“A minigun,” she said as she hefted it up onto the table. I saw a ton of other pistols and rifles and shotguns inside, plus a few stacks of various ammos.

“They’re coming,” Jacob said, raising the pistol.

Ellie looked up. Then, as if she’d planned for this, she walked right over, grabbed a stack of Z Magazines, and threw them out into the shambling horde.

The zombies stopped and looked down at the magazines.

Then they looked up at Ellie.

Then they looked at me.

Then at Ellie.

Then at the gun in Jacob’s hand.

Then at his ZombAlert necklace, or maybe his throat.

One of them farted.

And then they all fell to the ground and started fighting over the few issues of Z Magazine.

Ellie looked at us and said, “For zombies, by zombies,” and then she continued to pull out a few weapons from her tub. The last thing she grabbed was a go-bag.

She handed a shotgun to me, plus a bandolier of shells. To Jacob, she gave extra magazines.

“D.L., you’re close quarters—keep them off us. Jacob, you pick off the ones behind, keep them from ever getting to us.”

“And what are you going to do?” Jacob asked.

Ellie picked up the minigun and said, “Why, I’m wholesale crowd control. Now let’s go find the other Permuted authors.”

And then, like it was any other day, Eloise J. Knapp was on the move.

READ PART 3!
Featuring Jonathan Maberry (for real this time), Jacob Kier, Eloise Knapp, and more!

Find out who dies and who… prolongs the inevitable…

ZomBcon Breakout - Part 1 of 3

2011-10-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say zomBcon 2011 went well.

Held in rainy Seattle, the event had all the elements for a successful zombie horror convention: a group of seven fellow Permuted Press authors, plus owner/publisher Jacob Kier; a great volunteer staff who tended to the exhibitors like waiters who deserve big tips; guests like Tom Savini, Judith O’Dea, Sam Trammel, and Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead; tons of people dressed up like walking corpses and zombie survivalists; and of course… cupcakes decorated like brains.

It should have been great.

But the moment I saw the actor who plays Romero’s Big Daddy tending to a cut finger in the men’s restroom… I knew something was wrong.

Earlier, I had been joking with Jacob Kier about the best place to release the zombie virus, if you were some kind of weirdo who wanted to engineer the outbreak. Sure, you could release it at an airport and it would travel all the way around the world, but… wouldn’t it be way cooler to release it at a zombie convention? If you think about it, everyone there’s already disguised as a zombie, right? Like a wolf in wolf’s clothing—obviously fake and zippered wolf’s clothing.

There was one costumed fan in particular, a blonde dressed in a bloody nurse’s uniform, her jaw ripped off and her tongue hanging out far enough to rival Kiss’s lead singer. She was fully in character when she shambled toward the table I was sharing with Permuted authors Craig DiLouie and Peter Clines.

The table was set up in a long hallway right outside the doors to the ballroom, which served as a giant exhibition space for the other vendors of horror comics, frightening sculptures, counterculture T-shirts, and all other kinds of scary wares.

Most people at conventions, when they approach my table, have their eyes fixed on my books. If they make initial eye contact, it’s usually just to say hello, but then their attention goes right back to my covers. This nurse... she didn’t even glance at the cover of DiLouie’s The Infection as she picked up speed, dragging behind her a Land of the Dead poster she’d just gotten signed by the guy who played Big Daddy.

“Hi,” DiLouie said, engaging the nurse like the great salesman and exuberant author he was. “Can I tell you about my work?”

The jawless nurse let out a shrill cry, and Craig suddenly looked very terrified.

The nurse lunged… only to snatch up a copy of The Infection.

“Oh my gosh—oh my gosh!” she said. “Mr. DiLouie, I’m a rabid fan!”

On the other side of Craig, Peter Clines sat down in his chair after having jumped up, ready to tear open his overshirt for some reason, as if to bear the chest of his black tee underneath. He kept an eye on the blond nurse as he continued to sign and sell copies of Ex-Heroes to his fans. If it’s one thing people love, it’s superheroes vs. zombies.

After practically giving DiLouie a five-star review right then and there for The Infection—the kind of review where the reader openly wishes that the rating system allowed for, like, infinity stars—the tongue-wagging nurse went on to ask about his first book, Tooth and Nail. DiLouie forgot all about his own mortality.

“Well, my book asks the question, what happened to the military during the zombie apocalypse? You know, in most zombie books the military is either cannon fodder or… they go insane and ruthless and take rule over everyone around. But in Tooth and Nail they—”

Craig stopped when he spotted a bloody hand reaching from behind the blond nurse, reaching for her mouth. She noticed it a second too late, going cross-eyed as she glanced down at it.

It grabbed her by the fake tongue and yanked her around.

A man dressed like Captain America stood behind her, zombified, his mask ripped, his cheeks and shield bloodied.

The nurse screamed.

