Saturday, July 28, 2012

Meet Joshua Cook - Author of Alice in Zombieland



All zombie stories are the same.

The dead rise, they attack the living and maybe some people with big guns swoop in and make an even gorier mess. As writers, we have a duty to take this classic formula and polish it up all shiny and new for readers.

The point in my life when I began writing the short stories that would become AiZ: Alice in Zombieland was very dark and depressing for me. Just a month before, though, I was sitting on top of the world. I was in love with a beautiful woman and things we’re going great. My job, while not awesome, it was a steady retail job, and those are hard still hard to find. I was living with a friend, but the girlfriend and I were looking at getting our own place. Sam Dogg was happy as any dog could be. The world was bright and sunny.

Then it wasn’t.

It began with the messiest break-up I have even been through. I mean things got really ugly. This drama stretched out for about a month, each day tearing my heart out more and more. While dealing with this, I lost my job. Times were already tight, but now there was no money coming in. Then a fight with my mom turns ugly and we haven’t spoken since. Top all of this off with my friend losing his place and my life was a perfect storm of depression.

With no job prospects coming, and no foreseeable light at the end of the tunnel, I began to write. As the writing went on, things got more emotional for me; there were many times that I would write myself into tears.  What some people do not appreciate is how much it takes out of a writer spending that much time in such a dark place. It is draining both mentally and emotionally. So why do we do it? To set our stories above the rest of the zombie fiction running rampant out there.

We have all felt lost and alone at some point. These are real emotions that we feel every day. By focusing on the emotions of the story, I am able to connect with fans of zombie stories, but also with readers who don’t normally enjoy the undead.

Excerpt from AiZ: Alice in Zombieland (Complete Saga)

Having grown up in the Age of the Zombie, Gee knew what needed to be done. She pulled the fence board out of Barbara’s head, finding a sick gratification at the squishing sound it made as it overcame the suction of the wound, and headed for her step brother.

Gotta make sure he’s dead… For good.

Gee stood over her little brother’s body. Even though Josh and Alice weren’t her full blood siblings, Gee had always thought of them as her little brother and sister. The tears came and she was powerless to stop them. She waited, watching for any movement through the blurry lens of her tears... Nothing.

Still better safe than sorry.

Gee tightened her grip on the fence board and braced for what she must do. She took a deep breath to steady herself and, without hesitating, she stabbed the sharp wood through her little brother’s head and fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.

As she rose to her feet, wiping tears and blood from her face, Gee surveyed the devastation that surrounded her. At her feet lay the dead body of Josh, an innocent child. Barbara, once a loving mother and wife, was now a corpse, skull fragments and blood surrounding her. Young Alice’s life was still in trouble. There was no fairness in any of it. The anger over the injustices swelled inside Gee until she could not resist one last kick to the side of Barbara’s bloody head.

You caused this. I only wish you could feel the pain.

****

AiZ: Alice in Zombieland (Complete Saga) is now available in the Amazon Kindle Store, on Smashwords for all formats, and through many online retailers. Pre-orders are open for the signed limited edition paperback, as well as the regular paperback editions, at ZombieACRES.com. Also available through Amazon is the anthology 100 Horrors, which features an exclusive Zombie A.C.R.E.S. story, along with 99 other tales of terror. 100 Horrors is available in Kindle and paperback formats.

Joshua Cook is a writer for hire living in the Seattle area. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. To find out more about Zombie A.C.R.E.S., visit them on Facebook, Twitter, and in the ACRES merch shop.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Author Dan O'Brien


Today I host author Dan O'Brien. Dan is kind enough to offer insight on the submission process for writers. Be sure to check out his Kickstarter project as well - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/630515511/one-novel-one-project-one-dream

A Writing Perspective from the Other Side of the Fence
A Guest Post by Dan O’Brien



Life as a writer can be hard sometimes.

Success is elusive; fans shift as often as a summer wind.

Yet, we persevere, writing into the late hours of the night and waking in the early hours of the morning to log the hours and enter, for a time, the worlds we create. When I first started writing, more than a decade ago, it was because I loved the idea of immersing myself in a place where I could construct the narrative; walk through dense forests and to the tops of mountains. Over time the process became more about writing as a tool to move through emotions and languishing memories that required catharsis.

