Interview: Steve Berman and Craig Gidney (Lethe Press)

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

Steve Berman and Craig Gidney are the publisher and managing editor of Lethe Press.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. What’s the mission and vision of the company?

CLG: In Greek mythology, Lethe is the river of forgetting. Lethe Press’ mission was initially to resurrect ‘lost’ or forgotten texts—particularly works of speculative fiction, books on mythology as well gay fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The company’s output has extended, and we publish a wide range of material. It quite eclectic—from erotica to literary fiction to curious books about the history of barbers!

SB: As far as “vision”… well, I’d like to make Lethe one of the top names when a reader thinks about the field of queer speculative fiction. That’s one of the reasons I started the annual series Wilde Stories and have released books like Haunted Hearths & Sapphic Shades.

How do you decide which books to publish?

CLG: There isn’t just one answer to this question. Some books—like the erotica and some of the more commercial work—are market driven. Some books, such as the poetry book and a planned book of plays—are labors of love. And some books are just fun to work on!

SB: Part of being a small press is finding your way in the field. We’ve made many friends who happen to be writers and editors, and they often recommend work to us. Craig and I often have phone meetings to talk about what’s missing in the marketplace—whether that be more gay books by minorities, re-releasing a certain author’s work, etc...

At first glance, some readers might believe that the only books you publish are those that deal with gay interests or those by gay authors. What are the exemptions to this rule?

CLG: We have and will continue to put out books that lie outside the gay niche market—dependent, of course, on the quality of the work we receive. We recently released two orphaned speculative fiction anthologies—Spicy Slipstream Stories and Japanese Dreams—that aren’t explicitly queer, for example.

SB: We’ve released a number of folklore titles. I’m also pleased with what we’ve done so far with single author collections, such as Will Ludwigsen’s Cthulhu Fhtagn, Baby! and Other Cosmic Insolence.

In terms of speculative fiction, what forthcoming books can we expect?

SB: We have a busy autumn this year. The Haunted Heart, a collection of gay ghost stories by Jameson Currier just released. The next edition of Wilde Stories should hit shelves shortly—reprinting tales by Hal Duncan, Shaun Levin, and others. Time Well Bent, an alternative history anthology of LGBT stories edited by Connie Wilkins, releases in October.

CLG: The 2009-10 schedule is really exciting. We are publishing two short story collections by two up-and-coming authors—Livia Llewellyn’s creepy and erotic dark fantasy tales in The Engine of Desire (with an introduction by Laird Barron) and Beth Bernobich’s fantastical A Handful of Pearls. Collections are hard to sell to big presses; they are a natural fit for smaller presses. We are also starting a series, called Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction, which will reprint classic gay spec fiction. First up is Melissa Scott’s Shadow Man.

How about titles that you’re excited about in 2010?

CLG: 2010 will see the first book in our new imprint. Tincture, which focuses on fiction by and about queer people of color. The first book is a collection of edgy, literary short stories by a talented Latino writer, Charlie Vasquez. And we're publishing Tanith Lee's gay and lesbian fiction, channeled from (and written as) French Jewish lesbian Esther Garber and her gay half brother, Egyptian Judas Garbah.

SB: I’ll go on record saying I’m excited about all the books we release.

What were some of the challenges you faced starting out? What's your biggest challenge now?

SB: Cash flow is the bane of all small presses (and probably the challenge of all entrepreneurial endeavors). When I started Lethe back in 2001, I never imagined releasing more than 2-3 books a year and now we’re averaging over twenty.

Can I ask if Lethe Press is turning in a profit or at least breaking even?

SB: We’re making a small profit. Fortunately, e-book sales and licensing hardcover rights to the InsightOut Book Club have helped the coffers.

Do you consider Lethe Press a success?

SB: If I can keep releasing books that matter, yes.

How did the imprints White Crane Books and Bear Bones Books come about?

SB: The White Crane Institute releases a magazine on gay wisdom and culture. When I began reprinting works in that field, it seemed only natural to partner with them. With Bear Bones Books, I noticed that many gay readers identify with the “bear” culture—masculine, solid proportions, homosocial—but books aimed at such readers were few and far between (gay publishing focuses on the cult of youth and beauty a bit too much). I teamed with acclaimed author and editor Ron Suresha to make sure that books for bears became a reality.

Being not just a publisher but an editor and author of both gay fiction and speculative fiction, is there an overlap between the two genres?

SB: Of course. Queer fiction focuses a great deal on being the “Other” or “Outsider.” So does speculative fiction. Imaginary worlds hold a great deal of appeal to individuals who feel oppressed and yearn to be accepted and not marginalized.

How do you manage to find the time to juggle writing, editing, and the company?

SB: I don’t. I have a day job, too, that helps pay the bills (and tries to patch some of the cash flow problems with the press). Honestly, I am way behind in my own writing. In that sense Lethe has been detrimental to my career. One of the reasons I asked Craig to help with Lethe is so I can go back to my first love, writing.

Since you’re involved in a lot of projects, I want to ask how do you “switch” hats? Like are you juggling all three roles (writer, editor, publisher) simultaneously or is there like a month where you’re focusing on the writer aspect and then a month later you focus on the editor aspect?

SB: I mostly juggle. It’s not the most efficient method, I’ll admit, but it’s nigh-impossible to devote time solely to one endeavor. I was recently away on a writing-related vacation and I still had to deal with many editorial and press-related matters despite swearing off them for two weeks. Without Craig’s assistance, I’d be lost. I’m hoping that, as the company grows, I’ll be able to transfer more tasks to Craig.

In terms of speculative fiction, you’ve edited various gay-themed speculative fiction anthologies such as So Fey and Wild Stories. How did you end up being the go-to guy for such books?

SB: I sought to combine my love for a good story—whether fantastical or horrific—with queer culture. If people consider me “the go-to guy” for such books, I’m flattered. I really want to both create and promote the best such work in that mesh of genres.

What do you look for in a story as an editor?

SB: Characters that matter, storylines that move me. Seems simple, right? But too often the author focuses on developing the plotline rather than the characters involved. I want to read fiction that affects me. I remember a number of stories in So Fey left me in tears (one of which, Joshua Lewis’s “Ever So Much More Than Twenty,” won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for short fiction).

For actors/actresses, there’s a fear of being typecast into a certain role. Do you ever have such fears or are people asking you to work on gay-themed projects always a welcome experience?

SB: I once asked Chip Delany if I should worry about being “typecast.” He told me that, whether I like it or not, people will consider me that “Jewish writer who writes gay stuff.” So be it.

Who are some of the authors that you admire or some of your favorite books?

CLG: I love Samuel Delany, Toni Morrison, Steve Erickson (the American author), Patricia McKillip and Octavia Butler. Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu books and the obscure novels of fantasist Philip Ridley (In The Eyes Of Mr. Fury) were seminal books in my development as a writer. And I’m chuffed that I am working with Ms. Lee, as her Tales From The Flat Earth were among the first gay-friendly books I’d read.

SB: I think I read more young adult fiction these days, so my answer would be writers like Holly Black, Libba Bray, and Kris Reisz. In the field of gay writers, I think the essays of Jeff Mann are top-notch, and Rick Bowes tells the most amazing short stories. I consider Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner a perfect novel.

With all these new technologies popping up such as the Internet, how has it affected you, either as a writer, an editor, or a publisher?

SB: Inter-what? Okay, to be honest, Craig is the fellow who has been the reliable voice of Lethe lately; he Twitters and blogs. I’m a bit backwards on the social networking sites. Other technologies… hmm, well, E-books, though, have been a growing source of revenue.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

CLG: Now that I’m an editor, I can tell writers this: realize that editors aren’t your enemy. They really want your work to be the best it can be, and for it to sell. Publishing—as opposed to writing—is a business transaction, and must be treated as such.

SB: I think the most important tool in a writer’s kit must be a trusted critique partner or two. You have to have someone that can give you an honest appraisal of a story, and this person should not only have a vested interest in your career but also knowledge of the field (otherwise our Moms would be great critiques). A critique partner is as invaluable as a good agent—in many ways, they are like pseudo-agents, helping a writer develop.

Advice for aspiring editors?

CLG: Learn the difference between copy-editing, proofreading and ‘developmental’ editing. They all require different skill sets!

SB: For anthologists: ask yourself why there is a need for the anthology, what are your intended readers expecting (and how you can exceed these expectations), and who do I need in the book to make all this happen, because an anthology without any “names” is often quickly forgotten.

