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It's that time again! Matthew S. Rotundo has graciously agreed to do a Scavenger Hunt! If his interview has piqued your interest in his space opera series, then line right up: I'll tell you how you can win an e-book of either Petra (book one) or Petra Released (book two).

Unlike the Scavenger Hunts that we did for Maria V. Snyder and J.L. Gribble, I'm re-doing the structure in order to 1) encourage more entries and 2) make it reasonable for the author to provide copies. What does that mean?

If I receive 10 entries or less: ONE winner receives an e-copy of either Petra or Petra Released.

If I receive 20 entries: TWO winners receive their choice of either Petra or Petra Released, e-copy.

If I receive 30 or more entries? I'll talk to Matthew to see if he's willing to up the number of winners. ;)

So, not only should you ENTER, but it benefits you to signal boost the Scavenger Hunt, because the more people who enter, the more chances you'll have to win (so long as you provide the right answers, of course).

Ready?


Click through to Wordpress to Enter!

Welcome to third and final installment of Calico In Conversation with Matthew S. Rotundo. If you missed Parts One and Two, click below to catch up:

Part One: Taking Off Like a Rocket
Part Two: Politics in Fiction

Editor’s Note: this interview was originally conducted in March through July of 2016.

***

What else do you have noodling around in that brain of yours? Petra Released came out the end of July, and Book #3 is inevitable. Once you’re done with this story arc, what else do you hope to dig into? Other science fiction ideas? Fantasy? Noir?

Oh, you want to be careful about looking into my brain. :-) But since you asked . . .

Let’s see. Post-Petra, I have a few other projects that will need my attention. I’ve written an urban fantasy novel that’s first part of another series. I’d like to take a crack at the second book. There’s also a near future post-apocalypse novel that probably needs another rewrite. And then there’s this novelette I wrote, a story I dearly love that is -- get this -- middle grade fantasy . . . and which might be the start of yet another series.

See what happens when you peek inside my mind? It’s a mess in there. I warned you.

You’re writing science fiction, but it’s clear you’ve got lots of other ideas and genres percolating in that brain of yours. Would you talk about your influences as a writer?

You betcha. Although I have to be careful distinguish between favorite authors and those that actually influence me; they’re not always the same. I’m a huge George R.R. Martin fan, for example, but I don’t know how much of an influence his work has been on the type of writer I am. I would say that Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Charles Dickens, Madeleine L’Engle, and maybe Emily Brontë are the writers who taught me what fiction was and what it could do.

Of all of those authors, what do you think is the greatest lesson you’ve learned?

Last week's post got me nostalgic, and that got me thinking about another song/video that really punches me right in the gut. By itself, The Lumineer's "Stubborn Love" is a good song, with a particularly profound lyric, "The opposite of love's indifference."

But when I saw the video for this song, and every time I've seen the video since, it kills me. Because the story told feels like my story. Yes, the little girl in the video is older than I would've been, but this video/song combo taps into my unconscious memory, because I feel like I've been here (and based on what my mom has told me about growing up, I have).

This is the rare case where the video really elevates the song into something more. At least for me.

Take a listen:



Like it? Love it? Hate it? Sound off below!

Reminder: Music Monday is about the music, not the videos. Videos are just the medium I’m using to share the music, and some videos aren’t actually videos at all. Enjoy the songs, but if YouTube forces you to watch some sort of advertisement before you can get to the music, please be patient.

So Happy August! I bring you the belated Culture Consumption for July, but at least this month, I know where the month went: Speculative Chic! So far, so good, but starting a fanzine meant less time for other things, like…oh, I don’t know…READING. I still managed some movies and television though, so let’s take a look at what July had to offer, shall we?

Editor's Note: this interview was originally conducted in March through July of 2016.

