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Today (Friday) at Dragon*Con!
Posted on 2011-09-02 at 14:13 by montsamu
But wait, you say. Sam, you’re not even going to DragonCon.
Well, you’re right. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to live vicariously through your posts and tweets and such. So! Though I’m sure you have your flyer printed out (and a stack to hand around, right?) here is…
FRIDAY AT DRAGONCON:
1:00pm Gail Z. Martin (WRIT)
3:30pm Clay and Susan Griffith (PYR dealer room signing)
4:00pm Lou Anders (WRIT)
5:30pm Mur Lafferty (AUTO)
5:30pm Jason Morningstar (GAME)
5:30pm Gray Rinehart (Princess Alethea Kontis’s Traveling Sideshow, 5:30 in the Hyatt)
7:00pm Lou Anders (WRIT)
7:00pm Clay and Susan Griffith (YA Dark Fantasy)
7:00pm Ann VanderMeer (WRIT)
8:30pm Lou Anders (DFH)
8:30pm Ann VanderMeer (DFH)
8:30pm Jeff VanderMeer (DFH)
10:00pm CD Covington (Broad Universe reading in Greenbriar @ Hyatt)
10:00pm Gail Z. Martin (SFLIT)
So: go enjoy! Tweet, post, etc. (And go check out The Missing Volume in the Marriot Marquis dealer room for a copy of Bull Spec!)
Posted in Uncategorized
Bull Spec Dragon*Con Flyers
Posted on 2011-09-01 at 21:24 by montsamu
Happy trails, all you fine folks heading to Dragon*Con! Here are some flyers which will help you keep track of the Bull Spec contributors and interviewees and such, though there’s more even than I had room to list:
COLOR: http://www.box.net/embed/sp7o7gurcgqkx6u.swf
B/W: http://www.box.net/embed/nzfzl521mdrldqy.swf
So please! Print, post, share! And come by The Missing Volume in the Marriot Marquis dealer room to check out a copy of Bull Spec!
edit: Yipes! I forgot a big event which is happening tomorrow (Saturday): the Parsec Awards! The finalists list includes Durham author Mur Lafferty’s “Marco and the Red Granny”, the fiction podcast she edits (Escape Pod), and her excellent “I Should Be Writing” podcast as well. (And her daughter’s “Princess Scientist’s Book Club” podcast!) This year’s ceremony details are: “The 2011 Parsec Awards ceremony will be held on September 3rd at DragonCon. The event will be in Hyatt Regency V Ballroom, the same place it has been for the past several years. The doors will open at 4pm, and the ceremony will begin around 4:30, or when we are able to get things set up, whichever comes later.” And there will be a cash bar reception in the same location after the ceremony.
Posted in dragoncon, flyers
Lev Grossman: The Other Introduction.
Posted on 2011-08-31 at 16:34 by montsamu
Yesterday afternoon, Flyleaf Books let me know that I’d have the honor of introducing Lev Grossman at his reading. I put together some thoughts (ok, a lot of thoughts) and cut things down to an appropriate slice of time, and then realized… the introduction was sounding a lot like it was about me: my response to the book, my happiness that his tour included a stop in the area, my fondness for Grossman’s criticism and writing not just in his novels but in his essays and reviews and (particularly!) interviews.
And so I scrapped the whole thing and just read what I’d already written for the introduction to the Bull Spec #6 feature on him. Which was good, because after getting to meet and talk to Grossman back stage before the event, my literally fanboyish levels of squee were pegging the Scalzometer:
- We’d talked about our appreciation of Neal Stephenson
- He’d referred to William Gibson as “Bill"
- "Lev” asked me my opinion on whether he should take on a sekrit projekt
- I’d just met Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians
Let me go back.
In early September of 2009 I saw The Magicians in the new science fiction and fantasy releases section of the Barnes & Noble of Brier Creek. One look at the title and the cover:
And I knew I had to pick it up. So I did. And, gently, put it back on the shelf. I don’t remember the jacket copy on the hardcover, but apparently it didn’t sell me on a hardcover purchase. So I bought a mass market paperback that is still sitting, unread, on my shelf. (Someday, Greg van Eekhout’s Norse Code, I will read you. Some day…)
By April of 2010 I started hearing more and more about this book. Some people — who clearly have no taste — hated it. Others loved it and it was showing up on year’s best lists in both fantasy and “mainstream” fiction. And so, as the trade paperback was coming out and Grossman was touring in support of his NY Times bestselling book, I wrote him about coming to the local area. “I go where they send me,” he wrote back.
He wrote back.