Writing takes on many forms, for many different writers, over the course of our lives.

For me, the process is the reward.

I love to write.

When I ask myself that silly question of what I would do if I had all the money in the world, the answer is always quite simple: write. Now more than a decade later, I have a renewed sense of purpose and have become quite adept at balancing the spinning plates of responsibility.

Recently, between being a full-time graduate student and writer, I joined Empirical magazine as an editor – among other responsibilities. A national magazine similar in spirit to Harper’s or The Atlantic, the magazine is firmly rooted in a West Coast sensibility. There is a little something for everyone, and honestly, the hope is that everyone will take a look. Contributors to the magazine come from around the globe and cover everything from politics to fiction.

Working at a magazine, especially at this point in its maturation, is a wonderful experience. There are so many moving parts that enliven your day. Sometimes I spend the day sorting through fiction and poetry submissions, searching for that piece of prose, or perhaps a stanza, that ensnares my imagination. Other days I am editing, constantly referring to the Chicago Manual of Style to ascertain the correct usage of an archaic sentence structure. As a writer, the prospect of editing and rummaging through the work of others might not sound exciting, but there are some wonderful consequences:

1.       You learn to become a better editor of your own work
2.       You begin to recognize redundant sentence structures and overused phrases
3.       Your grasp of language grows exponentially

However, the most important component for me is:

4.       You get to help others bring their work into a public forum

For many writers, and certainly for me early in my writing career, the notion of being picked up by a magazine or a small press was foremost in my mind. It was that distant promise of publication and everything that goes with it that pushed me forward. When I got rejection letters, most of which lacked a personal touch, I would get down on my writing, denigrate my ability.

The years passed, during which thousands of rejection letters amassed, and I realized that the pursuit of writing for a purely extrinsic reward was dooming myself to Vegas-style odds. I became clear to me that I needed to write because I loved it, and then find a way to share it with others – even if it was not through traditional routes. I found that I was more comfortable with my writing when I did it for the pure joy of it.

Now that I am on the other side of the fence, so to speak, I have noticed a few myths about submitting to paying publications that otherwise mystified and frustrated me prior to becoming an editor and being responsible for interacting with first-time and established authors.

I have decided to provide a humorous, but serious, collection of things you should do and things you shouldn’t do when submitting and entering into a discourse with a publication – sprinkled, of course, with some anecdotes. And without further ado (or perhaps slight ado if you count this sentence here):

Things You Should Do

1.       Read the publication you are submitting to before sending an email. This one sounds obvious, I know. However, it happens so often that it warrants mentioning. If you have written a brilliant piece of prose that is about zombies, it is quite likely that Popular Mechanics will not be that interested in it. Pick up an issue of the magazine you are interested in submitting to and familiarize yourself with the kinds of stories they publish. The next part is the hardest part: be honest. Does your piece fit with what they publish?
2.       Read and follow the submission instructions. Again, a no-brainer. If you are thinking that you don’t know where to find the submission instructions and you just have an email address, be prepared for disappointment. Your email might go to submission purgatory with a one-liner response about having received your correspondence – if you’re lucky.
3.       Address your submission to the appropriate person. If you are thinking that I am giving you the obvious pointers, then you are quite right. With that in mind, imagine that I still receive hundreds of emails a month that manage to ignore these simple suggestions. If you are writing a stunning expose on corporate greed, the poetry editor is probably not the best destination for your work.
4.       Edit your work. I tell this to students a lot, so I will mention it here as well: spell check in Microsoft Word is not sufficient. I am not saying that you need to be a copyeditor to submit to a magazine, but do yourself a favor and read it out loud. If it something sounds funny when you read it, you can only imagine how it will sound to an editor who is choosing among thousands of articles and stories to determine what goes to print.
5.       Be cognizant of turnarounds. By this I mean, the amount of time between when you sent in the work until you hear back from an editor about the status of your submission. Nothing will send your work to the bottom of a slush pile than to send a follow-up email the day after you submitted, wondering whether or not you are going to be in the magazine. Most publications will post how long it takes to hear back from them about the status of a submission, and an amount of time after which you should contact them if you haven’t heard from them.

