Storm at Galesburg II

Another anthology post. This is the official description of the collection from the Cinnamon Press website:

Anthology of award winning short stories and poetry

Storm at Galesburg brings together the best stories and poetry submitted for the Cinnamon Press Writing Award.

The title story by the widely published reviewer and short story writer, Jeremy Worman, is a slow build, full of atmosphere and impeccably controlled. With other stories by award winning Welsh author, Huw Lawrence; the young Irish writer attracting attention for his forensic attention to detail and ability to describe the strange, Miceál Kearney; European writer, Brigita Pavsic’s haunting, honed style and a poignant, disturbing tale from Guatemalan based author, Cassandra Passarelli, the prose in this anthology is sure to delight and engage readers.

The poetry represents some of the best new voices to listen for, with excellent writing from Sally Lewis, Will Kemp, Ben Parker, David Underwood and Aisling Tempany. Lyrical writing which explores the boundaries of language, love and identity.

Storm at Galesburg is an anthology to savour.

Hauting style, huh?

Storm at Galesburg

The short story and poems anthology, Storm at Galesburg, by Cinnamon Press will be launched on the evening of 24th September at Pages of Hackney bookstore in London.

Although the anthology features one of my stories, To Love or Be Haunted, I'm not sure I'll be able to attend the reading, but if you go to the launch you won't be disappointed. Jeremy Worman, the author of the winning story, will read at the event. He's a well published writer, he taught at several universities, and has now finished a detective novel Entanglement.

Once I get my copies of the anthology, I'll have a contest here, so be sure to check back in September for a free copy of the anthology! :)

Online publishing and Michael Stackpole

In this piece Michael Stackpole talks about the advantages of online publishing.

"Stackpole is convinced that both established and fledgling authors need to embrace new content delivery methods or fade into irrelevance." True, we have to embrace them, however, a new author is far less likely to be noticed in the vastness of online publishing. If a publishing house stands behind them, then that gives them certain authority, but if they decide to publish their work online, at least some people will look at the author's credentials, see they haven't had anything published in print form, and dismiss them as a serious writer before even reading their work.

"Selling stories directly though his website generates a payment before the buyer has even finished downloading the story, and the profit margin on even a short story is far higher than on a paper novel." If only it were that easy.

"Rather than simply changing the method of delivering stories to readers, Stackpole believes digital formats will change the nature of the stories themselves." On this issue, I agree. The nature and form of the stories is changing due to online publishing. Not only is pure text sometimes substituted by other media, but it also has to be more concise and to the point. Blogologist Alister Cameron suggests that written text should be cut by 50 % before being published online due to a shorter attention span of online readers.

"(Stackpole) described how the method of writing old pulp stories could easily be adapted for modern audiences by eliminating certain ubiquitous but unecessary subplots and adding a bit of character development. A serial detective story should be, "70 percent case, 30 percent soap opera," with a little more soap in a later story to satisfy readers interested in a character's developing personal life." Can you get any less creative than that? What about if you add just one percent of philosophy or political issues? Are you then destined to fail? I've never imagined I'd hear such a statement from a writer. But I guess you do what you have to do to pay the bills, right? ;)

What's your opinion? Is online publishing lucrative? Is it an option for "Fledgling authors"?

Interview with Amber Benson

I did another interview for All Things Girl, this time with the multi-talented Amber Benson.

She's probably best known as Tara Maclay from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she's much more than just an actress. She's also written several stage plays and scripts for indie movies, including Chance which she also directed and stared in. With Christopher Golden she co-wrote the series Ghosts of Albion (which was originally an animated web-series and was later on novelized by the same authors). And in February this year, her first solo novel was published, Death's Daughter. It's the first part of a trilogy about Calliope Reaper-Jones, Death's daughter. Soon another book by Amber will be published, this time a children's book, The New Newbridge Academy. And if that's not enough, she's also working in post-production on Drones, a feature film she co-directed with Adam Busch.

A few links:
Death's Daughter
Amber's blog
The Essence of Amber


Go read the interview. I hope you enjoy it. Leave a comment. :)

the loser recognizing his failure
has no right to live
a full fridge and regular pay
are just another shortcut
you think will lead you to the goal
wrong
right
in between
reading poetry, writing life
and you still end up
on the heap of decaying leaves
of the autumn of all time
no one can read the map anymore
our lives too full of magnetic influences
offered, purchased, sold
compasses are broken
frenziedly twitching
like severed nerves
north
south
in between
grappling for signposts
all these good things
tick tock tick tock tick tock
time's up

The newest issue of BluePrintReview is now online. Go read fresh, delightful and thoughtful stories and poems. While you're there, check out the beautiful art and photography. :)

BluePrintReview

Why can't I win the lottery?

Now that I've made the decision about the project I want to do for my Online Writing class, and pretty much planned its execution and layout, I'm stuck.

Not that I don't have ideas about the story, I'm stuck when it comes to the website design. I want it to be chic, yet minimalist and straightforward so that the story will be at its focus, but I don't think I'm capable of actually designing it. I should choose a color scheme to use (at first I wanted it to be Black&White, but now I think that would be too boring), and then adapt everything to it. *sigh* If only I knew what I was doing.

Maybe I'll get some ideas here.

Other than that, I've been busy. In July, a poem and two photos of mine will be published in BluePrintReview. This week, a poem, Favorite Word, is featured in Foundling Review (link to the right). The same magazine will publish another one of my poems soon. And I'm working on another fun interview for All Things Girl.

Apart from that I'm also looking for a new job. This one doesn't pay enough (or at all, occasionally). But seeing how we're in the middle of a recession, I might have to be patient for a while longer. I'd love to keep translating novels, but there's no money in the business, so I'll probably have to return back to technical texts. Which is a shame, really.

I Love Lucy - good old fun and translating woes