Scarlet Letters

Or so Mother Bennett said when we were in the middle of that bishop thing. Associated Content ran a piece on Propay vs. the Literary Underworld, quoting my previous blog post extensively. Unfortunately I guess Propay didn't comment, and there's already trolls! Apparently I'm just "bitter" about "being declined" and must've been rejected by Paypal too. Hee. For the record, in case anyone cares: Propay made it very clear in all our communications that we were turned down because of our content, not because of anything having to do with our business structure or credit, and our site is protected by an SSL certificate. Now, whether Propay has the legal right to reject a customer based on legally-protected content under the First Amendment is for someone smarter than me to say - I'm betting probably they do. But being legal doesn't make it right. That's why I stated it publicly, so my fellow entrepreneurs can choose with whom they do bu...

I cannot recall a recent time when I have been so angry. As you probably know, I started doing the speculative-fiction convention circuit about six years ago, upon the sale of my first novel. After a few years, I saw how silly it was for each of the authors to get a separate table in the dealer's room just to hawk our own books. It was a waste of space in the convention hall, a waste of time and money for us - you have to sell a metric ton of books to be able to make your costs back when you're solo on a table, and there's no one to back you up when you need a break from shilling your wares. So I started sharing tables, first with a couple of my close friends who also were doing the circuit, and then bringing in other authors we met at conventions. Soon I began carrying their stock with me on tour, in the hopes that I could drum up a few extra sales for them at shows they couldn't attend. They were horror, science fiction, fantasy… and the occasional paranormal roma...

They say if you fold a thousand cranes, you can make a miracle happen. And we called her Miracle Girl. Jennie Sutton had cystic fibrosis. Her lungs destroyed themselves from the inside out, and by the time I met her and her mother, Selena Rochlis, she was already on the transplant list. The disease had robbed Jennie of an adult body, so petite and whisper-thin that at first I thought she was maybe 14 years old instead of a young woman in her 20s. Jennie and Selena came to St. Louis to wait for lungs, and after a long, hard wait, they were rewarded with that precious gift. Jennie's transplant went very well, and for a time, we got a glimpse of a Jennie without disease. She could walk without help, could go out without an oxygen tank. Friends took her to a little town along the Mississippi with famous levee-high pies, and Jennie relished the ability to walk about the town unaided, finally free. She was going back to college, she told me. Her dream was to work in early childhood...

You never realize the perfect times when they're happening. Only once in a while, you get a little glimpse, a hint that this is one for the memory banks. Kiddo's violin teacher canceled his lesson, which gave me time to run by the store on the way home. No big. The boy went gallivanting about the neighborhood for an hour with his friends, so they can talk about boogers and superheroes, I will never know. I dug weeds out of the garden and cursed the rocks and nasty clay soil that grows nothing but junk weeds despite my best efforts. Then the boy returned - precisely on time, because he loses bike privileges if he's late - and rode in circles around the parking lot while I finished weeding the flower bed. Then I enjoyed the last of the sunset, sitting in the Adirondack chair as he played soccer with the apartment building's wall. The music rose in the deepening twilight, and when he looked over at me as Nickelback came on, I raised my hands in the awesome salute and...

I spent this evening's writing time working on a critter attack on a diner. I needed expositional backstory on the two characters I'm introducing without having a visit from the Exposition Fairy - you know, the moment when the recruiting sergeant reads the soldier's personnel file to him so they can talk about shit both of them already know. Very exciting. But I'm also limited to my main character's POV. Outside of the interludes, I intend to stay in her head the whole book. So I put her in a surveillance van with her superior officer, and he'll ask her to tell him what she sees. Her observations will be mostly correct, because that's what she does, and we'll learn about these two through her eyes. Ain't I smart? Only it doesn't work out that way. Because it's an action scene, and Sara can kibitz all she likes but she's still stuck in the van. The van is never the place to be during an operation - ask any of a hundred flunkies, fr...

