We performed our super-secret giveaway ceremony. I can’t tell you too much, but it involves both names and hats. And we can now declare a winner!
Congratulations, Cat Barth! Your autographed copy of Shadows of the Emerald City will be in the mail as soon as humanly possible.
Diabolical Plots is giving away one free copy of Shadows of the Emerald City. Do you want to enter? It’s very simple. All you have to do is reply to this topic and name your character from any Oz-related media. (That’s the land of Oz, not the Oz TV show that takes place in a prison). We’ll pick a winner at random from those who respond.
You have until Monday 10/26/2009 at midnight CST to enter. If you’ve already paid for the special discount offer, then you can still enter–we’ll just refund your money if you win.
I have a special offer in the works for discounted copies of Shadows of the Emerald City. The awesomeness of the discount depends somewhat on how many are interested. If you think you might potentially be interested, drop me a line at:
Upcoming Interview: John Joseph Adams, editor of numerous anthologies, currently the assistant editor of F&SF, and soon-to-be fiction editor of new magazine Lightspeed. Have any questions for him? Drop me a line and we’ll try to work them in.
David here. My first published work, “The Utility of Love” is now available to the public in the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology, edited by JW Schnarr, published by Northern Frights Publishing. The story is a retelling of the Wizard of Oz, but the Tin Man is two stories tall and does not hesitate to kill if it can benefit him.
There are 19 stories in total in this anthology, appealing to a wide variety of tastes. It’s supposed to be available on Amazon in the very near future, but in the meantime you can order it directly from the publisher. If you do pick up a copy, stop by here after you’ve read it and drop us a line. We’d love to know what you think!
If you’d like to see reviews, here’s a list:
Apex–5 stars!
http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog/2009/10/review-shadows-of-the-emerald-city/
Wanderings–mentions my story as must-read:
http://www.wanderingsmag.com/rvw_ShadowEmerald.html
Senses Five–mentions my story before any other as a standout:
http://www.sensesfive.com/2009/10/15/shadows-of-the-emerald-city-review-by-greer-woodward/
Innsmouth Free Press
http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/?p=2440
Strange, Weird, and Wonderful (it’s a ways down in the PDF):
http://strangeweirdandwonderful.bravehost.com/3Site/Fall09.pdf
Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing because they’re something different, something special.
In the mood for a puzzle game? Give The Lost Vikings and/or The Lost Vikings 2 a try. I originally played both on the SNES, but they’ve been on several other platforms, including PC, Playstation, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo DS. It a 2-D platform-based puzzle game based around time-traveling Vikings.
In the intro sequence, the three Vikings are abducted from their homes by the evil alien overlord Tomator. They manage to escape through a time portal which takes them to to Prehistoric times. You control each of the Vikings, one at a time, and you must work your way to the exit. All three have to be at the exit or you can’t move on. Each Viking has his own unique abilities, and you’ll have to use each of them to fullest advantage to make it through the levels.
The game is infused with a good sense of humor. The expressions when the Vikings fall too far is cartoonish and comical, and at the end of each level they bicker amongst themselves and make fun of each other.
As the game progresses, you travel through a series of time periods, each with their unique puzzle sets and enemies. The game keeps a great amount of variety this way. So in the “sweat shop” stages, there is a magnet crane which any character can jump in to move metal blocks around. If Olaf moves his shield above his head it can also be used to carry him around. Each time period has inherent features like this to keep things interesting.
The game is on a password-based system, so all you have to do to come back to a level is remember a 4 digit password. This game is reasonably challenging. If you’ve never played it before, some of the levels will take you multiple tries to make it through. Some of the puzzles and levels are downright difficult, though the game never stopped being fun.
Unfortunately, this one’s not available for download for Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, but finding this game shouldn’t be any trouble, and shouldn’t cost you too much as long as you don’t demand a factory-sealed copy. A quick eBay search comes up with dozens of hits for multiple systems, most with “Buy It Now” prices under $20, as long as you are okay with “acceptable” condition. Alternatively, you can always search around for an emulator and a ROM for this game.
The Lost Vikings II
This article’s a two in one! The Lost Vikings II (known as Norse by Norsewest on certain game systems) is similar in most ways to the Lost Vikings. The first game was one of a kind, like nothing I’d ever seen before. The sequel was more of the same, but enhanced. If you liked the original, try this one out to fill your Lost Vikings craving.
