Douglas Smith | Writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction

And yet another kick-ass review for my latest collection, Chimerascope, this time from the fine online magazine, Ideomancer. Some excerpts:

"[A] superb collection of Douglas Smith’s previously published speculative fiction, stuffed with Aurora nominees (and one winner) and Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror honorable mentions. Spanning a wide spectrum of classic sci-fi, stories inspired by mythology, and post-apocalyptic fiction, this is a collection you’ll want to own and re-read. ... It’s a complex mix: one of the many reasons this collection succeeds so powerfully."

You can read the entire review at Ideomancer here.

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Please tweet this! Here's a note from Sandra Kasturi and Brett Savory, co-publishers of ChiZine Publications, the wonderful folks who have done such a great job publishing my collection, Chimerascope:

"Recently, Leisure Books, due to financial difficulties, had to cease its sponsorship of ChiZine.com. There is a note up on ChiZine.com explaining the details, but this has no effect on ChiZine Publications. The sponsorship agreement never covered CZP, and CZP never had any business relationship with Leisure—we're not an imprint or subsidiary; we are a privately held company. Rumours we are going out of business or in financial trouble are completely false. If anything, based on advance numbers for our Fall books, we're doing better than ever. Don't miss our October 22nd Toronto Fall launch!" —Brett & Sandra, Co-Publishers

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Woo hoo! The film adaptation of "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down" received 5 Nominations at the Oklahoma Horror Film Festival, including Best Short Film, Best Director and Best Editing (Anthony Sumner), Best Actress (Zoe Daelman Chlanda), and Best Actor (Jerry Murdock). Congrats to Anthony, Zoe and Jerry, and everyone involved. You guys did a great job and deserve this. Hope that you win them all! The film festival runs Sep 3-5 in Tulsa.

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The movie based on my short story "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down" is competing in the Vampire Film Festival Trailer Contest in New Orleans! Cool! And you can view the entries and vote! Follow this YouTube link to view the trailer, and if you like it, please click on the "Thumbs Up" icon at the bottom! You'll need to log in to either your Google or YouTube account to vote.

The story is not a pointy-toothed (or sparkly) vampire tale, but it is definitely a take on vampirism. Some selected reviews:

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Another nice review for my second collection, Chimerascope, this one in the August issue of Broken Pencil, The Magazine of Zine Culture and the Independent Arts:

"Smith is obviously a gifted writer in the genre of science-fiction. … Smith paints his worlds so well that you are transported within a paragraph or two and remain in transit until the short story ends -- a challenging feat to be sure. Smith takes common science-fiction topics, such as love between alien races, and manages to find a new way to have his tales unfold. … Smith tells them with a flair that breathes life into his characters. … [The] familiar traits that drive human needs and wants -- such as ambition, pride, love, hate and fear -- are what piece these stories together and give them a life of their own."

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I have a "new" story, entitled "A Bird in the Hand," in the upcoming anthology, Warrior Wisewoman 3, due out this month. See right for the beautiful cover. I include quotes around "new" because I wrote this story fourteen years ago, the second story that I ever wrote (so if you do track this one down, please be gentle). I'd actually sold this story a couple of times in the past, but those markets both folded before the story was published.

For any short fiction writers out there, there is a lesson here. Despite the mounting pile of rejections and the frustrations of two close calls, I kept the story in the mail (or email), and was finally rewarded with a sale to a respected anthology series. How many times did I keep it in the mail?

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I've been approached by Benoît Domis of DreamPress regarding a publishing a collection of my fantasy stories in France. We're still working through the details, but it would be published sometime in 2011. More info to follow. Benoît was formerly the publisher and editor of the excellent French dark fantasy magazine, Ténèbres, in France, which published two of my Heroka shapeshifter stories, "Spirit Dance" and "A Bird in the Hand." Check out their great covers below.

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Assuming that the nice people at the Edmonton Public Library get their requested Canadian Council grant funding, I'll be doing two readings in Edmonton the weekend of May 27-29, 2011. One of the readings would be on Sunday May 29 at EPL's monthly Writers' Corner (these take place the last Sunday afternoon of the month), and another would be at the Strathcona County Library, a very short distance from Edmonton, on either the Friday or the Saturday. More details to follow in January once we hear about the funding request.

Well, I'm a tad late with this update, but I'm way behind on updates in general. I'd blogged earlier about having my first story, "Spirit Dance," picked for this excellent anthology that celebrates the depth and range of Aurora Award winning short stories over the three decades since the award was first presented in Halifax in 1980. The anthology includes work by James Alan Gardner, Isaac Szpindel, Eileen Kernaghan, Daniel Sernine, Robert J. Sawyer, Julie Czerneda, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Candas Jane Dorsey, Yves Meynard, David Nickle, Karl Schroeder, Edo Van Belkom, Hayden Trenholm, Laurent McAllister, and of course, myself, with an introduction by Jean-Louis Trudel.

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"BY HER HAND, SHE DRAWS YOU DOWN," the short film based on my story of the same name, is an official selection of the 2010 DragonCon Independent Film Festival!!! DragonCon is a huge 4-day genre convention with over 50,000 attendees spread over 4 hotels in Atlanta, complete with its own film festival. Congratulations to the cast and crew! Here's a list of the BHHSDYD's upcoming film festival appearances so far:

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