Writing
Etched Deep & Other Dark Impressions – New Collection – Free Promo
I have put together what I think will become one of my most important collections. The title story, “Etched Deep,” is a good example. This is a very short story that originally was published in THIN ICE #7 decades ago. I lost the story, but it stuck with me, and later on I rewrote it from memory, in a more modern voice, and it’s stronger. These are stories that I believe in. Some of them were buried in themed anthologies, or in books and magazines where I appeared alongside much more popular authors and was delegated to the “And Others” land I have spent so many years in. A couple among these are borderline literary fiction, and at least one has been rejected more than one time for being “too literary”. I’ll leave it to readers to figure out which one.
There are also a couple of very old stories in the book. I’ve tried not to change them very much, but when you edit your old work, even trying just to proof read it, there is only so much you can stand. The point is, you’ll find a couple of rougher pieces here, but I wanted to include them to give them another shot at a new group of readers.
There are fourteen stories in this book, and I added fourteen poems as well. These are an even wider variety, spanning many, many years. There is a poem I wrote very early in my relationship with Trish, there is the only known poem by the famous Angus Griswold (as well as one story, “One Off From Prime,” that has never been published prior to this book, and that features Angus as a character. There are some of the poems I wrote for the three-word poetry challenges that Rain Graves invented – I’m given any three words and have to find a poem in my head that uses them all. I love that game.
Here are the contents. Starting on Tuesday, January 31st, this collection will be FREE ON AMAZON for three days. It runs from Tuesday through Thursday, and I am hoping the promotion will help find me some new readers for my other books… Also included in this collection is Chapter One of “My Soul to Keep,” the Donovan DeChance origin story.
SHORT STORIES INCLUDED:
Through an Eyeglass, Darkly
Fear of Flying
Moving On
One Off From Prime
Headlines
Waynes World
Redemption
Swarm
The Purloined Prose
SHIFT
Pretty Boys in Blue, and Long Hair Dangling
To Strike a Timeless Chord
Etched Deep
Unique
Also included are the poems: The Acropolis, Clamdigger, Cuttlefish Squeezings, Thanatology, A Poem of Adrian, Gray, The Fishmonger, Revelation, Loch Ness, Mirrored Hearts, Dark Man, Banished, End of Days, & Longhaired Puppies.
Publishers – What is, and Isn’t One
Recently I’ve been asked several questions by authors I hope to work with that have actually saddened me. How much will it cost me – directed at anything a publisher should be doing for their authors – gets me every time. It should cost you nothing. If a publisher tries to tell you to pay for your own cover, your own editor, or any part of the process (and this includes scanning and reconstructing a book that they plan on publishing in digital) – they aren’t a publisher. They are in business making money OFF of writers, not for them.
Traditionally publisher paid advances. At Crossroad Press we don’t do that. We have opted to keep our overhead as low as possible and to give the lion’s share of all money made to the authors. We do not charge for covers. We do not expect authors to kick in on anything, in fact. Authors create, and publishers provide that creativity to the public – hopefully to make money first for the author, and THEN for themselves. If this is skewed the other direction, you can pretty much rest assured that the “publisher” has their own interest at heart.
So, just to be clear, there is a message here. If a publisher wants to publish your work, it is THEIR job to get the cover, convert the book, edit the book – not yours. I actually heard today of an e-mail from a publisher who claimed it was no longer the responsibility of publishers to market the works of their authors? Really? How then do you suppose money will be made?
Just as the Internet has created a lot of authors, it has created a lot of “publishers”. Make sure you know your own goals when you approach them. If all you want is a book with your name on it, publish it yourself and keep what little return you get. If you go with an actual publisher, don’t pay them to publish you – that’s the same as doing it yourself, except more expensive with less return.
End very short rant. I guess I just don’t understand greed very well. I recognize it, but I don’t understand it.
