Zombonauts, a Word of Warning

I've always tried to be positive about the publications my work appears in. The reasons why should be obvious, but let's just set a few of them down:

The vast majority of magazines, whether print or online, are put together through the effort and time of talented people working from a genuine desire to showcase good fiction to their readers. On the rare occasions I've thought an editor didn't entirely pull that off, it's usually been clear that it wasn't for lack of trying. I'd much rather focus on the positives than nitpick the negatives when the positives are the product of hard work and the negatives are genuine mistakes.

Truthfully, I don't want to get a reputation for biting the hand that feeds. Editors are always taking a gamble on the writers they publish, however good they feel the writer or the particular story to be. I don't want anyone thinking that the gamble will be an even bigger one because I might turn around and rip their publication to shreds.

And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I've mostly been very happy with the publications I've been in. 

With all of that said, there's one other thing that I don't want to be known for, and that's encouraging people to buy things that I know are utterly below par. So, after much thought, I've decided the only thing I can do is to come out and say that I can't recommend anyone to buy the Zombonauts collection out recently from Library of the Living Dead Press. Frankly, it's been thrown together with a lack of care that borders on contempt for writers and readers alike. There are countless spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors, in places twenty or thirty a page, to the point where I can't imagine anyone did even a cursory proof read (though bizarrely, a proof reader is actually credited.) It's a mess, and worse, it's a mess with a $15.99 price tag.

It's a shame, because there are some neat stories in amidst all the dumb mistakes, not least of them my own Fear of a Blue Goo Planet. Luckily, that one at least is available here for free, in an excellent podcast from the guys at Chaos Theory: Tales Askew.

Zombonauts Lives ... FTA Anthologies, Less So

I discovered a couple of days ago that the Zombonauts anthology from Library of the Dead Press, which includes a reprint of my Fear of a Blue Goo Planet (podcast what seems an eon ago by Chaos Theory: Tales Askew) is now out to buy from Amazon.com. This unquestionably good bit of news was slightly spoiled by the fact that I found out not by my contributor copy turning up, or my payment for that matter, but because I happened to search for it in a moment of boredom. In fact it's been out since the back end of October, although apparently those early copies were plagued with a few (possibly undead-related) problems, hence the delay in contributor copies, etc. And hey, it's a neat-looking book. I realise this fact doesn't really come over from the miniaturised version here, so have a look on Amazon and appreciate it in all its gory glory. And check out the equally neat back cover while you're there. And, y'know, consider buying a copy.

I won't do any more plugging until I've actually seen it myself. But come on ... Zombies. In space. You know it makes sense.

A somewhat less cheering bit of news arrived the day after, when Kate Sanger e-mailed to let me know that the final two From the Asylum anthologies will not be seeing the light of day. Apparently spiralling costs got the better of the projects, and they will never be more than TOCs and a pair of awesome covers. This is particularly sucky news for me because I was in both of them. Still, you win some, you lose some, and what comes around gathers no moss, or some such philosphicalness.

No, it's still really sucky news.

Zombies ... in ... Space!!!

Some good news ... The Library of the Dead have picked up my Fear of a Blue Goo Planet - podcast what seems like a lifetime ago by Chaos Theory: Tales Askew - for publication in their forthcoming Zombonauts anthology. For those of you how aren't too good at working at neologisms, that means zombies in space, astronauts getting their faces chewed off, perhaps a few aliens being battered with their own severed limbs. What sane person could resist such a premise? And how often do you get to deal with an editor called Doctor Pus? I'm really looking forward to this one!

On a side note, it looks as though the two From the Asylum anthologies I'm in - the Best of Year and Things Aren't What They Seem - appear to be going ahead just fine. I'd been worried since the magazine folded earlier this year that they'd never see the light of day, so it's great to find that editor Katherine Sanger is still pushing ahead. FTA was a sad loss to the online small press, and it deserves a blaze of glory before it goes.