But he didn’t come. (I hadn’t yet figured out how these things worked. It actually turns out to be simple: when you know a publisher is planning a book tour, get your local bookstores to write them, promise, and beg. And plead. And beg some more.) But he wrote back!
In September 2010 he signed a copy of the trade paperback for a breast cancer charity auction on eBay — I had gone there looking to bid on Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind if I recall, but that auction was much, much too dear — and I won. (I might have been the only bidder. It’s been a while.) The book came, complete with a photo of Grossman, a wonderful personalized signature (“You rock! Thanks for helping to fight breast cancer!”) and…
… I still didn’t read it. Hey, the stack is long, the stack is tall, and after all he hadn’t come here on tour, the clear bastard.
But I was becoming a bit of a Grossman fan for other reasons. Following his articles in Time, the NY Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Diving into the backlog of his online articles and reading his thoughts on Twilight, Harry Potter, and George R. R. Martin. On Neil Gaiman, David Foster Wallace, BitTorrent, Jonathan Franzen, Napster, Facebook, Aubrey de Grey’s beard (if only I could tell you…), Ray Kurzweil, …
And via his online openness, funny remarks here and there (like never wanting to tweet again now that he’d been re-tweeted by @GreatDismal) and the shared human experience that is being a dad.
And in November 2010, after finally hearing too many great things about the book, I discovered and listened to a sample of the audiobook from Audible.com.
I was hooked.
Mark Bramhall brought The Magicians to life for me. I loved it. Loved it. I raved about it to everyone who would listen. I convinced my wife to listen to the audiobook and she really liked it. We talked about a fantasy novel. The book also helped me grow up in a way that was a bit long overdue: I wasn’t about to open a door and find my way into a magical world any time soon. Or be plucked from the street and inserted into a secret NASA field team for a Mars mission. Or study really hard and become a karate master. (This is something I should have been able to give up having read Stephenson’s Snow Crash but which lingered on. OK, it still lingers on. A bit.)
In March 2011, after a few more rounds of corresponding with Grossman (including getting a very nice quote from him for my article on Lou Anders in Bull Spec #4 and what seemed like very nice yet transparent lies about actually liking the magazine — sure, Lev, sure it’s on your nightstand) something unexpected and ridiculous happened.
I had known Grossman was working on a sequel — and he’d just written me to ask if I’d take a look at a draft of it as a beta reader.
Of course I said no immediately.
(Are you kidding? I said yes and dropped everything else I was doing. In case you were wondering why issue #5 was a little later than “quarterly” can be stretched to allow…)
I read the new book, The Magician King, looking, digging, clawing for flaws and faults. There weren’t many. I was blown away, like so many would be when the book came out, by “the Julia chapters”. I fell hard for new characters and remembered how much I loved the others. Quentin was more mature — like me he’d grown up a bit in the three years since The Magicians — and yet Quentin was still missing something, the kind of something that only taking on an honest to goodness quest can provide. (Or so Quentin thought.)
And some OMFG “no it didn’t” things happened in the book. And then the book ripped out my heart and stomped on it a bit. But I was reading so critically and narrowly — herein I refer to a scene in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five about being locked in place on a train, looking through a long, stationary tube — that I didn’t know it yet. I told Grossman that while I loved The Magicians, that it was a great book, that The Magician King was merely only very, very good. But that he’d tried, and done well, and not to feel too bad about that. (Yes. Yes I did say that.)
Anyway, in the course of giving chapter by chapter feedback, poking at lines, we struck up another conversation about book tours. And now I knew how these things worked, so I started at the top: with the book’s publicist at Penguin. I pitched the local area hard. I praised our support of author visits past, with the numbers and newspaper articles to back them up. I promised things I hoped I could deliver.
(Side note: In May I was interviewing Kij Johnson for the SFWA blog (sorry, Kij, I haven’t yet transcribed that one…) and was carrying my ARC/galley (I still don’t know the difference) of The Magician King and she literally grabbed it. I told her she could keep it if she wrote me a review. She did. It’s wonderful.)
Somewhere along the line, Grossman sent an updated copy, some technical term for whatever stage it was in the process but it was a fully laid out PDF updated even from the ARC. I read some key scenes again (the end, oh, my goodness, the end) and starting getting a suspicion that, hey, there is some terrible beauty here that I’d missed by reading from a height of one micrometer.
And then on May 19 Flyleaf Books was able to announce that yes, Grossman’s upcoming tour would be including a stop here! This led to a lot of work, actually. Writing newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV outlets. Writing them again. Putting together flyers and putting them up wherever I could, whenever I had time. (“Daddy, you’re always doing flyers,” my son has begun to recognize.)
