Attack on activist flotilla - Lavie responds

Just a quick one. My pal Lavie Tidhar has been posting on his blog in response to Israel's internal PR response to attack on the activist flotilla. Take a look.

C'est Lavie

Earlier in the month, that globetrotter Lavie Tidhar (currently sunning himself in Vietnam) announced a three-book deal with Harper Collins' SF imprint Angry Robot. They're going to be publishing The Bookman series, in Lavie's words, "...a kind of steampunk adventure novel with automatons, giant lizards, poets, pirates, airships and, you know... STUFF"

And from the Angry Robot press release:

In The Bookman, a masked terrorist of that name brings London society practically to a standstill by placing bombs inside books. After several atrocities against London’s theatres, he outdoes himself with an audacious attack on the blessing of the launch of the first expedition to Mars (by giant cannon!). For young poet Orphan, it seems his destiny is entwined with that of the shadowy terrorist, and so it turns out to be.

Like a steam-powered take on V for Vendetta, rich with satire and slashed through with wild adventure, this is book one of a series that will run to at least three volumes. The Bookman will be published by Angry Robot in Spring 2010, with sequels to follow at nine-month intervals.

Couldn’t have happened to a better man. Also congratulations to Aliette de Bodard, who has a similar deal and like Lavie has certainly paid her dues in the indie press.

Apex have also plumped to pick up Lavie’s weird spy thriller-fantasy An Occupation of Angels (published in the UK by Pendragon Press) and publish it for the first time in the US.

Curtain call

Fifteenth and final edition of Serendipity is alive. This is a 'best of' collection, and in it you'll find stories from, among others, Patrick Samphire, one Aliya Whiteley, Lavie Tidhar, Hal Duncan, E Nesbit and The Brothers Grimm, plus a few more. A great story each and every one.

If you want to buy some books

Lavie Tidhar points out Apex are struggling at the moment. They have a forthcoming book from Paul Jessup, which I'm sure will be worth a punt, and of course they publish Lavie's excellent Hebrew Punk, which should be on everyone's book shelf. Free shipping if you're in the US and spend over $25 too.

Here's a call-to-aid from publisher Jason Sizemore:

"The economy has taken a huge bite out of Apex Publications. Starting with Bear Stearns dying, you can see an immediate drop in our revenue (September/October/November/December). December has been the worst with a drop of 75% in revenue compared to the August numbers.

The recession hit at the worst time possible. I literally have spent every penny in the coffers doing things like: reimbursing old lifetime subscribers (and yes, there are a couple of you still waiting on money), paying back the Apex Digest printer $12,000 (done, huzzah!), reprinting and reshipping stolen copies of I REMEMBER THE FUTURE (goodbye $600), replacing almost 90 USPS damaged ORGY OF SOULS hardcovers to Horror-Mall (goodbye $2000). I'm not asking for pity. This stuff happens to good people and bad. But stuff happening with the downturn in the economy has the Apex bank account crying for mercy.

What this means is that Apex Publications needs an influx of revenue. Quick.

What this means is that if you've ever thought of buying an Apex book, now would be a damn good time to do so.

The most effective, easiest and most fun way to pump some blood into Apex is to buy a book directly from our store. You get damn fine literature (and free media shipping if your order is $25 or more (applies to US orders only)).

If you're strapped of cash, then blog about our books or authors and try to coerce people into giving us a try.

I figure we need about $2500 in revenue over the next two weeks.

Remember:
We're taking pre-orders on The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey, Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup, and The Monster Within Idea by R. Thomas Riley.

Catacombs and Photographs by Brandy Schwan is now available and all pre-orders have been shipped.

All back issues of Apex Digest are half-priced."

Dick and Jane and Neil too

Yesterday I received my contributor's copy of A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults. This is a fun/peculiar and extremely dark little collection of stories. As I've previously mentioned, it's exclusive to members of the British Fantasy Society, but if you're interested in getting hold of a copy without membership, it may be worth contacting them. As well as my piece, which if I was feeling self-aggrandizing I'd perhaps describe as a mini-Shakespearean tragedy, but if I was feeling realistic I might go as far as saying it's a crime story, there are some clever stories from Conrad Williams, James Lovegrove, Adam Roberts and Liz Williams, among others. The book's edited by Lavie Tidhar.