In this one hey’ve done a nice job adding some new features to keep things fresh. Tomator abducts the Vikings again to enact revenge. The Vikings see him coming this time and get away in a fight, stealing some futuristic equipment on their way. Erik the Swift gets a new helmet that lets him breathe underwater and boots that let him jump once in mid-air. Baleog gets a bionic extendable arm which can grab things from a distance and allows him to swing from strategically placed swinging points. Olaf has a shrinking device that allows him to enter small spaces. Also, he has been eating gassy foods and has gained the “ability” to fart, which allows to smash certain blocks, and give him a boost in mid-air.
In addition to extra abilities, there are two new characters they pick up as they travel. Fang, a werewolf, can attack with his claws (nice to have another attacker in the group), can climb walls, and can jump. Scorch, a dragon, can “fly” to a limited degree, which is really just five midair jumps. He can also use his wings to glide slowly down to land safely from heights, and he has fireball projectiles.
The concept is basically the same. Your group travels through different time periods. Only 3 characters are in any given level, and all 3 characters must reach the end of a level to complete it. And, once again, you return to Tomator’s ship for a final confrontation. Easy peasy? Not so much. This game is as much a challenge as the last one, well worth the time it takes to complete.
Unfortunately, this one’s not available for download for Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, but finding this game shouldn’t be any trouble, and shouldn’t cost you too much as long as you don’t demand a factory-sealed copy. A quick eBay search comes up with dozens of hits for multiple systems on both games, most with “Buy It Now” prices under $20, as long as you are okay with “acceptable” condition. Alternatively, you can always search around for an emulator and a ROM for this game. Enjoy!
J.W. Schnarr writes horror stories from his home base of Calgary. He has been published in a variety of places, including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Night of the Giving Dead, and Midnight Echo, to name just a few. As if that wouldn’t keep him busy enough, he is also the evil mastermind behind Northern Frights Publishing, an Indie publisher specializing in small market genre fiction and non-fiction. Hot off the press: Shadows of the Emerald City, an anthology of horror short stories related to The Wizard of Oz. The anthology has experienced a slight delay in release date, but will hopefully be available on Amazon in the next day or two.
If you’re not sure if you want to read the anthology, check out the reviews so far:
Apex rates it as 5 stars, and says she liked every story, a rare thing indeed.
Senses Five mentions my story, “The Utility of Love” as the first of the must-reads in the antho.
Wanderings Magazine also mentions my story as a standout.
Strange, Weird, and Wonderful (it’s a ways down the PDF)
You can follow Mr. Schnarr through his blog. To find out more about Northern Frights Press, visit their website or become a fan on Facebook.
David Steffen: Shadows of the Emerald City is the first anthology Northern Frights has published. Â If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
JW Schnarr: There are a TON of things I would do differently. This has been a huge learning curve for me. We had issues with software, contracts, correspondance, editing…the list goes on and on. I knew it was going to be like this though, and I got some great advice from A.P. Fuchs at Coscom Entertainment and Jacob Kier at Permuted Press. The ultimate goal for this anthology was to put out a book people would be interested in reading while ironing out the dozens of little hitches and problems that pop up during the birthing process.
David: What kinds of unique challenges has small press publishing provided?
JW: For me, most of those challenges came on the business end of things. I’m also flying pretty much solo, as I think a lot of Indies are. That creates all kind of challenges with the work needed to put a book together. It seemed never ending for about two months…and then one day I looked up and realized I could see the finish line. Also, trying to put a marketing plan together on a budget has been a challenge. I imagine all Indie publishers have similar challenges facing them: the biggest one is simply cutting through the glut of books being published to reach our audience.
David: Since NFP doesn’t have a huge marketing department, how have you market it?
JW: I’ve been doing a bit of viral marketing through social networking sites, and keeping discussions going in places like facebook and on forums. A large part of my plan has been reviews, and getting the word out that way. I think reviews are a really helpful marketing tool because it exposes people to the books while giving them in depth information and honest opinions on whether the book is worth finding or not.
David: How did the submissions for Shadows of the Emerald City compare with your expectations, in quantity, quality, subject material?
