REVERSE ORDER, Singers - Interview

April 16, 2012 Anthony Cardno

It’s MUSIC MONDAY, to steal a Twitter hashtag! It’s also the beginning of a week leading up to the one year anniversary of when I started running interviews here on my site. One interview every day, leading up to Saturday’s return interview with Evelyn LaFont.

Today’s guests are REVERSE ORDER, a local NJ band poised for great things. The band is composed of brothers John and Cruise Russo, Drew Katsock and Frank Spangler.

ANTHONY: Hello, Reverse Order! Thanks for taking a few minutes to chat with me. I’ve had the opportunity to see you guys perform live twice now: opening for Action Item at Starland Ballroom, and opening for Allstar Weekend at NJPAC. And I have to say: you guys have fantastic energy on-stage. So, how did the band form, and how long have you been performing together?

CRUISE: The band was formed by John and I (Cruise) we are brothers. We had been child actors (I was on the Soap, As The World Turns as Casey Hughes) then when we got to middle school we got interested in music. At the same time the movie School of Rock came out, and my mom found out there was one opening in NJ so we were the first students (Mike the drummer from Hollywood Ending was also a student there, we are good friends). Then we decided to start writing our own music and Reverse Order was born. I’d say we seriously formed in 2008. We had some band members change due to school, work, girlfriends but Drew has been with us a year and a half and Frank is going on one year. We really like this line up.

ANTHONY: Where did the band name come from?

CRUISE: John and I were trying to come up with a name for the band for a school talent show and at the time he was being homeschooled and there was an Algebra problem and the words Reverse Order were on the white board in our house, after much brotherly arguing my dad said “Reverse Order” that’s your name.

ANTHONY: You describe yourselves as “pop punk / pop rock.” Who are some of your biggest influences, and what inspiration do you draw from them?

JOHN: As we’ve matured our inspirations have changed. When I first got into writing I would re-write lyrics to Linkin Park songs along with some friends. As I started writing and building full songs with my own music, lyrics, and melodies, I started drawing inspiration from a wide range of both Pop Punk and Rock artists including the teen anthems of Blink 182, the wittiness and catchiness of Fall Out Boy, and the powerful honesty of Alice In Chains.

ANTHONY: I’m always interested in the creative process. So: who are the song-writers in the group? What’s your song-writing process like? Do the lyrics come first, then melody and instruments, or the reverse?

CRUISE: Up until 2012 it was totally John. Now, I’m writing too and we’ll have sessions with Frank and Drew to try to come up with their parts. John is still the main guy. John will have some ideas and he’ll play them over and over and I’ll keep trying different drum beats sometimes we hit on something and it falls in place and sometimes we have some really good parts that never get finished because we’re missing something.

JOHN: Sometimes the lyrics come first, sometimes the music. I start with whatever comes to me first and then work from there. Sometimes I just sit there for hours until something comes to me. Sometimes I have a whole song and it is just missing one part and I can’t finish it so I put it aside. Sometimes months later Cruise will say remember that song you were fooling around with let’s try to do something with it. So there are so many different ways we approach songwriting.

ANTHONY: You’re from Hackettstown, NJ, firmly up in the northwest corner of the state. Has living in the more “rural” part of New Jersey had any impact on the type of song you write, or the way your sound has developed?

CRUISE: For John and I our parents always took us to new places and even to concerts and plays to introduce us to new things. Some of our first concerts were Kiss, Billy Idol and Bruce Springsteen. We were born in Lincoln Park, NJ and then moved to the rural area in middle school. We live in a rural area but we’re more beach, or suburb type guys.

ANTHONY: I have to ask: you list “dancing in public places” as a band interest. Does this mean we can expect Reverse Order “flash mobs” around northwest NJ? And is it really the whole band that loves breaking into dance, or one of you in particular?

JOHN: We all love breaking into dance, but I’d have to say Frank and I are the worst offenders. We realized this at an H&M clothing store when we were on tour in Michigan. Frank and I started to dance in the middle of the store while waiting in line. There is also a video on YouTube of myself dressed in an afro and pleather pants ‘dancing in the 80s’ haha.

ANTHONY: In terms of the band’s sound and energy: what does each member of the group bring to the stage that is uniquely “them?”

REVERSE ORDER: John is the front man of the group and has the ability to captivate an audience of any size. You can feel the power in every note he sings and plays. Cruise is the drummer but one of his greatest assets is that he is able to take over lead vocals as well. His drumming style is powerful and energetic and he draws from Pop/Punk greats like Travis Barker and Jason Lancaster. Audiences go wild for Drew as he struts the stage giving a dynamic and high energy performance, Drew and John really work well together getting right into the audience and grabbing their attention, they’re not afraid to do whatever it takes to make sure everyone is having fun and lost in the moment and Frank’s driving bass holds down the low end as he delivers a powerful performance. Frank and Cruise hold everything together while Drew and John get the audience involved and pumped up. Sometimes they just go right into the crowd. One time recently the whole crowd just rushed the stage to jump and sing with them.

ANTHONY: You’ve got an album on itunes. How have sales been on that?

JOHN: Sales have been really good! It’s always exciting to get a new trend report every week, which shows where and when your music is being purchased or streamed. Sometimes we get really cool results and it says someone in Germany or Canada is listening to our music. It’s a great feeling to know you’re really getting out there!

ANTHONY: Is there another album or EP in the near future?

JOHN: There is another EP in the near future! We have been working very hard writing songs our fans will love. We have some really great ideas that we can’t wait to record and show the world! We were actually in the studio the first week of April to record. It should come out sometime in May J

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: for each member of the band, what is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

JOHN: I’m more of a wait till it gets to theaters kind of guy haha, but I do enjoy reading Graphic Novels and Stephen King books from time to time. My song, Wake Me Up will actually be in this horror film “You Can’t Kill Stephen King.” I love horror films so I can’t wait to see it.

CRUISE: Well I read a ton so it’s really hard to pick just one… But I’d say there are a lot of really good autobiographies from musicians. Both Clapton by Eric Clapton and The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Six from Motley Crue were hard to put down. The obstacles they overcame within the music industry, and just in life in general, are astounding and reading them was very insightful, I tell everyone to read them whether you’re a fan of their music or not.

DREW: Harry Potter, I grew up with it so it is a very much a part of my childhood.

FRANK: Don’t really have one.

ANTHONY: Okay, thanks again guys! Looking forward to catching up with you in person soon!

REVERSE ORDER will be playing this Friday, April 27th, as the headline act at The Croc Rock in Allentown PA and at The Canvas Clash in Boonton NJ on May 11th. You can buy tickets HERE. Tell them Anthony sent you!

You can find Reverse Order online on Facebook and Twitter. Cruise and John have their own clothing line, Just Dance Apparel. And of course they’re on Youtube. In fact, here’s their video for THESE SUMMER NIGHTS:

LINDA POITEVIN, Sins of the Son - Author Interview

April 4, 2012 Anthony Cardno

This week I’m taking part in the Blog Tour for Linda Poitevin’s SINS OF THE SON, the second book in her series The Grigori Legacy. And don’t forget, after the interview, to check down below for a chance to win TWO different giveaways!

Linda Poitevin was born and raised in B.C., Canada’s western most province. Growing up in an era when writing was “a nice hobby, dear, but what are you going to do for a living?”, Linda worked at a variety of secretarial jobs before applying to be a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Due to an error in measurement, however, she was turned down when she didn’t meet the height requirement of that time. Undeterred, Linda became a civilian member in the force and was a dispatcher for two and a half years, during which time she met her husband, a police officer.

Following their transfer to Ottawa, Linda went on to become a real estate agent and then a human resources consultant before starting a family. She has been a stay-at-home mom ever since and has homeschooled her youngest daughter for the last nine years. Now that she has realized writing can be more than a nice hobby, she continues to live her dream of being a cop vicariously through her characters.

Linda currently lives near Ottawa with her husband, three daughters, one very large husky/shepherd/Great Dane-cross dog, two cats, three rabbits, and a bearded dragon lizard. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found in her garden or walking her dog along the river or through the woods.

In addition to her books, Linda also does freelance writing and editing. Information about her services can be found at www.lindapoitevin.ca. Linda is a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Quebec Writers’ Federation, Romance Writers of America, RWA Futuristic Fantasy Paranormal Chapter, and Ottawa Romance Writers’ Association.

ANTHONY: Welcome back, Linda! It’s always great to have people come back for a second interview.

LINDA: Thanks so much for having me back, Anthony! I’ve really been looking forward to this.

ANTHONY: So let’s start out with a little recap: what is The Grigori Legacy series all about, and who are Alexandra Jarvis, Aramael and Seth?

LINDA: The Grigori Legacy series melds angel mythology with suspense, thriller, and police procedural aspects to create a world where God is a woman, Heaven and Hell are real, and homicide detective Alexandra Jarvis has been thrown into the struggle between them…with humanity’s very survival hanging in the balance. Aramael is–or was, in book 1–an angel who hunts Fallen Ones and the soulmate Alex was never supposed to have; and Seth is both the son of the One (God) and Lucifer and a pawn in their ongoing cosmic game.