...It just goes on and on my friend. The longest game in baseball history was Chicago vs. Milwaukee in 1984 at eight hours and 6 minutes. The longest game by innings was Brooklyn vs. Boston in 1920 at 26 innings, but there's an asterisk because they called it a tie when it got dark. 1920, you know. After that it's a tie: the Chicago/Milwaukee game above was 25 innings, as was St. Louis and THE METS in 1974. In 1971, a game between Oakland and California went 20 innings without a run before Oakland got a hit. In 1968, a Houston-New York game went 24 innings before seeing a run. So we didn't bust any records Saturday. Except perhaps in snark. But when Kiddo's godfather decides to show us a good time, he doesn't do it by half measures. Tom Collins is a reporter, New York native, my former partner and godfather to my son. We don't see enough of him, because he lives a whole four hours away, which is no good excuse for either of us. Long ago we arranged for...

Yeah, it's a week late. You want punctuality? I'm a writer, dangit. FRIDAY I decided in advance that I wasn't going to care about making a profit this time. This one was for the boy, and for Jenny.* We hadn't gotten into the dealers room, so I was dependent on the kindness of non-strangers anyway. The boy was excited beyond measure to stay in a hotel, go to the City Museum and have adventures in costume. As usual, we didn't get going nearly as quickly as I'd planned. The show had been going for some time when we arrived. My stuff was already set up in the marketplace, which is a brilliant idea: a room with trinkets and products set up like a shop, but you don't have to stay with your table and the show takes a percentage for the charity. Excellent. That left me free to get settled and feed the boy. I can highly recommend the Clayton Crowne Plaza. The on-site restaurant is not bad and the first I've seen in a hotel with actually reasonable prices....

Our program who art in memory HELLO be thy name. Thy operating system come, thy commands be done, at the printer as it is on the screen. Give us this day our daily data, and forgive us our I/O errors as we forgive those whose logic circuits are faulty. Lead us not into frustration and deliver us from power surges. For thine is the algorithm, the application, and the solution, looping forever and ever. Return. (c) Jeffrey Armstrong, 1985

It's STEAMPUNK WEEK at the Literary Underworld! Our featured title this week is the new addition THOMAS RILEY , a wild steampunk adventure by new LitUnd author Nick Valentino. Amidst a twenty-year war, weapons designer Thomas Riley is thrust onto the front lines when a risky alchemic experiment goes wrong, embedding a foreign soul into his wily assistant Cynthia Basset. Thomas and Cynthia are forced to join with murderous sky pirates in a deadly race to capture the only man that can undo the botched alchemy: their sworn enemy. Alexis Hart calls it "fast, furious and full of swashbuckling adventure." Reviews call it a "fantastic journey" and a great place for readers new to steampunk to explore the genre. Steampunk Week is in honor of the first annual Steamposium convention, here in St. Louis this weekend. This is a nonprofit event, a steampunk gathering that will raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. As many of you may know, a dear friend of mine died...

Jon Gibbs has an interesting poll/discussion comparing self-publishing to a demo tape. As in, it's a perfectly legitimate way to put yourself out there. I think I side with the folks who say the real "demo tape" of a novel is the ms that goes to the agent or editor, not something released to the general public. I've had my ear tugged about six times by now from people swearing that I need to self-pub on the iPad right now because that's the wave of the future. And as I've tried to explain, it very well may be. I couldn't say otherwise when none of us in traditional or new media can say what the state of our industries will be tomorrow. But as long as the publishing world considers self-publishing just this side of selling yourself on a street corner, I won't be doing it. Oh, I'll sell PDFs of short stories I'm not subbing to raise money for Relay. But I'm not self-pubbing a novel just to give myself something to sell, because it's hard...

