Jason Sanford

The Art of Adam Pizurny

Adam Pizurny's illustration for "Heaven's Touch"

As an author, there are two big fringe benefits to having your stories reprinted around the world—you get to meet new readers, and you discover new and exciting artists when they illustrate your work.

Illustration for Allen M. Steele's "The Emperor of Mars"

Adam Pizurny is a Czech artist living in Prague and he illustrates stories for the magazine XB-1. I love Adam's black and white illustrations, which are designed to fit in a single vertical column of the magazine. At right is his take on my story "Heaven's Touch," which appeared in the April 2013 issue of XB-1. The story focuses on a stranded astronaut whose space suit is infected—or haunted, if you will—by the ghost-like proxy of her dead crewmate. I think Adam did an amazing job capturing the essence of the story.

Another of his illustrations I really like is for Allen M. Steele "The Emperor of Mars." The space-suited face is what draws me to this illustration. The art both tells the story of what is happening and draws the reader deeper into Steele's story.

As you can imagine, Adam is a big fan of science fiction, and says he has loved the genre since childhood. Other samples of his XB-1 art you should check out includes illustrations for Nina Allan's "The Silver Wind" and Gregory Benford's "Immersion." 

Adam doesn't only do black and white illustrations. He works full time in graphic design and has a long list of impressive design and illustration credits, including music art, movie posters, and advertising murals. You can check out more of his illustrations here.

The Gordian Knot of the Night Shade Books Deal

This is a hard post to write. I'm a big fan of the novels published by Night Shade Books, which has published such groundbreaking works as the Hugo and Nebula Award winning The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. However, NSB has a history of not paying their authors on time, a trend which has intensified in recent months as the publishing company came under financial pressure.

A few days ago came word that NSB would be selling their assets — ie, books under contract — to Skyhorse Publishing and Start Publishing LLC. The deal will only go through if a majority of NSB authors agree to the new contract terms for their works.

Unfortunately, it appears the contract is a bad deal for authors, as Michael Stackpole details. You can also view a leaked copy of the contract on Scribd (assuming it isn't deleted in short order).

Night Shade Editor in Chief Jeremy Lassen claims "This is the last chance to make sure all of my authors get paid" and that otherwise these author's contracts will get tied up in bankruptcy for months and years to come. But I wonder about that, and about other aspects of the deal which are now emerging.

Know this — I don't have a dog in this fight, aside from the fact that I'm an author and support the rights of my fellow authors. But the more I learn about the proposed NSB deal the more this seems like a Gordian Knot which simply can't be untied without cutting everything apart.

There are so many unanswered questions. For example, as was posted on the blog Brillig,  Jarred Weisfeld is evidently tied in with this deal through the companies trying to purchase NSB assets. However, Jarred also is tied in with a literary agency called Objective Entertainment, which was mentioned in a SFWA Writers' Beware post. That immediately sets off warning bells, as does Michael Stackpole's previously mentioned analysis of the contract.

In my opinion, this asset deal is a way to cherry-pick the NSB's lineup, a view Stackpole shares. And as Stackpole adds, "Skyhorse and Smart are not buying books here, they’re buying Intellectual Properties, and at a bargain price."

The contract terms, and the fact that Objective Entertainment is, if not directly involved at least possibly tied in with the deal, leads me to suspect that the intent is not to publish NSB authors but to have their secondary rights to those books, which could then be sold to anyone and everyone.

Perhaps I'm wrong. But when a deal is so convoluted and non-transparent as this one, who can say. It appears NSB authors are screwed if they agree to this deal, and, since many of them are owed large amounts of money, also screwed if they don't.

Which is a damn shame.

End the Hugo Award 5 percent rule

The 2013 Hugo Award nominees have been announced and overall it's a strong list. I'm particularly pleased to see so many authors I know and stories I love make the final ballot.

However, there is one irritation — only three short stories are Hugo finalists in that category, while all the other categories have five finalists. This is due to the Hugo five percent rule, which states

3.8.5: No nominee shall appear on the final Award ballot if it received fewer nominations than five percent (5%) of the number of ballots listing one or more nominations in that category, except that the first three eligible nominees, including any ties, shall always be listed.

Cheryl Morgan has an excellent post about the rule and why it was established. She also invites the SF/F community to have a discussion on if the rule needs to be changed.

I personally believe the rule does need changing. This is the second time in the last few years where the short story Hugo category has run afoul of the rule (the other being in 2011). The changing nature of short story publishing — where there are more short stories being published in many more online magazines and venues — means it's harder for any particular short story to meet the five percent rule. It also wouldn't surprise me if other categories begin having similar issues with the rule in the coming years.

The Hugo Award are intended to promote and honor the best works of the SF/F genre, not be a slave to statistics and rules from three decades ago. I know the rule was well-intended when it was created, but it is not helpful in this current age.