The captain opened his mouth, and, groaning, letting gory pieces of someone else’s throat tumble out over his teeth, he moved in for the bite.

“This is not happening, this is not happening,” Peter Clines was saying.

“Peter, what are you doing?!” I shouted as I reached for the three-pound copy of my newest epic thriller, just something to throw at the star-spangled monster. “Get up and help!”

I threw the thriller and scored a headshot, dinging the captain’s eyebrow with the edge of my book’s spine. It opened a gaping wound in his eyebrow, which didn’t bleed.

I groped for anything else I could throw, but came up with a handful of marshmallow eyes we’d been handing out as freebies.

“This is not happening, this is not—”

“Peter!”

Clines turned on me then, ripping open his overshirt to finally reveal the black tee underneath. I was surprised to see an insignia emblazoned on his chest, a big silver stylized “D” in an even bigger silver oval.

I couldn’t believe I had never recognized him before, even without the mask. He was a real-life super hero, like Phoenix Jones. In the Permuted Press panel earlier that weekend, Clines had even said his weapon of choice against zombies was denial. I just hadn’t put two and two together. I hadn’t realized he was talking about...

His superpower.

“This is not happening!” the King of Denial shouted one last time, and the dead captain exploded like some kind of plague bomb, splattering everyone in the vicinity with bits of flesh and gore, and shards of bone that cut into them like shrapnel.

One girl picked the captain’s eyeball off her cheek and stared into its glassy black hole while she screamed.

Then she vomited.

And everyone around her started vomiting too.

Everyone who had been tainted by the captain’s explosion, at least.

They all started vomiting blood.

Clines, realizing his mistake too late, slicked his hair back in shock and disbelief. The real-life superhero sank down in his chair behind the table, slipping into a force field of complete and utter denial.

The blood-splattered zombie fans stopped vomiting and started turning on the rest of the crowd. They moaned. One lunged forward, biting.

Screams erupted. A few of the survivalists, acting on instinct, raised their guns... and threw the useless pieces of plastic at the infected.

“Craig!” I shouted at DiLouie.

He looked at me, and I indicated that we should corral as many healthy fans as we could into Peter Clines’s growing shield of denial.

DiLouie knew instantly what to do. He started tossing out the marshmallow eyeballs as bait.

The infected glanced down at the crinkly packages thrown at their feet.

They looked up at Craig.

Then down again.

Then up.

Then they looked at me.

I looked at them.

They looked at my book.

I told them what it was about.

They seemed interested and I thought I was going to make some sales. But then they all fell to the ground and started clawing for the eyeballs, fighting each other for them, growling.

While DiLouie reached into a box for more eyeballs, I hurdled our table and started helping people over into Clines’s personal bubble. One girl was dressed as a zombie castaway in a coconut bra.

“Are these bites?!” I asked her, pointing out the nasty, realistic looking wounds on her forearm and throat.

“No, I swear!”

I didn’t know what to do.

So I snatched up the fake severed arm that one of the other Permuted authors, Timothy Long, had left sitting on his table next to mine.

Earlier, DiLouie had stuffed the fake arm down his blazer sleeve and had extended the hand to shake with another fellow novelist, Jason Hornsby. Hornsby had gotten quite the shock when he’d ripped off the arm of one of Permuted’s bestselling authors!

I dangled the fake limb in front of the castaway’s face like I was teasing a dog.

She glanced at it.

Then glanced at me.

Then glanced back at the arm again.

Then glanced at my book, but there was no time for a sales pitch.

I launched into one anyway.

“Hey!” Timothy Long—who, for whatever reason, had been standing there the whole time just laughing at everyone getting killed—grabbed his fake arm from me and whopped the female castaway over the head with it.

“Ow!” she said. “What was that for?!”

“Nothing,” I replied as I lifted her over the table into Timothy Long’s capable arms. She hugged him around the neck, and her grass skirt dangled over his powerful, manly guns.

With her secured, I started glancing up and down the long hallway outside the ballroom, trying desperately to spot our publisher and my good friend Jacob Kier. Jacob was tall, about as tall as the guy who played Big Daddy. About as tall as the titular character in that horror movie Jacob. I couldn’t see him.

I formed a megaphone with my hands and shouted his true name: “Beavis! Beavis!”

Nothing.

But then… from deep in the ballroom, where there was nothing but screams and the sound of fighting and things falling down, I heard…

“Butthead?!”

“Beavis!”

I went running after my friend Jacob.

I only looked back once.

Behind me, back at our table, the castaway in Timothy Long’s arms leaned in as if to kiss him on the cheek, but then suddenly she was vomiting in his face and all down his front, and Tim went stumbling backward with her still in his arms, and they both crashed through the big windows of the convention center, and they went tumbling down three stories to the parking lot below while the Seattle rain blew in.