JW: Well, first off, there was a lot more porn in my inbox than usual. I had a bunch of submissions where writers had turned poor Dorothy into a sexual deviant…of all persuasions. It was really entertaining, but many of the stories fell short in just one or two little things and were swept away by more rounded tales.
I really had a lot more content than I thought we were going to get as well–I guess the subject matter set off a lot of matches in people’s heads. In the end, I had over 70 stories to choose from, all good, but unfortunately not all could make it. It really surpassed my expecations on all fronts, as far as quality, quantity, AND subject material.
David: How did you choose the theme? Why the Wizard of Oz?
JW: You know, I can’t say for certain when exactly I decided on this theme. The idea had been bouncing around for a little while, but I didn’t know all the ins and outs of Public Domain use until I really started researching. At one point I was actually deciding on whether to try this with Alice in Wonderland instead, but with the movie coming out I was kind of worried that the book would get snowed under and lost amidst all the hype of the movie.
NFP Anthologies are all going to be themed, and I really think an entertaining niche can be filled by letting writers explore the worlds of some of the most influential minds in the last hundred years or so. And hopefully some people went back and read some of Baum’s work in the process of creating new parts to his world. From the subject matter and responses I got, I know they did. Other publishers may be doing Zombies…We’re going a step further and bringing dead authors back to life.
David: Why did you start Northern Frights Press? What are your goals for NFP?
JW: NFP has its roots in a business plan I made up about a year ago to publish and market my own books. At some point I realized that I could easily turn the project into an Indie Press, something I’ve wanted to do since I was in high school. I love writing, but in College I realized I also loved editing and publishing as well. This has been a perfect mix for me, and allowed me to justify spending all that money on college getting a journalism arts diploma.
My goals for NFP center around a two year business plan where I’ll be growing our product base and getting the word out with new anthologies, novels, and electronic release in the coming months. NFP is going to continue to refine the publishing process, put out quality work from quality writers, and hopefully become a presence in the convention scene at some point. if, along the way, I can earn enough money to take a day off or two from drywalling, well, then it will have all been worth it.
David: After Shadows, what next? What’s the next theme?
JW: The next two themes are actually linked. Both are taken from classic science fiction written by the great H.G. Wells–War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. I’ve gotten Artist Gavro Krackovic back to do these covers (he did the cover for Shadows of the Emerald City) and we’re currently exploring some ideas on how the books should look. I’m giving him the full covers to work with this time, so expect something amazing, front and back.
War of the Worlds: Front Lines will have a harder sci-fi/horror edge to it and focus on the wars between humanity and alien forces…not just the H.G. Wells aliens, but all aliens. And the stories will hopefully take place on as many different fronts and battlefields as can be imagined.
Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Well’s The Time Machine is going to be a softer science fiction collection. I’m picturing dark, moody or introspective pieces, as well as the kind of horror that sneaks up on you. Hopefully these two books will compliment each other in style, and the covers will reflect that.
David: At what point in your life did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
JW: I was very young when I started writing. However it wasn’t until I was 12 or 13 that something happened that made me start thinking seriously about a life as a writer. We were doing a writing assignment in English class, and I remember I wrote some little thing about a monster hiding in a row of bushes that attacks a boy dropping his date off at her home. The teacher made me read it to the class, and just as I reached the part of the story where the creature reached out and grabbed the kid by the throat my teacher roared and scared the living piss out of the entire class. When I looked up, among all the babble and excited laughing there was this underlying realization that I actually had their attention, and they understood what I was trying to convey. This is a classic reader/author relationship of course, but at the time it was all new to me. I was hooked right there.
David: If you had one piece of advice to give aspiring writers, what would it be?
JW: READ!!! Read everything you can get your hands on. I have met too many writers who say they have no time for reading and can’t understand why their work isn’t growing the way it should. Honestly how can you expect to write well if you never read? Would you expect a musician who never listened to a note of music to be able to compose? Every published story and novel out there has a little blueprint in it for publishing your own stories and novels. Learn from those who have come and gone before you. Eventually you’ll start seeing the successful things they did with their work and be able to apply those things to your own.
David: What was the last book you read?
