“HOW TO MAKE MONEY AT BOOK SIGNINGS”

AT OUTDOOR EVENTS & FOR THE INDEPENDENT/NEWBIE AUTHOR

by Lawrence R. Dagstine

A lot of people have been “hinting” recently on places such as Facebook and via email looking for advice.  They want to know how I did it.  They want to know how to make money selling books and magazines at functions and signings, especially if you’re an independent/newbie author.  As many people already know, I came out of a series of signings at Coney Island, New York this past summer with a decent intake on such titles as FRESH BLOOD (see Books & Anthos), and more.  Writing is pretty much an extra income field for a majority of us.  Once you learn to accept that, and not depend on fiction or look forward to fancy six-figure careers, you find your comfort zone.  The checks that come in repetitively or non-repetitively may pay for such things as utility bills, groceries, little odds and ends in places like Rite-Aid, CVS, or Walmart, co-pays on prescriptions, dinner and a movie, or something as simple as a gallon of milk or filling up your gas tank.  Of course, all of this might not come from fiction, but that’s okay.  After all, it’s a starving profession to begin with.  In this recession, every dime that comes out of the written word counts, because you never know how much your next electric bill or gas bill will be.  For example, right now I’m doing people’s resumes.  If you’re already an established, professional author with a couple of novels out, this information probably won’t help you, as you already make a nice income from being an upper midlist author or being able to relax on what royalties and advances you make from mass market paperbacks.  That, and some of your publishers may already foot the bill for some of your traveling expenses from signings.  But nowadays it’s very rare unless you’re a lead-lister.

However, if you’re an independent/micro-press author who lives in a big city or a pretty happening little town, whose been published in lots of print magazines, maybe a few anthologies, has a new book or collection available through a POD press, has access to a small newspaper (bonus points here), this information might help you better understand the kind of buyers that you want to attract, the places you want to sell, the performance you want to give when selling, how much to pay for dealers’ tables, number-crunching, and, what seems to work and not work “perception-wise” when selling to an audience outside of genre, because let’s be honest—that’s the consumer you’re gunning for, and they’re hard to reach.  At the end of the day they’re still a reader of Charlaine Harris, Dan Brown, or James Patterson.  You want to sell to both genre readers and non-genre readers alike.  Most likely, you work a day job, or maybe you’re on a fixed income.  You need to rely on a budget throughout, cut corners when necessary, because this article is recession-friendly.  People may perceive you as a hack, an amateur, people you know for years may perceive you as a pro, a super-pro, or even Superman! But no matter what kind of author you are, the moment you sat down at that table and sold a variety of stuff with your name on it, you were no longer just an author.  You also became a merchant and a bookseller, and you need to keep that mindset.

If you do live in a big city or a small town and haven’t been able to get signings in places such as Borders, Waldenbooks, or Barnes & Nobles, that’s okay.  In this economy, if you don’t expect family or friends to show up (or friends of those friends), chances are you’ll only sell less than twenty copies anyway and look like a schmuck at a table in the corner with a bowl of lollipops or cookies.  Somewhere away from the door if you’re not cozy with the store manager.  I chose Coney Island because it was a seasonal attraction—over five million visitors per summer—rather than a one-day gig, and I’d known about it almost a year in advance because I did some writing and research for one of their papers.  I knew people, and I made connections.  And if you can make connections, and you know the turnout is going to be big and profitable in advance, and it’s inexpensive to show up and conduct your little set-up, then what are you waiting for?

Fact: five-million people do not visit a Borders bookstore over the course of a summer — matter of fact, they’re closing stores, and I would be surprised at how many more survive — neither does that amount visit an independent bookstore, which I find to be a good way to do nothing, sell nothing, and just kill the day in a chair.  A world famous amusement park and tourist attraction is a whole other story.  Even little carnivals passing through town may attract more visitors.

Of course, there are always exceptions.

If you’re not selling in places like the chains, then you still want to add some diversity to your table, make it look pretty: business cards, flyers, postcards, magnets, or buttons made up cheap.  I recommend Vistaprint (www.vistaprint.com).  You can get stuff made up by them quite often for free.  All you have to do is pay the shipping & handling.  Some of the greatest places to sell books, and which attract crowds are book fairs, street fairs, flea markets (outdoor, indoor, churches and synagogues), carnivals, community centers, town halls, schools, festivals, bars… But mostly outdoor events in spring and summer.  Warm weather.

One writer asked me how much should he pay for tables (or, in some cases, booths).  I would say if you’re an independent author DO NOT pay more than a hundred bucks for a table (but that’s just me).  If you don’t come out of your signings making a minimum of 70 to 80% profit, don’t even bother reserving a spot.  Why? Because you need to first make the cost of the table back.  Then there’s the cost of gasoline, food and beverages (maybe even hotel and airfare).  Trust me, it adds up.  Make your signings LOCAL, and, if possible, try to split the table costs with fellow authors, too.  Oh yeah, you also want to hit up the smaller cons rather than the big cons.  Not that you shouldn’t attend the bigger cons, only that some of the smaller conventions are much easier on your pocket when it comes to the dealer’s area.  Sam’s Dot Publishing, one of my publishers, always seems to make a killing at these events.  They often sell out! Flea markets, churches, and festivals can go as low as $25 to $50.  I know this one church which holds a pretty popular flea market on Tuesdays and Fridays for twenty bucks, but you have to bring your own table.  Always packed.  Just sell a few used books, sports cards and comics on the side, you’ll make that back in no time flat.  Other genre wares should be meant to cover the cost of your table and traveling expenses.  This is a must!

When you go into a signing as an independent/newbie author, you need to go into it with the mind of a businessman or businesswoman.  You need to ask yourself: where do I expect to pick up the most sales and the best exposure.  The ice cream parlor, the town library, or the state fair (obviously the state fair).  If you need a license, get one.  They’re really not that expensive.  If you’re a newbie on a fixed income, you need to calculate all this in advance.  Don’t just sit at a table with your hands clasped, smiling and nodding at passersby.  Get up and be a regular PT Barnum.  Be jovial.  Prepare what’s called a pitch. For example: “Hello, Ma’am, you’re looking lovely today.  You must love to read.  Oh, don’t be shy.  I bet you have a soft spot for books reminiscent of Stephen King and JK Rowling!”—you get the gist (woman sees table filled to the rim with merch; friendly conversation is under way).  You need to stand up and introduce yourself.  You need to have confidence, charisma, personality, and a little humor doesn’t hurt either.  Books don’t sell themselves.  Hence why you need to be business-minded when you approach this, especially in these hard economic times, where the independent writer gets the short end of the stick.

Let’s talk about Coney Island now.  My very first signing on that very first day in June was a disaster.  Why? Because I had only brought Fresh Blood with me and a few used books by pulp authors.  Luckily, that first day I covered the cost of the booth (it was only $30 at the time), but I’ll never forget this one guy who came up to me and said, “Wow, so you like write stuff.  Man, I remember books.” I was astonished! Let’s just say the guy was a caveman who’d taken one too many bong hits.  How does someone forget about reading and books? Another girl just wanted her photograph taken with me because she never met an author before, yet she didn’t buy anything.  Not to mention I looked like a big tool just sitting there with one Dagstine-related item to my name when, back home, I had hundreds of print periodicals I could have toted with me.  Duplicate copies, too.  Yes, variety, along with ‘public perception’ makes for a very nice recipe, which I’ll explain in more detail in a moment.

After that first day I learned my lesson.  Between June and August there were supposed to be seven signings, but there ended up to be six due to a one-day rainout.  There would have been a few more had it not rained constantly between June and July.  And Flea by the Sea (the name of Coney Island’s summer marketplace), though covered by tents, was an outdoor event.  It was on top of the beach.  At times, the winds were horrible.  The circus was there, too, and one day there was a big hoopla going on because Ringling Brothers were abusing the elephants, but believe it or not a few of the animal rights activists picked up some of my goods.  So I can’t complain there.  But what I’m trying to say here is that, make sure it’s not going to rain on your parade on the day that you sell.  Mother Nature has a funny way of defying writers when it comes to selling outdoors.  By July and early August I was paying $40.00 for the booth and then $10.00 to rent the table, which came out to $50.00 for an entire weekend.  How could you beat that price? This is the price area you should be looking into.  Once again, a hundred bucks should always be your cap, and hopefully, you have more than one book to offer.  Speaking of which…

They say never judge a book by its cover.  Bullshit. When you’re selling in quantity to a non-genre and genre crowd, cover art I noticed makes all the difference.  In most cases it comes down to perception and appearances, or just the way people interpret merchandise.  I don’t care what anybody says.  They do judge a book by its cover.  And what people saw were stacks of magazines with extra copies, six different hardcovers and anthologies, and of course, a stack of Fresh Blood.  It was set up professionally and it looked pretty, like my own compact comic book shop.  All featuring something by ‘Dagstine.’

