Random Musings: Poll Results: What You Are Willing To Pay For eBooks

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More on this later. Quite interesting!

What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITH DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):

  • Up to 50% of Trade Paperback price (27%, 29 Votes)
  • No sale if it has DRM (25%, 27 Votes)
  • Up to 75% of Trade Paperback price (24%, 25 Votes)
  • Up to 100% of Trade Paperback price (12%, 13 Votes)
  • Up to 25% of Trade Paperback price (9%, 10 Votes)
  • Up to 10% of Trade Paperback price (3%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 106

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What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITHOUT DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):

  • Up to 75% of Trade Paperback price (34%, 34 Votes)
  • Up to 50% of Trade Paperback price (28%, 28 Votes)
  • Up to 100% of Trade Paperback price (26%, 26 Votes)
  • Up to 25% of Trade Paperback price (6%, 6 Votes)
  • Up to 10% of Trade Paperback price (6%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 99

Loading ... Loading …

Poll Results: What You Are Willing To Pay For eBooks

Posted on by
Reply
More on this later. Quite interesting!

What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITH DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):

  • Up to 50% of Trade Paperback price (27%, 29 Votes)
  • No sale if it has DRM (25%, 27 Votes)
  • Up to 75% of Trade Paperback price (24%, 25 Votes)
  • Up to 100% of Trade Paperback price (12%, 13 Votes)
  • Up to 25% of Trade Paperback price (9%, 10 Votes)
  • Up to 10% of Trade Paperback price (3%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 106

 Loading …

What are you willing to pay for a newly released ebook WITHOUT DRM (within the first 3 months of release of an original fiction title):

  • Up to 75% of Trade Paperback price (34%, 34 Votes)
  • Up to 50% of Trade Paperback price (28%, 28 Votes)
  • Up to 100% of Trade Paperback price (26%, 26 Votes)
  • Up to 25% of Trade Paperback price (6%, 6 Votes)
  • Up to 10% of Trade Paperback price (6%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 99

 Loading …

Random Musings: Interview with Permuted Press Author – Brian Easton

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Over at Permuted Press, they’re releasing some great new books, especially some dark, apocalyptic fiction. I’m going to be doing some interviews with a few of the authors/editors there so I hope you’ll take the time to check out their work. Last week I interviewed author, Kim Paffenroth. Today, please welcome author, Brian Easton.

————

To start, can you tell me a little about yourself?

Well, I’m originally from a small town in southern Illinois. My father was a minister, as was my grandfather, my brother, two uncles and two cousins – this is my pedigree. My exposure to spirituality and faith-based phenomena cultivated a lifelong interest in the religious systems of the world, but it was the occult that I’ve spent more time studying than anything. In 1984 I began a research campaign into the occult, and majored in socio-cultural anthropology to that end. I’m also obliged to tell you, lest anyone think I’ve spent my life with my nose in a book, that I’ve trapped wild boar in Tennessee for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, been a cowboy in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, and worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad across Colorado and Utah.

How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?

My mother gave me her old manual Royal typewriter when I was about ten years old. I immediately tore out a piece of spiral bound notebook paper and wrote my first story on it. I was a “monster kid” in the 70’s. I loved the Wolf Man and Frankenstein and the Mummy, so that’s what I wrote about. Oh, and I made whole typewritten comic books of my own super heroes.

In my twenties I decided to compile a bunch of my short stories into a three-ring binder. I cleaned them up, filled in the gaps and called it a book. By the time I was 30 years-old I’d written six manuscripts with the same characters and ongoing story. I sent some of them to random publishers, not knowing then what we all know now, that publishers ignore unsolicited manuscripts. It wasn’t until 1999 that my girlfriend (now my wife) encouraged me to get serious about my writing. She introduced me to Print-on-Demand Publishing. The costs were minimal compared to what I’d seen from vanity presses, and I thought that if I could just get my stuff out there maybe a publisher would notice me and offer to take me on. I ended up self-publishing two novels, first in 2003 and again in 2008, and they both won Independent Publisher awards. Last year Permuted Press contacted me and offered me a contract for both books, so I guess the plan paid off.

You have a new book coming out, Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter. Tell me what inspired you to write this?

