Joe McKinney Guest Post for #WinterZombie2014

*Thanks to Armand Rosamilia for letting me reblog this great interview with Joe McKinney.

 

Joe McKinney Guest Post for #WinterZombie2014

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Why I Write the Dark Stuff
 Joe McKinney

In my day job, I’m a patrol supervisor for the San Antonio Police Department.  I work the west side of town.  The police officers who make the calls, who make the arrests, who keep the peace in the busiest part of the city, they work for me.  I’m the one they call when they have major crime scenes that need managing or when something just doesn’t look right.

What that means is that I have to see a lot of dead bodies.  And I mean a lot of them.

Like last week.  One of my officers called because he had a decomp (police parlance for a body that’s been rotting in place for a good long while) and he wasn’t sure if it was suicide or homicide.  So I showed up to the apartment and there was the dead guy, seated on the floor (or almost on the floor, his butt was about two inches off the carpet).  He had a noose around his neck, though you could barely see it because his skin was so bloated and gummy with rot that it had sort of oozed over the rope.

“So, what do you think?” the officer asked.
“Suicide,” I told him.
“But he’s sitting down.  Wouldn’t he have rolled over or something when he started to choke?  That’s like an instinct or something, isn’t it?”

“No,” I said.  “What you’re looking at is an act of will power.  If you want to do something bad enough, you’ll see it through.”

He looked from me to the body and shook his head.

“Besides,” I added, “look at all that medication in there in his bathroom.  Those drugs are for hepatitis and cancer.  He did this because he was hurting pretty bad.  And look up there.”  I pointed to the ceiling where our dead guy had nailed the rope to the rafter.  “He did that because he didn’t want the rope to slip off.  And look at where he chose to do this, here in the bedroom, so his relatives coming in the front door wouldn’t have to see him.  I bet if you look around here, you’ll find a note.  Probably in the other room, out of sight of the bedroom.”

The officer nodded.

We both stood there, staring at the body.  The apartment didn’t have air conditioning, and it felt like standing inside an oven, even though it was the middle of the night.  The smell was really bad.

The officer kind of chuckled and said, “So, Sarge, I guess this is one for your next book, huh?”

I offered him a bland smile.  Cops develop their gallows humor long before they learn that it’s actually a defense mechanism against the horror of confronting your own mortality, and this officer was one of the young ones.  He still had a lot to learn.

“Go look for the note,” I said.
He stiffened.  “Yes, sir.”

When he was gone, I found myself looking at that dead man’s face.  Suicides always get to me. Something about standing in the presence of someone so desperate to take control of their pain and their emotional devastation that they would resort to this makes me feel numb.

In the other room, the young officer was clumsily knocking around.  Something fell over and broke.  I almost called out to him to be careful, but held my tongue.  You see, my mind had drifted from my day job to my night job.  I was thinking about what he’d said about my next book.  So many people seem to have that opinion about horror, and about zombie fiction in particular.  To them, a book about shambling dead things eating the living must be nothing but gratuitous violence and gore.  What else could it be?

Well, I take exception to that.

I started writing because I was scared of the future.  My wife and I had just gotten married.  Then we had a daughter, and the world suddenly seemed so much more complex.  In the wink of an eye, I went from a carefree young cop—a lot like the one in the other room knocking stuff over—to a man with more responsibilities than he could count.  I had obligations and commitments coming at me from every angle.

I’d been writing stories for a good long while at that point, starting sometime in my early teens, but never with the intention of doing anything about them.  I would write them out on a yellow legal pad, staple the finished pages together, and leave them on the corner of my desk until the next idea came to me.

Never once did it occur to me to do something with what I’d written.  I just threw those stories away and forgot them.  But then came adulthood, and parenthood, and I found myself groping to put the world in order, to regain some of the control I felt I had lost.  I realized that writing could help me with that.  I realized that I could focus my anxieties and make something useful of them.

