Shadows in Flight delivers a unique family struggle

Shadows in Flight
Orson Scott Card
2012 Macmillan Audio

Reviewed by Ann Wilkes

I still remember the original trilogy in Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggin series (Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide) fondly, decades later. I haven’t read any of the others in that universe, which includes the Shadow series of which Shadows in Flight is book five.

This fifth book follows Shadow of the Giant. The Giant is Bean, who, as a boy, fought in the wars of Earth and was friends with Ender Wiggin. Bean and three of his children are both blessed and cursed. They are the result of an experiment which gave them super intelligence, but also gave them giantism (a real human disease in which the body never stops growing until the heart gives out in very early adulthood). Bean separated from his wife and other children to take their affected children to safety. He and the children are antonines (the genetic mutation is called Anton’s Key) and are feared by humans both because of their intelligence and the possibility of the spread of the mutation. They are aboard a starship heading away from the human worlds, but still linked to them through the ansible (although they never use their real identities when communicating over it).

Bean has grown so large (four and half meters tall) that he only fits in the cargo hold, and only on his back. The children each have special areas of talent. Ender continually searches for a cure for the giantism that will spare their hyper-intelligence. He has a temperament very similar to his namesake. Carlotta makes it her business to know everything there is to know about the operation of the ship and its maintenance. She also keeps the gravity low in the cargo bay to make it easier on the Giant's heart. Their brother, "Sergeant", concerns himself with weapons and war. Sergeant often gets Carlotta to side with him against Ender. Faced with this new possible threat, they must put aside their differences. These six-year-old children are smarter than any adult, but still, at times, have impulses and reactions, which makes for a very interesting dynamic.

Just when their life support is dwindling along with their father's life, they come across another ship near a habitable world. The ship seems empty, yet is piloted. Ender suspects it is a Formic ship. But how can any of the Formic have survived the “xenocide”? The answer to that question and much more awaits the children aboard that ship. They have no choice but to risk taking a closer look - and boarding it.

The thing I liked most about this story was the interplay within this unique family. They are more than just a family. They are the only surviving antonines – or leguminotes, as they prefer to call themselves in honor of their father – and the only living beings they may ever know; the only community they will ever be physically a part of. Even when Ender discusses genetics with scientists back home over the ansible, he cannot form friendships because he can’t even let on who or what he is.

The action in this audio book is fast-paced and the emotions palpable. I never found my mind wandering while I listened. The narrators did an excellent job holding my attention with this riveting yarn. With a novella length, it was a quick “listen”. At the end of the book, Orson Scott Card talks about how he came up with the idea for the book and what it means to him. That’s worth a listen as well.

Kea's Flight - in a ship of imperfect children

Kea's Flight
by Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker

Reviewed by Deirdre Murphy



“More. I want more food.”

A boy nearby was dawdling, taking forever to eat his energy bar. Two whole bites’ worth of it were just sitting there uneaten, and it had been bigger than mine to start with. The boy wasn’t skinny like me. He had extra fat on his sides and his neck that wiggled a little as he moved. It wasn’t fair.

“You. Give me that bar now.” I walked toward him, reaching out for his food. “I’m still hungry. They give you more food than me, and you don’t need as much. So give it to me right now.”

He made eye contact, curious, holding out the bit of energy bar as if to ask me if that were really what I wanted.

Beep. Beep. Beep. One of the cafeteria robots rolled toward the boy, taking away the morsel. I looked at the bot expectantly, wondering if it would correct the unfairness and give it to me. But it simply opened a compartment in the front of its body, inserted the food, and then grabbed the boy and held him down. A tube emerged from just above the compartment; one of the robot’s steel claws helped push the tube up his nose and down his throat, force-feeding him the now-dissolved energy bar.


Kea’s Flight
by Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker

I loved the opening scene of Kea's Flight, which features a very young Kea stuck in a situation that’s strange to the reader and incomprehensible to her. She’s real and vivid, her Asberger’s perfectly depicted, and Kea herself is sympathetic in her imperfection. I wanted to know more about how she got into such a predicament, and what would happen to her.

Kea was raised on a spaceship, gestated in an artificial womb and destined to help colonize a planet. Kea and all of the other children on the ship were genetic rejects, removed into artificial wombs by parents who didn’t want to keep them and a government that forbade abortion.

I know that in our world, parents with one socially-challenged child have their hands full—imagine surrogate parents, assisted by robots, who must somehow raise dozens of children with handicaps, all the same age, decanted from their artificial wombs in the same year! Kea’s early life was not easy.

I was sucked in by that first scene, thankfully before the too-long exposition about autism and Asbergers that lurks near the beginning of the book. I think those paragraphs should have been cut completely, or at least been relegated to an appendix in the back. It wasn’t anything new or ground-breaking, just real-world background information—and information that is mentioned in the book as it is needed in any case, since the “rems” are brought up with knowledge of their prenatal diagnoses and what those diseases do to the people who suffer from them.

Happily, the book quickly returns to Kea and her slowly growing circle of delightfully quirky friends. Kea invents a game that allows them to speak with each other freely about things their caretakers would punish them for, and her first friend finds ways to access information that their caretakers don’t think the flawed children in their care can handle. Together, they face threats from their caretakers (themselves misfits who were exiled from Earth for one reason or another) and from the ship itself, which they come to understand was put together as cheaply as possible while still keeping up the appearance that these “removed” children will have a chance at a good life.

If all goes well, they’ll reach their destination planet on their collective 21st birthday, at which time they will, according to the learning tapes, be granted the rights and privileges of adults, and allowed to make lives on the planet’s surface. But the planet was chosen from afar, more than 1000 planet-years ago, by scientists who had incomplete information. If the planet isn’t suitable, or if something happened to it while they traveled at relativistic speeds through deep space, what then?

The author also reveals glimpses of the spaceship from the other side—the grownups on the ship have fallen under the control of a dangerous psychopath, and many are convinced that Kea, her friends, and all the children living in Kea’s side of the ship are all defective children, who will never be capable of assuming the responsibilities of adults.

Everything comes to a head when they are 19, and the ship reaches the point where the computers can get a visual of the planet, and the programs scan for the elements in the new planet’s air, triggering a computer bug with dangerous consequences for everyone on the ship. Kea and her friends must act fast, for the lives of everyone on the ship are at stake, grown-ups and rems alike.

Daybreak Zero and Barnes on system artifacts, apocalypses

Daybreak Zero
by John Barnes
May 2011, Ace

Reviewed by Ann Wilkes

With Daybreak Zero, John Barnes continues his post-apocalyptic saga which began with Directive 51. Most of the "Daybreak" disasters have happened already: nuclear bombs, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses), nanoswarm – nanotechnology that attacks electronics - and biotes that turn plastics and rubber into odiferous, brown goo. The government is fractured into two when Directive 51 kicks in and the National Constitutional Continuity Coordinator and the acting President he appoints have a difference of opinion on how to proceed during the current crisis. The NCCC wants a military leader capable of bringing the fight to the enemy while the President believes there is no enemy. Daybreak seems to be the result of a system artifact, the propagation of an idea across the Internet and across the globe inciting people to wish to cleanse the Earth by destructive means to "heal" it.

