Vintage Typewriters

June 9th, 2010 § 0

This is a vin­tage 1929 Royal Portable type­writer. Over the last week, I’ve pur­chased six vin­tage, man­ual type­writ­ers. “Why the freck would you do that?” you might ask.

Well, I’m a writer, and these are writ­ing devices. Very cool, vin­tage writ­ing devices.

Also, I’m strange. And obsessive.

I’ve many other rea­sons. In fact, I will soon detail those rea­sons on this very site. I am going to write a story (novel?) using one or more man­ual type­writ­ers. I plan on explain­ing why and doing a series of arti­cles detail­ing the expe­ri­ence. (I’ve never used a man­ual type­writer before. Only an elec­tric for typ­ing class in high school. I got my first com­puter in 1984 at the age of 8.)

Interview with Lou Linked by io9

June 8th, 2010 § 0

I for­got to men­tion that my inter­view with Lou Anders was linked by io9 and scored over 10,000 hits. They hooked it with “which novel is sci­ence fiction’s Harry Potter?”

Good stuff.

The io9 link.

Redstone Interview with Lou Anders

June 7th, 2010 § 0

In case you missed it, I con­ducted an inter­view with Lou Anders. The inter­view appeared in the most excel­lent first issue of Red­stone Sci­ence Fic­tion. Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire inter­view here.

An Inter­view with Lou Anders
by David Alas­tair Hayden

Lou Anders is the edi­to­r­ial direc­tor of Prometheus Books’ ground­break­ing sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy imprint Pyr, as well as many antholo­gies, includ­ing the forth­com­ing vol­umes Masked (Gallery Books, July 2010) and Swords & Dark Magic (Eos, June 2010, co-edited with Jonathan Stra­han). Lou is a four-time Hugo Award nom­i­nee, a Philip K. Dick Award nom­i­nee, a World Fan­tasy Award nom­i­nee, and a Chelsey Award win­ning art director.

Is the life and work of a sci-fi edi­tor at all like you imag­ined it would be? What are the best and worst parts of the job?

I’m not sure I imag­ined doing this at all. As a kid I wanted to be either James Bond or Bat­man, and in col­lege I fell in love with act­ing and direct­ing. I came into the field back­wards, through a series of career shifts, from play­writ­ing to jour­nal­ism and screen­writ­ing to the dot com indus­try to free­lance anthol­ogy edit­ing to here. At each stage, it was always throw myself in and sink-or-swim, so I didn’t have a lot of lead time to imag­ine what was around the cor­ner. I do remem­ber telling my boss when I was hired that I thought I could do the job uti­liz­ing about a third of my day. Ha ! (In my defense, it was ini­tially con­ceived as a much smaller list and ramped up very fast after I was onboard. Hmmm, could that have been deliberate?).

As to the best and worst parts: The best part—finding a book that has me leap­ing out of my chair with excite­ment, a man­u­script so good I for­get to edit it and just get caught up in the action, then shar­ing that book with the world. Equal to this is the plea­sure (and honor) of work­ing with some of the world’s top illus­tra­tors when it comes to cre­at­ing a cover for these books. At such moments, I am the luck­i­est guy on earth. The worst part—when some­thing bril­liant and deserv­ing fails to catch and find its audi­ence. Noth­ing more painful.

Within the last few years, the num­ber of fan­tasy works set in our present day world, but with mag­i­cal tweaks, has surged dra­mat­i­cally (as have romance hybrids). Do you think some­thing like this will hap­pen with sci-fi as well?

Well, we’ve already been through a wave of “techno-thriller” nov­els, with a lot of the big names of SF for­go­ing space for the near future. Greg Bear, David Brin, William Gib­son have all been writ­ing nov­els set in the present, Neal Stephen­son even went back into the past for “his­tor­i­cal sci­ence fic­tion”. I don’t want to mis­quote him but I believe Robert J. Sawyer has said some­thing to the effect that he intends all (or most) of his forth­com­ing work to be like this. As to romance hybrids, I did recently notice a “my boyfriend is an alien” type novel on the mass mar­ket tree dis­play in B&N last week, pack­aged exactly like an urban fan­tasy only with ten­ta­cles. I’m sur­prised there isn’t more of an SF incur­sion into urban fan­tasy already, as that crowd pushes out fur­ther from vam­pires and were­wolves. But we’ve also had a flow­er­ing of space opera, per­haps com­ing out of that now. And par­al­lel uni­verse nov­els, with its sub-sub-genre of steam­punk, are all the rage.

Read the rest of the interview.

Wrath of the White Tigress (Scribd)

May 13th, 2010 § 0

The Palym­far Order, which once pro­tected the land of Hareez, now holds it in an iron grip of ter­ror under the malev­o­lent sor­cerer Grand­mas­ter Salahn and his mind-controlled assas­sin, Jaska the Slayer. As Salahn pre­pares to absorb the immor­tal White Tigress and become a god him­self, Jaska and the palym­far anni­hi­late all who stand in the way.