Advice for would-be publishers?

SB: Caffeine.

Anything else you want to plug?

CLG: Our production person, Toby Johnson, is really top-notch. Lethe is really blessed with finding a talented person who works tirelessly on our behalf.

SB: I cannot thank our authors enough. Jameson Currier, Catherine Lundoff, Lynne Jamneck, Lee Thomas, to name a few—have treated Lethe like a valued friend, and I am grateful for the chance to share their words.

Interview: K.J. Bishop

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

K.J. Bishop is the author of the novel The Etched City and has won awards such as the Ditmar Award for Best Novel and Best New Talent.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what is it about speculative fiction that interests you?

I seem to be reading more real-world fiction these days. But when I write, my mind seems to want to be fantastical. It's hard to say why, because it isn't a conscious choice. I suspect a taste for the sensational is part of it. It might be that fantastical elements help me to organise my thoughts, by acting as archetypal or mythical magnets around which emotional and cognitive material can accrue. There's also the surreal factor. The mind is a strange place, and I like to express that strangeness directly, which produces oddness in my writing -- like taking my brain out of my head and making a sort of potato-print with it on the paper.

In several interviews, you mentioned that you started writing in your 20's. What initially made you decide to foray into fiction, and what motivated you to keep at it?

Gwynn, who became the main character in The Etched City, had been in my mind for a long time, in various guises, and I'd occasionally written fragments about him, just for the idle pleasure of it. When I started surfing the web I found this picture, which is Sidney Sime's illustration for Lord Dunsany's story How One Came As Foretold to the City of Never, and that was it. I think the picture somehow pulled together influences from books I'd been reading around that time -- Viriconium, A Rebours, various Decadent writings -- and I saw this strange city on top of a huge cliff, with Gwynn there in an opium den with two lesbian swordswomen, and I wrote "The Art of Dying" about the three of them. The Australian speculative fiction magazine Aurealis published the story, and the next one I wrote, which encouraged me to think that perhaps I could write something longer. I was curious about Gwynn's backstory, so I started exploring it, and that became The Etched City. (I've just read the Dunsany story for the first time now, and I think it's funny that it starts off describing a kid in the English countryside who ends up in a world of wonder, because I think of Gwynn as being, underneath his layers of gunslinger and dandy and warrior from Ultima Thule, a schoolboy who dreamed of wild adventures and got them.)

As for keeping at it, I almost didn't. I didn't have any other books bursting to come out. But it was either go back to university and upgrade my qualifications, or try to do something more with writing. But I discovered that I couldn't just sit down and make more novels come, and I also discovered that the solitude of attempted full-time writing drove me crazy, so now I teach English as a foreign language and write in my spare time. I keep writing because characters still come into my head and prompt me to blacken paper on their behalf, and every now and then I actually finish something to their satisfaction and mine. If they stop turning up, I'll stop writing.

What was the most difficult hurdle you had to overcome before getting published?

Finishing a book! Seriously. On the story side of things, I sold "The Art of Dying" on the first go -- which was an unusual piece of good luck for a first-time writer. With The Etched City, I was again lucky in how soon the book found a publisher, and in the kindness of people who helped get it there. I first tried to sell it back in, I think, 2000, but not very seriously -- I only tried a couple of publishers. Geoff Maloney critiqued the book thoroughly, stopped me taking it down a path that wouldn't have worked, and recommended Prime Books, who gave me a contract and the luxury of rewriting for about a year with Trent Jamieson as editor. After Prime published it, Jeff VanderMeer and Jeff Ford were kind enough to show it to their agent, who then sold it to Bantam and Tor UK. A funny thing is, while I was writing the book, a psychic told me that she was hearing the name "Geoff /Jeff" in my future. On my own, I think I would have given up far too soon. I didn't know how to go about looking for agents, for starters. But the Internet is much bigger now, and we're all better connected. Selling your work might not have gotten any easier, but at least it should be easier to do reconnaissance about who to try to sell it to.

You're a widely-traveled person. How has your travels affected your writing?

Travelling gives me ideas for locations, and sometimes for characters and situations. A less than fabulous holiday in Morocco provided a fair bit of material for The Etched City (cloud and silver lining, there you go), and the experience of wandering in Cairo inspired "We the Enclosed", my story in Leviathan 4.

Where is home for you? (And this doesn't have to be a geographical place.)

Morningtown, many miles away ;-)

Some of your fiction, including your novel The Etched City, revolves around cities. What is it about them that fascinate you?

I don't know that cities per se fascinate me, but I could hardly help being inspired by places like Rome and Cairo and Fez when I was a tourist in them. And Melbourne, where I grew up, is another inspiring city. Not so old, of course, but it has wonderfully extravagant Victorian bits and good little poky alleys. But lately my imagination has been more interested in small towns and rural settings. And seaside resorts. I'd love to write something in a seaside town.

Since you're also an artist, is there a creative overlap between writing and drawing for you?

A bit. When I'm interested in a character, I often want to draw them. And I think I think like a person who draws a lot. I've always drawn pictures; it's a lifelong hobby and a means of self-soothing. Unlike words, pictures lack the dimension of time; its all there at once. Of course, you can take time to look at it; but the viewer brings the element of time, it isn't in the work. And when I write, I'm happiest writing with the "time" channel turned off. I'm drawn to slowness, pages where nothing happens, and then I'll make a jump to the next scenic point (where I might force something to happen, even if I'd rather just write about the sky or people's clothing). I don't always write like that, but it's what I enjoy doing.

What kind of satisfaction do you get from fiction that you can't get from art? How about vice versa?

With fiction, you can create virtual people. You can conjure the semblance of personality. I find that very satisfying, once the thing's actually working. And I enjoy discovering a work as I write it (if I discover it; I make a lot of forays that go nowhere). But I find the process of art much more immediately satisfying. The body and the mind are involved together, which is pleasant, and can be meditative. And I don't judge my art the way I judge my writing. I tend to enjoy looking at pictures I've made whether they're any good or not, whereas I'm very critical of my own writing. I think my drawing mind is still well connected to the memory of childhood pleasure, whereas my writing mind grew out of the world of school and work and takes its attitudes from there.

What does it feel like to have your novel translated in many languages?

Awesome. It feels like a great privilege, and I've been fortunate to have some very dedicated translators. From things a couple of overseas readers have said, I suspect some of the translations are better than the original.

I hear you're working on a short story collection. Can you tell us more about it?

It's all spec fic, of assorted sorts, mainly fantasy, with a fair dollop of surreal, and there are a few poems that I'd also like to include. At the moment I'm revising the work and knocking it into shape. Most of the tidying of older material isn't giving me too much trouble, except for "The Art of Dying", which has about 7 versions, and I'm not completely pleased with any of them. I'll probably be fiddling with that one till the day I die! Since nearly all the material I want to include as been published before I also want to write a couple of new stories specifically for the collection.

How did you decide which stories will be included in your upcoming short story collection?

I haven't decided yet. It'll depend on how the new stories turn out, and I expect the publisher will have some input too.

Since you had to edit The Etched City and some of your short stories more than once, what's the process like, editing work that's previously been published? Are there any trepidations?

There's no trepidation. I actually quite like giving old work a new coat of paint. The re-editing of The Etched City didn't come all that long after the first edit -- I think it was only a year or eighteen months -- so it was still quite fresh in my mind, and I welcomed the opportunity to polish it up. But a lot more time has gone past since I wrote some of these stories, and my tastes have changed. I've gotten less gothic, so I have to balance the urge to turn down the dial of portentousness with realistic acceptance of how far a story can be bent before it turns into something else.

Which is more comfortable for you: novel-length fiction or short stories?

I'd have to say short stories, since I've only managed novel-length fiction once so far. But I'm working on another novel with another writer, Preston Grassmann, and the partnership has made the going easier -- not to mention that when there's two of you, you can't say, 'Hey, let's go back home.'

Have you ever considered doing a comic or a graphic novel?

I've written 60-something pages of a very daft doujinshi (autodoujinshi?) called Ecchi no City.
As anyone looking at the art and layout will note, I'm not remotely up to doing a proper piece of visual storytelling! But if I ever level up enough, sure, I'd definitely consider doing something with pictures.

How has the Internet affected your life creativity-wise?

Well, research is a lot easier now. So is procrastination. I like to think I've come out about even. I also like to think I'm a tall, rich, gorgeous rock star with a pet leopard.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Look after your physical, mental and financial health, because the writing life can be bad for all three. Or just accept that you're going to be mad, poor and sick -- whichever works for you!