And so I started writing a science fiction novel.  It was a big space opera epic, and it was pure trash.  Every word of it was awful.

The reason?  Well, it wasn’t authentic.  It wasn’t me.

The real me, the kid who sat at his desk filling up yellow legal pads rather than going out bike riding with his friends, was a horror junkie.  I was crazy for the stuff.  Horror was my first literary love, and I figured, seeing as love was what drove me to return to writing, that I should write what I love. I was feeling like the world was rushing at me from every side, so I wrote a zombie story about characters who had the living dead rushing in at them from every side.  That’s when things started to click.  That’s when it all made sense.

But it wasn’t just that simple.  You see, I sincerely believe that fear is the most authentic, and the most useful, emotion available to the storyteller.  It is as vital as love, and indeed, gives love its profundity, for what makes love, and family, and everything we treasure so valuable but the fear that it could all go away in the blink of an eye.  For me, fear goes far beyond monsters.  It is the catalyst for my creative process, and without that creative process, I’m afraid I would wither up inside.  I’m not saying I’d end up like that suicide I just told you about if I couldn’t write anymore, nothing that melodramatic, but absence of that creative outlet would be a hole that nothing else could fill.

So that’s why I write the dark stuff.

San Antonio, Texas
September 11, 2012
Plague of the Undead
*   *   *   *   *
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The stench of frozen rotted meat is in the air! Welcome to the Winter of Zombie Blog Tour 2014, with 10 of the best zombie authors spreading the disease in the month of November.

Stop by the event page on Facebook so you don’t miss an interview, guest post or teaser… and pick up some great swag as well! Giveaways galore from most of the authors as well as interaction with them! #WinterZombie2014


AND so you don’t miss any of the posts in November, here’s the complete list, updated daily:

 

Armand Rosamilia, authors, fiction, guest blog, horror, Joe McKinney, winter of zombie, zombie, Armand Rosamilia, horror, Joe McKinney, zombie, Showcase with William Cook, Winter Zombie 2014

Macabre art by Gojin Ishihara

*Reblogged from here


Here is a collection of wonderfully weird illustrations by Gōjin Ishihara, whose work graced the pages of numerous kids' books in the 1970s. The first 16 images below appeared in the "Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters" (1972), which profiled supernatural creatures from Japanese legend. The other illustrations appeared in various educational and entertainment-oriented publications for children.
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Kappa (river imp), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Jorōgumo (lit. "whore spider"), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Kubire-oni (strangler demon), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Goujin Ishihara --
- Rokurokubi (long-necked woman), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Goujin Ishihara --
- Onmoraki (bird demon), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Nekomata (cat monster), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Tengu (bird-like demon), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Tenjō-sagari (ceiling dweller), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Enma Dai-Ō (King of Hell), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Kyūbi no kitsune (nine-tailed fox), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Baku (dream-eating chimera), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Yūrei (ghost), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Yamasei (mountain sprite), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Goujin Ishihara --
- Rashōmon no oni (ogre of Rashōmon Gate), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Waira (mountain-dwelling chimera), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Nure-onna (snake woman), Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters, 1972
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Hell of Repetition (Illustrated Book of Hell, 1975)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Burning Hell (Illustrated Book of Hell, 1975)
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Demons of the Orient (The Complete Book of Demons, 1974)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- The appearance of Satan (The Complete Book of Demons, 1974)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Gorgon (Illustrated Book of World Monsters, 1973)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Aliens in ancient Japan (Mysteries of the World, 1970)
Illustration by Goujin Ishihara --
- Alien (Mysteries of the World, 1970)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Emergency Command 10-4 10-10 (sonosheet book, 1972)
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- Emergency Command 10-4 10-10 (sonosheet book, 1972)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Kaiketsu Lion-Maru (sonosheet book, 1972)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Kaiketsu Lion-Maru (sonosheet book, 1972)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Prehistoric man as modern-day baseball player (Prehistoric Man, 1970)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Prehistoric man as modern-day wrestler (Prehistoric Man, 1970)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Prehistoric man as modern-day security guard (Prehistoric Man, 1970)
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
- The secretary who spied for 18 years (from Spy Wars)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- World's biggest glutton (World's Greatest Wonders, 1971)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Precognition of plane crash (Mysteries of the Body, 1973)
Illustration by Gojin Ishihara --
- Nostradamus (Psychics of the World, 1974)
Illustration by Goujin Ishihara --
- Frozen planet (Year X: End of the World, 1975)
Illustration by Gōjin Ishihara --
Dark star gravity (Year X: End of the World, 1975)
[Link: Gōjin Fechi]