People were complimenting me because of the covers of the magazines.  Short lines and interested eyes gathered.  One person said, “So you must be Brooklyn’s SF Writer.”—I said, “Okay.” I just totally went with it.  Everything acted sort of like a cash cow.  One Dagstine publication led to the purchase or attraction of another.  Not only did one person spend $50.00 in one shot on me, but over the course of those signings I pushed $250.00 worth of old self-published hardcovers from The Year of the Flood, back when I didn’t know what the words ‘Vanity Press’ meant.  The point I’m trying to make here: I had a lot to choose from, my buyers had a lot to choose from, and so should you.  The cover art, the variety, the set-up, and “come one, come all” pitch made all the difference.  Even the shirt I wore! I got to autograph and sell my writing where, with only Fresh Blood, I probably wouldn’t have made what I did over the course of the summer: around $1200.00 – NET. And hey, I got my work and business cards out there.  Not bad for a hack, and my table investments had already been covered. 

If you’re a writer whose works have appeared in quite a few magazines, talk to the editor about getting extra issues at an author discount.  Always use media mail.  You might pay $4.00, $5.00, even $6.00 for those extra copies featuring your work in it.  You’re going to autograph them and sell them for $8.00 to $10.00… And don’t forget what I said, once you’ve included the cost of the table, food and beverages, gas or transportation to get to your selling destination, you need to make a minimum of 70 to 80% profit, otherwise it’s pointless.  Remember to invest in your work, invest in yourself, and before you attend that signing with more than one book or periodical, sit down with a calculator and crunch those numbers.  Make sure the location is going to be worth the time and effort.

In closing…

Whether you’re selling indoors in some chain, an artsy-fartsy independent that has velvet couches and serves Lattes and marble loaf in the back, or you’re giving the outdoor thing a whirl like I did, there is also another reason why you need to impress that passerby.  Besides cover art and quantity, nine out of ten times the general reading public will throw down cash on used books, non-fiction, children’s books, fast-paced thrillers, or romances before they will genres or subgenres known for killer slugs, planets with giant lizards, what the future would be like if everybody were pink, zombie stories, and heroic fantasy yarns.  If you’re a writer of genre fiction, you’re automatically at a disadvantage, so you need to think of ways to catch up.  That’s why the business model/bookseller mentality is so important.

Still, if I could do it with twelve hundred smackers, with a little initiative, so can you.

Until Next Time,

Lawrence R. Dagstine

NEW YORK CITY

HOME OF CHAMPIONS!!!

Congratulations to the New York Yankees… Championship No. 27.

2009 MLB World Series – Bronx, New York.

]]> http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/11/05/lawrence-dagstine-the-new-york-yankees-2009/feed/ 0 Lawrence yankees http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/11/05/lawrence-dagstine-the-new-york-yankees-2009/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/http/wwwlawrencedagstinefeedburnercom/~3/ukSqtEoAHUc/ http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/11/03/hungur-magazine-9-november-2009-now-available/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:13:39 +0000 Lawrence Dagstine http://lawrencedagstine.com/?p=5019 ]]>

Vampires get your fangs ready! I’ve got a story in the latest issue of Hungur Magazine, No. #9.  Fall 2009.  Edited by Terrie Leigh Relf, and published by Sam’s Dot.  If you think the Obama Administration or any administration is safe from a vampire threat, think again! It’s an issue you won’t want to miss.  Because this issue… The Vampires are running the show.

HUNGUR MAGAZINE

Late Fall 2009 – Issue #9

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/HungurGL.htm

ORDER DIRECT FROM SAM’S DOT & THE GENRE MALL:

http://www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm#hungur

Bloodletting works by: Tyree Campbell, Lawrence Dagstine, Scot Coon, William Marden, Lawrence Barker, Dev Jarrett, John H. Stevens, Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Jared W. Vickery, J. Jay Waller, Lawrence Buentello, Allan Wise, Marge Simon, Brian Rosenberger, G.O. Clark, Debby Feo, Terrie Leigh Relf, Tom Galusha, Justin Bohardt, and illustrations also by Marge Simon.

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

TRICK OR TREAT

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2009

from Lawrence Dagstine

(I love scarecrows; had to go with a scarecrow theme this year)

However, in case you love zombies, werewolves, vampires, and lizards…

Still Available from Sam’s Dot Publishing & The Genre Mall:

http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#freshblood

Issue #5.2 – Fall 2009, of David Lee Summer’s TALES OF THE TALISMAN is now available for purchase.  Get your copy today.  Also, don’t forget, I’ll be back again next year around this time with a novelette-length work.  In the meantime, enjoy the 2009 print edition.  The interior artwork is fab!

TALES OF THE TALISMAN #5.2 - AUTUMN 2009

Submission Guidelines – Order Here:

www.talesofthetalisman.com

Table of Contents:

http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/Tales5-2-TOC.html

PREVIOUS ISSUES (maybe still available):

http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/09/18/tales-of-the-talisman-fall-2010-4th-acceptance/

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

Welcome to DAGSTINE’S HALLOWEEN! Did you ever wonder what it would be like to teach undead children? Did you ever wonder what the scientific, psychological, and moral implications of something so eerie would be like? I mean, dead kids with some thought processes still intact being taught and experimented on.  

Ever since 28 Days Later, every few years zombies have this funny way of making a comeback (perhaps too much).  From the Dawn of the Dead remake to Diary of the Dead and Land of the Dead.  From foreign masterpieces like [.REC] to hilarious films like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.  It’s as if we truly are a “zombiefied” culture.  For this year’s fiction sample and Halloween story, I’ve decided to present to you one of my more widely accepted tales — mags ranging from Necrotic Tissue to Atomjack  — entitled, Classroom of the Dead.  Have a wonderful holiday and enjoy!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2009 – FREE FICTION

CLASSROOM OF THE DEAD

by

Lawrence R. Dagstine

The room was huge.  A cavernous, old turn-of-the-century affair, with twelve-foot-high ceilings and magnificent, large windows that looked out on absolutely nothing worth seeing: a brick wall and the smokestack of the chemical plant next door, a well-sized piece of land fenced off and secluded from outsiders—most called it a playground for the stiffs—and it was just how the government wanted it.  A hefty chunk of the room had been partitioned off with gray steel industrial shelving units, used to store the supplies of safety such a learning environment would require.  The T-shaped area that was left belonged to substitute teacher, Howard Tressy. 

Windows ran the length of the wide, long arm of the T, where the chairs and work desks were; the narrow, shorter arm of the T contained the blackboard on one wall and the titanium emergency hatch at the opposite end.  It was an adequate amount of space—he had taught in more cramped, dangerous conditions—but it was a quirky arrangement.  The blackboard was useless because it couldn’t be seen from the work area, and the children didn’t have the skills required to pay full attention to it anyway.  And short of standing like a guard at the junction of the two arms of the T, he saw that he could not monitor the hatch.  Most eccentric, and morbid, however, was the government’s decision to combine a classroom for undead children with regards to furthering their education even after their pulses stopped.

They called it HOS (short for hostile, or Homicidal Outburst Syndrome).  You know, one of those biological “Oh, shit, it’s the End of Days” diseases which turned a whole nation of little boys and girls into half brain-dead monsters, flooding them with super strength and unbelievable rage.  It was to be one of the first official self-contained classrooms in the state of Colorado for zombies, ages twelve and under, who could be instructed and mentally reared since the No Kill Act had been passed in 2018.  For Howard, walking back into a schoolroom with musty children that early September morning, having been gone from teaching almost three years, had provoked a sense of intense déjà vu.  Looking at the twenty or so decomposed faces, it seemed as if he had been away forever and yet had never left at all. 

He put down his briefcase and studied the features of each of them.  Their pale white eyes caused a shiver to run up his spine to his shoulders.  As a precautionary measure, those who were extra vicious were handcuffed to their chairs, and if they were caught escaping or attacking the teacher, an armed guard, usually a Marine, would hear an alarm go off and hurry inside, then blow the ravenous child’s head off. 

The six through eight year olds came with the kind of profile that was almost a cliché: borderline death IQ, short to almost non-existent attention span, no verbal skills beyond a grunt or a moan, overaggressive and violent behavior when in large numbers.  In his entire short career as a substitute, Howard achieved virtually nothing.  Yes, some could talk.  But most could neither read nor write, or understand even the most basic of math.

The nine through twelve year olds had succumbed to the HOS sickness quite some time ago; it was obvious in their pale, sunken cheeks.  They had spent virtually all of their dead time in confinement facilities or walking the red earth.  Their early days were horrible—a litany of bloodshed and brutality.  And while it would take more than the joy of love and learning to conquer their fateful disease, they were diagnosed as being too unstable to ever make a return to society, and had a very poor prognosis for improvement.