Autobiography is the first book I was telling you about, except it used to be called: When the Autumn Moon is Bright. Remember those homemade comic books I mentioned? One of them featured two monster-hunting superheroes, a werewolf hunter and vampire killer. I’ve always been infatuated with werewolves, so I think it was only natural that I developed the Werewolf Stalker character. He became Sylvester Logan James, the central figure of both books.

I think my earliest inspiration for a werewolf hunter goes back to my father, because he absolutely hated the whole idea of werewolves. I remember when I was nine or ten; I had Power Record’s “The Curse of the Werewolf,” one of Marvel Comics old 70’s horror titles. I was listening to the 45 and following along in the comic when my dad overheard the narration and turned off the phonograph. He didn’t like all the talk of curses and evil, and he saw the werewolf as a hateful, demonic creature, so he confiscated the record. I still remember the conviction in his voice as he explained to me why I couldn’t listen to it. It didn’t stop me from liking those things, but it made a lasting impression.

I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this novel and what’s dark about it?

Dark is my middle name, and this book (and its sequel) definitely falls, four-square into that category. In fact, one reviewer said the sequel was, “Much, much darker in tone than the first book in this series, though you wouldn’t think that could be possible.” As far as I’m concerned, dark fiction is about more than a high body-count, and gratuitous violence just doesn’t cut it; you have to create and sustain an atmosphere. As I see it, there are two basic sources of darkness – the world we see and the one we don’t. Some horror novels use crime and human depravity to create their darkness; others focus on supernatural entities and powers. What I’ve tried to do is merge that human corruption with those diabolic agencies, and showcase the dark side of everything from religion to relationships. The book is written from Sylvester’s point of view and Sylvester has a very haunted and dark-turned mind. Sylvester harbors an internecine hatred for the Beast (werewolves), the kind that burns people up from the inside. It’s the very foundation of his life, and that by itself makes for a frighteningly dark world.

You quoted Nietzsche when you described the main character to me. He sounds complex. Tell me about him.

Yes, I was referring to Nietzsche’s quote: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” This describes Sylvester’s condition to a tee. Because here’s a man who has always wanted to be honorable and decent, and yet can’t really afford to be because he has this blood-feud with the Beast. He goes through periods where he accepts his own evil as a necessity, and then turns around to resume his struggle to be something better than he has become. I think that’s what keeps the character, anti-hero that he is, from becoming an all-out villain…he may do horrible things but he is never at peace with them. If a protagonist loses the readers sympathy, it won’t be long before he loses their interest as well, and when that happens they stop reading. This is the most delicate line I have to walk with Sylvester, and the idea behind it is that even a bad-guy can be a hero if he’s going against someone or something even viler than he is. That gives me some latitude with the character because I see the werewolf in the same terms my dad did. It also gives me a chance to pit the two kinds of darkness against one another.

This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.

This is the piece I used for the frontispiece of the book before it was re-issued:

“What are we running from, Logan?” Samantha shouted through her tears. “I’ll tell you everything later—I swear I will! But please don’t ask me now. Just hang on to Josh.” The road to the cottage was patched with ice, and despite the truck’s four-wheel-drive capability, I could feel the tires slipping. I slowed down as much as I dared. A single peal of metallic thunder rumbled from the roof of the cab as it buckled inward. Samantha screamed as the truck fish-tailed side to side, narrowly missing the embankments. My fight with the steering wheel was handicapped by the Colt, which I refused to release. The windshield had split into a “V,” and the maddening screech of talons against painted steel made my blood run cold. I regained control of the truck, smashed the .45’s barrel into the overhead bulge and pulled the trigger. The report exploded inside the cab and shattered the back glass, but it didn’t stop a demon’s claw from bursting through the roof! As the monster fished for prey through ruptured steel, the truck careened out of control. Sam huddled with Josh against the passenger door. Her eyes were ablaze in terror at the sight of the werewolf’s groping limb. I fired in repetition at the arm and the more vital areas at the other end of it, covering the upholstery in a steaming blood bath. The road ahead curved, but the truck continued its broadside slide. There was neither time nor opportunity to react as the earth dropped off beneath the wheels. The last things I was aware of were upside-down trees, and Samantha crying out my name.

What can we expect from you next? Is this the beginning of a series?

It is. As I’ve said, Permuted Press contracted with me for my first two books. The second, Heart of Scars, should also be available this year. I have a third installment in the series in mind, but I won’t be starting on that until the first two are up and running again. Beyond that I want to do a prequel that covers the life of Sylvester’s mentor Michael Winterfox.