Blogging, posting, tweeting, inviting, begging, pleading. Reminding. Bothering. Pestering. Flyering again.
And interviewing Grossman for Bull Spec #6, which he turned in for me with literally hours to spare before I had to print it. (Not his fault, I only sent it to him with days to spare. Thanks again, Lev.) Not just turning in a boring, ho-hum, things I’d read before — and I’d been reading his interviews, from Locus to Slice and many more — but personal, funny, interesting things.
When his book launch was approaching, I sent him some copies of Bull Spec #6 to hand out. I sent him a bunch more for WorldCon. (Where he won a tiara, mind you.) I sent more to a few other of the bookstores along his tour.
(Meanwhile, the audiobook for The Magician King came out as well, and once again Bramhall pulled me back into Fillory, into Brakebills, and along Julia’s path from high school to Free Trader Beowulf and beyond. This time, at least a few feet above the terrain of the page, I held onto every word, every phrase. I remembered what a funny book this was. I remembered what a touching book this was. And then I stood, leaning over my kitchen counter, and listened to the ending again. And another time, just to make sure. And I felt a bit like Quentin; the quest over, wanting it back but understanding that you can’t have it back once it’s gone. And being both incredibly satisfied, as I had been with the ending of the first book, and longing, longing for the next words to keep coming.)
Somewhere along the way, he found time not only for that kind of nonsense (handing around copies, etc.) but also to remind me that, hey, he was coming into town and did I need anything? When he’d already turned in some more interviews for local media (the Independent Weekly, the Flyleaf Books blog) and was all set to go on WUNC’s The State of Things as well. He’d given the Raleigh-Durham area plenty of his time and attention.
Now it was time to find out if we would return the favor. And we did. 150 people came and listened attentively and asked great questions, clearly having connected with the books in a significant way.
And then Grossman signed a lot, lot, LOT of books. And then signed some more:
And then we went out for drinks, and had just a wonderful time. It was absolutely amazing to meet someone who had become one of my literary and journalistic heroes (though I think he’d have a few things to say about heroism, in fact he’s said some of them in The Magician King) and whose work I had come to love, and find out that, actually, he’s a wonderful, sincere, funny, kind, brilliant, funny, very human person.
And now all he has to do is stick the landing on a third book, and I won’t have to hate him. No pressure, Lev. No pressure. And I’ll understand if you don’t let me read this one early. But be prepared to be begged.
Posted in lev grossman, personal, samuel montgomery-blinn
Kickstart Bull Spec!
Posted on 2011-08-29 at 20:11 by Natania
Do you want more amazing speculative fiction at pro rates? Of course you do. Bull Spec is holding a Kickstarter campaign, and there’s still plenty of time to contribute. For the whole list of gifts, check out our posts here. For an overview of how and why, read on!
Who? Bull Spec is a quarterly print and PDF magazine of speculative fiction published out of Durham, NC, with a strong focus on Raleigh-Durham and Carolinas authors. Upon completion of its first year of publication, it was approved as a SFWA market for professional short fiction. Now getting near half-way through its second year, BULL SPEC is looking to keep going.
What? This Kickstarter project is to help fund the 60,000 words or so of original fiction, 20 or so illustrations, the reviews, the poetry, and the serialized graphic short story (and more!) which will comprise the four issues of the third year ofBULL SPEC which will run from about Spring/Summer 2012 through Winter/Spring 2013. At $0.05/word for fiction and poetry and $100-$200 per illustration, the year’s content budget will come to about $5000. The printing budget adds another $5000, giving a total budget for the year of $10,000. So, why is the “goal” just $1000? No, it wasn’t a typo. If we aim for $1000 and make it, we can keep going, all the way! If we aim for $10,000 and don’t make it, Kickstarter cancels the whole thing. I wasn’t ready for all-or-nothing — not yet!
Why? Because you think a full-size, illustrated print and PDF magazine of speculative fiction focused around Raleigh-Durham, NC is a good thing. Because you enjoy the stories and art and poems. Because you enjoy learning more about local and regional (and global!) authors through at-length interviews and reviews. Because you think BULL SPEC is a good thing to keep doing, and you want to be a part of it. Because you see what stories new fiction editors Natania Barron and Eric Gregory will publish. Because you want there to be a bigger budget for fiction and art! Because you want to see anthologies, proper e-book versions, and other projects like chapbooks, and maybe even proper regional distribution. Oh, yeah, and because the community of authors and artists have stepped up with awesome rewards to entice you into doing so!