-DNW
John Rosenman – Quietly Awesome for Decades
I wanted to take a day out today and direct you all to a friend and colleague of mine, Dr. John B. Rosenman. John and I met at a writing group long ago in Virginia Beach. We were two of the members of the group who wrote horror – most of the others were (at the time) fantasy and Sci-fi oriented, and the whole shooting match was led by the talented and (often) wise Mr. Richard Rowand, who eventually edited STARSHORE Magazine and published my first important story.
Anyway…through those years, and all of those between (decades) John has been writing stories and novels and finding them homes. He may be the single most dedicated writer I’ve ever met. He’s always working on a story, reworking an idea, searching for flaws where too many other writers would hit send and move on…and he has produced some remarkable stories. He has appeared in literally hundreds of magazines and anthologies, and has a number of novels to his credit, and I’m hoping this little nudge will encourage you to check some of them out.
I will point you specifically at two Sci-Fi novels that we have published at Crossroad Press. Both of these were previously published, but we were fortunate enough to pick them up. John writes novels on a sweeping scale. There are messages and socially significant sub-themes in his alien cultures, and deep emotional insights in his romance. While they qualify, probably, as space opera, they go beyond that. Here are the two we’ve published to date. Read them and let me know if I’m not right!
Aaron Okonkwo, a Nigerian scientist, travels with a crew in the 24th century to evaluate Viridis, which proves to be a beautiful and fabulous world. There, Aaron discovers a strange, alien species and amazing machines and technology left in a vast underground complex by a mysterious race called the Creators.
Aaron soon falls under the irresistible, seductive spell of Nightsong, a green alien female with ominous and bewitching powers. However, an even greater danger rises. He will be forced to fight for the planet’s survival against a ruthless invasion of many ships to conquer and enslave the planet – just as Africa itself was once enslaved. Aaron knows it’s A Senseless Act of Beauty to try to reclaim his ancient warrior heritage and fight back against such overwhelming odds, but he knows he must try. - $2.99
Killer angels are roaming outer space looking for their messiah. If Captain Latimore can’t make them believe he’s the one, everyone on his crew – and many more besides – will die.
Captain Eric Latimore leads a four-person crew to Lagos to investigate a previous team’s mysterious disappearance. Once there, he discovers that an ominous alien presence is invading their dreams. Each member of his crew has the same dream – huge, seductively beautiful “angels” speak to them telepathically.
The creatures strand his crew on the planet and only Latimore can free them – if he survives. $2.99.
-DNW
Nanowrimo and Story Updates
I make daily updates on the official Facebookpage about what’s going on with the Nanowrimo writing…but I figured I’d sort it out here at a little more length for those who might be (understandably) getting confused.
THE PLAN: Write the next Donovan DeChance novel – Kali’s Tale. This novel is the story of the young female vampire who was part of Vein’s posse in the novel Vintage Soul. She was brought “to the blood” violently and against her will, and as her rage builds, she is called to perform what the vampires of my little universe call “the blood quest” – in which she travels back to North Carolina to destroy the one who created her. Naturally, these usually go south, as the creator is older, faster, stronger…thus she is not going alone. She is accompanied by Vein, Bruno, and Bones. Still, as it turns out, her creator is not just old … he is nearly ancient. Top that off with a few other secrets he hasn’t shared with the world, and you get classic “imbalance” in the universe… but wait! That makes it a job for…Donovan Dechance.
Donovan and Amethyst head off to NC to sort of look on from the shadows and help when they can. Along the way Amethyst and the young vampires run into a problem in Memphis Tennessee, and Donovan makes a side trip to consult with an old friend, Geoffrey Bullfinch, who has recently become a full-fledged agent of the newly formed O.C.L.T. – thus tying the two worlds together.
That was the plan.
The PROBLEM with the plan was that in the first few chapters I planned a short flashback where Donovan would finally reveal his past to Amethyst – how he became who, and what he is, and why. This, of course, turned into a lot more than a quick flashback. It turned into a 21,000 word novella that I cut OUT of Kali’s Tale and will publish first, and separately. The rough of that is finished, and I’m now 20k or so into Kali’s Tale proper, with all the primary characters finally getting on the road and leaving San Valencez behind.