Things You Shouldn’t Do

1.       Send an email telling an editor that they would be stupid not to publish your work. It always surprises me when I get an email telling me that I need to publish a story, poem, or piece of nonfiction because it is the next best thing. Top this off with letting me know that I would be a fool not to accept it, almost guarantees a trip to the trash can.
2.       Send a photocopy of your story by registered mail.  If you want to have your story in a magazine, start by giving it to editors in a format that they can actually use. By sending a faded and blurry photocopy of your forty-word poem and declaring that it is a soul-searching masterpiece does not inspire as much confidence as you would think.
3.       Contact an editor on a frequent basis about the status of your submission. I have to sort through hundreds of emails a day, edit for the current issue, and work on editing an anthology; not to mention a thousand other intangibles. We posted a time table about getting back to you for a reason: read it.
4.       Be discouraged by a form rejection letter. This is a bitter pill to swallow for many writers. They think the form rejection letter means that the editor didn’t read their work, or simply had things already planned and was stringing writers along. The reality is on any given month I send out hundreds upon hundreds of rejection letters. There is simply not enough time in the day to offer feedback to every single person. This not to say that I do not offer feedback, or that editors do not offer feedback in general, but instead the process is streamlined so writers can be responded to in a reasonable amount of time.
5.       Call the magazine to find out about your submission. This is subsumed by not contacting an editor about the status of your submission before enough time has passed, but I thought it warranted a special mention considering it is really going the extra mile in terms of being an irritation. If we haven’t gotten back to you yet, calling us is not going to suddenly make us more accessible.
6.       Send another email with corrections. Read twice, send once. If you don’t think what you sent is ready for publication, then please don’t send it. You get one chance at a first impression, and nothing speaks to being underprepared and unprofessional than sending a draft and immediately following up with another draft. If your piece needs work, note that in your submission, but don’t send a series of emails chronicling the different stages of the edits for that story. The exception, of course, is if you have already been accepted and you have been asked to make edits.
7.       Contact the magazine to air your frustrations about not being selected. I say this with all seriousness. It is very likely that you got rejected because the piece was not a good fit and not that the magazine has decided to order a hit on your writing career. Please don’t treat it that way. Lashing out at a publication for sending a form rejection letter, or passing on a piece you have written, reeks of a lack of professionalism and could impact your ability to publish elsewhere. Many editors are friends, especially in the digital age, and word spreads fast.
8.       Contact the magazine to ask if you think a story you are working on would be a good fit elsewhere. I can appreciate the sentiment. A lot of editors are writers themselves, and they love talking about the process and the product. I find myself building friendships with writers, those we publish and those we do not, and often I will give them suggestions about their work. However, if you don’t know me personally and have never been published or solicited in any way to use me as a sounding board, then do not contact me and ask if a poem or story would be a good fit at another magazine. If you think it is ready for publication, then submit it here. An obvious exception would be if the writer knew the story would not be a good fit and asked because they were uncertain in venturing into new territory.

I could probably keep listing things you shouldn’t do, but I will wrap it up there. I encourage you to keep trying and keep writing. Things only get better with time, and time is all we really have. I love to hear from other writers and potential readers, so please stop by and say hello.


Bio: A psychologist, author, editor, philosopher, martial artist, and skeptic, he has published several novels and currently has many in print, including: The End of the World Playlist, Bitten, The Journey, The Ocean and the Hourglass, Deviance of Time, The Path of the Fallen, The Portent, The Twins of Devonshire and the Curse of the Widow, and Cerulean Dreams. Follow him on Twitter (@AuthorDanOBrien) or visit his blog http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.com. He also works as an editor at Empirical, a national magazine with a strong West Coast vibe. Find out more about the magazine at www.empiricalmagazine.com.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

I've been awarded Indie Book of the Day!







Fourth of July Sale!



In celebration of Independence Day in the U.S., my publisher - MuseItUp Publishing - is offering a 50% discount on any e-book today and tomorrow. Come check out some great titles.

http://museituppublishing.com/