Nervous, Howard said, “Children, uhh, inside your desks you will find textbooks.  Open up to the chapter marked PLAGUES.” The school was required to have a certain amount of copies of the same particular book on hand, and he saw that only a select few had the capacity to pick them up. “Start reading amongst yourselves under THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 2012.  I’ll be with you all in a few moments.  Before the day is out, I’ll be testing you on this.” 

Putting his pencils out and searching himself now, he realized he hadn’t meant to be teaching again.  He’d been abroad, living between Baltimore and Bangkok, working part-time as a book translator, and he intended to return to his life in the East, to his little straw shack, his laid-back life and no worries if a zombie was going to turn a corner and jump out at him.  However, a phone call and an insurmountable pay hike from the government—and a less than enthusiastic divorce settlement—had brought him back to the States for good, and before he knew it, he was looking for an apartment outside of Denver. 

A friend of a friend in a top-secret division of the DOD had rang him one afternoon.  He’d never met the military scientist, but he’d heard of him and his breakthroughs in “awakening the mummified cerebrum” in undead adolescents, or, “we mobilize them, you instruct them”.  They had a problem of their own with a new school, it seemed, and since they had both held positions in the Pentagon, maybe they could help one another out.  One of their special education teachers had been taken ill—actually, she’d been eaten at recess—and there was only two weeks left before the beginning of the second trial school year, and they had no replacement.  They asked Howard if he would be interested in substituting. 

No thanks, he said immediately.  He wanted to be able to lead a zombie-free life the instant his wife cleared out.  But the woman wasn’t easily moved, and finding himself almost penniless and without a roof over his head after the lawyers caught up to him, Howard finally said, Okay, I’ll do it.

Reminiscing, he sat down at his desk, the students in the back row frowning and groaning at him.  He was staring out the gated window at the smokestack, dull and purple-gray in the late summer sunshine, when a ceiling light in back of the room went on and the hatch slid open.

“Mr. Tressy?” a female voice called.  He couldn’t see who it was from where he was sitting, so he rose.  An undead girl, deceased at maybe six or seven, was holding a torn Dora the Explorer doll.  Her head and neck was twisted and decayed, practically snapping what was left of her upper spinal alignment and sliding off her shoulder, yet she still managed to poke her head through the hatch and around the left side of the room. “Another one of your students has arrived,” the woman that followed her said. “The parents are by the side of the road.”

“What?” Howard was confused. “Are you the principal?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “There are no principals here.  I’m just a facilitator.” She walked the edge of the room carefully, so as not to rile up the students.  Almost two-dozen pairs of eyes were on her.  Finally, she reached the desk and extended a hand. “Dorothy Wilkins,” she added.  An army brat with an M-16 waited at the foot of the room for her.  He chewed on a saturated toothpick with a smug face.

“Pleasure,” Howard said. “Don’t mind me, it’s been a while.”

“Oh, really? I gather they didn’t give you the refresher course then.”

“No, they did,” he assured her. “Back in Baltimore.  It’s just that… Well, I’ve never seen an arrangement like this so far out.  It’s in the middle of nowhere.” He glanced down at the shy but mindless little girl who, like the others, had fine hair that was now brittle and streaked with gray.  Her right eye was hanging halfway out of its socket, a few tethered veins and a single optical nerve holding it in place. “And what’s your name, darling?” he knelt down and asked her, trying to break the aura of creepiness surrounding him, and blend in as best he could.

“This would be Nancy,” Dorothy said, as the girl smiled wickedly through torn cheek flesh and hid behind her legs. “And if she puts what’s left of her thinking cap on, she’s good at numbers.”

“Is she now?” Howard was impressed.  Mildly.

Then Dorothy smiled herself. “Why don’t you come with me? I’ll show you around and make you feel at home in our special school.”

“But the children,” he said, pointing, “they’ll—”

“Oh, they’re going nowhere.  Think of them as well-behaved dogs when you’re out of the room.”

Howard nodded. “All right, then.”

Dorothy brought him to a much older building than the first one, part of an underground complex which looked abandoned since the late half of the 20^th century.  Only it wasn’t abandoned.  Much of its interior was no longer used principally as a school.  Instead, it housed a few administrative offices and a training facility for young cadets.  The empty classrooms on the first floor were turned into an indoor shooting range—targeting practice and termination for the misbehaved or hopeless case (roughly one in every three), and to help coach newer soldiers in the art of zombie killing. 

The scientists had the second floor, to work, sleep, and eat—they even had a recreation room with pinball machines, a pool table, and a dartboard—and as Dorothy gave him a quick tour of the upstairs, he noticed a few doors marked, EXPERIMENTAL TRIALS, GROWTH CHAMBER, and BIOFEEDBACK.  The rest of the rooms were used for storage.  In fact, there were only a half-dozen real classrooms there: the one he was going to be teaching in and a few turned laboratory two floors below, in the basement.  Save for the occasional gun-toting soldier passing through, the building’s halls were hauntingly quiet on this first day of school.

Sublevel, however, he realized that the elevator system and intertwining tunnels connected with the old smoke-piping plant next door, and this interested him very much.  Every corridor they turned down there were blue steel walls, reinforced metal or concrete, low rocky ceilings, and unusual looking cameras mounted above them.  So unusual that he decided to question his tour guide on it. “Just wondering, Ms. Wilkins, but what is this place for?”

“The cameras got you?” she asked.

“Well, yes, I do find it unusual that you have this place so…so monitored…”

“One can never be too safe when it comes to a HOS casualty, Mr. Tressy.  After all, these are not ordinary children we’re dealing with.”

“But I’ve taught HOS victims in the past,” he explained, “and though the tutoring sessions and trials were costly and much to the government’s disadvantage in containing the disease, security and surroundings were still never like this.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Dorothy recalled. “They had you handing out leaflets and crayons from a fold-up table in a giant hangar, a bunch of men in gasmasks and white suits patrolling the corners and exits.” They passed an opening in the tunnel’s rock face, a small exterior shell of a room with no door to bar the outside but plenty of digital monitors and equipment on the inside. “We do things much differently here.  Have a look for yourself.”

Howard stepped inside briefly.  Two men in gray jumpsuits and donning headsets swiveled around a vast circle of television screens, wired through the rocks and pipelines above.  One man took notes in front of a microphone and recording panel, while the other wheeled back and forth mumbling things like “progress” and “stages”. 

Howard moved closer.  He turned to Dorothy and said, “Is all this for real?”

“Why, of course,” Dorothy answered.

Howard turned back and observed the two men at work.

The first man backslapped his coworker on the arm and said, “Hey, look at this.  Monitor no. 34.  We have us a live one, a thinking one.”

“Get out of here,” the second man said. “He’s scratchin’ for maggots again, I tell ya.”

“No, look!”

On-screen, at one of many different angles, a moldy looking child slowly went into his desk and pulled out a crayon and a composition notebook, studying the two objects carefully.  Searching for some kind of meaning, it was as if he wanted to know what they were for.

“That’s my class,” Howard whispered. “That’s one of my students.”

Dorothy smiled. “Yes.”

“I remember gray shelving and a closet there. You mean that’s a hidden camera?”

“One of many, Mr. Tressy.  Also, you have the key to that closet at all times.   There’s a shotgun and a first aid kit in case of an emergency.”

Howard was astonished.

Finally, the first man in front of him said, “That’s the Tarhouse brat.  He’s picking up the crayon, Harry.  Look, he’s opening the book and starting to scrawl.  He’s making circles!”

The second man couldn’t believe his eyes.  Hurrying for the panel, he said, “Holy shit, you’re right! We do have a thinker.” He brought up a school record on the screen in front of him, turned on the microphone, and started taking notes: “Student identification no. 42501236… Name: Billy Tarhouse.  Deceased: St. Louis, Missouri, 2017.  Noted age and race at time of death and reanimation, approximately eight years old and Caucasian.  Child has picked up a writing instrument without teacher present, and appears to be drawing.  At this stage, I’d say motor skills are barely level three.  But it’s a positive sign.  I repeat, there is progress.”

After he’d heard all that, Howard stepped away in disgust. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” he told Dorothy.

“Well, we could—”

“No, Ms. Wilkins.  This is too disturbing.  Take me elsewhere.”

They walked the remainder of the underground halls in silence, until they reached a secure metal door with a window in it.  With a dull expression on his face, Howard quickly peeked at what was going on inside the room.  Much to his surprise an officer, in standard military uniform, was sitting down behind a large table.  His eyes were glued to a teenage girl, tall, thirteen, maybe fourteen, standing with only half her skull visible against the far wall.  To the military official’s credit, a scientist arrived on the scene from a buzz-in door on the opposite side.  They both studied the unfortunate subject, and, while she hadn’t quite managed to shed the undead image, she’d obviously tried.  Her rank face was covered in makeup.  With the help of others, prosthetics and lengthy but seedy looking clothes had replaced the skeletal parts of her body.

“What else can she do?” the uniformed man asked.

The scientist said, “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

“Will she cooperate this time?”

