What do you want?

First off, I want to thank all the people that submitted and all the people that helped us get the word out about submissions. We received some tremendous work this time, and it's wonderful to read (though not so wonderful to have to choose between the good ones).

The real point of this post is to ask what people really want from their fiction, and especially their fiction anthologies like HBM. I'm very happy with what Here Be Monsters has turned in to. I feel like it showcases some great stories that people won't read anywhere else while still being the weird vehicle that Vincent, Duane, and I use to get our writing out. It is a strange hybrid though, I don't deny it.

I'd love for people to recommend some more books in the same vein as HBM to us. We recently all picked up copies of Imaginarium because we wanted to learn more about the world of Canadian speculative fiction. It's a much larger format, and it got me thinking about our own format at the discussions we've had. Our last issue (Settler 26), was larger than the rest, and it's looking like Issue 7 will be around the same size. Initially, I wanted to keep our slimmer profile because I felt like it made our book a bit more approachable, which is something that any indie publications full of strange stories could use. I don't think it makes much of a difference in the end, but if it does, I'd love to hear from people.

Which reminds me: Do you guys know anyone that has picked up HBM and isn't a regular reader? Because that would be one ticked box on the "things-to-do-before-I-die list".

We use an arcane system involving haruspicy and the stains left in the bottom of coffee cups to determine the stories we put in our books, but I will say that one thing I ask myself when reading a work (and this goes for my work as well as others') is "is it fun to read?". So, to me, I'm looking for stories that people will enjoy. I don't want one of our stories to drain part of your day away and for you to come away with nothing. And I'm not too concerned if it isn't the most original idea, either. I want it to spend your time well, and this is what I expect of other stories too. This means that the overall message of the piece isn't as important to me. In fact, when the message becomes the point of the story, I tend to get turned off very quickly - (I think sci-fi is more guilty of this than fantasy, but that might be my own prejudice.)

If anyone wants to let us know what they want in their fiction (be it of a particular genre or otherwise), please feel free to comment here or on our Facebook page. Thanks!

Alexander Newcombe

Issue 7, Imaginarium, guest bloggers, comic con and Fantasia!!!

Issue 7 is in the juicer. If you submitted then we should be responding in the next couple of weeks. Our committee is still reading and once we have read everything we will make our decisions. Thanks for opening your over ripe minds to us. Keep writing and keep taking chances.

We will also keep you up to speed on the launch date for issue 7. It is planned for end of September or early October. This in part depends on the availibility of the venue location. We're looking into this.

I've ordered  Imaginarium because it looks cool, and received it. So far, I've read the first story, Looker by David Nickle and rather enjoyed it.

Thoughts on guest bloggers? We are curious what others could contribute. Collaboration is what started this anthology after all. Would you or someone you know have an idea for something to contribute. Do you have a blog, do you not have a blog, but have things to say...? Let us know, if you think we might be interested.

Finally, two projects I hope to follow through on. I'm attending a comic con type event. I have never been to a comic con and I'm not sure what to expect. I was going to hit the one coming up in New York, because I thought, well if comic con is no fun then it's still New York. I was in New York this summmer, I went by bike from Montreal... It was a great city to explore, so getting stuck there if comic con was a bust would not be the worst. A friend has convinced me to go to Toronto, and I'm in Montreal so I can also check out the Montreal event. Back to my bike trip and project two... I want to fictionalize my real trip by bike to New York. Why? Well the real trip was awesome, I do however live in an imaginary world.

Oh, and Fantasia film festival. You will be missed. Till next year.

This blog post is rather scattered. Summer can bring that out.

Unused Superhero Hideouts

    Alex was recently telling us about the New York Public Library and how it’s his favorite place in the world.  To illustrate this, he added that if he was a superhero, he would make it his hideout.  Aside from reassuring me that I’m not the only one fantasizing about being a superhero, it triggered my inner geek to wonder what other places were being overlooked as hideouts for yet unborn avengers.  Today, I give you the first result of this delirium.

    Unused hideout #1: The Periodicals Storage Facility at U of M.   Hidden inside the tower in the main building (the one everybody calls the phallus) are several stories of metal shelves that hold all the health sciences publications the University has ever subscribed too, from Annals of Forensic Medicine to Prostate.  The floors are steel platforms covered in cheap linoleum and connected by narrow staircases that sometimes lead nowhere.  The windows are small and dirty, and barely let in any daylight.  This is not compensated by the pale fluorescents, many of which have not been replaced for so long they stopped meeting safety regulations in the seventies.  I remember once walking in there in search of an article and finding a drawing a friend had etched in the dust on a window three years earlier (and although the rest of my description might make an overly enthusiastic use of hyperbole, that last part is entirely factual).

    The superhero that goes with it:  I picture a bookish type, studying late into the night at a little desk by one of the dusty windows overlooking the Côte-des-neiges cemetery.  He’s brought coffee.  A lot of it.  He made it in a old stovetop coffeemaker he just bought at a garage sale.  It’s a strange machine, sold by a strange old man who claimed it was from some abandoned town in the Ukraine.  It works fine but has valves all over it that don’t seem to do anything.  It’s the first time our student had used it.  He’s made three thermoses full.  He’s drinking mug after mug of the stuff.  He’s anxious about an exam the next day and doesn’t notice the strange taste.  Midnight comes and goes and he keeps drinking.  Eventually he falls asleep on his copy of Base Pairs Quarterly.  When he wakes up, he is changed.  His hands now shake at an unknown, hyperfast frequency that can shatter even the hardest material, and make any man insane.  He has become Kaffeïne.

