Short Story News, September 2017

Well, it has to be said that 2017 is turning into a horrible year for short story sales, which is frustrating to say the least, if only because I'm pretty sure that I'm sending out some of the best fiction I've ever written.  But the compensation is that, for the moment at least, I still have stuff coming out in some very cool venues.

Taking things in reverse order, May saw my somewhat Lovecraftian, somewhat Howardesque sword and sorcery story Now That All the Heroes Are Dead come out from Read Short Fiction.  It's a thoroughly screwed-up tale, if I do say so, with a lot of subtext about who generally ends up doing the dirty work and why, in fantasy worlds or elsewhere; I guess the clue's at least partly there in the title.  Anyway, it's fairly short and it's free to read, so why not take a look?  And if you never quite trust traditional sword and sorcery stories afterwards then don't blame me, they were never that trustworthy in the first place.

Next we have my only comics work of the year, and something that's been slowly coalescing for absolutely years, mine and my C21st Gods co-creator Anthony Summey's short strip Conservationists in this year's Futurequake anthology.  I've already talked about this one quite a bit, so I'll just add that as of last month it's available on Comixology at a really reasonable price - see here - and that I was hugely pleased to come across a review that singled Conservationists out.  I was convinced no-one would get this one, what with dialogue-free alien invasion stories with animals as protagonists not exactly being a major subgenre, so it's nice that at least one reader responded to what Anthony and I cooked up.

(Speaking of reviews: there have been a few for Horror Library volume 6, but the only one I managed to keep a note of was this one, for reasons that will become apparent if you read it.  All right, yeah, the reviewer picks Casualty of Peace as their favourite story in the collection.  But it's also a really thorough review, so there.)


July also saw my personal highlight for this year on the short fiction front, my second appearance in a Flame Tree Publishing anthology.  I can't stress how stupidly gorgeous these are!  I suspect my biggest regret when I die will be that I didn't somehow figure out a way to wrangle a story into every single one of them, because they're some of the nicest books I've ever seen; at any rate, to be in not one but two of them has been a huge thrill.  This time around, it's The Sign in the Moonlight - lead story of the eponymous short story collection - in their Lost Worlds collection, and I'm up against such vaguely prestigious sorts as Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.  Oh, and those Howard and Lovecraft blokes I plugged earlier.  Seriously though, these books are absolutely fantastic, and if you're into classic genre fiction then you owe it to yourself to track them down.

Which brings us up to the present day, and the podcasting of my flash horror piece My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy Aged 7 at 

YA market Cast of Wonders.  As much as I was ever so slightly disappointed that they didn't manage to find an actual seven year old girl to read it, I'm happy to settle for Head Editor Marguerite Kenner's take; as I pointed out to her afterwards, I know how hard it is to read this grammatically challenged little story out loud, and Marguerite does a fine job.  You can hear it here.

Lastly, I have a couple more stories pending at what's basically my authorial home now, Digital Fiction Publishing - those being Twitcher on the horror front, first published in Pseudopod, and SF story Free Radical, which appeared in the Second Contacts anthology a year or two back.  Sad to say, with me now slush-reading on both the fantasy and science-fiction sides, I've had to bar myself from submitting due to the blatant conflict of interest!  Still, it's been a heck of a run, and I'm really proud to have so much work with what's become, out of nowhere, the most consistently excellent reprint market around.  And yeah, I'm horrendously biased, but that doesn't make it any the less true.

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.

Ten Things the Small Press Can Do As Well (Or Better) Than the Professional Press, Part 2: Artwork

I pretty much always judge a book by its cover.

What else am I supposed to judge it by?  It's not like I can read it before I buy it.  But even if I could, I'd still be wary of any story that was trapped behind a lousy piece of art.  Because my gut instinct tells me that anyone who truly, devotedly, unconditionally cares about their product gets everything as near to right as they can.  If the cover looks like it was drawn by a six year old with nothing better to do, how can I expect the editor to put care into anything else?  How can I trust them to present me with a story I would want to read, in a format I could stand to read it in?

I know that's unfair.  I realise how unreasonable it is to ask anyone to get everything right, and how next-to-impossibly difficult it is to do in practice.  There's only ever so much time or money or energy.  But that isn't going to stop me judging books by their covers.  Because, like I said, how else can I judge?

If cover art is a big deal for books, it's even more important for magazines.  Even the most well-informed reader is unlikely to be familiar enough with all the writers a magazine publishes to buy solely on the promise of its content.  A cover, a piece of banner art, is the bridge that lets a reader know that here's something they're willing to invest time in, that's worth their time.  It's first contact.  And you only have to get it wrong once to lose a reader for ever.

I think that's an obvious point, though, and something most serious editors get right to a greater or lesser degree.  In my experience, the magazines and sites that neglect artwork altogether rarely last that long.  What's perhaps trickier is interior art or, for web-zines and podcasts, story-specific and other more transitory pieces.  I suspect there's often a feeling that this is something to be skimped on, a money-sink that isn't really that necessary in the first place.  If someone's hooked enough to be reading, they probably don't need to be seduced with pretty pictures.