On the run since Salahn destroyed her tem­ple and mur­dered her fam­ily, only Zyrella, last high priest­ess of the White Tigress, has the power to free her god­dess. But the White Tigress has other plans and instead releases Jaska. For Salahn has demented ambi­tions reach­ing far beyond immor­tal­ity and only together do Jaska and Zyrella hold a hope of stop­ping him before it’s too late.

Wrath of the White Tigress

Laughed the Ancient Stars

May 11th, 2010 § 0

My Writing Mentality (or Fuck You)

May 10th, 2010 § 3

To me the hard­est part about self-promotion and social net­work­ing is that I write best when I have a “fuck the world” men­tal­ity. No sur­prise that in that state I’m not very approach­able and I don’t care if any­one reads (or lis­tens to) my work. I’m try­ing to learn how to turn the atti­tude off and on at will because I’m not sure I have the self-confidence to write well with­out it.

And I’m not sure that I want to. I think I come by this spirit hon­estly and it works for me. In fact, dur­ing my writ­ing slump a few years back, I was meek. I wor­ried about peo­ple judg­ing me and lik­ing my work. I let the world win. Now that I think it needs to go get fucked again, I’m far more productive.

Sure, I could just be an ass all the time, but the inter­net has enough of those, right? Is there a bal­ance? Am I miss­ing something?

Doctor Who: 5th Season

April 20th, 2010 § 1

Wow. The first fan­tas­tic chap­ter of what I’m sure will be a grand fairy­tale. The only episodes of Doc­tor Who that I’ve seen* that are bet­ter are the ones from the pre­vi­ous sea­sons that were writ­ten by Steven Moffatt.

The act­ing was far and above pre­vi­ous efforts, though I like David Tennant’s work quite a bit. Matt Smith turns it up to 11.

Also, Amy Pond was infi­nitely more inter­est­ing than the pre­vi­ous com­pan­ions I’ve seen. Right now, I think it’s her story, not the Doctor’s.

* Admit­tedly, I have seen very lit­tle Doc­tor Who. I just never have liked it much, until I saw the Steven Mof­fat episodes. And I only gave those a try because I love Cou­pling so much.

White Tigress: Chapter 7

March 30th, 2010 § 0

Part 7 of 7 in the series Wrath of the White Tigress

A horde of face­less chil­dren shuf­fled toward Jaska. He tried to back away, but Grand­mas­ter Salahn loomed behind him and whis­pered into his ear: “Kill many, Jaska, so that we may bathe in style tonight.” Jaska tried to resist, but his arms moved of their own accord and drew his weapons. Then, even with his eyes closed, he con­ducted his grisly task.

Hours later, he was in a shal­low, marble-tiled pool filled with blood. As he slid between Mardha and Salahn, gasp­ing in orgasm, Zyrella sud­denly appeared, chained to a col­umn ris­ing from the mid­dle of the pool.

Mardha left Jaska’s embrace and took a scourge from the pool­side. » Read the rest of this entry «

White Tigress: Chapter 6

March 23rd, 2010 § 0

Part 6 of 7 in the series Wrath of the White Tigress

When Jaska next awoke, the dim sun­stone barely illu­mi­nated the cave. Zyrella slept on a pal­let along the oppo­site wall; Ohzikar was absent. Jaska’s stom­ach churned, demand­ing food. So with creak­ing joints and trem­bling mus­cles, he retrieved dried meat and dates from the sup­ply packs. He sat by the pool and ate.

Jaska was dressed in a grey shirt and pants that cinched at the ankles and knees. His pack, weapons, and uni­form lay stacked nearby. No, he thought, those weapons can’t belong to me. Mine fell into the river. These … must have belonged to my students.

He nearly wept as he thought of the young men he had trained for the last few years. But then what sort of men had they truly been? » Read the rest of this entry «

White Tigress: Chapter 5

March 18th, 2010 § 0

Part 5 of 7 in the series Wrath of the White Tigress

A warm glow emanated halfway up a rock wall on the north end of a dry canyon. Along a nar­row ledge was a cave not vis­i­ble from the canyon floor. Fire­light flick­ered on the walls inside and illu­mi­nated hunt­ing scenes and ani­mal lords painted by tribes­men cen­turies ago. Many of the scenes depicted species long extinct from the region, their pop­u­la­tions dec­i­mated by the inex­orable approach of the north­ern desert.

Zyrella chalked her own sym­bols onto the walls: twist­ing runes that chan­neled the geo­man­tic forces in her sur­round­ings and called upon the divine pow­ers of the great deity Kashomae, the Gen­tle Sav­ior. After Zyrella fin­ished, Ohzikar fas­tened a sheet of can­vas over the cave entrance. Then he joined her at the back of the cave where water, shim­mer­ing like liq­uid fire, trick­led into a small pool.

“That should mask our fire­light.” He frowned at the small pile of brush, dung, and coal. “Not that we’ll be burn­ing much.”

“I’ll con­jure sun­light into a stone tomor­row.” Zyrella didn’t let on to Ohzikar that she was utterly spent. Mak­ing a sun­stone would tax her, and an appren­tice sor­cerer could han­dle such a task with ease.

Ohzikar turned his gaze to a pal­let set into a nook two-thirds of the way back into the cave. » Read the rest of this entry «

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