Winter 2007

Here’s what you can expect
from
Subterranean
Online in the near future:

* An entire novella by Hugo
and Nebula Award winner
Lucius Shepard

* A full-length original
audio-book by
Kage Baker

* New and original short
fiction from Subterranean Press authors
Poppy Z. Brite,
Joe Hill,
Joe R. Lansdale
and
John Scalzi

* Columns and opinion from
Elizabeth
Bear, Norman Partridge
and
Scott Lynch

* Weekly reviews of the
best new fiction from
Dorman T. Shindler
.

All new, all compelling, all right there on your screen.
It’s what you expect from
Subterranean
magazine — and a taste of what you can expect in the future.

The following features are in this issue:

•
 
Column: Harvesting the Darkness #1 by Norman Partridge

•
 
Column: Dear Patriarchy by Elizabeth Bear

•
 
Fiction: Boiler Maker by R. Andrew Heidel

•
 
Fiction: Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search
Results by John Scalzi

•
 
Fiction: The Surgeon’s Tale by Jeff VanderMeer & Cat Rambo

•
 
Fiction: Vacancy by Lucius Shepard

•
 
Fiction: Wandering the Borderlands by Poppy Z. Brite

•
 
Fiction: Surveillance by Joe R. Lansdale

•
              
Interview: David Morrell

•
              
Review: Book Reviews by Dorman T. Shindler

Bill Schafer has asked me
to sound off once a month in this space, and it’ll be my pleasure to oblige.
I’ll give you a little bit of everything in this column—tales of the
publishing business, advice for those of you trying to carve out writing careers
(the kind dispensed in
Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales
), reviews of books
and movies, and other good stuff. Whatever we talk about, it’s my hope that
Harvesting
the Darkness
will provide you with a moment’s diversion, and maybe even
some material for cerebral chewing once that moment has passed.

This time out, I’ve got a
tale from the writer’s side of the fence. So mind the barbed-wire, climb on
over, and let’s get down to it.

2006 was a very good one
for me as a writer. I’d had a dry spell between novels, and that changed last
Halloween when a new book appeared under my byline.
Dark Harvest
was a
tale of horror’s favorite holiday, taking place on the night itself in a small
town choked with shadows.

It was a short book.
Weighed in at 39,000 words, which is closer to an old-fashioned Gold Medal
crime novel than one of those bestselling bricks you can use for a doorstop.
But that was okay with me.
Dark Harvest
was a book with my name on the
cover and no one else’s; it had chapters; it had your requisite beginning,
middle, and end. It was—wonder of wonders—a novel.

Like I said, it had been a
long time since I’d written one of those. The truth is I’d gotten gun shy about
so much as trying to write one. Oh, I could still manage to turn out novellas
and short stories, but somewhere along the line the idea of tackling writing’s
big monster just plain froze me up.

Which was strange. I’d
written five novels, and I’d had it pretty good. Hey, I couldn’t even complain
about the work-for-hire novel I wrote.
The Crow: Wicked Prayer
made the
jump to the movie screen… or the DVD box, anyway. Either way, I banked a nice
check as a result.

But when it came to
following up that book, I figured I had all my chips on the
table—literally. I was determined that novel #6 move me to that elusive
“next level” as a writer. I started thinking less about the stories I wanted to
tell, more about ways I could mold my writing to make the market pay off like a
rigged slot machine. The way I saw it, my next book had to be bulletproof. It
had to light a fire under my agent, make publishers scramble for their
checkbooks, leave critics stuttering as they searched for complimentary
adjectives they’d never employed.

Strange as it might sound,
I wanted that end result tucked safely in my pocket before I wrote a single
word, and I had the crazy idea that I could accomplish that if I came up with
the right big-ticket concept. That led to some bad habits. I’d talk myself out
of good ideas before I so much as typed a title page. Or I’d write fifty pages
and an outline for my agent and get a lukewarm response. Or he’d tell me those
fifty pages weren’t quite what he was thinking of and ask me to try another
fifty some other way. Add to that the general industry scuttlebutt every writer
deals with—i.e. I’d hear that a certain kind of book wasn’t selling, and
(of course) it would be exactly the kind of book I was trying to write.