Where can we find you on the internet?

My website is www.hauntedjack.com, and that contains information and updates on the novels. You can also find me on Facebook under Brian P. Easton, I update that more regularly.

Who would you say your primary literary influences are?

HP Lovecraft is by far my most prolific literary influence. He remains the only author I’ve read who has the ability to get under my skin and into my head. On the other hand, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is my favorite book of all time and represents my other favorite genre: the western. Cormac writes extreme violence as if it was verse, and depicts scenes of atrocity with such grace that it’s almost poetic.

————

Brian, this sounds right up my alley. Congratulations on finding your way to a great publishing house (I hope I get that lucky!) and thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions. I certainly hope I can have you back for the next book in the series!

Interview with Permuted Press Author – Brian Easton

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Over at Permuted Press, they’re releasing some great new books, especially some dark, apocalyptic fiction. I’m going to be doing some interviews with a few of the authors/editors there so I hope you’ll take the time to check out their work. Last week I interviewed author, Kim Paffenroth. Today, please welcome author, Brian Easton.

————

To start, can you tell me a little about yourself?

Well, I’m originally from a small town in southern Illinois. My father was a minister, as was my grandfather, my brother, two uncles and two cousins – this is my pedigree. My exposure to spirituality and faith-based phenomena cultivated a lifelong interest in the religious systems of the world, but it was the occult that I’ve spent more time studying than anything. In 1984 I began a research campaign into the occult, and majored in socio-cultural anthropology to that end. I’m also obliged to tell you, lest anyone think I’ve spent my life with my nose in a book, that I’ve trapped wild boar in Tennessee for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, been a cowboy in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, and worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad across Colorado and Utah.

How long have you been writing and how did you get to this point in your career?

My mother gave me her old manual Royal typewriter when I was about ten years old. I immediately tore out a piece of spiral bound notebook paper and wrote my first story on it. I was a “monster kid” in the 70’s. I loved the Wolf Man and Frankenstein and the Mummy, so that’s what I wrote about. Oh, and I made whole typewritten comic books of my own super heroes.

In my twenties I decided to compile a bunch of my short stories into a three-ring binder. I cleaned them up, filled in the gaps and called it a book. By the time I was 30 years-old I’d written six manuscripts with the same characters and ongoing story. I sent some of them to random publishers, not knowing then what we all know now, that publishers ignore unsolicited manuscripts. It wasn’t until 1999 that my girlfriend (now my wife) encouraged me to get serious about my writing. She introduced me to Print-on-Demand Publishing. The costs were minimal compared to what I’d seen from vanity presses, and I thought that if I could just get my stuff out there maybe a publisher would notice me and offer to take me on. I ended up self-publishing two novels, first in 2003 and again in 2008, and they both won Independent Publisher awards. Last year Permuted Press contacted me and offered me a contract for both books, so I guess the plan paid off.

You have a new book coming out, Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter. Tell me what inspired you to write this?

Autobiography is the first book I was telling you about, except it used to be called: When the Autumn Moon is Bright. Remember those homemade comic books I mentioned? One of them featured two monster-hunting superheroes, a werewolf hunter and vampire killer. I’ve always been infatuated with werewolves, so I think it was only natural that I developed the Werewolf Stalker character. He became Sylvester Logan James, the central figure of both books.

I think my earliest inspiration for a werewolf hunter goes back to my father, because he absolutely hated the whole idea of werewolves. I remember when I was nine or ten; I had Power Record’s “The Curse of the Werewolf,” one of Marvel Comics old 70’s horror titles. I was listening to the 45 and following along in the comic when my dad overheard the narration and turned off the phonograph. He didn’t like all the talk of curses and evil, and he saw the werewolf as a hateful, demonic creature, so he confiscated the record. I still remember the conviction in his voice as he explained to me why I couldn’t listen to it. It didn’t stop me from liking those things, but it made a lasting impression.

I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this novel and what’s dark about it?

