It’s January, which apparently means that people stay inside and talk to me rather than going outside to garden, run marathons, or exercise their gryphons. I’m interviewed this week on two hour-long podcasts. (So now I’m really tired of talking.)

Authors Love Readers is a brand new podcast program, created by my friend and colleague Patricia McLinn. She has so far interviewed about a dozen authors, with more to come. The podcast is aimed at readers who’d like to know more about how and why their favorite authors (or authors who are new to them) create the stories they write. If you could spend an hour talking to me or some other writer whose books you enjoy, these are (we hope) the kinds of  questions you might ask or the things you’d like to know.

Here’s a link to the interview in iTunes.
Title: Absolutely Go For It, with Laura Resnick
Date: January 24, 2018
Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/authors-love-readers-podcast/id1329846041?mt=2

I’ve known Patricia McLinn for many years, but we got to know each other much better about a decade ago when we served together on the Board of Directors of Novelists, Inc. (NINC), an international organization for career novelists. We worked well together and I developed a great deal of respect for her.

That said, I must nonetheless point out that Pat’s yardstick for the ideal length of any podcast, including this one which she now produces, is based on how long it takes her to walk her dog.

And the second podcast this week is:

David Afsharirad of Baen Free Radio Hour hosted some of the contributors to the new Baen Books anthology, The Cackle of Cthulhu.

The authors David interviewed included Alex Shvartsman, who also edited the collection; Esther Friesner, Jody Lynn Nye, and Gini Koch.  (And me. But in that company, obviously, I tried to listen more than I spoke!)

We talked about H.P. Lovecraft, his creation Cthulhu, horror, humor, and how we came up with our stories. (I’ve also discussed my story for the anthology, “Cthulhu, P.I.,” in a previous blog post here.)

So here’s the link to the podcast, January 26, 2018, on iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-baen-free-radio-hour/id625313693?mt=2

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Cthul.
Cthul who?
Exactly! I’ve come to tickle your funnybone.
Oh, and also to eat your soul…

The Cackle of Cthulhu
ed. Alex Shvartsman
Baen Books, January 2, 2018
Available now!

So last year at Christmas dinner, my dad (science fiction writer Mike Resnick) says to me, “I’m going to have a story in this Cthulhu anthology that Alex Shvartsman is editing for Baen Books. I hear that you’re going to be in it, too. Since when are you a Lovecraft fan?”

As the old man knew, I’m not.

Alex Shvartsman did not invite me into the book on the basis of my non-existent Lovecraft expertise, but rather because I’ve written some humor stories for him in anthologies published by his own company, UFO Publishing.

As it happens, when I said, “Sure, I’d love to be in the anthology!” I had never read a word of Lovecraft’s fiction—a fact I refrained from sharing with Alex.

So I did my research. That is, I got some Lovecraft fiction from my local library, particularly stories that are considered Lovecraft classics and/or central to the “Cthulhu mythos.”  I typically turn down a short story commission that involves more research time than I can spare (ex. a short story for an anthology based on a series of novels I’ve never read), but Lovecraft didn’t write novels, and you can get a good handle on his tone, the subjects or themes he often used, and the Cthulhu mythos by reading just a handful of his short  fiction.

Also, the assignment seemed like a good opportunity to open some of the best-known works by an influential author whose writing I’d never read.

H.P. Lovecraft, who died in 1937, wrote fantastical horror fiction in the early 20th century. An American writer, he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, his own nightmares, and various writers of his own era. In turn, writers influenced by Lovecraft include Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, and Jorge Luis Borges, to name a few. Filmmakers, anime scriptwriters, and manga authors have also cited Lovecraft as an influence. He is often named as one of the most important or influential writers of his genre in the 20th century. Yet despite all that, and despite being a prolific writer, he experienced very little success in his lifetime, and he died in poverty at the age of 46.

Cthulhu, the Unspeakable Eater of Souls, is a dread dark god, a cosmic entity approximately 100 meters tall. Lovecraft describes him in “The Call of Cthulhu” as: “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.” A figure or force in various other Lovecraft stories, Cthulhu dwells deep beneath the sea in the sunken “nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh…[which] was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars.”