“Much of the exterior fractures and impact holes are small,” the scientist pointed out. “You’ll also notice her left temporal lobe and hypothalamus are still intact.  So, yes, I don’t see why not.”

The uniformed man took the scientist’s clipboard, then faced the girl again.  Her features, for a HOS victim, were decent; her oozing brain matter, however, was another story.  She’d clipped the cracked pieces of her skull back with large barrettes so that it would stay in place on her head.  Shocked, Howard wondered if it would be enough to convince the officer for whatever purpose his visit required.

Finally, the man nodded. “You look good,” he said. “But can you braid what’s left of your hair back or something?”

Sitting down across from him, she pulled strands of her hair around over her shoulder and began to braid it.  She never spoke.

“Are you quite well now, Tracy?” the scientist inquired when he reintroduced the military official to her. “We don’t want another incident.”

The uniformed man glanced in the scientist’s direction, a questioning expression on his face; it occurred to him that she might have little or no memory of that previous occasion.  Then he gave her a knowing look. “He means when I was last here.  You know, last semester.”

She grinned. “Yes, I remember,” she replied.

Howard was taken aback.  He wondered where this girl’s intelligence and ability to speak and think came from; even more perplexing, how had these scientists succeeded where he had failed?

Through the window, Tracy smiled in a friendly way. “I know where I saw you last,” she said. “You were laying on the ground, protecting that teacher.”

A flush of color filled the uniformed man’s face. 

And of course, there was the scientist and Howard.

“Your men all came outside at once.  You shot me.  Over and over.”

“Are you sure about that, Tracy?” The man looked up and said, “This isn’t working.  She’s still too corpselike.”

The scientist disagreed. “I beg to differ.  Here, feel her arm.  Touch it.”

“I’m not going to touch no dead girl!”

“Touch it.  Feel her arm.  See? See how warm her arm is.  Dead people are cold, aren’t they? Feel how warm she is.  A part of her brain is still sending signals to other parts of her body.”

“Get her away from me!”

Suddenly, she shrieked, “It’s the dead teacher! That dead teacher is here…” She pointed toward the door with Howard staring through it. “She wants her old job back!”

“Tracy, she’s not exactly dead.  Now calm down,” the scientist ordered.

“Who’s that?” the uniformed man asked.

“He’s our new substitute,” the scientist replied. “Ms. Wilkins is giving him a go of the place.”

“No, she’s dead!” The zombie girl shouted. “I killed her.  I made the teacher go away.  Now she’ll be back!”

To say that the two men inside were looking horrified by this point was a vast understatement, Howard thought.  From the other side of the door, even his expression was more horrified than before.  The girl was frozen, unable to pull herself away from staring at him, a maniacal little smile repeatedly coming to her lips.  And though the trancelike connection was eventually broken, she seemed to confuse him for this other teacher.

Dorothy put her hand on his shoulder. “She’s a special case,” she said. “We should go.”

Howard moved away from the window.

“How do you keep them so calm?” he asked. “A girl as challenged as that one should have attacked the door the moment she spotted me.”

“Every morning we prep them with mega-dosages of tranquilizers,” Dorothy said. “Their parents must sign confidentiality agreements and permission forms before the administering begins.  And even then, we have a special selection process as to who gets into one of our classes.  Naturally, those we feel are most gifted are bumped up to the top of the list.”

They took the elevator back to the first floor, and it was here, on their way back to the other building, that Howard stopped to gather his thoughts. “Ms. Wilkins, I never signed up for this,” he said. “I realize not all HOS victims are unique, and all cases can’t be alike, but—”

Dorothy shushed him. “Mr. Tressy, did you know that a child’s brain grows until age twenty? After that, adult brains become atrophic and shrink.  A young person’s brain, however, produces a certain amount of cells and neurotransmitters, and often well through college.  Even in death, these kids sometimes maintain serotonin levels equal to living people.” 

“Listen, I’ve taught zombies before, but never within a factory or military science installation.  What could a child, dead or alive, possibly learn in an environment where purple smog and constant monitoring is the everyday norm?”

“Ah, I knew you’d question that,” she said, “and it turned three other teachers off by the position.  The reason we keep this school next to a chemical mill is not by accident.  The discolored remnants you see coming out of that smokestack, the smog as you call it, isn’t just some industrial pollution.  The science team is releasing a mile-wide toxin that gives parents their wishes and children a second chance at life.  We’re giving mothers and fathers peace of mind, and kids the opportunity of learning and adapting to society.  The toxin tries to tap into a dormant cell in young people.  This cell has the potential of multiplying into millions more just like it, only at a slower pace than the living.  A thinking cell.  It doesn’t work for all of them, naturally.  It’s all behavioral when you observe these youngsters together in one room, and you get to look beyond their musty features.  Speech, logic, reason—in the right-fueled environment, undead children can be host once again to these traits, and many more they picked up whilst among the living.  So yes, in a way, they are like guinea pigs.  But we’re trying to help these guinea pigs, because we feel they deserve an education.”

She reached forward and gave his hand a quick, clammy shake for good luck.  Howard was glancing around nervously, but he still regarded the facilitator’s words.  While his take on the school by now was not precisely negative, neither was it positive.  Once more he studied the environment with the kind of unabashed scrutiny not usually tolerated among substitutes.  Every muscle in his body was taut, and when the woman opened the hatch for him, a strange silence followed.  It was almost as if he didn’t know what to do once he stepped back inside the room.

“You’ll be fine,” she said, urging him forward. “You won’t know unless you try.”

The door sealed behind him and, like an hour earlier, he found himself alone with his new class.

The girl with the twisted head and neck, Nancy, walked over to him.  She seemed the most sedate of the bunch. “What should we do, Mr. Teacher?” she asked, looking up and tugging at his pant leg.

He smiled down at her. “Ah, a genuine talker.  Let’s just leave things and get acquainted for today,” he told her, his mind still gazing off. “Perhaps we’ll feel more like learning tomorrow.” After that, he told the students—the ones that could understand, and the ones that couldn’t—that they could put their textbooks away.

He had an idea.

As had long been his custom in special classes, he opened the day with “story time”.  Story time required a book, which he searched the wall in back for; stories traditionally explored areas that persistently got the children thinking, or took them on brave new adventures—an escape from their horrible disfigurements, their cause and effect behaviors, lack of feelings and moral understanding.  The period was not used for problem solving or problem making, but relaxation and fun. 

He was creating a comfort zone and, once at ease, finally realized that he could make a difference in these young people’s lives, no matter what their ailments.  So much that their grunts and moans were replaced by laughs and smiles.

The End

Other New Entries: “Fiction Sample”

…Or, rather, David Tennant.  But I will get to that in a moment.

Artwork by Neil Cameron

Plot devices and continuity.  Like most hit television shows, in any given genre, be it comedy or drama… from Grey’s Anatomy to Ugly Betty to Lost to Star Trek to Stargate to, yes, Doctor Who.  New writers must come in and draw a fine line where the old left off, and hopefully fill those new shoes properly.  If you were hired to write a hit TV show tomorrow and you were not a fan or somewhat of an expert or historian in that series, somewhat part of the progression of it, I would tell you to get the F out.  Good example, Desperate Housewives. I mean, come on, five years later? OK, prequels I can handle.  Pip and Jane Baker; you wrote about Colin Baker but you never ever bothered to watch the series and analyze your lead character’s progressions?

I have faith Stephen Moffat will make this new improved Doctor Who work to his advantage, and, most importantly, the audience’s advantage.  And don’t be surprised if Russell T. Davies “guest writes” a story every now and then.  Like most science fiction shows, the best writers and collaborators must look at the material of seasons past and see how they can improve on that, go one step further.  They must include an element within a series that will not only keep the viewer attached but something that approximates the previous seasons and the very heart of what the show represents, especially in terms of approach and sophistication.  Good example, historical stories.  Anything else nowadays is a waste of time and a quick cancellation. 

The Two New Stars of Series Five

But, once again, I have faith in the soon-arriving Fifth Series Doctor when it comes to his bow-tie donning persona, what I personally consider to be a 21^st century Peter Davison by way of Jon Pertwee and perhaps a bit of suave “academic emo”.  Then again, over the next three years—in which Matt Smith was contracted—I could end up wrong.  However, I love the new outfit.  And I fell in love with Matt Smith when I saw that new TARDIS, the tweed dandy, and the old crotchety boots and rags he was wearing.  Yes, sometimes fashion makes a bold statement.  The best part: it works for just about all age groups. 

When I was growing up, the late Tom Baker and Peter Davison years were my era.  My son loves Christopher Eccleston.  Who knows, maybe it’s the ears.  But he is young.  The way I grew up to Davison, is the way my boy will start off “fresh” with Matt Smith.  The Eleventh Doctor.  Below you will find set photographs littered across the web of Matt Smith in a rather torn-up outfit belonging to a dead David Tennant.  Yes, the Tenth Doctor’s garb.  Ice cream, anyone? And there’s a surprised Karen Gillan, in standard police uniform, by his side.  So one question now remains: what happened in the aftermath of whatever it is that killed Tennant’s character off?