The L.A. Times has discovered that the multi-city luxury-hotel book tour is pretty much gone. Okay, if you're King, Patterson, Rowling or Grisham, they'll pick up your hotel tab. But then, if you're one of those guys, you're a) not reading this blog, and b) you actually don't need the tour to sell four bazillion copies. For the rest of us groundlings, "tour" is a fairly malleable term. Brian Keene got a corporate sponsor to send him and his bodyguard/assistant across the country in a van. The folks cited in the linked article couch-surfed their way across the country on four new tires and a pile of McDonald's and Starbucks gift cards. Those of us with day jobs *waves hand* have a tougher deal: how do you do a book tour when you only have X number of days off work? The solution I choose is to piggyback on conventions. Cons are an efficient way to meet science fiction and horror readers, because they're already there and in the mood to hear about the...

to Joseph: I never did find the actual Center for Southern Folklore. But in my wanderings I found several historical markers and boards from them, and they were all about Memphis' rich music history. This is, of course, really great stuff and the primary reason normal people come to Memphis. I, however, was hoping for traditional folklore, for myths and legends, ghosts and river spectres… you know, the stuff I use for inspiration. :) to CelestineAngel: No room parties because there was a stated $150 fee, which means no room parties. Now, I hear there were room parties, but you had to know which door to knock on. I guess I'm not one of the cool kids, because I never heard. :) I don't mean to rip the hotel too much - the room was nice, and while they were less than accommodating for policies, it's a funky-cool Escher layout. That said, as an author I need room parties for promotional purposes… and I'd much rather relax in a room party with a drink in my hand than stan...

Sunday This is turning into the Magna Carta. I didn't really intend that. Sunday was pretty exhausting. We had to hustle out the door because the hotel absolutely refused to do extended checkout for anyone - have I mentioned I don't mind that we're leaving them next year? So I had six people to shove out the door or I got stuck with another ninety-dollar night. We packed out without too much trouble. Sara, I dressed down on the last day - I wore my black harem pants again with the red salamh kameez, because the red pants ripped. So did my hip scarf, which is pretty much DOA. We sold like gangbusters on our last day, moving the books fast. I haven't done the math yet, but I'd say we were about double what we did the year before, and on a par with our best shows of all last year. Portents are good for 2010, folks. I picked up a new author, too - Nick Valentino, with his debut steampunk novel THOMAS RILEY. It'll be added to the Literary Underworld soon, along with ...

Saturday Seriously, I was going to be on a panel or seven. For some reason, none of them were on Friday. You know how I always say I'd like to go to panels I'm not on and I never get the chance? I broke my streak at MSC. Angel took the first shift on Saturday, which enabled me to be a lump. Not much of a lump, though, since I had to get the boy going. I then took over the booth for a while, and marveled at our sales. In 2009, MSC was my worst show for sales per capita. This year it was easily double, and I haven't even done the math yet. I heard the same from other vendors - it's becoming a writers' show, a book show, and sales were strong for just about everyone. It was terrific. My first panel was supposed to be Allan Gilbreath of Kerlak Publishing, Sara Harvey and myself, talking about mutilation vs. mind-play in horror. Sara, of course, could not attend the show due to illness. So it was just me and Allan yukking it up for a respectable crowd of writers busily t...

Friday David Tyler joined me on Friday morning to lead me out to Whispering Woods, the northern-Mississippi conference center where the show has been held the last two years. Nothing against the place, but it was really too small - particularly in terms of parking - and the amenities just weren't that great. I won't miss it next year, even though its funky layout was designed by Escher. Jimmy Gillentine was already on site, so he and David helped me unload the books and set up the booth. You know what's wonderful about having an all-male crew of flunkies? They never criticize my decorations or the color of my draperies or the strings of skulls... it's just, "You want it this way? Got it." And they do it. Of course, they kept going "Yes mistress" because they think they're funny. But they also gerryrigged straps to keep the button cases in place on a table that was really too small for my setup, enabling me to sell the buttons that really pay for ...