***

Let’s dig into Petra. It was a lot of fun re-reading it after reading the initial draft, what…. nearly ten years ago? I also remember at that time, I was a complete crazy person who read through that sucker TWICE (I don’t do that anymore with novels), so the published version is my third time through, and still, despite remember various details and broad strokes of the story (your ending is specifically memorable), I found it to be an engaging, fast read, and I’m really disappointed there wasn’t more interest when you shopped it around. I mean, I know SF has been a hard sell in the past ten years, but dang. This is one of the most professionally polished self-published books I’ve ever read, and believe me, I’m not saying that because I know you. You mentioned you hired a copy editor and a cover artist. How did you go about finding the right ones for your book?

Wow. Thanks so much for the kind words. Petra is a labor of love, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. In addition to the writing itself, I went to some trouble to teach myself how to format both ebook and print editions of the book. That was an inordinately time-consuming process, but I learned a lot, and am grateful for it.

I do wish the market -- i.e., publishers and agents -- had shown a bit more interest. Of course, I think it’s brilliant, but then, I would, wouldn’t I? Still, there is a glimmer of a possibility that a traditional publisher might pick it up. In the meantime, though, I’ll just keep plugging along with it.

My copy editor, Tamara Blain of A Closer Look Editing, came recommended to me. She did a sample edit of the opening pages, so we could be sure her style meshed with mine. Did it ever! She really knows her stuff. Beyond that, though, she has a lot of experience with independent publishing, which has been invaluable to me. She pointed out issues I never would have thought of on my own. So a lot of the credit for the polish you admire goes to her.

As for my cover artist, Ryan Malm -- he’s my niece’s husband, and a talented graphic artist. It was kind of no-brainer to contact him.

Who knows what the market will bring, and what it will look for? If not Petra and its sequel (sequels?), perhaps something else you write in the future will be published through a traditional house! Then again, maybe you’ll get addicted to being an indy author and eschew the traditional publishing process!

But let's stop speculating: What advice do you have for authors considering the self-publishing route?

After a couple of weeks of possibly obscure, progressive rock, I wanted to do a little something different this week, and the perfect opportunity arose with the release of Lindsey Stirling's new video for "Something Wild," which features Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, and is part of of the soundtrack for the 2016 remake of Pete's Dragon, which I'm still not sure I'm okay with them making, but here we go.

I've been listening to this song off and on, as it was part of my pre-order for Stirling's new album Brave Enough, so I had no idea it was part of Pete's Dragon until I watched the video. And frankly, this is one of the cases when the song and the video goes pretty well together, and I love the way scenes of the movie are intercut with the story of the video, which features two children diving deep into the world of pretend. I admit, I get a little choked up, but I'm just going to chalk it up to nostalgia and move on.



Like it? Love it? Hate it? Sound off below!

Reminder: Music Monday is about the music, not the videos. Videos are just the medium I’m using to share the music, and some videos aren’t actually videos at all. Enjoy the songs, but if YouTube forces you to watch some sort of advertisement before you can get to the music, please be patient.

I don't intend do to this every week, but it's been a week and a half since Speculative Chic launched, and I wanted to give you all a chance to see what kind of awesome my contributors have been publishing. So, if you haven't yet started following Speculative Chic (the best way is subscribing through email/Wordpress), here's what you may have missed:

Welcome to Speculative Chic

Sound Off! Ghostbusters

My Favorite Things: Soundtrack Love, Fairytale Dectectives, and Awesome Aps

You Can't Kill The Truth: Re-Reading Mira Grant's Newsflesh Series Part One: Feed

Broken Earth, Broken Characters: A Review of N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season

Welcome to the Bookstore

Dear Sherry: Scared to Share

As you can see, we've already got a lot of content to sift through, and that's not going to change! Excepting weekends, you can expect to see at least one new post daily, and the content varies from fangirling, commentary, reviews, writing advice, and the inner workings of bookstores. And it varies week to week!

So if you haven't checked us out yet, please do! Feel free to like posts and comment on those that catch your interest: let Spec Chic's authors know how much you appreciate their work!