For those of you worried about it, do not fear. I will be finishing up Killer Green very shortly as well – at least the rough draft – and then (hopefully) Tattered Remnants – a long-time project that has been sitting too long. Somewhere in there I will find time to edit all of these. Welcome to the world where time ran out and we keep going anyway.
At 41,000 words for the month…the end of Nanowrimo is in site.
Onward!
The Call of Distant Shores – New Collection
My new collection, The Call of Distant Shores, is out now in digital. You can buy it already at Crossroad Press & Smashwords, and it will be live in the next 24 or so hours at Amazon & Barnes & Noble. I thought I’d post the Author’s Introduction here…
Author’s Introduction
A lot of authors of dark fantasy and horror will cite H. P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Hugh Cave, and Manly Wade Wellman as influences on their writing. Clark Ashton Smith is another name you’ll hear, and in this volume, you’ll find my tribute to that great talent, as well as a number of others that dip into the wells of darkness and magic – a world I’m familiar with from endless hours of reading, dreaming, and spilling my own words onto the page.
I have never considered myself a huge fan of Lovecraft. Pulp writing, in general, appealed to me when I was much younger, and in the middle years of my writing career, I pushed it aside. I was, of course, deluding myself. When someone pointed out to me that I actually had a body of work loosely fitting this sub-genre of horror / dark fantasy that was probably enough for a book, I laughed. Then I looked. Then I stopped laughing. What I found was that these writers – these storytellers I grew up with and believed I’d left behind me – were responsible for a huge chunk of my output as a writer. There are elder gods, ancient evils, and everything that attends them walking the corridors of my creative consciousness, and that reader was correct. There was more than enough to make a book.
I also note that, of all my works, most of my favorites, and some that have garnered critical notice, are among the stories you are about to read. “The Call of Distant Shores,” the title piece of this collection, is one of my most popular stories to date, and Cockroach Suckers, which is more recent and set near my current home town in the fictional Old Mill, North Carolina, could not be more Lovecraftian without being set in New England.
Anyway…there are a lot of words ahead – a lot of images – a lot of nightmares. I hope you’ll enjoy them, and I dedicate them to those authors who have gone before, paving the way for an ever-widening realm of new worlds and deep-rooted fears.
Welcome to my nightmares.
-David Niall Wilson
4/9/2011
.99 Promo / Sale On the Third Day & Defining Moments
I’ve started a new promotional “plan” wherein I’m talking about one of my books a week on Facebook, here, and Twitter. In conjunction with this, I’ve decided that – whatever the book of the week is – I’ll put it on a ten day .99 sale during the time I’m talking about it.
The purpose of this entire promotion is to raise awareness of my work. I hope the stories, histories, anecdotes and notes on my writing process will intrigue people and make them want to read the books. I also hope that, the lower price will entice some people who are not familiar with my work to give it a try – and to generate more feedback, discussion (and hopefully reviews) for the books as I progress.
That said…here are the various links to where you can get ON THE THIRD DAY and DEFINING MOMENTS for .99 between now and the 15th. I added in On the Third Day, which was last week’s book, because the idea of the lowered sale price only just occurred to me last night – and I want that book to have a shot at new readers too. Here are links that give you a search of all my available titles at each of the following sites. The price at Amazon takes a day or so to catch up with the change I made…everywhere else the .99 is already in effect. You’ll have to scroll through my titles to find the two that are on sale at each site:
GO! BROWSE! BUY! READ! Join me on FACEBOOK to discuss Defining Moments this week – or to discuss my writing or any of my books any time.