“Tim!” DiLouie screamed… and Peter Clines’s field of denial grew more and more...

READ PART 2!
Featuring Jonathan Maberry, Jacob Kier, Lyle Perez, Eloise Knapp, and more!

Find out who dies and who… prolongs the inevitable…

Editor Miles Boothe interview

2011-05-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Miles Boothe is the kid that always got sent home with a note from his teacher because he was daydreaming and he didn’t turn in his homework. He’s the goof that walked into the display at the bookstore because his nose was buried in one. He was all ears whenever there was a campfire and a spooky tale to be told, and later, when most kids were praying for something to not crawl out from under their bed, he was wishing really, really hard that something would.

As it turns out, the only way to make that happen is to write about it, so he does.

Miles lives in Atlanta, GA. He grew up in the woods, and misses them whenever he’s in an office for too long. He lives with his wife, son, and an ever-growing roster of dogs.

Most recently he has edited a monster-hunter anthology, Leather, Denim & Silver, for Pill Hill Press.

- SYNOPSIS

A twig snaps in the mist behind you, and you turn to see lantern eyes hanging over slavering jaws…

Most would panic, run, and within moments, die. But not the Monster Hunter.

Reflexes like coiled springs unleash with fury into the beast, and the never-ending struggle between hunter and nightmare begins with blood…

Behold Leather, Denim & Silver, a collection of monster hunting tales ranging from the frozen halls of a Russian orphanage to the steamy jungles of the Congo. Hunt the foggy streets of London, moonlit New Orleans, and prowl the Old West as hunters square off against bloodthirsty werewolves, vampires, demonic spirits, and devils escaped from legend.

Creatures will die. Hunters will die. But no one will go without a fight…

- TOC

The Werewolf Hunters

"Reasons to Kill" by Shelley Ontis
"The Artist as Wolf" by Joshua Reynolds
"Wolfers" by Matthew Baugh
"The Message of the Wolf" by Gary Buettner
"Wolf’s Pawn" by Chris Lewis Carter
"The Hunter’s Moon" by James Ossuary
"The Artist as Wolf" by Joshua Reynolds
"Antler & Eye" by Kate Shaw
"Black Horse Trading Company" by Miles Boothe

The Vampire Hunters

"The Vampire Hunter’s Requiem" by John X. Grey
"Alderwood and Old Lace" by Aleta Clegg
"The Rookie" by Jennifer L. Barnes
"Two-For-One Chinese Special" by Derek M. Koch
"The Fullness of Your Truth" by Eric Pollarine

The Spirit Hunters

"Spirit in Black" by Thom Brannan
"Nadya’s Nights: Frost" by Indy McDaniel
"The Oni" by Heather Whittington
"Murder in Thy Name" by Elisa F. B. Ramirez
"Weeping Woman" by H.J. Hill

The Monster Hunters

"Tentacles & Petticoats" by T. W. Garland
"Kudzu Jesus" by Edward McKeon
"Windigo Dreams" by E.M. Macallum
"Godspore" by Marc Sorondo
"Fish Out of Water" by Liam Cadey
"The Carpetbagger" by A. J. French
"The Gargoyle’s Curse" by Mhairi Shaw
"Finally, the Source" by Chris Nadeau
"Capital Vices" by Lina Branter
"Asanbosam" by Angela Meadon
"The Last Payday of the Killibrew Mine" by John M. Whalen

D.L. Snell: Thanks for joining us, Miles! I see you on the Permuted Press forum all the time but have never taken the chance to really chat with you. It’s great to have you on!

Miles Boothe: Thanks! I’m a huge fan of Permuted, and it’s one of the forums I haunt on a regular basis. heh

DLS: To start, I’d like to solicit something self-serving.

Earlier in the year, you filled out a Market Scoop for Leather, Denim & Silver (LD&S). How do you think your scoop influenced the submissions you received afterward, both in quality and quantity, and accuracy to the theme? And… I heard the scoop helped garner something especially cool for the antho, is that right?

MB: The Market Scoop was absolutely vital to this book in a couple of ways. First, you listed it on Dark Markets, and up to that point I had only posted it on Ralan’s and Duotrope. A good number of folks who wound up in the book learned about it from Dark Markets, including—and this was beyond cool—Brian P. Easton.

In the Scoop, I had mentioned how much I had enjoyed both of Brian’s novels (Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter and Heart of Scars). I also mentioned how much those books inspired me to create a monster-hunting themed anthology.

Brian saw the scoop on Dark markets, and when all was said and done, very generously wrote the Foreword for the book!

So, in a nutshell, your Market Scoop was how the Godfather of Monster Hunting wound up writing the Foreword for this book, which makes both of you some of the coolest cats in the business!

DLS: Thanks, Miles! So is Leather, Denim & Silver the first thing you’ve edited, or have you done other projects before that?