JW: At the moment I’m digging through The Encyclopedia of Mass Murder (research for my novel) but recently I read The Time Traveler’s Wife and it was fantastic. I don’t usually go for love stories, but there was enough science fiction in there to keep things interesting. I’ve been on a bit of a literary kick this year, stepping out of my more familiar stomping grounds of horror and golden age sci fi and picking up things like The Life of Pi and The Kite Runner. maybe I’m just turning into a suck.
David: Your favorite book?
JW: Tough call. I am Legend or The Hellbound Heart maybe, though both were novellas. My favourite book for years was Blue World by Robert R. MacCammon, but I’d feel like a traitor if I didn’t include a Stephen King or Poppy Z. Brite novel. There are so many good ones, it’s really too hard to decide on one.
David: Who is your favorite author?
JW: See answer above. Can I make a list? If so, it goes like this, in no order: Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Poppy Z. Brite, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert R. MacCammon. Right below this unholy alliance of writers there are probably several hundred waiting in the wings to take over a top spot.
David: What was the last movie you saw?
JW: Transformers 2! there’s a cheapo theater right by my house that shows movies like a month or two before they hit the video shelves, and for 20 bucks we can get movie passes, popcorn, and drinks…and she gets skittles. The theater is a grungy little thing that attracts all kinds of unsavoury people, but it has a feel to it that you can’t get anywhere else except in Forest Lawn, Calgary. Anyway, I thought the movie was alright, I tried not to think about the plot too much and focused on the robots instead.
As for recent DVDs I’ve watched, I picked up used copies of The Unborn and Last House on the Left…I probably could have spent my money better elsewhere. I was looking forward to Last House, but I watched the unrated version and the five hour long rape scene in the middle of the movie really pissed me off to the point where I didn’t really care what happened to anyone after that. Seriously when did that become entertainment? The Unborn was kind of fun…Monster and I made a game of picking out the continuity errors, and there seemed to be a lot of them.
David: What is your favorite movie?
JW: Conan the Barbarian. I can recite the entire movie line for line. I can even drop the music ques and horse/sword noises, if you want. I’ve probably watched it 200 times. People think it’s cheesey but it really captured a great feel for Howard’s writing…it’s moody and bleak, and enough blood gets spilled to fill a swimming pool. Plus, James Earl Jones as a Demigod in control of a doomsday cult? That’s two words: Awe. SOME!!!
David: Do you have any upcoming publications?
JW: Well the ones mentioned already are coming out in the next few months. Shadows and Light (Pill Hill Press) is out already I believe, and ASIM and Midnight Echo are both October issues, so those should be right around the corner if they’re not out yet. As work on Shadows of the Emerald City intensified I was kind of forced to put my short stories on hold, but there will be more coming soon! I promise!
David: Can you tell us about any works in progress?
JW: Currently I have two projects on the go. I’m working on a novel called Alice and Dorothy that answers the question: What if Alice Pleasance and Dorothy Gale were two real people who met and fell in love in a mental institution? It was originally my cast off idea for Shadows of the Emerald City and I realized I could tell the story as like a rock n’ roll style highway novel with lots of drugs, shooting and hot lesbian sex. I’m also putting together a short story collection of mostly previously published work. I’ll be adding some new stories of course, and those will both be on the ground running in the Spring of 2010.
David: Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions, JW.
JW: Anytime! Remember kids: Support Indie Press! Show some love so we can continue to love you back!
Upcoming interview: writer Jeremy C. Shipp, who has been published in Pseudopod, Apex, Chizine, and Cemetery Dance, to name a few. If anybody has any questions for him, drop us a line and we’ll try to work them in. His website: http://www.jeremycshipp.com/index.html
Body Harvest was released in 1998 by DMA Design, the company that later became Rockstar North, the makers of Grand Theft Auto III. This isn’t at all surprising if you play the game as the style is very similar with a wide open world, open-ended game play, a large collection of weapons, and the ability to acquire any vehicle you see. The graphics weren’t terribly impressive, even for the time, which might explain why this awesome game has been overlooked by so many.
The story begins in 2016, and humanity is on the brink of extinction, at war with an insect-like alien race. Every 25 years for the last century aliens have returned to Earth for one day and sealed off an area of the Earth behind an impenetrable shield which prevented any outside help from entering the area. The poor humans outside watch helplessly as the humans within are slaughtered, every single one.