Advice for aspiring artists?

I was a web designer for a while and I've done the odd book cover, but I wouldn't call myself an artist and I'm not really in a position to give advice. Better ask Leonardo da Vinci.

Anything else you want to plug?

Last Drink Bird Head, a fabulous anthology of flash fiction for literacy charities, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I'm a dim light in the galaxy of contributors. I'd also like to mention Halo Evolutions, an anthology of tales from the Halo Universe, which features a collaboration between VanderMeer and Australian writer Tessa Kum, whose short fiction I've been enjoying for years. And slated to be published early next year is Baggage, an Australian speculative fiction anthology from Eneit Press, to which Tessa and I are both contributors. Quoting the editor, Gillian Polack, "It's all about the stuff we carry with us, inside us, especially that which we brought with us to Australia." I think it's a fascinating project, something well out of the ordinary. I also have a couple of stories coming out next year, one in Subterranean Magazine ("The Heart of a Mouse") and one in Fantasy Magazine ("Saving the Gleeful Horse").

Interview: Adam Golaski

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

Adam Golaski's latest short story collection is Worse Than Myself. His translation of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight—"Green"—appears in installments on the critical site Open Letters. His poetry, fiction (horror and otherwise), and non-fiction has appeared in journals such as: word for/word, Supernatural Tales, McSweeney's, Sleepingfish, Conjunctions, and All Hallows. He is currently editing selected poetry of Paul Hannigan for Pressed Wafer, and co-edited for Flim Forum Press two anthologies of experimental poetry, Oh One Arrow (2007) and A Sing Economy (2008). Adam edits and publishes New Genre, a journal of horror and science fiction, now in its seventh year.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, when did you know you wanted to become a writer/poet?

Writing was a fear-filled school requirement, its mechanisms a totally mystery to me, until I was twelve. I wrote a short story and showed it to a classmate and he liked it and passed it along to other classmates who also liked it. I've identified myself as a writer ever since.

What is it about horror that appeals to you? How about speculative fiction?

In my household, horror and science fiction were presented to me with all other types of literature, with no caveats made about their worth. So I read in a very catholic manner, genre and non.

What's the appeal of horror? Mystery. Mystery that isn't inevitably spoiled by a rational explanation. Conversely, the explanations in science fiction are as wondrous as the mysteries they undo. Both of these answers are so cute they can't possibly be good.

In terms of fiction, what made you decide to write horror and speculative fiction?

I was in my early twenties when I sat down to deliberately write a horror story and that story was “Back Home” (which is included in Worse Than Myself). I was already editing New Genre, and I was reading and rereading a lot of horror in order to teach myself about the genre--trying to understand what the parameters were, etc. I did write horror stories before then, but I didn't know it at the time. I just thought of them as stories. The same can be said for speculative fiction, though I've written very little (intentionally).

A lot of your output has been short stories. What is it about the form that makes you suited to it? What are your experiences with novel-length fiction?

I've written three novels. I'm revising the third now and have a fourth in the works. There's no form of writing that doesn't interest me, and I really mean that. I do love the short story--as a reader, especially--I prefer collections to novels as a rule. If the form does indeed suit me--and I take you question as a compliment, thank you--then it's because I usually start (prose) from a single strong image, and the story radiates from that. So, maybe (maybe!) single images are more likely to produce short work?

What would you say was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome in order to break into the industry?

I would say that I have yet to “break into the industry.” I may be on the cusp of a breakthrough, but then again maybe not. In terms of being published, the biggest hurdle was finding editors who like my work for what it is and not for what it might be molded into. I've been lucky to find more than a few. These editors ask smart and challenging questions, but they don't think the best way to edit is to Gordon Lish the hell out of everything.

In your short story collection Worse Than Myself, a lot of the pieces have a gothic atmosphere to them. Was this a conscious decision?

Atmosphere is very important to me. I reject (as editor of New Genre) solid horror stories that lack atmosphere, because without it they're only functional. When I wrote the stories collected in Worse Than Myself, I wasn't thinking Gothic, per se, but Gothic is such a part of the language of horror it's probably as apt a description as any.

Could you tell us something more about your upcoming collection, Color Plates?

Color Plates is a museum, alive in the now crystallized brain of a sort-of Mary Cassatt. Four rooms of Mary's museum are open to the public, and they are named Éduoard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Mary Cassatt. Each room exhibits little stories--plates--drawn from real paintings by the painters who are the rooms' namesakes.

Though I'd not read these books when I began, Color Plates bears a passing resemblance to Baudelaire's Paris Spleen and to Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. I've been told it's a bit like some of Gilbert Sorrentino's fictions. I think Rose Metal Press is publishing this on a dare.

A lot of my writing is generated by systems I create. In this case, I developed a few rules, most of which I broke when I needed to. The rules are: 1. each story corresponds with a painting, 2. the stories are set in the present (not in the 19th century), 3. at some point, the characters in the story must arrange themselves into the scene the painting depicts (this was tricky for Déjeuner sur l'herbe!), 4. there must be a character or narrator who is outside said scene--someone who takes the role the painter took, the roles of the observer, 5. none of the characters are to be named, 6. the stories are not to be (overtly) about painting, and, um, I think there are more rules but I can't remember.

It's pretty weird.

How did Raw Dog Screaming Press end up publishing your collection? Rose Metal Press for Color Plates?

I handed Raw Dog a big sloppy mess of a ms., untitled, with unfinished stories and stories I'd later cut, coffee rings on the cover, pages stuck together with honey and God knows what else. Jennifer responded in an email, “Overall I think this is possibly one of the weirdest collections I've read. It's quite rare to read something that is actually disturbing in a really-not-sure-what-to-make-of-it kind of way”--and agreed to publish it, with the caveats that I would finish the unfinished stories and email the finished ms. so she could print a clean copy. Jeremy Lassen, who was booked solid and so never even read the ms., recommended I try Raw Dog.

When I had a mostly complete draft I sent Color Plates to maybe half-a-dozen small presses I considered to be likely publishers and Rose Metal Press was one. Rose Metal Press specializes “in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry; novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond the traditional genres of poetry, fiction, and essay to find new forms of expression”--all of which pretty much describes Color Plates. John Cotter, the editor of Open Letters (a journal to which I contribute), suggested I try them. And for that one good suggestion, I apparently have to keep buying him drinks, for, like, ever.

How did you get involved with New Genre Magazine?

How did I get involved with New Genre? I love that question. “Involved” is a funny way to put it. It's more like “married to.”

Just out of college and with a tiny bit of saved money my then-roommate (Jeff Paris) and I decided to publish a magazine that would present horror and science fiction in a way that, up to that point, only non-genre fiction was being presented: in the form of a literary journal, with no traditional genre imagery whatsoever. The idea was to attract readers who were put off by the way the genres are typically presented, but who were smart enough to recognize good fiction when they read it, regardless of genre, while also appealing to genre readers by publishing real horror and real science fiction. This is tricky.

That's what I did instead of backpacking through Europe. After the publication of issue number five, Jeff retired for a quiet life on the small island of Amity, where he is their chief of police.

What do you look for in a horror story as editor of New Genre?

I look for good language. I read lots and lots of submissions that are good, that will find homes in other magazines, but that forego interesting prose for the sake of plot. These stories bore me. Cliché--even little clichés, such as describing the sky as looking like a bruise, or comparing a road to an “endless ribbon”--will put me off a story (clichés are usually flags that the author isn't paying enough attention). After language I look for lasting images.

What's one of the more challenging aspects working with New Genre? Most rewarding?

I'll start with rewarding. The opportunity to publish really beautiful work unlikely to find a home any where else: Jaime Corbacho's “Honeymoon” (from #5), Jan Wildt's “Bink is Luv” (#4), Thomas Dunford's “Inside Everything is an Engine” and Cheryl Smith's “Two Birds” (#3). Matthew Pendleton's “I Am Antenna / Antennae” (#6). Back when the we first started New Genre, I used to telephone the authors whose stories I wanted to publish. One call stands out in my memory. I reached the author's wife and left the message with her--she was amazed. She asked, “So he's really a good writer?” That made me feel good. It's rewarding to work with Jeremy Withers, who designs our brilliant covers (since issue #4). He's a childhood friend; we used to make magazines together with notebook paper and staples. Now we're all grown up. What's challenging? Absolutely everything else. Selling copies!

With regards to poetry, what aspect of it that tickles your fancy that fiction cannot satiate?