ANTHONY: The first book, SINS OF THE ANGELS, was very clearly focused on Alex and Aramael: their relationship and their struggle with serial killer / fallen angel Caim. Some of Alex’s fellow cops and Aramael’s fellow angels play strong supporting roles, and of course there’s a major subplot involving Seth, but mostly it’s Alex and Aramael’s story. The focus shifts for SINS OF THE SON. Not unexpectedly, because the book is about him, Seth joins Alex at center stage. How hard of a decision was it to make Aramael slightly less of a presence?

LINDA: The series really is about Alex as a main character, so lessening Aramael’s presence wasn’t really a decision, per se, it was more just a natural progression in Alex’s story.

ANTHONY: You expand Heaven’s ranks a bit by bringing in perhaps the most well-known arch-angel ever, Michael. I believe you hinted at the reason for his absence in book one, and we get closer to the full story in book two. Do you have detailed histories written out for each of the major angelic characters (Michael, Raphael, Aramael, Verchiel, Mittron, etc), keeping track of where and when they’ve crossed paths in the past?

LINDA: Wow, the more questions like this that get thrown at me, the more I realize how much of a pantser I really am, lol. Perhaps my subconscious has already worked out these details, but they only surface as I’m doing the actual writing…so no, no written histories as yet. I am, however, working on writing them down as I uncover the details, and I plan to put them up as a series of short backstories on my website…eventually.

ANTHONY: You also introduce two more main human characters, Detective Hugh Henderson and Doctor Elizabeth Riley, who play much larger roles than any of Alex’s fellow cops or family did in book one. Was your plan always to expand the human cast in book two to give Alex a bigger support network, or did you find that the story as it developed necessitated letting Alex share the spotlight with other humans?

LINDA: It was definitely something that developed with the story…poor Alex really needed some kind of human sidekick.

ANTHONY: Good point. Although I have to admit: at one point I thought there was a very real possibility that you’d pull a George RR Martin and kill off your main viewpoint character. Was there ever any thought to killing off Alex and turning the series over to Henderson and Riley? (Hey, even JK Rowling considered killing off Ron Weasley at one point!)

LINDA: Really? You thought I might kill off Alex? For real, I mean? That possibility honestly never even crossed my mind! I cannot guarantee the safety of all my characters, however. (Mwahahaha!)

ANTHONY: Yes, really. And I adore that evil laugh. Now, you gave us a very well-developed, if non-conventional, look at the hierarchy of Heaven in book one, so it makes sense that you’d give us a glimpse of Hell in book two. It’s a small glimpse, most scenes featuring only Lucifer and Sammael. Do you have maps of Heaven and Hell in your head, and how completely does Hell mirror Heaven?

LINDA: I have a clear vision of Heaven, but not necessarily a map of it, no. Hell itself mirrors Heaven very closely, but in an anti-Heaven kind of way. You’ll see more of that in books 3 & 4.

ANTHONY: Taking yourself out of creator/author role for just a moment: as a reader, would you be #TeamAramael or #TeamSeth? (Please don’t say #TeamHenderson….!)

LINDA: #TeamHenderson was never even a possibility, so you’re safe there! And I remain firmly on the side of #TeamI’mStillNotTellingYou, lol!

ANTHONY: Curses, foiled again! You can’t blame a boy for trying, though! On a more craft-oriented note: did your writing process change at all from book one to book two?

LINDA: Hugely! The Grigori Legacy is my first attempt at a series, and while I’ve never been a plotter, book 2 forced me to take a more long-range view of the series…and to start keeping at least a few notes about backstories (just so I didn’t get myself too lost!). I was also writing under contract for the first time and so there was an element of expectation I’ve never had before. For the most part that worked in my favor, keeping my butt in the chair and on schedule, but every once in a while it resulted in some serious performance anxiety, too. Book 2 taught me how to work through roadblocks created by my own insecurities.

ANTHONY: Okay, so you know I have to ask: when’s book three coming out? Can you at least tell us the title and tease us a little of the plot?

LINDA: In book 3, Sins of the Righteous, Seth’s decision in book 2 creates unforeseen complications for the entire universe, Alex is stretched to her limits with trying to keep both her relationship and humanity glued together, and more impossible choices will have to be made. No pub date has been set yet, but you can be assured I’ll let everyone know when I do (most likely by yelling it from the rooftop!).

ANTHONY: You’ve got a plan for the end of the series, right? Have you known it all along, or did it evolve from what you’ve written in the first two books? Does the ultimate series-ending allow for other books/characters in the same world at some time in the future?

LINDA: I do have an end in mind, yes. It evolved through the first two books and cemented itself at about the 3/4 mark of Sins of the Son. I think there would be room for other books/characters in the future, but I’m not sure I’d want to go there. I like the idea of ending this series as planned and moving onto a fresh idea (and yes, I already have one in mind).

ANTHONY: My usual closing question is about favorite books, but you fielded that one last time. So, let’s change it up: what’s your favorite movie and what would you say to someone who has never seen it to convince them that they should?

LINDA: My favorite of all time isn’t actually a movie, but a mini series: the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. If someone has never seen it, I’d tell tell them that it is head and shoulders above the Hollywood version, with brilliant acting (Colin Firth is just sooooo good in it!), and a script that stays unbelievably true to the story itself. I love the series for the snapshot it provides into another era…and for its historical accuracy.

ANTHONY: Thanks again, Linda!

LINDA: Thank you, Anthony, for another wonderful invitation to visit!

Now, on to news about those giveaways:

GIVEAWAY #1: You can win a copy of SINS OF THE SON, just by commenting on this post! It’s easy. Just choose who you think Alex Jarvis should end up with when the series concludes. Are you #TeamAramael? #TeamSeth? #TeamHenderson? Or #TeamSomeoneElse? Have fun with it, and add your reasoning if you feel like it! A winner will be chosen by random, by me, on the last day of the SINS OF THE SON Blog Tour, which is APRIL 26th, 2012. Chosen winner will be notified by email to arrange delivery, so please provide good contact information!

WIN THIS!

GIVEAWAY #2: All of the book winners from all the stops on the SINS OF THE SON Blog Tour will be entered into a Grand Prize drawing for this beautiful necklace/earring set designed by Cemetary Cat, aka @psynde on Twitter: Winner will be chosen by Linda herself, who will then contact the winner to arrange delivery.

Remember, you can find Linda on Twitter as @LindaPoitevin, you can find her author page on Facebook, and of course you can go right to her own webpage for even more information and goodies. And here’s a link to my original interview with Linda when SINS OF THE ANGELS was released.

And you can see the full list of SINS OF THE SON blog tour stops (with lots of other interviews, guest posts by Linda, and chances to win) RIGHT HERE.

MYKE COLE - Author Interview

April 3, 2012 Anthony Cardno

This week’s author interview is with Myke Cole. Credit where credit is due, this is another author I might not have picked off the bookshelves if he hadn’t taken part in Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s #sffwrtcht round-table on Twitter.

As a security contractor, government civilian and military officer, Myke Cole’s career has run the gamut from Counterterrorism to Cyber Warfare to Federal Law Enforcement. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. All that conflict can wear a guy out. Thank goodness for fantasy novels, comic books, late night games of Dungeons and Dragons and lots of angst fueled writing.

ANTHONY: Hi, Myke! Thanks for taking some time to chat with me.

MYKE: Thanks for having me.

ANTHONY: During your visit to the #sffwrtcht on Twitter a few weeks back, we discussed “military fantasy.” Most of the series I can think of in that area are still high fantasy but with heavy martial elements (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones). How difficult was it to find a publisher for a “modern warfare” setting with fantasy elements?

MYKE: Really, REALLY difficult. Many publishers were skittish about the idea, worried that high fantasy and hard military stories attracted vastly different audiences. They were tempted by the idea that my work might attract both, but more concerned that it would attract neither. In the end, we found someone willing to take a risk on the idea, but it remained a risk. This soon after publication (less than 2 months after release), we still don’t know if that risk has paid off or not.

ANTHONY: Do you think “modern military fantasy” is a market that will grow? Will it ever equal the plethora of military science fiction on the market?

MYKE: That’s impossible to answer. On the one hand, authentic military stories have a lot of resonance in a country that has just wound down one war and is trying to wind down another (all while vigorously rattling sabers at a recalcitrant Iran). Movies like Act of Valor and Battleship are capturing/responding to that Zeitgeist. On the other hand, we’re damn well sick and tired of war (and particularly counterinsurgency operations) and the tremendous drain they have placed on our national energy (emotional, financial and . . . well. . . sanguine). That fatigue might make concepts like SHADOW OPS seem tired even though its relatively new in the fantasy field. But, honestly? Who knows? Nobody predicted the intense popularity/longevity of either paranormal romance or zombie fiction. Who knows where this will go?

ANTHONY: Now that Shadow Ops: Control Point has been out for a few weeks, what kind of audience has gathered around it? Is it mostly military fiction fans, mostly fantasy fans?

MYKE: I’m surprised (and thrilled) by how diverse my audience is. I get a lot of fan mail from service members and the “core” fan base of hard military stories (folks who enjoy Jack Cambell, John Ringo, David Weber, etc . . .). But I’ve also been pretty vocal about my appreciation of romance and have guest blogged for a few major romance writers. This outreach has resulted in a fairly large number of romance readers trying my work, and it’s a real delight to get insights from a mostly female audience who bring a fresh (and character focussed) perspective to hard-edged military work. Here’s hoping those same folks will come back for FORTRESS FRONTIER.

