I plan to make final decisions on stories this week, with a few acceptances going out as early as tomorrow.  I’m always amazed at the jump in quality of submissions with each issue.  There are truly some wonderful stories in the slush that I look forward to publishing soon.  I’m hoping for a release date before Readercon.  Stay tuned.

In other publishing news, Paper Cities is in progress to be listed in Apple’s iBookstore, so all you iPad and iPhone (and iPod Touch too!) users can have your own copy.  I’ll let y’all know when it’s live.  Until then, happy reading.

The book is DRM-free, which means there’s no copy protection.

You can get it here for $9.99.

CT: What made you decide to include those cryptic marginalia, or music suggestions under each story/poem? (And wouldn’t it be cool if one day each magazine came packaged with a soundtrack?)

MK: For the latest issue, I created an iTunes playlist (http://www.sensesfive.com/2009/05/30/sybils-garage-no-6-playlist/), which is about 95% accurate to what appears in the magazine. I know iTunes isn’t available or convenient for parts of the world, but it’s a start.

For the musical suggestions, it’s simply because I love music. Music has always been very inspirational for me, and I thought it would be a fun way to see what others were listening to and inspired by. Kind of like peeking into someone’s record collection. Crap, I just dated myself. I should say “mp3 collection.”

For the marginalia, I’m not sure I can answer that simply. I think part of the reason I pepper it throughout the pages has to do with my obsession with detail, a desire to fill in every nook and cranny. I also think it has to do with the joy I’ve felt in finding similar cryptic messages or imagery in song lyrics, album art, comics, books, films, and other media. And then, as I dig in further, discovering what they mean. I’m purposely trying to invoke that in Sybil’s, that unexpected frisson when you suddenly discover three quarters of the way through the magazine that there’s a story written in the margins, for example. It’s no secret that my favorite film is Blade Runner, and I’ve always admired Ridley Scott’s obsessive attention to detail, the intense layering of objects, so I guess in a way I’m emulating that too.

But yeah, a Sybil’s Garage soundtrack would be brilliant. I’m actually working on something related to that, interestingly enough.

You can read the full interview here.

• For those who haven’t heard, Sybil’s Garage will be opening to submissions for our 7th issue on January 15th.  Guidelines here.
• The World-Fantasy award winning anthology Paper Cities is now only $12 for the holidays.  Get it now.
• Altered Fluid, my writers group, will be appearing on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf on January 16th.  We will be critiquing a story by the talented writer and amateur lepidopterist Paul Berger.
• I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the trim size of Sybil’s Garage from 7″ x 8.5″ to 6″ x 9″.  (The latter size is a common trade paperback size in the U.S.) For issues two through six, we used the “half-legal” size, which I shamelessly borrowed from such great zines as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Electric Velocipede. But there are problems with that .  Most notably, the size is not an industry standard.  The printing costs are higher.  Additionally, I’d like to start selling Sybil’s as a print-on-demand title.  This would allow it to be sold on Amazon and through bookstores via distrubution.  Previously, we only sold Sybil’s at conferences, through the Senses Five website, and at a few local bookstores.  So the pluses are: cheaper printing costs and greater potential distribution.  The negatives?  We will no longer be old-skool “zine” sized.  I’d like to hear opinions from people on this, as I’m not 100% convinced.  (More like 98%).
• I saw Avatar with my girlfriend last night.  We both enjoyed it.  It’s a totally immersive experience.  The world is rich, beautifully rendered, full of life.  Pandora seems like a real place.  Exotic, colorful, a complete biosphere.  The plot is flawed, however.  It’s chock full of stock plotlines and easy stereotypes.  Many characters are no more than cardboard (how odd that in a 3d film the flattest things were the humans themselves).  But the world is so vibrant and alive that I was able to overlook the plot flaws and engross myself in the planet’s wonders.  I’d like to see what a good writer can do with this technology.
• Generally, it is not a good idea to be a hallucinating hipster knocking on my door at 5:30 am on a Sunday morning and claim to live in my apartment.  Additionally, knocking again at 8:00 am and claiming to know  me will not solidify your case.
• Have a happy holiday season.

