That's pretty goddamn impressive.
So imagine my surprise when I stumble upon Richard H. Fay, fantasy author.
I, like all sensible men, have never heard of Richard H. Fay I seldom let that stop my opinion of him from forming.
Which movie sequel do you like better than the first, and why?
Most common answers: Terminator 2 and The Empire Strikes Back.
The Empire Strikes Back may actually have been better than the first Star Wars movie.
Although I did run into one yahoo who said The Godfather part fucking III.
I ran across some news that is personally very bad, at least in terms of my list of forthcoming publications.
From the Abandoned Towers site:
"We’re sorry, but at this time Abandoned Towers Magazine is closed to submissions and will be closing soon unless a different publisher wishes to take it over.
Yeah I tried to get a story published but I realized all the magazines I wanted to publish in haven't been around since the 1950s.
Haven't quite determined what to do yet, no.
If you are interested in doing so, please email us at cwizprod@gmail.com.
If no one steps forward, Abandoned Towers by August 1, 2011, the magazine will be taken offline.
Any previously accepted submissions that have not been published are released back to the authors."
Note especially that last bit about accepted submissions being released back to the authors. The next print issue of Abandoned Towers was to be built around my article "The Darker Side of Fairy Lore".
Fairy love.
I'm taking that a lot of different ways, Dick.
I think Warhammer captured fairies the best. They're kind of these malevolent forest spirits that aren't to be trusted.
Actually that's a fair summary of anything not human in Warhammer.
In addition to my article, the issue was to contain seven of my fairy-themed poems, my illustration of a "Redcap", and my art on the cover. I also have a plethora of art and poetry on Abandoned Towers on-line, which will apparently vanish from cyberspace come August 1st, barring any last-minute miracles.
I'm looking into writing an anthology, in fact.
I consider that the pinnacle of storytelling.
What makes matters worse is that I didn't receive word of this from the soon-to-be-former publisher of Abandoned Towers, a publisher and editor I thought I had a good working relationship with. I didn't hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were. Instead, I happened across it on-line when I began to wonder about the lack of news concerning the Summer 2011 issue of the zine and performed a Google search for Abandoned Towers.
If you are writing for a magazine you should expect 0 job security.
especially one that publishes quarterly.
A discussion that has wandered toward the idea of the Christian ethos making tolerance a practiced virtue got me thinking about what the historical record says regarding Christians and tolerance of other faiths.
Christians are the funniest group of people in terms of tolerance. They cry persecution when they're the largest religion on earth and have probably the worst record for persecuting others.
While I agree that the Christian ethos ideally contains the concept of tolerance (after all, Jesus said that "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" is the second greatest commandment), I can't help but to question the historical record of Christian tolerance.
Can't help but question?
Gee, what part is confusing for you?
When they burned all the pagan shrines in Rome?
When they started any number of crusades?
When they burned witches in Spain?
In ancient Rome, Christianity moved from a position of tolerant co-existence with the older Greco-Roman paganism to a position of intolerance. Constantine I (reigned 306 to 337) went from proclaiming religious toleration in his Edict of Milan of 313, to ordering the destruction of pagan temples during the final years of his reign.
Not a popular historical opinion but I personally blame Constantine I for the collapse of the Roman Empire.
He knew his empire was overextending itself but did he do anything about it?
Nope, Edict of Milan and Council of Nicaea.
Then they had such award winners as Constantius II, Gratian and Theodosius I.
NO WONDER IT COLLAPSED.
The Christian Emperors Constantius II (reigned 337-361), Gratian (reigned 375 to 383), and Theodosius I (reigned 379 to 395), all took various official steps to repress paganism in the Empire.
Yeah, them.
Gauls and Goths destroying your extensions?
WHO CARES WE HAVE A BOOK TO CANONIZE.
In an edict issued in 356, Constantius II banned public pagan worship. After a period of relative tolerance under the reigns of Jovian, Valentinian I, and Valens, Gratian returned to a policy of repression. In 382, Gratian did away with the privileges enjoyed by the pagan priests, confiscated the revenues of the pagan temples, and had the Altar of victory removed from the Senate House in Rome.
Oh but let's tax-exempt the largest revenue collector at the time: the newly founded Catholicon.
WHY ARE WE TOO BROKE TO START WARS?
HURRRRRRRRRR.
Theodosius I banned paganism in his "Theodosian Decrees" of 389-391. He outlawed private pagan ritual and declared Paganism a "religio illicita". Various Christian emperors that followed continued these policies, and enacted yet more laws repressing paganism.
Except for a brief period of renewed glory in Julian the Apostate.
But he died on campaign in Africa.
The month of June has been quiet for me, publication-wise. Unless some of the outstanding publications without a firm publication date come out between now and the end of the month, which is doubtful, the only thing I will have published this month is a reprint poem in the June issue of Aphelion (if they manage to get THAT out before July 1st). I haven't even had any acceptances so far this month; the last acceptance I received was on May 12th, for my poem "Shroudeater", slated to appear in the Panic Press vampire anthology Bleed - And They Will Come (if that anthology ever gets published, that is).
So it seems to me the best way to become a successful author is to write good shit and get one of the heavy hitters to publish you.
I know that seems obvious but ol' Rich here apparently hadn't considered it.
Or maybe he can't write.