ANTHONY: You’ve drawn from your own military experience to inform the battle sequences. Was there any point where you wrote a scene and thought “no, that’s too close to reality to use?”

MYKE: Absolutely. You have to remember that I’m still in service. Just today, a Commander (O-5), complimented me on CONTROL POINT, which he had read on a plane between duty stations. I am always aware of senior officers like him reading my work and how it will reflect on my service. Balancing that concern with my 1st amendment rights and my duty as an artist to create compelling and thought-provoking stories is a balance I will navigate as long as I combine my two careers as writer and officer.

ANTHONY: The parallels between the fictional US incursion into The Source and the real-world incursion by Europe into North America in the colonial period can’t be ignored, especially in the way the indigenous people are treated by the FOB. Was this something you intended to explore from the beginning, or did it develop as you wrote it?

MYKE: It is absolutely something I intended to explore in the story, but I was thinking more of the relationships between the US military and the native Iraqis and Afghanis that surround (and work on) our FOBs and COPs in those countries.

ANTHONY: You hint throughout the book as to how other nations have reacted to The Reawakening of magic on Earth. Russia plays a role in a particularly brutal scene midway through the book, India is at least mentioned, and there’s at least a few hints that Europe is completely Muslim-run at this point in history. Will we see more development of the political state of the world post-Reawakening in future books? Will that play a major role, or will it stay essentially background to Britton’s story?

MYKE: The SHADOW OPS series was *never* intended to be solely Oscar Britton’s story. While he gets major screen time in FORTRESS FRONTIER, he is not the main character. BREACH ZONE has a different protagonist as well. I had always intended the series to slowly develop a small ensemble (think George R. R. Martin or Joe Abercrombie lite). I strongly believe in fully-formed, fleshed out characters, and the ones I’ve created are far too interesting to me to ignore in favor of Oscar Britton (though he’s interesting to me as well).

As for the foreign countries question: Yes. India is a major player in FORTRESS FRONTIER, and I am currently planning to have an independent Quebec play a strong role in BREACH ZONE.

ANTHONY: How did you decide on the breakdown of the various schools of magic and which abilities would be rare/”prohibited?”

MYKE: The basis for the magic system was always elemental (along the Greek conception of elements), and it developed with the story. I knew there was a baseline of incredible institutionalized fear in the global reaction to magic, and I tried to logically extrapolate how that fear would play out along religio-cultural lines. That thinking gave rise to the Geneva Convention amendments and special religious prohibitions. Fortunately, I have many years in civilian government service dealing with international relations/policy making, and that helped me to think about what fears/reactions might play out on a strategic scale in various countries. It was a really fun exercise and I’m still doing it with each book I write.

ANTHONY: You put your main character through one hell of an emotional roller-coaster. Some of the worst moments are almost blink-and-you-miss-it they happen so fast and yet they have lasting repercussions through this, and I suspect future books. Did you ever think “enough is enough for one book, give the guy a break?”

MYKE: Hell, no. Perhaps my three favorite fantasy authors are Peter V. Brett, George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie. They beat the crap out of their protagonists, nonstop, book after book after book. It’s so bad that I actually posit in a forthcoming essay that many of Martin’s characters suffer from PTSD. You can read about that essay here.

ANTHONY: There are also some great secondary characters developed, and some great character reversals as well. Without giving too many spoilers, did you outline heavily for this and know all the character arcs before you started, or did some of the developments catch even you by surprise?

MYKE: I am a religious outliner. I have detailed character arcs planned for everybody before I write a word of prose. I envy those writers who say that they can just put characters on the stage, stand back and take dictation. That never happens to me. That said, there were a few points in the story where beta readers came back to me saying that a character behaved in a way that didn’t gel with that characters established personality. In those cases, I did have to think carefully and rework it (usually with a lot of self-derision. I really come down hard on myself when I don’t get character right, because I think it’s the most critical element of good writing).

ANTHONY: It seems like you worked hard to make even the scuzziest characters at least somewhat likable (personally, I’m think Fitzy here, but other characters could fit that description as well). Was there a temptation to let characters fall into various military-related stereotypes just to advance the story?

MYKE: Not at all (though I do believe that stereotypes are a useful thing in writing and not to be totally ignored). My favorite villains are the ones I can identify with (Jardir, Jamie Lannister, Inquisitor Glokta, Jorg, Elric of Melnibone, Dr. Doom, Magneto, etc . . .) I worked really hard to understand what motivated my villains. I wanted them to feel like they were justified in pursuing their goals. They might be wrong, but THEY, at least, should believe they are right.

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

MYKE: I can’t pick a favorite, but if you haven’t read Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle, you MUST. The first book, THE WARDED MAN is a singular work of fantasy and is the most influential piece of literature in my life. If you like my work at all, THE WARDED MAN is a big piece of the why.

You can find out more about CONTROL POINT and Myke’s other writing by checking out his website, following him on Twitter as @MykeCole, and friending him on Facebook.

A BATTLE FOR PARANTWER - Space Battles Book

March 22, 2012 Anthony Cardno

I usually talk about other people (or let them talk about themselves, with me asking questions). But today, it’s all about … ME!

A few months back, I had a short story, “A Battle for Parantwer,” accepted by editor Bryan Thomas Schmidt for inclusion in an upcoming anthology. Today, we got word we could share the cover art and publication info with people. So, here it is:

Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6

Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Flying Pen Press, 264 pp., tbp, $16.95, April 18, 2012

Red Alert! Red Alert!

This is not a drill…

Anna Paradox’s “Between The Rocks”: The Courtly Vizier, a utility truck, renders aid to a colony ship but when they return to their asteroid home from supply runs to mines on Old Lumpy from Jupiter’s atmosphere, the colony ship they once helped attacks them. But the situation is not what it seems, and strange circumstances are at hand.

David Lee Summers’ “Jump Point Blockade”: While pirating a mine on an asteroid, Captain Ellison Firebrandt and the crew of the Legacy find themselves forced into battle by Captain Stewart of the New New Jersey, serving as shields against the Alpha Comas at a jump point to Rd’dyggia. But instead of obeying Captain Steward, Firebrandt has plans of his own.

Jean Johnson’s “Joystick War”: Scavenging a storage bunker for salvage, Scott Grayson and Rrenn F’sauu stumble onto mint condition Targeting Drone A.I.’s, joystick controlled combat suits and can’t resist taking them for a test run. Then an old enemy, the Salik turn up, and instead of joy rides, they’re fighting for their lives and their people…

Mike Resnick & Brad Torgersen’s “Guard Dog”: Watchfleet sentinel Chang leads a lonely life of extended, dream-filled sleeps in between frenetic, life-or-death battles. The Sortu had almost defeated humanity and the lives of everyone, including his wife and son, depend on men like him. Then, called to battle again, he finds himself up against the last opponent he’d ever expected…

These and more stories await inside…

All personnel,

report to battle stations!

CONTENTS:

Introduction – Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Between the Rocks – Anna Paradox

The Thirteens – Gene Mederos

Like So Much Refuse – Simon C. Larter

Jump Point Blockade – David Lee Summers

First Contact – Patrick Hester

Isis – Dana Bell

The Book of Enoch – Matthew Cook

The Joystick War – Jean Johnson

Never Look Back – Grace Bridges

The Gammi Experiment – Sarah Hendrix

Space Battle of the Bands – C.J. Henderson

A Battle for Parantwer – Anthony R. Cardno

With All Due Respect – Johne Cook

Final Defense – Selene O’Rourke

Bait and Switch – Jaleta Clegg

The Hand of God (A Davi Rhii Story) – Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Guard Dog – Mike Resnick and Brad R. Torgersen

Yes SF fans. You see that right. I’m in an anthology alongside Mike Frakkin’ Resnick. What a way to debut.

STEPHANIE HAZELL - Athlete Interview

March 15, 2012 Anthony Cardno

Today I’m welcoming teen tennis player Stephanie Hazell.

ANTHONY: Hi, Stephanie! I’ve interviewed teen-age singers and actors, but you’re the first teen athlete, so thanks for taking a few minutes to chat with me. So let’s talk tennis! How old were you when you started playing, and what got you interested in it?

STEPHANIE: I was about 6 or 7 when I first started, my grandma thought I had to much energy so she put me in ever sport possible and tennis is just the one that stuck. I still play soccer and basketball but I focus much more on tennis.

ANTHONY: What is your practice regimen like?

STEPHANIE: I play about 5 hours a week if I’m lucky right now I have been super busy but I’m going to try and start playing more soon! Most of the people I’m playing against are playing about 20-25 hours a week, which is what I should be doing, but for some reason I am able to keep up with them for now.

ANTHONY: How often are you away from home for tournaments? How do you balance school and tennis?

STEPHANIE: I have been to Europe three times playing in over 20 countries, I have also been to Australia and I played the qualies for the junior Australian open. I have to miss a ton of school for tennis but I have been good with keeping up, at least so far! Finding time to do school, tennis and hanging out with friends is hard but it’s totally worth it in the end.

ANTHONY: Do you work with coaches/trainers, and if so how many and in what ways do they help you become a better tennis player?

