Win Something Free

Nothing like the promise of free loot to drive the hit-counter up, and, again courtesy of Matt Staggs, there is a contest to win a free, signed copy of Peter Straub's forthcoming book A Dark Matter. Go to the official Straub Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/officialpeterstraub and describe the scariest thing about your home town. The scariest thing about my town is the influence of Southern Baptists churches, but that's fairly common in the South.
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Trailer for A Dark Matter

Courtesy of my friend Matt Staggs, here is a trailer for Peter Straub's new book A Dark Matter, due in stores February 9th. I'm partially through a review copy (look for a complete review next week) and it is classic Straub, which is good indeed.

Pounding Your Head on the Desk Hurts

One of the ways the internet has ostensibly increased the pleasure of the reading experience is the amount of access and information we now have about our favorite authors. Whereas in the old days the writer was a fairly mysterious figure, this system of tubes allows us to stalk follow writers and other industry figures pretty closely.

I’m beginning to believe, however, we have reached the point of diminishing returns. I find myself increasingly more likely to be repelled by an author’s actions and views these days, and I’m feeling that a lot today, after a weekend in which one publisher basically called his readers stupid, another indicated he hated it when people actually read the books he sells, and a third showed she doesn’t have a clue what “ad hominem” means. This on the heels of recent laugh riots such as RaceFail, GenderFail, and NippleGate (no kidding).

Then I, much after the fact, learn of the depressing case of science fiction writer John C. Wright. I don’t follow science fiction any more (see RaceFail, See GenderFail, See Nipplegate), so I didn’t recognize the name, although he seems to be quite a successful author. Apparently Mr. Wright posted on his website his view of homosexuals. In his words:

“I am equating homosexuality with sadomasochism, pederasty, necrophilia, bestiality, and other sexual neuroses. While a technical distinction can be drawn between them, they share the fundamental property of being objectively disordered appetites.”

Ugh. Mr. Wright certainly has a right to his opinion, and at least he has the good sense to blame it on the Catholic Church, but wow, that is seriously warped. I’m not a politically correct extremist (I thought NippleGate was phenomenally silly), but it is surprising that an educated person in 2009 could still believe gayness to be a sexual neuroses. All this adds up to a feeling I’d be better off retreating from the web, but I’m probably too dumb to do so.

A much better summation of this can be found at my friend Matt Stagg’s website Enter The Octopus, which you ought to be reading anyway. While I am writing inane, juvenile posts concerning entertainment based around a giant radioactive mutant hamster demolishing Albuquerque, Matt deals with important issues in well reasoned fashion.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to find my Home Trepanation Kit to see if I can get rid of this headache.
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Exit Vector

From Matt Staggs at Deep Eight, here’s a press release about an unusual item. Underland Press is publishing a “wovel” (an interactive serial novel) by Simon Drax:

“Mori Kim Marr’s personal force-field of drugs and drink has worn thin: she’s a burned-out teenager in a burned-out world, an Earth wracked by wars and rumors of wars, plagues and disasters, the hopelessness of every human heart. Mori couldn’t care less; just bring her the next fix, please. But when an artificial woman from the 19th century and a boy with psionic powers wander into the smoke and squalor of Mori’s favorite watering hole, gore-drenched violence and city-wide destruction erupts, catapulting Mori and her new-found “friends” into the thick of a battle that began long ago, a war that has raged since before the dawn of civilization, a blood-feud fought and overseen by the sole-survivor of an ancient, pre-human race: Trista Ska Shearn, last of the Cantarans. Trista has been waiting 65,000 thousand years for this, the final battle; she has waited millennia for the glum, sallow teenager, Mori Kim Marr. For Mori is . . . the Exit Vector.
Ancient enemies will clash. Worlds will crumble. The fate of the very universe will be decided in Exit Vector.

Every Monday, the author posts an installment, usually about five to seven pages in length. At the end of the installment, readers vote on which direction they want the story to take, and the author incorporates the readers' decision into the narrative.
Past wovels by Kealan Patrick Burke and Jemiah Jefferson have drawn more than 1,000 readers and 14,000 page views a month. Read the first installment of EXIT VECTOR on June 22 at www.underlandpress.com.”

Sounds like an interesting story, and a fascinating approach to on-line publishing. I’ll be following to see how it turns out.