Celebrating my $25 windfall courtesy of Borderlands, Ange and I took the kinderlings out for a $70 dinner last night (numbers were never my strong point).
This morning, I prepared a hitlist of potential markets to tap overseas. I figure if I plan to attack the US publishing scene with Harbinger, they may as well know who I am. Of course, I need to make a few more sales in Australia (although Andromeda Spaceways and Ticonderoga Online are looking promising at the moment).
One thing I found with my list (courtesy of ralan.com, and a few other sources), is there are precious few big paying professional mags that cater to horror. The big boys seem to like Fantasy and Sci-Fi better. I guess I’ll just prosititute myself a little and diversify.
It’s strange, but on the subject of story genre, Ange asked me about it this morning. I had previously told her I was a fantasy writer, yet she picked up on the fact that the majority of my short stories are horror. In my heart, I know I am a fantasy writer – that years of reading sword and sorcery (and dare I say it, playing Dungeons & Dragons) have turned me into a someone who knows the difference between a broadsword and a longsword. Yet here I am, with most of a supernatural horror/thriller/action novel completed, with potentially another three planned after that, and a plethora of short stories, almost exclusively horror. Something didn’t turn out right?
I pin it down on a couple of things. First of all, any ideas I’ve had in the realms of fantasy were always vast in scope – epic adventures and cataclysmic battles. Too big for a short story. The other thing is, I started the prologue for Harbinger years ago, then left it. Somehow, the story, and the mythos, ignited by that prologue has been haunting me ever since. I need to complete the novel (and the series) to find peace from the tormenting dream demons that whisper “Harbinger” every night. Finally, I just keep coming up with good (to my mind) and creepy stories. It’s just coincidental they’re all horror.
I have to say the supernatural is really my underlying theme, it translates well into horror, and okay into fantasy. While I have a cool idea or two for sci-fi novels, the genre itself holds little interest to me.