Also, here’s a video of the World Fantasy Awards, where they announce Paper Cities as the winner for Best Anthology.  That’s me accepting the award on behalf of Ekaterina Sedia.

“I am delighted and humbled to be receiving this award, but I feel that the honor belongs to the writers who contributed their amazing and unsettling visions of urban fantasy and what it can be, and to our publisher, Matt Kressel, who recognized that these stories deserved to be seen. Today, I thank you all for this honor, even though my role was secondary to your talent.

–Ekaterina Sedia”

Work, family, and other obligations have kept me supremely busy as of late, but I thought I’d give you an update on what’s going on with Senses Five Press.  As I (might have) mentioned on this blog, I’ve been working to get Paper Cities out as an e-book.  I’ve just submitted the complete e-manuscript to Amazon and am awaiting their approval.  So the first platform it will be available for is the Kindle (obviously).  I expect to make the anthology available for other platforms as well in the coming weeks.  If you haven’t had a chance to read this 2009 World Fantasy Award Nominated anthology yet, now’s your chance.

As for Sybil’s Garage, I’ve been so busy lately with work that I can’t conceive of trying to fit reading slush in with all the other things I have to do.  This is not to say that Sybil’s Garage is going anywhere.  I still plan to publish the magazine for a long time to come.  But the next issue may be delayed some.  I do not have a firm date for when I plan to open for submissions, and right now, to be perfectly honest, I am enjoying the downtime from reading & producing to work on my own fiction.  Oh, you didn’t know?  I also write too.

My most recent stuff is in Electric Velocipede and Apex Magazine, both of which you can read online by clicking the links at left.  That’s about all I have for today.  Merry blogging.

Right now I’m still severely depleted from Readercon, so an in-depth review of my time there will be forthcoming.  In the meantime, here are some photos from the con.  It really was a wonderful time, and I think perhaps my favorite Readercon to date.  It was so great to see everyone and just be surrounded by such creativity.  I know I will be inspired for a long time to come.

The photos.

“The Ditmar sub-committee has released the Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Awards finalists for 2009. This ballot honours the best works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror published by Australians in 2008 as nominated by members of Australian fandom.”

Best Short Story

* “Pale Dark Soldier”, Deborah Biancotti (Midnight Echo #1)
* “This Is Not My Story”, Dirk Flinthart (Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #37)
* “The Goosle”, Margo Lanagan (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction, ed. Ellen Datlow)
* “Her Collection of Intimacy”, Paul Haines (Black: Australian Dark Culture Magazine #2)
* “Moments of Dying”, Robert Hood (Black: Australian Dark Culture Magazine #1)
* “Sammarynda Deep”, Cat Sparks (Paper Cities, ed. Ekaterina Sedia)
* “Ass-Hat Magic Spider”, Scott Westerfeld (The Starry Rift, ed. Jonathan Strahan)

Congratulations Cat!

The full list is available here.

A full list of winners is here.

UPDATE: Mercurio D. Rivera was gracious enough to point out these comments from the judges’ report:

“Long after reading, this is a story that returns to haunt the reader. From the very first word, ‘Sammarynda Deep’ drags you into a world both wonderfully exotic and strange, yet undeniably familiar in the emotions and ambitions that drive its inhabitants.”

Winners will be announced on January 24th.  Please wish her luck!

And what better gift for the Holidays than a nice, shiny copy of Paper Cities, eh?

First off, if you don’t know what a book trailer is, it’s simply a short video that advertises/promotes a book. Think of it like a TV commercial. However, since most of the book trailers I’ve seen have been on the Internet, they have not been restricted to a time limit or particular format. I’ve seen book-trailer comedy sketches and book-trailer horror scene re-enactments.