There's probably a degree of sense to that.  But here's another one of my readerly traits: I fear full pages of text.  Oh, I can manage one or two, maybe even half a dozen, but an entire magazine's worth?  Hell, no.  Nor do I think I'm alone in this.  One of the biggest trends in publishing over the last half-century has been a drift towards more white space, larger fonts, clearer typefaces, shorter paragraphs, more dialogue ... in short, towards breaking the page down, moving away from a page-sized chunk of cramped text.  Call it dumbing down if you will, but if, like me, you tend to read in low light and your eyesight sucks, it's a blessing.

This is a big point, and one I'll be coming back to it in at least one more of these article thangs, so for the moment I'll just say this: I love an editor who thinks about my poor strained eyes.  Really, I want to hug them. I would love them even if they were only randomly inserting pictures of their wife and kids (in fact, possibly more so.)  I like to look at cool pictures of spaceships and crazy monsters and ladies in furry bras wielding broadswords, but my number one requirement is that I get to the end of a magazine no more blind than when I started.  Anything that breaks the page up makes me that bit happier.

So ... onto the vaguely-useful observations bit.  See?  It's even bullet-pointed.

• Artwork doesn't have to be expensive.  It doesn't have to cost anything except the time and effort of attracting artists and offering them a spotlight.  As evidence, I offer Futurequake Press, a venue that's won awards without paying its exceptionally talented artistic fold in anything more than exposure and love.  Because in my experience, artists aren't that different from writers.  They want similar things.  They'll work for the promise of an audience.  They like to be told how great their work is.

• That above was a good hint.  A quick and easy way to find talented artists who'll work for little or nothing is to look at the indy comics press.  An art-heavy magazine like Murky Depths is a worthwhile stop-off too.  I know there are fantastic artists out there who'll put huge amounts of time into anything that will make their CV that bit better because I've been making comics with them.

• Anything is better than nothing.  There are many, many sites that provide copyright-free art and photographs*.  So long as it's in a good enough resolution that it doesn't pixelate, where's the harm?

•  When I said "anything that breaks the page up"?  I meant anything.  I'm perfectly happy to see good-quality, eye-catching adverts for products that might potentially interest me as a genre-fiction reader.  By which I mean, not Viagra or Kalashnikovs.  Personally, I think ad-swapping and banner-swapping are great ideas.  Free advertising for both parties, and free graphics to boot.

• If you're going to review a book, film or computer game, why not include an image of the cover / poster art?  More free graphics, less blocky text.  Easy win!

I don't doubt that are plenty more quick, cheap and relatively painless ways to art up a magazine or webzine, but those are the ones that occurred to me on the spur of the moment.  And each and every one of them have, on some past occasion, made me like a magazine that little bit more.


* Not to say photography isn't art, like.

Duncan Kay Draws the Heck of My Brain Droppings (Part 1)

I wrote a little last week about my recent adventures in the heady world of small press comics, and particularly about my work - both past and hopefully future - with the brilliantly talented Duncan Kay.  Afterwards, I realised it would have been nice to spruce up the post with some of Duncan's work (and Bob Molesworth's too, for that matter, but hopefully you'll get to see that once we get Endangered Weapon B out there).

So I checked with Duncan, and he's cool with the idea, which is good news because it would be a hell of a shame if we were the only two to get to see these.  Duncan's an excellent sequential artist, but I think he'd agree that it's concept and design stuff like this that he truly blows out of the water.

First up, then, here are some colour concepts for the strip that recently appeared in Futurequake Press's Something Wicked imprint.

Above, left and right, we have some sketches for three nerdy henchman cultists.  I gave Duncan next to no direction in the script here, but he absolutely nailed the idea: I love the thrown-together uniforms, particularly the robe / sneaker combinations.  I can totally believe that these are guys who'd practise occultism in their basement really badly.

For that matter, I can believe that this guy, the Head Cultist (aka Derek), would be the one to encourage them to do it.  I'm not convinced he'd actually be able to summon spooky green fire, though.  He may look a bit sinister, but those sandals are an even more misguided robe accoutrement than sneakers, so it's clearly all a put on.  My guess is that it's actually something he's knocked up out of lime jelly.  Or maybe he's so desperate to look cool that he's set his hand on fire - something I think we've all been guilty of once in a while.

"The Dark One will cleanse!"  Yes indeed.

Lastly, and my personal favourite - to the point where I framed it and put it on my bookcase - we have the Monster Baby. 


Again, I don't think anyone could have done a better job of capturing the script's vague concept of something at once eye-wateringly cute and completely repulsive.  I never know whether I want to hug this little guy or kick him into a ditch.  Maybe both.

Anyway, that's The Unleashing of the Ineffectual covered.  Hopefully next week I'll get round to compiling Duncan's sketches for Endangered Weapon B.

Some Comic News

While there hasn't been a heck of a lot happening on the prose front lately that I haven't already posted about -well, except for the ginormous bit of news that I can't mention yet - there have been a few fun and interesting developments on the comics front.

