Tag Archives: tales of the talisman

Snow, Glass, Apples

The fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” has fascinated me ever since I translated the story for a German literature class back in my university days. Since that time, I published a translation of the story in an issue of Tales of the Talisman Magazine. I then wrote a piece of flash fiction that imagined a vampiric version of Snow White called “The Tale of Blood Red” which appeared in the anthology Blood Sampler. Most recently, I gave Snow White a steampunk treatment and placed the story with the forthcoming anthology Grimm Machinations.

On a recent trip to a bookstore, I found the 2019 graphic novel Snow, Glass, Apples written by Neil Gaiman with art by Colleen Doran. Reading the back and then browsing the interior, I soon discovered this was also a retelling of Snow White. Not only that, it looked like Snow White was portrayed as a vampire. Of course, I picked up the book right away. In this case, the fairy tale is told from the point of view of Snow White’s stepmother, the queen. We learn that the former king went to the woods and fell in love with a beautiful young woman after his wife had died. The king marries the young woman and brings her home. There, she discovers his vampire daughter, who mostly keeps to herself. Over time, the king fades and dies, which is how the young woman becomes queen. She sees Snow White for the danger she is, orders her heart cut out and her body taken to the woods. The years pass, but fewer and fewer people cross the woods to visit the spring fair. Looking in her scrying mirror, the queen realizes that Snow White is still alive. When people enter the woods, she attacks and kills them. The queen sets a plan in motion to save her land and the fair from Snow White. She’ll create blood-laced poison apples for her stepdaughter.

You might wonder how Neil Gaiman and I would independently come up with the idea of a vampire Snow White. I would argue many of the ingredients are right there in the fairy tale. In the original, Snow White’s mother pricks her fingers and sees the blood drop onto a snow-covered, ebony window frame. She wishes for a child with skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony. Also, in the original story, Snow White’s stepmother succeeds in killing Snow White three times, only to have Snow White return from the dead each time. When Snow White dies the third time, the dwarfs place her in a glass coffin and the prince at the end wakes her, not with a kiss, but having his bumbling entourage drop the coffin, dislodging the poisoned apple piece. And, there’s also the bit near the opening where the wicked queen wants to destroy Snow White’s heart. It’s not a big leap to go from the story as commonly read to the idea of Snow White being a magical, undead creature.

It turns out Snow, Glass, Apples is actually based on a 1994 short story by Gaiman. The story along with Colleen Doran’s art has a distinctly erotic feel. This may feel like a departure from a classic fairy tale, but again, it has roots in the original story. I’m fortunate enough to have a German copy of Grimms’ tales which include notes by the Grimm brothers. They mention that some versions of the story do relay not just the wish of Snow White’s mother, but tell the story of Snow White’s conception during a sleigh ride.

I was glad to discover Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran’s Snow, Glass, Apples. The story is an interesting twist on the original and Doran’s art is lush and gorgeous, adding to Gaiman’s story. The graphic novel was published by Dark Horse Books and you should be able to find copies online or at your local bookstore. The original story appears in Gaiman’s collection Smoke and Mirrors.

My translation of “Snow White” appeared in Tales of the Talisman, volume 2, issue 2, which is sadly out of print. My vampire story, “The Tale of Blood Red” is available in Blood Sampler, which you can pick up here: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/blood-sampler-by-david-lee-summers-lee-clark-zumpe

My steampunk story “The Porcelain Princess” will appear in Grimm Machinations from eSpec Books. Although that version of Snow White isn’t a vampire, I still explore some of the darker, spookier aspects of the character. The Kickstarter for the book should be launching soon. I’ll be sure to keep people posted.