In Daybreak Zero, Heather O'Grainne's Department of the Future sets up shop in Pueblo, Colo. to discover what's behind Daybreak and to help America get back to a semi-industrial society with transportation, communication, and a 1940s or 1950s level of comfort. Meanwhile, the Daybreak followers storm the populated areas like raging bands of primitives bent on destruction and annihilation.

Arnie Yang, an uber-cyber analyst, still believes a system artifact is behind Daybreak and that the ongoing, moon-based attacks are automated.

The country is set to split down the middle or launch into a second civil war with two governments claiming authority. Both sides finally agree to meet to discuss putting the country back together under one government. The talks are delayed when it's learned that some of the negotiating parties have been brainwashed by Daybreak followers.


He could see the watch's lantern glinting half a mile away. I could run and join them and just stay with them till they passed my house. Lots of people do that. But the time to have done that would have been to catch them on Main, in front of the courthouse; no, they'd wonder what had frightened him. They might ask. What could he say?

Deep breath. Walk and breathe like you're going to fight; if it turns out you are, it's one less thing to wrry about, and if not, it calms and clears the—

"Doctor Yang. Doctor Yang, doctus in the doctrine, the indoctrinated doctor."

Arnie spun ne step backward into the space he'd been about to walk into, cross-drew his knives and held them at ready. "I've been expecting you."

Teeth gleamed in the dark under the blanket; the eyes were black blobs around the greasy promontory of the nose. "Expecting to stab me?"

"If necessary." Arnie shifted his weight for a better stance.


Barnes' style, at least in this series, includes quite a few rambling, conversational sentences that seem to derail in the middle, which kind of bugged me, but his excellent gift for storytelling kept me reading. In fact, as I said in my Directive 51 review, I couldn't stop reading to wait for Directive 51 to arrive, so I finished reading it out of order.

I liked Heather's tactile, old-school war-room. And teenage couriers sprint messages to and fro and are tipped with meal coupons. People who used to be obscure hobbyists are new tech leaders making radio tubes, building printing presses, and creating steam and water-powered this and thats.

And castles! Their neo-land-baron owners could pose a threat to the government or be a lesser evil that keeps order in their vicinities.

There were quite a few witty monologues and inner dialogs. I would expect the survivors of the apocalypse to have a good sense of humor. It would be a survival mechanism, right? Anyway, I enjoyed Heather's wit and Cameron Nguyen-Peters' (the NCCC) ironic sense of humor.

This novel provided a good balance between science, politics and the human condition. Barnes' offers believable characters with engaging conflict both external and internal. I look forward to the next book in this series.

Now let's get to know John Barnes.



AW: Can you explain what a system artifact is for my readers?

JB: Actually, I'd love to. The editor and I disagreed about what the basic appeal of the book is (and there was no market research to settle the question), so a lot of my "how it works" material ended up on the cutting room floor. Warn your readers there'll be a quiz after this …

System: in communications, anything where multiple communicators are passing multiple messages over time. That might include networks, like the internet; communities, like small town gossip; discourses, like Shakespeare scholarship; or distribution systems, like mass media.

Artifact: something that arises arbitrarily from the way things work, an emergent property. Classic examples are that our inability to think about more than seven objects at a time, give or take, is an artifact of our brain; the potential for a stalemate is a system artifact of the rules of chess; the discomfort of time at the DMV is a system artifact of the way that our time is structured and the number of clerks and what they are and are not allowed to do.

So a system artifact is a message that doesn't have a single author/speaker/sender within the system, but arises in the interstices of the system. Cars on the highway send and receive messages, but congestion is a system artifact – it's a property created by all the cars, the highway, weather, work schedules, real estate prices, etc. together. A performance of a play is a system artifact – the audience's experience is created by everybody working together, including the playwright who is usually absent, the past experiences and expressions of other artists, and the behavior of the audience. Catholicism is a system artifact produced by the interactions of all the Catholics with each other and with the world around them, and possibly with things beyond this world, depending on whether or not you're Catholic.

Some system artifacts have fairly person-like qualities – hard science fiction, for example, tends to be stern and tough, telling people the world is this way and you can't just have it any old way you like. (Imagine a hard sf novel titled The Cheerful Void or Planet of the Soft Life). Whereas the whole self-help category is relentlessly positive and never-say-die (you'll never see anything on the self-help shelves titled Oh, Get Over It, You Big Baby! or Childish Dreams: How to Know When It's Really Too Late and You Should Just Give Up.) Those personalities of genres, again, are not any one person's conscious decision; they just happen over time, but they're nonetheless real.

Other system artifacts seem to be a relentless overall value or commandment repeated forever – very often we become aware of those when someone finally objects, as with, for example, the Disney Princesses, a complicated message that says girls should be plucky and cute, their fathers are bumbling nitwits, and the whole universe including inanimate objects and singing seafood will unite to bring them a boyfriend, which is the most important thing that a princess can have. There's a system artifact in Christianity that says that people who suffer are good, and one in the American version of democracy that says the lone arguer in the middle of a consensus is a vital resource to be protected, and one in the environmental movement that says energy conservation is nearly always preferable to energy production. Nobody thought those up individually and sold everyone on them; they evolved out of thousands or millions of exchanges.

Still other system artifacts seem to have evolution-like purposes, seeking to be reproduced, mutating to accommodate it. I don' t mean so much the simple ones like tweets with RT in them so much as songs like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which goes far beyond earworminess and turns into a whole collection of feelings, symbols, words, notes that partly take over the recipient's musical taste ever after; Heinlein juveniles keep trying to reproduce at science fiction publishers despite their dwindling audience (which doesn't include very many young people anymore), partly by constantly waggling the attractors of "this is where many existing customers came from" and "remember how much fun these were when they were new?" which they obviously acquired long after Heinlein wrote the original texts.

Now, a really complex message coming out of a really enormous system – say, two thousand years of Christianity, or a million lines of computer code, or tens of thousands of interactions within a family – can have all three kinds of qualities: a personality, a value, and a reproductive drive. And at that point you have the kind of system artifact I'm talking about – a little like the way some compulsions seem to pass from parent to child, or some religions seem to be more extreme than their own practitioners, or the way that whatever physics is reaching for, it has gotten beyond the comprehension of any individual physicist. But, of course, since this is a science fiction novel, I have it magnified in the imaginary future, increased enormously by the power of the internet and by an improving understanding of what really happens in motivational psychology and brain chemistry.

AW: What sorts of hobbies do you have that would come in handy in your Daybreak scenario?