I don't know that fiction couldn't be made to satiate what poetry does, but it doesn't, you're right. The latter strongly informs the former, and not the other way around, so that's important. When I write poetry the approach and the process is very different from fiction and very exciting to me. You've asked a big, complicated question! My poetry is as important to me as my fiction.

What made you decide to start Flim Forum?

Starting Flim Forum Press was Matthew Klane's idea, but we both consider the press to be an extension of what we're doing as poets.

What are the challenges you face in the poetry scene?

Within the small poetry community I'm directly a part of, my work is well-received, my editing is appreciated, and my criticism responded to thoughtfully. It's a community of weirdoes, but they're generous, talented, and sincere weirdoes. So my biggest challenges are entirely my own. Where am I headed with certain devices I've invented for myself? How can I get to Buffalo, New York? When can I devote myself to corrupting the sonnet? Today I worried over the incompleteness of my poetry ms., and considered for it new directions. [I touch on challenges for poets and short story writers in my introduction to issue #6 of New Genre. If anyone wants a copy of my introduction, I'd be more than happy to email it to them; make email requests through the New Genre site. (Of course, you can buy the issue, too!).]

Have you thought of contributing to the speculative poetry scene, or do you find such distinctions/labels confining when it comes to poetry?

Poems about fantastical beings are the foundation of all literature. I published a series of poems inspired by murderers (Laura Sims' brilliant “Murder Poems” in A Sing Economy). So I'm not ignorant to the fact that poems about the future, about monsters, etc., can be as good as poems about anything else.

That said, I've never read any poetry that identifies itself as “speculative” or horror, or science fiction that was especially good. Perhaps the label causes the authors problems, and I assume the editors who publish these poems don't read enough poetry to know what good poetry looks like.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Stop thinking of yourself as “aspiring.” By the phrase “aspiring writers” we usually mean writers who have yet to be published, but it's a mistake to confuse writing with publishing. There are published writers and unpublished writers. Being published hardly means being good.

So, to unpublished authors, take yourselves seriously, use rejection as a motivation to do more work, and look for models worth imitating.

Of course, if you're only thinking about writing, then you really only are aspiring, and I don't know what to suggest for you other than don't wait for inspiration, don't wait for the right moment, just get to work.

Advice for aspiring publishers?

Love your authors. Don't be the publisher notorious for the harsh “honesty” of your rejection letters (tact is not dishonest, kindness is not weakness). Don't act like a bouncer at an exclusive club. When you publish, you're part of a literary community, doing work for that community: be glad you're so lucky. And please, stop complaining about slush piles every damn chance you get. You sound like geezers moaning about their sore knees.

Anything else you want to plug?

Nope. Thank you for asking such good questions. I hope you'll have me over again sometime.

Interview: Jeremiah Tolbert

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

Jeremiah Tolbert’s fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Black Gate, Interzone, Ideomancer, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies Seeds of Change, Polyphony 4, and All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories. He is also the editor of Escape Pod.

Hi Jeremy! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what's the appeal of science fiction for you?

Well, I'm a nerd and a geek, and thus I have a genetic predisposition to anything vaguely science-y. I'm told that when I was asked what I wanted to be when I was 3 years old, I calmly sat aside my plastic dinosaurs and explained that the only logical path for me was to be a mad scientist. Science was always my favorite subject, particularly biology (which is not easy to maintain when you grow up in Kansas surrounded by fundamentalist creationists). I majored in biology in college, and it wasn't until I saw the balance on my student loans that I even considered a different professional field. I still sometimes consider going back for a Masters or PhD--my focus was originally in evolution and ecology, but I'm growing ever more fascinated by the advanced in molecular biology and genetics. I think that's the mad scientist in me. I can't wait until I can have my own genetics kit at home and build my own home-brew insects and other creatures. My natural tendency to rush forward to the implications of an idea or technology leads to the appeal of science fiction.

All the sorts of speculative fiction appeal to me because they stretch a particular portion of my brain that I like to have stretched. I've always been more interested in what's possible than what's actually happened. I didn't even really understand the appeal of history and historical fiction until I was in my late 20s. Yes, science fiction is about looking at today's world through a lens of speculation, and is not about predicting the future. But it's serious explanation of technology, and what it means to be human, are big questions that I love seeing answered, even if sometimes the answers are uncomfortable.

What made you decide to become a writer?

Well, I had all this paper sitting around with no words on it. Also, a delusion that I might actually be good at it. I've been struggling with that delusion for about seven years now, but it seems that like with some delusions, the longer you hold onto them, the more likely they are to become true. I'm not quite there, but I think I might be some day. Also, it's easier than digging ditches or trapping and tagging prairie rodents.

I think a good chunk of the people who enjoy reading science fiction are interested in writing it. If we enjoy the kind of thought games that SF puts us through, we probably also enjoy creating them ourselves. Many young SF writers are initially drawn to science fiction because they think they have a cool idea for a story, by which I mean a SFnal idea or premise. I know it's what got me started anyway. It's only after you start taking the idea of publishing seriously and start collecting your rejections that you learn SF fiction is about a hell of a lot more than just cool ideas--it's also about the art of the story. In retrospect, I probably should have taken a few less science classes and a few more creative writing and english courses.

I think the reason I've kept being a writer is that it's really, really hard for me, but I still sometimes feel like I'm making progress at understanding it. I write quickly, but that's only a virtue in the sense that it allows me to fail a little more quickly to make up for my sucking. If I had found writing something exceedingly easy to do, or far too difficult, I would have given it up after my first few rejections or sales.

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome before breaking into the industry?

I wasn't aware that I had broken into the industry. Shouldn't they send you a welcome basket or something?

The biggest barrier I had to overcome to improving my work was my own ridiculous notion that science fiction was only about the ideas, and good characterization and nice prose were unimportant. It might have been the case in the 1940s, although I'm not sure I would even say that.

I had to learn to see the stereotypes in my characters. I've always been less interested in the inner workings of people than, say, the ecological dynamics in a rain forest. People are messy and their lives often lack the elegance I see in nature. But that's part of what makes them so great, and once I found that I could enjoy that, I started exploring the lives of fictional people more, and my work began to sell a little.

The truth is, despite some pretty good credits, I don't have a single sale that in the eyes of SFWA qualify as a "pro sale." I've been paid pro rates many times, but for whatever reason, probably print runs, SFWA hasn't acknowledged my markets. Until I sell something that meets their definition, I think I will always question whether I have "broken in" or not. I may never, given how small the number of publications is that qualify anymore, and in that case I guess I'll have to change my definition of "breaking in." I had a better chance 5 years ago than today, just looking at the markets left standing right now.

You're a triple-threat in the sense that you're a writer, a photographer, and a programmer. How do all three satiate your creative urges, and how does each one affect the other?

Well, one minor point to correct--I am not a programmer. I can't program my way out of paper bag. I am a web designer, which is a very different thing. I deal with information architecture, with design, and with HTML and CSS (which are markup, not coding) but when it comes to the programming aspects, I use off-the-shelf parts. I have an understanding of how things work that lets me tinker and modify, but I couldn't sit down and build you an application from scratch. Nor would I want to. I'm a big fan of not reinventing the wheel.

As to how these things satiate my creative urges? Writing stretches my intellect. Photography exercises my ability to see things in a new way. And the design work pays the bills. Okay, design is also very satisfying in that it often allows me to combine all of my interests at once, like with my Dr. Roundbottom project.

My writing affects my photography, in that I sometimes get the urge to photograph the kinds of things I want to write about. That sensawunda that everyone's always talking about--I want my photography to evoke that, and I think is most successful when it does. Photography affects my writing in a lot of nebulous ways, but one of the things its helped with is my patience. I'm more willing to wait for the writing to come to me these days. Web design exists in kind of a separate world, although my photography and writing skills get brought into it from time to time.

You're the go-to guy in terms of web design for certain authors. Do you think this has had an impact on your writing career, or simply another method of potentially earning income?

Well, there's simply no way in this day and age I could make a comfortable living as a writer of SF short fiction, so I will always have to do something to earn money. When I had a full time job and was doing author sites on the side, that definitely negatively impacted my writing. Right now, due to the economy, I'm freelancing exclusively, so if anything, it's giving me a lot more time to write. It's less about the job and about the time it takes to do that job.

Being a writer has definitely helped me build my niche in the web design market. I understand the needs of writers on the web better than a more generalized web designer. Unfortunately, writers aren't the wealthiest people. In retrospect, I probably should have cultivated yacht owners as my niche. I bet there are a lot of yacht owners who want websites for their boats, right?