MB: This is my first official editing job. I’ve had a few stories published, edited a few friends works, and participated in a couple of shoot-outs with Pill Hill Press. But, last year, after reading Brian’s books and searching for more monster hunting stories, I realized that it was time for a monster hunting antho. I knew Jessy from Pill Hill from the shootouts, and we talked about it a bit, then launched it.

DLS: LD&S is subtitled Legends of the Monster Hunter. What inspired the theme of the anthology?

MB: Simply put, the absence of monster hunting stories! With the advent of e-books, you really can scratch an itch for almost anything whenever you want, which is cool. But, if you get hungry for a monster-hunting tale, there’s just not a lot out there, and I figured it was time for more.

DLS: Looking at the table of contents for LD&S, I can see you have a promising stable of authors, and some interesting titles. What kind of monsters get corralled here?

MB: We’ve got all sorts of creatures in this one—I started with Werewolves as a nod to Brian, and because the theme of the cover is Werewolf-Western. Next is the Vampire section, and those two make up the first half of the book. Demon hunting was very popular, so the next section is dedicated to spirits, and this includes Ghosts, Bog Mummies, and some other spooky stuff. Then, we finish up with a rogues-gallery of creatures, ranging from a Thing-like plant monster, an African folklore nightmare, and a Lovecraftian-Steampunk story.

All in all, the monster-hunting bases are well covered!

DLS: If you could be any one of these monsters, which one would it be? Why?

MB: I have to go with the Werewolf from Joshua Reynolds’ “The Artist as Wolf.” The story is amazing, and the Werewolf is smooth, twisted, and comes across like he has a very, very good time with his life.

DLS: Introduce us to some of the notable hunters in the anthology. Any recognizable public domain characters?

MB: You know, we asked for, and got, some really original stuff. But, there are a few folks you may recognize. Ded Moroz of Russian Mythology and a thinly veiled Odin and sons from Norse mythology are a few.

DLS: If you were a hunter, which monster in this anthology would you pursue and why?

MB: That’s easy – the Asanbosam, from the story titled “Asanbosam” by Jennifer Barnes. It takes me back to my safari days, and even though the ending to this one is tragic, I loved the hunt and the memories.

DLS: A few questions about the editing process: What’s your method? How many drafts do you and the writers go through? Do you use Track Changes?

MB: I went through multiple drafts myself, this being my first antho. I tried to use Track Changes in the beginning, but had a few problems with it, so I wound up just bolding all of the edits so that the authors could compare it to what they had written.

DLS: You’re a writer as well. How did you get into it, and where can we find your work?

MB: I think I’m like most other writers in that I started reading when I was very young, then started messing around with writing after that. I kept reading, but put writing on hold for a while, then, a few years ago, I just started back into it and kind of haven’t stopped, heh.

DLS: Last question—what’s in your near future? Any writing projects? A Leather, Denim & Silver 2? And—a more pressing issue—when and where can we get a copy of the first LD&S?

MB: A second volume has just been given the green light! It will be titled The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunters II, and the call for submissions has just been posted at PillHillPress.com!

For personal projects, I’ve got a couple of novels I want to finish this year, a few shorts I want to submit, and a website in desperate need of an update.

But for now, Leather, Denim & Silver is available at www.PillHillPress.com, Amazon, and BN.com

DLS: Thanks, Miles—it’s been fun! We’ll definitely be doing a Market Scoop for The Trigger Reflex – Legends of the Monster Hunters II.

MB: It’s been a blast! Thank you again for everything!

For more scoops, go to www.dlsnell.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth thrice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City, Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2011

2011-05-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

Historically, I have been to only two horror conventions, both of them Horror Realm. Each time, I was a guest, vendor, and panelist.

In October I will add a fourth convention to the list: zomBcon! I'll be attending with guests like:

Jonathan Maberry
Tom Savini
Sid Haig
Bill Moseley
Rose McGowan
Sam Trammell
and loads of other cool stars!

"But wait," you might be thinking. "Snell just said he's only been to two conventions in his life. How can zomBcon possibly be his fourth?! Did he simply not proofread? Or could his two years at Horror Realm possibly be cool enough to count as three cons? And why am I paying that much attention to Snell's post???"

Before you offer to edit my blog for a steep, unrealistic price... look at the first word of this post. It's a qualifier. Because recently—in fact, just this weekend—I attended my third horror con (the red below is supposed to be blood; just imagine it in Chiller font):

TEXAS FRIGHTMARE WEEKEND

NOTE: These videos say "by dlsnell," but YouTube's lying

This time around, I was only an attendee, not a guest. But as usual I went with Jacob Kier from Permuted Press; he's kind of my sidekick. I arrived at the airport alone, and had to wait thirty minutes for the hotel's courtesy van—or, as we now call it, the "no courtesy" van. Jacob, who had also taken the shuttle earlier that night, told me it would be quicker just to walk. "It's only like 9 miles," he'd texted.