JB: I enjoy looting, inciting mobs, and leading from the rear. Also, I know the locations of several survivalists I expect to have large caches ready. All right, that's a joke. Sort of. I was an Eagle Scout ages ago, back when you had to earn your own badges instead of having your mommy do them for you. I can cook wild game and have cooked and eaten critters for which I did not have directions. Having worked in theatre tech for many years I can improvise machines pretty well. And I'm not a bad teacher; I could open a school if people would feed me in exchange for teaching.

AW: If you lived in the aftermath of an apocalypse, what would you miss the most?

JB: Whatever was gone; different apocalypses would have different patterns of what was missing afterwards. I'm an old fat guy with bad eyesight, I prefer to live in densely urban areas, and I'd be a sitting duck. Almost certainly, I'd miss civil order briefly and intensely until whatever got me, probably in the first week.

AW: What are you working on now?

JB: At this moment I'm finishing The Last President, the third of the Daybreak trilogy. Then I'll do some finishing work on Losers In Space, a hard-sf YA. My agent is peddling The Wordly Evidence of Grace, a mainstream YA, because Tales of the Madman Underground has done much better than most of my science fiction. In between, I'm working on moving to the self-publishing model; in the grand old ship of publishing, water is pouring into the hold, and I am not going to be the last rat down the hawser.

Geist - a complex fantasy tale

Geist: A Book of the Order
By Philippa Ballantine

Reviewed by Deirdre Murphy

Active Deacon Sorcha Faris has plenty of problems. The husband who has grown increasingly distant from her emotionally is also her Sensitive work partner, paired with her magically and metaphysically to fight the geist—unliving forces that keep trying to invade her world. For no apparent reason, geist activity is on the upswing, with more and stranger attacks suddenly appearing in a part of the world that she spent years working to make safe for humankind.

As the book opens, what should have been a boring bit of guard duty turns deadly, requiring her to call on the most dire of her powers, one that many Active Deacons never master. They win the fight, but her husband is nearly killed, and will spend months in the hospital even with the best of care.

She expects to be given leave to take care of him. Instead the Abbot calls her in with new orders from the Emperor. She is to partner with a very powerful young Sensitive, Deacon Merrick Chambers and leave immediately, quietly and with no backup, to aid a priory that’s besieged with violent geist activity. Sorcha doesn’t recognize the young man—but he recognizes her as the beautiful woman who destroyed the geist-creature that had just messily killed his father years before. Merrick covers his nervousness about being partnered to her by deliberately antagonizing her.

As if this isn’t enough to deal with, their trip to the endangered Priory is beset with danger, and before they get there, they run into geist-cursed Prince Raed of the former royal family, now known as the Pretender. Raed spends his time sailing the high seas to avoid both the Emperor and situations that could waken the murderous geist-beast that is twined into his body and soul. When increased geist activity threatens even ships on the ocean, Sorcha ends up having to worry about the curse too.

There’s plenty of action, and twists and turns to the plot that I didn’t predict. I found it harder and harder to put the book down as the plot unfolded. The ending was satisfying, though it wasn’t a “happily ever after” sort of thing. But then, this was never portrayed as a fairy-tale sort of world. The characters and the Empire they live in are complex, powerful, and imperfect—and that, along with how they face their dark enemies, is what makes them interesting.

As noted above, in the book we see hints of Sorcha’s interesting history—history with her husband, with other former partners, and, of course, fighting the spooky, dangerous geist creatures. Thinking about that while writing this review, I wondered if this might not be the first book about her (though I never felt like I should to have read a prior story to fully understand this one). A quick web-search did not turn up any earlier Sorcha book, but I discovered there is a sequel, Spectyr, which is due out in June. I’ll be watching for it.

The Adversary - epic multiverse saga begins

The Adversary
by James R. Bowman
Melrose Books (2009)


Reviewed by Lyda Morehouse


In Bowman’s multiverse, Lucifer’s right-hand man, AKA the Adversary, is tired of playing second fiddle. Heck, he’s done with the whole status quo thing and decides the time has come just to wipe out all the remaining mortal heroes and destroy life as we know it. In other words: apocalypse time.

Tomas Walker, ex-British government assassin, is one of the last of these heroes, known as “guardians.” His life takes a strange turn when the Adversary’s minions show up to try to kill him. He’s on the run and is drawn back to the mysterious Glastonbury Hill, where he encounters none other than the Archangel Michael. Michael tells him it's time for him to accept his true destiny and save the multiverse from the evil fate the Adversary has planned.

Meanwhile, another guardian awakes in Santa Fe, New Mexico -- Tomas’ sister Gwen, a Goddess-worshipping New Age shop owner. She has her own quest: to find the tree of life (not Etz Chaim, as you might expect given all the other Judeo-Christian references so far, but Yggdrasill, of Norse myth.) Turns out, her BFFs are actually a group of exiled Valkyrie and they set her on her path after a giant Kachina (Hopi spirit doll) goes Godzilla on the town.

Oh yeah, and the powers that be are actually the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, and Michael and the Valkyries answer to them as the “Absolutes.”

Confused yet? The Adversary is a very long, dense, and intense novel. Unfortunately, it also bears the subtitle: “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Saga, Book One” and when the stalwart reader reaches the end of 1,028 pages, the story simply stops, with nothing resolved. Likewise, Melrose Press’s website does not yet have a listing or any information about a second book in the series, even though the official publication date of this book says 2009. That makes me worried that a reader may have to wait several years for a conclusion.

This book was short-listed for the Brit Writer’s Published Writer of the Year Award (2010), but for my money its complicated and rather epic plot isn’t helped by the constantly shifting point of view. Early sections of the narrative seem to glorify gore, like an amateur horror story or one of those “Saw” movies, but I’m personally very fond of religious mash-ups and was willing wade through that to get to the archangels and adversaries. If you’re similarly interested in eschatological fiction and okay with leaving the story hanging until the next installment appears, you may wish to seek this novel out. There’s certainly a lot to chew on in this massive book.

H. G. Wells Classic Collection a True Classic

H. G. Wells Classic Collection

Illustrator: Les Edwards

Publisher: Gollancz, an imprint of Orion

US Distributor: Independent Publishers Group

Review by D. E. Helbling

I had just finished listening to an audio book version of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds when this book showed up on Ann’s to-be-reviewed list. I jumped at a chance to review it. So, just days later, here it was in my hands, easily the prettiest book I'd handled recently. But what was I going to say about it? Was I qualified to review a book with content from H. G. Wells? Only if I dared to be, I decided.

So I sat down and started reading The Time Machine again, letting my mind fill in the details and taking me into the story world in a way that does not always happen with an audio book or, for that matter, a printed book. Some hours later, I was still reading and it was still as magical as when I had first read it as a boy of twelve. I decided that on the basis of this experience alone, I was quite qualified to say "Yes H. G. Wells wrote 'good stuff'". This stuff is still worth reading, stories and prose that hold up over one hundred years later.

