World Fantasy Convention 2014

Next week I'll be heading to Washington, D.C. for World Fantasy.  Technically, it's being held at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, which is actually in Arlington, VA--but close enough, I suppose for them to say D.C.

The convention programmers have been gracious enough to have me on a panel (one we pitched to them).  Programming is at a premium at World Fantasy since they limit the number of panels, and convention goers are lucky if they are put on even one panel.  Many thanks to my good friend, Mark Van Name who persuaded convention programmers to allow us this panel--he was also gracious in offering his services as a moderator.

Here is a description of the panel which is going to be on the first night of the convention, November 6th:

Fantasy and the Reality of Law Enforcement
Time:  9:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m., Thursday, Fairfax
Panelists:  Mark L. Van Name (M), Griffin Barber, Alistair Kimble
Description:  Fantasy writers who are also law-enforcement workers discuss how fantasy fiction portrays law enforcement, and compare those practices to real-world law enforcement.  They will talk about where fiction differs from reality and discuss what works in stories and what really is fantasy.  In discussing such works as The City and The City (China Mieville), Finch (Jeff VanderMeer), London Falling (Paul Cornell), and Servant of Empire (Raymond Feist), they will contrast the real and fantasy worlds of law enforcement.

Here is a link to the entire programming schedule.

The Endless River On The Dark Side Of The Moon

With the upcoming release of Pink Floyd's The Endless River, I've been thinking a lot lately about The Dark Side Of The Moon and what the album means to me. Yes, it's an album--a cohesive collection that should be listened to as such and not necessarily downloaded in pieces on iTunes or wherever it is you youngsters (hey, get off my lawn!) get your music these days.

I won't go into the accolades and the number of consecutive weeks on the Billboard Album chart (741). And I won't go into how if you begin the album at the whatever minute mark of The Wizard of Oz that it syncs up. I'm discussing how this album played an interesting part in my life.

Dark Side was introduced to me by my high school girlfriend probably in early 1985 (before this I listened to all sorts of things, but for some reason not Pink Floyd). Her parents had a copy on vinyl (of course--and it's wonderful on vinyl) and we listened to side 2 over and over, even though side 1 was just as awesome as side 2. We'd sit on the sofa at her parents' house and talk and kiss and talk and listen to Dark Side and I didn't ever want it to end. Such wonderful memories of the mid-1980s. (We did listen to other albums--Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti for instance.)

Also in the mid-1980s--my history teacher one year in high school put on a trip to Greece. Before I went I picked up a copy of the album on cassette and about wore out the tape on that trip. Even the cruddy headphones and cruddy little walkman type player couldn't ruin how great the album was--it made the non-stop from JFK to Athens bearable.

The soulful saxophone and soaring guitar solos of Money--the production values and inventiveness of the entire group of songs was mesmerizing. For a high schooler, who was (and I suppose still is at times) also a musician, this album was pretty amazing stuff.

Of course, I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics at that point--the music really did it for me at that point, the lyrics would get me later--

Fast forward to the mid-1990s, I'm firmly in my mid-twenties and I'm not in a good place and I feel like my life is over before it has even really started. I was in the Navy, working my ass off to finish my degree before I got out of the Navy, and I was in a marriage that could not last (certainly not one person's fault more than the other's--we were young and simply unable to function as a married couple--we were too different). I had a fifty mile commute each way in an un-airconditioned car (this was in the Mojave Desert of all places) to go to my classes a few nights a week (these classes were in addition to my full time job in the Navy and all the responsibility that came with that--having to miss class because of helicopter maintenance issues or having to be a crew chief on search & rescue missions). 

Well, I played The Dark Side Of The Moon--and I'm not sure I regretted it as much as I wallowed in it. Time is a wonderful song, but not so wonderful for someone who feels like their life is predetermined to suck at this point and that they're trapped. When you're in high school listening to Time, the song doesn't really mean much--ten years earlier and you're a little kid, what in the hell has gotten behind you? All you want is to move forward and can't wait until you're out of high school. But when you're 27 or 28 and you hear the line about how "ten years have got behind you" --that's you're entire adult life up to that point and I felt like I didn't have anything to show for those ten years but a doomed marriage and uncertainty about what I'd do after my enlistment was up.  I just couldn't deal with the failure of my marriage.

