The Future is Futurequake

I'm getting a bit bored of mainstream comics lately.  In fact, I feel like mainstream comics are getting bored of mainstream comics; what other reason could there be for the endless reboots and reimaginings and re-whatever-the-hell-else's?  And for the first time since when I first got into comics way back when, it feels like all of the interesting stuff is happening elsewhere.  I mean, would anyone seriously argue these days that Marvel or DC are putting out better books than, say, Image?  Well, perhaps, but they'd be wrong.

In other news, the UK still has a comics industry.  Okay, maybe not an industry, but it still has more than enough talented creators to support one; all that's lacking is the publishers and the readership.  As far as I can judge, there's 2000AD and then there's Futurequake, and honestly, in my experience, your chances are a great deal better of getting published in the latter.  But you know what, that's okay, because Futurequake is seriously impressive in its own right, and has grown all the more so since I last had work in there a few years back.  It's a proper indy comic that looks as good as just about anything out there, and it's a hundred pages long, which makes for a particularly cheap graphic novel in this day and age.  And those pages are packed full of quirky, original work of the sort that's becoming so vanishingly rare in the world of comic books.

For example: Conservationists.  The first draft of my script dates back a heck of a way, and was one of those nonsensical ideas I never know when to let go of.  The short version is, what would an alien invasion look like from a nonhuman perspective?  In this case, the nonhuman is an urban fox just trying to get by, and in my original draft the invasion was very much background detail; after all, what would a fox give a damn?

Dave Evans, Futurequake head honcho, liked the notion but wanted to see a bit more action, and then Anthony Summey - who'd soon after because my co-conspirator on C21st Gods - was heavily into the alien designs and the violent, explodey stuff, and the end result was not a great deal like what I originally had in mind.  Which, lest it sound like I'm complaining, is undoubtedly a good thing.  What Anthony, and to a lesser extent Dave, nudged this little story towards being is a heck of a lot more fun than what I first envisaged, while still maintaining that core concept of how the alien annihilation of humankind would seem like much, much less of a big deal if you're weren't a human.

Should you be up for reading it, along with lots of other stories by a whole load of talented writers and artists, you can grab a copy of Futurequake 2017 from their website; it should be available by the time I post this or very soon after.

Short Fiction News, Mid-2014

I'm currently on the train back from Nine Worlds, which was for the most part a lot of fun, but which I'm at this precise moment too tired, hungover, and not-quite-sure-of-exactly-what-I-thought to try and blog about.  So here's one I prepared earlier...

I remember writing quite a grumbly post when I got my first short story acceptance of 2014, that being Twitcher to the fine folks at Pseudopod, thanks to the fact that it came in goddamn May and four and a bit months is a fair while to go without a sale.  (In fact it had been quite a bit more than that because the tail end of 2013 hadn't been exactly brilliant either.)  Well, it's August now and I'm grumbling substantially less.  In fact if things were to keep on like the last couple of months then I'd be happy indeed ... which of course they probably won't, so I'd better get my positivism in while I can:

- First up I sold Twilight For the Nightingale, the story I'd been unhelpfully referring to as my homoerotic supervillain story, to Resurrection House's forthcoming XIII anthology.  I'm hopeful that this will be one of those rare perfect pairings of story and market, because it sounds like it's going to be a terrifically bonkers book.  I mean, you know when editors normally say they want something a bit like Neil Gaiman or whatever?  Mark Teppo name-checked Kafka, Gene Wolfe, Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch.  I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on this one.

- Out of the blue I got some good news, not to mention a little unexpected cash, when Kat Rocha of 01 Publishing got in touch to say that the previously e-book only Whispers From the Abyss collection, which includes my My Friend Fishfinger By Daisy, Age 7, had done well enough to warrant a print edition.  As I've noted before now, this was a terrific little collection and deserves to do well.  I've since discovered that 01 have run a Kickstarter for the project, which has finished now but remains well worth checking out for its fantastic trailer.  If I wasn't due two copies as a contributor then I suspect this would have been the first Kickstarter I got actively involved with, because I want me a Star Spawn poster something bad.

- Soon after that I got my quickest ever acceptance, when relatively new outfit Eldritch Press got back to me within four hours to say that they'd like to take my story Br(other) for their upcoming Our World of Horror anthology.  I genuinely assumed this was some sort of mistake until the contract came through, because four hours.  That's barely even a real amount of time.  I mean, I've spent that long in the shower before now.  Anyway, if the cover art is anything to go by then this one is going by both great and seriously warped. 

- I realised that I might as well send one of the short comic scripts I've been sitting on for years to Futurequake, who published a couple of my early efforts in that department a few years back.  The one I opted for was a story called Conservationists,which I'm hopeful may be the only occasion of anyone telling an alien invasion story through the eyes of an urban fox.  It's a frankly insane, completely dialogue-free bit of work, and I can't wait to see what an artist makes of it.

- Last but not least, and unusually up to the minute in that I only found out three hours ago, but Jonathan Green, official Nicest Man in Fantasy (and yet, paradoxically, the world's meanest Just a Minute player), let me know that he'll be using my The Shark in the Heart for his forthcoming-next-year-from-Snow Books anthology Sharkpunk. 

Because yes, apparently, now that's a thing.

So there we go.  I'm still way behind on my target for this year, which should theoretically be going really well due to all the additional time I have and in fact is going worse than last year, when I had hardly any time at all.  But a couple of good months surely does take the edge off, and who knows?  There may yet come another surge of goodnewsery before the year is out.