PragoFFest appearance on Saturday, Feb. 2

I'll be appearing virtually at the PragoFFest convention in the Czech Republic on Saturday, Feb. 2 at 8 pm local time. I'll be discussing SciFi Strange and why I believe this style of science fiction is so relevant to today's SF-influenced world.

PragoFFest looks like a blast and I wish I could attend in person. The Czech magazines XB-1 (and their predecesor Ikarie) have published a large numbers of my stories. I also write a monthly column for XB-1, which Martin Sust is kind enough to translate. Translations will be available for my talk and I'll also take questions from the audience.

So if you're in the Czech Republic this Saturday, look for the virtual me at PragoFFest.

Ssh. We're not supposed to talk about latest SFWA drama

After three successful terms as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, John Scalzi has finally fallen to his knees and prayed "Oh Great Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke, deliver me from all this damn SF politicking!" Seriously, John's done a great job at SFWA, helping grow the membership and set up reforms to ensure the organization's future. He's entitled to a well-earned break and he fully intends to take it.

Which, of course, brings up the question of who will be SFWA's next president. And from there comes the latest drama to play out on the SFWA discussion forums.

Now before I talk about that ... let me say I'm not supposed to talk about that. SFWA has a long tradition of keeping its discussion boards private and smacking around frowning upon anyone who breaks said silence. As as SFWA member I have no desire for a frowning upon, so no talkie on the private fun and games.

However, that doesn't mean I can't talk about what people have said in public. Theodore Beale has publically declared his candidacy for SFWA President. Now if you don't know Beale, he's published a number of genre books and also writes columns for WorldNetDaily under the name Vox Day. While I can't confirm or deny or even speculate if Beale's candidacy is causing any drama on the SFWA forums, I can point to a public comment from two years ago on how he felt 

"... inspired to run against John Scalzi for SFWA President next year. My platform is going to involve disenfranchising all of the female members and endorsing a Federal law banning women from writing any science fiction or fantasy that does not contain vampires or wereseals and comes with a warning label: WARNING: this is Vampire/Wereseal fiction, not actual science fiction or fantasy."

Beale has also made a number of other fun comments, including that "educating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves" and that Americans need to expel all Mexican immigrants and "reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture."

Oh yeah. Nothing controversial about this candidacy.

But the good news is that Beale is nothing more than an attention seeking candidate. Soon other candidates will throw their hats into the ring and we'll all breathe a big sigh of speculative fiction relief.

Until then, welcome to the SFWA madhouse.

Victoria Foyt again explores her own racism with Save The Pearls, Part Two

When last we left Victoria Foyt, her young adult novel Revealing Eden (Save the Pearls Part One) — about a future where white people wear black face to survive the cruelty of life under their black overlords, who are not-so innocently nicknamed "coals" — was justifiably denounced as racist and a piece of literary excrement firmly dropped in the stereotyped toilet. And that was before Foyt and her enablers questioned the ability of anyone but themselves to correctly identify racism. In case you don't remember, this bizarre train of thought derailed spectacularly when Weird Tales editor Marvin Kaye proclaimed the novel "a thoroughly non-racist book" and promised to excerpt it in his legendary magazine. Or at least, that was his plan until his boss, the publisher of said legendary magazine, went "Oh crap" at the emerging shit-storm and pulled the plug.

If you want to catch up on all those fun and games, I suggest you read these insightful posts from N. K. Jemisin, Jim C. Hines, and Foz Meadows. And catch up you should, because Victoria Foyt is about to release the sequel to her novel, titled Adapting Eden, Save The Pearls Part Two.

According to the book's promo page, it's scheduled for release in early spring, while the book's Amazon page indicates a release of January 25. Since that's also the date B&N is giving, I'm betting on the January 25th date.

According to the book summary on Amazon:

"In the sequel to the award-winning, dystopian novel, Revealing Eden, Eden Newman must adapt into a hybrid human beast if she hopes to become Ronson Bramfords mate. She has no choice but to undergo her fathers adaptation experiment at his makeshift laboratory in the last patch of rainforest. But when the past rears its ugly head, Eden and Bramford must abandon camp along with their family and friends. Luckily, an Aztec tribe that has survived with the aid of a healing plant provides them with sanctuaryor is it? Too late, Eden realizes she is at the center of an epic spiritual battle between love and war. To survive, she must face her deepest fears or lose everything, including the beastly man she loves."

First off, Foyt must want us to ignore the grammatical mistakes in her summary. And she'll also likely want no mention that the award her novel won is questionable at best, or that the sentence about how the main character "must adapt into a hybrid human beast if she hopes to become Ronson Bramfords mate" indicates that Foyt is no more knowledgeable about racial issues than in her first novel. After all, that novel described the African-American character of Ronson Bramfords as a "beast-man;" this time the summary avoids that term and merely calls him "beastly." So if the white main character must adapt into a "hybrid human beast" to become a black man's mate...well, I can't even begin to comment on that.