How did you become the editor of Escape Pod?

Steve Eley, faced with increasing day job responsibilities and a little bit of burnout, decided he needed to bring someone else in to handle story selection. He knew that I had some experience in podcasting from some other projects of mine, and he had run two or three of my stories on Escape Pod and really enjoyed them. For whatever reason, I think I was the first person he asked? I'm not sure about that, but given that you'd have to be a fool to turn it down, I think I was. I've been very excited about the potential of podcasting to bring new people to SF, so I jumped at the chance. I don't regret it.

What are the difficulties in being an editor?

Wanting to like every story that comes across your virtual desk, and failing to. I wish that I could publish every author with aspirations and dedication, and maybe with enough dedication, I will one day publish them. I don't like writing rejection letters. I don't enjoy having to take apart a story and explain why it didn't work for me, so I tend to use standard rejection letters instead.

Dealing with community feedback can be a bit of a bear. You have to keep in mind that not everyone will like every story you select, but I figure if 30% of my audience is happy with a story, I've done my job. People are just too different in their tastes to hope for much more than that. There are probably some very rare instances where that ratio climbs higher, and those are the true bullseye for Escape Pod. I don't think I've published one of those yet, but I hope to soon.

Anyway, it's only speculation as to what portion of our audience likes something. There's no true mechanism in place to know in a statistically satisfactory manner. Forum and the soon-to-be-gone blog comments are not a good measure of that, because people who like something are generally less likely to make a point of saying so than people who really dislike something. A topic I blogged about recently.

How are podcasts--especially fiction podcasts--changing the speculative fiction scene?

Escape Pod has over 20,000 listeners, and they are not what you would call traditional SF fandom. They're a new audience, and a different one. A lot of them are people who don't have time to read, but have time to listen to audio on their commute to work. They are, perhaps, a much harder-to-please audience and are sometimes listening to a story in less-than-ideal circumstances. But I feel like working at Escape Pod gives me a chance to show what's going on inside the bubble of the SF community to people outside of it.

Judging from the people who submit to me, I would say that much of the old guard has not caught onto us. I'm not sure why I don't see every name in the business in my inbox. We're a reprint market that pays pretty well and we don't require any kind of exclusivity. But we also release our productions under the Creative Commons, so I think that scares some who want to have a very tight control over their work. I can respect that, but any control they think they have is an illusion thanks to our friend the Internet. I can go online right now and find torrents with literally thousands of SF novels if I was inclined to do so (I'm not. I like paying for what I read). Escape Artists releasing our productions under the Creative Commons is an acknowledgment of the reality of the matter. If it means I'll never get to run a Neil Gaiman or any number of authors who have passed on and have literary estates, then so be it. There are plenty of young authors who get what we're doing and see the value of it.

What are some of the problems you see in the stories submitted to Escape Pod?

They're the same problems you see in any slush pile. 70% of it is by writers who are just too green and haven't mastered telling a story yet, or at least not consistently. A lot of them haven't moved past the cliche-ridden part of their writing paths. 20% of it is stuff that's good, but too similar to something else I've run recently, or not really a story that grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, or maybe just about a topic that I think we've played out. 5% I buy. Roughly, I haven't done the math.

I don't see nearly enough reprints. I see too many original stories and as a general rule of thumb, they aren't good enough for me to publish. I'm not sure if writers are trying to send their work elsewhere first, and having it rejected, or if they are just sending it to us first because Escape Pod is what inspired them to write. In either case, I think writers are better served by selling to a print market first, and then offering us reprint rights. More money, and more exposure.

One unique problem we deal with when we're running work from the Hugo nominees is a story that was specifically written for the page, using some kind of typographic convention that can't be conveyed in audio very well. I think people who come in via submission and not solicitation recognize that their stories need to be read out loud though, so it's not a major issue.

For you, what constitutes a good podcast, both in terms of content and performance?

The story has to have a good through-line that's easy to follow in audio. It's language should sound fairly natural when read aloud. The narrator should be able to distinguish the voices of disparate characters well, and otherwise have a voice that is not intrusive on the story, but they should definitely inject feeling and a performance of their own into the work.

Also, good recording quality, something we've been struggling with lately.

What made you decide to create Dr. Roundbottom?

Dr. Roundbottom grew out of a desire to synthesize my three main interests into a single project. I was doing a lot of macro photography at the time, and I started to think about a character who was the kind of scientist I wanted to be when I was a kid--but the last time naturalists were true professionals was the Victorian period. The steampunk elements crept in because of that.

What's the appeal of Steampunk for you?

Primarily, style. The Victorians and steampunkers have a lot of style, and that looks good on camera. I also like big, clunky machines and clockwork bits. I look at my iPhone and there's nothing about the device that expresses what it's capable of. In steampunk, a device's purpose is inherent in its design. Guns look like guns, and so on.

My particular form of steampunk is a mix of fantasy and SF. I really enjoy mixing up genres. I love science in my fantasy. It's one of the reasons Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is one of my favorite books.

What were the difficulties in maintaining Dr. Roundbottom?

It makes me very little money, so I can't devote as much time to it as I would have liked. I had higher expectations for growing the audience, and they just weren't there, or at least, I didn't find them. Also, creating the shoots were often expensive--buying props and the like. I don't like doing any more photoshopping than necessary, so I try to use real world objects as much as possible.

I also probably set a far too ambitious update schedule of once a week as well, but anything less than that doesn't do a good job of drawing repeat visitors.

In my dreams, someone pays me to do Roundbottom, or I land some kind of publisher/sponsor. I think Roundbottom could very easily be turned into an annual print book as a revenue stream if I was able to afford the time to work on it.

Unfortunately, being a fulltime freelancer means I have to carefully consider how I use my time, and I spend a lot more time thinking about the monetary side of things than I would like as an artist.

Still, I have many more ideas for Roundbottom, some of them even written and ready for me to photograph when I can find the time.

In your opinion, barring the Internet, what's the most innovative technology that's making a big impact on the publishing industry?

You'd probably expect me to say podcasting here, but I don't think anyone has really figured out how that can work for the publishing industry instead of alongside it. No, right now I think the biggest shift is that eInk readers have finally turned the public on to the notion of reading on a digital device. We're going to see a huge shift in how publishing works as this technology matures, and the price point gets lower.

I don't own a Kindle, but I do read on my iPhone. I'm still waiting for the right eInk reader for me.

More on your opinions, what's perhaps a practice in the industry that you find ultimately stifling and stagnant?

Resisting the fact that the Internet has changed everything. Print publications like Asimov's and F&SF not accepting electronic submissions is a good example of this. That these magazines have websites that look like they were designed in 1996 is not helping them either.

I do think the book publishers are catching on quicker. But in fairness, their model has been less threatened by the internet than magazines have.

Why are vampires your weakness?

A weakness? When did I say that? Hmm. I think this might in reference to my unabashed love of the TV series True Blood. Any show with a supernatural element will catch my attention, just as it is with SF elements. I grew up playing role-playing games, and a very formative game for me was Vampire: The Masquerade. So I will always have a soft spot for them, especially when they resemble the vampires of the game I spent so much time playing in high school and college.

I am not much of a fan of vampires in stories, although I have a really fun SF vampire story by Garth Nix scheduled for October [Ed Note: this interview was conducted before November] this year at Escape Pod.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Develop discipline in your writing habits. As true as it is in any other field, practice will improve your work. Read so much you can barely stand looking at words, and read widely. Don't just read what you want to write, although I think you should keep up on what's going on in your field. You should read the classics. You should read the Bible, even if you're not religious like me. There are works of literature that are cultural touchstones in the West, and being familiar with them will only enrich your work.

Remember that when you become a writer, you become an information sponge. Everything that has ever happened to you and ever will is potential material. Writing will teach you to be an observer in your own life, and of the lives of others. You'll find yourself trying to get into the heads of other people more often, sometimes asking questions that make people uncomfortable, but are necessary for bettering your understanding of people.

Finally, realize that you're playing this game for peanuts. You almost certainly will not get rich writing this stuff. You make pennies a word for the most part, whether your write novels or short stories. That means you don't stand much to gain, and you don't stand much to lose. So do what you really want to do. If there's a market for it, you'll find it in time. If there's not, well, you'll do it anyway, right? True greatness is something we mostly measure ourselves. It can't be measured in terms of audience size or financial success. So, throw out your caution and write what you really want to write. Your passion is one of your greatest assets, no matter what your skill level is.