Anno Dracula

In the past few weeks I’ve been working on an outline for a new Scarlet Order Vampire novel. Back when I first wrote Vampires of the Scarlet Order in 2004, I’d written four synopses for novels in the series. I started the prequel, Dragon’s Fall almost right away in 2005 as a NaNoWriMo project. I set the novel aside for a time, but finally published it in 2012. Recently, I was prompted to think about the series again as I brought out new editions of the novels in 2020. Also, around that time, Boutique du Vampyre in New Orleans selected Vampires of the Scarlet Order for their book club. Both events reminded me how much fun I had with these characters and I went back to look at those synopses from eighteen years ago. Of the three remaining synopses, two would be historical novels and the third was a sequel. The sequel interested me most. Re-reading the synopsis, I thought there was a lot of potential to further explore concepts I’d developed in Vampires of the Scarlet Order. Not all the ideas in that synopsis grabbed me, but I started playing with the plot, jotting ideas down and just about 4000 words later, I have a detailed outline that I’m chewing on and probably will pursue in the coming months.

The Vampire Marcella peeks out from the pages of Anno Dracula

Looking for a little thematic inspiration, I decided to browse my to-read stack for a vampire book I hadn’t read before. One of those books was Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula which I’d purchased on the strength of Kurt MacPhearson’s review from a 2011 issue of Tales of the Talisman Magazine. At long last it was time to give it a try.

Anno Dracula is set in 1888. It imagines that Dracula did not die at the end of Bram Stoker’s famous novel, but killed Abraham Van Helsing and went on to marry Queen Victoria and become Prince Consort of Britain. Once done, vampires become an accepted part of society and are seen almost everywhere. The story is set up like an episode of Columbo. The book opens with one of the Jack the Ripper murders and Jack’s identity is revealed right at the start. The twists are that this Jack only murders vampires and he’s a character from Dracula. From there, we meet Charles Beauregard, an agent for the Diogenes Club. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will recognize this esteemed establishment as the home of the power behind the British government. Among the club’s most esteemed members is Sherlock Holmes’ older brother Mycroft, who assigns Beauregard the task of solving the Ripper murders. At the heart of Whitechapel, near the scene of the crimes is a vampire named Geneviève who has set out to help the poor and destitute of the district. We soon learn she’s a truly ancient vampire with powers to rival Dracula’s.

The novel reminded me of a vampire-centric League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a mix of historical personages and characters related to just about every Victorian-set vampire novel or movie you can think of. Among the notable characters in the novel are Lord Ruthven, Florence Stoker, Frances Varney, and Doctor Jeckyll. Count Orloff, from Murnau’s Nosferatu is a creepy, silent jailkeeper. Dracula himself only actually appears in the novel’s last chapter. For the rest of the novel, his shadow just looms over everything that happens. One of my favorite character cameos happens near the end of the novel when Beauregard encounters an armadillo in Buckingham Palace, a clear nod to Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula.

All in all, I had a lot of fun reading Anno Dracula and I might well seek out some of the other stories and novels in the series. It’s clear Kim Newman is a fan of many of the same books I am.

I know some authors who avoid reading books in genres they’re working on to avoid being unduly influenced. However, when I’ve done my job as a writer and fleshed out my characters and have a good idea of what they’re going to do in their story, I find I’m not tempted to lift anything from another writer’s work. What I do pay attention to are those moments where I emotionally connect to the story. What makes me sad? What makes me laugh out loud? What makes me say “Cool!” After reading Anno Dracula, I did go back to my outline and asked, were there moments where I could do more of that? Are there moments where I could be more effective and make better connections with my readers? I did weave in a new plot thread as a result of asking those kinds of questions. And, I suspect I’ll find even more connections as I begin the actual writing process.

In the meantime, if you want to delve into the world of the Scarlet Order Vampires, click the links below to learn more about the books in the series.

Fevre Dream

I first became aware of George R.R. Martin’s vampire novel from a review Kurt MacPhearson wrote for Tales of the Talisman Magazine back in 2010. His enthusiasm for Fevre Dream caused me to put it on my to-read list. I finally had a chance to dive in and my only real regret is that I waited so long to read the book.