-DNW
Defining Moments – The Author’s Preface
Back when DEFINING MOMENTS was about to be published, I sat down and wrote an author’s preface to the collection. The preface gives a bit of insight into each story included in the book. At the time, I didn’t know the book would get me another Bram Stoker nomination (two actually) or that one of the stories would actually win me the award for short fiction – which I am very proud of. At the time, it was a collection of words – stories chosen by editor / publisher Robert Morgan. Here’s what I had to say back in 2006…
* * *
I’m happy to have the opportunity to write an introduction to this collection, because it gives me a chance to talk about the stories that were chosen, why they were chosen, and where they fit in the great puzzle that is my life’s work. The process of creating this book was interesting, and I think the selections were very nearly perfect. Having over a hundred and thirty stories in print it isn’t easy to whittle that number down to thirteen, but we attacked them a pile at a time, and with Robert’s help, I think the representative pieces will do very well indeed.
I want to comment briefly on each of the thirteen tales, in no particular order, so that I can lend perspective to each piece and hopefully show how and why I came to write them. I don’t know if this is helpful to the reading experience, but I know that I’m usually fascinated when another author reveals their process. Here’s a bit of mine. (more…)
Preserving Your Words – Don’t Let Them Get Lost
I have become alarmed over my short period as a publisher by what seems to be a significant lack of concern on the part of my fellow authors toward their own work. Most of us are good at keeping backups of the work in progress, getting through the edits, and getting a book to print, but what is SORELY lacking is an understanding of the importance of “maintaining” those works. Seriously. You spend all that time – all those hours of your life – creating a novel…and you don’t even have a file copy of it? The only thing you have is some old paperbacks in the garage, or maybe a file on a floppy disk your last two computers wouldn’t even read?
This is important, so listen up – particularly in this new age of digital magic, where old words can come back to life and reach out to new readers. If you don’t keep a copy of your book, no one will. It takes very little time and effort to make an archive copy of your books, and being text, they really take up very little space…here are some things to consider.
Keep only the latest draft of books. Don’t allow for the mistake of an older version making it back into circulation – or bypassing copy-edited versions in the publishing process – unless there is a reason to preserve the earlier draft – like a removed chapter, or a shift in plot required of you by a publisher.
Keep a file copy of every book and story you write on your computer. Get something like a Dropbox.com account and put a copy there too (Tell them I sent you, I’ll get free space). ALWAYS have the words available to you quickly and easily.
When you upgrade or change operating systems or Office products, convert your old files to the new format and save them again. If you wait too many versions, you may lose formatting, or not be able to open the file at all. When you update the copy on your computer, update the backup copy as well. It REALLY won’t take that long.
When you turn in a manuscript, and the publisher comes back to you for edits, and you create that final, clean copy – SAVE IT. Don’t save just your working copy that will have to be copy-edited all over again. Also save .pdf proofs if they are sent to you. This way you have the cleanest manuscript possible if you need it again.
It doesn’t matter if you are writing licensed, work-for-hire fiction, short stories, poetry, lyrics, or the Great American Novel. Make sure that once you do the work, you don’t LOSE the work.
I have become a lot more aware of this as I work to bring back the nearly lost books of a number of Crossroad Press authors. It’s good that technology and an IT background have allowed me to scan, recompile, and resurrect these old manuscripts. I hope that the authors I’ve done it for have taken the files and saved them – but if they haven’t? I have. Other publishers and companies are charging what I consider exorbitant amounts of cash to do what we do for our authors free of charge…if those authors had maintained their books and files and stories, there would be no such service necessary.
If you are an out-of-print author, and looking to get your old books back into the hands of readers…drop me a line at publisher@crossroadpress.com – drop by our store, http://store.crossroadpress.com and see what we’ve already done…
Care for your words…
-DNW
From the Past …D. G. K. Goldberg Interviews Me…
This is another excerpt from my Live Journal back in the day. One of my friends – someone I lost back then, D. G. K. Goldberg, she of the sharp wit and love of NASCAR, sent me some questions one day as a sort of “challenge,” or “meme,” or whatever. I answered them…this is what I said. I’m saddened to see that some oriental spam-bot website has assumed control of the url dgkgoldberg.com – but in actuality, I can imagine what she would have said/written about it, and smile…
Current mood: amused
Current music: Still Nick Cave…
Questions From dgkgoldberg and answers from Me
This is a five question “challenge” sort of interview spawned in the live journal of dgkgoldberg I decided to post her questions and my answers here so everyone could share in the nonsense. Besides, I almost never get interviewed….
