Book picks similar to
Magazines I remember: Some pulps, their editors, and what it was like to write for them (Pulp vault pulp study) by Hugh B. Cave
pulp
publishing
strange-times-research
writers-and-writing
The Swordsman
Zack Archer - 2018
The mythical warrior Beowulf. A harem of hot warrior women and monster girls. Joining forces to take down the bad guys in modern-day Los Angeles. Wait. What? Adam Fraser's coming home from an unsuccessful movie pitch when he nearly collides with Beowulf and a duo of powerful warrior women who’ve been catapulted forward in time by an evil alchemist named Mossheart. Realizing that each can help the other, they set off on an epic journey across Hollywood to track down the alchemist before he accomplishes his ultimate goal: the resurrection of the monster Grendel. What could go wrong? Lots. Tons. A crapload of things could and do go wrong, but along the way, Adam builds his harem, grows in strength and skills, gathers material for an incredible movie, and discovers how to defeat villains and become an expert um…swordsman. Warning: would it surprise you to learn that this book’s intended for those over the age of 18 who like fresh takes on old stories, sexy monster women, shapeshifters, adrenaline-fueled action, cool snarky characters, and lots of haremy (yes, that’s a real word) adult situations? Probably not, so if you like those things, and I’m guessing you do, come and get swung with The Swordsman!
In a Small Motel
John D. MacDonald - 2017
She owns a small motor-inn motel on a major highway in South Georgia. The summer heat is still strong in the waning days of October, and she is tired from a long summer season. As the evening progresses, Ginny’s motel begins to fill-up. There is Johnny Benton, a strange motel guest who insists on parking his car behind the motel, a would-be suitor named Don Ferris, a guest that is the catalyst for a long and frightening night, and then there is the dead husband whose long shadow is cast across Ginny’s life like a long heavy rain...
The Accidental Life: An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers
Terry McDonell - 2016
Over the last four decades, Terry McDonell has been at the helm of some of the most influential beacons of American journalism: from his early days at Outside through tenures at Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and, most recently, as cofounder of LitHub. Now he tells us what really happens between editors and writers--behind the scenes and between the lines--with deadlines ticking. Here are intimate portraits of the most important (and most eccentric) journalists, novelists, and media personalities: from Hunter S. Thompson and George Plimpton to Richard Ford and James Salter; from David Carr and Steve Jobs to Jimmy Buffett and one remarkable Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. And here is an insider's unimpeachable advice on how to get, and keep, the best writers; what makes a great lede and headline; how to style a cover that flies off newsstands (whether or not there's a celebrity on it); how to build the online traffic that translates into dollars; and how--in whatever format--a good editor really works. From the storied past to today's tumultuous media landscape, this is an incisive, galvanizing account of the pressures, joys, and obsessions of a writing and editing life.
Necessary Sins: A Memoir
Lynn Darling - 2007
He was older, married, more “establishment,” a celebrated foreign correspondent and editor. She, who entered Harvard at age sixteen, was a brilliant wild child of the sixties. She lived life in the present tense, where every affair was an adventure. Then Darling fell in love and everything changed.This is a story of the many lessons love can teach us, of a marriage turned upside down and inside out, and all the tenderness, thrills, comfort, and yes, even disappointment, that comes with the territory. Lynn Darling thought she knew the narrative of her own life, until it really began with her “one true north,” and now, ten years after his death, her story is still unfolding.From the Hardcover edition.
From Dissertation to Book
William P. Germano - 2005
But a dissertation is written for a committee and a book for the larger world. William Germano's From Dissertation to Book is the essential guide for academic writers who want to revise a doctoral thesis for publication. The author of Getting It Published, Germano draws upon his extensive experience in academic publishing to provide writers with a state-of-the-art view of how to turn a dissertation into a manuscript that publishers will notice.Acknowledging first that not all theses can become books, Germano shows how some dissertations might have a better life as one or more journal articles or as chapters in a newly conceived book. But even dissertations strong enough to be published as books first need to become book manuscripts, and at the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is a fundamental process of adapting from one genre of writing to another.Germano offers clear guidance on how to do just this. Writers will find advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. With crisp directives, engaging examples, and a sympathetic eye for the foibles of academic writing, From Dissertation to Book reveals to recent PhD's the process of careful and thoughtful revision—a truly invaluable skill as they grow into their new roles as professional writers.