My antidote at the time was listening to a lot of Metallica to wipe my brain free of Time. 

Since around the year 2000 I've listened to Pink Floyd in spurts, and now I wish I had seen them in concert back in the 1980s and 1990s. I'm happy that I can listen to Dark Side now without any negative side effects, but I do steer clear when I'm feeling a little down. You know, I had to go through those moments in my life, and at least I have great memories of the album to balance the bad memories. And I suppose I knew what I was doing when I tossed the CD in my car player during the bad times. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

So I'm not sure how The Endless River will turn out, but it's great that we'll have more Pink Floyd to listen to. Somehow I doubt it'll have the same impact Dark Side had on me, but I'm really hoping it'll be a great listen.

Only one other album imprinted on my mind like Dark Side, but in a much different way--Rush's Moving Pictures. Wow. That album for me is 100% positive, not a bad memory attached to it--all good.  Rush may be my favorite group of all time, but no album had an impact on me throughout my life like Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.

An interesting side note: I'm very good friends with the high school girlfriend and ex-wife I mentioned above, so some good came from it all in the end.

Fine Books Are Not An Endangered Species

At first glance, this post may seem like it should be on the writing portion of the site, but this article is more about reading and owning fine editions of books one loves.

Many people have been declaring print books dead, or at least on the way out due to the rise of e-books over the past several years.  I'm not arguing for or against e-books, there are plenty of articles all over the web about such things. Now, I do own an e-reader, but the majority of my reading is done the old fashioned way.

Books will live on far into the future, and one of the reasons will be specialty presses. Specialty presses take books that have been mass produced and create new editions, turning them into something truly special, works of art.  There is no better example of a specialty press than Subterranean Press, specializing in fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but have strayed into mainstream, mystery, and thriller territory.

Check out this excellent Sub Press edition of Harlan Ellison's wonderful short story collection, Deathbird Stories:

                                                     Dust jacket from Harlan Ellison's Deathbird Stories

What a beautiful dust jacket. The edition I bought also came with a custom slipcase and was signed by Harlan Ellison.  Here is another photo, but of an interior page containing some of the front matter:

      The Shining Slipcase - Subterranean Press

These special editions often sell out--and with good reason--the care and attention to detail given to these books is without peer.

Here is another great example from Subterranean Press, Stephen King's, The Shining. The edition I ordered came with a slipcase, as well as a chapbook of Vincent Chong's sketches for the illustrations within the book.

Chapbook

While the slipcase is beautiful, and the chapbook of Vincent Chong sketches is a wonderful bonus, the glossy dust jacket is amazing, as are the black & white illustrations and full page color illustrations inside the book! This is an edition that won't simply sit on my shelf--this one begs to be read and enjoyed. The pages are thick and the typeset is easy on the eyes. This is such an amazing edition of The Shining to own.

But there is more--Subterranean also has very reasonably priced editions of other books, and they produce not only these ultra-limited editions of books, but also career spanning collections spread across multiple volumes of authors such as Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg, and Philip K. Dick.

Lest you think they only cater to the classics, Subterranean also publishes beautiful editions of new works by a wide range of authors such as Peter V. Brett, Brent Weeks, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi--and the list goes on and on.

Subterranean is simply one example of a specialty publisher--though I may have started you off with the best if you're a fan of genre fiction. They certainly hit it out of the park with their editions, and they're great people as well--a bonus in this day and age.  Subterranean puts out a regular email with release dates of upcoming titles and offers sales fairly regularly. I highly suggest signing up for the newsletter on their main page, here.  These books make wonderful gifts for the lover of fine books in your family.

Do yourself a favor, take a look at their website and browse--you WILL find something you simply must add to your collection.

The Shining Dust Jacket

Inspiration, Observation, & Participation

Lately, I've been thinking about inspiration -- not in the start your day right, devotional kind of way (though I could certainly benefit from that sort of thing), but more along the lines of writing, and the genesis of a story.  Inspiration and ideas can be from an article, word, photo, sunset or sunrise, or any number of stimuli prompting thought or some sort of activity, creative or otherwise.

These stimuli often lead to an idea or an image I turn over in my mind, and often I believed there was a story there (yes, on occasion it sprouted into a story and everything fell into place perfectly, but not often).  Lately, I've realized the stimulus has not sprung a fully formed story from my mind, but only a simple premise--if that.