At about 1 a.m. I arrived at the hotel.

I didn't tip.

That whole weekend, Jacob and I just kind of wandered around the vendor rooms, dressed like two clean-cut college kids at a rave for furry Mogwai, Cenobites, and humanoid pigs (everyone was dressed up, mostly in their own bare skin, sometimes in Freddy Krueger's). We also ate at Denny's more than any self-respecting insomniac Goth; stayed up till 5 a.m. every night, watching episodes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace; avoided the creepy Dieter Laser, and the greasy-paint Sid Haig; and once, we even gladly waited to use a restroom temporarily reserved for a VIP who shall remain nameless. Okay, okay, I'll give you a hint: this person is English and had polyps, not cancer, removed from his throat. I repeat, it was NOT cancer. Which was such a relief to hear.

Don Coscarelli

All right, you get one last hint: the VIP was not writer, director, producer Don Coscarelli. But Jacob and I did meet Don as well. This is the guy who brought us Phantasm and The Beastmaster. He's also the guy who's making a film out of John Dies at the End, an old Permuted title by David Wong. Jacob, of course, published the book. And I edited it. So we went to hassle Don at his vendor table. He's a nice guy! And... do you want to know how he really found John Dies at the End? No, he didn't smoke some of Wong's nasty, multidimensional hallucinogen, "soy sauce," which enables you to know every fact in the universe. Actually, as it turns out... he's a big fan of Permuted Press!

Keep up the good work, Don Coscarelli!

On Saturday, Jacob and I attended Robert "Freddy" Englund's Q&A, which was awesome—even if I had tinnitus afterward. Englund had lots of funny and interesting things to say at excruciating volume, but one thing in particular really rung in my ears. He was talking about Nicolas Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married. Englund says a lot of actors are very concerned about portraying the truth of their own character. But sometimes—and this is something Englund says Nick Cage got absolutely right in Peggy Sue—sometimes it's more important to portray your character through the eyes of another character. This same point is so important for a writer to understand. And any great writer gets it. But it's so important to be reminded, so I'll reiterate:

Sometimes it's not about portraying the truth of a character, but the truth of that character through the eyes of someone else.

Thank you, Freddy Krueger, for reminding me how important perspective is.

"You're welcome."

Other than that, Jacob and I wined, dined (at a Mexican restaurant that let you bring your own beer), and partied with friends like author and Texan Rhiannaon Frater, Kody Boye, editor Felicia Tiller, Laura and Robert R. Best (who we're now calling "The Best"), Patrick "Unoshato" Rooney, The Vic, and so many more. I also got to meet a few new guys, like Tony Faville and Lyle Perez-Tinics. Great guys. And Tony even lives near me, so there might be some author events in our future.

Overall, we had a blast!

Oh... one last thing: snagged in the carpet of the room I shared with Jacob was someone's used safety pin. Everyone who's read Heart-Shaped Box or anyone who knows how long hepatitis can live outside the human body will understand why I'm a bit paranoid after stepping on that pin. But no matter what Jacob Kier tells you...

No, I don't now have AIDS.

If anyone else wishes to share their Texas Frightmare experience, please sound off in the comments below!

Diabetes, Best-selling Authors, Kevin Bacon, and DLSnell.com

2011-04-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

For the longest time, I have wanted the domain name dlsnell.com. But since the beginning of time, it has been parked. Which means someone else owned it, but wasn't using it. I wanted it so badly--most respectable authors brand their sites with their name--but a lot stood in my way: doubt that I would hear back from the domain owner... procrastination... laziness... I could go on, but... meh, I'm lazy.

Anyway, a few months ago I decided I really wanted the dlsnell.com domain. Really really. So I got off my butt and did a Whois lookup, and I discovered that the name belonged to one Dianna Love Snell. There was an email address. Not expecting to get a reply, in fact totally expecting the email to bounce back undeliverable, I sent Dianna a message.

That same day she replied.

Never in a million years did I expect to hear back... let alone from another writer! But as it turns out, Dianna Love is a best-selling author, and a really cool lady.

Best-selling author Dianna Love

Not only does Dianna share my last name and my occupation, she also co-authors with Sherrilyn Kenyon--I have been in two Blood Lite anthologies with Sherrilyn. It was such a small world, I started to wonder how Kevin Bacon fit into all this... He doesn't. At least I don't think...

In my initial email to Dianna, not knowing who she was, I had offered to purchase her a new domain name for one year, in exchange for dlsnell.com. But she had a different offer in mind. She would give the domain name to me on one condition...

No, I didn't have to trace our family tree back to Kevin Bacon--that doesn't make any sense. Why would you even think that? Dianna simply asked that I donate a $50 gift certificate and a copy of my book to the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes.