Well, actually, two: How did David Tennant die?

REGEN-NEWS TIP: The Gallifreyan Embassy (Doctor Who Podshock): ttp://networkedblogs.com/p13718949

Official BBC Doctor Who Homepage:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/ 

Doctor Who Series Five Monster Poll:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/03/16/doctor-who-series-five-monsters/

 On-Location Film Shoots:

www.bigpicturesphoto.com

Surprise, surprise!

"Can I get you a Firerocket, Amy?"

The 2010 series assures us the return of Alex Kingston (Professor Riversong, who I suspect might be Amy Pond).  The new series assures us the return of the Daleks.  The 2010 series rumors that Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston will be back.  How the latter, I do not know.  Maybe Merlin, maybe CGI dragons.  There are rumors of The Sea Devils, Sherlock Holmes, The Yeti, The London Underground (remember The Web of Fear), and possibly Noel Clarke and John Barrowman, too.  But until 2010, that’s all they are: rumors.

Matt Smith

Nevertheless, I’d like to take this time to thank David Tennant, Russell T. Davies, and Julie Gardner for fulfilling a dream I had wished come true way back in the 90’s when I was scouring Forbidden Planet, Barnes & Nobles, and Borders for paperbacks like the “The New Adventures” and places like FYE and Sam Goody for VHS Tapes of past stories.

Goodbye David Tennant

Thank you David Tennant, for being a BRILLIANT Tenth Doctor.  This post is dedicated to you.

Yours Truly,

Lawrence R. Dagstine

Just Another SF Geek.

P.S.: How about that new DW Logo? What do you think?

P.S. 2: I’ll return with more Whovian news and thoughts in 2010.

Probably destined to become a semi-prozine down the road with a little bit of funding  — they don’t make Hard SF or genuine SciFi news like this anymore, seriously — and available in an affordable monthly PDF format (12 dollars per year), M-BRANE Science Fiction.  Issue #9, October 2009.  This would be my 2nd appearance with the publication.  They also have a print version available on Lulu for those interested.  My story takes place on Mars fifty years into the future.  They’ve featured such names as Rick Novy, Cat Rambo, Brandon Bell, and Cate Gardner among others.

M-BRANE Science Fiction – Issue #9, October 2009

M-Brane SF - Issue #9, October 2009

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – ORDERING INFO:

www.mbranesf.blogspot.com

Issue #9 Fiction Line-up: Eden Robins, Sue Lange, Maura McHugh, Janett Grady, Bill Ward, Bob Brill, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Fredrick Obermeyer, Jason Earls, Jeff Kozzi, Anna Sykora, Lawrence Dagstine, Mari Kurisato.  Edited by Christopher Fletcher. 

Also available as a LULU print version:

www.lulu.com - Enter M-BRANE SF in Search Box.

*   *   *   *   *

Previous Issues featuring Lawrence R. Dagstine

M-BRANE SF, Issue #2 – Late 2008/Early 2009 

M-Brane SF - Issue #2, Past Editions

That main homepage one more time:

www.mbranesf.blogspot.com

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

Not to be confused with the upcoming Fall 2009 issue, which should be out around Halloween to early November.   That’s Issue #5.2.  I’ve learned I’ll be making my 4th appearance next year in Issue #6.2 — Autumn 2010.  A long way off, but stay tuned to this spot.  Tales of the Talisman.  Edited by David Lee Summers, the magazine has been around for a number of years, features ten to twelve authors per issue, and is published quarterly.  Annual subscriptions also available.

www.talesofthetalisman.com

Previous Issues which may still be available.

Featuring stories by Lawrence R. Dagstine 

Tales of the Talisman, Issue #3.1 (2007)

Tales of the Talisman, Issue #4.1 (2008)

And click the link below to see what’s due in 2009:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/08/10/tales-of-the-talisman-late-fall-2009-coming-soon/

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

I don’t know whether to consider this a magazine credit or anthology credit, so mark them as both for now, I suppose.  I’ll have a SF and Fantasy-mixed tale coming to a fairly new bi-annual trade paperback anthology-magazine called Shelter of Daylight by Sam’s Dot Publishing.  They’re published every April and October, with a dash of poetry and art.  Edited by Tyree Campbell.  And yes, this officially puts me on the road to 400 publishing credits sometime in 2010.

SHELTER OF DAYLIGHT – APRIL 2010

Coming Next Year from Sam’s Dot Publishing

SAMPLE ISSUE – SAMPLE ISSUE

Shelter of Daylight

SAMPLE ISSUE – SAMPLE ISSUE – SAMPLE ISSUE

 Sam’s Dot Publishing Main Homepage:

www.samsdotpublishing.com

I’m not in the issue above, however, if you’d like to sample it:

http://www.genremall.com/zinesr.htm#shelter

And I’ll see you in spring 2010.

Other New Entries: “Books & Anthos” and “Magazines”

I’ll have a semi-long story coming soon to an upcoming edition of the online fiction zine, Labyrinth Inhabitant.  A very hard SF market to break into, they’ve featured such fantastic and familiar short story authors as Gareth D. Jones, Kristine Ong Muslim, Robert E. Keller, T.M. Crone, and Patricia Russo.

Labyrinth Inhabitant

http://www.labyrinthinhabitant.com/

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

The thirtieth issue of Aoife’s Kiss is now available for purchase, and after eight, nine years at press, in sparkling form as always.  This would be my ninth or tenth print and electronic appearance with the publication.  They’re put out quarterly by editor Tyree Campbell and Sam’s Dot Publishing.  Get it now!  

Aoife’s Kiss, Issue # 30 – September 2009

Aoife’s Kiss/Submission Guidelines:

http://samsdotpublishing.com/aoife/cover.htm

Sam’s Dot homepage (updated monthly):

www.samsdotpublishing.com

September 2009 Aoife’s Line-up: Paul E. Holt, Elana Gomel, S. Hutson Blount, Bill Snodgrass, Matthew Wuertz, Rachel Olivier, Tracy S. Morris, Lawrence R. Dagstine, Christine Lucas, Michele Lee, Zdravka Evtimova, Marc Colten, A.K. Sykora, Rhiannon Morgan, Rhonda Parrish, Holly Day, Francesca Forrest, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff, Joshua Gage, Justin Bohardt, Jamie Lee Moyer, Ethan Brandt, John Nichols, Nina Babon, Ellie Biswell, John Hayes, Thom Olausson, and reviews by Scott Virtes.

Order this magazines direct from The Genre Mall:

http://www.genremall.com/contents.htm

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

…And a few other thoughts.

The following essay pertains to mostly science fiction.  It’s an opinion-based essay and nothing more than that.  These are my views, take it for what it’s worth.  It derives from something Harlan Ellison originally wrote on his Webderland Website a few days ago, a paragraph which can be found here: http://harlanellison.com/home.htm

Harlan Ellison thinks SF is dead.

 He might be right.  Here is what he wrote:

“Literature is dead. Civility is dead. Ethical considerations are dead. Common sense is dead. Dignity, respect, responsibility are dead. It is a cheapshit spur-of-the-moment tawdry and empty-headed congeries of societies, here, there, everywhere. It is a universally cheapjack time in which a steadily more ignorant and venal species has become drunk on notoriety and the scent of Paris Hilton’s thong. Science fiction is dead? You just noticed? You come late to the literature party; the hyenas have long since been attracted to the stench of stupidity; text them for me: bon appetit.”

HARLAN ELLISON / 28 August 2009

Now…

Did you know there are over 100,000 readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror out there? At the same time, in any given year, there are around 100,000 submitters of genre fiction out there.  Worldwide, that is a rough estimate.  I was surprised to learn from one hobbyist publication that during their quarterly reading periods, they receive anywhere from 300 to 500 manuscripts.  And they only pay 25 bucks.  So the next time you get a publishing credit or get shortlisted for a story slot, give yourself a pat on the back, because getting published in genre fiction nowadays is sort of like trying to win the lottery.  Actually, if you live in New York, it’s probably easier to win the Take Five or one of those Loose Change/Bingo scratch-offs.  Or you could just pay-to-play (many esteemed venues such as F&SF are doing it, even though for years such places advised against it).  That’s code for broke.  Still, there are much more writers than there are magazines (it’s sad), and buying something as simple as a sample issue or two can help a magazine stay alive and keep slots – part-time and full-time jobs for those who struggle – open and afloat.  Then you have the whole e-revolution and how prices just went down on X-BOX 360’s, Nintendo Wii’s, and Playstation 3’s.  Now that makes it a whole lot easier to introduce a new generation to geek-a-ture.