STEPHANIE: I only work with one coach and his name is Chris Lewis he has been so amazing for the past few year I would be no where without him! I have been with a few coaches over the years but Chris is the only one who has ever clicked he’s perfect for me and totally understands my game.

ANTHONY: Who are some of your tennis heroes, and why?

STEPHANIE: I love Federer and Isner for guys and for girls there is an upcoming girl named Marina Erakovic. My coach was her coach when she was young and I have hit with her and she is such a sweet genuine girl and I look up to her very much!!!!

ANTHONY: You seem to have a lot of parental support. Do you think it’s important for parents to consider tennis as a sports option for their kids equally with the bigger team sports? Why or why not?

STEPHANIE: Yes, just because tennis isn’t as well known as some other sports doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Tennis is always been a huge part of my life, I have met so many amazing people through it that will last me a life time, and that’s why I do it. Not only to maybe make it my career but for the amazing life lessons it has taught me.

ANTHONY: A lot of schools put more emphasis on those team sports than they do on “solo” sports like tennis, track, bowling and swimming. Why do you think this happens?

STEPHANIE: Yeah your totally right they put a lot more emphasis on team sports and I believe that’s because they have more people willing to support them but tennis is becoming bigger an bigger and all it needs is time, it’s going to be as big as football one day!

ANTHONY: What are you personal short and long term goals for playing tennis?

STEPHANIE: Right now I’m focused a lot on school but I have a few huge tournaments coming up I’m hoping to do well in. I would really like to play tennis through college and see where that takes me but the best thing that could happen would be for me to turn pro.

ANTHONY: I know you’ve said tennis is your life, but outside of tennis, what else do you enjoy doing?

STEPHANIE: I play soccer and basketball for my highschool and teams outside of school. I also freeline, I like to bake, hang with friends and I have been doing a lot of work with charities and I have loved that as well!

ANTHONY: You’re friends with a lot of the young actors I’ve interviewed lately (Sam Lant, Taylor Hay, and Justin Tinucci to name three). Have you considered pursuing an acting career?

STEPHANIE: Umm not really I have always been the tom boy sports chick but I can also be that super girly-girly that loves shopping and talking about guys. If I ended up doing some modeling for sports or something like that I would do it. I’m not opposed to maybe get in to it in the future it might be something I end up loving like tennis.

ANTHONY: You’re also a part of Sam’s Ronald McDonald House fundraiser. How did you get involved with that, and how much have you raised so far?

STEPHANIE: Sam and I know each other really well and he asked if I would like to walk with him and since I am very into charities I told him I would love to. I have raised $1,681 so far but I’m still raising. I can not wait to walk with everyone on April 1st!

ANTHONY: How can people donate to support you and the team and help Ronald McDonald House out?

STEPHANIE: They can donate to my personal page for the fundraiser!

I also have an event on Facebook that has all the info and the link to my page.

ANTHONY: What other causes or charities are important to you, and how do you support them?

STEPHANIE: I love charities and I have been trying to get more involved with them. I’m doing the Ronald McDonald walk and at my school I am part of FCA, which is Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as well as ASPCA, UNICEF and a few others. Any charity that I have time to help out with I do!

ANTHONY: And my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who has never read it to convince them that they should?

STEPHANIE: Hmm this is a hard one, my favorite book right now would have to be a classic and it’s to kill a mockingbird I have read it many time and just read it again for school. A good reason to read this book is although I have read it many times every time I read it I find out something new! And I think that’s so cool that you can read something over and over and still find out something you did realize before.

ANTHONY: Thanks, Stephanie!

You can follow Stephanie on Twitter as @stephaniehazell to keep up-to-date with her tennis career and her fundraising for Ronald McDonald House and her other charities. You can also see my interviews with Stephanie’s friends and fellow RMDH fundraisers Sam Lant, Taylor Hay and Justin Tinucci by clicking on their names.

These Crazy Kids Next Door are walking for RMDH on April 1st, just a day or so from now. Donate to Stephanie, or to her team’s page, to help them get to their $10,000 goal before they walk!

GORDON McALPIN & THE MULTIPLEX - Interview

March 7, 2012 Anthony Cardno

Today I welcome Gordon McAlpin back. It’s been a week of returning favorites. You’d think there was an anniversary coming up or something.

Gordon McAlpin lives in Minneapolis with his cat Punk. In his twenties, he watched over a dozen movies a week. Gordon has written movie reviews, co-hosted a movie podcast, and edited a movie news blog, but now he just writes and draws Multiplex. While he has never worked at a movie theater, he has had several equally terrible jobs.

From 2004–2006, Gordon created Stripped Books, a series of non-fiction strips covering book- and comics-related events in comics form. Multiplex began in July, 2005, and is Gordon’s first on-going comic strip.

Gordon draws Multiplex in Adobe Illustrator CS5 on a Mac and happily endorses the Astute Graphics’s Phantasm CS and VectorScribe plug-ins. He uses Coda to update and maintain the Multiplex website and hosts the site on Rackspace Cloud Hosting.

ANTHONY: Welcome back, Gordon! Thanks for agreeing to chat again.

GORDON: No problem. Thanks for asking!

ANTHONY: You used Kickstarter to successfully fund the publication of MULTIPLEX BOOK ONE: ENJOY YOUR SHOW. It’s time to get Book Two: THERE AND BACK AGAIN. How long is this campaign running for, and what are some of the rewards you’re offering to those who contribute?

GORDON: This campaign is running for 23 days total. This is a bit shorter than most, and much, much shorter than my first project, which went for the maximum of 90 days. When I ran the Kickstarter project for Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show, I was literally the first webcartoonist to do it — not the first cartoonist, jus the first webcartoonist. So I assumed more time = more money. What I didn’t realize was that it would be more stress and more work, because I had to promote the project for three months. That got old kind of fast. So I decided to do a much shorter one this time: three weeks, which I rounded up to 23 days so that I could end it on midnight before an update day. This way I get the initial flurry of interest and the last-minute drive much closer together. That might have been a mistake, but it’s been doing well so far. We’ll see how it plays out, won’t we?

As for the rewards, you can get artist’s editions of the book (or both books, even), a T-shirt with some as-yet-undecided movie parody image (like the Breakfast Club one I did for Book 1), a print, sketches, an original hand-drawn Multiplex comic on the subject of your choice — on up to some kind of jokey ones like a print of a Multiplex comic with yourself “George Lucased” into it or me flying/driving to your home to watch the movie trilogy of your choice on Blu-ray.

ANTHONY: You’ll really watch any trilogy of the person’s choice if they donate at the highest level? This makes me hope I hit the lottery before your Kickstarter ends, just so I can make you sit through The Never-Ending Story movies. Seriously, what trilogy would you most and least like to sit through if someone did donate at that level?

GORDON: Absolutely! I mean, it was really mostly a joke, but yes, I would absolutely do it. It’d be great if the staff of a movie theater were to make that pledge collectively. I can’t imagine any single person wanted to give me THAT much money. I was shocked that someone went for the “Leet Pack,” which gets them a portable hard drive with every Multiplex file (strip, reference file, background, etc.) in its original Illustrator format, signed by me. And some other stuff, of course.

The trilogy I would most like to see… I think the Mad Max movies. They’re pretty awesome, and I’ve only seen each of them once or twice ever, so they’ll feel pretty fresh.

Least like… probably the Matrix. The first one is awesome, of course, but I can’t even look at it anymore because the sequels were so bad, especially the third one.

ANTHONY: Book One got some really good reviews, and I remember how excited I was to find a copy randomly on the shelf at my local Borders (alas, poor Borders, we knew it well, Horatio…). What lessons did you learn from the production of Book One that you’ll apply to producing Book Two?

GORDON: I was mostly very happy with how the book turned out, physically. There were some mistakes that slipped past me and the freelance proofreaders I brought in, so there’s stuff I’ll be able to keep my eye out for now.

Johanna Draper Carlson gave a review of the book that pointed out a few things I hadn’t thought of, like a table of contents or providing a better introduction to the strip in the front matter than I did. I’ll be taking some of those comments to heart with Book 2’s design.

But I’ve produced books and other printed stuff as part of my “day job” as a freelance print production artist for over a decade, so there wasn’t much I was going to learn from doing yet another book. The only big difference was that this was MY book, you know?

ANTHONY: There are those who say “why bother buying a print edition of one storyline when I can see the entire series archives online for free.” So what can we expect in the print edition of book two that we didn’t see online?

GORDON: About 236 dpi? (Mathematically not accurate, I know.) Aside from much better reproduction, there will be something like 25 bonus comics. Those will also be in the Chapter eBooks that I’ll be releasing as I get the material done, just like with Book 1. Chapter 6 is already out.

There isn’t a new story in this book, like the “Prequel” story in Book 1, because I felt like there was already a pretty strong main thrust to the volume and that any new, longer story I added would just feel like filler. But the bonus comics here will serve the same purpose as in Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show — fleshing out the narrative and characters in a way that I couldn’t (or failed to do) the first time around.

ANTHONY: For those who don’t follow Multiplex on line, give us a summary of who the main characters are, and where we find them as THERE AND BACK AGAIN starts.

