Was Egon correct in his terse reply to Janine when she supposes out loud that he reads a lot?
While I don't agree that "Print is dead", it's much less expensive to set up and publish via the web than deal with the costs of print and layout and distribution. One of the reasons there are so many markets out there for Speculative Fiction is that the web has made publishing much less rigorous to get involved with. The web also allows for insane specialization of genre and subgenre... for example, I have the Hotel Nocturne stories which are sort of traditional vampire tales, all centered around a grand hotel built very high up in the Arctic Circle. Because of the six-months of darkness/semidarkness the hotel caters to vampires. So far so good, right? I go looking for markets for these stories and so many horror markets say "no traditional monsters, or no vampire stories", but I find one, a good one, it even pays, I get all ready to final edit and format one of the tales and start to pour over the guidelines again.
Man, when is the golden Star Trek age going to come when we don't need money and everyone spends their days doing what they love, not what they need to survive. Then we could all read/listen to the fascinating tales you and others have created because you can offer them up freely. Will these works get lost and forgotten if you can't find a market for them?
Err...did I get oddly poetic with that? Sorry.
The vampire stories sound so interesting. And I am also a Union Dues fan.
I like to think that if the Union Dues stories stay popular and Escape Pod continues to buy them, I will be able to interest other editors in these stories via name recognition/publishing history alone. My stories never die, I have them all right here. I am banking on the markets being cyclical and that the need for or love of traditional monster stories, or historical adventure fiction, prompts the market to respond.
Just for fun though, here are the opening scenes to "Hotel Nocturne: Employee of the Year"
1
Marguerite dragged a sweat-dampened sleeve across her forehead before attacking the king-sized bed. She tore the ornate green quilt and top sheet off the gigantic mattress and flung them to the floor then stripped and fluffed the goose down pillows.
Redressing the room would take at least another half hour. She glanced at her silver pocket watch and grimaced. “Five more after this,” she mumbled. The mantle clock struck 2, its soft chimes died in the heavy red velvet drapes slung around the gigantic canopy bed.
Marguerite instinctively glanced at the window then silently cursed her inability to adjust to the perpetual darkness of the Arctic winter.
The room was complete now, she checked the small dish beside the basin and ewer, and retrieved two Hotel Coins. Smiling, she dropped them into a small leather bag slung at the hip. The coin sack offered a noticeable weight and pleasant jingle as she made a final check of the room. Satisfied that all waited in perfect order for the occupant she pushed the cart into the wide hallway and pulled the door closed while crossing the threshold.
2
Bright light escaped the staff building through heavy slotted shutters and flickered across the drifting snow beside the path to the door. Marguerite listened to the shallow ruckus from the other day-shifters settling in to their late evening routine of gossip and inquiry. She lingered at the door and braced for the cacophony inside.
It was then that the eyes made themselves visible in the otherwise impenetrable darkness.
Marguerite froze. The entire staff knew the dangers of the path between the rooming house and the hotel. Warned of the wolves prowling the night the rule was never to stray from the lamplight, and above all else, never linger. But, these were not wolf eyes, unless wolves somehow learned to walk upright. “Hello?” she called softly.
“Hello,” came the answer.
“You shouldn’t be in the darkness...” Marguerite saw the owner of the voice then, tall, impossibly skinny, and draped in a black muslin cloak that hung as if it were tied to a scarecrow. The owner’s visage lay hidden behind a red velvet scarf and wide-brimmed hat.
He stepped forward through the snow on nearly silent footsteps. “Room 317,” he said quietly. The words floated through the scarf garbled and nearly indecipherable, “you are the chambermaid?”
“I... I am,” she said as the figure stopped a few inches from her. The guest’s breath reeked of some otherworldly night soil and Marguerite struggled not to turn away from the fetid stench.
He extended a bony and long finger nailed hand wrapped around a clutch of Hotel Coins, “You do good work,” he slurred.
“Thank you sir,” she answered and accepted the heavy coins.
The man bowed slowly and backed into the darkness.
Marguerite shuddered and dropped the Hotel Coins into the sack before opening the door. She stamped the snow from her boots and rushed to the fireplace to warm as she stripped the parka, hood, and mittens that only kept the ambient cold at bay long enough to walk from the grounds to the dormitory.
“How did you do Margie?” Sarah Benevedez jiggled a swollen coin purse before Marguerite’s face.
“I always thought it impolite to brag Sarah, or didn’t you learn that as a child?” Marguerite hung her parka and mittens beside the fireplace and dropped to a long wooden bench beside the coal stove.
“Ha! I knew she was lacking.”
Marguerite slid her boots beneath the bench. “I don’t see what the big deal is anyway. No one even knows what the prize is.”
“You don’t think the guests giving us these gold coins means anything? I think the employee of the year prize is a fortune, and I want it.” Sarah dropped to the bench. “I have thirty three coins, and we still have a few weeks before the final counting.” Sarah again rattled the coins in their pouch.
Marguerite rolled her eyes.
“Come on Margie... Lay yours out. We all did before you got here and I lead the rest of the girls by at least eight.”
“I just want to sleep Sarah.” Marguerite padded past the fireplace to her bunk within the long racks of sleeping spaces. The other girls crowded around and refused to let Marguerite relax. “Go away,” she sighed.
“Come on Margie. Everyone else did...”
Marguerite rubbed her eyes and sat up. “Fine,” she said then dumped her pouch across the quilt and slowly counted out twenty-seven coins.
Sarah’s face lit up with the delighted smugness that Marguerite found especially annoying. “I knew it!”
“Now please, everyone, let me sleep.” Marguerite scooped the coins back into the pouch and tied it lightly around her wrist. The other girls dissipated quickly and Marguerite rolled over and dropped into an exhausted slumber.
And here is the opening scene from:
Burden of Bushido: The Emerald Treasure of the Thuggee Assassins
Amid the great I have traveled
And amid the refuse and forgotten
Many a year and month and day
From the shores of Edo Harbor to the pirate temples of Ankor
Now I lay a stranger in India
Untouchable
With vengeance as my protector
And the Gods as my foe
I riseKintaro Koboyashi - 1859
1
Senajit peered out of the new moon darkness at the small groups of pilgrims spread out around the bonfire. He knew better than to sleep on Pilgrimage Road during the darkest of nights of the month. The tales of The Thuggee were not mere stories told to frighten unruly children, but sinister men who strangled and robbed unwary pilgrims to please the goddess Kali. Even though the British hung four thousand Thuggee and drove them from all but the darkest recesses of the countryside their legacy had not died.
Senjit knew the assassins were nearby because that day he had robbed them.
He scrambled up the low hill to the base of a great mango tree and dug a deep and narrow hole into which he placed the fist-sized emerald, wrapped in sheepskin and tied with a length of silver chain, before covering the hole with the soft earth.
Senajit then strung his remaining meager valuables, a single gold chain and a small purse of rupees, around his waist beneath the folds of his white shirt before slipping back down the hillside to side of Pilgrimage Road.
He stayed in the shadows on the periphery of the bonfire and lay back. He struggled to remain alert to every sound in the deep forest that protected Srisailam Temple. But, the relentless heat of the coming Monsoon season sapped his strength more than the long walk from his village outside Pondicherri.
Senajit's eyes soon fluttered and the sound of distant prayers faded into ghostly echoes.
He awoke breathless; a garrote twisted tight around his neck and strange, cold hands tearing through his clothes.
Senajit struggled for a second then slumped dead.