I enjoyed exploring a little Lovecraft, though the work isn’t to my taste. Lovecraft’s stories are creative, but he tends to portray everything as so menacing, evil, and horrifying that I kept involuntarily blurting, “Okey dokey.” The author’s prose is often imaginative (ex. “great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths”), but the text dwells so frequently on unimagined, lurking, nameless, unthinkable horrors from the deepest, darkest denizens of the nightmarish corners of the most tormented, unnamed terrors… that his prose often reads to me more like parody than horror.

The story I liked best, “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs,” was unrelated to the Cthulhu mythos I was researching, though it’s typical of Lovecraft’s tone and style, and it gives the reader a good feel for his work. Lovecraft wrote it on commission for Weird Tales in 1924. Interestingly, the first-person narrator in this story is the real-life magician and escape artist Harry Houdini—who encounters an ancient Egyptian deity and sinister rites older-than-time, etc., after being abducted while traveling in Egypt. Houdini (the real one) liked the story and wound up commissioning Lovecraft to write several works after that.

“The Call of Cthulhu,” certainly one of Lovecraft’s best-known works, seemed like essential reading for me, given that I was committed to writing a story for The Cackle of Cthulhu. I also read “At the Mountains of Madness,” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.”  I picked up various shiny bits from these works and rolled them into my story, “Cthulhu, P.I.” in which my love of old-fashioned hard-boiled detective movies is revealed, as well as my slight addiction to Airplane-style cheesy jokes.

So I hope you like the story and enjoy the anthology, whether you are unfamiliar with Lovecraft, a devoted fan of his work, or someone prone to muttering “okey dokey” while reading his stories. Other authors in the anthology include my dad, Neil Gaiman, Esther Friesner, Ken Liu, Jody Lynn Nye, and more!

I have a new short story out, “Lost & Found,” in the sixth annual installment of writer/editor Alex Shvartsman’s popular Unidentified Funny Objects series.

My story in UFO5 was a satirical mash-up of The X-Files, Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who, and the classic movie, Casablanca. “The ∏ Files” (“The Pi Files”), featuring Special Agents Mully and Scalder, was great fun to write.

This time, though, my story for UFO6 is a little more personal.

I used to work part-time at a community newspaper. It should have been a great job. The hours, the location, the work, the community, and the rest of the staff were all pleasant, and the pay was okay.

Unfortunately, though, the boss (who was the editor, publisher, and owner of the paper) was an incredibly toxic person, which made working there miserable and stressful, despite all the positive attributes the place otherwise had. In addition to his stunning incompetence, he was also prone to frequent tantrums and irrational rages, he was jaw-droppingly rude, and he regularly insulted and gaslighted the staff.

Unsurprisingly, the place had a comically high turnover rate. Departures were an even mix of quitting and getting fired. I was only there for a few months before I was fired, during which time we ran through 5 office managers, for example. One very nice person quit after just one day, telling me as she left how appalled and astounded she was by the boss’ behavior.

Well, at one point, the boss wanted to print some “joke” stories in the newspaper. He presented staffers with a few real news stories that he wanted us to riff on. I selected one about NASA, wrote my story as directed, and turned it in. After reading it, the boss informed me that this story was not at all what he had wanted. In fact, it was what he had asked for, but now he was asking for something else. So I wrote another draft. He sent this one back to me with some notes. I revised the material in accordance with the notes and turned it in. Now he gave me all-new feedback, stuff he had not said on any previous iteration, and had me revise it again. I did so. And then he did the same thing again.

Next, he told me to start all over from scratch. He couldn’t articulate why, he just knew he wanted something else. I pointed out that I had already done 5 versions. He said I would probably have to do 10 or 12 versions before we were done. 

It was the “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it” school of editing. I had consoled various writers friends about situations like this over the years, but this was the first time I had dealt with it myself. This is a well-known gambit of completely incompetent and/or malicious editors, and it always goes very badly for the writer.

Then he told me I didn’t know how to write humor. He also said I wasn’t creative. He gave me a contemptuous look and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be a science fiction writer or something?”

At which point, I finally lost my temper. I don’t remember exactly what I said, though I do recall working into my tirade the information that I’d never before been asked for 5 rewrites because I’d never before worked with such an incompetent editor. I took my work away from him and stalked out of his office after telling him my next version of it would be final, period.

Not long after that, I later learned, he posted a want-ad for someone to fill my position, and after he arranged a start date with the new hire, he fired me.

