The guy who lives next door to me has put up this metal bird feeder thing. You know the kind - it's got hooks on it and from the hooks dangle cages that have bread or nuts in them. The smaller birds (right up to the starlings and thrushes) are quite adept at sitting on the little perches and hacking away at the goodies inside the cages. The wood pigeons however are not so agile. I've seen them try for the gold but they've figured out that all they need to do is hang out on the wall and eventually, food falls on the ground - at which point, they simply fly down for it. It struck me that this is pretty much how publishing (and many other things in life) works. The methods are different but the end result is that everybody eats. The key ingredient however is that you need to be gathered around the bird feeder to stand a chance.
We also have a Barn Owl that lives somewhere around here. I don't see it very often at all but last night, it flew down from a tree and pulled the whole bird feeder over. It didn't even seem that interested in the food that spilled out. It was as if it had pulled it down to prove it could eat everything if it wanted to but the owl only looked around it and then flew off - probably looking for mice, frogs and other tasty morsels.
The moral of the story is, if you're going to be a bird, be an owl.
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I'm finding it hard to switch gears this week. Moving from horror to comic books for project number two is not as easy as it sounds. There's a stack of books still sitting on the table here full of monsters and people of interest... out of the whole stack, if you're really into that kind of thing (and if you're here, I'm guessing you have at least a vague interest), the biography of Boris Karloff is more than worth a damn but I think I'll spend the coming week in the company of comics and see what flies out of the pages. Any excuse will do to sit around reading comics in the sun (while it's here)... not that I needed one.
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Talking of the coming week, following on from my post of a few days ago, my short story The Magic Of 1978 (working title) will be finished up by Monday/Tuesday. Thinking about what I previously posted, I'm going to pitch it out at some top end websites (one at a time) that it wouldn't look out of place on. Having chewed it over for a couple of days, to go for a printed magazine is the wrong thing to do at the moment. I need to gain some traction. Plus - the only place I have to tell you all about it is online right here (and twitter maybe) but here's what I figure:
If I posted: "My story, The Magic of 1978 has just been published in Killer Stories Magazine" - the odds on anybody ordering it are probably quite low. Some might but I think most wouldn't. Not yet. Hell, I don't order some magazines in which there are things I totally adore.
But, if I posted: "My story, The Magic of 1978 has just been published online at killerstories.com" - the odds on fingers clicking the link (because, duh, it would link) to at least take a look, is actually pretty high. Really high in fact and that's a good thing. Job done for everybody pretty instantly - no losers in that scenario.
It's not saying that print is dead and is not for me, because it is for me and very much so - but it's rather like trying to score a job when you've got nothing for people to base an opinion on. For any of you doing anything in the world today, whether you want to be an artist or a comic book writer - name your poison here - unless you're hunted down or are very good at playing the game, you really need some kind of track record for something.
Those are my immediate thoughts at least - it's what the internet is great at, so to push forwards, using the web as a tool for such things is not taking a digital or traditional stance at all. It's simply using a tool because there will be another story along soon enough and that will need a different thought process behind it.
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A huge box of books arrived this morning of my horror tattoos book - if anybody is passing by and would like a review copy, drop me an email with details of your magazine or website and I can get that organised pretty sharpish - like today/tomorrow. Once I've mailed copies to all the important people in it, there will be a reasonable amount left for publicity purposes - on which note: first come first served seems like a good rule to dish them out to.
That said, being as I'm so damn happy with it, I'll also give away three copies from my own box - not for any reason other than to share some horror love. I'm not big on buttons and banners on here saying what a swell guy I am for doing so, so we'll just leave it here as a textual afterthought. Again, drop me a mail telling me why you want one and I'll pluck some good ones from the millions and millions of entires that will come in from around the world...
Thats enough for today. Time for some rock n roll and new stuff from Fall Out Boy. The album is Fall Out Boy/Saves Rock n Roll. Man, if ever the world needed FOB, it's now - good job guys. These are all in order from top to bottom and form what I think is collectively known as The Young Blood Chronicles. Lap it up: