The Slings and Arrows of Publishing the Outrageous

In the following snippet of International Authors "backchannel" communication, surrealist Terrance Lindall reports on his frustrations as he seeks a publisher for the illustrated version of Horace Jeffery Hodges' Bottomless Bottle of Beer, and offers some interesting observations of the process he followed as he began his career as an illustrator.

Jungle Drums in Publishing

So, after a few skirmishes into the tangled publishing jungle, we have learned a couple of things. One is that it is not easy to find a publisher or agent, even if you have a well-respected illustrator who knows a few people in the industry. Why?

First, there are 7 billion people in the world. Many aspire to be writers or artists. The competition is fierce.

Second, the established publishers do not want to take chances. Copy success, use publishing formulae, use authors and illustrators with a pattern of success with the style they are presenting.  The comments I got from presenting BBB are that “it isn’t a comic book format.” Others said, “it isn’t a graphic novel format.” There you go. They do not know what to do with it! I do not blame them for not wanting to take a chance. Why should they? They will be out of business if they gamble with their business, which is always a marginal enterprise. Even Marvel Comics was bankrupt.

The best way to be a successful writer or illustrator is to go out and meet people in the industry. When I started out, I published my own poster of “The Stone Eater and advertised in Stars and Stripes, and Heavy Metal. One day I walked into the office of James Warren to buy advertising in Creepy and Eerie. They asked what I wanted to advertise and I showed them the poster. They showed James Warren who came out of his office to meet me. The exchange that followed got me a cover commission.

Later I set up a table at a Sci-fi Convention at Columbia University. There was Stu Schiff who had a table with his Whispers and first editions he put out of famous authors like Isaac Asimov and Stephen King.  He came over and we got to know each other and he bought a small painting. Later at the Lunicon Sci-fi publishing convention in NYC I exhibited my “Visionary Foal” and won the Grand Prize for Fantasy Art. There Stu introduced me to David Hartwell and he gave me the commission for Pamela Sargent’s Watch Star.

The jungle drums were tapping out that there’s an interesting new illustrator out there. So everywhere I went they came out to view my portfolio and treated me with the utmost respect.

In other words, one cannot simply sit in your office and send out emails. There is magic in meeting people face to face. There is magnetism in persona contact.

I do not have time to do that for BBB. I have made a bit of effort to see what could be done immediately with BBB, but now it is what I already said was a long slog. I no longer attend conventions, and even if I did, they prefer the “new young talent.”

So, we will just keep going until “something comes along…”

Observing the Observer

 

          Sun Watcher

She’s a sun watcher

Waiting for the advent

Of the dawn

A dreaming sun watcher

Waiting for the breaking

Of the dawn

Day swings open gates

And the sun watcher relates

Arcane wisdom that has come

From afar

As a sundial indicates

Shadows of the hour

Lovely watcher celebrates

Messages streaming from the star

She’s a sun watcher

Reading well the lights

From beyond

A shining sun watcher

She glows with the signs

From beyond

Dan Brown and Dante: Exposing the Clues

I was happy to read a story in The Independent about the forthcoming book inspired by Dante from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown.  To be called Inferno, Brown says his new book will

...take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm, a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways.

Inferno will feature the return of Da Vinci Code culture de-mystify-er and professional Harvard Symbologist (Symbologist?) Robert Langdon, who as usual will penetrate a semiotic labyrinth of conspiring global elites, slay miscellaneous political minotaurs, and enjoy the museums and restaurants of Florence as readers become "entwined in a mystery that has global ramifications tied to the ominous and truly mesmerizing details of Dante’s masterful work."

While I am pleased to anticipate that Mr. Brown's effort will promote appreciation for Dante amongst the "general public" and the "popular readership", I remain mystified by the sub-sub-passageways underlying his labyrinthine assumption.  That is, with so many clever Harvard Symbologists running around, why do global elites (particularly, as Mr. Brown suggests, elites from the Italian peninsula) have this compelling need to cast bizarre and self-exposing riddles into the wake of cultural history?

Illustrated Bottomless Bottle of Beer now Available

Click and Read Opening Pages

Terrance Lindall has completed work on an illustrated version of Horace Jeffery Hodges' novella The Bottomless Bottle of Beer (which appeared originally in Emanations: Second Sight). The project has been published by the Yuko Nii Foundation and the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center.

In addition to followers of fine art and literary fantasy, the book--especially signed copies--will be of interest to collectors. Lindall is a well-known artist who has created illustrations for Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, Heavy Metal, the Epic Comics imprint of Marvel Comics, Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine, and John Milton's Paradise Lost, among other texts.

Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the cosmic orbs, stare into the Sun (from The Paradiso Canto I)

And as a ray descending from the sky
  gives rise to another, which climbs back again,
  as a pilgrim yearns for home; so through my eye

her action, like a ray into my mind,
  gave rise to mine: I stared into the Sun
  so hard that here it would have left me blind;

but much is granted to our senses there,
  in that garden made to be man's proper place,
  that is not granted us when we are here.

I had to look away soon, and yet not
  so soon but what I saw him spark and blaze
  like new-tapped iron when it pours white-hot.

And suddenly, as it appeared to me,
  day was added to day, as if He who can
  had added a new Sun to Heaven's glory.

Beatrice stared at the eternal spheres
  entranced, unmoving; and I looked away
  from the Sun's height to fix my eyes on hers.

And as I looked, I felt begin within me
  what Glaucus felt eating the herb that made him
  a god among the others in the sea.

How speak trans-human change to human sense?
  Let the example speak until God's grace

  grants the pure spirit the experience

 

Mike Chivers Reviews Emanations: Second Sight

Mike Chivers reviews Emanations: Second Sight in his blog Necronomania.


Mike Chivers on Location

From Story to Film

There has been back channel discussion about making a film (possibly an animation) of Horace Jeffery Hodges' short novella, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer", which was published in Emanations: Second Sight.



At this point we need investors, then we'll hire a studio, animators, voice actors, and away we go...

La Pléiade

A Highbrow Revolution in Consciousness: what would it look like?

Click here: Highbrow Consciousness As It Is