New Poetry Collection available

Starting to get cold here in Wellington. The Southerly winds are bitterly swept forward by 120-30 kilometer-an-hour winds. Tonight is quiet after a stormy couple of days, perfect for a quick blog post. For those of you who sometimes read this I apologize for my lack of posts/communication lately. Sometimes life gets in the way and I've been quite busy. Since the last post, my new collection of poetry has been published by James Ward Kirk Fiction, a small Independent publisher in the U.S. (Indiana). 

http://www.amazon.com/Corpus-Delicti-William-Cook-ebook/dp/B00K2AY04A/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1401082312&sr=1-1&keywords=william+cook+corpus+delicti


'Corpus Delicti' is a collection spanning two-decades of material, carefully selected and revised (some) with much new material; 290 pages of dark philosophical verse. BE WARNED: my poetry does deal with dark, often taboo, subjects and language - as such, you have been forewarned. Please keep in mind that my poetry tells a story as a fiction more often than not. My poetry expresses my thoughts, and it would be safe to assume that I speak from experience or have some bias towards the words I choose to employ, for they are my thoughts - but like everything, influence pervades, as much as words are shared. 

I have probably said enough already but I'd like to say a big thank you to my readers - I am getting frustrated with social media lately so will endeavor to be more active on the blog/website front with more posts and things of interest. Take care. Here's some other readers talking about 'Corpus Delicti' instead of me for a change [insert wink here]:

Latest Amazon review


May 25, 2014 by Anthony Servante
Format: Kindle Edition

Corpus Delicti by William Cook is an extravagant challenge. It is at once an abundant selection of poems on a wide range of topics while it is also individual little gems that captivate the reader. One might say that each poem has its own job, its own vision that leads one to the next poem, and so on. If anything, its greatest feature, its size, is also my one criticism. I see three books here, a trilogy, in one volume. But that's good news for poetry fans: you get three books in one, close to two hundred pages of gems to appreciate one by one. This is not a book to devour in one sitting. It is to be savored slowly, over multiple readings, perhaps three to four poems at a time. I tried random readings and sequential readings, and both work equally fine, with only a subtle difference in reading experience. It is not often that a book of such magnitude of thought and word reaches the modern reader. Purchase Corpus Delicti with confidence that you will have a year's worth of reading joy and introspection. And if you come to read William Cook from his fictional work, then you are in for a treat. Fans of Blood Related can enjoy these little intellectual challenges to the mind in the same way we enjoyed Cook's toying with the line between fiction and nonfiction with his serial killers in Blood Related. The pulse of poetry is as strong as the poet's heart in this very large compilation of poems. 

Anthony Servante wrote this review and I'm very proud to have him take an interest in my work. He is an interesting chap and has a great little blog that is getting bigger by the day - fantastic articles and reviews, profiles, interviews, poetry, fiction and everything dark in-between. He is an academic fellow who has a good eye for the whole process of authorship; either verse, fiction, or non-fiction alike. He has also reviewed another poetry collection, 'Moment of Freedom' with a very insightful and erudite critique of my work:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009XZI7LC/ref=cm_cr_dpvoterdr?ie=UTF8&qid=1401098465&s=books&sr=1-11&thanksvoting=cr-vote-R24N3CJCWAHVQX#R24N3CJCWAHVQX.2115.Helpful.Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The New Modernism April 1, 2013
Format:Kindle Edition
[Also reviewed in the Servante of Darkness Blog]