The Cornell Woolrich Omnibus: Rear Window and Other Stories / I Married a Dead Man / Waltz into Darkness
Cornell Woolrich - 1998
It contains two full length novels (I Married a Dead Man and Waltz into Darkness) and five short stories, including "Rear Window" -- works in which one of the genre's consumate "poets of terror" explores all the classic noir themes of loneliness, despair, futility, and occasionally redemption.CONTENTSRear WindowPost MortemThree O'ClockChange of MurderMomentumI MARRIED A DEAD MANWALTZ INTO DARKNESS
The Erotica Handbook: (How to Write Erotica) A guide to making $100 an hour writing erotica short stories and selling them online (Emily Baker Writing Skills and Reference Guides)
Emily Baker - 2016
You will learn how to generate hundreds of story ideas, cover designs, and characters. How to get past writer’s block. How to use the monster mirroring technique. The most profitable keywords, word counts, kinks. THE EROTICA HANDBOOK also includes a thesaurus with a mountain of sexy synonyms to help speed up your writing. Working from home has never been easier, and erotica is the only genre where new authors can price a short story at $2.99 and sell 100 copies in three weeks. THE EROTICA HANDBOOK is the cutting-edge blueprint to obtaining pleasure and money. Don’t deny yourself the joy of making $200 while you sleep.
Cries of the Children
Clare McNally - 1992
Three little children, found abandoned in different parts of the country. Three wonderfully sweet and startlingly gifted children who won the hearts of the grown-ups who adopted them.But now all three children were gone. Had they run away or been stolen? Their foster parents had to find them to find out. And on a rescue search that led them across America and into a world-within-a-world ruled by a psychically terrifying envoy of evil, little did they realize that the young ones they loved so briefly were now the unwitting possessors of a deadly power to harm.
The Way the Future Was: A Memoir
Frederik Pohl - 1978
. .* What Isaac Asimov was like at 19.* The truth behind the great World SF Convention War of 1939.* How a teenager became a mover and shaker in the bizarre world of the pulp magazines.* The strange mating rites of the sf community.* How to represent most of the best sf writers and go broke.* The dreams of new worlds and universes behind a body of completely original writing that has enlarged the horizons of three generations of readers . . . and netted the writers ½¢ to 3¢ a word.From the moment he attended the first meeting of the Brooklyn chapter of the Science Fiction League, Fred Pohl was hooked. He and his friends founded and disbanded fan clubs with dizzying speed, then organized the fabled Futurians. At 19, he became editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories, and, except for the war and a brief fling in the advertising business, has been almost totally involved in science fiction ever since.As an agent, he created the market for hardcover sf; as editor of Galaxy in the 60s, he shaped the field for most of a decade; his Star Science Fiction series pioneered the concept of original anthologies; and along with all that he produced a number of truly outstanding works of sf, including: The Space Merchants (with Cyril Kornbluth) and, most recently Man Plus and Gateway, voted the Best Novels of 1976 and 1977, respectively.It's been a long road, from the scruffy Ivory Tower where the Futurians denned to a time when much that was science fiction is now reality—and Fred Pohl retraces it with candor, wit, and abiding love.
The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics
Paul GravettJack Kirby - 2008
This collection includes Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Will Eisner, Max Allan Collins, and Alex Toth—plus adaptations of and collaborations by famous crime writers, such as Dashiel Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Lesley Charteris, and Raymond Chandler.
In the Sargasso Sea A Novel
Thomas A. Janvier - 2012
Recently, Kessinger Publishing's rare reprints has re-issued the book. The protagonist, Roger Stetworth, unwillingly joins a slave ship called the -Golden Hind- captained by Luke Chilton. (When Chilton demanded that Roger -sign aboard- he refused and was clubbed on the head and thrown overboard.) He is rescued by the -Hurst Castle- and doctored by a painfully stereotyped Irishman. The -Hurst Castle- is abandoned but does not founder in a gale and the crew, unable to get to him, are forced to leave Stetworth marooned aboard. The ship drifts into the center of the Sargasso Sea where Stetworth finds himself in a ships' graveyard in which survivors of previous shipwrecks still inhabit the forgotten ships. Stetworth must rely on his own ingenuity to get free from the choking sargasso weeds........ Thomas Allibone Janvier (July 16, 1849 - June 18, 1913) was an American story-writer and historian, born in Philadelphia of Provencal descent. Early life and marriage: Janvier received a public school education, then worked in Philadelphia for newspapers from 1870-81. In 1878 he married Catherine Ann Drinker (May 1, 1841- July 19, 1922), an artist who was the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and first teacher to Cecilia Beaux. Later in life, she accompanied her husband on his travels while writing books and translating books from the Provencale language. Many of Janvier's published works would be dedicated -To C. A. J.- New York: Janvier went to New York in 1881. From 1884-94, he lived in the Washington Square district of New York. A few years after arriving, he published the Ivory Black Stories, tales of artist life, which were reprinted in book form in 1885 as Color Studies. In them he pictured the life and color of what was then considered the Latin quarter of the city, with the old-fashioned French restaurants, the artist colony to the north, and the studios in Tenth Street where Abbey, Millet, F. Hopkinson Smith, Laffan and others made the Tile Club famous. He published many stories and articles in Harper's Magazine.[2] Travels and death: Janvier spent several years in Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, thereby gaining inspiration and material for much of his literary work. His travels in Mexico produced the Aztec Treasure House and his stories of Old New Spain. He and his wife also lived for three years in Avignon, Provence, France, where they became friends with Mistral and Felix Gras. Catherine A. Janvier's translations of the latter's work introduced him to English-speaking readers.His books from this period include An Embassy to Provence, Christmas Kalends of Provence and The South of France. He was made an honorary member of the Felibrige society in France, and of the Fol Lore Society of London, where he and his wife lived from 1897 to 1900, and the Century Club in New York. Janvier died in New York on June 18, 1913. He is interred in Moorestown, New Jersey. Literary family: Janvier's sister, Margaret Thomson Janvier (1844-1913), was born in New Orleans. Under the pen name Margaret Vandergrift she wrote many juveniles, among which are: The Absent-Minded Fairy, and Other Verses (1884); The Dead Doll, and Other Verses (1900); Under the Dog-Star (1900); and Umbrellas to Mend (1905). Janvier's niece, Emma P. Spicer, going by the stage name of Emma Janvier, was a well-known comedian on Broadway and elsewhere from the turn of the century until her death in the early 1920s. Janvier was also related to Philadelphia businessman and poet Francis De Haes Janvier.