Matt gravitated to science fiction, fantasy, and horror at an early age, too.  He discovered Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” in a grade school reader, and read it over and over whenever he got bored in class. (Needless to say, he read it a lot.) Other classics soon followed -- Dune and Lord of the Rings and Foundation, the usual suspects. As a boy, he often pretended his bicycle was Shadowfax, and that he was Gandalf, riding like mad for Minas Tirith. Yeah, he was that kind of kid. Half the time, his family and friends didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

Matt’s story “Alan Smithee Lives in Hell” placed second in the 1997 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Contest. In 1998, he attended Odyssey. The workshop led directly to his first sale -- “Black Boxes,” in Absolute Magnitude. In 2002, Matt won a Phobos Award for “Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown.” He was a 2008 winner in the Writers of the Future Contest. He has since continued to publish in various magazines and anthologies, and is the author of Petra, the first book in The Prison World Revolt series.

Matt lives in Nebraska. He has husked corn only once in his life, and has never been detasseling, so he insists he is not a hick.

Editor’s Note: this is part one of a three-part interview. Parts two and three will be published August 9th and August 16th, respectively. Also, this interview was originally conducted in March through July of 2016.

***

Now, to get started, I ask all of my interviewees the same starting question, and that’s this: how do we know each other?

We both attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop -- I in 1998, and you in 2005. We got to know each other via an email group for alums. You graciously volunteered to read and critique an early draft of my novel Petra. (Thanks again for that, by the way). We’ve kept in touch ever since.

I’m really starting to go into denial regarding how quickly the years are passing. Tell me, since my initial beta read of Petra, can you talk about your process from that stage to the published stage it’s at now?

So last week was so much fun that I couldn't resist coming back this week and subjecting you to the music I put on repeat and listen to for hours. You're welcome.

This week: "Waves" by The Dear Hunter. It's an easy, accessible pick, one of the few songs that, when the outro is removed like it is in the video, it easily stands alone. But the song, like the album it's part of, is part of a six act story told all through music: the birth, life, and death of a boy known only as "The Dear Hunter." It's fascinating, and the music, as expected for progressive rock, is a study in complexity and differing music styles, and if you really want to dig deep into the lead singer/songwriter and the story behind these albums, then click here, but then come back, because you have a song to listen to.

"Waves" is one of those songs that gives me very distinct visuals, and naturally, those visuals don't line up with the video. That said, it's a compelling and catchy song, especially in context of the greater album.



Like it? Love it? Hate it? Sound off below!

Reminder: Music Monday is about the music, not the videos. Videos are just the medium I’m using to share the music, and some videos aren’t actually videos at all. Enjoy the songs, but if YouTube forces you to watch some sort of advertisement before you can get to the music, please be patient.

So, if you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know I've been jabbering about SEKRIT PROJECTS!!! Sekrit Project #1 was Calico in Conversation, now wrapping up its second month and going into the third.

But Sekrit Project #2 is much bigger. Bigger, more complex, and a little bit crazy.

Guys? With a little help from my friends, I've started a fanzine.


That's right. A FANZINE. For those of you who used to follow me in my book blogging days, consider this a SUPER BLOG, with far more people contributing than little ole me, as well as a diversification of content. Yes, there will be book reviews, but contributors are talking about movies, writing, conventions, cosplay, music, games.... all kinds of things!

So please, go visit Speculative Chic.com. Learn what we're about, see what we have to say. Follow us any way you can: subscribe, email, social media, whatever works best for you. And please, if you like what you see, or if you're remotely interested, please spread the word!

I'm super excited to finally unveil this to you, as this has been in the works for MONTHS, and it's already involved blood, sweat, and tears.

Please enjoy. And while I continue to toil away with both Calico in Conversation and Speculative Chic, it's time for me to embark on . . . you guessed it . . . yet another SEKRIT PROJECT. Three Sekrit Projects in a year.... I'm not sure how I'm going to survive all of this!