    His cheesy tagline: “Justice pulls an all-nighter.”

Pod-people

I listen to a lot of podcasts; there are few days when I don't go through at least one.

My desire for talk radio started as a way to drown out the monotony of a summer job I had. It was brutally hot, much like now, and I was working at a shrub and tree nursery in the Okanagan. My friend Scott and I had little radios that we tuned to CBC so that our brains would be occupied while we repeatedly moved potted plants from one seemingly identical row to another.

Years later, I stumbled on podcasts while I was doing another fairly monotonous job, this time in Montreal. Since then, I've spread from one to another, picking and choosing the ones that interest me. A few are just based on hobbies, but I really enjoy scientific, political, and (of course) literary ones. I think it still fulfills that same desire to keep absorbing knowledge when I'm otherwise fairly idle. Now, this is usually on my commute to work.

It turns out that as much as I love to write about strange and unrealistic places, learning about our world really provides a lot of raw material for me -- Ideas have been spawned by asking "what if?" while listening to a show about the way birds may communicate or the history of the Hope diamond.

So, I wanted to point out a show I've recently gotten into from (again) the CBC called Writers and Company. Particularly, the episodes on Malcom Gladwell and Juan Gabriel Vasquez.

In the interview, I find Gladwell's storytelling is divorced from the didactic tone of his books and is more interesting. Still, I know some people can't stand him. If you are one of those people, I doubt this will change your mind. I really enjoyed his stories about entrepreneurs in the second half the show, though.

Vasquez has an awesome accent in English. Possibly worth the listen on its own. However, he has a lot of neat things to say about what drives him to write novels. Particularly, he talks about how he had to leave his country (Columbia) to write about it. I recommend giving it a listen; it's enjoyable from start to finish.

Duane and I (two-thirds of the cerberus-like HBM team) are both transplanted from our home provinces. I struggle with writing about the Okanagan in my stories. There are bits and pieces, but I still don't think I've ever written one piece that is really about the way that I saw the Okanagan. And I've been away for almost 8 years. Then again, Vasquez's upbringing in Columbia was a lot more dramatic than mine in BC.

I don't know if Duane has touched on this either. Maybe I can convince him to set his next apocalypse in Newfoundland ;)

Thanks,
Alex Newcombe

P.S. HBM was interviewed by CKUT earlier in the year. We're not quite the wise storytellers that the men above are, but if you'd like to listen, the show is linked here

Did I hit it? RPGs and Writing

“13. Did I hit it?”, I asked.

“Depends, what’s your THAC0?”

Some of you will get that and others are definitely already lost. THAC0? What the hell is that? Those of us who know, still ask (it's an over complicated RPG [Role Playing Game] game mechanic that stands for: to hit armour class 0... as if that clarifies it).

I think RPGs are a big part of why I like to write. Over complicated game mechanics aside, RPGs are a way to tell stories. I’m referring to the pen and paper table top kind, not the videogame kind, or rocket propelled grenades (in case you missed it above). It is and always has been the story that draws me to the table whether I'm playing the game or running it.

I’ve been playing RPGs on and off for a good part of my life. My first character the way I remember it was a chaotic dwarf called Rolf. I was 2 (I’m exaggerating… slightly). Many characters have followed Rolf, too many to remember, unless I sat down and went through them methodically... A few stand out.

Necrelius Ravendark, who killed enemies of the state until he was deemed one and rose up to fight for himself and slowly the people, a classic story. Then there was Xarynish, a migou-human hybrid who was treated like a dog on a leash by his “employer”. His loyalty stemmed from Stockholm syndrome. I have played all sorts, most of them odd and conflicted. They are strange and unusual heroes dreamt up around the RPG table, or nowadays our forum. They have a past and motives, but no predetermined future and no future I can control entirely. The RPG story unfolds - collectively.

My RPG beginning was during the time when RPGs had a stigma because of the ridiculousness portrayed in movies like Mazes and Monsters with wunderkind Tom Hanks. Not that they don't have a stigma now, or maybe they don't. Whether you like Tom Hanks or not it is undeniable that he was a huge success… but that movie is on my list of worst movies ever. Youtube it. Troll 2 may be worse, but it is still better. Watch the documentary. The silliness that Mazes and Monsters, along with other media, had somehow released into the minds of adults… made them think RPGs would break our brains...

My awesome older brother introduced me to gaming, so any good or bad influence that it has had on my life falls entirely to him (I refuse all responsibility even if it is my life). Fortunately, he wanted to do other things than run games for his younger brother and his annoying friends and that drove me to tell my own stories. As a result, I learned how to read. Anyone unfamiliar with RPGs should now be made aware that each system often has hundreds of pages detailing over complicated rules, setting elements and other facts relevant to the world and the things that inhabit it. You can also just take the rules and homebrew the rest. My current favourite system is FATE.

I have been creating my own plots and story arcs to feed to my story hungry friends for years now, on and off. It is part of my origin story as a writer. I'm certain others have been infected with the creative bug in completely different ways. Also, am I alone on the feeling that RPGs are great for stories? I doubt it. Of course everyone has probably had at least one terrible GM. 

Oh and sis, you never introduced me to RPGs, but you're cool too.