1. What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started writing?
This is obviously a trick question assuming that I know things now. I can hardly even figure out where to START an answer, because if I’d known any particular thing, all the other things that led up to me knowing the rest of what I know would be skewed. I guess that if there was one thing I sort of hoped to be true at the beginning, but know to be true now, it’s simply that I am good enough to do it. The writing, I mean. When I started outI was not good enough – I was the best who ever lived and would soon eclipse everyone. Now I know that the truth is simply that I have some things to say, and a way of saying them, that people are interested enough to read, and in the end, it’s better than eclipsing things would be. If you cause an eclipse, one side of you always gets burned.
2. What is the one item for resale that you would most like to come across and resell?
There are a lot of things that would fall on the most like to find column, but the hard part is making yourself resell. I think if you are talking actual items that really exist, I would like to find that last existing copy of The Declaration of Independence that is still missing. Why? Not because it’s the most valuable thing I could find, because it isn’t, though I’d be rich for the rest of my life after selling it. The reason is because I’d like to hold it in my hand, read the words inscribed there for myself, and then – when I got the chance to return it to the country and to whatever weasel-snouted politician is currently called Mr. President to his face and a laughingstock on the Jay Lenno show, I’d get the chance to commentate. I have a lot to say about the Declaration of Independence, the rights of Americans, and the country in general, and I think if I found and resold that particular piece of parchment, I might get the chance to make those comments, and actually have a few people hear them. It would be spitting in the wind, but at least – for a change – it would be my spit.
Barring that, there are some lost films that no copies of have survived that it would be cool to locate in a frigid vault somewhere.
If you allow the fanciful, I’d probably take something simple like The Holy Grail, or Jesus’ actual remains – both of which would be worth enough to bankrupt the Catholic church. I remember what happened when a guy found that body in a novel called “Another Roadside Attraction,” though, and it might be more trouble than it’s worth.
3. What is the one thing that if you came across it at a yard sale you would most fear?
Hmm. A lot of things would bring downright terror, but the question says specifically at a yard sale. Again, you open two doors with one question. Should I be artsy and interpret this to mean anything real or fanciful, or should I interpret it as straightforward and pertaining to something one might find at a yard sale.
Cursed objects would bring me that fear, particularly if the person ‘s item was up for sale because the curse took them out. Let’s do this with a bulleted list, all organized and some junk:
· A painting of myself, beginning to molder right where my hair is thinnest on top? · A cheesy romance novel with #1 Bestseller at the top, a raunchy pirate bending back a buxom maid with my byline on it in a dusty box of books I didn’t write, dated 3001? · A sealed, carved box with a label that says “If found, please return to Pandora”· Any relic or holy object that proved the narrow-minded Christians have been right all along.· Any relic or holy object that proved Christians were, without a doubt, absolutely WRONG, because it would be like a train wreck. I would have to buy it, and I would have to make it known, and they would kill me, as they have so many others – not to protect their faith, but to protect their power.
4. Which writer who has not been alive in your lifetime would you most like to spend an evening with?
It I only get an evening, I would have to go with Byron. I love his poetry, and only the dim among us don’t know he has inspired everyone up through Stephen King. He wrote about vampires, and he provided us with lines like, “She walks in beauty, as the night…” while instilling Polidori with dreams of Dracula, and Mary Shelley those of Frankenstein. He played Cricket though he was lame, and drank like a fish (thankfully before there was any driving to be done, and in any case, he was rich enough to BE driven). I think the night would be memorable, and if he can send others off with the inspirations that became classics, why not myself?
Many who know me would have guessed the Marquis de Sade, who, while a horrible author of porn and nonsense, was also a brilliant man, but I suspect he wouldn’t have been much fun at dinner, and I’d hate to think what sort of entertainment he might provide.
