DOUGLAS SMITH | Writing the Fantastic

There's a great review of Anthony Sumner's film adaptation of my short horror story "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down" at the, uh, The Zombie Rights Campaign site. Now BHH contains no zombies, so I am touched that ZRC would include a review of the movie on their site dedicated to the rights of the living-challenged.

Some extracts from the review:

"A couple of things really stand out about this film. One is how close to a two-man (person? actor?) play it feels; the story here isn’t about visceral scares or some abstract concept of monstrous-ness, but rather is about the death of trust and intimacy between two people who have been growing apart for a long time, even as they are bound together by tragedy and secrets.

Hi! On June 11-12, 2011, I'll be participating in a 2-day major cycling event called The Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer benefiting The Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, one of the top 5 cancer research hospitals in the world. I'll be cycling over 200 km that weekend, from Toronto to Niagara Falls, with thousands of other riders. All the proceeds will go to The Princess Margaret to support cancer research, treatment, and services. The Princess Margaret is Canada's leading comprehensive institution devoted to cancer research and care, and the work they're doing is leading-edge. Research at the National Cancer Institute of Canada show 171,000 estimated new cases of cancer in Canada this year and 75,300 estimated deaths from cancer in Canada this year. That's why I'm riding--to do something BIG about cancer. I hope that you'll share this incredible adventure with me by supporting me in my fund raising efforts. I've agreed to raise at least $2,500, but I'd like to exceed that. So here's where you come in, because I need your help to reach my goal. Could you please consider making a donation? The link at the bottom of this email will take you directly to my personal fund raising web page for the Ride. Please take the time to support me. To donate, please click the badge below to visit my personal page, or click here. Thanks in advance for your kind and generous support.

Willi Paul interviews me at Planetshifter.com on the new mythologies, inspirational sources, myth making and innovation, shamanism and alchemy, animal identity, and many other things, in one of the more unusual interviews I've had the pleasure to be part of. Check it out here. As an added bonus, you get to read a small extract from my first novel.

The 2010 edition of the SFWA Handbook ("The Business Side of of Writing, By Writers, For Writers") has now been published, containing my updated article on "Selling to Foreign Language Markets." The article contains the same information that I maintain here on my website, outlining my recommended approach for reselling your short fiction to non-English language markets around the world. My approach, of course, leverages the Foreign-language Market List (FML) that I maintain here as well. SFWA, for those who don't know, is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, an organization that aims at supporting professional SF&F writers. Despite the name, its membership includes writers outside of the US. SFWA membership criteria include at least two sales to professional markets that meet SFWA criteria.

I'm be appearing at the inaugural edition of the brand spanking new SFContario, Toronto's newest annual genre convention, being held in downtown Toronto, Nov 19-21. Here's my schedule of panel appearances, signings, and readings, including a special screening of the indie film based on "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down."

Friday 9 PM – Aurora Pin Ceremony (Ballroom BC)
A ceremony to present the new Aurora pins (which are quite spiffy) to all past winners and nominees who are attending SFContario.

Friday 9-11pm – ChiZine Publications Fall 2010 Launch Party(Courtyard Room)
Join CZP, the most excellent publishers of my collection CHIMERASCOPE, for their fall launch of new titles. Readings, food, drinks, freebies, and the opportunity to meet many of the CZP authors and buy their books.

For a limited time, the Kindle version of my latest collection, CHIMERASCOPE (ChiZine Publications), is available at a special price of $2.99 on Amazon.com and £1.71 on Amazon.uk, a 50% savings from the prior Kindle price. And, as with all CZP ebooks, these are DRM-free. So why the drop? It's an experiment, quite frankly. I follow the ebook trends closely, and the one thing that I'm convinced of is that no one in the industry has yet to figure out, to cite an Economics 101 term, the elasticity of demand for ebooks yet. Meaning that no one knows the sweet spot for pricing ebooks. I believe that, unless you're a household name author, the key to driving ebook sales for your work right now is to keep the unit price low. Dropping the price on anything will increase sales. That's a given. But will that increase in unit sales offset the per unit price drop? If this 50% price cut increases ebook copies sold by more than 50%, then this was a smart thing to do. If the increase in ebooks sold is less than 50%, then...well, not so smart.

And the wins keep coming for Anthony Sumner's indie film based on my story BY HER HAND, SHE DRAWS YOU DOWN. The movie won four awards at the Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia last week: Best Actress (Zoe Daelman Chlanda), Best Actor (Jerry Murdock), Best Director of Photography (Bart Mastronardi), Original Musical Score (Gene Hodson), as well as being nominated for Best Short Film and Best Director. Congratulations to everyone involved!

I'm actually having trouble keeping up with the news around the BY HER HAND, SHE DRAWS YOU DOWN movie, but I have to share the latest news. BY HER HAND has won BEST HORROR SHORT at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival!!! Congratulations to everyone involved: producer Alan Rowe Kelly, director Anthony Sumner, actors Zoë Daelman Chlanda and Jerry Murdock, and photographer Bart Mastronardi. And thanks once again for taking such good care of my story!

More cool movie news! The indie film based on my story "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down" has received ever so many nominations at the Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia, including Best Short (Alan Rowe Kelly / Anthony Sumner), Best Director (Anthony Sumner), Best Director of Photography (Bert Mastronardi) , Best Actor (Jerry Murdock), Best Actress (Zoe Daelman Chlanda), and Best Original Music Score (Gene Hodson). Congratulations to everyone involved, and best of luck! The festival runs Oct 21-23.

Claire Horsnell interviewed me for the Torontoist website a while back, and the interview is up on the site now. The interview is a wide-ranging one, covering early influences, favourite writers, use of myth in fiction, my recently completed first novel, dystopian futures, corporate power, Avatar, the "By Her Hand..." movie, and, of course, Springsteen. And Claire does a great job of making me sound way smarter than I am.

Here's an excerpt:

"Most science-fiction, fantasy, and horror fans can point to an early discovery period during which they came to their genre, but for prolific Toronto writer Douglas Smith, author of the recent short story collection Chimerascope, it seems fitting that he had not one, but two significant exploratory phases for his field. 'When I was eight, a friend introduced me to Robert A. Heinlein’s young-adult SF novels,' Smith recalls. 'They were essentially rocket and ray-gun books aimed at young boys. I devoured all of those, but then stopped reading the genre. Then in Grade 11, I had to do a paper in English comparing the works of multiple authors. Amazingly, the teacher actually included a group consisting of Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, which, of course, was the group I picked. That assignment got me back into reading SF and fantasy.'

Read the full interview on the Torontoist site here.