Not changed were Wells’ notoriously long paragraphs, which took me aback for the first few pages. The book's faithful rendition of the original content would not change this. This is really the only issue I have with Well’s style. For me, the prose holds up in terms of readability, pacing, and story arc. And I love the characters. Ever the scientifically minded observer, the first person narrator of most of Wells’ works is a character who is at once accessible, personable, and sympathetic. His portrayal of the other characters, especially those overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of circumstance, is a big part of several of his tales, and is especially engaging to me. A key example: the “Man on Putney Hill”, in The War of the Worlds. I also appreciate how these stories embrace the plight of everyday people of "common station" with the same consideration, admiration, or disdain as he shows of the more elite members of his story world societies.

As for the book itself, the illustrations by Les Edwards were wonderfully retro. While one could argue that H. G. Wells’ works, along with those of Jules Verne, might constitute the Original Steampunk, it was refreshing to read a retro technology fiction work that was not splattered with illustrations of goggle-wearing stereotypes. My favorite image was one from the end of Book One of The War of the Worlds, showing a ship approaching one of the Martian tripods. The utter bleakness of the situation was wonderfully captured by the drawing.

Other features of the book include a brief biography of H. G. Wells, along with some quotes about H. G. from the likes of Brian W. Aldiss, Stephen Baxter, and Amazon.com, among others. On the following page is a long list of Wells’ novels and short stories.

My only real criticism of this book is the quote from Stephen Baxter on the back of the book. This is a book design issue, and really just a philosophical nit pick. Stephen says wonderful things about H. G. Wells’ work … his statements are not the issue. Stephen is himself a fine author and, as a member of the H. G. Wells Society, he is a suitably appropriate choice of person to say great things about Wells. Stephen, if you are reading this, please take no offense. It’s just that having words about H. G. Wells from any contemporary science fiction writer actually embossed into the hardcover, even the back, seems, well ... irreverent. The book and its contents do not, in my humble opinion, require validation from a modern day expert to stand up. Even if that validation was required, there are already several of these quotes printed inside. I suggest that this is a kind of marketing blurb, and as such it belongs instead on the dust jacket (assuming there may be one in a store copy of the book), or else relegated to only the interior of the book.

If one waits long enough, what was old is new again. If it is good enough, it helps us feel new again, too, when we are fortunate enough to rediscover it. This book did that for me, for a few brief hours. And will likely do so again in the weeks to come, as I have yet to get to The Island of Doctor Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, and The Invisible Man. I have never read these last two before, so am looking forward to it.

Would I buy this book? Absolutely. I will also be looking forward to other works from the publisher, including a new rendition of H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods, coming out later this year.

- D. E. Helbling

---

Greatshell writes Mad Skills with, well, mad skills

I raced through Mad Skills like a madwoman. What a fun ride through the looking glass. Young Madeleine Grant goes from average teenager struggling to fit in, to vegetable to government experiment with "mad skills" in a very short period of time. Who can be more vulnerable than someone who is trapped in a body with a damaged brain, who is unable to process her surroundings and voice her needs? Scientists use experimental technology to literally hardwire Maddy's brain. But now that she's part tech and the creators are monitoring their tech, what's next? What's real? How can you tell with someone feeding ideas into your head?

Maddy has her faculties back and then some. The speed at which she analyzes a situation and uses raw materials at hand to build a solution makes MacGyver look like an idiot.

Maddy goes back to school after her operation. News crews show up to see the spectacle. After having her Dad drop her around the corner, she gets to work.

As soon as he was out of sight, she walked to a nearby convenience store and browsed the automotive shelves. Making chemical connections in her head, she bought various items and took them behind the store, where she fashioned a peculiar device out of plastic bottles and volatile compounds. It looked like a toy spaceship. The warhead was a can of degreaser with a steel penetrator made from a lug bolt. It took a few minutes to assemble everything, then she had to hurry with it down the street -- she didn't want to be late for school.

A few blocks over, she found what she was looking for: a clear view of the local TV news affiliate. Estimating trajectory, she angled the device just right and lit it off. It went shoosh! and streaked upward, arcing high over the town common. A second later, there was a crash and a puff of flame -- the station's big satellite dish was on fire. People came out, yelling and screaming, and in minutes the news trucks started showing up.

Maddy passed them going the other way. The front of the school was clear of media people. She slipped onto campus unnoticed, grateful that she hadn't missed the bell.

But her functioning brain has come with a price. Not least of which is her freedom. Still in the balance is her sanity. What's with that talking raccoon, anyway? The more she learns of the project and it's goals, the more the carpet is pulled out from under her. She has no one left to trust.

Greatshell's pacing is excellent. And he manages to introduce boy to girl without things getting all mushy and complicated. Maddy has complications in abundance. And what do you do when you find out you're a lab rat and there are lots of other lab rats like you? What do you do when people you've trusted aren't who you thought they were? Read Mad Skills to find out what Maddy does. You won't be disappointed.

It was a real treat to chat with Walter about Mad Skills, his Xombie books and writing.

AW: You wrote a very convincing female protagonist. And I'm sure those in your Xombie novels are equally well-rendered. Maybe I should ask your wife this next question. Do you seek female input or are you really that good?

WG: My wife says, "He's strongly in touch with his feminine side." Which is funny, since I look like a Mack truck. But any little boy who loves books more than sports can't help but feel a certain kinship with girls, who tend to be the most ferocious early readers and writers. And I was raised by a single woman, so that probably helped.

AW: Okay, what's a Xombie?

WG: A Xombie is a person who has been infected by Maenad Cytosis, the disease called Agent X, which attacks the X chromosome and turns women into unstoppable killing (or rather, infecting) machines.

AW: How do they spread it?

WG: By suffocating their victims--either by strangling, or by literally sucking the breath from their lungs. Agent X doesn't work in the presence of oxygen molecules. The O2 has to first be evacuated from the victim's body.

It's a real "kiss of death". My idea was to create a situation where women were the aggressors, and no man was safe. They call it Sadie Hawkins' Massacre.

AW: Who do you credit with nurturing your unique sense of humor?

WG: My sense of humor probably comes from being a bit of a class clown all through school. I liked being a ham, and also loved reading my stories in class.

AW: Have you ever had your sense of humor get you in trouble?

WG: A few times, yeah. I remember once I was being disciplined in front of my 2nd grade class, and I made goofy faces behind the teacher's back--the class cracked up. But then I got caught, and got slapped with a ruler. The good old days...

AW: Mad Skills is a far cry from your usual satirical horror. You seem to be diversifying. What else can we look forward to?

WG: I have a bunch of different books in various stages of development. A Godzilla-like satire about a man who grows to giant size, called Enormity [original title still listed on website is The Leaf Blower]. A steampunk type story about girl flyers at the dawn of aviation. Also a horror novel about a voodoo-type cult on an island (Catalina Island, actually), called Terminal Island.

AW: What genres do you read?

WG: Everything! Lately, a lot of nonfiction. I just read a bio of William Golding, which made me buy his sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. But I grew up on all the science fiction greats, as well as Stephen King.

AW: Where did the idea for Mad Skills come from?

