August’s acquisitions include:
One of the fitness magazines I read, Men’s Fitness, recently featured tennis star Andy Roddick on their cover. But though Roddick is a fine physical specimen, he wasn’t quite fine enough for Men’s Fitness; they enhanced his image through visual trickery to make him look more buff. It was so blatant, some readers thought they’d actually photoshopped Roddick’s head onto someone else’s body. (They didn’t; it was just airbrushing or the digital equivalent.)I could get all outraged about it, but actually, instead I think that maybe SF should do the same thing. I could try to be vague, but since the demise of SF Chronicle, there’s really only one magazine I could be talking about–Locus. I’ve seen a number of recent covers (and interior shots) that are less than flattering to their subjects. There has been more than one that I’ve seen and thought, “Yeesh, he looks like a zombie in that picture.” I mean, I’m not asking anyone to make them look beautiful or anything, but, you know, can we make them not look like zombies?
SCI FI Wire print news, week ending August 31, 2007:
Doug Cohen and I will be appearing on Hour of the Wolf this Saturday, 5-7 am. Like our appearance last year, we’ll be discussing all things slush, but this time we’ll be allotting more time for call-in questions, as last time the phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree, but we didn’t have much time to field the questions.
Hour of the Wolf airs on WBAI (99.5 FM) in New York City. If you’re not local, or if you just don’t want to get up at 5 am (or both), you’ll be able to listen to the show via streaming audio on the Hour of the Wolf website after the broadcast airs.
Today, I’m officially launching the online home of Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. Visit the site at johnjosephadams.com/wastelands.
If you browse around the site, you’ll find plenty of information about the anthology, the stories, and the contributors.
The ABOUT page provides an overview of the anthology.
The CONTENTS page showcases the anthology’s table of contents. It also serves as a portal to information about each of the stories. There, on each story’s page, you can read the introductory header note for each story. In some cases, you can read excerpts of the stories; in other cases, you can read the entire story online.
The AUTHORS page provides even more information about the authors…in their own words. I conducted brief interviews with several of the contributors to gather some background information about their stories. While I was at it, I also jotted down their thoughts about the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction, and asked them to name their favorite stories in the sub-genre.
The PUBLICITY page will point the way to reviews and interviews, and any news about public appearances related to the anthology.
The other two pages are self-explanatory: CONTACT provides contact information should you wish to learn more about the anthology; SHOP, meanwhile, points you toward some of the places you can buy Wastelands.
Wastelands is due to be published by Night Shade Books in January 2008. Until then, take a look around.
SCI FI Wire print news, week ending August 24, 2007:
One of my slush survivors, George Tucker, is in town this weekend, so he and I and Gordon met up with him last night, the first meeting for all of us. We met at an Indian restaurant in Manhattan called Utsav, which was good, but pricey. For some reason they didn’t have murgha tikka, though they had other cubed chicken dishes, and they had tandoori chicken, which uses the same sauce as murgha tikka, which left me wondering why the hell they couldn’t just make it for me.
But anyway, it was a fun evening. We chatted about everything from porn expos to mystery novels to the intricacies of book publishing. Normally, Gordon and I just talk about porn expos, so it was nice to have the excuse to talk about something else for a change.
* If you’re confused about this reference, look here.
Speaking of Wastelands, you can now pre-order the book via Amazon.com. Using the Amazon Connect feature, I’ve posted the table of contents and the introduction to the book on the book’s ordering page. Go check it out!
Now that Wastelands is all done and put to bed, it’s time to turn my attention to my next project: Zombies. I’ve been hip-deep in zombie fiction for the past few days, and am enjoying it quite a bit.
This is another reprint project, and I’ve got a long reading list already, of course, but I’m open to suggestions. With that in mind, I’ve setup a database in which you can enter your zombie fiction recommendations. Suggestions of short fiction are obviously my primary interest, but feel free to suggest novels as well, as I plan to include a “For Further Reading” appendix in the anthology. If you’re a writer, you’re welcome to recommend your own work as well as that of others.
So drop by the Zombie Fiction Database and throw your two cents in.