When? Right now! Ending Friday, September 30, at 5 PM EST. That might seem like a while, but don’t forget, many of these rewards come in limited quantities (even 1’s and 3’s!) so don’t wait forever… As far as when rewards will ship, most rewards will ship the first weeks of October, after the Kickstarter ends.
Posted in Uncategorized
Bull Spec local events e-mailing list: September 2011
Posted on 2011-08-26 at 19:31 by montsamu
Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1, 2011:
Anyone going to Dragon*Con next weekend?
NEW: 27 (Saturday), 11a-5p: Ultimate Comics hosts the next in their NC Comicon signing series, this one a huge (HUGE!) spread of local creators. Tommy Lee Edwards (TURF), John Mahoney (LAST MORTAL), Firetower Studios (ORDER OF DAGONET, PRINCELESS), Brockton McKinney, and Angi Shearstone (BloodDreams). It's also acting as their 8th anniversary party: http://www.ultimatecomicsonline.com/?p=1298 and http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150725641679496
NEW: 10 (Saturday), 3 pm: Launch party for Hillsborough author John Claude Bemis's closing book in his Clockwork Dark trilogy, The White City, at the Public Market House in downtown Hillsborough. More info: http://johnclaudebemis.com/2011/04/launch-party-for-the-white-city/
20: Local author book release: Pyr to publish The Rift Walker (Vampire Empire: Book 2) by Raleigh's Clay and Susan Griffith. Sequel to last November's The Greyfriar.
OCTOBER
18 (Tuesday), 7 pm: Durham author Stephen Messer will be part of a two children's authors in one (though I would argue he is a middle grade / young reader author to be specific!) for his September 27th published book The Death of Yorik Mortwell: http://www.quailridgebooks.com/event/stephen-messer-kathleen-churchyard-two-childrens-authors-one-program
NOVEMBER
- Jay Requard: The Night from Apex-based Peak City Publishing, Late 2011. "This new dark fantasy story takes place in Tarinthol, a world fueled by action, magic, intrigue, and dark plots." More info: http://jayrequard.blogspot.com/
- Natania Barron: Pilgrim of the Sky from Candlemark & Gleam, Late 2011. "A novel that might be best described as mythpunk. With elements of fantasy, science fiction, Romantic poetry, steampunk, and multiverse theory, well, it isn’t exactly the sort of book that finds a comfortable little niche to sit in." More info: http://pilgrimofthesky.com/
- JL Hilton: Stellarnet Rebel from Carina Press, early 2012. "A science fiction romantic thriller." More info: http://jlhilton.com/stellarnet-rebel/
Posted in newsletter
Bull Spec Poetry Reviewed!
Posted on 2011-08-26 at 16:20 by Dan Campbell
New speculative poetry review site Versification reviews the poetry in Bull Spec issues 1-6! I’m particularly happy that Versification’s Erik Amundsen is the reviewer, as I’ve enjoyed his other reviews there. Overall, he provides a solid critique for our work with poetry over the last year and more, ending with: “Bull Spec seems to be developing quite well as a poetry publication. I know that poetry is not ever going to be its first priority, but its choices are showing signs of steady improvement, and I’m glad of that.”
Versification: Bull Spec Poetry Issues 1-3
Versification: Bull Spec Poetry Issues 4-6
Posted in bull spec #1, bull spec #2, bull spec #3, bull spec #4, bull spec #5, bull spec #6, poetry, reviews-of-bull-spec
Blurbing the blurbs.
Posted on 2011-08-17 at 19:24 by montsamu
Well, it’s not terribly often I run into books with local authors as the source of short reviewer quotes, a.k.a. “blurbs”. But recently I’ve seen not one but two such books.
The first is Southern Gods by debut novelist John Hornor Jacobs, out from Night Shade Books both in print and (from Brilliance Audio) in audio:
Here's the publisher description:
Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle when a Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysterious blues man's dark, driving music--broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station--is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.And here's what Pittsboro author David Drake had to say, printed at the top of the front cover: “Southern Gods is scary, smart, and effective both as Lovecraftian fiction and as a Southern Regional novel set in 1951.” While best known for his millions-in-print science fiction and fantasy novels, Drake is both a great writer of short horror fiction (the cover blurb attributes him as the author of Balefires, Drake's short fiction collection from Night Shade Books) as well as a voracious reader and collector of "weird tales" short fiction.
Disturbed and enraged by the bootleg recording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail into the strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumors the musician has sold his soul to the Devil.
But as Ingram closes in on Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .
In a masterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace, John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerous power of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.