William Cook joins the Modernism School of Poetry. From Wiki: "For the modernists, it was essential to move away from the merely personal towards an intellectual statement that poetry could make about the world." Thus William combines a writing style of prose and poetry to weave an intellectual tapestry, slipping his words in and out of subjective and objective observations, pulling and pushing the reader to envision the completed tapestry while savoring the in's and out's of the words themselves, much as we watch a movie without thinking about the camera work or actor interpretations of the screenplay. As Peter Gabriel points out in The Cinema Show regarding the use of cosmetics: "Concealing to reveal."

Let's consider the "The edge of the night" from MOMENT OF FREEDOM: Selected Poetry. First off, two notes: the title Moment of Freedom is ironic in that the title indirectly states, a lifetime of slavery to the "moment of freedom", much as the term "a cloudless clim" from Lord Byron, must incorporate "cloud" to denote an empty sky: an image to convey emptiness rather than simply using the unpoetic "empty" to state such. Second, the poem's title capitalizes the article but not the noun or prepositional phrase, combining poetic license with standard grammatical rule (namely "The", the first word in the line, must be capitalized). The intellectualizing has begun; William flaunts the world's rules by obeying them as he pleases, this, a moment of freedom.

To discuss William's deliberate misuse of grammar would be folly as it is part of the pursuit to reach the reader. Note also his use of metaphor and litotes. To say simply: "a corpse" is not in his vocabulary; he metaphorically says "dinner" and the diner, death ("the dead!"). Knowledge is life, and life is accepting death: "The darkness comes from knowing nothing is ours, except death...." The first slip into litotes comes from a shift into prose from the metaphor: "...to wake with a sore splitting back from the cold floor in borrowed clothes and eyes..." and with the "borrowed...eyes" shifts back to poetry and metaphor. These are very aesthetic acrobatics.

Furthermore, in the line "To wake up and see the sun if not the glare from beyond" we see additional shifts with the sun at once literal and figurative (as that solar body we find upon waking and as a metaphor for the afterlife). William maintains the balance between shifts throughout the work and ultimately "time" becomes a "cannibal" eating us as we sleep and wake, with varying degrees of metaphoric intents. Thus, the final line of Part II captures this fatality of cannibalism of the self as William becomes the "I" of the poem and states the thesis with the "if", bringing together the personal and the intellectual in Part III: "The science of the mind corroded the body, blinded every mile I ever burnt in this life and the next if there ever were such a thing."

A work in three parts, "The edge of the night" is representative of the poetry throughout MOMENT OF FREEDOM. Think of the book as a complete poem with each individual poem making up the whole. I do not recommend jumping around reading individual works, but rather beginning to end, as one would read James Joyce's Ulysses or William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. It is a work worthy to be mentioned with these modernist authors.

 
Anyway, that's pretty much the intro to my collection 'Corpus Delicti'/'Moment of Freedom.'  Those of you who buy a copy - bless you and I hope you find it interesting, those of you who don't - I hope you find something else worth reading here on my blog/site. Check out the Links/Recommended pages for other horror, art and writer-related links. Until next time . . . 
 

Interview with Dutch Speculative Fiction author, Mike Jansen


Here is an interview with talented Dutch author Mike Jansen, friend and colleague with James Ward Kirk Fiction. Please make sure to check out the links section and delve into Mike's interesting and varied literary world. He has some interesting things to say on writing from an EU perspective. Enjoy.