LtoR: Kurt, Melissa, Becky, Franklin & Jason. Your friendly neighborhood Multiplex 10 staff

GORDON: Jason is a movie snob, a bit of a jerkass, but always honest (some might say to a fault), so… that’s his one redeeming quality, I guess. Oh, girls think he’s cute, too, but his mouth gets in the way.

Kurt is a horror movie buff and just in general muuuuch easier to please. He’s goofy, but not stupid, and has a cruder sense of humor than Jason (although it’s slowly rubbing off on Jason).

Becky is a quiet, bookish science nerd with a romantic streak, who was kind of in love with Jason for a bit (see Book 1), but might just be getting over it…

Melissa, Kurt’s girlfriend, is a bit more worldly than Kurt. She’s pretty protective of Becky (her roommate and best friend), so she can be a bit of a scold when Jason is a jerk to her, but otherwise she’s sort of aimless and just likes to enjoy the moment. Which is how she can handle with Kurt’s abysmal taste in movies.

Franklin hasn’t done a whole lot at this point, but he’s a ladies’ man and computer nerd rolled into one.

Jason’s girlfriend at this point is Devi, who worked at the theater over the previous summer but is now attending the SVA in New York, so there’s going through some long-distance drama (still). Devi is a lot like Melissa: worldly but also a little boring. (I hate to say that about her, because I love her, but that was always the idea.)

Book 2 picks up where Book 1 left off, but there’s not a long going on with them yet. Multiplex didn’t really have a whole lot of continuity at this point, and it’s not really a plot-driven comic. It’s the 2006 Christmas season. Devi is back home from school for the winter break, and that pretty much sums it up, really. It’s a pretty good jumping-on point.

ANTHONY: Your art and story pacing clearly improved over the course of the strips collected in book one. What noticeable differences are there over the course of book two?

GORDON: I think my writing — in terms of character — is what improves the most throughout this book. The art evolves less noticeably in Book 2 than Book 1. You have to keep in mind that I was basically relearning how to draw in the material you see in Book 1, so it was bound to start off VERY roughly.

Mostly, I think, I just get a little better at the actual drawing/posing/whatever of the characters in Book 2.

ANTHONY: The estimated delivery date for the rewards is November 2012, which I guess rules out Book Two making its’ debut at NYC Comic-Con this year. I don’t suppose you’ll be getting a table anyway?

GORDON: If things pan out with financial aid, I’ll be a poor grad student when NYCC rolls around, so I don’t think so.

The November thing is definitely an estimate, though, for the ebooks. The print books will be out in March of 2013. If I end up going with a Chinese printer, it could be later than that. We’ll see.

ANTHONY: You know I have to close with a question. Last time we talked your favorite movies and favorite books, so this time, tell me what each of the Multiplex main cast’s favorite movies are, and what they would say to convince someone who hasn’t seen that movie that they should go watch it immediately.

GORDON:

Jason: The Apartment. “It’s the perfect blend of comedy and drama, with just a bit of schmaltz-free romance.” And then he would blather away for another few minutes.

Becky: Sense & Sensibility. “It’s so wonderful. Emma Thompson makes me start bawling every single time.”

Melissa: The Princess Bride. “Cary Elwes. yummm Oh, it’s inconceivably funny, too.”

Franklin: Die Hard. “It’s the best American action movie ever, man!”

Kurt: Night of the Living Dead. I wrote a whole storyline leading up to Kurt introducing this flick, so I’m just going to give you the URL of the strip where he explains it… http://www.multiplexcomic.com/strip/606

ANTHONY: I loved Kurt’s intro for Night. Thanks again, Gordon!

GORDON: No problem!

You can follow Gordon on Twitter as @gmcalpin and be updated about the webcomic by following @multiplex10. You can join in the current action at Multiplex, where Jason, Kurt and the gang are filming a zombie flick (yes, a zombie flick). And of course you can (and I hope you will) donate to Gordon’s Lightning Round Kickstarter for MULTIPLEX BOOK TWO: THERE AND BACK AGAIN. Oh, and Multiplex has a Facebook page as well.

DELIA SHERMAN - Author Interview

March 1, 2012 Anthony Cardno

Today I welcome fantasy author Delia Sherman, a long-time favorite of mine.

Delia Sherman, Photo by Laurence Tannaccio

Delia Sherman was born in Tokyo, Japan, and brought up in New York City, with occasional visits to her mother’s relatives in Texas and Louisiana and her father’s relatives in South Carolina. Much of her early life was spent at one end of a classroom or another, including Brown University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies in 1981, and Boston and Northeastern Universities, where she taught Freshman Composition and Fantasy as Literature until she realized she’d rather edit and write. Pursuing her love of history and travel, she has set novels and short stories for children and adults in many times and places.

Her books include Through a Brazen Mirror (Ace, 1989), The Porcelain Dove (Dutton, 1993; Plume, 1994), Changeling (Viking, 2006), The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen(Viking, 2009) and her latest, The Freedom Maze (Big Mouth House, November 2011).

Delia lives with fellow author Ellen Kushner in a rambling apartment in New York City. She is a social rather than a solitary writer, and can work anywhere, which is a good thing because she loves to travel, and if she couldn’t write on airplanes, she’d never get anything done.

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, The Freedom Maze explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine. In 1960, thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending summer at her grandmother’s old house in the Bayou. But the house has a maze Sophie can’t resist exploring once she finds it has a secretive and playful inhabitant. When Sophie, bored and lonely, makes an impulsive wish inspired by her reading, hoping for a fantasy adventure of her own, she slips one hundred years into the past, to the year 1860. On her arrival she makes her way, bedraggled and tanned, to what will one day be her grandmother’s house, where she is at once mistaken for a slave.

ANTHONY: Delia, thanks for taking a few moments to chat with me about THE FREEDOM MAZE. I have to start by saying: I absolutely loved the book. Such a great story, told in a straightforward manner but still with a touch of whimsy in the right places. At the end of the book, you say you’ve been working on this story for eighteen years. I know Neil Gaiman had a similar experience with THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. He said that although his initial idea came years ago, he never quite felt his skill was up to the task of telling the story until recently. Why did it take you eighteen years to bring Sophie’s story to the page?

DELIA: One reason is What Neil Said. My reach exceeded my grasp in a big way. When I started it, I’d never written for young readers before, so I had to learn a different way of pacing, a different way of dealing with exposition, a slightly different focus of attention. Another is that the first publisher I sold it to asked for revisions I did not feel comfortable making, which ended in my buying the manuscript back from them. Yet another is that new research became available, which allowed me to make the book more historically and sociologically accurate than it could be when I began. And a third is that the dialogue on race and representation and Writing the Other came out into the open, making it more possible for me to address the troubling question of what a white woman was doing writing about slavery. I guess the bottom line is that THE FREEDOM MAZE took the time it took because that’s the time I needed to get it as right as I humanly could.

ANTHONY: Sophie clearly follows in the footsteps of the Pevensie siblings, Alice, and most specifically the kids in Edward Eager’s THE TIME GARDEN, which you reference repeatedly. But Sophie’s adventure is not quite like her literary predecessors. When did you decide that you would concentrate on the, shall we say, more mundane aspects of living in the past, rather than sticking to “the grand adventure?”

DELIA: Oh, I knew that from the very beginning. I’m not good at writing about “grand adventures.” Never have been. I like reading them, but writing them? No. My second novel, THE PORCELAIN DOVE, is all about what happens at home while the hero is off achieving the quest. My favorite chapters in THE LORD OF THE RINGS is “The Scouring of the Shire.” I love the magic that surrounds, grows out of, and leaks into ordinary daily life. It’s pretty much what I always write about, in different contexts.

ANTHONY: Have you been made aware of any impact your book has had on awareness or republication of THE TIME GARDEN or the rest of Edward Eager’s books?

DELIA: Like any other author, Edward Eager goes in and out of fashion, but he is plenty important enough to remain in print. I hope kids who aren’t familiar with his work will be inspired by THE FREEDOM MAZE to read it, but I suspect there are always going to be more kids who read Eager than who read me.

ANTHONY: I know you go on a lot of writer’s retreats. How much of THE FREEDOM MAZE was written “communally,” so to speak, and how much at home / in private? This also leads to a larger question: how has attending retreats and conferences affected your own writing habits over the years?

DELIA: None of FREEDOM MAZE was written on retreat–or at least not the kind of retreat in which several writers get together to share writing time and brainstorming sessions. I did take time away from home, once alone and once with Ellen (who was crunching her own project), to work on it away from the distractions of Real Life. That kind of retreat is, and will always be, invaluable to my process. The kind of community that helped me with THE FREEDOM MAZE was more my reading group and the kind friends who read and commented on the history, the structure, the pacing, the representation of slavery and slaves, the dialect, the botany, the costuming, the emotional plot, Sophie’s development, the rites and rituals of Voudon and symbols of the Orishas, and just about everything else (except the commas, which NOBODY messes with if they know what’s good for them). That community is something I have accrued over the years, mostly after the early drafts of FREEDOM MAZE were already written. Recently, I’ve learned to talk plots through, to brainstorm, to try out ideas and trajectories of emotion and action, figure out which ones are worth pursuing and which lead only to blind ends or places I’m not interested in going. Macro-plotting is a skill, both for the one who is asking for help and the ones who are giving it. It involves trust on the one hand, and flexibility and non-investment in your suggestions on the other. The helpers have to learn to ask questions. The helped has to be open to new ideas and ways of looking at things without falling into the trap of letting somebody else’s aesthetic take over their book. I have found I love writing in community. It makes my task easier and keeps me from following quite so many false narrative trails. But finally, it’s my obsessions, my tarot deck of characters, my sense of style and story that goes down on the page.