Here we go again: I have run across yet another discussion about the debate over whether or not it is proper and appropriate to call "hard" or "serious" or "literary" science fiction "sci-fi". From what I've gathered, in some genre writing circles it is seen as improper and even downright offensive to call such science fiction "sci-fi". According to this camp, the label "sci-fi" should ONLY be applied to "softer", "less serious", "less literary" stuff like space opera and science fantasy.
This debate bothers me because a lot of the must successful science fiction is space opera.
People who claim there's a real distinction between "literary" sci-fi and "soft" (whatever that means) sci-fi seem to conveniently forget such heavy hitters as Dune and Foundation are technically space operas.
Even I, Robot tends more towards the operatic than the "hard sci-fi" which most people haven't read because it is titanically boring.
Looking at this debate from a broader perspective (an "outsider's perspective", perhaps?), this whole thing sounds an awful lot like a bunch of silly BS.
Stop, shut up.
End of essay you got it right (for once).
Compared to all the serious real-life problems in the world today, the eternal debate over whether or not to call certain brands of science fiction "sci-fi" or "SF" is truly trivial. I think those that make a big deal out of such a trivial topic (especially those that get offended when one shorthand version is used over another) have a serious problem with perspective. Compared to floundering economies and endless wars, a changing climate and environmental disasters, failing educational systems and scandal-ridden governments, continued inequalities of various sorts and the growing gap between the haves and the have nots, calling "hard" or "serious" or "literary" science fiction "sci-fi" is simply not that big a deal.
Did you seriously just tell nerds not to debate trivial shit?
See that's why you should have shut up before.
That's like me telling twats not to twat on about shit on Livejournal.
Three years later and you can see how effective that has been.
In my opinion, some genre writers take this whole labelling thing way too seriously.
Easiest way I've found to troll this debate:
just say sci-fi is a subgenre of fantasy (which it is) and then say any further labeling is redundant.
BUTTMAD. BUTTMAD EVERYWHERE.
In case anyone has been wondering what I've been up to for the past week or so, I've been busy drawing and colouring colossi for the deviantART RIFT Create a Colossus Contest.
Oh RIFT has gotten popular enough they can just get other people to do their job for them.
Here you go, RIFT: I just Googled "World of Warcraft Golem" and found plenty you can rip off.
Don't feel bad. You're just ripping off something they undoubtedly ripped off themselves.
I started off by creating a colossus from the plane of death (imagine that?), but I wasn't sure if the concept for my death colossus was imaginative enough.
You drew a giant skeleton.
I'd say that's about as unimaginative as you can get.
Your water colossus is about as good as it gets but unfortunately there's already an enemy that looks like that.
Not that it matters, RIFT is just H.P. Lovecraft + WoW.
I did like RIFT, though.
Until I realized its playerbase was infantile and stupid but unlike FFXIV where they actually prove an obstacle to my in-game goals I was achieving my goals in RIFT far too quick as I just made a ladder of bodies to the top.
I frequently ended PVP matches number 1 in every single category except deaths.
Apparently people don't expect AN ASSASSIN WHO CAN TURN INVISIBLE AT WILL to attack from the back.
I got 90% of one battleground's achievements in one round.
That's when I decided to hang up my spurs.
I know a writer sometimes puts a lot of themselves into their characters, and I have done that from time to time, but I'm not my characters! Last I knew, I'm not a blood-sucking alien creature ("The Iltrox"), or a member of a legion of lonely ghosts ("Souls Adrift"), or a woman involved in a fatal love affair with an incubus ("The Incubus"), or a malicious jilted wizard ("Vengeance of the Alpe").
I'll be sure not to make that mistake again.
I'm especially not Daniel from my dark poem "The Damnation of Daniel Brewster". I have not lived "decades of debauchery".
Too bad, though.
This might actually be vaguely interesting if you had.
I certainly wouldn't return to my childhood haunt "searching for scraps of solace" or "hoping to find warm comfort"; I know I would find neither in my cursed home town. I certainly don't have "throngs of cast-off lovers" holding "never-born sons and daughters / snuggled against bloodied breasts".
If this is supposed to make me want to read this it's not working.
My dark speculative poem "The Banshee's Cry", originally published in the October 2007
Well that'll be a short poem, won't it?
I heard a banshee's cry
I promptly--
BECAUSE WHEN YOU HEAR A BANSHEE'S SCREAM YOU FUCKING DIE.
issue of the (now apparently defunct) horror print magazine Sinister Tales, has been accepted for publication in issue 6 of the e-mail/on-line horror poetry newsletter Dark Metre, due out June 5th.
Reprints are always nice, but what makes this one even nicer is that I will actually be paid this time around (£2.50). I received no payment for the original publication of the poem in Sinister Tales; they only paid for the lead poem, and "The Banshee's Cry" wasn't chosen as the lead poem in that issue.
Ah so that's how you get published.
You're not actually getting paid and when you are it's a little under 15. US Dollars.
Now here's a story so bad he's apparently having trouble getting accepted in a publication that doesn't pay--
hrm.
I received a payment today for a forthcoming dark poetry publication, one that happens to be one of my best sales yet ($10 for a poem of 24 lines). Nine more like that (as long as this poem does get published in the end), plus $65, and I just may be able to get myself an active membership in the HWA.
10 bucks for 24 lines.
I'm in the wrong business.
What's the point of mentioning this? Not much,
LIKE ALL BLOGGING AM I RIGHT?
HOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Okay that's the topper.
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