Fevre Dream Novel

Starting in 1857, Fevre Dream tells the story of Abner Marsh, owner of a small steamboat company in St. Louis, who lost most of his boats the previous winter when they were crushed by ice during an unusually harsh winter. A stranger named Joshua York shows up on his doorstep and offers to buy half the company and gives Abner enough money to build his dream steamboat, which Abner calls the Fevre Dream after the river which flowed by his home town. The Fevre Dream sets off down the Mississippi with Marsh and York serving as co-captains. It soon becomes apparent that York only appears at night. What’s more, York insists that the steamboat make many stops on its journey where he will disappear for days at a time. Meanwhile, on a plantation near New Orleans, we meet Damon Julian, leader of a vampire nest. A human thrall named Sour Billy Tipton buys slaves and brings them to the plantation for the vampires to drain dry. It soon becomes clear that Marsh, York, and Julian are heading toward a confrontation. Martin offers some twists and turns that kept me guessing about the exact nature of the confrontation.

I loved Martin’s description of steamboats. The places the Fevre Dream visits in the novel came to life through his writing. Martin also did a great job of creating vampires that felt like they could be real creatures who exist in the world we know. Also, instead of simply dismissing vampire mythology as so much nonsense, as many other writers did in the 1980s and 1990s, he lets his characters speculate about how that mythology built up around the real creatures, which I liked. I was less impressed with his use of an offensive word for African-Americans. While it lends some authenticity to the novel in its period and setting, and it ultimately serves a good story point, there are some points where the word just feels overused.

Fevre Dream Comic

One of the things that led me to read the book now was discovering that Daniel Abraham had adapted the novel into a comic book. Abraham is one-half of the writing team who created the Expanse novels under the pen-name James S.A. Corey. Since I recently went through the exercise of adapting an episode from one of my vampire novels into a comic book, I was curious what the comic adaptation of this novel was like. He did a good job of paring the novel down to it’s essence and hitting the key plot points. In a comic book, the art needs to do a lot of the heavy lifting of conveying the story’s emotions. At some level, a comic writer’s job is to give the artist all the tools needed to show the story to the reader. Overall, the art did seem to capture the emotions I felt when reading the novel. I did catch a couple of places where it seemed like important plot points were mentioned in passing and if I hadn’t known they were important from the novel, I might have missed them in the comic. This is a challenge in comic book writing because you have to be so minimalist that you have to make choices about what to emphasize and what not to. I might have made a different choice, but without more experience than I have, I don’t know if it would be a better choice.

For those people looking for an interesting, historical vampire tale, I do recommend either the novel or the comic book adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Fevre Dream. Studying how Daniel Abraham adapted Martin’s novel has given me some ideas about what I would do in further adaptations of my own work.

As a reminder, I will be sharing my comic book, Guinevere and the Stranger with my Patreon subscribers starting on Monday. If you want to be first in line to read the comic, be sure to subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/davidleesummers. What’s more, print comics have arrived and will go on sale at https://www.hadrosaur.com soon after it’s appeared for Patreon subscribers.

Tinkering Under the Hood

This past summer, while Kitt Peak National Observatory was shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic, I took some online courses in web design. Web design is something I’ve learned largely on the job without any formal education, so even though I had been designing and editing web sites for several years, I decided to start with some fairly basic classes to improve my formal understanding of the process. One of the subjects covered was “hypertext transfer protocol.” This is basically the protocol computers use to speak to each other over the web. You’re probably most familiar with this from the “http” in front of web addresses in the address bar at the top of your browser. You’ve probably noticed that some of these addresses start with “https” instead of “http.” The “s” stands for “secure” and when it’s in the address, you should also see a lock icon in the bar.

Without getting into too many technical details, the way you secure the communication between your browser and the computer where a website lives is that the website’s computer has to have a piece of code called a secure socket layer certificate or a transfer layer security certificate. Without the certificate, the data transferred between the computers is just the code typed by the programmer, which can be viewed by a lurking third party. When the certificate is enabled, that communication stream is encrypted and can’t just be read by the third party. This is especially important when you’re using a form to send personal information across the web, and particularly when you’re sending something like a credit card number. When I started working on websites, secure certificates weren’t used and I haven’t tended to worry about them. On the Hadrosaur Productions websites, when I offered something for sale, I used a shopping cart from Paypal, which had all the necessary security in place. However, because of my recent classes, I learned that I could make a more secure web browsing experience for my customers.