A premise is not a story. In fact, most of the time I don't even have a premise from these stimuli. The sunrise photo is useful, but I'm not likely to yank a full story from the image. I'm more likely to have a premise emerge from this photo of a tree taken in Luxembourg Gardens -- it's almost Lovecraftian, or some sort of petrified sea creature trapped on land, waiting to be awakened when the seas rise or something. You get the idea...still not a story.

What I'm experiencing most often is a detail, and I'm reminded of an exchange from Woody Allen's, Midnight In Paris, where Owen Wilson's character, Gil talks about Brasserie Lipp (a wonderful place in Paris to soak up what it must have been like in the 1920s). I'm paraphrasing here, but Gil states he once had a professor who saw James Joyce at Brasserie Lipp eating frankfurters and sauerkraut. His girlfriend and her friends look at Gil expectantly, waiting for more. His girlfriend, Inez says, "That's it? That's the entire story?" Gil responds that what he related isn't a story, but more of a detail.

This is exactly my point. Details like Joyce eating frankfurters and sauerkraut are the spices that will make a story come alive and provide insight into what a character (Gil) thinks, and also shows where his interests lie. I could write an entire post on Midnight In Paris and nostalgia and "Golden Age Thinking" (and I probably will, since I'm in love with a bygone era).

Details are not story, but they certainly pull a moviegoer or a reader deep into a story. If you're a writer and interested in adding more depth to your stories, I highly recommend an online workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith called--Depth In Writing. He also teaches an online workshop on Character Voice & Setting (another I highly recommend, though I took this one as a weeklong workshop in Oregon when it was offered as such).

Back to ideas. Rather than think every single thing I see is another story, cataloging them is useful. This can be with photos, or jotting down words the image evokes, or simply stuffing it back into my subconscious where I'm hoping it'll emerge when I need it in the middle of writing a story.

Experiencing life is the best fuel for a writer. Not only observing, but participating. Passive observation, or reading and researching can only get you so far when it comes to true details that will make your work come alive. Sensory details come about from living life and building a vast archive to draw upon so the characters in the story I'm writing will have an opinion.

Don't dismiss any experience--the details of the experience will be useful for a character and his/her/its opinion in a story at some point.  And this goes beyond writing--you never know when a seemingly unimportant detail will provide inspiration down the road to solve a problem, or help someone out, or even help you in a situation.

The Gates Of Hell

I have twice stood before The Gates of Hell--while on vacation in Paris--mesmerized by the scope and detail. And if there had been fewer people running up and touching the sculpture and acting like they were going to enter the Gates (ha ha--so original), I probably would have stayed and studied it for the better part of an hour.

The Gates of Hell were originally supposed to have been a pair of bronze doors to be used as an entrance for a museum in Paris, the Museum of Decorative Arts, which was never built. Rodin worked on the sculpture for 37 years in the lobby of the Hotel Biron, which later became the Rodin Museum.

The photo tends to understate the hugeness of the object (sorry, a This Is Spinal Tap reference regarding Stonehenge). The Gates of Hell are close to 20 feet high, 13 feet wide, and over 3 feet deep (6 meters by 4 meters by 1 meter).

Rodin chose a scene from "The Inferno", of Dante's Divine Comedy as the subject for the sculpture, but ended up not sticking to the narrative of the poem. If you are at all familiar with Rodin's other works, there are many of his famous sculptures embedded in the Gates--and were originally created on the Gates and later became works of their own.

In this photo, note The Thinker just below The Three Shades atop the Gates. But there are many, many more of his famous sculptures adorning the Gates, all in various states of joy, suffering, and damnation.

My photos here also do not show how black this bronze cast--displayed at the Rodin Museum--is. By the way, the plaster original is displayed at the Musee d'Orsay, also in Paris.

So what if you can't make it to Paris? You're in luck. There are two more original bronze casts outside Paris--one at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia (the first bronze cast, actually) and another at The Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

Rodin never saw his creation cast in bronze, and only ever saw it as the full-size plaster model. I highly recommend visiting the Rodin Museum if you ever find yourself in Paris--the sculptures are amazing and the gardens are relaxing.