 Interview by



This interview was triggered by the two books Dutch writer Mike Jansen published recently. In March he published TheFailing God, the first book of his fantasy series ‘Chronicles Of Cranborn.’ A few months earlier he published his short story collection Ophelia In My Arms. You might think that's enough for a man to handle, but Mike is also editor at Dutch publisher 'Verschijnsel' and at 'JWK Publishing', he has been pushing new writers to publish digital media and he is coaching several new writers. I sincerely hope he will not burn-out, because I desperately want to see him finish his fantasy series.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Failing-God-Chronicle-Chronicles/dp/0615966039/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392492423&sr=8-1&keywords=the+failing+god

http://www.amazon.com/Ophelia-Arms-James-Ward-Kirk/dp/0615896642/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380696391&sr=1-1&keywords=ophelia+in+my+arms


1) Mike, let’s talk about your short story collection ‘Ophelia In My Arms.’ Before I read this book I had the impression that you were primarily a SF writer. But the majority of the stories in this book are Horror. And now your first novel appears to be Fantasy. How do you see yourself as a writer? Apart from the obvious answer "a good story is a good story," that is.

The real answer is: I like to be versatile. I love a good Science Fiction story, but I can also write Horror and Fantasy or cross-overs of each of these genres. It's really a matter of what story I want to write at a given point in time. Sometimes I write for specific themed contests or anthologies and that sometimes requires you to write outside of your comfort zone. A good thing, really. I consider myself at the beginning of my writing career, so every story I write is in fact a new experiment, a new way of looking at specific writing issues, from world and character building to psychological and emotional development. And I like to write with some of my fellow authors, for their own unique perspectives and specific ways of writing stories or coming up with ideas. Ophelia was really the result of a request from my US publisher to collect a number of my stories into an anthology. I thought that was a brilliant idea and when I showed it to Roelof Goudriaan (Verschijnsel), my Dutch publisher, he immediately opted for a Dutch version. The first novel being fantasy. It was a decision to write either a Fantasy novel, for which I had a lot of material ready, or a space opera sci-fi novel or a weird cyberpunk/dystopian novel. I chose the Fantasy novel, which I'm now writing the third part of. In the mean time I've also developed plans for a bizarro/horror themed novel and a techno thriller.

2) Were all the stories already available in English or did the book need extra translation work? And what role does English have in your career? Did you write in English right from the start?

Some of the older stories were only available in Dutch. I had to translate them, but that's not a big issue these days. Most of the stories in Ophelia in my Arms I wrote in English first. Whenever I write a story these days I try to create a translation as soon as possible. Double the work, but it's nice to be able to answer a request for a story with: "here, this seems suitable.” Apart from writing stories, I have a lot of international work that requires me to speak English, mostly at high business level, write offers, documentation and contracts. So my English gets polished more or less continuously. The first story I wrote in English, for an English language contest, was 'The Day the Sea turned to Jelly', which received an honourable mention in the Australian Altair Magazine launch competition. That was 1998. Later on I renamed it 'The David Effect', which sounded better, although I really liked the 'pulpy' feel of the original title. I think it wasn't until 2012 that I started to write directly in English and I've reached the point that most edits that are returned to me contain only very minor adjustments.

3) You mentioned that you like to write with fellow authors. The only co-operative project that I am aware of is the story 'Retrometheus' that you wrote with the late Paul Harland and that won the prestigious King Kong award 1992 in the Netherlands. What more work did you do with other writers and is anything available in English?

In the early days I did indeed work with Paul Harland on a few stories. I also wrote with other authors, we did some workshops, tried improving our skills. Some may be familiar, some less so. With some I worked on stories, with others we just critiqued each others work. People like Paul van Leeuwenkamp, Peter Kaptein, Max Hirschfeld, Martijn Kregting, Sophia Drenth, Jaap Boekestein, Michael del Pino and more recently Michael Blommaert, Edward van Egmond and Maarten Luikhoven. That's of course just the Netherlands. In the US I'm currently a member of several writer groups and what I did in Holland in the early days I'm now repeating over there. Funny thing is I cooperated a lot with those last three guys last year (2013), specifically to participate in the various contests. Some of those stories are now available and will find their way to Dutch magazines and/or anthologies, some will be translated and will appear in English language publications. There's some information on my site about the writing process: http://meznir.com/1_16_Red-Village-Writing-Weekend.html

4) There are 13 Horror stories in the book and 8 SF stories. And there are 10 poems. Why did you include these in the book? Were they meant as a nice intermission or are you a poet as well? In other words, is there a chance that you will publish a dedicated poetry book one day?