Hadrosaur.com after modifications

This past week, the hosting for hadrosaur.com and talesofthetalisman.com both came up for renewal, which prompted me to check on the state of the security certificates offered by our web host. I discovered the hosting service does, indeed provide them. So, I’ve been tinkering with links throughout the sites I manage, including this blog, my personal website, and those two websites to make sure links were summoned using the https protocol. As you can see in the image above, hadrosaur.com now displays the lock icon in the address bar.

We have some exciting products coming to hadrosaur.com later this year, including the new edition of my novel Children of the Old Stars, a new edition of Hybrid by Greg Ballan, and the comic Guinevere and the Stranger adapted from my Scarlet Order Vampire series. Although Tales of the Talisman Magazine remains on hiatus, many back issues are still available at talesofthetalisman.com and they all have great stories. The changes to the sites are mostly invisible to the casual browser, and while shopping there has always been secure through the Paypal shopping cart structure, my goal has been to add another layer of security and trust to your shopping experience through our sites.

Remembering David B. Riley

I was saddened to learn last week that my friend and long-time Hadrosaur Productions contributor David B. Riley passed away unexpectedly at the beginning of the month. I first discovered David’s work when he submitted his story “The Brother” for publication in Hadrosaur Tales 2 way back in 1997. It told the story of a vampire monk, an idea I loved and I remember being pulled in by his clean, unpretentious prose.

Although David’s first submission to me involved a vampire monk, he soon started submitting stories featuring the character I believe will be his most enduring, Miles O’Malley. Miles was a down-on-his-luck cowboy in the old west who managed to get caught up in a feud between Nick Mephistopheles (AKA Satan) and Ah Puch, Mayan god of death. These stories were a lot of fun and David ultimately turned them into a novel called The Two Devils. I edited the first edition for LBF Books.

David continued to submit to me over the run of Hadrosaur Tales and his work appeared in many issues of Tales of the Talisman starting with issue 2 of that journal. From the time David first started submitting to me, I became aware of his interest in weird westerns. I knew he ran a zine called Trails: Intriguing Stories of the Wild West. I submitted a couple of stories and I was pleased when David liked them enough to publish them. This zine was just a few sheets of paper stapled together. In 2006, he decided to put together a nice, perfect bound anthology of the same name. I was delighted to appear in the anthology alongside such friends as Uncle River and Robert E. Vardeman. Not only did that prove a nice anthology to appear in, that was the first appearance of my characters Ramon Morales and Fatemeh Karimi who would headline my Clockwork Legion novels.

Although I had been corresponding with David since 1997, I first met him in person at MileHiCon in Denver, Colorado. I think that would have been in 2002. We would see each other at many conventions after that. Often we would be on panels together discussing the weird west, how the weird west intersected with steampunk, or a topic of common historical interest such as observations of Mars in the nineteenth century. David and I didn’t always agree on panels or in personal conversations, but I think we both came away from our conversations with something to think about and we took those opinions to heart.

I appeared in a few other books David edited, including Six-Guns Straight From Hell. David continued to write stories featuring characters he introduced in his Miles O’Malley Stories. I published two of his novellas in this world. One is Fallen Angel, which features Miles and the Angel Mabel. I also published his novella “The Venerable Travels of Ling Fung” as part of the collection Legends of the Dragon Cowboys.

After David retired from working in the hotel business, he moved to Tucson, Arizona. I was pleased to give him and his family a tour of Kitt Peak. Also, David became a regular speaker at Wild Wild West Con. While passing through Tucson one time, I decided to stop at a movie theater to see the latest remake of The Magnificent Seven. I was surprised when David came in. He joined me and we had fun discussing the movie afterward. I was especially gratified when David Boop, who also appeared in Tales of the Talisman and Six-Guns Straight From Hell dedicated the collection Straight Outta Dodge City to both David and me.

I’ll miss David and our discussions about the weird west. I’ll miss his comments on this blog. If you haven’t discovered his writing, I encourage you to look him up on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever you buy books.

End of Year Sales

As the year draws to a close, Hadrosaur Productions is pleased to offer our ebooks at a discount through the Smashwords End of Year Sales Event. All of our books normally priced higher than $1.00 are on sale through tomorrow. This is a great chance to load up your e-reader with some great new books.