Advice for aspiring editors?

Watch what John Joseph Adams does and emulate it. He's establishing the path for young genre editors today. It may not work for everyone, but it's working very well for him. I'm just a part-time editor. He's the real deal.

Anything else you want to plug?

I have a story in the latest issue of Interzone, #224 I think it is. It's the result of my challenge to myself to try to invent an alien species and culture that's truly alien, but not so alien that we can't relate to them somehow. It's also about whale falls, a biological phenomenon that fascinates me.

Interview: Rose Fox and Josh Jasper

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

Roses Fox and Josh Jasper maintains the Publishers Weekly speculative fiction blog Genreville.

Rose Fox:

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, how did you get acquainted with speculative fiction? How did your parents help shape your reading habits?

Harlan Ellison introduced my parents, both of whom are writers whose work includes a fair amount of speculative fiction, so it's pretty safe to say that fictons were bombarding me while I was still in the womb.

Shortly after I was born, my parents divorced, and my mother and I pretty much lived alone for four years until she met and married my stepfather. Somewhere in there, she ditched SF, left the fannish scene (insofar as she'd ever been in it, which wasn't very far), and switched over to reading mysteries. I grew up reading all kinds of mysteries for kids--Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Cam Jansen, Billy Jo Jive, Detective Poufy, and my all-time favorite, Encyclopedia Brown--and I'd go around telling people I wanted to be a detective. Then we took a trip to Ireland when I was maybe seven or eight years old, and I went wandering around to the gazebo behind a house we were visiting and found a copy of Doctor Who and the Space War.

I CONSUMED it, and it consumed me. I still have it. I'd never watched an episode of Doctor Who--hadn't until a couple of years ago, actually--but I loved that book with a passion. I read it over and over. I still loved mysteries, but soon I was stealing a lot of books off the one three-shelf bookcase that still housed all my mother's crumbling old Heinlein juvies and Andre Norton and Asimov and the like, and over the next few years all those books migrated into my bedroom. I read them over and over too, and hunted down other books by those authors, and whenever I went to Forbidden Planet (back when it was huge and awesome) or the Science Fiction Bookshop, I always opted for skinny, yellowing paperbacks over anything actually in print, because everything I loved was a skinny, yellowing paperback.

So all the SF I was first exposed to was SF written before I was born. I missed out on pretty much every novel in the field published between the late 70s and the early 90s. And I had no idea! I mean, it didn't even occur to me that reading-wise I was traveling back in time ten or twenty years. I remember being utterly shocked to learn that Robert Heinlein was dead, because he looked so young in all the author photos in the editions I had. In that sense, my mother shaped my reading habits by not being an SF reader, or rather, by being a former SF reader.

As for my father, I remember reading his books when they came out, and once I was in my teens and had firmly established myself as an SF reader on my own, I started picking through the piles of books that people sent him in hopes of getting reviewed. I know that occasionally friends of his would be visiting and autograph books for me (yes, I still have them). Unfortunately, I think the experimental and New Wave books I got that way hit me before I was ready for them, so I bounced off of them and went straight back to my familiar 70s hard SF and juvies.

What made you decide to pursue journalism? Was it difficult finding a venue to write about the genre?

I'm going to put these questions all together because the answer is sort of the same for all of them. My aunt (also a novelist) was a PW reviewer, and she got my mother into reviewing there, and I thought that being paid to read books sounded awesome, so my mother arranged for me to meet Peter Cannon, who was the SF/F/H reviews editor at the time. He was kind enough to give me a trial assignment (I am still paying this favor forward and probably will be for the rest of my life), and he liked my work enough to send me more books. I wasn't thinking of it as "pursuing journalism" at that point; it was just a fun hobby that made me a little money. The hardest part about going into journalism and editing full-time was finding ways to write about things other than the genre, since my goal was to actually make a living.

Mostly what drove me to pursue journalism was being really unhappy as a receptionist. (It's rather a long story how I ended up being a receptionist.) I worked for a decent company but I really didn't feel like I belonged there. A high school friend who was leaving his job as an editorial assistant on a medical journal got them to hire me as his replacement for three months, which was just long enough for it to look really good on my résumé. After that, I took a really long shot and went freelance full-time, throwing myself into a combination of medical journalism (helped greatly by a family friend who farmed out some work to me and introduced me to editors), book reviewing, and blogging. No one was more shocked than I was when I broke even well before the three-month deadline I'd set myself. I freelanced for most of a year before PW hired me on as an editor.

I should note here that I don't think of myself as a journalist. I'm an editor first and foremost. Kids always find some way to rebel against their parents, and mine was to be an editor instead of a writer. Everyone just assumed I was going to grow up to write books. It wasn't just my parents; my mother's father was a printer, my uncle was an art historian and author of many books, and even my father's father, an engineer, wrote an autobiography. I have ink in my veins. Well, I wrote some short stories when I was in my teens and they were all awful. I wrote some awful poems and songs too. Meanwhile, I was my mother's first-pass editor, and I soon realized that I was really good at it (woe betide the misplaced comma that came before my nine-year-old eyes, for I excised it as imperiously as only a nine-year-old can). When I joined my high school magazines, I did so as an editor. In college I was the first sophomore to become copy chief of the student paper. I don't mind writing, and I'm a pretty decent journalist these days, but editing is my true love.

My fiction is still awful. I'm comfortable with that.

How do you juggle your time covering speculative fiction and your duties as a medical writer?

I'm part-time at PW and always have been. I sort of snuck in when another part-time editor left; there was a hiring freeze on, but part-time hires didn't quite count as hiring, and it was easy for them to slot me in as a replacement. So I'm in the office just twenty hours a week, from 2 to 6 p.m. Freelancing happens between 10 and 2 a.m., and I sleep from about 4 to about noon. This schedule makes me ridiculously happy; I've always been a night owl. If I need to make phone calls during business hours, I just get up a little early.

At the moment I'm moving away from medical writing and into various kinds of editing. Medical journalism is a really tough market right now; after the bank crash last fall, all the big companies that publish news magazines for doctors pretty much stopped using freelancers, and when I did get assignments it took months and months to get paid, so I started looking for other things. I still do some writing and interviewing for a continuing medical education company from time to time, but my big secondary gig is with a Columbia healthcare information technology lab, getting their papers into shape for submission to peer-reviewed journals. I'm starting to do more freelance copyediting, which I love with an absolute passion. I just finished copyediting a Popular Mechanics book on how to design and build sheds, and it was so much fun! I'll edit anything, really. The best project so far was a different book for PM, where I compiled and edited articles from 1903 through 1969 that predict the future. It's coming out in fall 2010 with an intro by Greg Benford and I am tremendously excited about it.

Does your medical background have a bearing in the way you read books? (i.e. it might be a pet peeve when a hard sf novel gets the medical science wrong)

I don't have a medical background in the sense of a degree or college study. (I'm a three-time college dropout, and when I was in school I studied math, linguistics, computer science, and architecture.) I've just spent a lot of time around doctors and the medical establishment because I've written so much about them. I suppose I'd roll my eyes at awful medical science in a book, but I'd also be really excited to see anything medical handled in more detail than "She slapped the medpatch on her arm and waited for it to heal the broken bone" or "Nanobots will save us all". It's so rare to see good SFnal predictions of issues in medical ethics or advancements in medical technology. I just (as in, a few hours ago) finished reading Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire, which was very timely given the whole argument going on right now about euthanasia, and at times I got really impatient with it because the whole book is built around the ethics of death and life and medical resurrection and the way class divides affect medical treatment and all this really important interesting stuff, and yet I kept feeling like the future tech was getting in the way of really talking about those things. In the end--and this is kind of a big spoiler for the book, so skip to the next paragraph if you care about that--all the ethical and cultural issues get completely swamped by a technical issue, a failure of medical technology, and it's supposed to be this huge reveal and instead it just felt like a cop-out. And then the book ends! I wanted to know how the big reveal affected the culture and the way medical treatment was dispensed and it just... ended. Bah. I had similar issues with Robert J. Sawyer's WWW: Wake, which brings up two major issues in modern medicine--an epidemic in China and the use of medical technology to compensate for disability--and then gets completely distracted by fetishizing tech and loses its grip on the more human issues at hand. So yes, I guess I get very impatient with people who don't think about this stuff in depth.