I've talked a few times about my script Endangered Weapon B, which has had a troubled existence so far, to say the least.  The gist of that backstory is that I wrote it for Futurequake Press's imprint Mangaquake, the editor there picked it up but suggested some major alterations - expanding the story and changing the titular protagonist from a panda because some other studio did a lot of books with pandas in - and then, months later, told me it wouldn't be getting published after all because Mangaquake had folded.

So that sucked.  But not to be defeated ... well, actually, I did kind of give up for a while there, since there aren't a heck of a lot of places that take short comic scripts, to say the least.  After a few months, though, I got around to doing a bit of market research, and discovered the neat-looking Underfire Comics.  I sent Endangered Weapon to the editor there, Bob Molesworth, and he also really liked it.

A month or two after that, I was contact by Duncan Kay, who did a completely brilliant job of illustrating my story The Unleashing of the Ineffectual for the recently-released Something Wicked #6.  Duncan asked if I had anything going and I mentioned Endangered Weapon.  Duncan liked the script too, and said that he'd like to draw it, which was fine with me.

Then some more time passed, I likely got distracted by something shiny, and before anyone knew any better it was last month.  Duncan got back in touch again to say that he'd started on some concept sketches, and at that point I figured I'd better get in touch with Bob again to see what was what.

At which point, I found out that Bob had finished drawing, colouring and lettering my script.  And that he'd done a ridiculously great job of it.

Since, due to me shabby lack of research, I had no idea that Bob was even an artist, this came as a bit of a surprise.  A good surprise, though, all told, since like I said it looks fantastic, and especially since Duncan was cool about the whole thing and suggested that rather than pass up on the opportunity to work together again we start thinking about putting together some kind of comics collective and involving all his hugely talented professional artist mates in it.

So the upshot is that Endangered Weapon B is pretty much finished and just waiting while we figure out how to get it out there, and that I've been insanely busy attempting to churn out scripts that Duncan and his mates can draw. Which, considering that a month ago this whole comics thing was little more than a fun sideline, is both interesting and quite exciting.  Will it come to anything?  Well, I hope so, and there's plenty of enthusiasm going around, so I'd say that right now the signs are good.

Endangered Weapon Faces Extinction

Some bad news this week, perhaps as mean-spirited cosmic penance for the week-before-last's truly awesome news: Mangaquake, the Futurequake Press comic that was to be publishing my strip Endangered Weapon B, is sadly no more.  This is a big loss for the ever-dwindling UK small press and a blow for anyone who likes stories about bears in robot armour pumelling Nazi space dolphins on the moon - which I guess is realistically just me. 

Well, the world may never know what it's missing, because I have absolutely idea where else to send it.  I will of course have a dig around, and hopefully find a new home for Endangered Weapon.  Kidding aside, I think it's a really strong script, and I'm not ready to give up on it just yet.  If anyone reading this knows of anywhere that might be interested in ten pages of somewhat Manga-inspired comedy sci-fi featuring grizzly on dolphin violence then I'd be hugely grateful.  Likewise, if anyone with comic art experience fancies a rather surreal illustrating challenge then please get in touch, either by leaving a comment or e-mail me at contact@davidtallerman.net.

Mangaquake Do Their Bit For Endangered Species

Just when I was thinking that the good news had dried up for the month, Richmond Clements - editor of Futurequake Press's Mangaquake - got in touch to say that, yes, he'd like to use my script Endangered Weapon P. It's the touching tale of a an insane professor, his kidnapped prospective wife, Nazi dolphins and the titular endangered weapon, who will have to remain a suprise for the moment because I've inadvertently found myself stepping on the black-and-white fuzzy toes of an established property. Richmond has suggested a quick species change for my protagonist, lest we both get sued, and I'm happy to consent. He's also asked that I decompress it a bit and give the story more room to breath. More pages of demented, Nazi-dolphin bashing madness? Yeah, I think I can stretch to that.

While I'm here, a link that I meant to post over the weekend: Mr Howell's title, Why science fiction authors just can't win, says it all - and it needs saying. Genre literature has never been more significiant or influential, sci-fi has never been more prevalent in film and television, and yet a writer like Margaret Atwood can still raise her nose at the very notion of her work being science-fiction and ninety-nine percent of the mainstream literary establish will rush to clap her on the back. Come on, people! To the barricades!

End of August News: Part 2

Being, as the name suggests, a contination of yesterday's rambling:

I had a novel experience at the back end of last week, in that I submitted a story for one magazine and had it accepted for a totally different one. I sent in my Feeler - a cheery tale of an empathic counsellor struggling under the weight of other people's pain, and her quest to hang on to a little sanity - to Tyree Campbell at Aoife's Kiss, which featured my The Burden of Kings not so long ago. Mr Campbell decided to accept it, but for Sam's Dot Publishing's new imprint Shelter of Daylight. Expect to see it in April of next year.

Finally, I just received the artwork for my comic strip The Unleashing of the Ineffectual, forthcoming from Futurequake Press, from artist Duncan Kay. Duncan's been teasing me with character sketches and suchlike for months, one of which was so damn neat that it's currently sitting framed on top of my bookcase, and the final product doesn't disappointment. No idea yet when it will actually see the light of day, but I'll post when I know more.