She said (and other writers might want to take note):

"[The auction] is a major event many authors, agents, publishers and others support each year. Brenda is all about promoting authors so... it would be great exposure for you as well (she gets a tremendous flow of traffic on the auction site).... I’ve picked up a lot of readers from the auction."

I jumped at the opportunity, of course. Not only would I get the domain name I wanted, all while promoting my book to a new readership via the auction, I would also be supporting diabetes research. Some of my close family members have diabetes. Like Dianna said, it was a win-win; or a win-win-... win?

But, of course, as with most things that seem too good to be true, there were problems. Not with the auction. And not with Dianna Love. She and her web master were prompt, efficient, and pleasant to work with. The problem was with transferring the domain name from Dianna's registrar to mine. We initiated the transfer with no problem, but then it quickly unraveled into a confusing mess of authentication numbers and security codes and approval processes and arcane symbols... Dianna Love admits she's not good with technology on her best days, but even I was scratching my head... and my day job revolves around technology.

Finally, after a little initiative on my part, and a whole heck of a lot of patience and kindness on the reciprocating end, we got it figured out. And now, after years and years of wanting this domain but doing absolutely nothing for it, I am proud to announce that this blog has officially become DLSnell.com!

A big thanks goes out to Dianna Love and her web master, and to the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes. You guys are the best!

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.dlsnell.com.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Kevin J. Anderson Interview

2011-04-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of more than one hundred novels, 47 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists. He has over 20 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader's Choice Award, the American Physics Society's Forum Award, and New York Times Notable Book. By any measure, he is one of the most popular writers currently working in the science fiction genre.

D.L. Snell: Hey, Kevin! Thanks for joining us!!!

Kevin J. Anderson: Thanks, David—I’m on a radio interview right now, with 5-minute commercial breaks at (in)appropriate times, so I can type answers to the questions during the breaks.

DLS: Kevin, you have been working as an author for a long time, and have produced volumes upon volumes. But… what about your first story? Not the first one you ever published, but the first one you ever put to paper. What about that story? Was it crappy? Or the best thing you ever wrote?

KJA: Oh, it was delightful—I wrote it in fourth grade about a mad scientist who invents an injection that can bring anything to life, but when the other scientists don’t believe him, he breaks into the wax museum and brings all the monster figures to life, and then goes to the natural history museum and reanimates a dinosaur skeleton, all of which go on a rampage. The writing wasn’t very skilled, but the story was pretty cool.

DLS: You’re an editor as well. What projects have you worked on? Who are some of the authors you have edited?

KJA: My first anthologies were for Star Wars, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Tales from Jabba’s Palace, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, and those are still (I believe) the best-selling SF anthologies of all time, so not a bad way to start. Then I did War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches, spinoff stories about the Wells Martian invasion. I thought I had given it up for good, but HWA asked me to come up with another anthology, and I suggested Blood Lite…humorous horror stories. That’s been a lot of fun, allowing me to work with some of the biggest names in the genre—Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kelley Armstrong, Heather Graham, LA Banks, Sharyn McCrumb. Of course, when someone is at that point in their career, they don’t need me to edit them; they turn in good stories in the first place.

DLS: I’m an editor, too, and have had a couple… “funny” experiences. The funniest had to be when someone publically accused me of inserting rape into a novel. What’s the “funniest” editing experience you’ve ever had?

KJA: Sad more than funny, I suppose. I had one person submit the same (awful) story to all three Blood Lite anthologies, as if I wouldn’t remember it. They think I have skyscraper offices with dozens of staff…I have a house and the stories come through the mailbox, and I read them. I’m not senile yet; my memory lasts more than a few months.

DLS: I found the following in your bio: “Practically unheard-of in the field, Anderson released all seven large volumes [of The Saga of Seven Suns] on time, year after year, and he completed the series with Book #7.” Many writers struggle to be prolific, let alone punctual. How do you do it?! Can you describe your typical work schedule?

KJA: Due to a confluence of deadlines, I recently found myself finishing three book manuscripts in two weeks—The Key to Creation (Orbit/Hachette—172,000 words), The Sisterhood of Dune, with Brian Herbert (Tor—181,000 words), and a YA space adventure Star Challengers with Rebecca Moesta (Catalyst). Two solid weeks of 12-hour days, 7 days a week. Not quite the stereotypical image of a writer lounging around all day.

I have an office in my home, or I occasionally take the laptop and hide in a local coffee shop. When I have a particularly heavy slate of writing/editing to do, I’ll go to an out-of-the way lodge where I can work uninterrupted. The workload changes all the time, depending on the projects, but I generally write a couple of new chapters in the morning, edit in the afternoon, do correspondence, blogs, etc. throughout the day and in the evening. Everybody else with a high-end career—doctors, lawyers, restaurant managers, business CEOs—has to put in a full day at work. Why shouldn’t an author?