There's so much going on in medical technology development at the moment that it feels really SFnal, so there's no excuse for neglecting it. Forget nanos, the handwavium of medical SF. Look at what people are doing right now with robots and cameras and microscopic instruments. You can have a hernia repaired with mesh that slowly dissolves into your body after you form new tissue around it. If you have a stroke or heart attack and go to a good hospital, they'll put you on ice--or rather, on a pad that circulates ice-cold water under and around you--because the cooling helps prevent nervous system damage, though no one really knows why. Imaging technology is so advanced that we don't actually know what to do with the degree of detail we get. We can turn genes on and off almost casually. This stuff is amazing. At the same time, we know almost nothing about mental illness despite decades of intensive study, it's still common practice to burn out cancerous tissue with hot pointy metal things (look up "tumor ablation" and then consider that it is the year 2009 and we are still basically at the level of setting people on fire for their health), and completely treatable, curable diseases still run rampant in impoverished areas around the world because medicine is as cultural as it is technical. Any SF author looking for inspiration should pick up a copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association or the New England Journal of Medicine and prepare for their mind to be blown both by what we can do and what we can't.

For you, what constitutes a good book review? How about a good interview?

It should make me go "Huh, I never thought of that" or "Huh, I never knew that".

Personally, what do you look for in a book, speculative or otherwise?

I categorize books by the type of mood they encourage in me, so what book I look for depends on what mood I'm in and what mood I want to be in. I recently started to read Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss and had to stop because it's a really gripping, powerful book that is completely not the right thing for me to be reading in the summer, when I tend to be depressed and paranoid already. I'll try again in the fall or winter, when I have enough emotional resilience stored up that I can afford to spend some on reading stories about loss and fear and despair. Mind you, I really like books like that, when I have the strength for them.

Other than mood, I look for good proficiency with language, consistency and believability of setting and character, a lack of errors of fact or punctuation, all that technical stuff. I'm entirely willing to read in any genre as long as the writer knows what they're doing.

How did Genreville get established? What are your upcoming plans for Genreville?

Genreville got started in a pretty mundane way: our editor-in-chief wanted more blogs on PW's site, I had been blogging for years on LiveJournal, I offered to write an SF blog. I wasn't geting paid separately for it, so I was trying to write it while I was at work in addition to editing two sections and so on, and as more editors got laid off and my workload increased, I just didn't have the time for it. Our new editorial director mentioned that he was willing to pay for bloggers if they'd bring traffic to the site and I said "Oh well in THAT case" and made what was apparently a very persuasive pitch for PW to pay me and Josh as freelancers, which means we can work on it from home. That changes things entirely. Now the only question is how much work we're willing to do for the amount we're getting paid, and apparently we're willing to do quite a lot. We're going to be writing at least three posts a week and hopefully closer to five, putting up videos, doing tons of interviews, starting serious conversations about controversial issues, posting book reviews, all that jazz.

How is the Internet changing the publishing industry? For you, does it bring more benefits or disadvantages?

For the first half of that, see my recent long SF Mind Meld contribution, where I discuss it in detail. The short version is that the internet is a vast storage space for information about books and publishing and fandom, and as people who didn't grow up in this world start making use of that stored knowledge and using it to get traction for their new ideas in the traditional publishing world, I think we're going to see some tremendous innovation that both works within the current paradigm and really shakes it up.

For the second, I don't know: I've never worked in non-internet-enabled publishing! It's like asking whether I think all the oxygen in the atmosphere is good or bad for me. I'm so thoroughly adapted to it that it's a moot point.

How would you describe the current field of science fiction, fantasy, and horror?

I wouldn't even know where to begin. It's vast and nebulous, and expanding at a terrific rate.

Right now, there's a growing awareness of speculative fiction written by people of color, people outside of the US and Europe, and GLBT. What's your take on this changing paradigm in the field?

Look at that first sentence: when you say "there's a growing awareness" you mean "there's a growing awareness among straight white Westerners". They're still the default, the implied actors and the implied audience. If we talk about "recognition" and "awareness", what we mean is that it's still all about where members of the privileged classes deign to direct their attention, and the underlying paradigm really isn't changing at all. I think the paradigm of assumed privilege does need to change, and the sooner the better, but we're still at the very beginning of making that change and we have a long way to go.

Mind you, some straight white guys get it:

Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.
--Philip K. Dick

I don't think we're going to achieve a privilegeless world in my lifetime. There will be some people with more privilege and some with less. My goal is to see the gap narrowed, and see the privileged class expand and expand and expand. Ideally that will involve privileged people giving up some of their privilege; realistically it will involve less privileged people coming and taking it, demanding to be treated with respect. I support both halves of that, and do what I can to mitigate and make honorable use of the privilege I have as a white English-speaking middle-class white-collar Westerner while never giving up the fight as a queer genderqueer disabled mentally-ill Jewish agnostic.

Is there a particular cause in the genre that you want to champion or see major change take place?

Serial commas. I'm for them. PW doesn't use them and every time I take one out of a review I die a little inside.

[Ed Note: In between when I answered those questions and when the interview went up, PW has started using serial commas!]

More seriously, see above; I'm pushing very hard, personally and professionally, for "we" and "us" to become more genuinely inclusive terms in fandom and in publishing. At PW, I just got in a novel from Blind Eye Books, a wonderful small queer genre press; I'm sending it out for review like I would any other genre title. On the romance end (I also edit the mass market reviews section), I've directly requested submissions from African-American-focused imprints like Harlequin's Kimani Books and Kensington's Brava and Dafina, and my reviewers treat them like they would any other romance novels. I'd love to see more queer mass market romance originals, too. I'm also delighted that my reviewers are starting to call out racism, sexism, and other biases in their reviews and discuss them in depth in their post-review notes to me.

If there's a writer whose personal opinions clash with yours (i.e. John C Wright and Orson Scott Card loathing homosexuality), does this affect your reading preferences?

Not really, no. I think I'd be a pretty poor critic if it did. I still read Roald Dahl's work even though he was a virulent anti-Semite, and Harlan Ellison's work even though he's said a lot of awful things about a lot of people (including my father), and so on. I could name all my favorite authors and I bet each of them would disagree with me in some really major way. They still write great books and stories. When authors I disagree with write things I dislike, then it's even more important for me to be sure I engage with the work and not with the author; criticism can discuss authors, certainly, but I think it is never a book critic's job to criticize an author's personal views.

I bet some of the critics whose work I most like would disagree with me on that!

What advice do you have for aspiring journalists? How about aspiring writers?

To aspiring journalists: Get used to people thinking you aren't a writer. When people ask you "Are you a writer?" what they want to know is whether you write fiction. That's the only kind of writing that matters to most of the world. Don't be shy about saying "Yes, I'm a journalist".

If you're going to freelance, calculate every assignment in terms of how much you get paid per hour of your time, and keep pushing your hourly rate upwards. Never, ever work for less than minimum wage, unless you can honestly say you're volunteering your time for charity. (I say this as someone who only pays a mere $25 per book review, but I also think our reviewers should go on strike and demand higher pay.) Network like crazy; nepotism and helpful friends are the only way to get anywhere in this industry. In general, try very hard to view the journalistic world as a community, and to understand that helping other members of the community--by passing on leads, making deals, farming out extra work, demanding fair pay so that your fellow journalists will get fair pay too, insisting that journalists are writers, and so on--is the only way the community and the business will survive. Stay alert and be flexible. Above all, turn in good, honest work on time.

To aspiring authors (ahem): See above re: networking, community, alertness, flexibility, and turning in good, honest work on time; those all apply to you too. Pick your battles when your work is being edited. Once your writing is out in the world, let it speak for itself. Never read reviews of your work, and if you do, never argue with them except in the privacy of your own head.

Josh Jasper:

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, how did you first get into speculative fiction?

I was first read the hobbit when I was 8, and when I could read the whole thing to myself, I knew it cover to cover.

What's the appeal of genre for you?

I like the community more than anything, but the literature is fun too.

Who are some of your favorite authors or what are some of your favorite books?

I'm partial to Spider Robinson, Cat Valente, Tom Holt, Terry Pratchett, and Chris Moriarty, off the top of my head.

How did you get involved with Genreville?

Through Rose Fox, who was writing it on her own for a while.

How did you become director of marketing for Fantasy Magazine?

I emailed Cat Rambo when I heard she was looking.

What exactly is it that a director of marketing does?

I help with strategy for ad revenue, and I'm wokring on long term projects to get more readers, and keep the readers who're current around.

How did you get involved in marketing in the first place?

My last job was at at an internet marketing/advertising firm.