WG: Mad Skills was my attempt to do a psycho-thriller in the vein of The Stepford Wives or Coma. That kind of paranoia thriller that was so popular in the '70s. I also am a fan of Dickey's book Deliverance, and always wanted to do that kind of suspense. My agent suggested I work on something in the urban fantasy genre, and Mad Skills was what I came up with. Actually, once I had the rough idea for the novel, it sort of wrote itself. That doesn't happen often, so it was nice.

AW: In Mad Skills, did you ever get tangled up in your layers? How did you keep track of it all?

WG: I just took a lot of notes on scraps of paper--I have a very cluttered type of organization...but it seems to work.

AW: Will there be a sequel?

WG: I'm in the middle of writing a sequel right now, which I think is going to be great. I'm incredibly excited about it, but I can't give anything away because it's too early in the process...but it'll be good.

AW: Woo Hoo! Make sure I get an ARC. :)

WG: Actually I had an earlier idea for the sequel, which would have been kind of an international spy thriller type thing. But this new idea is much better. And of course you'll get the first ARC!

AW: Do you do conventions?

WG: I've just started. I went to Thrillerfest last year, and I've been to Comic Con a few times, and intend to go again. It's fun, but I'm still too obscure a writer to really be able to greet the fans. Hopefully that will change.

I love meeting people and talking about my work--it's a rare treat for me.

AW: Did you have one big break that got you going? Many authors have a dumb luck story about how they found an agent.

WG: I sold my first novel, Xombies, back in 2004. That was an incredible experience: I had been working the night shift at a submarine plant, and the idea occurred to me that people could escape a zombie-type epidemic aboard a nuclear sub.

So I talked to my wife about it, and she agreed that I should take the time to write it. I quit my job, and a year later I had a book called Dead Sea.

I sent it to several agents, and one of them agreed to rep me. He sent it to an editor at Berkley, and they immediately bought it.

AW: That's awesome!

WG: Then I sold nothing for the next five years! But I wrote the whole time, and suddenly out of nowhere, Berkley contacted me again about doing a Xombies series--three books plus Mad Skills.

Echo review from Clare

ECHO
by Jack McDevitt
Penguin Group (Ace)
Reviewed by Clare Deming

In Jack McDevitt's Echo, readers are introduced while fans are re-introduced to the characters of Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath in their fifth adventure together. As a dealer in antiquities, Alex Benedict often comes across mysterious objects, peculiar clients, and dangerous foes. His business, Rainbow Enterprises, hooks sellers and buyers up to a mutual advantage, taking a cut of the profits.

When Alex discovers an online listing for a stone tablet engraved with runes in an unfamiliar, possibly extraterrestrial, language, he decides to investigate. The former owner, Alex learns, was Somerset "Sunset" Tuttle, an eccentric archaeologist and anthropologist, whose life's goal was to search out intelligent extraterrestrial life. When humans had initially colonized star systems across our arm of the galaxy eight thousand years ago, many colonies lost contact with the rest of civilization, suffered disease or catastrophe, and are now the subject of all modern day archaeological studies.

Only one intelligent life form, the telepathic Ashiyyur (Mutes), had been discovered. Tuttle had risked his professional reputation on his obsessive search for other intelligent aliens, and was remembered by most in his field as a single-minded kook. His ultimate failure brought him ridicule as he continued to lecture on the importance of his search up until his premature death. If this mysterious tablet had been evidence of an alien civilization, why would Somerset Tuttle have kept this knowledge a secret?

When Alex's assistant, Chase Kolpath, arrives at Tuttle's former residence to retrieve the tablet someone else has beaten them to it. Through further sleuth-work, they track down the culprit -- Doug Bannister, a young man with no apparent connection to Tuttle. After Alex and Chase corner Doug, Doug's wife reveals that he took it as a favor for his aunt, Rachel Bannister.

Oddly, Doug claims Rachel subsequently decided she no longer desired the artifact and had him drop it in the river. The river search is as fruitless as all their previous leads seem to be. Then Chase learns Rachel Bannister and Tuttle were romantically involved. The more they learn about Rachel and World's End Tours, where Rachel quit her interstellar piloting job, the more the mysteries deepen. And Rachel refuses to assist them.

Did the tablet hold an alien secret so terrible that even Tuttle would not reveal it? Before Chase and Alex can continue their investigation, an attempt is made on their lives, convincing Alex that the tablet's secrets are too important to ignore. He and Chase retrace the path of Tuttle's explorations and Rachel's last tour, which puts their business, their friendship, their lives, and even humanity's role in the cosmos in jeopardy.

I had no trouble jumping into this story, even never having read any Alex Benedict novels. Each book in the series encompasses a single mystery and problem to solve, so reading the previous volumes is not critical to the understanding of each subsequent one. The third book, Seeker (2005), won a Nebula award. McDevitt reveals most of the important aspects of this future world without interrupting his brisk pacing.

Echo is told from the point-of-view of Chase Kolpath, which follows the traditional structure of a detective novel, so that when Alex solves Tuttle and Rachel's terrible secret, the reader is kept guessing until Chase catches up with him. The personality differences between Alex and Chase in terms of their goals and ambitions also added to the tension in the novel.

The only subject I felt needed more attention was the Mutes, though I gather their discovery is the subject of the first Alex Benedict novel.

As the stakes continuously escalated, I found myself reading until I had finished the final one hundred pages in one late-night sitting. That rush of story-reading glee makes me thirst for more, and I plan on looking for the earlier volumes sometime soon.

Building momentum - keeping the sf train rolling

Well, I finally revamped the blog a bit. If you scroll down - way down - on the right, you'll see my new blog roll of sf authors. What's really handy is it includes the title of their latest entry. Hey, I'm using it to see what they're up to. You can, too. I tried to add more, but Blogger no longer wanted to play. I'll try again another day. Meantime, there's about 25 excellent author blogs to choose from and 11 other science fiction blogs higher up. Don't forget that all the author interviews (nearly 40 of them!) are listed by name in alphabetical order as well. Still can't find what you're lookin' for? There's a Google search box on my page, too.

I noticed that my 42 Blips button is missing from my blog directory buttons. I googled 42 Blips. When I clicked on their site I got this message: Thank you for your interest, but the website you are trying to visit is no longer being supported. Hmmmm. Poof. Gone. Lock, stock and barrel. Just like that. Anybody know why? Wish I could offer the scoop on this, but I can only speculate. And I had climbed to 33 in their ranking. Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. At least I finished near the top of another list. :) While deleting the code I realized there was yet another button missing. The blog directory "um yeah" vanished without a trace.

I'm almost caught up on book reviews. I was IMing with a friend on facebook earlier and I lamented the fact, yet again, that there are so many older books that I don't have time to read. I read the latest books to deliver timely reviews. I have an embarassing number of classic science fiction novels sitting on my shelves that I have yet to read. I'm thinking I should devote a few months a year to reading oldies, but goodies. I'm not going to review them. Those reviews would be superfluous. But I could review sci-fi TV and movies those months while I'm indulging myself and filling in those embarassing gaps.