ANTHONY: THE FREEDOM MAZE clearly is a tale complete in-and-of itself. Then again, to my mind so was THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. So I have to ask: will readers see Sophie Fairchild Martineau, “the creature,” Papa Legba and the rest again?

DELIA: I haven’t the slightest idea. When I first turned in this book, back in 1990, I think, I had sketched out a sequel in which both Antigua and Sophie come to New York in their different times, and perhaps overlap briefly. I could still write it. But not in the foreseeable future. There would be a LOT of research involved, and although it would be fun, I’ve got other projects I need to work on first. But thank you so much for asking.

ANTHONY: You’re welcome! Now for my usual closing question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

DELIA: I love many books. My favorite tends to be the one I just finished that I can’t stop talking about (right at the moment, Jeanette Winterson’s WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU CAN BE NORMAL?, which is a stellar memoir about adoption, the feral mother to end all feral mothers, love, and madness). However, if what we’re talking about is the thing I go to when life gets to be too much, when I want to crawl into a text and pull it up around me like a magic robe, I read THE LORD OF THE RINGS. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s one you can live in over and over again. I think I’ve read it 20 times, and every time, I find new things to think about–or maybe new ways of thinking about the things I find. It makes me laugh, it moves me, it makes me believe in community and friendship and hope. It scares the living daylights out of me and saddens me and comforts me. It’s one of the great books of the 20th century, and it has had a greater effect on how I look at the world than almost any other book I can think of, except maybe Francis Hodgson Burnett’s THE SECRET GARDEN, which turned a New York girl into a gardener who believes in magic. And if all that didn’t convince someone to read it, well, then, I’d just have to feel sorry for them.

ANTHONY: Thanks again, Delia!

You can follow Delia on Twitter as @deliasherman, and you can learn more about THE FREEDOM MAZE and Delia’s other books by visiting her website.

KAARON WARREN - Author Interview

February 29, 2012 Anthony Cardno

Today I welcome one of my favorite Australians, author Kaaron Warren. (Australians and Canadians seem to be a theme around here…)

Kaaron Warren sold her first short story, “White Bed,” in 1993. In the time since, she’s published over 70 short stories, and multiple novels (including MISTIFICATION, SLIGHTS and WALKING THE TREE) and short story collections (including THE GRINDING HOUSE, THE GLASS WOMAN and the forthcoming THROUGH SPLINTERED WALLS). Currently in Canberra, she’s lived in Sydney and Melbourne. The unusual spelling of her first name was a personal choice, she says, “Even at 17 I wanted my writing to be remembered, and I thought that a memorable spelling would help me in that quest. Does it work?”

ANTHONY: Kaaron, first of all: congrats on your recent Stoker Award nomination for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction. Where were you when you got the news, and how does it feel?

KAARON: Because I live in the future (Australia) it felt as if I had to wait an extra day! It was midnight when the email came. I wasn’t quite sure I read right, so re-read it a few times. It was amazing. Just amazing. Making this sort list has been a long-time career goal.

HWA members who are considering their votes can read the story by contacting me.

ANTHONY: Is this your first Stoker nomination?

KAARON: Yes, it is. I made the preliminary ballot with my novel Slights.

ANTHONY: You’ve had short stories published all over the map (geographically and thematically). How does your writing/revising process differ from editor to editor?

KAARON: Writing stays the same, though obviously style may alter depending on the market. If the story is for a specific anthology then I’ll take on a different voice.

Every editor is different in the way they approach things, but I’ve seen the same actions from all the good editors I’ve worked with. Firstly, they want to make sure the story is right, so they’ll ask for more clarity in some places, check continuity, find the plot flaws, ask for more information. They they’ll want the words to fall well, and will look for repetitions or clumsy phrasing. All editors have slightly different processes and I try to work within them.

ANTHONY: I know some authors approach the writing of a novel differently than they do a short story or novella. Are there any differences in your own creative approach to different length works?

KAARON: Creatively, writing a short story and a novel are very similar. I come up with my Spark (the central idea, a character or title), the thing that sets my mind buzzing. That’s the same for all lengths, including novellas. Then it’s the hard work of turning it into a story. Whether it’s long or short will depend on how many paths I take; how much I want to expose of a character’s life.

ANTHONY: They say “write what you know,” and some beginning writers I think that the adage too much to heart. How do you interpret that saying, and how does it apply to your own work?

KAARON: I used to say I wasn’t a fan of ‘write what you know’ but I do think it depends on how you interpret it. If it applies to the senses and the emotions then yes, you should use these to bring your story to life. If you’ve smelt a rose, or horse shit, or old sweat, or bread baking, you’ll know how to describe it.

But as far as writing your own life onto the page? Ugh. An office worker writing about what it’s like to catch the bus every day? No. unless you use it as part of a larger story. Many of my ideas came while catching public transport, and the people I observed. Like the man who would always run from the train to the bus stop, even though we had 20 minutes to wait before the bus came. It made me so curious. Why are you running? I haven’t written about him yet, but I will.

My story “The Wrong Seat” was written during the four hour bus trips we used to take between Canberra and Sydney when we first moved to Canberra. They were very smelly trips and I always wondered; how do people make so much stink? And why? I wrote a sad ghost story about a woman haunting the bus.

So my interpretation is this; take the things you see, hear and feel and imagine them in someone else’s life.

Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren

ANTHONY: Your next release is Through Splintered Walls. Tell me a little about the book, and when it will be available.

KAARON: Though the Splintered Walls will be launched at the Australian National Convention in Melbourne in June. You should come along!

It’s part of the Twelfth Planet Press Twelve Planets series. The book holds four stories inspired by the Australian landscape.

“Sky” is a horror-SF novella about a finger found in cat food and where it came from. I think it’s one of my most disturbing stories. I had to work hard to allow it to fall the way it fell. I’m writing about abhorrent people and practices and trying to make them sympathetic. That’s part of the trick of horror writing, I think. Making awful things seem believable.

“Road” was inspired by the many roadside memorials you see when you travel anywhere in Australia. They are heartbreaking, I think. So I wrote a nasty ghost story about them.

“Mountain” began when a truck full of cat food overturned on Clyde Mountain, the main route from Canberra, the inland city where I live, to the coast. The thing was, the truck was cleaned out. People stole that cat food; almost all of it. And this greed shocked me, and started me thinking about what there was on the mountain that made people behave that way.

“Creek” is a sad story about loss, love and women who quake.

Next year’s Australian National Science Fiction Convention will be held in Canberra, and I’m one of the special guests along with Nalo Hopkinson, Marc Gascoigne and Karen Miller.

ANTHONY: And my usual final question: What is your favorite book, and what would you say to someone who hasn’t read it to convince them that they should?

KAARON: This question will make a good friend of mine laugh, because of what he calls my FBOAT. Favourite Book of All Time. Because there are lots! And each time I see him I say, Oooh, this is my FBOAT.

These are some of them. I think it’s a tough list to get onto. I’m pretty picky. All of them are on this list because they make the world slow down when I’m reading them, and that’s why you should do so.

Georges Perec “Life: A User’s Manual”

Barbara Kingsolver “The Poisonwood Bible”

Suzy McKee Charnas “Walk to the End of the World” and the whole Motherlines series.

D M Thomas “The White Hotel”

ANTHONY: Thanks again, Kaaron! Good luck (or break a leg, or whatever charm you Aussies use) on the Stokers and the Ditmars!

You can find more of her work on Kaaron’s website. You can also follow her on Twitter as @KaaronWarren. The link to Twelve Planets Press’s website is above.

CAROL HANSEN & MATT LANDE, Author, Singer - Interview

February 21, 2012 Anthony Cardno

Today I’m welcoming back two previous interviewees (seems to be a theme this week!), author Carol Hansen and musician Matt Lande. Carol and Matt are “merging word and song” for a Kickstarter project that, if funded, will bring out a book, an album, and an EP of songs based on the book, as well as helping to defray production costs on two music videos. Carol’s book is DarkStar, which she chatted with me about several months ago. Matt’s album is Welcome Home The Child; we discussed Matt’s music several months back as well. The EP is three new songs by Matt based on the novel, as you’ll see in the interview below:

ANTHONY: Hello again, Carol and Matt! I’ve interviewed you each individually, so this combined interview should be fun.

CAROL AND MATT: Hi Anthony! Thank you so much for chatting with us again.

ANTHONY: Tell us how this project came to be.

CAROL: Well, when I was writing, DarkStar, one of my goals was to have a song written for my book and possibly a music video made for that song. Getting a book noticed is incredibly tough and I thought that this would be a great marketing tool to help get exposure for DarkStar. The idea was always in the back of my mind, so when Matt and I began following each other on Twitter, and I saw that he was a musician, I checked out his links. The minute I heard his voice, I knew that he had the sound I was looking for. I contacted him to see if he would be interested in reading DarkStar and writing a song for it. He said that he wasn’t opposed to the idea but, with his time schedule, he didn’t know how long it would take him to read a whole book, as he was working on his solo acoustic album at the time. So, I sent him a twenty nine page synopsis to read that would give him the gist of the story, but he decided he wanted to read the whole novel. Matt takes his music very serious and he said he didn’t want to miss anything. I thought that was awesome.
So, he read my book and initially, I had asked him to write one DarkStar song but in the process, he was inspired to write three!