The poems are not really poems, to be exact. They're exercises in writing minute stories. The longer ones are less than 420 characters (size of a FB update), the smaller ones are exactly 5 lines of 5 words each. I also have some that are less than 140 characters (size of an SMS/twitter update) I included them for the intermission, yes, and selected those that fit the overall theme of the collection. I'm not sure if writing these small stories makes me a poet. What I do know is that writing them takes only a few minutes mostly and that they help get the creative juices flowing. If I wanted to create a collection of those I could fill up a nicely sized book already, maybe add a few dozen more to give it real substance. I think it's more a matter of 'when' than 'if' it will come.

5) I read many anthologies. Seldom, less than once a year, I find a story that really stands out. Which for me means that the story is well executed, breathes lots of atmosphere and keeps singing in my mind long after I have read it. One of the last stories in your book, 'The Copper Oasis', is such a story. What exactly constitutes an excellent story for you?

First of all, I'm happy you enjoyed ‘The Copper Oasis.’ Reactions to it are mixed and, I must say, understandably so. It's not a story that adheres to the golden rules of writing a good story. It wasn't written to show off a great plot arc, because there isn't any real plot, character development is limited and the characters never get into any real problems. But the world, I'm told, is beautifully created. So why did it win a prize? Why were the jurors excited about it? That brings me to the actual question you asked: for me an excellent story is one that makes me think and wonder and look at the world through different eyes. If that story is then also well written and is beautiful enough to draw me in and keep me there, it's a winner for me. In 'The Copper Oasis' I asked a very simple question: 'Would a mechanical man, a robot, with human-like brain capacity, develop a sense of loneliness after guarding a desolate world for many thousands of years?' As a premise that sounds simple, but turns out you need to take many things into consideration, especially in the format of a short story. Funny fact: I wrote the story with the music of Ennio Morricone in my ears. People sometimes come up to me and tell me they could almost hear the music while they read the story. For me that's a big compliment.

6) In 'The Copper Oasis' chemistry plays a major role. Is that part of your work or educational background? If not, is your education or work helpful in any way?

Part of the chemistry is based on research. Part is based on education. When I was in high school, my career choices were chemistry or IT. I finally chose IT, mostly because I perceived the bigger challenge there. And I guess both interests were helpful in writing the Copper Oasis.

7) Your Fantasy novel, 'The Failing God,' has just been published in English. It is the first of the five-book series 'Chronicles of Cranborn'. Does this mean that we will not see any more SF from you for a long time coming?

No, it does not mean that at all. I write one fantasy novel a year in that series. But I have material for a few Sci-fi and Horror novels as well as techno thrillers. In addition I write many short stories for magazines and anthologies. In all I write about 250-300k words a year, or more, so that's enough for two or three novels a year. Expect a lot more from me in the coming years, in all different genres.

8) That's good news for the readers, who don't like fantasy. In one of the major newspapers there was an item with the title 'Science Fiction, is it something of the past?' One of the viewpoints was that SF is no longer interesting because science is now all around us. That could be one of the reasons reader attention has shifted towards Fantasy. What are your views?

My view may be somewhat different than the view expressed here. I will agree that there is less 'technical' Science Fiction around, the kind of stories that regale of the beautiful sciences and technologies that will push humanity forward in leaps and bounds. I will agree that there are more Fantasy books than ever before, in all shapes and sizes. But there is still Science Fiction around and lots of it too. The nice thing about Science Fiction is that the field is so incredibly broad that some of the stuff being written today may not even look like Science Fiction at all, yet still is. 'What if?' is still one of the most powerful questions humans can ask and as long as a writer is capable of asking that question and is willing to investigate the possible answers, Science Fiction will remain alive and kicking. My opinion, of course.