Right now I'm devouring Peter F. Hamilton's The Evolutionary Void.

And when do I find time to write? Yeah. About that. It's pretty much been relegated to a couple days a week. On the plus side, I have a contract writing job and can quit chasing freelance work, which will give me more time for my own writing. How appropriate that as school is back in session, I have to return to a more structured schedule. You know how they say if you need something done, give it to a busy person? I seem to get more accomplished when I'm busy and have to budget my time carefully.

I'm wrestling with what I think will be one of my better stories, but it has been nothing but trouble to get just right. I'm back to rewriting again and putting back some things that I too hastily deleted. And I'm going to throw in some dangerous fauna. If I can't whip this thing into shape and send it off by the end of this year I'm going to scream. It's resisting my attempts at shaping it into a short story when it really only wants to be a novel. Why can't I have both? First the short, then the novel. I can do this!

I must get poor Horace (Awesome Lavratt sequel) through his next hurdle as well. He really is too fun to torture.

And in my inbox this morning is the panelist questionnaire from Conjecture programming. Conjecture is a little con that can in San Diego. This year's GOH is Rob Sawyer. My friend and fellow Broad (Broad Universe), Trisha J. Wooldridge made GOH for


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Far flung tales - Eight Against Reality

I've decided to do a bit of book reviewing here in addition to Mostly Fiction. First up is a collection edited by Dario Ciriello, Eight Against Reality (Panverse Publishing 2010). I ripped right through this little collection not just because of its size. The complex characters in the majority of the stories face life and death situations with courage and fortitude and their reactions are felt on a visceral level.

Eight Against Reality is a collection of stories set on far flung worlds – either in an imagined future, an imagined past or on a distant planet. In spite of their alien environs, these character-driven stories are very human. Many of these dark tales are down-right disturbing. I do recommend this collection be read, but not at bedtime.

In "The Eminence's Match" by Juliette Wade, we meet the leader of a clan on a distant world who has a very human affliction: obsessive compulsive disorder. He's on a quest for the perfect man-servant, one he can bend to his will, who will not let anything be out of place – ever. Unless he finds the perfect servant, the halls of his palace will be soaked in blood. Almost as disturbing as the Eminence's cruelty is the new candidate's desire to please, and indeed love, this tyrant. The inner dialog and the fixations are portrayed most credibly.

Extreme sports enthusiasts will enjoy Genevieve Williams' "Kip, Running", in which a girl traverses the cityscape of future Seattle virtually invisibly clinging to trains, maglevs, airships, bubblevators (way cool!) and more. They even have flying squirrel-like wings on their camouflaged suits. It's an illegal sport, which raises the adrenalin even further. Kip hopes winning will get the attention of someone she worships from afar. But does Lily even notice?

"The Lonely Heart" by Aliette de Bodard is set in China with mystical beings and terrible curses. What's worse than the local pimp, an infinitely dangerous person who knows where you live, knowing that one of his girls has sought refuge under your roof? The emotions in this piece soar. The author plucks on the strings of pity, empathy, terror, betrayal, forgiveness, determination, loyalty and resignation. It's a symphony of the soul.

"The Flying Squids of Zondor: The Movie Script" by Doug Sharp is something like Monty Python meets Ed Wood. Sex-crazed tyrants are ensnared by a giant alien squid's love potion gas. Really. 'Nough said.

"Spoiling Veena" by Keyan Bowes looks at what might happen when all genetic traits can be programmed and reprogrammed. Letting your daughter change her sex at age twelve isn't nearly the same as letting her dye her hair or get a piercing. And a lot more expensive.

Dogs have become mutant monsters in "Man's Best Enemy", a post-apocalyptic tale by Janice Hardy. The human struggles to fit in, to prove one's skills and to contribute to society are the themes woven into a terrifying fight for survival.

"Love, Blood and Octli" by T.L. Morganfield is by far the most disturbing of all, and yet, the most compelling. Set in ancient Aztec times, this is a story of a girl who is befriended by a god and becomes a priestess. Her brother follows his own avarice and the darkest of the gods. Readers get a glimpse into what might have motivated that ancient race to follow such blood-thirsty gods and live in such fear. Is this what happens when humans become playthings of the gods?

What if you could visit your other selves in other realities? Would dipping into those strange worlds become addicting? Where might it lead if you taught your other selves how to surf realities, too? Find out in "Dancing by Numbers" by Dario Ciriello. Who is the real Lyra? Will she lose herself to these others?


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Steve Hockensmith - crossing genres and mashing it up

Steve Hockensmith spoke at the Redwood Writers conference I presented at in October. I was impressed by a lot of things he had to say in his keynote speech. I subsequently received an offer of Dawn of the Dreadfuls from the publisher. I didn't even look at the author's name. Dawn of the Dreadfuls sounded like great fun. Discovering that it was written by Steve was a bonus.

I'm also thinkin' Quirk (the publisher) knows just my kind of funny.

Steve's other books have been more western/slash mystery, but they all have one thing in common: his unstoppable wit. Anyone who can be so consistently, and seemingly effortlessly funny, is aces with me.

Read more about Steve on his blog/website and you simply MUST watch the book trailer. Where do I sign up for these? It's fabulous! My review of Dawn of the Dreadfuls is available at Mostly Fiction.

AW: How did you arrive at the idea of melding zombies with a Jane Austen classic?

SH: The person who deserves all the credit is Jason Rekulak, an editor at Quirk Books in Philadelphia. He was the one who had the brainstorm: “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we took a public domain classic and threw monsters into it?” I’m just glad he decided to start with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and not War and Peace and Sasquatch or something. The Austen/zombies combo really was a stroke of genius. I’m lucky that Seth Grahame-Smith did such a good job with the first book, too, because if that hadn’t been a worldwide phenomenon, Jason wouldn’t have wanted a prequel...and I would’ve missed out on the gig!

AW: How many books have you written so far and in what genres?

SH: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is my fifth published novel. The previous four are all in my “Holmes on the Range” mystery series. They’re whodunnits about a couple of 1890s cowboys who set out to solve mysteries using the methods of their hero, Sherlock Holmes. I’ve got one more horror/comedy coming up (which I’m not allowed to say more about, at the moment) as well as another “Holmes on the Range” novel, then I’m not sure what the future holds. Hopefully, more of everything: I’d love to try my hand at every genre under the sun!

AW: What's your favorite genre to write in? To read?

SH: I had more fun doing Dawn of the Dreadfuls than anything else I’ve ever written, which was a surprise. I thought I’d feel a lot of pressure, and I wasn’t a huge horror fan before, yet that book was a blast. Maybe I just needed a change of pace, since I’d done four “Holmes on the Range” books in a row. I grew up loving science fiction, yet I never got the hang of it as a writer. I’d really like to give that another shot, one of these days. As for my reading, I’m all over the map. I dabble in mystery, SF, fantasy, and “literary” fiction while mixing in a lot of non-fiction, as well. I say “dabble” because I’m a very slow reader -- I probably only get through 14 or 15 books a year. So while I haven’t read deeply in any particular field, I have read broadly...which I hope counts for something.

