Reading: misc. fanzines
Music: The Clash's Essential (2nd disk) * Tom Wait's "Swordfish Trombone"
Link o' the Day: Earl Kemp's eI7

I got a very large chunk of the Daws Butler book laid out tonight. That project is coming along very well. I expect to get the rest of the layout done within the next day or two, and then I'll run through it and fix ellipses and em-dashes, add some page headers and figure I'll submit it to the editor by Sunday evening.

In the meantime, writing still continues. I finished a run-through of the Tecumseh story, but seeings how I had a couple of days away, it's not too early to go back to the beginning and do yet some more polish. There is one plot element that I decided I didn't like at all, and am trying to figure out an alternate plot device. Not going to go into details here--partly because I'm slightly embarassed by the pulpish plot device currently being used (let's just say that if this _were_ being published in one of those old pulps, the cover would likely depict a half-naked girl strapped to a table while a mad scientist approaches her with a wicked looking buzzsaw. The fact that there is no half-naked girl in my story has no bearing. In any case, I need to do some serious cogitation. I've been keeping an index card in my pocket during the days in case something hits me, and a pad of paper by the bed.

Over the weekend my racoon-like mind sketched out the plots to two other stories. One is a hard story because it lacks logic for a world in which the internet is nearly everywhere. I may have to turn the clock back and set the story in the 50s which may erode some of the story's saleability. The other story is a bit easier, but creepy. I don't usually write horror, and very very rarely read it. I don't even care for horror films. I suppose the creepy story _could_ be turned into a slipstream-style fantasy, but there is something compelling about a little girl trying to rip away the soul of a little boy that appeals to the Freudian dragon. I've already written out a couple of pages for this currently-untitled story, but am giving most of my attention to Tecumseh and Dignity right now. Plus I need to remember to finish revising my Truck Kings Artists Collective story as well.

A number of people at other Journalscape blogs have mentioned the WotF contest. At least one of my current In Progress stable will go out before the next deadline.

I'm back to reading ABOUT TOWN by Yagoda. As I've said before, it's very well written, but very dense. I need to find something lighter for the in-betweens, although I have a good stack of fanzines I need to get through and LoC.

Which brings me to today's featured link--Earl Kemp's fanzine _eI7_. There's a in this online version of his zine that covers the darker and seedier history of publishing. Some folks may recall hearing rumors that Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Mike Resnick and Marion Zimmer Bradley (and a host of others) paid the bills in their early days by writing cheap erotica. Of course it's not just about these books Earl mentions in his zine. In the various issues he does a lot of fan history, pulps, and bios of writers who perhaps shouldn't have been so forgotten.

Here's a quick taste of the latest issue:

"[Robert] Silverberg would revisit this theme again, in Penthouse Letters of December 1992. In an article named "My Life As A Pornographer," Silverberg writes: "I was 24 years old when I stumbled, much to my surprise, into a career of writing sex novels. I was then, as I am now, primarily known as a science-fiction writer. But in l958, as a result of a behind-the-scenes convulsion in the magazine-distribution business, the whole s-f publishing world went belly up. A dozen or so magazines for which I had been writing regularly ceased publication overnight; and as for the tiny market for s-f novels (two paperback houses and one hardcover) it suddenly became so tight that unless you were one of the first-magnitude stars like Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov you were out of luck."

That's when it really started happening big time, in the late 1959s and on until the early 1970s. The Slime Gods From Outer Space started their switchover from writing science fiction to writing pornography. Only it wasn't pornography but that was the label used at that point in time. To be more accurate, they were certifiably pristine, pure, and totally sex free. There was not even implied offstage sex going on. Not one word of profanity was used, no vulgarisms, no offensive terms of any sort, no character had any body parts…and that was pornography?"

These guys _hate_ seeing these books showing up at autograph sessions. Just a little hint for y'all out there.

Cheers!

--John Teehan