Thursday We arrived late Wednesday night to sad news: Jesse's father had just died. Mr. Morris Sr. had struggled with cancer and other illnesses for several years, but there is no way to be prepared for such a thing. My heart goes out to Jesse and his mother, as they continue to deal with their loss. Thursday was Research Day. Being an author, research is a variable term. In the morning, the boy and I went to the Memphis Botanical Gardens and wandered about. The Memphis gardens are considerably smaller than ours back home, but the boy loved their children's garden and I caught several pictures of a lovely swan. I told the boy the story of the Ugly Duckling, and to my surprise, he had never heard it before. Lunch was La Baguette, because I cannot pass through Memphis without visiting my old employer. No one in the continental U.S. makes chicken salad like La Baguette. We nommed much French bread and I introduced the boy to chocolate napoleans. We also picked up a boxful of pastr...

We'll be gathering at Memphis Pizza Cafe 7-9ish p.m. Thursday, March 11! Join us. Sigma Alphas, spice, friends and kids all welcome! Tip back a few and tell tall tales of college, as long as no one brings the yearbook photos this time. The more the merrier! I will have books in the trunk in case anyone wants them but doesn't plan to come to Midsouthcon. Should be a blast! Oh, and if you're in the area, you should come to MSC! The Literary Underworld will be in the dealer's room, and I'll be doing a handful of panels. I'm supposed to get a reading, though I haven't seen one on the schedule yet. If I do, I just might read from the sequel to THE COLD ONES, which is the first time I'll have read from a work in progress. What, me nervous? Also: reader chat is set for 7 p.m. CST March 16 in the Wilderness Chat Room. I'll have just gotten back from Midsouthcon so I should be nice and loopy. We'll give out some prizes, chat about upcoming projects, a tri...

I got in a few hours of work and finished the opening sequence. Then I had a cigarette. Okay, I don't smoke. But if I did, I would totally have busted out a cigarette after finishing that chapter. Of course, then the smoking police would have hauled me away for lighting up in a coffeehouse - we don't allow such things here in sunny Illinois. But I'm getting away from the point. The point is that Sara's back. There's a bit of melancholy to the opening. While THE COLD ONES started with a scream, BLACKFIRE is a bit more atmospheric. Sara is different now. She had to be, no human being could go through what I did to her in THE COLD ONES and emerge untouched. And the place where Sara hides is important, to her character and to the story. I've done the best I could to capture Nantucket considering I've never been there. As much as I'd love to expense a Nantucket research trip, barring corporate sponsorship that ain't happening. So far I'm pleased. It...

It took a long time to come up with BLACKFIRE, and right away someone pointed out that there is a 1987 Star Trek tie-in titled BLACK FIRE. That teaches me not to Google. Sure, but it's two words, not one. And there's also an anthology of African-American writing titled BLACK FIRE and novels by James Kidman, Steve Brown and Maggie Bonilla-Thompson. All two words, which makes it a different Amazon search. Want one word? There's plenty: • A Native American music group focused on public activism; • A DC supervillain (only seen in the New Teen Titans); • A line of car care products; • A Canadian mining company; • A erotic magazine for black men (they got the dot-com); • A clamping flashlight; • A web and software development company; and probably more. Here's the thing: I've been mulling it all morning, and I find I don't really care. I mean, I survived having THE COLD ONES unintentionally named the same as those damn sparkly vampires in TWILIGHT. Every morning my Go...

There's a method to my madness. I didn't stop SANCTUARY just because it's an endless behemoth with no hope of publication or being, y'know, good. I stopped because I had a new book to write. Temporary title: BLACKFIRE. And we had a good start. Not bad for a first day, though we're nearly 2,000 words in and we're just getting to the first monster. But I think I'm doing okay at capturing a place I've never been. I've been obsessed with Nantucket Island to an unhealthy degree for many years, and though I can never afford to actually visit it, I knew when Sara Harvey ran away, Nantucket is where she went. Plus I really love my opening line. "Sara Harvey thought she was doing pretty well until the corpse started in with the puns." Watch this space. I'm hopeful this one might not suck. P.S. Thanks to Cole Gibsen and Rebekah Shelton for putting up with my endless questions. NO THANKS to the smartasses on Twitter. I ask a simple question about ...