AW: Can you share with my readers about your wall of inspiration and achievement?

SH: Well, looking up from my computer monitor, the first thing I see are the reference materials for my latest Work In Progress. But right above all that is a shelf containing every bit of fiction I’ve published professionally: not just my novels, but the magazines and anthologies I’ve appeared in, as well. Whenever I feel like a phony, I can just look up there and see physical proof that I’ve accomplished something. Just to the left of all that are reminders of the things that inspired me as a kid (a Raiders of the Lost Ark poster, a DC Comics calendar), while to the right is an advertisement for an early ’90s exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art called “High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture.” That reminds me what I’m trying to produce -- pop entertainment with (hopefully) something interesting or offbeat mixed in. On the wall directly behind me, meanwhile, are all my award nomination certificates. So if I’m feeling really low, I can just spin around and say, “Hey...I was a finalist for the Edgar Award, dammit!”

AW: I really enjoyed your keynote at the Redwood Writers Conference. Have you always been a good public speaker, or did you have to work at it?

SH: Thanks! I enjoy doing speeches and workshops, but I’m always terrified beforehand. It comes pretty naturally to me once I’m up there, though. I know I have my weaknesses as a public speaker, but the trick I’ve learned is not to care. As long as you’re comfortable at the microphone and project an aura of friendliness and fun, folks will cut you a lot of slack.

AW: How important is it for an author to make public appearances? How has it helped your career?

SH: Good question...and one that’s hard to answer. Are public appearances vital? No. Can they help? Yes. I’ve attended a lot of mystery conventions over the years, and doing panels at those kinds of events has helped me connect with many, many readers. Enough to make me a bestseller, though? Not by a long shot. And my experience with bookstore signings has been extremely spotty. Sometimes the place is packed, sometimes I end up chatting with the store staff until it becomes obvious no one’s going to show up. But even when it’s the latter, that can be helpful, in some small way. At least you end up with signed copies on the shelves, and the people who work there know you...and maybe even feel sorry for you! It can’t hurt -- which is, I guess, my bottom line when it comes to public appearances.

AW: Awesome book trailer! How much involvement did you have with that process? Has it measurably boosted sales?

SH: Thank you! It is pretty cool, isn’t it? My involvement was limited to getting an e-mail telling me the publisher was having a trailer made. Oh, and then linking to the trailer from my site once it was on YouTube. That’s it! It’s hard to say if it’s boosted sales, but I know it made a splash when it was first showed up on the Internet, and that counts for something.

AW: In which order do you recommend reading the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies series?

SH: The nice thing about Dawn of the Dreadfuls is you can read it either before or after Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Either you know the characters and the set-up already, so the prequel fills in interesting back story and answers questions you might have had, or you don’t know anything about the premise at all, in which case you can watch the story unfold from the very beginning. Hopefully, it works either way.

AW: What are you writing now?

SH: Funny you should ask! I just e-mailed my editor the second draft of my next “Holmes on the Range” novel. It’s called World’s Greatest Sleuth! and it should be out in early 2011. After that, it’s on to the top secret horror project, which will carry me through to the end of the year. So my plate is full, as they say. Heaping, even. That can be a little stressful, at times, but I infinitely prefer it to the alternative!



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BayCon and beyond

My back surgery went well. I now have BayCon, a family reunion, and my son's wedding back on my calendar. It would have really been the pits to attend my son's wedding on a gurney. Now I just have post-op pain, which is minor and temporary. It's good to be back (pardon the pun).

One thing I won't be going back to is work. The magazine I worked for couldn't wait for me to have my operation and recover. Monday, May 3rd, was my back operation, my termination date and my 25th wedding anniversary. So what now? I'm going freelance to fill gaps between book sales. I've also monetized the blog. I'm sure you noticed the ads on the right. If you know anyone in need of a writer/editor for a job here or there, send them on over. :)

I received my BayCon schedule this evening. For those living further afield or close by, yet in convention denial or under a rock, BayCon is one of the best science fiction conventions on the west coast. It's in San Jose every Memorial Day weekend. Come by and say hi. My schedule is tentatively as follows:

UPDATE!! This just in. I have Sat. panels now! Woo hoo!
Saturday
10 AM Writing Workshops: Hit or miss with Jon Cory, Morgan Hua and Jay Ridler (M).

8 PM Character I want to _________ with TBA. If you see TBA, let me know. ;)

Sunday
10 AM Self-promotion and publicity for writers. I suggested this so get to moderate it. :) Joining me are A. Kovacs, Emerian Rich, Scott Sigler and Tony Todaro.

noon The new Doctor, again! with Mette Hedin, Bryan Little and Tom Saidak (M).

Monday
10 AM Stop me if you've heard this one with Andrew Clark (M), Valerie Frankel, Kevin Andrew Murphy and Lorrie Wood.


So, yeah we'll have hang out Friday or Saturday, no?

I received Android Karenina in the mail today for review. Shiny! :0) It's a mash-up with Leo Tolstoy (may he still RIP) and Ben H. Winters.

I'm polishing reviews for Coyote Horizon by Allen M. Steele and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Friday, return here to read my interview with Steve Hockensmith and then read my review of Dawn of the Dreadfuls at Mostly Fiction.

And as LOST nears its mindlessly muddy end, here are some fun imaginings of the last 10 seconds.
LOST: The Cast Says Goodnight

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Spoofs | The Last 10 Minutes of Lost

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Squeezing out words and slicing words out

I had an interview planned for yesterday that had to get bumped to later, so here I am on Saturday struggling to wrestle more words out of my brain. I just finished a guest blog post for my friend and fellow writer, Sue Bolich on word economy at Words from Thin Air. It was a very timely topic for me since I had just whacked 1100 words off a story last weekend.

I'm also chasing my muse for a good speculative flash fiction idea -- with a deadline looming.

My review of Brian D'Amato's In the Courts of the Sun went up yesterday at MostlyFiction Book Reviews.

I received another ARC today. Joe Haldeman's Starbound. I'm thinking that interview might be better done in person. I'll be seeing Joe in February at RadCon. He's billed as the "Husband of the Fan Guest of Honor." That should be a fun interview.

Next Friday, you can feast your eyes on my interview with Jay Lake.



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New for me, in the news and let the sales begin

There's nothing like the buddy system. I just joined a critique group again after almost 2 years away. It's helping me to prioritize my time better with regard to my writing. That's a very good thing. I'm actually finding time to write spec-fic again. Woo hoo! I'm currently cutting a 5100 word story down to 4K for my next target market. Only 350 words left to chop. ;)

I also joined a local MeetUp for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fans. As the Mystery Science Fictionator, how could I resist?

