Well I took out and dusted down my novel, and struggled through a re-draft of my covering letter and then reached for my stack of Writers' News magazines to find the next potential publisher.
As it happens in this months issue which I received this week (oddly dated April 2009), there was one on page 3 - Snowbooks, who even better, only accept e-mail submissions. That meant there was absolutely no recourse to my usual delaying tactic of having to print out copy and find an envelope. I had a browse around the site, www.snowbooks.com and it looks interesting. A quick google search (I always do this) showed up no negative reports about them, so I composed a blurb and a bio, carefully read, re-read and checked the submission guidlines and hit the 'Send' button.
Interestingly I read the rejection letter before I sent it, as they publish it on the website, so I'm not even worried about what it might say!
Now I feel much better about myself, but I'm not going to stop there, because I know that there are many more possibilities in my stack of magazines, and bookmarks that I've been saving up until I'd finished the latest draft, which I've now done.
In case you are interested, this is what I came up with for the blurb and the bio:
Blurb:
Roxy Harker is a single mother, a recovering drug addict and a vampire. Thrust into a shadowy London underworld controlled by immortal beings, Roxy has to come to terms with her need for blood while raising her two year old daughter, Claudia.
She becomes caught up in an ancient feud which threatens the future of humanity itself, and only Roxy can stand in the way of the coming Darkness.
Author bio:
Bryan Vaughan has been telling tales for over thirty years, and learned to craft stories playing Dungeons and Dragons and other, darker roleplaying games. He has become increasingly drawn to horror writing, seeking what it is to be afraid and the slow realisation that however bad things may appear, they can always get worse! Roxy has been haunting him since university at London ten years ago, so he finally sat down and started typing. This is her story.
Friday 6 March 2009
Tuesday 3 March 2009
Zombies
So I'm into Zombies at the moment, for some reason.
I'm reading a book called World War Z, which is part of my research into how contemporary authors are handling 'end of the world' scenarios. I've also recently read Survivors and the Day of the Triffids (which the BBC are remaking....again).
World War Z is about a Zombie uprising which devastates the whole planet, and is told from the viewpoint of the survivors after they fought back and eventually defeated enough to retake large parts of their countries. The Zombies in this book are traditional, lumbering zombies like in Evil Dead, which come at you slowly, but relentlessly.
On sunday I watched Resident Evil and 28 Days Later, back to back. Resident Evil again uses slow zombies, but 28 Days Later was a real turning point in Zombie fiction.
They learned to run.
This was a brilliant re-imagining of the Zombie myth, and one that was also taken up brilliantly by Dead Set by E4 last year (by the way, if you want to see something really freaky, go to www.unseenscreen.com). If seeing a horde of unthinking creatures staggering towards you is horrific, then seeing them sprint towards you must cross the line into terror.
It just shows how you can breathe life back into a tired old concept and turn everything you thought you knew on its head.
There are now a raft of Zombie films and books coming out, and they seem to be relentlessly, unfalteringly pursuing me. Who knows, maybe I'll try me hand at a short story or two, featuring a flying zombie, or an intelligent one...?
I'm reading a book called World War Z, which is part of my research into how contemporary authors are handling 'end of the world' scenarios. I've also recently read Survivors and the Day of the Triffids (which the BBC are remaking....again).
World War Z is about a Zombie uprising which devastates the whole planet, and is told from the viewpoint of the survivors after they fought back and eventually defeated enough to retake large parts of their countries. The Zombies in this book are traditional, lumbering zombies like in Evil Dead, which come at you slowly, but relentlessly.
On sunday I watched Resident Evil and 28 Days Later, back to back. Resident Evil again uses slow zombies, but 28 Days Later was a real turning point in Zombie fiction.
They learned to run.
This was a brilliant re-imagining of the Zombie myth, and one that was also taken up brilliantly by Dead Set by E4 last year (by the way, if you want to see something really freaky, go to www.unseenscreen.com). If seeing a horde of unthinking creatures staggering towards you is horrific, then seeing them sprint towards you must cross the line into terror.
It just shows how you can breathe life back into a tired old concept and turn everything you thought you knew on its head.
There are now a raft of Zombie films and books coming out, and they seem to be relentlessly, unfalteringly pursuing me. Who knows, maybe I'll try me hand at a short story or two, featuring a flying zombie, or an intelligent one...?
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