Everybody has a story to tell, but not everybody wants to listen.  People are laughing now at devices like the Kindle, the iPhone, the Sony eReader.  I’m thinking way ahead of that, wondering what will replace those devices in twenty years time. 

Amazing Stories

Remember the days of Jack Vance, Frederick Pohl, Philip Jose Farmer, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. Van Vogt, Fritz Lieber, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and yes, guys like Harlan Ellison? Remember the days of Richard Laymon, Robert McCammon, Hugh B. Cave, Charles L. Grant? Remember female authors such as Vonda McIntyre, Connie Willis, Ursula K. Leguin, and Octavia Butler? And yes, there are some notable British names I’m leaving out, that should be included.  Nowadays Stephenie Meyer is the NEW Stephen King, and I still don’t know what to make of Margaret Atwood all these years later.  Eventually I’ll have an answer.  In 2009 we can’t wait to read about vampire Bill Compton sucking on little Sookie Stackhouse’s titties—yesteryear it was Spike humping Buffy—or tuning in to the next great classics: Fringe (yesteryear it was The X-Files).  Everywhere there are zombies, werewolves, boogeymen or things that go bumpity-bump in the night.  And vampires.  From TV to movies to comic books to graphic novels.  Zombies, werewolves, vampire crossovers.  Zombies, werewolves, vampire subgenres.  It’s kind of like the Measles, but without the vaccine. 

Before all the clichés, before all the contrived storylines and slightly more mainstream pieces with beginnings but no middles and ends… before the slice-of-life vignettes which were supposed to relate to us, our inner demons (grrr!), or be politically daring and poetic to our ears and somehow symbolic, but was actually crappy and confusing rather… You had character-driven stories, plot-driven stories, protagonists you cared about, antagonists you cursed beneath your tongue, and most of all, innovative ideas.  Some of those ideas would eventually become what you see before you today.  Some of it yet to make its debut in society.

FACT: 75% of genre writers will die poor, starving, or rely on insubstantial bank funds as their nest egg.  Most don’t want to believe change is happening, or that evolution is impossible, and that it is going to stay that way.  A vast majority already have one foot in the coffin.  Otherwise, older, former editors and writers are about eight to ten years away from being maggot food regardless.

“Ah ha, Mr. Dagstine! But I have a Limited Edition of 500 copies from such-and-such-a-press in hardcover dustjacket.  It’s science fiction literature at its finest!”

No, trust me.  It isn’t… Paging Adam Roberts, paging Adam Roberts…

There are six-billion human beings on the planet Earth; most are from Asia.  There are more books than there are people.  Out of that 500 Limited Edition run from that Small Press, you might sell 250 to 300.  Perhaps more, and those will be to your colleagues.  It’s a race against time to write and get read (if, even after your death, technology has not evolved yet again and you are preferably read).  The other day I stared at a non-fiction check for $400.00 (Dagstine is my nom de plume for horror and scifi).  Then I looked at a micro-press pub and said I must be holding my prick in my hand.  My advice: take any money you make in this profession and fucking run!

Maybe Harlan Ellison is right.  Maybe science fiction is dead.  And maybe horror is just one big keg party where you get to check in but you don’t check out.  Maybe fantasy is for the LARP’ers who refuse to abandon ye’ olde dungeon.  Better yet, maybe we should save ourselves the glum silences and troubles of the clinical depressions that await us twenty, thirty years down the road.  What do you think? Should we start filling  those Zoloft prescriptions a little early?

Lawrence R. Dagstine

P.S.: If you still enjoy what you do, naturally, just go with the flow.  Me, I guess I’ll still keep on submitting, keep on trucking.  After all, what else is there? 

Welcome to the Internet premiere of my paranormal story in digital format, Visitation Rights.  It is available for download to practically all manners of reading devices, and at a very affordable price.  Read it on the bus, the subway, in your bed, or in the park.  Visitation Rights (a different kind of ghost story; you’ll never see the ending coming), published by Damnation Books: www.damnationbooks.com

"Visitation Rights" by Lawrence Dagstine

www.damnationbooks.com

AMAZON KINDLE (order direct):

http://www.amazon.com/Visitation-Rights-ebook/dp/B002LLNFUI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251364206&sr=1-4

MY eBooks & Kindle page:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/ebooks-kindle-dagstine/

ISBN 13: 978-1-61572-008-1 
ISBN 10: 1-61572-008-1

With that said, join Damnation Books at KILLERCON 2009 this September in the biggest convention state in the U.S.: Las Vegas, Nevada.

Other New Entries: “eBooks & Kindle”

The Golden Age makes its return in digital format.  So does the Industrial Revolution, Neo-Victorian Horror, and lots of other historical weird tales.  Come one, come all to Steampunk Tales! Where many adventures, horrors, and mysteries await.  Some of the best short stories by short story giants and rising stars in the field.  On my eBooks & Kindle page you too can order my brand new stories alongside many other talented authors within the Steampunk genre.  And at a very affordable price.  Behold the future of fiction magazines! Read them anytime, anywhere! 

Steampunk Tales – Issue #2

 For your iPhone & iPod Touch

www.steampunktales.com

Penny Dreadfuls * Victorian Pulps for your readers!

(*Also available as a PDF or through Mobipocket*)

What exactly is Steampunk?

http://www.steampunktales.com/steampunk.html

Issue #2 Authors: Phil Brucato, David Wellington, Brenda Cooper, Jillian Venters, Arkwright, G.D. Falksen, Lawrence R. Dagstine, Mark Rossmore, Angie Montmartre, Philip Challis, and cover art by Paul Sizer.

More about Steampunk Tales:

Emulating the style of the pulp adventure magazines of the 1920s and ’30s, Steampunk Tales contains first-run, original fiction written by an A+ list of award-winning authors. Issue #1 contains 10 stories, each running between 4,300 to 11,000 words, for an unbelievable price. Authors contributing to issue #1 include Jay Lake, Catherynne M. Valente, Phil Brucato and G.D. Falksen. The cover art was painted by popular artist Melita “missmonster” Curphy.

Featuring:

• 10 pieces of exciting steampunk pulp fiction at an unbelievable price.
• Featuring a true A+ lineup of award winning authors.
• Stories run 4,500 – 11,000 words each! (totaling over 600 screen pages using the default font and font size)
• The Steampunk Tales Reader on (iPhone/iPod Touch) features unique retro-futuristic Victorian styling never before seen in an eBook reader!

Other New Entries: “eBooks & Kindle” and “Magazines”

COMING NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

SNEAK PREVIEWS – COLLECTOR’S ISSUE

TALES OF THE TALISMAN Issue # 5.2

featuring Lawrence R. Dagstine

Third appearance; Subscribe now:

http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/

PRE-ORDER NOW:

http://www.talesofthetalisman.com/bookstore-v5.html

Edited and Published by David Lee Summers

(formerly Hadrosaur Tales for you old-schoolers)

Details: Karen Anne Mitchell introduces us to a Taiyiha-a woman who has been made into the ultimate lover by aliens-and a lonely man who faces his own inner demons. Join Lawrence R. Dagstine as he shows us the lengths a werewolf must go to adopt a child. Danielle Ackley-McPhail gives us a glimpse into the life of a lonely man and the solace he receives from a humble visitor. J Alan Erwine will show you a dark future where a soldier who has seen too much is treated as a criminal. This issue includes eleven stories and eleven poems guaranteed to sweep you away on wings of the imagination. Don’t miss the autumn 2009 issue of Tales of the Talisman!

FIVE YEARS RUNNING! STAY TUNED!

Other New Entries: ”Magazines”

Or… The BEST WEEKEND EVAH! Thank you sooo much to everyone who stopped by my booth and picked up copies of my books, pulp magazines, and other wares.  Many of you told me you’ve never read genre before, many of you took my card, and a couple of you even stood in line and actually waited.  You don’t know how good that made me feel.  Thank you again.  Here I thought folks don’t read anymore (well, that was before this weekend, assuming I now have new readers – I really hope you enjoy the tales and stay tuned to this spot). 

ISBN: 978-0-9819696-2-6

Good news: I’ll be back next weekend.  Some marketing, diversifying, and injecting the right pitches clearly doesn’t hurt, I see.

Bad news: If you’re new here, I’m temporarily sold out of Fresh Blood.  I only have five copies left, and at the moment I need to mail out to review venues.  I will, however, still have a few copies of other books and pulps on hand.  But these will be sparse.

Oh yeah, and I’m planning a contest too!

Order FRESH BLOOD direct from The Genre Mall:

http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#freshblood

Check out some of the other goods:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/books-anthos/

http://lawrencedagstine.com/magazine-credits-dagstine/

Order the Post-Apocalyptic SATIRICA ANTHOLOGY:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/04/27/satirica-anthology-nominated-for-ippy-award/

Some of the merch, some of the profits.

Fresh Blood scores BIG in Brooklyn, New York!