The fact that more readers these days seem to favour Fantasy is a different realization altogether. I don't think that having 'science all around us' is detrimental to the interest for science. In fact, I would expect the opposite. What I think is happening is that Fantasy addresses different markets than the original Science Fiction readers, who were, by and large, white, male and American, who grew up in the time of the Cold War, the race for the moon and boundless investment in hard sciences, both in research and in education. But that is only a small percentage of the worldwide population. By searching for new markets, publishers quickly found that women and in later years young adults could also be voracious readers and they tailored their search for new authors to that part of the population. Is there an easy way to prove that statement? Go to a book store. Look for the Romance section. Don't be surprised to find the Fantasy and Young Adult sections really close by. Don't be surprised to find much the same colour settings, pictures and themes on the covers of all these books. Now think it through. Again, my opinion.

9) You are involved with two publishing houses, as far as I know. And you are coaching new writers in various ways. How do you combine all of this with writing several books per year?
 
Yes, I assist Verschijnsel (verschijnsel.net) in Belgium and JWK Fiction (jwkfiction.com) in Indianapolis, US. And yes, I also help out new writers. And I do write some 250-350k words per year. I can make this work through strict focus on my family, my work and my writing. That's what I do, not much else. Let's put that in perspective: 1000 words per day. That's not spectacular. And I usually write in what I call 'edit mode', meaning that most of my work is ready for publishing when it's delivered to the publisher's desk. Writing in 'edit mode' is what makes the difference. I rarely (need to) rewrite and if I do it's no more than once, based on input from various readers.

10) This interview is for Europa SF. The purpose of this site is to present European SF to the world. So far however contributors seem more concerned about conventions than about presenting the writers of their countries in such a way that the rest of the world will notice that European SF is something special, well worth reading. What should be done to move to a truly European SF scene?

I do not claim to know the exact situation in Europe, but I've been around for a while and I've seen conventions and initiatives to promote genre, books and authors. In Europe we have a large diversity in culture and languages. It means we have many distinct and unique voices in genre as well as mainstream literature. The problem is that there is no single European market that allows you to reach millions of potential readers. In sharp contrast to the English language market, which is well over half a billion people. This problem isn't new and it's quite universal in day to day dealings within the EU. Because the markets are small and local, the easiest way to congregate for people is through local conventions, usually safe, cosy, with often the same people from one convention to the next. It's also detrimental to the interaction between cultures and languages, as you create an 'incrowd' of genre lovers. Publishers are not helping either: they are more likely to select 'safe' English authors who have already sold many books. Risk aversion is a common theme with publishers nowadays. It's these and many other small things that hinder a truly European SF scene. If we look at the USA, we see author associations like the SFWA and the HWA and many more that provide services to their members and help authors, artists and publishers organize to optimally reach their markets. Now, the US model is not the end-all of scifi organizations, but a European version of these associations might help organize the European authors, artists and publishers and provide a launch platform for organized initiatives. Such an association could raise funds to organize a European prize for European authors, which in turn generates interest in European fiction. It will still require ways of crossing language and cultural boundaries, but those can be handled piece by piece, in small increments. This organization could deal with European publishers to point their attention at new and exciting writers in the market today. And I'm sure there are many other things these American organizations do that Europe could learn from. There are many details to work out, but I think a European SciFi organization styled after HWA/SFWA might be a great, first step towards a strong European writing community.

11) That is definitely good advice that people who favour a European SF scene should think about. These were my questions so far, Mike. Thank you for this interview. Is there anything else you want to share with your readers at this point?

Yes, there is one thing, a request. My free stories have been downloaded thousands of times and I hope people enjoyed those. However, maybe 1 in 200 leaves a rating and 1 in 500 writes about how much or how little they enjoyed my work. So my request is this: if an author gives some of his work away for free and you, the reader, enjoy that work, leave a rating, or even a remark. Authors love that sort of thing and it helps them to perfect and polish their work even more.


