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David Gerrold at Genre-LA Writers Conference This Weekend

on Feb 11, 2013 • Tagged in:

If you are an author, screenwriter, or fan, you won’t want to miss David Gerrold at Genre-LA this Saturday, February 16! “The Trouble with Tribbles” author will be speaking on Saturday at an event open to the public, and is scheduled to be on panels during Sunday’s programming. On February 16, 17, and 18, at LA Valley College in Valley Village (in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles, for those of you who don’t know), West Coast Writers Conferences are putting on Genre-LA Writers Conference. There are two tracks: Science-Fiction, Fantasy & Horror; and Thrillers, Suspense, True Crime, Read More »

The Hungry 3 Book Release March 15, 2013

on Jan 31, 2013 • Tagged in:

It’s Official! The Hungry 3 is coming. For all you Sheriff Penny Miller fans, Genius Book Publishing is pleased to announce that The Hungry 3: At the End of the World will be released on March 15, 2013. Please watch our blog for upcoming announcements; cover art; video interviews with authors Steven W. Booth and Harry Shannon, cover photographer Yossi Sasson, and cover model Gillian Shure; downloadable excerpts from the book; and reading and signing events. Read More »

Our Own Harry Shannon Interviewed on FearNet

on Jan 31, 2013 • Tagged in:

Harry Shannon—author of the Mick Callahan series, CLAN, Dead and Gone, Daemon, and of course, the Sheriff Penny Miller series, The Hungry and The Hungry 2: The Wrath of God—was interviewed yesterday on FearNet.com. Please check out the interview here: http://www.fearnet.com/news/news-article/award-winning-writer-harry-shannon-talks-hungry-3-dead-and-gone-and-drunk-santa Read More »

Time-Crossed Lovers by Karl Alexander

on Sep 27, 2012 • Tagged in:

Karl Alexander Releases a New Time-Travel Love Story, Time-Crossed Lovers For those of you who remember the movie Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steemburgen, and David Warner, you’ll be pleased to know that the bestselling author of the novel and screenplay, Karl Alexander, has written a new time-travel-love-story-thriller novel which is being released this Friday. Time-Crossed Lovers is another example of Alexander’s understanding of human relationships under extraordinary circumstances. Time-Crossed Lovers is the story of Curtis Beckett, a convicted murderer on Nebraska’s Death Row. His crime: the brutal murder of his wife and step-daughter. His sentence: a date Read More »

In Search of “That Purple Book”

on Sep 17, 2012 • Tagged in:

Technology is funny stuff. Take hearing aids, for example. Back in the last century, hearing aids were so horrendously expensive that the only way anyone could ever afford one is to have the cost of the device subsidized by the government and donations—usually the organization selling the hearing aid was a tax-exempt nonprofit. Technology changed all that by bringing down the price of the devices so much that hearing aids are now quite affordable. And you know what, those free and nearly free services have gone away. Does that mean that technology made hearing aids obsolete? Not at all. But Read More »

The Problem With Publishing Today Is All The Damned Content

on Sep 13, 2012 • Tagged in:

For those of you old enough (or lucky enough) to have seen the 1987 movie, The Lost Boys, you may recognize this line: “That’s the problem with Santa Carla. All the damned vampires.” That just about sums up the problem with the publishing industry. Just substitute publishing for Santa Carla and content for vampires. Why is content a problem? Where do I start? Well, lets start by defining content, which in this case means information, generally in written form, for which there is an audience. Content can be free or paid; it can be valuable or worthless; but most importantly, it takes time to Read More »

Don’t Explain Anything!

on Sep 11, 2012 • Tagged in: Manuscripts, readers, reading, style, Submissions

Yesterday I was emailing with an author who had submitted a manuscript to me which I had turned down. The story was hard science fiction, and the word count was in excess of 140,000, but that wasn’t why I turned it down. The reason I did turn it down was because when I read it I was bombarded with information that, to me, was extraneous and got in the way of the story. There were other reasons that I didn’t accept it, but they were all related to the same writing “mistake.” And I’m not talking about telling vs. showing. Read More »

How Gross Is Too Gross?

on Sep 10, 2012 • Tagged in:

I tried to get into The Walking Dead. I really did. After being called out at World Horror Convention 2012 for being an author of zombie novels and not having seen it, I decided that it was something I had to do. I rented the first season from Netflix, talked my wife into watching it with me, and spun up the DVD player. The characters were interesting, the premise was reasonably thought out (I still don’t buy into the “simultaneous appearance of zombies in all parts of the world” school of zombie storytelling, but this isn’t a post about zombie Read More »

If You Like Speculative Fiction, Raise Your Tentacle

on Sep 6, 2012 • Tagged in: Manuscripts, publishing, Rants, readers

Genius Book Publishing started out with the intent to publish “speculative fiction.” But just about as quickly as we made that decision, we began hearing a startling question: “What is speculative fiction, anyway?” I mean, isn’t all fiction speculative? After all, the eternal writing prompt “What if?” can apply to anything from science-fiction to romance, and everything else, for that matter. Fiction, by it’s very nature, looks not to what is, but what could be. But that doesn’t solve the problem. When most people (and for the purposes of this post, most people includes all the editors at Wikipedia) say speculative fiction, they Read More »

It’s Just Publishing, Folks

on Sep 5, 2012 • Tagged in:

A while back, I saw a blog post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch which discusses the divide between self-publishing authors and those who are traditionally published (e.g. published by someone else). It’s a great article, and you should read it. The general gist, however, is that somewhere in the timeline of publishing history, the publishing world fractured into two camps, and the chasm between the self-published and the traditionally published continues to grow. Well, it’s time someone put their foot down. It’s just publishing, folks. It turns out that all publishers, from the big “legacy” publishers to the meekest self-publisher, have Read More »