About the Author
John T. Cullen lives with his wife in San Diego, California, where he writes technical material for the computer systems development industry. Following a stint in the U.S. Army, he worked successfully in small publishing, and later the mortgage business. While working, he earned his B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut, and later his M.S. in Business Administration from Boston University. All the while, his first love has been writing fiction. Writers, professional or aspiring, should check out Mr. Cullen's SharpWriter.com for comprehensive writing resources.
Editorial - April 1999
by John T. Cullen
OSDF AUTHOR WINS BIG. While the final standings are not in as of this writing, we believe our own A.L. Sirois is the only author to have placed two stories in the Top 25 of Eternity's Best of the Web 1998 fiction contest. Both stories were published in OSDF. At this writing, As Bad As It Gets (OSDF April 1998) placed 16th out of nearly 600 entries, while March 11 1936, 5:30 AM (OSDF December 1998) tied for 3rd place. Eternity expects to publish the Top 10 on the Web and in print later this year. Congratulations, Al! We're proud of you, and proud that OSDF placed so well!
ANDRE NORTON. We received an email from Maciej Zaleski-Ejgierd, an associate of world-famous science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton. Andre Norton is the only woman in history to have won the SFWA Grand Master Award, the rarest and highest award in speculative fiction, awarded for lifetime excellence and contributions to the field.
Maciej wanted us to announce the High Hallack Genre Writers' Research and Reference Library, sponsored by Ms. Norton, which is a wonderful new research center for genre writers. Located near Nashville, TN, the center includes a 10,000 volume (and growing) library, including many rare volumes. This center (named after a setting in one of Ms. Norton's novels) has its web site at High Hallack, and other information is available for Andre Norton. Thanks, Maciej!
ALTA VISTA QUICKIES CONTEST. The Wild Wild Web, the CBS-syndicated TV show about entertainment and pop culture on the Web, wants your entry for the 1st annual Quickie Awards. The winners will receive fantastic prizes, and winning entries will be shown during a special episode of the TV show in May. Animation, live action or interactive—if you have a multimedia moving work of art on the Web, it's eligible for the Quickies. We accept entries in any of the following formats: QuickTime, AVI, MOV, MPG, Shockwave and Flash. All you need do is send us the URL of the page that contains your work. (Do not send us the files themselves.)
Among the prizes are an Olympus D-400Z digital camera, sound-editing software from Sonic Foundry and a package of multimedia development software from Macromedia, including the latest versions of Director, Flash, Freehand, Generator and Dreamweaver. All entries must be received by April 14, 1999. This contest is open to citizens of the United States and Canada. For more information and contest rules, point your browser to http://www.getwild.com/theshow or email Susan Kaup, skaup@getwild.com.
ESERIAL NOVELS—Douglass Claig announces the first-ever eserial novel available—for free! He plans to email weekly installments of his novel "Naomi" for free to anyone who will sign up at www.onelist.com. We're anxious to read the first installment, which will be mailed out May 1.
He's probably correct in saying it's the first "eserial," in so far as it's distributed by mail. In terms of serials on the Web, actually, Clocktower Fiction was undoubtedly the first site to publish free serial novels of top genre quality. John Argo's free serial novels "Neon Blue" (300 pages) and "Heartbreaker" (500 pages) went on line in 1996. "Pioneers" went on line in 1997 (200 pages).
These novels continue to be read by thousands of readers around the world—in Mongolia, Brazil, China, Russia, and over 50 other countries. Just this morning we uploaded copies to Vietnam, India, Moscow, and locations around the U.S. and Canada. When the last chapters had been posted in 1997, Clocktower Fiction made them fully available, as they are today, along with various short stories. We stopped serializing when we turned instead, in April 1998, to creating one of the first professional Web-based genre fiction magazines, Outside: Speculative & Dark Fiction, where we publish some of the finest authors around. We pay our authors a professional wage, but the fiction is free to readers around the world.
COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL - San Diego, August 1999. We've received Update Number One informing us that this is C-CI's 30th year and counting. They cover more than comics—some of the hippest movers and shakers from the world of movies and TV attend and sign autographs, including Star Wars' Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) and John de Lancie, Star Trek's Q.
You can attend workshops on animation design and writing. Watch the pros demo their skills—like Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother), Jerry Robinson (DC/Batman), and others. Meet actor Bill Mumy (the kid in the original Lost In Space TV series—most recently credited in Babylon 5), novelist Max Allan Collins (Ms. Tree and 1998 Paradox graphic novel Road to Perdition), and more.
Check Comic-Con International's progress on their web site at http://www.comic-con.org.
REDESIGN. I want to take one more opportunity to congratulate my fellow publisher, Brian Callahan, on his outstanding redesign of Outside: Speculative & Dark Fiction (OSDF).
The changes are not only cosmetic, but functional. Unlike print magazines, which are static one-time shots and tend to disappear within a few weeks, Web publications can maintain large archives of previously published stories. It's as if a print magazine came out each month with new work, plus everything they published before—they'd be the size of a phone book!
While we now publish a new issue monthly, we're using a Webcentric layout scheme developed by Brian Callahan to take advantage of our differences from print magazines. By being our readers, you are taking part in an exciting new pioneering work that will eventually result in universal acceptance and usage of the Internet as a publishing medium—probably in a year or two, when everyone owns an inexpensive e-reader to download novels, short stories, and nonfiction. I predict magazines, newspapers, and advertisers will hand the readers out for free.
RECEIVED: Advance copy of "Choice of Evil" by Andrew Vachss, the 11th Burke novel, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf (NY) in May 1999.
Site designed and implemented by Brian Callahan (brianc@clocktowerfiction.com).
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