Tag Archives: Pulp Literature

New & Upcoming Writings

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It’s been a good season for placing stories. Besides my latest, “Three Strings,” which appeared in the premier issue of Farstrider Magazine (more on below), I have a handful of short works cropping up in a variety of collections this year.

“The Woodcutter’s Sons,” an arboreal fable, will appear in the first issue of what promises to be the lovely and sylvan Bracken Magazine, I have a short surrealist piece on something that definitely didn’t happen while writing my dissertation coming up in Pulp Literature called “Two Twenty-Two”, and my literary horror story, “Bone Orchard,” is forthcoming in Hypnos Magazine. Finally, I’m quite excited to announce that “When I Was Dead,” a story of the afterlife, will appear in Mysterion, a new anthology of Christian fiction.

It’s a pretty good track record, especially as my fiction writing has slowed down lately. I’ve begun working on a manuscript based on my dissertation for the University of Pittsburgh Press, and whatever room in my life that occasionally was filled by reading and writing fiction has recently been stuffed with the works and writings of various nineteenth-century astronomers.

So far all of these are still forthcoming, but you can find “Three Strings” online now at Farstrider Magazine. It’s fun to be part of the first issue of a publication, especially one that looks as sharp as Farstrider. I mean, just check out that cover:

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It’s everything you want good fantasy to be: comforting, warming, and familiar until you glance into the sky and realize, as Chesterton once pointed out, that “you’ve arrived at the wrong star.” It’s that juxtaposition of the expected and the fundamentally strange that makes good speculative fiction resonate, and this cover captures that perfectly.

“Three Strings” is the first story I’ve written so far that’s based around a pun. (Blame my dad. It’s in the blood.) But it made my wife snort out loud when she read it, so that’s a success in my book. If you haven’t already, take a look.

And while you’re there, you can check out the fantastic review they posted on my novel, First Fleet, which is still available on Amazon.

FantasyCon!

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Last week I participated in my first con, a local one here in my hometown. I thought it would be a good way to get the word out about First Fleet, especially as we get close to the fourth and final installment being released this summer. I approached my publisher about getting some promotional materials printed for distribution, and he had the idea to print up pamphlets of First Fleet 1: Bones with links on the back to the rest of the installments on Amazon.

I did a bit of research online about what makes a good convention table stand out. My goal was to look professional, catch people’s eyes, and get copies of Bones into as many hands as possible. Also to have fun.

I had business cards printed through Vistaprint with a QR code on the back that links to my Amazon author’s page. I considered going with Moo, but as cool as their card designs look, the price differential was just too high. There are some complaints online about the quality of Vistaprint’s cards, but I was quite pleased. I had mine printed vertically on Vistaprint’s recycled paper option and found a couple old Gundam figurines in the basement that served quite nicely as card-holders (and got attention from the sort of people who like robot figurines– of whom there were many).

The table was focused on First Fleet, but I also wanted to highlight some of my other publications. I borrowed a book display from work and set out copies of some of the magazines in which my work has appeared. None of these were for sale (though you can access them through my Amazon author’s page), but several people stopped to thumb through them. The Lore cover in particular with the lovely monster drew a few..

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I read that a table should have something with good height, and the fantastic poster my publisher sent featuring the cover of First Fleet 2: Wake (which was available for free download the day of the con) served this function nicely. If I was going to do this again, I might replace the poster (which took up table space) with a collapsable vertical banner to stand behind my table.

Again, my goal was primarily to make local contacts, have fun, and get the word out about First Fleet. To that end, I think it was successful. I distributed about 250 copies of Bones, and online stats showed almost 200 downloads of Wake that day. That’s a pretty good “activation rate,” considering it means that many people took the additional step of going online and downloading the first portion of the novel.

Plus, I learned that our town once again has a local comic book shop.

So, wins all around.

Polycarp on the Sea

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I still place the blame (or credit) on Gene Wolfe’s fiction for setting me on the literary track that led to the all classical pieces of writing that I should have read in high school, if not before. Until reading Wolfe, it had been possible to enjoy science fiction and fantasy and bluff my way through an understanding of the classical allusions writers made at times. With Wolfe’s writings though, this was no longer possible. I realized I needed at least a rudimentary basis of culture to catch what he was often laying out in his stories– or at least, to try to catch more of it.

So I read, among other things, Dickinson’s translation of the Aeneid. What particularly struck me was the story of Palinurus, the faithful but hapless navigator who was sacrificed at the conclusion of Book V to appease Neptune and allow the surviving Trojans safe passage to Italy. I wrote a story based on this episode, but in the strange evolution of ideas the character of Palinurus was replaced by St. Polycarp.

There are metaphors here, to be sure, and maybe I was even trying to make them: Polycarp at the helm of the early Church, perhaps. His journey toward Rome and martyrdom. Maybe it also had something to do with what other books I was reading at the time and the idea (surely misplaced) that could write about an early church father more easily than an early Latin hero.

In any case, I wrote a surrealist retelling of this episode from the Aeneid with Polycarp standing in for Palinurus. It was short, haunting, and (I thought) poignant–but it was also rather eclectic. Indeed, it wasn’t until Pulp Literature’s call went out for especially unique stories– I think the editors said something about “those stories that you’ve been hiding under your bed”– that it found a home and has now seen print.

And what lovely print it is. The folks who put together the print magazine Pulp Literature make it look easy and elegant. Their latest issue– Winter 2015— is now out and on sale, and if you pick up your copy, you’ll find my Polycarp bit, complete with illustrations.

Doooooo it. Support writers (like me). But more importantly, support the lovely people who collect stories and publish them with such love and care.