The theme of Paper Cities is, of course, cities. And because the visual medium is so powerful, I wanted to choose images that would convey the idea of “mystery, magic, and wonder”– stealing copy from the back of the book. Using actual live-footage video was not an option because a) I didn’t have such video and b) to purchase or create it would have been prohibitively expensive. I had to make this video on the cheap and I had to do it quickly. The book was coming out soon, and I needed to have the trailer ready.

The first thing I did was ransack my hard drive for images. Lo and behold I had several photos of nighttime New York, images of Hoboken’s cobbled alleys snapped on digital film, and even one lovely shot looking up “out of the gutter.” (The photo was taken at the entrance to Jimmy’s No. 43 in the East Village). I found only three or four good photos, and this wasn’t enough. So I spent a half-day scouring various stock-photo sites, using what little credit I had left, to purchase the rest. Now I had the photos I needed to work with. Next was the music.

I knew music was essential to making the trailer work. Few media go as well together as images and sound. I knew I wanted music both ancient and modern, riffing off the anthology itself which has stories in the past, present, and future. I scoured creative commons music sites and found a song, an improvisational piece on electric guitar, that sounded like a baroque classical/modern jazz fusion. But after many listens, I felt the song took too long, a full minute, to reach its emotional epiphany. I thought the viewer might click away before the full minute elapsed. The music had to hook from the beginning.

But, “Hey,” I said. “I play guitar. Maybe I can do something here?” I had just put new strings on my acoustic and I slapped a capo on the first or second fret (I can’t recall which) and tried a few riffs. (For those musically inclined, you may notice a fingering similarity to Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away.” The notes are different, but the movements are very similar.) I found a riff I liked, but it was simple. It needed layers.

In walked Audacity, a free audio program for the PC, and with it I laid down tracks like a prison chain gang. I started with the main riff. You can hear it in the opener. Then I added a second riff to harmonize, with notes that complement, yet accent the main riff. Then I added strums to each measure. I worked out a soloized harmony on the high frets. I kept layering and adding sounds until I felt that, yes, this song is what I’m trying to say. Or maybe I was just having fun. The tune sounded slightly mid-eastern, perhaps-Arabic, but it also had a modern, folk-style feel to it. And the acoustic guitar gave the song a rawness, an impromptu feel, like a busker on a street corner. Perfect.

Now, all I had to do was stitch everything together into a film. No easy feat. I used Adobe Premiere, a powerful and complicated video editing tool. It was my first time using it. The most difficult part for me was timing the musical changes to the images. I faded the photos in and out, added “glowing” titles, re-positioned images, blurred and sized, until eventually, many hours later, I had this video here:

I posted it to Youtube to show some friends and have them “proof” it, however, because most authors now have their Google Alerts poised like snipers on a fence, ready to pick off their name from a website a thousand routers away, some folks in Paper Cities got wind of the trailer less than an hour after I uploaded it, posted a link to it on their blog, and the cat was thus out of the bag. That’s why there are two versions of the trailer. One has some minor corrections. In my mind, the shorter version has better timing. The images are more synchronized with the music. The longer version, however, allows the viewer time to take in the scenery. Personally, I like them both. I hope you do too.

And that’s the story of my book trailer in a nutshell. By now, more than 1000 people have watched it. I hope that some of them were intrigued enough to go out and buy Paper Cities. At the very least, I hope they were entertained.

For those who are interested, the images in the trailer are presented in this order:
A scale model of ancient Jerusalem
Cairo (with a solar flare effect added by me)
Exit stairwell to Jimmy’s No. 42 in the East Village
Burmese temple
Hoboken street light
New York City, looking West, from the top of an apartment building
Hoboken’s Court Street
Candlelit steps of Petra

David J. Schwartz – “The Somnambulist”
Forrest Aguirre – “Andretto Walks the King’s Way”
Greg van Eekhout – “Ghost Market”
Kaaron Warren – “Down to the Silver Spirits”
Steve Berman – “Tearjerker”

If you are a member of SFWA, you can read the stories on the password protected portion of the SFWA web site.  If you like the stories, please vote for them!