Travel to the Past

Fallen Angel is the story of Mabel, an angel from Hell, who accompanies General Grant’s army during the last days of the Civil War only to discover that Martians are watching the Earth with envious eyes and slowly drawing their plans against us. Not only that, but Mabel has to contend with her evil sister, who wants to have humans for dinner. Use discount code SEY50 to get Fallen Angel for just $1.50 at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/924099

Sugar Time collects Joy V. Smith’s Sugar Sweet stories into one volume. When Sugar Sweet’s Uncle Max falls ill and his collaborators disappear, she investigates the old Victorian mansion where he conducted his research. She soon finds the collaborators — or what’s left of them — along with an angry Neanderthal. She also finds her uncle’s research project, a working time machine. Sugar Time is available for $1.50 with discount code SEY50 at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/567992

In Revolution of Air and Rust, tt’s 1915 and the American Expeditionary Force has invaded Northern Mexico. Pancho Villa leads his revolutionary army in a desperate raid against the American force only to be outflanked. Just as American airships prepare to deliver the death blow, Pancho Villa is transported to a parallel Earth where he finds an unexpected ally and the technology that might turn defeat into victory. Revolution of Air and Rust is available for $1.50 with discount code SEY50 at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/254622

Great Story Collections

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has discovered thousands of new planets. Visiting, much less settling, those worlds will provide innumerable challenges. The men and women who make the journey will be those who don’t fear the odds. They’ll be Kepler’s Cowboys. Saddle up and take an unforgettable journey in this anthology of science fiction stories about planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. Kepler’s Cowboys is available for 75% off the cover price with coupon code SEY75 at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/698694

Explore P’Eng-Lai, the legendary home of the immortals in Tales of the Talisman volume 8, issue 3. Travel to an exotic future inhabited by the bee and wolf tribes. Join a quest for a druid’s master — just be careful, the master has been dabbling in forbidden magic! Climb rugged mountains in search of dragon eggs and power. These and other tales of the imagination await in this issue of Tales of the Talisman. This issue is available for $1.50 using discount code SEY50 at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/377360

Thanks to all the readers out there who have made 2019 a year to remember. I wish you a wonderful and prosperous 2020 filled with good books, new discoveries and amazing adventures.

Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale 2018 – Fantasy/Steampunk Spotlight

This month, the e-book retailer Smashwords is running their annual Summer/Winter sale, which runs from July 1 through July 31. Why summer/winter? That’s because it’s summer here in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere! All of Hadrosaur Productions’ titles published at Smashwords will be on sale for 50% off their retail price. All you have to do is enter the code SSW50 at checkout. Smashwords presents their ebooks in a variety of formats including mobi (which work on Kindles), epub (which work on Nooks), and PDF (which work on just about anything). For today’s post, I’ll be focusing on Hadrosaur’s fantasy, weird western and steampunk titles at Smashwords. Read to the end to get a free bonus!

Legends of the Dragon Cowboys

Legends of the Dragon Cowboys brings you two weird western adventures by authors David B. Riley and Laura Givens. Their heroes ride boldly out of the Far East to find their way in a mythic land of danger, romance, and adventure.

In “The Venerable Travels of Ling Fung” by David B. Riley, a wandering businessman encounters a Mayan god, crooked enterprises and Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, when all he really wants is to open a gun store. Ling Fung is not any ordinary Chinese entrepreneur–he’s highly skilled in Kung Fu and he can shoot good, too. While his heart is set on business, providence seems to have other plans for him.

Laura Givens brings wily acrobat Chin Song Ping to the Wild West in search of adventure and fortune. He finds little fortune, but plenty of adventure. Chin Song Ping is a scoundrel, a gambler and a trouble magnet. His heart of gold lands him in schemes to outwit would-be gods, cannibal ghosts, insane robots, Voodoo despots and the ultimate evil–bureaucrats. But he is a romantic, and the love of his life is the true treasure he seeks. The odds are always against him but if he survives he will become the Western legend he always was in his own mind.

The Wild West just got a lot wilder!