DLS: Okay, here’s something a little different—a question from a horror writer familiar with your work…

Bobbie Metevier: Kevin, how has publishing . . . the process . . . changed since you started?

KJA: It took them quite a while, but they finally take my computer files and typeset from that, rather than retyping the whole manuscript. The physical production process is a lot more efficient. The business side, however, is what’s changed the most, with distribution being completely scrambled, online bookstores, authors being expected to do the lion’s share of publicity.

DLS: Dean Koontz was one of my biggest writing influences growing up—and this was back when he was Dean R. Koontz. We’d love to hear about the novel you co-authored with him, and about your co-authoring process in general. How do you make collaboration work?

KJA: Dean had written a script for his own version of the Frankenstein story, which was made into a TV movie so awful that he took his name off of it and wanted it released as a book instead. He asked me to help him novelize the script as the start of his series. Ed Gorman worked with him on the second book, and then he has gone off to finish the series on his own. That was different from my usual collaborating method, because Dean had already written the story and much of the dialog. For my work with Brian Herbert, Rebecca Moesta, and Doug Beason, it’s much more interactive from the start: we brainstorm the whole book together, develop the chapter-by-chapter outline together, and then write our separate chapters, before combining it all into one manuscript and then editing it repeatedly.

DLS: It seems like every time I do a book signing, I run into at least one… “interesting” person. For example, this lady in a muumuu—she took one look at my book cover and started backing off, saying, “That book’s from the dark side.” You’ve been on national book tours and have attended countless conventions. Any interesting people you can tell us about?

KJA: Oh, always interesting people. I have plenty of unique fans, some eccentric, some a little odd or intense, but they’re still my fans and readers, so I’m happy to have all of them. They come in costume, some have even named their children after my characters, and it’s great to see the impact my stories have had. I’ve written over a hundred books, and it’s amusing sometimes that someone will come up and ask me about a minor detail in a novel I wrote 15 years ago…I really don’t remember!

DLS: Your new novel Hellhole, co-authored with Brian Herbert, looks stellar. What’s it about?

KJA: Hellhole is a big SF colonization epic, about a rugged world that’s nearly been destroyed by a massive asteroid impact. Not a pleasant place, earthquakes, volcanoes, terrible storms, the whole ecosystem wrecked, yet a bunch of misfits try to make a new home there…and they find remnants of an alien race wiped out in the impact. Lots of characters, adventures, politics, a very big story.

Hellhole (The Hell Hole Trilogy)

DLS: Let’s say you committed a crime that landed you in Hellhole. What kind of crime would it be? I mean, if you were a criminal in the Hellhole universe, what kind of criminal would you hope to be?

KJA: In true Hollywood fashion, I would be innocent, I swear! Falsely accused, wrongfully convicted, but because of my heart of gold, I will work to make life better for my fellow colonists. (Fortunately, the characters in the novel itself aren’t so clichéd.)

DLS: Here’s another question from the outside, this one also from another writer…

Zombie Zak: Kevin, I understand you carried on from AE van Vogt's work with Slan Hunter (2007); what was that like for you?

KJA: My collaborations with Brian Herbert have led to a great resurgence in the popularity of Frank Herbert’s works. Van Vogt was also very popular with me when I was younger, and I was thrilled when Van’s widow Lydia got in touch with me to ask if I would be interested in finishing the last book her husband had begun before his death. Slan is such a classic, with such an impact on the whole SF genre (you’ve seen it copied a million times, though Van doesn’t always get credit). That one didn’t take off as much as the Dune books did, but it did lead to the reprinting of other van Vogt classics and a new readership for Slan.

DLS: Any upcoming writing or editing projects?

KJA: I’m just wrapping up the manuscript and starting the boring production parts of Blood Lite 3: Aftertaste, and that’s the only editing project I have going right now. Next month, Tor will release this year’s Nebula Awards Showcase, which I also edited. In coming months I will be releasing a lot of my short story catalog as mini ebook collections, three stories for three bucks; most of those stories have never been seen beyond their original magazine publication, so it’ll be new stuff for most readers. I’ll also be giving away free stories and book excerpts on our website, www.wordfire.com—check there in a couple of weeks (as soon as the web guy gets all the details fixed).

DLS: Thanks for humoring us, Kevin—it was great to have you!!!

KJA: Thanks for being humored.

For more scoops, go to marketscoops.blogspot.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth three times, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney for Apocalypse of the Dead. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.exit66.net.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.

Transtories antho

2011-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

THE MARKET

Antho: Transtories
Publisher: Aeon Press
Editor(s): Colin Harvey
Pay Rate: Minimum £10 per story, possible bonus, plus royalties
Response Time: 1 - 2 months - ish
Reading Period: March 1st - 31st
Description: Stories based on words prefaced by 'Trans' in dictionary, from 'transact' to 'Transylvania' (but this last is not recommended).
Submission Guidelines: www.ralan.com

NOTE: Author D.L. Snell conducted the following interview to give writers a better idea of what the editors of this specific market are seeking; however, most editors are open to ideas outside of the preferences discussed here, as long as they fit the basic submission guidelines.