Several hunks o’ book ended
up in my filing cabinet that way. I wasted a good chunk of time. A couple
years, actually. It got to the point where I didn’t know what to do… so I
didn’t do much of anything. I didn’t think of it so much as writer’s block—after
all, I could still manage those short stories and novellas. I thought of it as
novelist’s
inertia
. When it came to those suckers, I felt like Captain America (or
maybe the Frankenstein monster) frozen in a block of polar ice. I figured I had
it in me to bust out and roll the way I had before, but man… I just couldn’t
move an inch.

But I kept doing the
shorter stuff. One opportunity that came my way was writing a 10,000 word piece
for Rich Chizmar at Cemetery Dance. Rich was starting a novella series, and he
told me he’d hold open a slot for me. I figured I’d do something hard-edged,
the kind of stuff I’d written when I was first starting out. I’d set the tale
in 1963, in a small town where things went completely wild on Halloween every
year as the locals hunted down a walking nightmare called the October Boy. I’d
toss in some bad J.D.’s in a street rod, burn rubber down a black road straight
into
Twilight Zone
noir country.

The story took off. Pretty
soon that 10,000 words turned into 20,000. The end was not in sight. I emailed
Rich. He said keep writing, and I did. And why wouldn’t I? Hey, for the first
time in a long time, I was actually having fun working on a longer project. And
man—was
that
something different.

By the time I typed “The
End,” I knew I’d busted out of the block of ice. I’d written a novel. And I
knew something else, too—I’d never felt as good typing those two words at
the end of a manuscript as I did with
Dark Harvest
. It was the Norm
Partridge novel I was happiest with, and that was no surprise. After all, I’d
written it for me.

Readers liked the book.
Critical reaction was great—
Publishers Weekly
chose
Dark
Harvest
as one of the Best Books of 2006. I just signed a deal with Paul
Stevens at Tor to reprint
Dark Harvest
in trade and mass market, and I’m
talking to some young guns about a movie option.

In other words: things are
good.

The old prizefighters had a
saying:
Dance with the girl who brung you
. That meant when you got the
big fight, you didn’t try to do things differently. You didn’t change your
style or your trainer. Nope. You stuck with the stuff that got you there in the
first place. You climbed between the ropes and did it your way.

I think I finally learned
that.

From here on out, I’ll be dancing
with the right girl.

[Back
to Table of Contents]

Column
:
Dear
Patriarchy by Elizabeth Bear

At ComiCon last year, some
yoob actually walked away from me when I tried to hand him a copy of
Spin
Control.
Free! Free copies of
Spin Control
. I didn’t even get one!
He had been about to take it, but then I said, “You’ll like Moriarty’s stuff;
she’s really good!” And his eyes went blank and he backed away, protesting that
he didn’t read books by women. Kid in his twenties, too, with the flannel shirted
emo thing going on. Whatever.

At the time, I argued with
him.

It occurs to me that I was
wrong to do so. Because I’m not going to change that guy’s mind.

And what’s more? I don’t
need
to.

That’s right. I don’t have
to care what that guy thinks. No, not him. Nor a thousand more like him.

#

Dear Patriarchy:

I don’t care what you
think.

I’m not here to convert
you. I’m not here to enlighten you. I’m not here to try to earn your respect. I
don’t need it.

I am not scared of you.

You see, I can win without
you. I can make a living without you. I can reach a broad readership of
women–yes, and men too! lots of men! men who are enlightened, and
emotionally secure!–without you. It’s really kind of awesome. After
fifteen years working in corporate America, actually, where I usually had to do
what a particular type of authoritarian men wanted if I wanted to keep my job,
these days, I can pick the audience I care to appeal to.

nolove, Bear.

#

This is not shrill,
aggressive, evangelical feminism. I am not here to prove anything to you. Those
who went before me have done the hard work, the hardest work, and created the
opportunity for me to have that market. And that market exists not because a
vast feminist conspiracy has taken over publishing and they’re not printing
what men like to read, but because a certain percentage of the women and the
men who
do
read are more interested in reading books like mine.

Books with girl cooties.

And, you know. ’splosions.

You know how things come in
waves? For example, if you see one reference to an obscure historical personage
(Sir Phillip Kimberly, perhaps) suddenly, he’ll be everywhere. You’ll be
noticing references every time you click on a web page and every time you open
a book.