The unsung extras from Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

So you’ve seen the Green Room, where my characters while away the hours until their names come up on the call sheet; and really, all the characters get to enjoy its amenities. But so far we’ve only looked at named characters: those human and mechanical people who have lines, or – if they’re not equipped for speech – something like lines.

But that’s not everyone: in Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom there are hundreds of robots from the Fraternal League of Robotic persons; there’s a council room filled with the Priests of the Spider God; there are plenty of switchboard operators who pitch in, but never chime in; and so on. And at last there are those characters who simply mill around in the backgrounds of the illustrations. Like Hazel, here.

Hazel falls into that category of character actors who we see over and over again in the old studio films. She’s individual enough to stand out even though she never gets a line. If she minds at all, she won’t let on. Hazel’s a pro.

Hazel’s especially useful to me because her silhouette is so distinctive. I need a bunch of robots. I’m still modelling them as they’re needed for one chapter or another. In order to give them plenty of personality in such humble roles, I’m trying to create varied body types.

The fact is, though, I’m kind of taken with Hazel here. I may have to give her a bigger role in the future. That’s it, hon: I can make you a star.

Swell covers & illustrations from Marvel Science Stories, at The Golden Age

Filed under Found on the Web

The all-devouring scanner of Mister Doortree treats us, today, to a collection of covers and illustrations from Marvel Science Stories. They’ve come to us from the future by way of the years 1938 to 1941.

The well-rounded stable of artists ranges from Norman Saunders and Frank R. Paul to a young Jack Kirby. Each one of them wants to show you brains in balls, women in tubes, gigantic spacemen (in tiny cities), creepy things, and fellas in swell hats.

The least you can do is to go have a look, eh?

Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom – behind the scenes extra!

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I don’t often show behind-the-scenes images from my work here in the Secret Laboratory. This may be a character defect. I’ve wondered about that before.

But people do get curious; it’s natural enough. So here’s a rare shot from behind the scenes that explains what happens between the time I build and texture a character, and the time that character shows up in an illustration. That may take weeks, or even months, so the Secret Laboratory’s Green Room is as comfortable as I can make it.

In this corner of the Green Room we see R-54KG and Davies. They’re catching up on the latest news until they’re needed for Chapter 18.

The characters in the Green Room amuse themselves in all sorts of ways, many of which require some clean-up and damage control because, well… that’s just how they are. Increasingly, though, they’ve kept their noses buried in their Info-Slates: they just tune out the other characters around them. Now I myself have been accused of being on the introverted side, but this behavior strikes even me as antisocial. So I’m planning to add some board games.

The Green Room’s come a long way since Trapped in the Tower of the Brain Thieves. Back then, there wasn’t even a Craft Service table. Hard to believe!

Swedish movie posters at io9, brain resets, and injustice on the Satellite of Love

Filed under Found on the Web

Here’s a Swedish movie poster for Alexander Korda’s Things to Come, just one of a series posted over at io9. Lovely design.

The last time I watched the film I saw Raymond Massey’s character as a sinister figure, certain that he knew what was best, dammit, and you’d take it – and like it! – which wasn’t really what the film was trying to show me. It’s always interesting how our perceptions change over time, especially when we’re watching or reading things from decades past. I noticed this again last night: I had to reset my brain during the first few pages of Barnes’ Interplanetary Huntress, mentioned earlier (and still a free download!)

Eventually my brain stopped commenting “Well, this wouldn’t play too well today” and I was able to enjoy the peculiar Venusian wildlife in the story. There were these armored beetles that liked pipe smoke, for example.

But this morning, and these posters, reminded me of what has aways seemed like an injustice in Mystery Science Theater 3000. Joel and/or Mike and the bots skewered several Swedish fantasy films that had been dubbed (badly) for an American audience. One was even turned into a “Sinbad” story. It was that bad. But it always seemed to me that in their original versions these may have been pretty cool movies. I guess we’ll never know.

Amazing Stories and Futures Past Editions to republish classic science fiction stories

Filed under Found on the Web

Amazing Stories, in its new incarnation as a web site, has announced that it’s teaming up with Futures Past Editions to reprint stories from the long and remarkable history of Amazing Stories magazine. That backlist includes even more vintage science fiction from Amazing‘s companion publications, Amazing Stories Quarterly and Amazing Stories Annual.

The eBook and printed editions will bear the comet tail logo of the magazine under the imprint Amazing Stories Classic Reprints. Selected stories will also be published on the Amazing Stories web site: the first of these is Don Wilcox’s The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years (available there now).

I’ve already got one of the Futures Past eBooks on my Kindle, just waiting for me to get to it: it’s Arthur K. Barnes’ The Interplanetary Huntress (currently a free download at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo).

Barnes sometimes collaborated with Henry Kuttner, and that’s why I’m pretty sure I want to read him. Kuttner—with or without C.L. Moore—was pretty amazing in his own right.

A quick visit to their web site shows that Futures Past Editions is already republishing loads of vintage science fiction and some new titles, too. I look forward to seeing what this co-venture with Amazing Stories will add to that list.

Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, the Republic Serials version

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

If we ignore the fact that I was just goofing around, we’ll be free to imagine that this is the title card for the Republic Serials version of Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. There. Aren’t we happier now?

I thought so. Now I’ll go and put on my “Better Living Through Mindless Escapism” T-shirt.

Meanwhile. . . in the world that is somewhat more real than the one we visited so briefly. . . I’m working on the fourteenth illustration for the book. It’s being mean to me, so I’m playing around with extruded titles.