Get the book at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/751811

Revolution of Air and Rust

Revolution of Air and Rust This is my tale of Pancho Villa in an alternate Steampunk reality. Set in 1915, Teddy Roosevelt is building an empire. Pancho Villa is the only man who stands in his way!

The American Expeditionary Force under the command of General “Black Jack” Pershing has invaded Northern Mexico. Pancho Villa leads his revolutionary army in a desperate raid against the American force only to be outflanked. Just as Pershing’s airships prepare to deliver the death blow, Pancho Villa is transported to a parallel Earth where he finds an unexpected ally and the technology that might just turn defeat into victory.

Revolution of Air and Rust is a stand-alone novella set in the Empires of Steam and Rust world created by Robert E. Vardeman and Stephen D. Sullivan. A story filled with military action, espionage and gadgetry that’s sure to satisfy fans of steampunk and alternate history.

Get the book at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/254622

Tales of the Talisman

Tales of the Talisman Magazine may be on hiatus, but back issues are still available. We did post one issue to Smashwords and it’s chock full of outstanding stories and poetry. At only $1.50, this is quite a steal!

In volume 8, issue 3, Kurt MacPhearson and Rick Yennik show us the way to P’Eng-Lai, the legendary home of the immortals. Anna Sykora takes us to an exotic future inhabited by the bee and wolf tribes. Join Timothy Bastek and Taylor Packer on a quest for a druid’s master. Just be careful. The master has been dabbling in forbidden magic! Sidney Blaylock, Jr. climbs rugged mountains in search of dragon eggs and power. D’Arcy Ann Pryciak takes us camping with a family of banshees, but be careful of the salamander causing forest fires. These and other tales of the imagination await in this edition of Tales of the Talisman.

Get the book at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/377360

The Slayers

Now, this one is a special treat, just for reading this blog and for looking at what we have available from Hadrosaur Productions at Smashwords, I’m giving away a free short story!

Dragon bellies are full of powerful carbide that allows them to breathe fire. Dragon carbide is a valuable treasure. Rado is a young man who sails the winds in a flyer. He signs aboard a mighty dirigible called the Slayer to hunt dragons. However, he soon learns that Captain Obrey will not rest until he strips the teeth and carbide from a mighty gold dragon. First published in 2001, “The Slayers” is a fun, clever retelling of Moby Dick in a fantasy world with dragons. Remember to enter the code SSW50 on checkout to get the story for free!

Get the book at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/58303

Anniversaries and a Graduation

Today, I’m with my family in New Orleans to celebrate my eldest daughter’s graduation from Tulane University. She majored in mathematics and computer science and has a minor in Japanese. Needless to say, I’m proud of her accomplishments and expect great things from her in the years to come. Today, my wife and I also celebrate our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary. This is one of those times when I can’t help looking back at where I’ve come from and then look forward to where I hope to go. The photo at the head of the article shows me with my wife, Kumie, and daughter, Autumn, in 1997, right around my daughter’s second birthday.

1995, the year my daughter was born, was a milestone year for us. The birth of our first child would have been sufficient for that to be true, but it was also the year Kumie graduated from the University of Arizona with her master’s degree in business administration and we founded Hadrosaur Productions. Originally, the company’s objective was audio book publishing, but we soon moved into magazine publication as well with the first issue of Hadrosaur Tales. We dedicated the first issue of the magazine to Ray Bradbury. He sent a nice letter and photos to all the contributors in response. His letter and photo still hangs over my desk to this day.

Autumn has accepted a job offer and will be moving on soon. She’s enjoyed her time in New Orleans and I’ve enjoyed visiting. I’ve made friends there and hope to find other occasions to visit the Crescent City in years to come. We’re spending a week in the city, exploring, taking in the ambience, and generally celebrating our daughter’s accomplishment. It’s been amazing to watch her grow into a determined, young woman with her own goals and interests. She’s even started her own company where she sells crafts. You can follow her online at http://entropycreations.wordpress.com

Hadrosaur Productions has also made a pretty good showing as a small publisher. We published Hadrosaur Tales for ten years, then published Tales of the Talisman for another ten. We have a number of great books including Joy V. Smith’s time travel adventure, Sugar Time; Wayne James’s anthology of science fiction and horror, When Only the Moon Rages; the weird western Legends of the Dragon Cowboys by David B. Riley and Laura Givens; and our science fiction anthologies inspired by the Kepler space mission. I encourage you to browse all our titles at http://www.hadrosaur.com.