The Seeding
David Shobin - 1982
Sandra Fischer relaxes in bed. Moments later, when her husband enters the room — she is dead. One by one, the women are dying. The leading medical experts are baffled. There is only one clue: the rich, sweet scent of the tropics — the scent of life, seconds after each woman's shocking death.One dedicated doctor. One beautiful woman. Together they will enter an awesome new realm of medical knowledge beyond both life and death. For he will discover a terrifying secret. And she has been chosen for … THE SEEDING.
Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews
Harry Crews - 1987
Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you’ve been told. . . . If you’re gonna write fiction, you have to get right on down to it.""Harry Crews cannot refrain from storytelling. These conversations are blessed with countless insights into the creative process, fresh takes on old questions, and always, Crews’s stories: modern-day parables that tell us how it is to live, to work, and to hurt."--Jeff Baker, Oxford American"Harry Crews has indelible ways of approaching life and the craft of writing. This collection shows that he elevates both to a near-religious artform."--Matthew Teague, Oxford AmericanIn 26 interviews conducted between 1972 and 1997, novelist Harry Crews tells the truth--about why and how he writes, about the literary influences on his own work, about the writers he admires (or does not), about which of his own books he likes (or does not), about his fascination with so-called freaks, and about his love of blood sports. Crews reveals the tender side under his tough-guy image, discussing his beloved mother and his spiritual quest in a secular world.Crews also speaks frankly about his failed relationships, the role that writing played in them, and his personal struggles with alcohol and drugs and their impact on his life and work. Those seeking insights into his work will find them in these interviews. Those seeking to be entertained in Crewsian fashion will not be disappointed.Harry Crews on his tattoo and mohawk . . ."If you can’t get past my ‘too’--my tattoo--and my ‘do’--the way I got my hair cut--it’s only because you have decided there are certain things that can be done with hair and certain things that cannot be done with hair. And certain of them are right and proper and decent, and the rest indicate a warped, degenerate nature; therefore I am warped and degenerate. 'Cause I got my hair cut a different way, man? You gonna really live your life like that? What’s wrong with you?"On advice to young writers . . ."You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read--if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. 'Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week." On being "well-rounded" . . ."I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design." Harry Crews is the author of 23 books, including The Gospel Singer, Naked in Garden Hills, This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit, Car, The Hawk Is Dying, The Gypsy’s Curse, A Feast of Snakes, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, Blood and Grits, The Enthusiast, All We Need of Hell, The Knockout Artist, Body, Scar Lover, The Mulching of America, Celebration, and Florida Frenzy (UPF, 1982).Erik Bledsoe is an instructor of English and American studies at the University of Tennessee. He has published articles on southern writers and edited a special issue of the Southern Quarterly devoted to Crews. His 1997 interview with Harry Crews from that magazine is included in this collection.
FIRSTS: Women Who Are Changing the World
TIME Magazine - 2017
A companion to TIME's multi-platform documentary, the book includes 15 first person deep-dives into the lives of influential women such as General Lori Robinson, the first woman to lead troops into combat, Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space, and Aretha Franklin, the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many others, including Oprah Winfrey, Madeline Albright, and Sheryl Sandburg offer their own personal reflections, thematic quotes and perspectives on balance, perseverance and strength.Each first-person piece or quote is accompanied by a distinctive portrait by photographer Luisa Dorr ― set up and taken on her iPhone. Others included in this unforgettable volume: Serena Williams, Ellen Degeneres, Loretta Lynch, Shonda Rimes, Nancy Pelosi, Rita Moreno, Cindy Sherman and Mo’Ne Davis.With a stirring introduction by Nancy Gibbs, herself a pioneer as the first female editor of TIME magazine, this is an inspirational book for all women and men.