I finished In the Courts of the Sun by Brian D'Amato and will be reviewing it at Mostly Fiction soon. I'm still chewing on it. That's a good sign. ;)

I receive a number of emails about new issues of magazines coming out. Just in case you're not on the same lists that I am, SF Crowsnest and Ideomancer have shiny new December issues available.

And these publishers are having holiday sales:

Five Senses Press
Mundania Press
Phaze Books
Awe-Struck Publishing

(For the last three, enter the code SANTA when you check out and receive 20% off your entire order.)

Looking for spec-fic books for yourself or for gifts? Try starting with the Beyond Reality shelf at Mostly Fiction. You can read reviews (many by yours truly) and click through to Amazon (which helps support the site) to purchase.

On my TBR shelf is Jack Skillingstead's collection, Are You There and Other Stories? Here's an interview with Jack at Locus. I became a fan after reading his stories in Asimov's. I'll have to hit him up for an interview here. He gave me a blurb for Awesome Lavratt.

71 more days till RadCon in Pasco, WA! I think I attend as many cons in the Pacific Northwest as I do right here in the SF Bay Area. It's great to see my PNW buddies.


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Jennifer Brozek, dark speculative fiction writer /editor

I met Jennifer at BayCon. We were instant friends when we shared a panel. Cons are like that. And Jennifer has so many interesting, helpful things to say, I asked her for an interview.

She also has a book, Grants Pass, a post-apocalyptic anthology that came out this year. I read it and reviewed it over on SFReader. I gave it the glowing review it fully deserved. The wide range of foible-ridden characters represented in the stories made it very compelling. Those characters could have made a trip to the grocery store (pre-apocalypse) riveting.

AW: What attracted you to editing anthologies?

JB: It wasn't something I decided on specifically. I never thought, "I want to edit an anthology now." My first anthology, Grants Pass, was simply a project I wanted to do that happened to be an anthology and I needed to be the editor of it. I went into the project blind and learned a lot along the way. After doing the first one, I got bit by the bug of what an anthology is and could be. I got hooked. I enjoy creating something that is more than the sum of its parts—which is what an anthology is.

AW: Do you consider yourself foremost an editor or a writer?

JB: Definitely a writer first (at least at this point in my career) and an editor second. Most of my projects are writing based. Actually, now that I think about it, about 60% of my projects are writing based with the other 40% in the editing, proofing and publishing category. I still have stories I want to tell. I still enjoy writing fiction and RPG worlds.

AW: How has editing helped your writing and vise verse?

JB: Editing out the same mistakes over and over again has taught me to not make the same mistakes in my own writing. Reading stories I know I will have to edit later has taught me to use "active voice" much more often than "passive voice." At the same time, writing has helped my editing by allowing me to recognize my past mistakes that much quicker in someone else's work.

I really believe that doing more than one job in the writing industry improves all of a professional's skills. Writing improves editing and slush reading. Editing improves writing and slush reading and slush reading does amazing things for writing and will give an editor an idea of how much work is involved in editing/copy editing a story.

AW: How much work goes into shaping a cohesive anthology after the stories are chosen?

JB: It is a huge amount of work. After the stories are chosen, there is a series of back and forth that goes on between the editor and author for edits (rewrite requests) and copy editing (technical corrections). For my anthologies, I like to have an afterward from each of the authors about the story itself and, of course, a biography. Getting a single story in shape for an anthology takes hours of work and coordination between the editor and the author.

After that is a series of processes – story order, book layout, getting ARCs out to reviewers in order to get the needed book blurbs for the cover of the book, getting the cover to approve, proofing the ARCs for any stupid spelling error and the list goes on. You must be very detailed oriented: who owes you what, who do you owe something to, when is your deadline and a thousand other details. Finally, you need to give your publisher a completed product for production and hope you didn't forget something silly like your own bio or the introduction.

AW: I know you write role-playing games by day. Most recently you had a writing contract with NC Soft for Aion. What did you like most about writing for it?

JB: It is an amazing experience to be in a room with a dozen highly creative writers all working on the same product. You have some area experts and some jacks-of-all-trades that you can talk with. I spent about half of my time just editing another author's work and the other half writing original content. Everyone writes. Everyone edits. Everyone needs the edits. It is this fabulous gestalt of creative writing. If you have a question about something, you can easily call it out and someone will answer you. The best part about it was being able to really dive in and create something new for a game that millions of people will eventually play.

AW: Are you an avid gamer yourself?

JB: I am a gamer. I don't know if I can say "avid" because I tend to stick to a single video game for a long time until I'm done playing with it and then I'm done-done. No more. I do spend my Saturday nights pretending to be a bloodsucking creature of the night at a local LARP. When I'm not running that LARP, I tend to have one tabletop game a week as well. I guess I'm a well rounded gamer – tabletop, video games and LARPing. My newest video game addiction is Aion. But I need to be careful because if I'm playing the game, I'm not writing.

AW: What's the story you've written that you are most fond of? Why?

JB: That is an evil question. It's almost like asking "Which one is your favorite child?" I'll break it out. Grants Pass is my favorite anthology because it was my first and I would not let it die. Five years from conception to publication—it was the little anthology that could. Regresser's Evolution is my favorite novel because it is the first novel I completed that I was willing to show anyone else. It is about to be completely rewritten as a serial for a possible upcoming project. It really does need to be rewritten. So, whether or not the project pans out, it will still be for the best. Finally, my current favorite short story is "Eulogy for Muffin" because it's about kids running a Wild Hunt with their family pets and what's not to love about that? It also had the best reaction from all of my 1st Round Readers.

AW: Can you tell us about the new anthology you're working on?

JB: The newest anthology I'm working on is called Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. It has already been sold to the Apex Book Company and is due out in the Spring or Summer of 2010. It is a mash up of urban legends and alien encounters. Some urban legends caused by alien encounters. Some urban legends used by aliens in an encounter and some alien encounters based around urban legends retold. I'm very excited about this anthology. I have a fabulous set of authors for it. The author list will be posted in October on the Apex Book Company website. I am in the final stages of story selection and I can see just how good this anthology is going to be. Scary, too, as I have a preference for the darker side of life.

AW: What are you writing now?

JB: Right now, I am working on a new PDF setting for Colonial Gothic – a horror RPG based in 1776 – called Colonial Gothic: Plymouth Rock. This should be out in time for Thanksgiving. I have a new website fiction project for Colonial Gothic that should go live at the beginning of 2010.

AW: What do you mean when you say PDF setting?

JB: It is a PDF only release of a product that describes a location setting in the RPG world. It describes the location layout, major features, canon people/places/events/mysteries. Then in a Gamemaster section, all of the location's secrets are discussed for use in an RPG campaign.

I have also just agreed to a monthly project involving the Pathfinder RPG as well as agreed to be the lead writer on a new Talisman Studios product set in the Suzerain universe. In my spare time (hah!) I intend to start the rewrite of Regresser's Evolution. My writing cup is full and this makes me very happy.

Read more about Jennifer on her website.



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