5. If you had to be a character in a book and live it out as it was written who would you be and in what book?
I could cheat again. I could say Judas Iscariot from “This is My Blood” – my own novel, because I would be the real hero of the gospel, and being a vampire-born-of-fallen-angels would still be alive to tell the tale, but that would be wrong.I think I’d have to say I’d like to be Roland of Gilead in King’s Gunslinger novels. He’s a hero, and a desperado, an asshole, and a legend. He had abilities and memories that others can only dream of, and his destiny? To save not only this world, but all worlds…or die trying. He has loved, been loved – yep. Roland of Gilead for me.
Of course, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at being Harry Potter, though his life tends to suck at times. (Don’t’ they all?).
DNW
This is the entry I made long ago about Bunting Miles’ tombstone, which does, indeed, still live in our living room, propped up against the NEW fireplace. It’s an interesting story. We have since learned that he was probably a laborer, a black man living in a portion of Norfolk that used to be called something else. We have not been (quite) able to track relatives. He is welcome right where he is, if he traveled with the stone. We’ve had some odd, ghost-like goings-on near where the stone has been placed for years…anyway, here’s what I wrote a few years back:
| deep_bluze (deep_bluze) wrote, @ 2004-03-05 08:41:00 |
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| Current mood: | awake | |
| Current music: | Bauhaus – 1979-1983 – Volume II | |
I own a tombstone. It isn’t MY tombstone, but it does live in my living room (perhaps not so well named), propped against the fireplace in the main living room where all our most precious, gaudy, and should-be-living-in-a-Victorian Whorehouse furniture, gold gilt, dark velvets, old wood are kept. And Bunting. Bunting Miles, to be precise.
Years back, my good friend Richard Rowand came to visit. Richard was then editor of a sci-fi mag called STARSHORE – four glorious, full-color national distribution issues, one of which carried “A Candle in the Sun,” My first really big sale, the story that was reprinted in Karl Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror (despite his threat never to print anything with a vampire in it) and later became This is My Blood, my first critically acclaimed work (that no mass-market place will touch, despite the great PW review). But that’s neither here nor there.
Richard came to visit me in a house I’d just bought at the time (long gone down the drain of bad marriage and bankruptcy). He brought a house-warming gift. Sort of.
He brought me a concrete tombstone. It is so old the material threatens to crumble slowly away. It is marked, simply, Bunting Miles – who died in 1867 ( or it could be 1857, I will put up a picture, eventually). I have searched the net. I have contacted the freaking MORMONS who have a great database for this. I have consulted libraries, the 1870 census, have discussed it at length over food and wine and whiskey and I cannot find a trace of this man. I do not know who he is, where he came from. I have his tombstone. Every year I put lilies on it and drink a glass of cognac while I’m watching them wilt.
The tombstone came in a load of fill dirt. The fill dirt was delivered to Richard’s neighbor, and when he went to spread it, there was the stone. The dirt came from either Portsmouth VA or North Carolina. It was delivered to Virginia Beach. The neighbor, knowing Richard was “Strange,” brought it to him. Richard’s wife, who is NOT strange, consigned it to his garage, and later on, just wanted it gone. Thus it passed to the next strangest acquaintance up the chain. Me.
The fact is, it probably leaped and bounded its way to the top of the strange pile, because I kept it. I have tried to find its original home.
I’ve had it suggested that this was the marker of a freed black slave, or a native American. I have had it suggested the fill dirt actually came from the ballast in the bottom of a cargo ship and could be European. Many scenarios have been offered. At one point I was nearly certain I’d nailed it down to a freedman who worked a farm in Virginia who actually worked for an ancestor of mine, but that fizzled.
I intend, when time permits (soon I hope) to put a link from www.deepblues.net called the Hunting Bunting page with all pertinent info in pace. I’d love to bring him home.
If not, there’s probably a book in the hunt somewhere…
DNW