Our correspondence with each other made us realize that we have a fun and unique opportunity to join forces and work together so we came up with our project; Music…when word and song collide. It’s awesome, as an author and a musician, to come together and make something amazingly different!

ANTHONY: Can you give us some examples of how Matt reinterpreted words from the book to create the songs?

CAROL: Sure! Here’s a couple:

DarkStar quotes that inspired the DarkStar song:

Alec hugged me tightly, and I pressed my face into his shoulder, allowing me to smell his masculine scent on the sweater he was wearing. Sobs escaped my throat as I felt the relief of finally being in his arms. All I cared about right now was being with him. Alec saved me. He didn’t let me die on the cold and snowy mountain.

After a moment of sobbing and sniffles, he put his finger under my chin and lifting my face up, captured my eyes. His were the same color as the day I met him.

“You are safe now,” he whispered. “I will never let you be in harm’s way again.”

***

“I know this is crazy and complicated, but I will get through this…we will get through this. There is nothing to worry about now.” Alec drew me in close. I could feel the beating of our hearts, thumping in unison, two as one. Relief overcame me, but I wondered if it was premature as, at the same time, in the back of my mind the anxiety of the unknown future lingered.

“I love you, Amrie,” he whispered in my ear. “You truly are my Darkstar.”

DarkStar song lyrics:

My darling star, I’ll hold you within my arms,

When worlds apart, I’m with you, you’re safe from harm.

Most would fall and fallen they have, the might ones, but they’re not us

My perfect star, my brilliant angel, suspended there, I pull you in

DarkStar quotes that inspired the duet, It’s in the Way We Are:

“Why do you do that to me, Alec?” I asked quivering.

“Do what?”

“Look at me like that. You captivate me with your eyes to the point that I can’t even breathe or think. Do you do that on purpose?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. You think my eyes captivate you? Why, I think that is absolutely absurd,” he grinned.

“Well they do and I can’t believe you don’t know it.”

“Actually, I do,” he confessed. “Sometimes I feel that way when I look into my mother’s eyes. They seem to hold me as if in a trance. Often I feel like that is how she gets me to do some of the things she wants me to do —enthralls me with her eyes.”

“Is that what you are doing to me?” I asked suspiciously.

“I didn’t think I was,” Alec said shrugging his shoulders. “But could I?”

“Could you what? Get me to do what you want me to just by looking into your eyes?”

He stepped closer to me and the longer our eyes locked the more mesmerized I became. I almost felt as if I was in another world, watching the iridescent colors flicker as I gleamed into crystal glass swirling with delicate color.

***

I noticed that Alec’s eyes were a deep, dark blue, darker than I had ever seen them. “Please, Alec,” I sobbed. “You can help him. I know you can. I know what you can do…please.”

My pleading drew me into his space, his mystical eyes and their undeniable power. His pupils gripped me as emotion swelled in his chest, heavily breathing, nostril’s flaring.

“Please.” I whispered.

Staring with rapt attention, the intensity of his eyes began changing, motion swirling intricate patterns, power emerging.

It’s in the Way We are Lyrics:

It’s in the way you rescue me

You are the current pulling me

It’s with the pause in time we make

Say it’s alright here

It’s alright

When the world slows down

And our hearts race

I can feel the sound

I can feel you breathing

When I drink you in

It’s in the way we are

The third song is a short acoustic song, Amrie.

At this point, Matt has already recorded our three DarkStar songs, as well as ten songs for his acoustic album, “Welcome Home the Child,” (which, can I just tell you how amazing they are!) The first part of our project is getting all of these songs into the studio to have the DarkStar songs made into a 3 song EP– that will be marketed with my novel, and his ten songs made into an album. The rest of the project will involve going to Logan, Utah, the location of DarkStar, where we will be doing music videos for two of the three songs and printing DarkStar novels.

Our goal is to do combined DarkStar/Welcome Home the Child concerts and book signings. AND…the coolest thing ever…Matt has agreed to do a full DarkStar album!! Sweet!! We already have ideas for more songs, so if we can get the funding for this project, we will be in a good position to work on the full album.

ANTHONY: Matt, what was it about Carol’s story that inspired you to create music based on it?

MATT: I wasn’t sure what to expect when taking on the job to write music for DarkStar. I also couldn’t fathom reading an entire novel cover to cover. lol! Turns out that I became inspired more than ever and instead of only writing one song for the book as Carol asked, I ended up writing three. I think my inspiration was the mix of getting to know Carol as a person, what the book means to her and then the story of love and fantasy that DarkStar portrays. It kept me wanting to read more…that’s saying a lot because my attention span is such as a goldfish.

ANTHONY: Carol, what is it about Matt’s music that drew you to him as a source for creating music inspired by your characters?

CAROL: The first time I heard Matt’s voice was when I followed his links and he was singing, “Walking with Ghosts,” on his You Tube video. I was instantly intrigued because he had this magical, mystical sound and it’s exactly what I wanted for my song. Matt has a very unique voice and when you combine it with his amazing talent for writing and playing guitar; you can’t help but be captivated.

DarkStar is about a guy, Alec, from England who finds out he is destined to be a wizard, and he doesn’t want to be. He is tormented because the powers of the wizardry are being forced upon him and when he meets a girl named, Amrie, both of their worlds change. She has mysterious dreams and as his magical world intertwines with hers, they get lost in a plot of mystery, romance, intrigue and a mystical connection. I knew, instantly, that Matt was the one I wanted to write my DarkStar song, but I soon realized that he could also play the part of, Alec. I tease him about it, telling him he will be my, Alec in our DarkStar movie. He definitely could be because he fits Alec’s description to a tee. Coincidence? Personally, I don’t think so:) Everything has just fallen into place for us…like it was meant to be. That’s why we’ve joined forces, because what we have is an amazingly unique opportunity and we are working really hard to make it happen.)

ANTHONY: Matt, you’re also in the midst of creating your own album. How do you balance the two projects, make sure each gets equal attention, etc.?

MATT: How do I balance anything!? I have no idea. I have a dangerous balancing act. So many things going on. I think I get a mad drive when it comes to music and entertainment. I love the feeling when you pick up the guitar, something comes over you and a song is born. From that point, I’m itching to record and produce it. Once I get rolling, it’s kinda hard to stop me and miraculously, eventually, it all comes together.

ANTHONY: Carol, has Matt’s music influenced the way you’ve written the characters in the sequels versus the way you wrote them in the original story?

CAROL: It’s interesting that you ask that because it definitely has. Having Matt write the songs for DarkStar gave me a different perspective of my story. He took a whole novel and described three different aspects of it in just a few words…a musical synopsis, if you will. When writing, I have this vision in my head of who each character is and it’s quite easy to become repetitive with them. Matt’s words opened up a new picture for me and a different feel for what others are seeing–compared to what I’m writing. I have also learned a lot from Matt. He has a way of putting such deep emotion into his lyrics and it’s made me want to explore more deeply the way my characters, especially, Alec and Amrie, view each other.

ANTHONY: Matt, I know you’ve done fundraising before, on Indiegogo and other places. What sets the Kickstarter project apart from your other efforts? Why should folks who have donated to you in the past donate again for this project?

MATT: We thought it would be a good idea to do Kickstarter because we really need to accomplish our goal in a timely manner. Even though we won’t get the funding unless the full $5000 is raised, the site is more well-known than indiegogo, so we are taking the chance. All of the pledges from indiegogo campaigns were used to purchase recording equipment which I’ve used to lay down nearly all the acoustic guitars, lead vocals, and backing vocals for “Welcome Home the Child” as well as for the DarkStar EP. There’s still a ways to go, but if we reach this goal through Kickstarter, we’ll knock everything out of the park. I believe I have some of the best fans and that’s simply why we’ve gotten this far.

ANTHONY: Okay, let’s talk about the Kickstarter incentives. I know folks can click through on the link and see what you’re offering in return for the donation, but tell me a bit about each incentive and why you chose them.

CAROL: One thing we like about Kickstarter is that we are able to give something in return to those who support us. We are grateful for every single pledge because each one puts us closer to making our project a reality and without them, it just won’t happen.

First and foremost, we give, Thank You’s, both privately and publically, because we are so appreciative to our backers and we want them to know it. Along with those, everyone gets a virtual hug. Who wouldn’t want one of those? LolJ

Our incentives are a reflection of exactly what our project is and everything is personalized and very personal to us:

~Pre-released DarkStar and Welcome Home the Child CD’s and digital downloads

~DarkStar novel pre-released Wizard novel & bookmarks

~A guitar and hand written lyrics

~An original DarkStar manuscript and exclusive DarkStar Jewelry

~Exclusive connections with us through phone and in house concert and book signing

~Contact and knowing just exactly how our project is advancing

~Plus more added, “cool stuff” as Matt says

ANTHONY: Last but not least, what is the final deadline for the Kickstarter?