Dick, Jane and the Beatniks, man

Lavie Tidhar, he of travelling and science fiction short story fame (he has the lead story in the current issue of Interzone), quite some time back commissioned a load of stories for his Dick & Jane Primer for Adults. The stories come from folks like Adam Roberts, Conrad Williams, James Lovegrove, and son. There's an absolutely cracking story from Liz Williams and, yes, this isn't all about the altruism as there's a story from me in there too. Well, it is finally be published, in June, but only available to members of the British Fantasy Society. I'm assuming it will be mailing out with Prism, their magazine.

In other news, it looks like back in August of last year, hepcat online litzine the Beat published one of my stories. They may have told me about it, but if they did, I forgot. You can read it for free anyway, and it's quite good. It's called The Flautist.

Where I’m at

I vividly remember writing my first story, fan fiction for The Biskits, when I was five or six. My hair was really rather long for a young boy. I followed this up the year after with my first proper story, about a family of toothbrushes, one of whom falls out of the beaker where they live and has to be rescued (a pulley system made of dental floss would have been the preferred method, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t feature in the story). This wasn’t published but did earn a gold star and smiley face.

I got the writing bug again when I had my first exposure to a proper computer, as opposed to an arcade machine of Atari games console, and wrote an anthropomorphic story about a fox and a squirrel living in some nice woods. Hair was still relatively long. This was also the year I had my first published piece appear in Marvel’s Transformers comic. It was a pseudonymous letter in which I pointed out lots of typos.

When I was sixteen I started growing my hair and had my first ‘poem’ published in an anthology by Poetry Now. From 1997 until 2000 I was in a band that never was and my very long hair was not cut very often, although bits of it did turn a shade of blue. I also wrote lots of pretty good alt-punk songs with a friend and worked as a dog trainer for Battersea Dogs’ Home.

New millennium, new start. I met and moved in with my wife-to-be and got my first office job, wrote Nicolo’s Gifts and had several short stories published. A year or so later I had my first paid-for story published by 3LBE and had a story included in Bluechrome’s first anthology. Sam Hayes won the competition for best story. Bluechrome also published Nicolo’s Gifts, which a few agents rejected and which wasn’t quite so terrible as I like to make out but was in dire need of editing

The next couple of years saw more short stories published, and several others not published. I started work on a new book as soon as I finished Nicolo’s Gifts and this book remains my skull-on-the-shelf-elephant-in-the-room. With a colleague I set up Fragment, a nice online PDF zine before devoted to music and short stories and it also dawned on me what bad a writer I am so I join a writing group. This is around the time Aliya and I started emailing and I met Lavie Tidhar, for whom I reviewed some small press titles on the defunct Dusk site.

2005 saw the publication of Book of Voices, an anthology I project managed for Flame Books, with Sierra Leone PEN’s founder Mike Butscher (now on the International PEN board) as front-man. The aim of it was to raise awareness about the work of Sierra Leone PEN, which it did relatively successfully. The book had stories from, amongst others, Patrick Neate, Gregory Norminton, Tanith Lee and Jeffrey Ford, as well as an introduction by Caryl Philips. It also got a great review in the Irish Times and a cover blurb from David Mitchell (the Cloud Atlas one, not the Peepshow one).

I arranged the launch of the book at the Royal Festival Hall, pre-refurbishment, and got it included as part of the BBC’s Africa Season. Aminatta Forna gave a rousing speech at the launch, there were readings, the British Council paid for contributor Brian James to be flown over from Freetown and everyone had wine and orange juice. If I make no other significant contribution to the arts during my lifetime, I at least did this.

This was also the year The Elastic Book of Numbers was released, within which I had a story. The book won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. I also wrote a novelette with Ekaterina Sedia, which is first accepted by someone that wants to give us money for it, then changes their mind, then another, nicer, publisher accepts it, but then folds. (Ed: We now have someone willing to put this out for us. Watch this space.)

After all this I start a blog, which I’m useless at maintaining, so I go on holiday and change job and while I’m away Aliya fills in on the blog. We decide to share the blog. Sharing a blog kind of works, so we decide to share a short story. It kind of works too, and gets accepted for publication, so we write another one.

After promising not to do anymore distracting side projects, I start Serendipity with Ben Coppin, who published one of my stories in Darker Matter, his previous zine.

The publisher for mine and Aliya’s first story folds, but not before I have harangued her into writing a full-blown novel with me. Besides, the second story we wrote is accepted for publication anyway.

Now the first co-written book is finished and here were are. Aliya has a world-class agent, a three-book hardback deal with trade paperback agreement for the second book, critical acclaim in the British broadsheets and some low-grade genre writer attempting to hitch a ride on her coat-tails.