The second concerns Isles of the Forsaken by Carolyn Ives Gilman, out from ChiZine Publications:
Here's the publisher description:
The Forsaken Isles are on the brink of revolution. Three individuals are about to push it over the edge and trigger events that will lead to a final showdown between ancient forces and the new overlords of the land. Spaeth Dobrin is destined to life as a ritual healer—but as the dhotamar of the tiny, isolated island of Yora, she will be caught in a perpetual bond between herself and the people she has cured. Is it slavery, or is it love? Meanwhile, Harg, the troubled and rebellious veteran, returns to find his home transformed by conquest. And Nathaway, the well-intentioned imperialist, arrives to teach Spaeth’s people “civilization,” only to become an explorer in the strange realm of the Forsakens. These two men will propel Spaeth into a vortex of war, temptation, and—just possibly—freedom.
Well, that's pretty much all I have today. Blurbing the blurbs!
Posted in blurbs
WorldCon fun! Just not for Sam.
Posted on 2011-08-16 at 21:07 by montsamu
Well, I see a long contrail (ha ha) of “See you guys, I’m off to World Con!” so it must be that time again: time to live vicariously through others, and try to get the word out about Bull Spec. First, I hope you all have a great time. No, really, I do.
Secondly, some flyers! I’ve lately enjoyed peeking at the participants lists of these conventions and noting how many folks can be found in the pages of Bull Spec. This time, I spy, with my little eye, 10 — count ‘em, TEN! — such folks at World Con:
- Lou Anders (interviewee, issue #4)
- Lev Grossman (interviewee, issue #6)
- Joe Haldeman (interviewee, issue #3)
- Daniel M. Kimmel ("Them!", issue #5)
- Mur Lafferty (review of The Wolf Tree, issue #6)
- Nick Mamatas ("Oh, Harvard Square!", issue #4, and a growing list of reviews)
- Tim Pratt ("Hell's Lottery", issue #5)
- Brandon Sanderson (interviewee, issue #3)
- Jonathan Strahan (interviewee, issue #5)
- Jacob Weisman (interviewee, issue #3)
And here's a color version of the first page, suitable for posting on walls, doors, etc. You know, generally wallpapering, etc.:
Now, what this doesn't have is the long list of "Friends of Bull Spec" or even the full list of contributors who will be out there. M. David Blake ("Absinthe Fish" in issue #5) is heading to Reno, as is Preston Grassmann ("Cael's Continuum" in issue #5, along with an interview with Hannu Rajaniemi in the same issue), and I'm sure there are more. But, sadly, you don't have to collect them all. You just have to find Marc (M. David Blake) and ask him nicely, and, while supplies last, he will have some Bull Spec goodies for folks.
So: enjoy! Print! Share! Have a blast, and good luck also to all the Hugo and Campbell nominees! (Particularly including Bull Spec contributors Lou Anders, Jonathan Strahan, Lev Grossman, Kij Johnson, and Brandon Sanderson. But, yeah, all of you.)
Posted in flyers
Yeah, more DNS fun.
Posted on 2011-08-16 at 03:17 by montsamu
DNS servers all went berserk today, so I may have lost more e-mail, and all the folks who were so good to check out the Kickstarter (and thanks big time to all of you who shared the link!) were probably a bit confused when they, er, couldn’t actually go see the magazine website, sample issues, etc. Hooray, technology fail! Trying to sort things out, but also need to go to bed.
Posted in Uncategorized
A lot of random stuff.
Posted on 2011-08-15 at 19:36 by montsamu
In the spirit of “not enough time to even tell you what I’m going to tell you” some random stuff:
- Issue 6 is in pretty much all the bookstores it goes to, but ... sorry to the last couple of holdouts. It's been a crazy few weeks for me.
- I'm not quite sure what the final fiction lineup for issue 7 will be, but at least have settled on having Jason K. Chapman, Jason Erik Lundberg, and Ken Thompson in there. Others will remain to be seen.
- I may actually run out of fiction before filling up issue 8. To remedy that, a couple of things, starting with taking a closer look at a couple of "man this is so close" rewrites that are time consuming but rewarding when it can work out.
- THE BIG NEWS! Finally took the covers off of the Bull Spec: Year 3 Kickstarter campaign! With rewards ranging from goodies like t-shirts and pendants and freakin' plasma-cut steel visors, to critiques from Kij Johnson, James Maxey, and Gray Rinehart, to original art, to ... well, go check it out.
- The other thing is that we're ready to put a bit of a real line in the sand on something that's a long time coming: we're going to be opening for fiction submissions again on October 1.
Posted in random
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