CAROL: The reason we are on Kickstarter is…the age old problem….MONEY! Matt and I have both had some personal struggles and setbacks the past few years that has made it really tough for us financially, so the fact that we have come this far, by financing our individual projects, is really quite remarkable. We are both working extremely hard to share our talents, but there hits a point where sometimes you have to, in all your humility, ask for help. That’s the point we are at. We are both extremely independent and it is hard for us to have to rely on others.

We are approaching our deadline quickly. Our project will end on March 29th at 8:36 a.m. so we are beginning to stress a bit. We haven’t even reached half of our financial goal and we’re past the half way point in our time limit, so we feel an urgency to get the word out about our project and hope that everyone will be willing to offer, even just a little bit toward making this a reality for us. We like helping others, also, and welcome the opportunity to return the favor and help any of you when you are in need.

We are so appreciative to Anthony for helping us out by doing this interview and want to thank him! He really does all of us an unselfish service by doing all the interviews he does to give exposure to so many creative and interesting people.

THANK YOU, Anthony for all you do! Most sincerely!!

ANTHONY: You’re welcome!

So, folks, here’s the link to Carol and Matt’s Kickstarter. I hope you’ll consider sending even just a few bucks their way. And remember, with Kickstarter, they don’t get your money if the project isn’t fully-funded, so please consider spreading the word!

ANTHONY GARGIULA & BOWLING AGAINST BULLYING - Interview

February 9, 2012 Anthony Cardno

This week I welcome back singer, songwriter and anti-bullying fundraiser Anthony Gargiula.

You know, this whole interviewing thing is actually Anthony’s fault. When I met him at the 30th anniversary performance of Mahopac High School’s ILLUSION rock ensemble last March, and discovered his beginning singing career, I suggested to his mother that we do an interview for my website. That got the ball rolling, and I’ve been at it ever since. Anthony hasn’t exactly been resting on his laurels, either, as you’ll see in the interview below, in which I chat with Anthony and his father Rich.

ME: Okay, let’s start out with Bowling Against Bullying. Remind us how you got started.

ANTHONY: Bowling Against Bullying started last year. My social studies teacher gave my whole class a challenge to change the word in any way we could. So I wanted to do something with bullying. I thought of doing an event that could raise money and bring awareness to the subject. So I came up with Bowling Against Bullying and I really enjoyed it so I decided to do it again this year.

ME: How much money did you raise last year and how many people were involved?

ANTHONY: Last year we raised just under $500 and I would say there were 20-30 people there, lots of close friends. This year there’s room for 300 people and possibly more. We have 4 hours, 2 two hour sessions, but may extend that depending on how many bowlers there are.

ME: How can people contribute if they can’t attend? Can people send checks?

RICH: They can mail a check to Bowling Against Bullying PO Box 433, Glenmont NY 12077 if they can’t attend. If we go to year three, we may add paypal and an actual website. It’s grown so much that keeping up with it has become a full time job. What we have done is go to people who Anthony has sung for and asked them to be involved, and that’s worked out very well.

ANTHONY: They can also check out the Facebook page and my website for more information.

ME: I saw something on the Facebook page about corporate sponsorship. That’s a new aspect, right?

ANTHONY: Right now we’re working with a local counter top company called Solid Surface Craftsman, Inc. The owner, Alan Boulant, is one of our dancer’s fathers. He is a diamond sponsor with a $1,000 donation. Also, SIS Insurance and Financial Services and Met Life are a Gold Sponsor with a $500 donation. More are coming, I’ll keep you posted.

Albany Broadcasting has decided they want to be my exclusive media sponsor and they own 6 local radio stations which will be covering the event. I’ll be on all the stations’ morning shows to promote the event.

RICH: April 1st they’ll start advertising the event on their websites, and then I think April 14th the radio spots will start. On the Thurs/Fri before the event, Anthony will go to each station and do the morning shows. Hopefully he’ll sing on them as well.

ME: Other than bowling, what else will be going on at the Lanes that day?

RICH: Anthony and his dance crew will be performing. There will be a magician, a face-painter, a silent auction, a 50/50 raffle … a pretty nice event. And of course the bowling. You know, families are buying whole lanes to be able to bowl together. We’ll have the local minor league baseball team & hockey teams mascots also.

ANTHONY: The Facebook page has really helped.

RICH: There’s a 70 year old man in Canada who read about the event on Facebook and wanted to donated $70 for his 70th birthday because he was bullied horribly as a child and still remembers it, and can’t believe Anthony is making such a stand at such a young age.

ME: I’ve said since I met Anthony at the Illusion reunion and we did that first interview that you really are one remarkably “together” kid, and how great it is that you’re committed to a cause like this. One of the great things about all the interviews I’m doing is meeting so many teens like you, who are committed to causes outside themselves – whether it’s bullying, cancer, MDA, homelessness. Almost every kid has had something outside of their career that they wanted to discuss with me.

RICH: Anthony, I don’t know about you, but I know when we were kids, all I wanted to do was play with my friends and hang out …, and these kids nowadays are so focused and are in fact changing the world.

ME: I was so shy at Anthony’s age, all I wanted to do was sit someplace and read comic books! Anthony, what else would you like people to know about Bowling Against Bullying?

ANTHONY: I want everyone to know that I’ve always been really focused on trying to change bullying because it’s a huge issue for teens, for adults, for younger kids, it’s insane and out of control. It’s something I’m passionate about and I wanted to do this. My birthday is the day after the event, and instead of a 13th birthday party I decided to do this again. My goal is to raise $10,000.

ME: That’s great. So what do you do with the money raised?

RICH: Last year he took the money and donated it to Teens Against Bullying (a charity that Demi Lovato promotes) and that was all fine and good, and as we were very excited about that, but it was a little bit of a bummer that you don’t get to see what good your money is doing. So this year, we’re going to use the money to bring in anti-bullying speakers and programming to local schools, YMCAs, churches … whatever we can do (as far as the money we raise will go) . We’re meeting with principals to see what kinds of programs they would like.

We want to do programs in gyms. Performances and such. Bring in speakers. There’s a woman in Michigan who does national anti-bullying work, and she’s been in touch with us. We’d like to have at least one of the events have her educating adults in one room while the kids are entertained and educated in another way in another room. We’ll see how that goes. It’s a work in progress.

ME: You know I have to ask, Ant, since I’m a big fan … what’s going on with your music?

ANTHONY: I’ve been doing a lot of songwriting lately. I wrote six new originals. I’ve been to Nashville three times for meetings. I’m hopefully going to start recording soon.

ME: Awesome! Can’t wait to hear the new stuff, so get to that recording soon, please! What appearances do you have coming up?

RICH: He’ll be at Madison Square Garden singing the National Anthem for the Knicks again. Their entertainment coordinator told us, “I wouldn’t go a whole season without Anthony coming down to sing.” It just took us this long to work out this season’s appearance.

ANTHONY: We’re looking at some summer concerts too.

RICH: There’s interest from Boston, NYC and Nashville. We’re just kind of letting it happen organically.

ME: That seems to be a running theme among the parents of performing teens that I’ve spoken to lately, sort of bucking the stereotype of The Pushy Stage Mom. Making connections, staying on top of things but not pushing so hard you because that can actually turn the opportunities away.

ANTHONY: Nashville was cool. I was there in July, August, and September.

RICH: He played at the Bluebird Café. From its’ reputation you expect this huge stadium but it’s really this sort of small bar / restaraunt. People line up hours early to put their name in to perform, and the show runners just pull people’s names from the hat and say “you’re on tonight.” It worked out that Anthony got to perform, and it was great.

ME: Anthony, you’ve become friends with country singer Jimmy Wayne, right?

ANTHONY: I loved meeting Jimmy Wayne. We’ve become friends, and he’s a really nice guy. We’ve been talking about my next visit. We had Mexican Food together. He is really passionate about his charity and he has inspired me to make a difference too. I’ve also become close with Melinda Doolittle. We had coffee at Starbucks last time we were in Nashville. She actually donated signed CD’s and a sweatshirt for me to use in the silent auction at the Bowling Event.

ME: Very cool. If I was going to be there, instead of halfway across the country, I’d bid on the stuff Melinda donated! Okay, I think we need to wrap this phone call up. I won’t ask you about your favorite book, since we covered that last time … unless your favorite book has changed!

ANTHONY: I’d love to talk about my favorite book, it did change. It’s definitely The Hunger Games! I’m really into it, absolutely into it. I haven’t quite finished the 3rd one yet but I really love them and can’t stop reading. I can’t wait for the movie!

ME: haha, I think Suzanne Collins should start paying me for all the free advertising I’m giving those books. I think almost everyone I’ve interviewed in the past month has talked about them! Okay, thanks again Anthony! Talk to you soon!

ANTHONY & RICH: Thanks!

Don’t forget, in addition to the Bowling Against Bullying Facebook page and Anthony’s own website, you can also follow Anthony on Twitter as @anthonygargiula and become a fan of Anthony on Facebook!

Photo credit: Bonnie Jacobs

Anthony’s favorite punctuation mark is the semi-colon because thanks to cancer surgery in 2005, a semi-colon is all he has left. Enjoy Anthony's blog "Semi-Colon," where you will find Anthony's commentary on various literary subjects.