Natives Are Restless

Natives are Restless – seems like that in the territory in the small press when one rival author calls me a snake oil salesman. The truth in the matter of doing Tabloid Purposes it was originally a group of friends from two different writers websites getting together and wanting to do an anthology together. It always had been that, just different groups of friends meeting together. Tabloid Purposes had always been a collective when it came to the input of the anthologies and how they were done. The core crew had helped in the direction I wanted to take with this project. One or two malicious reviews here and there but we’re still getting up and pushing, prodding and poking our way to getting discovered by someone huge.

The only snail oil sales lady is the person trying to put a hex on the series and succeeded to get one author stabbing in the back in the process. The fact she let five years of correspondence and respect go to hell when she stared to listen to this particular lady trying to put a hex on a series. There are many things people tried to do to the series to make sure it never went to press or never got the readership it deserved. Such critics never really go far in the business because the only way they got there is by working on a publishing company, and if they didn’t have that publishing company they wouldn’t have jack shit. I did some research on this person early on in my own career and will say she’s got a past that is less than clean of her own. Rivalries like this do go on for years and I am trying to avoid it in the sense that I am just trying to get the authors discovered and paid along the way.

Doing Tabloid Purposes is always been something to get an author out there – either new or established alike, but always had that small bunch of mid-list assholes going around making their lives difficult for that reason. I never really liked how some authors will go around to play the political game and go with the dirty politics and turnabout play. This is the dirty side of the small press that I never really cared for. It is an age of cronyism. What I mean by that is they go around basically in their little circles smearing who they don’t like and pissing on authors who don’t go in with them. When that particular individual goes around adding your real life friends just so they can get the dirt on you, that is a crock of the person’s part it is making them a lower than the dirt they drag their feet upon.

I am going to use her own words against here, don’t be afraid to use the internet to learn more about the author – there are three sides to the story, theirs – yours, and the truth. The truth is something that falls between their side of the story and your side of the story, usually they are quicker to believe blind people like that. It is the blind leading the blind sort of thing when it comes to those kind of authors – new age peddlers who piss upon authors who think all of that goes against what is said in the business.

I am not going to blow sunshine up someone’s ass when I don’t like a story that I read, and when I like the story a lot I will e-mail the author asking if they would want to be part of the magazine or part of an anthology. I know how this business is – they would go and turn the person who you known for many years against you some cases people you knew for 20 years or more. The moment I did An Eye In Shadows, I knew that something like this would happen. There will be blogs like ExposeTheTard who steal people’s copyrighted material such as photographs and writing in my case. The ones who celebrate alternative horror as being the trend right now, and when horror writers who don’t use that kind of shit in their fiction they have this mentality, fuck them. I refuse to pull the party line for anyone and that was the reason I did the interview with Skullring.org it was more the reason to tell the rest of the mid-list who go around bullying people where they can get off at.

In this business – it is hard to keep a good friendship going, and this is the case with one author who recently admitted that she stabbed me in the back. I am not going to talk bad on her here but I will say this, there will always be those who will go around fucking with what you worked hard to establish. The fact I had too many people going off on me who hide behind fake names, they don’t even have half the balls to come out on someone and rip their nuts off. It doesn’t matter if you’re a best selling author, if you go around disrespecting me on a message board and I am in an eyeshot of it – I will say something. Be lucky this isn’t the century of Andrew Jackson. Otherwise I’d be drawing a duel – two guns, take ten paces turn around and open fire at each other.

This is the 21st Century the age when people hide behind the computer and be mean to people, I will actually say what I say to someone’s face on top of what I say online. This is when I go out on a limb and say when the industry attacks, and it gets ugly at times. Being a Chicago guy this is when we’re at our most hostile in ways, having to fight for what we gained. This is how it is in Chicago, when we see something that is bullshit we call it bullshit. When I see online names like I think when I see something that is good in my eyes – I will do everything I can to get the author discovered. I pay them yes, but also the bigger payout is when they see their story on the big screen. When people expect to force me into hiatus, it is not going to happen. That is when I am working on another last minute anthology which I try to get in the hands of promoters. Ie for their giveaways and all of that – my system of working on getting authors names out there isn’t a conventional way of doing it but it works for me. When they call me a snake oil salesman – they are all that. They write fiction for a living for fuck’s sake.

I am nothing but truthful to the writers involves with the anthologies, I will pay the authors but it will take longer for me to get contributor copies because something came up like a book signing and I will need them in another place – I am just one man who runs everything. It is really hellish when places like Encyclopedia Dramatica go around hounding every forum one person hangs out that – just because they have an outspoken world view. I learned this one from my family, you sure the fuck can’t please everyone all the time – and they get a little greedy the moment they get published on a place that is a bigger.

I am always going to get people submitting no matter what I do, either fiction or nonfiction –– I will look at the story either way and if I like the story they’re part of the line up the contract is an e-mail contract or the galley cover and ask them to sign it and keep it for their records. If the author is local I invite them to join me on a few signings when I do a book signing (the signings are few and far between because I live so far from civilization. So being a print on demand author has a few strikes against me and working with lulu.com has the natives restless. I consider this my mission statement and this works with coaches who play football – be in it for the long haul, and go hard or if you can’t take the heat when it gets really rough then go home.

What they expect in the business is to play by everyone else’s rules – the hell with the rules they’re overrated. If you want to get into the business as a publisher places like what I work with are the way to go about it. Publishers out there don’t give you full creative freedom, and it is a revolutionary idea. The very thing this country was born on. So with those who are going around calling me a snake oil salesman – this is America, like it or get the fuck out. This country is a Republic and I voted for the leader who is in office right now. The publishing business – thrives on the whole idea of Freedom of Press, and if I remember right I am not running this from North Korea.

I publish what I want, when I want. I know the kind of stories I am looking for and this is the type of thing that really pisses off the likes of the Effort Witch Lady. Stalking me on Reunion.com and going around digging all the dirt you can about me. I will say this right now – there is a war waiting to brew and she’s starting the jihad, a holy war. She wants a word from the wise I will give the word to the wise here, people like her don’t last when they are driven to topple something that is bigger than the person who is putting the project together. I am starting to see the anthology Tabloid Purposes as something bigger than me, bigger than all of us in this business. People like this one person calling me the snail oil salesman will fail, they’re designed to fail. This is the kind of author who I liken to the terrorists on 11 Sept 2001, the fact she is willing to ram an airplane into someone’s career. (I am not being insensitive to the victims of 11 Sept. 2001, but I am proving a point here. The blog post she made on her own website was the plane that rammed the twin towers.)

There are people who are demanding that I apologize for such a strong statement – using the term jihad as the term for the infidel in this business. I do call this person an Infidel here. I think when someone like that is trying to force hiatus on someone – that’s a jihad waiting to happen. That is when a boycott on her novels begin and I do call this – boycott any book of hers and if she tours and notice there are no lines in Chicago for her books, that means there is a boycott going on her own works. That will hit her harder than anything I will say here in this article or rant. If you want to know what I am talking about look no further than her rant the blog she made on November 19, 2007.