THE SCOOP
1) What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?
I grew up idolising Roger Zelazny, and to a lesser extent Samuel R. Delany, and I still get a little shiver of anticipation when the occasional magazine or anthology crops up with Robert Silverberg's name in the table of contents.

Right now I'm enjoying Lucius Shepherd for his imagery and use of language; Nancy Kress for her characterization; Jason Sanford for his ideas; Greg Egan for his science. But that's only a smattering of the writers I like to read. And there will be four or five different names tomorrow if you ask me the same question!

2) What are your favorite genres? Which genres would you like to see incorporated into submissions to this market?
I'm not looking for horror, because Aeon Press is covering horror through Box of Delights. Apart from that, I don't really have favourites. I'm hoping that I'll see SF as well as fantasy, and maybe some slipstream—but I read all forms of speculative fiction.

But the whole point of Transtories is that just as anthologies such as Eclipse, and older ones such as New Dimensions, Orbit and Universe, we're looking for a range of stories with no connection other than that they're good. I want sixteen different submissions, rather than sixteen different versions of the same story.

3) What settings most intrigue you? Ordinary or exotic locales? Real or fantasy? Past, present, or future?
All of them. But if I'm doing a regional anthology—as I did before with Dark Spires—then I'll say what I want the location to be. In the absence of that, writers can assume they have a free hand.

But to answer the question, I love Jack Vance's exotic planets, and Lucius Shepherd's use of Central America. Many of my favourite stories are set in more recognizable milieu; an alternate rural Dorset, the bars of New York where a man in the penthouse fights the rhythms of the universe, an isolated hotel on the Maine coast called the House of 31 February, the Sprawl, orbital zaibatsus, the city of Rebma, and London in 1810, where the Dog-faced Man prowls the streets.

4) Explain the type of pacing you enjoy, e.g. slow building to fast, fast throughout, etc.
It's more important to me that the author displays control of the tempo of their story, rather than what that pace is. I'm not sure that this counts as pacing, but the best stories start as late as the writer can manage, and finish when the story's done.

5) What types of characters appeal to you the most? Any examples?
Rounded, believable characters that are consistent. I like to see the protagonist evolve throughout the story rather than change abruptly, or worse, remain static.

6) Is there a specific tone you'd like to set in your publication? What kind of voices grab you and keep you enthralled? Any examples?
I'm completely open-minded about this. There are stories like Bester's 'The Pi Man' and Zelazny's 'This Mortal Mountain' that couldn't be written by anybody but their authors. And then there are stories like Dozois' 'Morning Child' that seem incredibly simple. What I want is for the author to seem invisible, unless like Frederik Pohl in 'Day Million' he's talking to the reader.

7) What is your policy for vulgarity, violence, and sexual content? Any taboos?
If the story calls for it, I have no taboos. But I don't want sex or violence in stories for the sake of it—there has to be a reason for it to be present.

8) What kind of themes are you seeking most in submissions to this market? In general, what themes interest you?
I like to see stories where there is not one idea but two, colliding in a nuclear explosion, sparking off one another.

If you read most pro magazines, they will have two or even more ideas, working off one another. As an extreme example, Mike Alexander's 'Ware of the Worlds' deliberately took Wells' War of the Worlds, with its Martian cylinders invading, then added the replicator from Star Trek, but twisted the outcome with a plot development from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, and rounded it all off with a denouement reminiscent of Alfred Bester. And all the time he was perfectly in control.

I don't expect all writers to achieve these levels of innovation and control—this was, after all, one of the very best stories of last year, written for a top-paying magazine. But these are the sort of stories that I'd like authors to aspire to.

9) Overall, do you prefer downbeat or upbeat endings?
Upbeat, although if a downbeat ending is required, and can be justified, I'll accept it. I don't want what some are calling 'Pollyanna-ish stories' where the author has to pull a figurative rabbit out of a hat, to force a happy ending.

10) Any last advice for submitters to this market? Any critical do's or do not's?
Write the story you want to write, rather than what you think I want to see. Surprise me. Don’t be afraid to stretch yourself to your limit—I’d sooner have a glorious failure which can be reworked, than a safe, dull story.

For more scoops, go to marketscoops.blogspot.com.

D.L. Snell writes with Permuted Press. He edited Dr. Kim Paffenroth twice, John Dies at the End once, and provided a constructive critique to Joe McKinney on his next major novel after Dead City. You can shoot D.L. Snell in the head at www.exit66.net.

To reprint this article, please contact D.L. Snell.