On the querying front: I’m preparing to wind down. The queries that are still out there amount to two agents with the first five pages; three agents with the first two chapters; two agents with the first three chapters; and one agent with the full manuscript. I have two or three queries I’d still like to send in the next week or so, but then I’ll just wait out the agents’ response periods (assuming that they pass on the book) and at last move on to Phase Two, Attack on the Editor’s Tower.

Phase Two will involve fewer characters but will last at least as long as Phase One since, well, that’s just how it is. In the frenetically glacial pace of the publishing process, I mean. I can’t say that I haven’t learned anything that I didn’t already know in the abstract, but the realities somehow still surprise me.

One does get a sense of what it must be like at the big, open end of the funnel that is the Inboxes of the literary agents. They have plenty more to do, apart from fielding queries, and although they are legion they’re still outnumbered by hundreds to one when you compare them to the hosts of queriers.

At the level of editors, that funnel mouth isn’t necessarily smaller. I guess in order to change things you’d need a vastly more profitable business or an army of brilliant, unpaid interns who never burn out. Which, now that I think of it, is perfectly possible in the world of Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. . . so long as you’re willing to be the villain.

Roomba-like mobile printer crawls across your pages

Filed under Found on the Web

Here’s a pretty inspired Kickstarter project for a mobile, Roomba-like inkjet printer.

It’ll print on any size paper without requiring a huge framework. While it doesn’t seem all that practical for a 100 page document, there’s a lot of potential here for unusually small or large sheets and, when it comes right down to it, the thing is just a nifty idea that ought to exist.

It probably will, too: with 22 days left to go they’ve already raised $390,000 of their $400,000 goal.

Vintage Allies interviews me, and here’s a new robot for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Works in Progress

Vintage Allies has posted an interview with me, which means that they asked me questions and I tried not to sound like an idiot. How did that work out? You decide.

In other news, here’s a robot character I’ve just finished for Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. He’s a minor character, but in spite of that he’s got to be there in one of the illustrations: so here he is.

Those illustrations, since you ask, are coming along pretty much on schedule even though I somehow decided to add a title page illustration (it’s nice!). I’m about halfway done with the whole set. That means my ballpark estimate of "sometime in June or July" is still looking good.

Of course I’ve got even more robots and control rooms and escalators to model along the way. So, you know, fingers crossed.

Oh, and it looks like I found a new (browser specific?) bug that’s whacking out some of the posters people build with the Pulp-O-Mizer. I have to fit a little testing and fixing in there too, then.

Nifty little memo books from the Pulp-O-Mizer

Filed under Web Development, Works in Progress

It’s been awhile since I made changes to the Pulp-O-Mized products you can make with my Pulp-O-Mizer; in fact, there was a sort of debacle concerning a broken API for the T-shirts, but I’m not talking about that because the wounds are still fresh.

So apart from What I Am Not Speaking Of, these nifty new memo notebooks are the latest thing. They’re made of acid free recycled paper and at 3 1/2" by 5 1/2" they’ll go just about anyplace. I like these because they feel. . . informal. You don’t agonize about whether your sketches or notes are worthy. You just scribble ’em in there.

You can choose blank, lined, dotted, or checklist pages. I’ve made you a nice little title plate on the inside of the front cover, and there’s a colorful surprise on the inner back cover. And all for the low, low, ultra-customized and Pulp-O-Mized price of $10.95.

You can still get the old spiral bound notebooks through a text link below the products section. So whatever your notemaking preference is, go forth and Pulp-O-Mize!

Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom: I Aten’t Dead

Filed under Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I see I haven’t posted an update since last month about my experiment with the world of traditional publishing. I’ve mentioned that I’m working through a short list of those literary agents who I think would be helpful and interested in Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. That list has grown a bit as I’ve gone on since I’ve had the time to do additional research, and that’s led me to new names.

I was encouraged a couple of weeks back when I re-read Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus (which is wonderful), and found that it had been rejected thirty or thirty-one times before she signed with an agent. My list is a little less than half that long, and—being an old codger—my patience may be a little shorter, too. Ms. Morgenstern is too young to worry about the carrion birds that may be circling outside the window.

Two of the agents who’ve risen to the top of my list say that they take up to eight weeks to respond to a query. That’s a long time, in codger weeks, anyway. So I’ve decided that they’ll define my cut-off date. After some time in late May I’ll abandon the search for an agent and submit to a couple of publishers. I say "a couple" because the wait for an editor to reject a writer is usually longer than the waits I’m going through now. Refer above: codger, patience, carrion birds.

I know that a lot of people take these rejections personally. The fact is, though, that there is nothing personal about this process so it wouldn’t make much sense to take it personally. The great majority of the agents who’ve passed on the book have never seen it, or any part of it; a few have seen the first five pages. There’s no way to know whether they’ve even read what they did get. I have to admit that an email titled Query: SLAVES OF THE SWITCHBOARD OF DOOM might sound like something that they don’t want to read. But even that isn’t personal. It’s just a preconception.

The crazy thing about this process is that I started with an agent I figured I had no hope of working with, and that’s where I got the most positive response of all (and a full reading of the book). Go figure.

So, assuming rejections, sometime in late May I’ll turn the book over to one editor who’s asked to see it; after that, one—or possibly two—other publishers. But come June or July I’ll have finished the book’s illustrations and I have to figure that by then I’ll be in the mood to get something done. Once again: codger, patience, carrion birds.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the problem of launching a self-published book in a way that dovetails with the way a traditionally published book is launched. Odds are I’ll be putting those thoughts to the test: sometime after July, plus or minus a slush pile.