The Living Dead: Now Available/Website Now Live

The Living Dead is officially out and for sale at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com, and at better bookstores everywhere. The official website is now live, and it features a number of bonus features, such as:

(1) Free stories & excerpts. Including free stories by Kelly Link, Adam-Troy Castro, David Tallerman, and Dale Bailey, with more to come in the near future.

(2) Interviews with the authors.

(3) Zombie pop-culture commentary.

So swing on over to check it out, and tell all your friends!

Read More

Making e-Reading Easier: Change Your Screen Orientation

I just had kind of a revelation about reading on my laptop. One of the things that bugs me about reading PDFs is that it’s very difficult to maximize your screen real estate since laptop screens (and most PC monitors) are widescreens, displayed in the landscape view. For a PDF, a laptop screen would be ideal in portrait view, since it approximates the dimensions of a sheet of paper and it would allow you to view one whole PDF page at a time, which makes turning pages in the PDF much easier. So I thought, if I turn my laptop on its side, can I make Windows change the orientation of my display? The answer is yes.

For some machines, apparently the default Windows hotkeys will be in place, so all you have to do is hit CTRL + ALT + [Right Arrow] to rotate your display orientation 90 degrees to the right. To return to normal orientation, hit CTRL + ALT + [Up Arrow].

If, like me, that doesn’t work for you, you can go into your display properties (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display > Settings) and click on Advanced. Click on the tab for your video adaptor. Then from there, you’ll have to play around with your settings.

In my case, with a GeForce FX Go5200 video adaptor, I have a list of options, including "NVRotate". Opening that screen presents you with the option of changing your screen orientation. That’s kind of pain to do, though, if you’re going to be switching back and forth. So you’re going to want to setup your own hotkeys to accomplish what some lucky users have setup by default. In the same tab for your video adaptor, in that same list of options, there will be one marked "Desktop Management." Click the plus sign to expand the list, then select Hot Keys. Click on the plus beside "Display Mode" then select "Rotate Display" and double-click and follow the on-screen prompts to select your hotkey to change your screen orientation (the default Windows hotkeys mentioned above seem to make sense to me, so that’s what I used). Note you’ll have to setup two hotkeys, one to rotate the screen 90 degrees to the right (CTRL + ALT + [Right Arrow]), then another hotkey to return the screen to normal orientation (CTRL + ALT + [Up Arrow]).

I’m rather pleased with myself for figuring out how to do this. Given all the reading I have to do on screen (while reading for anthologies), it helps a lot to be able to just use my laptop rather than having to put stuff on my Pocket PC phone (which requires file conversion and doesn’t read PDFs well at all). I briefly investigated doing the same thing on my PC, but the settings were different (although the video adaptor is made by the same company) and there didn’t seem to be any option for changing the orientation.

So anyway, I thought I’d share my discovery in case that would be of use to anyone else. Of course, if you have one of those sweet rotating monitors, you don’t need this.

Read More

Photoshop Whiz Needed

Anyone with mad photoshop skilz have time to work on a fun, zombie-related photoshop project? I could say, offer, a copy of The Living Dead or something in exchange for your efforts. If you’re interested, email me or leave a comment and we can discuss the project privately.

Read More

Interview @ PW’s Genreville

Rose Fox of Publishers Weekly interviewed me for the PW Genreville blog. It’s for a feature called "Nuts & Bolts," so as the name implies the interview sort of explores how Seeds of Change was born and how the book came together.

Also, Scott Marlowe posted a nice review of the anthology on his blog: "If you’re looking for a healthy dose of thought-provoking literature leavened by a hefty shot of entertainment to put an exclamation on these final summer days, I highly recommend Seeds of Change."

And John Klima gave me a nice write-up for Tor.com, in which he talks about my anthology projects, and gives special kudos to Seeds of Change.

Read More

Wastelands review in Some Fantastic

Another new review of Wastelands just appeared in Some Fantastic. The reviewer, Matthew Appleton says all kinds of nice things about the stories in a very long and detailed review, and sums up: “Wastelands is an excellent anthology that belongs on the shelf of any SF fan, and not just fans of post-apocalyptic fiction. It’s hard to imagine a better way to spend $15.95 on a themed collection of short fiction.” [PDF]

It’s a really nice analysis of the stories he talks about in detail—well-worth a read whether you’ve already read Wastelands or not.

Read More

New Reviews of Wastelands, Seeds of Change, & a new interview

Dorothy Emry reviews Seeds of Change for Static Multimedia, giving it 3.5 out of 4 stars: “Nine short stories equal one great read in Seeds of Change, the latest anthology edited by John Joseph Adams. The authors contributing to this collection serve up works that range from tragedy to comedy–each of them thought provoking.”

Ms. Emry goes on to post some additional thoughts on her MySpace blog, saying “The authors featured in Seeds could well be part of the next generation of big names and Adams is to be commended for gathering them in this anthology.”

Static Multimedia also reviews Wastelands, calling it an “exceptional collection” and giving it four-out-of-four stars.

And last but not least, NVF Magazine (New Voices in Fiction) has an interview with me which doesn’t focus on any one project, but instead pries a lot of background information out of me. The format can be a bit hard on the eyes, so I’d suggest hitting CTRL + A to select all the text on the page to make it a little easier to read.

Read More