Author Details

Website         http://www.meznir.com
Twitter           https://twitter.com/MisterMeznir
Facebook       Like My Page
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Bio

Mike has published flash fiction, short stories and longer work in various anthologies and magazines in the Netherlands and Belgium, including Cerberus, Manifesto Bravado, Wonderwaan, Ator Mondis and Babel-SF and Verschijnsel anthologies such as Ragnarok and Zwarte Zielen (Black Souls).

He lives in the Netherlands, in Hilversum, near Amsterdam. He has won awards for best new author and best author in the King Kong Award in 1991 and 1992 respectively as well as an honorable mention for a submission to the Australian Altair Magazine launch competition in 1998. In 2012 Mike won awards in the SaBi Thor story contest, the Literary Prize for the Baarn Cultural Festival and the prestigious Fantastels award for best short story.

More recent publications included various English language ezines and anthologies, among which several publications with JWKfiction.com, Encounters Magazine and others. For a full list please refer to Mike's site: http://www.meznir.com

Mike's debut novel, The Failing God, is available in English, while an anthology of his short stories title Ophelia In My Arms, has also been published by JWK Fiction.

 





Source - http://scifiportal.eu/europe-needs-an-organization-styled-after-sfwa-interview-with-dutch-author-mike-jansen/

What people are saying about 'Blood Related' (Review, Thriller, Amazon, Goodreads, Bookworm's Bookmark)

Blood Related by William Cook: 5 of 5 Stars


Goodreads Synopsis:
 

For over two decades, Detective Ray Truman has been searching for the killer, or killers, who have terrorized Portvale. Headless corpses, their bodies mutilated and posed, have been turning up all over the industrial district near the docks. Young female prostitutes had been the killer’s victims of choice, but now other districts are reporting the gruesome discovery of decapitated bodies. It seems the killer has expanded his territory as more ‘nice girls’ feel the wrath of his terrible rage.

Meet the Cunninghams... A family bound by evil and the blood they have spilled. The large lodging-house they live in and operate on Artaud Avenue reeks of death, and the sins that remain trapped beneath the floorboards. Ray Truman’s search for a killer leads him to the Cunningham’s house of horrors. What he finds there will ultimately lead him to regret ever meeting Caleb Cunningham and the deviant family that spawned him. The hunter becomes the hunted, as Truman digs deeper into the abyss that is the horrifying mind of the most dangerous psychopath he has ever met.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13508567-blood-related
Click to go to Goodreads Review
 
Blood Related by William Cook
My Review: 5 of 5 stars


Blood Related is a psychological roller-coaster. I couldn’t put it down. The nature or nurture theme comes across strongly. Reflective of Caleb and Charlie Cunningham's disturbing family background and the outcome of what could be only described as twisted parenting. Parents (Ella and Vera’s) poison continues to bleed into the adult lives of two brothers. The madness of their crimes is chilling, and persistence of Ray Truman whose goal is to bring them to Justice - leads the story into an endless horror fest for the reader. 


The Cunningham’s childhood home becomes a house of horrors. Spine chilling gore and the insight into the mind of a serial killer kept me hooked. In my mind’s eye I could imagine the carnage, sense the emotions, with that feeling of watching a horror movie at every twist and turn, I wanted to look away, but couldn't.
 

Buy a Copy now from Amazon

William Cook has a talent of making the story come to life. And if this is your choice of genre, then you are in for a treat.
No Spoilers Intended




Debbie Allen (see all Debbie's reviews)


http://debs-bookwormbookmark.blogspot.co.nz/p/who-is-debbie-allen.html
Check out Debbie's cool blog - click on the image above






Reblogged from the fantastic Bookworm's Bookmark

Review, Debbie Allen, William Cook, Blood Related, 5-star, Horror, Thriller, Bookworm's Bookmark

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