Dark is my middle name, and this book (and its sequel) definitely falls, four-square into that category. In fact, one reviewer said the sequel was, “Much, much darker in tone than the first book in this series, though you wouldn’t think that could be possible.” As far as I’m concerned, dark fiction is about more than a high body-count, and gratuitous violence just doesn’t cut it; you have to create and sustain an atmosphere. As I see it, there are two basic sources of darkness – the world we see and the one we don’t. Some horror novels use crime and human depravity to create their darkness; others focus on supernatural entities and powers. What I’ve tried to do is merge that human corruption with those diabolic agencies, and showcase the dark side of everything from religion to relationships. The book is written from Sylvester’s point of view and Sylvester has a very haunted and dark-turned mind. Sylvester harbors an internecine hatred for the Beast (werewolves), the kind that burns people up from the inside. It’s the very foundation of his life, and that by itself makes for a frighteningly dark world.

You quoted Nietzsche when you described the main character to me. He sounds complex. Tell me about him.

Yes, I was referring to Nietzsche’s quote: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” This describes Sylvester’s condition to a tee. Because here’s a man who has always wanted to be honorable and decent, and yet can’t really afford to be because he has this blood-feud with the Beast. He goes through periods where he accepts his own evil as a necessity, and then turns around to resume his struggle to be something better than he has become. I think that’s what keeps the character, anti-hero that he is, from becoming an all-out villain…he may do horrible things but he is never at peace with them. If a protagonist loses the readers sympathy, it won’t be long before he loses their interest as well, and when that happens they stop reading. This is the most delicate line I have to walk with Sylvester, and the idea behind it is that even a bad-guy can be a hero if he’s going against someone or something even viler than he is. That gives me some latitude with the character because I see the werewolf in the same terms my dad did. It also gives me a chance to pit the two kinds of darkness against one another.

This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.

This is the piece I used for the frontispiece of the book before it was re-issued:

“What are we running from, Logan?” Samantha shouted through her tears.
“I’ll tell you everything later—I swear I will! But please don’t ask me now. Just hang on to Josh.”
The road to the cottage was patched with ice, and despite the truck’s four-wheel-drive capability, I could feel the tires slipping. I slowed down as much as I dared.

A single peal of metallic thunder rumbled from the roof of the cab as it buckled inward. Samantha screamed as the truck fish-tailed side to side, narrowly missing the embankments. My fight with the steering wheel was handicapped by the Colt, which I refused to release.

The windshield had split into a “V,” and the maddening screech of talons against painted steel made my blood run cold. I regained control of the truck, smashed the .45’s barrel into the overhead bulge and pulled the trigger. The report exploded inside the cab and shattered the back glass, but it didn’t stop a demon’s claw from bursting through the roof!

As the monster fished for prey through ruptured steel, the truck careened out of control. Sam huddled with Josh against the passenger door. Her eyes were ablaze in terror at the sight of the werewolf’s groping limb. I fired in repetition at the arm and the more vital areas at the other end of it, covering the upholstery in a steaming blood bath.

The road ahead curved, but the truck continued its broadside slide. There was neither time nor opportunity to react as the earth dropped off beneath the wheels. The last things I was aware of were upside-down trees, and Samantha crying out my name.

What can we expect from you next? Is this the beginning of a series?

It is. As I’ve said, Permuted Press contracted with me for my first two books. The second, Heart of Scars, should also be available this year. I have a third installment in the series in mind, but I won’t be starting on that until the first two are up and running again. Beyond that I want to do a prequel that covers the life of Sylvester’s mentor Michael Winterfox.

Where can we find you on the internet?

My website is www.hauntedjack.com, and that contains information and updates on the novels. You can also find me on Facebook under Brian P. Easton, I update that more regularly.

Who would you say your primary literary influences are?

HP Lovecraft is by far my most prolific literary influence. He remains the only author I’ve read who has the ability to get under my skin and into my head. On the other hand, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is my favorite book of all time and represents my other favorite genre: the western. Cormac writes extreme violence as if it was verse, and depicts scenes of atrocity with such grace that it’s almost poetic.

————

Brian, this sounds right up my alley. Congratulations on finding your way to a great publishing house (I hope I get that lucky!) and thanks again for taking the time to answer these questions. I certainly hope I can have you back for the next book in the series!

Random Musings: Interview With Apex Book Company Editor – Jennifer Brozek

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Over at Apex Book Company, they’re releasing some great new books, especially some wonderfully dark fantasy. I’m going to be doing some interviews with a few of the authors/editors there so I hope you’ll take the time to check out their work. Last week I interviewed Sara M. Harvey and earlier this week was Maurice Broaddus. Today is editor, Jennifer Brozek.