Foyt has posted a short prologue of her novel, and guess what, she's embraced an additional stereotype — that of the romantic natives who teach "civilized" people about the folly of their ways. But don't worry. The novel's white girl is still the world's only hope. The prologue has the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli saying as much, right after he muses how the glorious 1960s was his heyday because it produced great songs like “Here Comes The Sun" (never mind that you'd think an Aztec sun god's heyday would have been during the Aztec's heyday).

Yeah, this novel is going to be way more uplifting and racially sensitive than its predecessor.

A Novel of Cliched Discovery: A Subtitled Guide to the Worst Fiction Subtitles on Amazon

I shouldn't do this. One of the unspoken rules of being an author is you shouldn't pick on your fellow authors.* (see exceptions to rule below)

But no. I can't let this go. The other day I was browsing on Amazon and I realized that almost EVERY SINGLE NOVEL on the site has a subtitle, and most of them are bad. Really really bad.

I mean, what the hell? Have we reached the point where people can't buy a novel without seeing an annoyingly cliched subtitle summing up the book in the most trite way possible? Are readers lost without someone telling them that this is My Story: A Novel of Discovery in an Age of Love and War, Book 1?

Before you think I exagerate with that intentionally bad subtitle, do you know how many novels have the subtitle "a novel of love and war"? Check out the list. Since Amazon returns four pages of results with that subtitle, let's simple agree that it's quite a few.

Now don't get me wrong: subtitles can be a great thing, and Lord knows I've used them in my time. Two anthologies I've edited — Million Writers Award: The Best New Online Voices and Million Writers Award: The Best Online Science Fiction and Fantasy — both sprouted their titles in the fertile fields of subtitle land. After all, subtitles can be a useful way to both brand your book and convey added information to potential readers.

In my case, I needed to let readers know the anthologies were tied in with the annual Million Writers Award while also helping readers tell them apart. And for some genres — such as with nonfiction — subtitles are a vital tool to help potential readers quickly determine a book's subject matter.  

But that doesn't mean most novels need subtitles. And if they do, novels certainly don't need the cliches which most publishers and authors believe qualify as subtitles.

In many ways we're living in the literary landscape left by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He'd originally wanted his epic fantasy story to be published as one massive novel, but his publisher balked at the cost of doing that. Instead, they released the novel as a trilogy, resulting in bastardizations such as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

When other authors and publishers realized the payoff which could result from successful series, we began to see increasing numbers of subtitles proclaiming the series and book number. This trend picked up even more steam when mega-blockbuster films like Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope tricked a new generation of authors into believing subtitle land was the only place to write.

I'm probably fighting a losing battle against this trend, but such is life. Still, where logic and literary analysis don't succeed, there's always humor and snark. Below are the worst subtitled novels I've discovered on Amazon. I know there are many more out there — if anyone finds a jaw-droppingly bad fiction subtitle, add it to the comments below.

• ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery by Thomas T. Thomas 
• The Return of the Mayan: A Novel of Discovery by J. Albert Rorabacher
• Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery by Charles Martin 
  • No self-pub excuses here. A major publisher ran with this subtitle.
• Winona's Web: A Novel of Discovery by Priscilla Cogan
  • I'd love to discover a subtitle which isn't a novel of discovery.
• Blight; or, The Novel Hater: A Tale of our Own Times, Volume II by Rose Foot 
• He Loves Me Not: a novel of suspense (Lily's Story, Book 1) by Christine Kersey
• Rav Hisda's Daughter, Book I: Apprentice: A Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery by Maggie Anton
• Rashi's Daughters, Book III: Rachel: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France by Maggie Anton
  • Maggie Anton dearly loves her subtitles. Check all of them out on her Amazon page.
• Beyond The Blue, The Blue Series Volume 2 Part 1 by Josephine Dillon
• Crazy For You (A Controversial Romance)
• The Superuser: A Grisham Stark Murder Mystery Novel (Action Suspense Thriller) by Collin Moshman and Katie Dozier
• WIRED (The NY Times Bestselling Novel) by Douglas E. Richards 
  • Because once you crack the combined NY Times print and e-book bestseller lists, naturally that must become your novel's subtitle. I should also note that the subtitle was recently dropped on this novel, but that's how I originally found it. And the book's cover still shows the subtitle clearly.
• The Worst Horror Novel: Night Vigil by Dallas Releford
  • You have to give this author credit for reversing the title and subtitle, and for truth in advertising.

* Exceptions to the author-picking-on rule. Authors are not supposed to pick on fellow authors unless:

• You can do it anonymously. Because oh yeah baby, authors love a nice anonymous flame war built on the bonfires of each other's books.
• The author being picked on is successful. If an author makes the best-seller lists and becomes a household name like J.K. Rowling then the knives come out. Because dang it, when you're an author sometimes you're only reward in this world is extra-heavy envy of those who are more successful than you.