Even more merch; Dagstine bulk filled almost two big suitcases

It was a great few days.  My count may be off, but I pushed somewhere well over 130 mixed Dagstine titles: hardcovers, softcovers, magazines, etc.

With that said, I’m off to eat in my favorite sushi restaurant.  I feel like a kid living his dream.  Once again, thank you!

Lawrence R. Dagstine ;-)

Technically this should be part 2, but since it laps into the following week, I’ll leave it as is, because it will be 3.  I’m coming back! I’ll be signing copies of FRESH BLOOD at Flea by the Sea on the weekends in Coney Island, New York.  I’ll have copies of obscure pulp mags on hand (with stories of mine in it), hardcovers, other books, and you have Famous Nathan’s Hot Dogs just up the street.  So come say hi, pick up a book or two by yours truly, go to the beach or amusement park, and on the following dates below.

Transportation, Directions, and More Details:

http://www.fleabythesea.com/about.php

LAWRENCE DAGSTINE

Fresh Blood Signings!

July 25th & July 26th

August 1st & August 2nd

 Fridays, unfortunately, no… Saturdays & Sundays, YES!

11:30-12PM up until roughly 7-8PM (when I head out).

ISBN: 978-0-9819696-2-6

FRESH BLOOD: Tales From The Speculative Graveyard

PUBLISHER: www.samsdotpublishing.com

PURCHASE THE BOOK AT ‘THE GENRE MALL’:

http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#freshblood

With that said, August 2009 will be a pretty low-key month.  That and my laptop screen is falling apart at the edges.  However, be here in September and October.  Autumn time, as usual.  Because I’ll have a plethora — and I do mean a handful — of new publications and new stories you’ll want to check out.  Own a Kindle? An iTouch? Or Sony eReader? Well, my first e-title debuts in September from DAMNATION BOOKS, and at Killercon 2009.

VISITATION RIGHTS – A different kind of ghost story

DAMNATION BOOKS:

www.damnationbooks.com

VISITATION RIGHTS: Coming Soon…

ISBN (10): 1-61572-008-1

ISBN (13): 978-1-61572-008-8

He was a man among legends.  He was a man born and raised in Brooklyn.  He was a major influence to many, and as someone whose been practicing the Scifi craft a long time, I’d hoped to one day shake hands with him.  He lived a good life, and he brought us LOCUS Magazine.  At least the last thing he did was the one thing he loved most. He got to see his peers at Readercon…

CHARLES N. BROWN R.I.P.

Founder of LOCUS Magazine

 DETAILS BELOW:

 http://www.locusmag.com/News/2009/07/charles-n-brown-1937-2009.html

My condolences go out to his friends, family, coworkers, peers, and those whose lives he changed in this time of grief… Push on…

DING-DING-DING! Hello and welcome, good fans.  How are you today? I’m fine, thank you.  Welcome to FREE SHORT STORY DAY!  Today I figured would be a good time to share a nice ditty.  It’s been a while since I’ve put up a work, which I often do around Halloween.  However, I decided to go this time with something a little bit absurd.  A bit of satire, if you will.  With that said, I hope you enjoy. 

The Runaway Hack

by

  Lawrence R. Dagstine     

He was moving into it all again.  It might be a few hours or a full day developing, but the mood rose in him, like compressed air in a tank.  It was a pressure that must move toward an exit.  He looked about.  He looked at the big picture: friends and peers mostly, a few fans and admirers, well-wishers who were wannabes themselves, perhaps a few enemies, and for the rest all wordsmiths.

Wordsmiths were kind of like fucksmiths.  Each had their own prominent place in this highly developed society.  Both fucked things up when the need arise.  The only difference was that the fucksmith was twofold: to have fun and to produce the works that will eventually not earn out.  They will, in turn, each have one other function: to leave the field in a little worse shape than it was or at least aspire to.  That is the history or function of each new generation: fuck it up a little bit more for the next.  Actually, wordsmiths could bleed on paper and still be criticized about the amount they donated.  In the end, they often begged for a rejection letter or a quick, painless death.

I’ve got that bit settled, Jermaine thought.

Much of his life he was looking for a kind of salvation called obscurity, which probably explained why he was always on the run from his profession.  He tended toward a gruesome and descending philosophy when he was moving into despondence.  Actually, when he wasn’t writing short stories, despondency was a chronic part of his nature.  One of the main objects of his days was to keep the subject matter of his stories concealed, for it was the very opposite of the way the world viewed him.  Off the page, audiences figured that he hadn’t a care in the world, and never did and never would have, that he lived for sensationalism alone.  He even told himself the same thing, that he had a great gift for words.  He wanted to live out of a fairy tale where, as someone had put it, there was indescribable bullshit eternally prolonged.  He said it, he tried for it.  He even sold it.  But underneath there were the ideas.  Often this showed on the page; it came out on his face, however, in a sudden set of despair.  Or, he’d fall silent a while and have nothing to say.  And the ideas drifted away from him then, fearing to cross him in all its syntactic glory.

Perhaps that was why he was looking for escape.  Perhaps that was why he was groping his way toward Something Else (and yes, with a capital S and a capital E).  Or maybe it was the repetitions of it that made it unbearable.  To be at a convention or on a panel or at a writing function, with its outer sign of sheer bragging, ostensibly even to the life of the party, and yet inside to be saying to himself that he wished he weren’t there—at all.  Not even alive. 

He was alone.  For a washed-up hack, the worst kind of aloneness in the world.  It was a feeling he experienced more and more often, of late, at these special events.  People all about were close-joined, seemingly delighted, and all was well with them.  Then he would find himself on either side, but none opposite.  Renowned as he was in smaller circles, he’d be sitting there by himself, the world moving about him, and he presumably along for the ride.  The voyeuristic kind.

Here was a legion of the destined and doomed.  He spent most of his time at the bar, watching them.  Taking a sip of his brew, he stared up at a sign.  STARCON 34 in moon-streaming colors.  They should have called it NOBODY-CON.  Some would go on to become editors or work for literary agencies.  Some would start indie presses or become poster children for RPG handbooks.  Others would die horrible deaths: being unknown.  But was that such a terrible thing? He saw one poor sap at the door of the dealer’s room wearing Vulcan ears and selling some silly never-before-done novel about space stations that could create suns with smiley faces.  The ridiculous blurbs on the back went as far as to say that the book would put a smile on your face, too.

Each convention it had been like this, sellers pacing back and forth, hours of windmilling about the dealer’s area of some hall or hotel before they could get to work or the customers would arrive to spend their hard-earned dough and pick up their usual merch.  A Star Wars book here, a Limited Edition novella there.  How the devil, Jermaine wondered, could a man in a Predator outfit have such a fat wallet and so many needs and appetites? What kind of an outfit was it that drew things into it like some absorbing tentacled underwear plant? Whatever reason, that was why the writers and dealers were here, to sell books and get insights into this strange being, in whom the rest of the public was so interested.

The man was trying to lure Jermaine further inside, to the point that he’d even give away his whole collection of Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew if he purchased just one book.  It was depressing.  Jermaine wanted to smack some sense into him.  The hotel lobby was filled with about four hundred people: fanboys with lightsabers and battleaxes and sonic screwdrivers, English fangirls in Japanese schoolgirl clothing, age-old scream queens in cheap corsets with terrible boob jobs and God knows how many facelifts, and another poor sap who had starred in one of the Saw pictures.  There had been so many, Jermaine not only forgot the actor’s name but forgot which one. 

Then, of course, there were the writers…  Some retired, some semi-retired (which still meant retired).  There were the Grandmasters, and in-between panels, they had to take their Geritol.  There were the editors from the Age of the Flood, and they recounted tales of American Letters that had most people scratching their heads and thinking this all intoxicated drivel.  One man in a King Arthur’s outfit drank from a chalice and read from “The Death of the Old Guard.”  Industry heads disappeared upstairs to hotel rooms for hours.  When they finally returned to the lobby, they said, “That felt great! I’ll see you next convention!”

There were also the newbies.  Some weren’t published, some had a polished hand.  They had set out once with their aspirations and their energies, like young untried actors in Hollywood, and they had a story to tell, and now here they were pitching it.  Out of the two hundred or so of these fools who attended semi-regularly, only a dozen or so would go on to be anything.  Now they were spending airfare and hotel fare to tell the ‘Holier Than Thou’ communities that they’ve constructed worlds, that they’ve created unforgettable characters, that they’ve got the ultimate trilogy! And now they were flaunting it, at agents, at publishers, who smiled and nodded respectfully: “Sounds terribly interesting.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

And then, Jermaine knew their secret, he knew what the whole attendance of the convention was doing that day.  It was like a giant black hole swallowing everything up into a pile of computer-generated debris.  At some point he stood stock-still and asked himself, “What the hell am I doing here?” He was doing what a few others were doing: standing or sitting apart thinking.  Perhaps he was not alone after all. “I’m thinking while these other boobs are imagining that they’ve got a future or they’re having a good time.  The only difference is I’m trying to make some sense of it.”

A significant silence followed.

Jermaine no longer asked himself what he was doing there.  He frankly didn’t know, and he didn’t care anymore either.  He swallowed his drink in one gulp.  As a poor writer traveling from place to place, from editor to editor, from small publication to small publication, he discovered the world was seen from billions of varying vantage points.  Or disadvantage points, depending upon each person and what they believed.  His moment of failure just happened to come when he halted to ask himself what he was doing walking the floors of a particular convention.

He understood that writers were a sea at sea.  This convention was a wave on the surface, and only the best of the best—thinkers, wordsmiths, folks with MFAs and top degrees—or those with the right connections managed to get down under a few feet.  He tried to go under from time to time, but he didn’t see or feel much.  More often than not he found himself drowning.  He watched them at their work, for they were working at being productive and making money.  Most were actually having a good time, and that might be sufficient, for they were toiling for the maws of a great beast called legacy.

He sought the opposite now.

Jermaine was suddenly alone at the bar, lost in his reflections.  Those who had gathered about, talking with him, all at once received no answers. “I am just a mere hack,” he said, looking away shamefully, “you don’t want to know me.” After that, they sensed that the poor fellow was in deep thought, and they moved away.

Then a writer-editor he’d talked to on occasion approached. “So which is it this time?” he asked. “Science fiction, fantasy, horror, or that paranormal romance junk?”

Still looking down, Jermaine said, “I dabble.”

The writer-editor felt sorry for him. “What’s really bothering you, Jermaine?”

“Do I look distressed?”

“I’d say so.”

“I am.  I have the feeling the gift is leaving me, the inspiration and gusto just dwindling away.” He smiled, knowing that such a verbal crime would provoke other writer-editors into a fury. “The thing is I kind of like the idea.”

“I don’t get it.  Why, because of deadlines or you’re under strain?”

“Heh! What deadlines?” Jermaine laughed. “When I was a kid genre magazines used to do a lot for me.  I’d buy handfuls of them.  The moment a new issue hit the stands, I was there.  I bought them so often that the act of reading short stories had some kind of impact on me.  It comes back to me from time to time, of its own volition, when I’ve got writer’s block or I’m diddling my own asshole for a forty-dollar check.  Sometimes, late at night I tell myself I don’t want to be famous and I put the computer away.  Sometimes there’s no reason for this at all.  That I can understand.  Go figure.”

“Interesting.”

“That’s not the only thing,” he continued. “I thought it easy and satisfying work, for one thing.  Lately I’ve got a feeling of monotony out of it.  When my fingers grow tired of typing, I am seized with a great discomfort.  I want to hurry outside and do other much livelier things.  When the job is finished and the words THE END stamped, it often seems to me that my hands are still held out though.  I could still feel the puppeteer looking down at me, face contorted and strings being pulled.”

“All writers get those urges from time to time, Jermaine.  We call it the Need, or the Fix.  There are many names, but no faces.  We finish one story, we tackle the next.”

“Well, I’ve refused to go through it again! I’ve had a bitter argument with my conscience, and I’ve seen the light.  Years and years of putting myself through this.  At critical moments, the re-reflection of this pseudo-literary image of myself, typing out a manuscript, watching yet another zombie or vampire story unfold before my eyes.  Sooner or later, the depression comes back.  I saw myself staring at the genre as its prostrate enlarged.  I saw my fingers curving, away from the keyboard over and around to the back door.  And as I prepared to open it, I always felt the heaviness.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is that the same heaviness is over me now, a fatigue with the critical process.  As if the last yarn is spun.  The artform comes back to me every now and then, but it is blurred, hasty, and it’s a jarring impression.” Jermaine hesitated, then: “With time I have begun to understand what each piece of the story, from page to page, means in my own life.  It has become a twist from fear to stress, fear to stress, round and round.  After each story I write, sometimes before the story, the prostrate gets bigger and the puppeteer laughs harder.  Now I have the same feeling of monotony and pointlessness that pressed on me before the writing is done.”

“It’s an unpleasant image,” the writer-editor remarked with a consoling nod.

“It’s the key to me, my good man, it’s the key!”

“Perhaps.”

“The genre is getting very big now.”

“Bloated would be a better word, but when you’ve worked in this business for as long as I have, what can you do?” The writer-editor reflected for a moment. “You know, now that I think about it, I don’t really know anything else either.”

They drank for a time.  They were silent as they knocked down rounds.  They were thoughtful.  Then the writer-editor asked, “What I can’t understand is why you keep working and seem so anxious to get to work.  I should think you’d be a little weary of the grind.  Puppeteers and prostrates aside, do you know why you’re still writing?”

Jermaine gave him a look that concealed what he really thought.  He thought, Real writers are not smart.  Real writers are so goddamned blind and ignorant, it’s a fucking blessing.  But he said, “It’s weird.  I have to write.  If I didn’t write it would all end at once.  Writing is the root of a tree, and if you take away the root the thing on top will fall over.  I’d fall over.  So I write because I write.  Whether I need the money or not.  There is a thing we hacks call Keeping Afloat (and yes, with a capital K and a capital A).  And you do it.  You keep afloat.  I keep afloat with the short stories; the short form is a bladder that holds me up.  Maybe the only time I feel alive and dead is when I write.”

Some of it was true.  The writing ruddered Jermaine, kept him afloat in the sea which shook more and more heavily these days.  Writing was the stabilizer.  He knew it, and like a twenty dollar a day drug addiction, he even escaped from himself when he wrote.  But how long could he keep on at it.  It was not salvation.  And that was what he sought.

“So where do you go from here?” the writer-editor asked. “What now?”

“Peace of mind,” Jermaine answered.

“Ahh, now that’s impossible in this game.  You and I both know that.”

“I don’t think so.  I’ve been yearning for obscurity for quite some time now.”

“But what for?” The writer-editor was confused. “After your death you have the chance to be anthologized.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But your fiction will be archived.”

“No, it won’t.”

“But your work exists, and therefore it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The writer-editor was astonished. “Don’t let the Literary Police find out.”

“I could give a damn about Grammar Nazis!” Jermaine shouted.

The whole bar turned around; one Grandmaster spit up his drink.

“Sorry.” Jermaine began again. “I need to walk away from these writing organizations a new man.  I need to turn my back on the politics and step down from these panels once and for all.”

“But how?”

“Through fiction, how else?” He snapped his fingers as if it were that easy. “Fiction got me into this mess, and it’ll get me out.”

“You must be some storyteller then.  You know what’ll happen afterwards, don’t you?”

“Yes, I am fully aware of the consequences.”

The writer-editor shook his head worriedly. “Is this so-called salvation— Let me rephrase that, is this permanent anonymity really worth that much to you?”

“Where sanity is concerned, yes.  It could also mean new growth!”

“But you yourself even said that if you didn’t write the thing on top of the tree would come plunging down!”

“And the moment I leave this convention, my good friend, I snap my fingers and reverse the polarity of my thoughts.  Hopefully, it changes for the better.  If it doesn’t, at least I tried.”

The writer-editor felt overly sentimental.  He shook Jermaine’s hand and patted him on the back. “I wish you good luck in your new life.  I only wish I had the balls to join you.  But I’ve been in this field for over two decades.  I don’t have anything else.  I just have my words.  Flinging myself into obscurity for some kind of deliverance would be too much of a risk on my well being.” He smiled. “I guess I lack the courage of a hack.  At least let me buy you one for the road.”

Jermaine accepted.

When he finished the drink, the author said his goodbyes and headed for the hotel’s automatic sliding doors.  He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath.  He looked behind him very briefly… at the boys and girls wielding lightsabers and sonic screwdrivers… at the jolly attendees dressed in Vulcan ears and Viking’s armor… at the Grandmasters and Industry heads immersed in their readings.

Outside he whistled for a cab.  A taxi pulled up directly in front of the building.  He hopped inside.  The cabbie grinned at Jermaine’s reflection in the mirror. “You look like a Jedi Knight in that blanket.  A regular Obi Wan Kenobi.”

“I’ll give you an extra five bucks not to make any comments.”

The cabbie reset the meter. “So where to, old man?”

“Someplace far away.” 

The taxi didn’t move. “Where exactly? You’re the author of this tale.”

Jermaine stared out the passenger side window and into the hotel lobby.  All the big writers danced outside the convention hall: wonder and uncertainty, progress and decline.  The bewitcheries of status, ambition, success and poverty rose from their voices.  The goods and evils of the human competition, the demonology of lives spent, misspent, the mystique of literature’s disorder and hope.  Fear of the new, dread of the old.  They were like witches celebrating a Sabbath of chopped-up modern catechisms.

Finally the hack turned around.  He was beaming, his big handsome smile, the one that had won the hearts of amateurs everywhere. “A place called obscurity.  Now step on it.”

The End