————

To start, can you tell me a little about yourself.

I am an author, award winning editor, award nominated RPG writer and small press publisher who should probably sleep more than she does. I’ve been a full time freelance writer for 3.5 years and have never worked harder in my life. I can’t decide if I want to be Neil Gaiman and Stephen King’s unholy literary love child or a clone of anthologist editor Ellen Datlow. I’m married, have three cats and over one thousand books. In general, I consider myself a wordslinger and an optimist—which you kind of have to be in the publishing industry.

How long have you been writing/editing and how did you get to this point in your career?

I have been writing since the early 1990s and have been a professional author and editor since the year 2000. To get to this point in my career, I took a leap of faith in November 2006, quit my tech job and spent a year “just writing.” During that year, I met up with a freelance tech writer who got me an “in” at a big corporation who uses freelance tech writers all the time. I learned how to do that on the fly while I wrote more than 330,000 words of fiction that year—half of which was published in the following year.

The editing came later when I had the idea for my award winning anthology Grant Pass (Aug 2009, Morrigan Books). Turns out I had a knack for editing as well as writing and many projects came along for the ride. Now, I split my time between all of my loves: writing, editing, and publishing. I’m a bit like a Swiss Army knife in the publishing industry.

You have a new anthology out, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. Tell me what inspired you to put this together?

In June 2010, I have a horror collection, called In a Gilded Light, coming out from Dark Quest Books. It is a collection of horror and supernatural vignettes. One of those vignettes is called Snipe Hunting. I had a “what if” thought wondering what would happen if someone sent a city boy on a hunt for a snipe… and he found one… and it turned out to be an alien? It got me to thinking about how urban legends would change if there was an alien encounter component to the story. I chatted with the idea with Apex Publications owner, Jason Sizemore, and he liked what he heard.

I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this collection and what’s dark about it?

I don’t think you have any worries with Close Encounters of the Urban Kind being dark fiction. It very clearly is. There’s a lot of scary urban legends investigated with an even darker element of the alien encounter. While I do have a couple of nicer stories in the anthology, that is just to bring the reader up towards the light a little before I plunge them back down into the dark. There is a high body count, several stories that I wouldn’t read at night and, did I mention the alien clowns? Seriously. Evil alien clown.

You are exploring urban legends in this in addition to alien encounters. Give us a hint as to some of the more popular urban legends you explored.

The biggest thing I wanted to bring forth was that when urban legends or aliens are concerned, there is no safe haven. The most popular urban legends in the book are the ones that deal with people being chased in their car of having something evil in the car with them: the ax murderer in the backseat, the gang initiation, the mysterious black SUV chasing you, being kidnapped in your car and running over something living. People spend a lot of time in their cars and feel very safe there. I liked the idea of removing the car as a safe haven. Other urban legends involved strangers in the house or breaking into the house— again destroying the safe haven.

Was this a particularly difficult anthology to edit?

Honestly, no. It wasn’t. Not once I figured out two things about the overall arcing themes of the anthology. First, every story had to be about or start with an encounter. There are no prior relationships between the human encountering the alien in the setting of the urban legend. Then, as most urban legends grow from mere encounters to full stories of why the ax murderer was in the backseat, I turned reading the anthology into a journey. The beginning stories have no explanation at all. The middle ones have some explanations. The ending stories give a lot of detail on why things are happening.

The hardest part about editing this anthology was rejecting certain stories—not because they weren’t good—but because they did not fit the encounter theme of the anthology. I sent a couple of those stories up the line to Jason who published them in the April 2010 companion issue of Apex Magazine.

This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.

This quote comes from Jennifer Pelland’s story, The Invitation, and it has stuck with me ever since I read it.

“Everything comes from something, Daniel. Urban legends come from folklore and myths that were once born in truth.” She stabbed at her floral flannelled chest, her expression pleading. “I’ve merely made the connections. Why can’t it be everyone else who is wrong?”

Sometimes, the craziest people among us are the ones that know what’s really going on.

What can we expect from you next?

Quite a lot actually. This is a big publication year for me.

May 2010 – Shanghai Vampocalypse – Published by Savage Mojo, this is an RPG book using the Savage Worlds rules. The year is 2048 and high tech Shanghai is about to meet a supernatural monster of its own creation. If one vampire is a monster, eight million is an apocalypse.

May 2010 – The Little Finance Book That Could – Published by Lean Marketing Press, this is an autobiographical book on what I did to get out of debt and stay out of debt. It has my ten rules for getting out of debt and five principles of financial responsibility.

June 2010 – In a Gilded Light: 105 Tales of the Macabre – Published by Dark Quest Books, this is a horror collection of stories from me where I take common events and twist them into something dark and horrible. There is a high body count and most of the people I kill off are my friends. Every reviewer has admitted to nightmares or uneasy sleep after reading this collection.

September 2010 – Beauty Has Her Way – Published by Dark Quest Books, this is my next anthology. It is about women across the ages using all of their assets to get what they want. This is not a heroine’s book unless she knows how to do bad in the name of good. Beauty will have her way…even if she has to get down and dirty to do it.

Where can we find you on the internet? Blog? Twitter? Web site? Book trailer?

I live online. 100% of my work is due to the internet. You can find my portal at www.jenniferbrozek.com. I blog over at Livejournal and I twitter under the name JenniferBrozek. Finally, I am on Facebook as an individual and I have a fan page. Feel free to add me to your FB, LJ, Twitter feeds.

Any final comments or thoughts you’d like to convey that you haven’t covered?

I am a big supporter of small presses. Every company I mentioned is a small press and I publish my small press magazine, The Edge of Propinquity. I would like to encourage everyone to support their small presses, the people who work there and the authors they publish. Our supporters and our readers really are a deciding factor in whether or not we eat, pay bills and can afford to go to conventions. Please think of your small presses when you go looking for something new to read. We do appreciate it.

—————

Jennifer, you do, indeed, have a busy publishing year ahead of you and I agree about small presses. Everyone should support them. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions, I really appreciate it, and I certainly hope I can have you back for future works! I want to know what else you plan on dreaming up!

Interview With Apex Book Company Editor – Jennifer Brozek

Posted on by
Reply
Over at Apex Book Company, they’re releasing some great new books, especially some wonderfully dark fantasy. I’m going to be doing some interviews with a few of the authors/editors there so I hope you’ll take the time to check out their work. Last week I interviewed Sara M. Harvey and earlier this week was Maurice Broaddus. Today is editor, Jennifer Brozek.

————

To start, can you tell me a little about yourself.

I am an author, award winning editor, award nominated RPG writer and small press publisher who should probably sleep more than she does. I’ve been a full time freelance writer for 3.5 years and have never worked harder in my life. I can’t decide if I want to be Neil Gaiman and Stephen King’s unholy literary love child or a clone of anthologist editor Ellen Datlow. I’m married, have three cats and over one thousand books. In general, I consider myself a wordslinger and an optimist—which you kind of have to be in the publishing industry.

How long have you been writing/editing and how did you get to this point in your career?

I have been writing since the early 1990s and have been a professional author and editor since the year 2000. To get to this point in my career, I took a leap of faith in November 2006, quit my tech job and spent a year “just writing.” During that year, I met up with a freelance tech writer who got me an “in” at a big corporation who uses freelance tech writers all the time. I learned how to do that on the fly while I wrote more than 330,000 words of fiction that year—half of which was published in the following year.

The editing came later when I had the idea for my award winning anthology Grant Pass (Aug 2009, Morrigan Books). Turns out I had a knack for editing as well as writing and many projects came along for the ride. Now, I split my time between all of my loves: writing, editing, and publishing. I’m a bit like a Swiss Army knife in the publishing industry.

You have a new anthology out, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind. Tell me what inspired you to put this together?

In June 2010, I have a horror collection, called In a Gilded Light, coming out from Dark Quest Books. It is a collection of horror and supernatural vignettes. One of those vignettes is called Snipe Hunting. I had a “what if” thought wondering what would happen if someone sent a city boy on a hunt for a snipe… and he found one… and it turned out to be an alien? It got me to thinking about how urban legends would change if there was an alien encounter component to the story. I chatted with the idea with Apex Publications owner, Jason Sizemore, and he liked what he heard.

I have a keen interest in dark fiction. Tell me how you would classify this collection and what’s dark about it?

I don’t think you have any worries with Close Encounters of the Urban Kind being dark fiction. It very clearly is. There’s a lot of scary urban legends investigated with an even darker element of the alien encounter. While I do have a couple of nicer stories in the anthology, that is just to bring the reader up towards the light a little before I plunge them back down into the dark. There is a high body count, several stories that I wouldn’t read at night and, did I mention the alien clowns? Seriously. Evil alien clown.

You are exploring urban legends in this in addition to alien encounters. Give us a hint as to some of the more popular urban legends you explored.

The biggest thing I wanted to bring forth was that when urban legends or aliens are concerned, there is no safe haven. The most popular urban legends in the book are the ones that deal with people being chased in their car of having something evil in the car with them: the ax murderer in the backseat, the gang initiation, the mysterious black SUV chasing you, being kidnapped in your car and running over something living. People spend a lot of time in their cars and feel very safe there. I liked the idea of removing the car as a safe haven. Other urban legends involved strangers in the house or breaking into the house— again destroying the safe haven.

Was this a particularly difficult anthology to edit?

Honestly, no. It wasn’t. Not once I figured out two things about the overall arcing themes of the anthology. First, every story had to be about or start with an encounter. There are no prior relationships between the human encountering the alien in the setting of the urban legend. Then, as most urban legends grow from mere encounters to full stories of why the ax murderer was in the backseat, I turned reading the anthology into a journey. The beginning stories have no explanation at all. The middle ones have some explanations. The ending stories give a lot of detail on why things are happening.

The hardest part about editing this anthology was rejecting certain stories—not because they weren’t good—but because they did not fit the encounter theme of the anthology. I sent a couple of those stories up the line to Jason who published them in the April 2010 companion issue of Apex Magazine.

This blog is called Random Musings, so give me a random quote from the book – something you’re particularly fond of.

This quote comes from Carole Johnstone’s story, The Invitation, and it has stuck with me ever since I read it.

“Everything comes from something, Daniel. Urban legends come from folklore and myths that were once born in truth.” She stabbed at her floral flannelled chest, her expression pleading. “I’ve merely made the connections. Why can’t it be everyone else who is wrong?”

Sometimes, the craziest people among us are the ones that know what’s really going on.

What can we expect from you next?

Quite a lot actually. This is a big publication year for me.

May 2010 – Shanghai Vampocalypse – Published by Savage Mojo, this is an RPG book using the Savage Worlds rules. The year is 2048 and high tech Shanghai is about to meet a supernatural monster of its own creation. If one vampire is a monster, eight million is an apocalypse.

May 2010 – The Little Finance Book That Could – Published by Lean Marketing Press, this is an autobiographical book on what I did to get out of debt and stay out of debt. It has my ten rules for getting out of debt and five principles of financial responsibility.

June 2010 – In a Gilded Light: 105 Tales of the Macabre – Published by Dark Quest Books, this is a horror collection of stories from me where I take common events and twist them into something dark and horrible. There is a high body count and most of the people I kill off are my friends. Every reviewer has admitted to nightmares or uneasy sleep after reading this collection.

September 2010 – Beauty Has Her Way – Published by Dark Quest Books, this is my next anthology. It is about women across the ages using all of their assets to get what they want. This is not a heroine’s book unless she knows how to do bad in the name of good. Beauty will have her way…even if she has to get down and dirty to do it.

Where can we find you on the internet? Blog? Twitter? Web site? Book trailer?

I live online. 100% of my work is due to the internet. You can find my portal at www.jenniferbrozek.com. I blog over at Livejournal and I twitter under the name JenniferBrozek. Finally, I am on Facebook as an individual and I have a fan page. Feel free to add me to your FB, LJ, Twitter feeds.

Any final comments or thoughts you’d like to convey that you haven’t covered?

I am a big supporter of small presses. Every company I mentioned is a small press and I publish my small press magazine, The Edge of Propinquity. I would like to encourage everyone to support their small presses, the people who work there and the authors they publish. Our supporters and our readers really are a deciding factor in whether or not we eat, pay bills and can afford to go to conventions. Please think of your small presses when you go looking for something new to read. We do appreciate it.

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Jennifer, you do, indeed, have a busy publishing year ahead of you and I agree about small presses. Everyone should support them. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions, I really appreciate it, and I certainly hope I can have you back for future works! I want to know what else you plan on dreaming up!