The sad part, so to speak, was that the pieces he kept spiking were funny, and none of them ever saw the light of day.

So when Alex Shvartsman asked me to participate in UFO6, I decided to turn my ideas  for that article into a short story. The result is “Lost & Found,” in which some surprising visitors emerge from a UFO orbiting Earth.

And apparently someone thinks I can write humor, since Imagine A Book SF gave my story 5 stars and said, “So many different layers of humor. Wonderful.”

Yep, getting published is still the best revenge.

I was Guest of Honor (GoH – pronounced “go”) at MillenniCon 29 this weekend, where a good time was had by all. And at the traditional GoH reception on Friday night, the convention unveiled a beautiful sheet cake which was the size of my car–and decorated with themes from my Esther Diamond fantasy series, which I found especially thoughtful. (Note the diamond, the comedy-tragedy dual-mask image that’s the traditional symbol of thespians like Esther, and the books. Also, the cake was yummy!)



MillenniCon is a science fiction/fantasy fannish convention in the Cincinnati/Dayton/Ohio Valley area, so it’s local to me (I’m a longtime Cincinnatian and now live in Northern Kentucky–so close to Cincinnati than I can easily walk to downtown Cinti, across the Ohio River, and can see parts of it from my back yard.) They like to feature local sf/f writers, and past GoHs include fellow Cincinnatians Mike Resnick (my dad) and Stephen Leigh aka S.L. Farrell, as well as Midwestern residents John Scalzi, Jim Hines, Eric Flint, and Tobias Buckell. Over the years, they’ve also brought in guests from farther afield, including Robert Sawyer, Connie Willis, Catherine Asaro, David Brin, Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Joe Haldeman, and so on. As you can imagine, I am honored to be in such company.

Before opening ceremonies (generally pretty unceremonial in the sf/f world, but always fun and friendly), my fearless GoH liaison Cheryl, responsible all weekend for making sure I didn’t disappear down a manhole or get lost in the laundry, took me and several others out for dinner, including former MillenniCon GoH and friend-of-con David Drake. Later on, after the GoH reception back at the hotel and some evening programming (during which I confessed to enjoying Elvis Presley movies), there was the usual round of parties. (As I have said before, the sf/f world is mostly about the parties, not the books.)

I was settling down to sleep around 2am that night when I realized I had forgotten a bunch of essential things at home–such as something to read to the audience at my reading in the morning–so I made a middle-of-the-night trek back to my house across the river to get forgotten items. Upon arriving home, I surprised the Infamous Hector in the middle of constructing a catapult in the cellar by using–it seemed–pieces of a Scrabble game he had  liberated from the top shelf (9 feet high) in an upstairs closet. So it was a rather long night.

Like many others at MillenniCon, I was jailed the next day. (This is a fundraiser whereby people pay a few dollars to arrest and imprison anyone of their choice for 5-15 minutes in a temporary jail that’s constructed in the lobby. The jailer is a well-armed Klingon, so I went quietly, officer.) That evening, writer Stephen Leigh aka SL Farrell, who has been publicly performing in rock bands for decades, did a great job of entertaining the audience during the intermission at the masquerade while we waited for the judges to deliberate and make their decisions. Afterwards, on my way to the parties, I saw a giant blue sea monster in the hallway, and everyone said I’d had enough to drink. But I saw it again the next day, too, after all the effects of wine and questionable company had worn off. Hah!

Sunday wrapped up with some more programming, during which time I realized that I probably shouldn’t spend so much time at parties when I have a heavy programming schedule, since I am not quite the spring flower that I used to be.

Overall, I believe that being a good GoH means being polite and accessible, available to committee and attendees during most waking hours during the con, well-prepared on programming, and courteous to everyone who has shown up in hopes of having a nice time. So I tried hard to follow that example, since that’s all much easier than, oh, writing a book, and certainly not a lot to ask of an author in exchange for making her the honored guest of a convention.

And concoms make it a very positive experience for the GoH by running a good con where everyone has a good time, as well as extending warm hospitality to the GoH. All of which was the case at MillenniCon, which was a happy experience for me and, as far as I could tell, for everyone else, too.

Next year is MillenniCon’s 30th anniversary, for which they’re planning big festivities, including inviting back some former GoHs, such as my dad and my friend Jim Hines–so I’ll certainly be in attendance!