I'll never forget how in the middle of this past decade, the new editor of the New York Times Book Review declared that the review would be reviewing more "potboilers"—clearly having no idea what the term means. It seems to have meant, in the editor's private language—commercial fiction. A potboiler is actually a book or other piece written primarily to pay the bills and finance more important work. It can be of any genre or of any level of quality, but is generally not important. It does need to be a readable consumer commodity though; Richard Yates writing technical reports and such for internal use by mainframe computer companies doesn't quite count.
In utterly different news, check out this press release headlined, "Hit Graphic Novels Get Literary Treatment", about a prose anthology based on the comic book Zombies vs Robots. What is Zombies vs Robots? See that image in your mind's eye—the first thing you think of? That's it. Or, to put it another way, Michael Bay is co-producing the motion picture.
Anyway, I have pots to boil too! So I have a story in the ZVR anthology. Mine's called "Throckmorton's Bad Day"—it's a prequel about one of the human characters...one who lasts, I think, about ten panels in the first volume of the comic. He dies quickly, that's for sure. I just didn't count up the exact number of panels. I had fun writing it. My impulse when I do such work—as in the comic of the exploitation film Flesh for the Beast is to march out to Prequel Land right away, so to avoid dealing with the core of the "property"—and competition for the more obvious implicit story situations—as much as possible. Anyway, it was ten cents a word, and the continuity edits involved inserting one phrase, so it was a cool working experience. I also got to make fun of New Haven, Connecticut as much as I liked.
Aaaand...I can't help but notice that somehow, via some magical* means, editor Jeff Conner managed to get about ten women involved in the project. Amber Benson! Rachel Swirsky! Kaaron Warren! Amelia Beamer! Ekaterina Sedia! And others! And everyone knows that bitches don't be liking no robots nor zombies. I have a suspicion that this boiling pot may have some tasty chicken within after all.
*The power of solicitation, you know. And if you don't know, then the power of soliciting someone to suggest solicitations. I think Jeff Conner asked Paula Guran for a slew of names, and she offered them up happily. That slew, shockingly, contained women's names as well as men's, for some ungodly reason—perhaps political correctness gone wild, perhaps Sharia law, perhaps unreconstructed Nazism of the sort which leads to slightly higher marginal tax rates on billionaires sometimes. Who can tell the difference anymore?! But I'm sure we can all agree that it's unnatural and likely homosexual.
In utterly different news, check out this press release headlined, "Hit Graphic Novels Get Literary Treatment", about a prose anthology based on the comic book Zombies vs Robots. What is Zombies vs Robots? See that image in your mind's eye—the first thing you think of? That's it. Or, to put it another way, Michael Bay is co-producing the motion picture.
Anyway, I have pots to boil too! So I have a story in the ZVR anthology. Mine's called "Throckmorton's Bad Day"—it's a prequel about one of the human characters...one who lasts, I think, about ten panels in the first volume of the comic. He dies quickly, that's for sure. I just didn't count up the exact number of panels. I had fun writing it. My impulse when I do such work—as in the comic of the exploitation film Flesh for the Beast is to march out to Prequel Land right away, so to avoid dealing with the core of the "property"—and competition for the more obvious implicit story situations—as much as possible. Anyway, it was ten cents a word, and the continuity edits involved inserting one phrase, so it was a cool working experience. I also got to make fun of New Haven, Connecticut as much as I liked.
Aaaand...I can't help but notice that somehow, via some magical* means, editor Jeff Conner managed to get about ten women involved in the project. Amber Benson! Rachel Swirsky! Kaaron Warren! Amelia Beamer! Ekaterina Sedia! And others! And everyone knows that bitches don't be liking no robots nor zombies. I have a suspicion that this boiling pot may have some tasty chicken within after all.
*The power of solicitation, you know. And if you don't know, then the power of soliciting someone to suggest solicitations. I think Jeff Conner asked Paula Guran for a slew of names, and she offered them up happily. That slew, shockingly, contained women's names as well as men's, for some ungodly reason—perhaps political correctness gone wild, perhaps Sharia law, perhaps unreconstructed Nazism of the sort which leads to slightly higher marginal tax rates on billionaires sometimes. Who can tell the difference anymore?! But I'm sure we can all agree that it's unnatural and likely homosexual.