Now, in 2016, the aliens are back again, poised to wipe out the last remnants of the human race. The human race has finally perfected time travel technology, and they’re able to send one soldier back in time to single-handedly take on the alien threat.
First stop, Greece in 1916. Shortly after you arrive, you receive an alert of suspicious alien activity in the area. Hordes of helpless local civilians are being dragged kicking and screaming out of their houses by bloblike aliens which are carrying them towards a bug the size of a tank to have their bodies harvested for unknown reasons. Many other aliens are defending the big “harvester” bug. Your job is to destroy the big bug as soon as possible, the more humans it harvests, the closer the aliens are to reaching their agenda. There’s a meter on the screen that keeps track of casualties. If you let too many people die, game over.
In each time period the vehicles and weapons are at least a semblance of era-appropriate, which gives a nice excuse for increasing the firepower of weapons and quality of vehicles as time goes on. Besides stopping Harvester waves, you also must defeat a major boss at several stages in each year. This will drop a teleport beacon to make transport easier as well as opening a hole in the shield to progress to the next level.
When this game first came out the ability to switch between such a multitude of vehicles had never been seen before. From normal cars, to tanks, helicopters, various boats, airplanes. There’s even an alien UFO. Weapons all have a variety of different stats. Most of the weapons are pretty standard fare, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, all with their strengths and weaknesses. My favorite weapon by far is the sun shield, a mythological weapon stripped from a Greek statue. It reflects and focuses the light of the sun into a powerful weapon. It requires no ammo, can cause damage as far as the eye can see, and makes quick work of even boss characters.
Besides the action component, there is also some degree of puzzle element. From time to time obstacles will block your progress and you must find a way through or around them, such as finding dynamite to blast a path through a rockslide, or to find a rifle to blast an alien sitting on the distantly perched tram car to free it to move. You can move indoors in certain places, sometimes finding people to talk to, or having to find switches to secret passageways inside. These challenges aren’t terribly difficult but they lend some welcome variety to the gameplay.
Most of the game has a reasonable challenge level. The progression of difficulty of the enemies escalates well with the progression of weapons and vehicles. The boss battles are epic struggles, but not impossible. But, alas, I never finished the game. There was a challenge in the 4th world that proved too much for my then-teenage gaming skills. It involved hauling a heavy explosive on the back of slow and unmaneuverable vehicle. I was given ample time to clear the path before driving it, but somehow new aliens ‘ported in and detonated the explosive no matter what I did. I would like to retry it now to see if I can overcome it now.
Getting your hands on this game won’t take much effort. Unfortunately, it is not available for a Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console download. At least not yet. Finding a copy used shouldn’t be difficult at all. A quick eBay search comes up with many results, some of them with “Buy it Now” prices of about $7, so if you have an N64 console, you’re set. If you don’t have the console, you might be able to find an N64 emulator and a ROM for the game.
Especially considering the low price tag buying this game used, if a lover of a good action shoot-’em-up with bug-eyed aliens, you can’t go wrong. Enjoy!
I’m now officially a slush reader for Flash Fiction Online. I’ll be part of a team that collectively helps the editor judge the stories that come in. For anyone who hasn’t heard of them, they are an online monthly magazine which publishes several flash stories per issue. Flash stories are 1000 words or less, and let me tell you, it is not easy to get a full story into just 1k! Many of the staff has a preference for speculative fiction, but they accept submissions of any story under 1k, so literary, mainstream, romance, mystery, anything is fair game.
I think it’ll be a fun opportunity to sample the editorial side of submissions. The duties shouldn’t be too onerous. I’m at the 2nd level of the slush reading, so the worst stuff will be filtered out before it gets to me. And each submission is 1100 words or less, so even if I don’t like the story, it doesn’t take very long to determine. I’ve been through my first round of judging, and was pretty pleased with the experience. I’ve said for a long time that one of the keys to becoming a better writer is to read and critique other people’s work, so this will be a good way for me to do that. When I feel I have feedback that could be useful for the writer, I’ll try to send some back their way–personal feedback is so rare it’s so nice to receive when you get it.
And, for those of you aren’t familiar with FFO’s slush reading procedures, the stories are anonymous, with no author name attached to them. If I see a story come through and I already know the author, I must choose not to rate it, so you may want to think twice before telling me that.
-David