What are the qualities that make a good marketer?

Understanding who your target audience is, how to capture their attention, and how to keep it.

What's the reading culture like in Singapore? How did it shape your current opinions and tastes in books?

When I was there, it was pretty dismal, but I hear from Janet Chui and Jason Lundberg that it's getting better these days. I did get into Julian May in Singapore, which was interesting.

Where is home for you? (Singapore? New York? Neither? Both?)

Both, I think. More NY than Singapore these days. I'm out of touch with what it's like to live there anymore.

In your opinion, how is the Internet changing the speculative fiction scene?

It makes authors acesible in ways they never were before. These days having an internet persona can really help get you noticed. Of course, once you're noticed you still have to be good. And of course, the fanfic communities have grown a lot online. Even if no one is getting paid for it, and it's probably illegal, it's still speculative fiction, and it's got an incredibly dedicated community.

What change would you like to see take place in the genre?

I'd like to see it taken more seriously. The NY times treats it like a Cordon Bleu chef treats day old McDonalds.

In researching possible questions for this interview, Google fails me. Is it difficult to make a name for yourself in the publishing industry considering you have a football player doppelganger?

Get back to me in a few years. I'm only getting started!

Any advice for aspiring writers?

Understand that it'll probably take a while to get good. Be open to criticism, and don't assume that people who're successful got there through some sort of "secret handshake".

Anything else you want to plug?

Harry Connolly's Child Of Fire. It's the best new fantasy set in current day earth I've read. "Urban" fantasy is a hot commodity these days, and if Connolly improves at the same pace (or faster) than Jim Butcher, he's going to be quite popular.

Interview: Diana Rowland

Every Tuesday, I'll have an interview posted.

Diana Rowland is the author of Mark of the Demon.

Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what made you decide to try your hand at writing?

I’ve been writing since I was old enough to write, and I’ve always loved making up stories and writing scenes and adventures. The big step for me wasn’t so much deciding to write, but rather deciding that I wanted to try my hand at being a writer--as in trying to get people to pay money for my stories. And even with that, I don’t remember making a conscious decision to go for it. I think it was simply a steady progression from writing scenes and story fragments to writing complete stories and allowing other people to read them. Once I broke through that barrier of letting others read what I’d written it seemed only natural to do it some more!

Before writing Mark of the Demon, were you familiar with the urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre? What made you decide to foray into that field?

I’ve loved the whole concept of urban fantasy ever since reading Children of the Night by Mercedes Lackey almost twenty years ago. I went on to devour Tanya Huff, Neil Gaiman, and eventually Carrie Vaughn, Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison, and many many others. I have very eclectic reading tastes, but the core idea behind urban fantasy--that the story is based in something resembling the “real” world--has always appealed to me as an ideal form of escapism. And, since I enjoy reading the genre so much, it seemed only natural to write in it.

What was the road to publishing your first novel like? What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome?

Mark of the Demon wasn’t the first novel I wrote, though it’s the first one that made it to publication. (And the first one that deserved to make it to publication as well!) I wrote my first novel about fifteen years ago, and even though in retrospect I can see that it was terribly weak (imagine a novel filled with every possible epic fantasy trope you can think of) it was still a terrific book simply because it showed me that I could write a novel. I attended Clarion West in 1998 and upon my return to the real world I did what “everyone” said you were supposed to do: write and sell a bunch of short stories to improve your craft and make a name for yourself. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t the best advice for me--I don’t enjoy writing short fiction, and even though I managed to do well with a few stories, I lost some of my love for writing and ended up taking a several-year hiatus from the writing scene. I stopped trying to sell anything, and though I continued to write snippets and scenes when they came to me, I didn’t try to make anything resembling a “story.” Eventually I woke up and realized that I needed to get my head out of my ass, stop obsessing about short fiction and the market and “making a name”, and just go ahead and write another damn novel and have fun with it. By that time I had several years of law enforcement experience under my belt and urban fantasy was beginning to seriously take off as a genre. I started writing a book about cops and demons, and a few months later I had Mark of the Demon. At that point my time in the trenches with short fiction paid off, because I had a solid understanding of how the market and the publishing industry worked. I researched the market, queried agents, revised my pitch and queried some more, and eventually found terrific representation. Six months later, Mark of the Demon sold to Bantam!

How has your experience as a cop/detective/morgue assistant shaped the book?

How has it not shaped the book? Mark of the Demon is a police procedural/crime thriller at its heart, with the twists that there are arcane powers involved and that some of the characters aren’t human. But the procedures, routines, and interactions are taken from experiences I had in law enforcement and death investigation.

There's a couple of geek references in the novel. What made you decide to include them?

I’m a geek! Seriously. I am. I made a model of the Enterprise when I was in grade school. I wore a hat and scarf a la Doctor Who in high school. I played D&D until the wee hours in college. It felt somehow wrong not to include at least a passing nod to my geek heritage.

What promotional/marketing plans did you have for the launch of Mark of the Demon?

Pretty much all of my promotion and marketing was of the online variety. I’ve been a follower of several book review blogs for a couple of years now, and I figured that the most effective use of my time and energy would be to tap into that network. I sent emails to several bloggers whose sites I followed and enjoyed, asking if they’d be willing to review my book. Once those reviews started appearing, then I was thrilled to see that other bloggers began to show interest, and before I knew it I had a strong word-of-mouth buzz going on for the book. As I mentioned earlier, I have eclectic reading habits, so I knew that urban fantasy had an appeal that reached beyond the Science Fiction and Fantasy community--especially in Romance. And, since most of the bloggers I initially approached reviewed romance as well as urban fantasy, I think that helped considerably with reaching a broad swath of potential readers.

When you wrote the book, did you intend it to be a long series?

I guess that depends on how you define “long.” I certainly don’t want it to be an endless series that goes on for decades. There’s a definite ending to the overall story arc, and I know exactly what happens at that end. (I even know the title of the last book!) I’m not sure how many books it will take to get there, but I don’t intend to string readers along for dozens of books to find out.

What's in store for readers in Blood of the Demon?

Blood of the Demon picks up a couple of months after the end of Mark of the Demon. Kara is trying to cope with the aftermath of the Symbol Man investigation, she’s trying to figure out how she feels about FBI Agent Ryan Kristoff, her aunt is in an inexplicable coma, and a certain demonic lord wants to strike a dangerous deal with her. But something or someone is eating people’s souls and it’s up to Kara to find out if it can be stopped.

How is writing/editing your second novel different from the first one?

Blood of the Demon ended up being much harder to write than the first book. It didn’t help that I was about halfway through writing BotD when I decided to set it aside and work on something else. (This was when MotD was still on submission to publishers. It had been several months and I wasn’t sure if it was going to sell, and I was getting nervous about spending time working on the sequel to an unsold book.) So, when I came back to BotD I realized that the plot had some serious issues, and I ended up ripping out almost a third of it. I nearly missed my deadline (made it by hours!) and I learned some hard lessons about time management, and also learned what writing process works best for me.

How did you end up as a contributor for Magic District?

Actually, I somehow ended up being one of the creators! There are a number of terrific group blogs out there, and I was interested in doing something like that with other urban fantasy and/or up-and-coming authors. I contacted Greg van Eekhout--since he and I both had books coming out from Bantam--and asked him if he’d be interested in something like that. He supplied the name, I set up the website, and we both convinced a handful of other suckers, er, writers, to join in.

How did you end up covering the San Diego Comic Con for Suvudu? What was the experience like?

Purely by chance! It was my first time at Comic Con, and so I often took refuge at the Random House booth to get a break from the press of the crowds. The Suvudu gang was there, and when they saw me and Jackie Kessler standing around apparently doing nothing, they shoved a camera into our hands and thrust us back out to brave the crowds. But Jackie and I had an absolute blast doing it, and we hope to do it again next year!

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Don’t be afraid to take a break from writing. I hear all sorts of advice about how you should always write every single day, keep the butt in the chair, etc... And yes, that’s excellent advice for staying on track, but I think that if you start to dread opening up that file, or if you find ways to put off working on a story or project, you need to step back and ask yourself if you need a break or if you need to make a change. Sometimes you have to take the pressure off and let your mental muscles recover.

Anything else you want to plug?

I definitely want to encourage people to stop by The Magic District. Come by and see what everyone’s talking about! (Okay, maybe not everyone... but there are a couple of people talking about it. Probably. Possibly. Okay, most likely nobody’s actually talking about it, but you should still stop by the site and see what we’re up to.)