Also, we have many back issues of our magazines still available. Good stories and poems don’t spoil! You can browse back issues of Hadrosaur Tales at http://www.zianet.com/hadrosaur and back issues of Tales of the Talisman at http://www.talesofthetalisman.com.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Perhaps one of the things I miss most from years gone by is the ability to tune in to network television on Saturday morning and find a wide variety of animated cartoon programming. Much of this is due to television networks in the period of 1992 to 2002 deciding they didn’t make enough money to continue supporting animated programming. Also, around 2001 my wife and I decided that neither cable nor satellite TV were necessary items for our budget and we could see all the TV we wanted with other media such as DVDs. Of course, our decision was all part of the national trend that helped to kill animation in the first place. Not many people eschewed broadcast TV altogether as we did that early, but the number of choices available made it harder for networks to justify the expense of animation when certain cable networks specialized in it.

I grew up watching cartoons in the 1970s. I fondly remember many teams of crime-solving kids from shows such as Scooby-Doo and Josie and the Pussycats. The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour provided some great comedy, much of it originally produced much before my time. I was already a Star Trek fan and loved the animated adaptation that aired in the mid 70s. There were even some cool live action experiments during that time such as Land of the Lost about a family trapped in a land of dinosaurs and the superhero-themed Shazam/Isis Hour.

I never really fell out of love with cartoons, but the 1990s ended up being another high point for me. That was in the early days of my astronomy career and cartoons became an escape from my working life. They were also a welcome treat when my first daughter was young. What I particularly remember from that period were some exceptional superhero shows such as Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men. There were also some great animated superhero parodies such as Earthworm Jim, The Tick and Freakazoid.

Of course, for all the gems, there were many forgettable shows as well. Still, what I find amazing living in the times we do is how many of these shows that I thought I would never see again are readily available on video or with the touch of a button on the internet. For a guy like me who occasionally wants a dose of nostalgia, these are great times. That said, the real joy of those Saturday mornings was the fun of discovery and I think that’s what I really miss is having that easy means of discovering new favorites.

Giving people a way to discover new authors was much of the reason I edited Hadrosaur Tales followed by Tales of the Talisman. Publishing those magazines also helped me appreciate the economic reality that caused the networks to take Saturday morning cartoons off the air. Like TV shows gone by, you can still get most of the back issues of both magazines. There are some great stories there by authors such as Neal Asher, Nicole Givens Kurtz, David Boop, and Janni Lee Simner and many more. You can find the back issues of each at:

As it turns out, I can do better than just give you nostalgia, Hadrosaur Productions has published two anthologies of stories set around planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. Be sure to check out:

Queries, Marketing, and Talismans

It’s been a little over a year since Tales of the Talisman volume 10, issue 4 hit the streets and I thought I’d take this opportunity to update you on the magazine’s hiatus.

Tales10-4-cover-big

I took the break, in part, to finish three novels under contract. Where those stand is as follows: The Brazen Shark was published earlier this year. I just turned in the first round of galleys for The Astronomer’s Crypt. I still need to write Owl Riders. My goal is to work on that novel this autumn and winter. Lurking in the background was also the anthology which is now called Maximum Velocity: The Best of the Full-Throttle Space Tales. As I mentioned last weekend, construction of that book is well underway.

I’m also conducting an experiment to see whether it’s a better business decision for Hadrosaur Productions to focus its publishing efforts on anthologies rather than a magazine. That experiment is on-going and you are welcome to participate. If you’re a writer, we’re reading for the anthology Kepler’s Cowboys right now. Find out what we’re looking for at the Guidelines Page. If you’re a reader, be sure to visit my homepage at davidleesummers.com and sign up for my newsletter so you can be among the first to know when the book is released! Just as a brief update for those writers who have submitted, the first short-listed stories are with my co-editor Dr. Steve Howell right now to get his opinion. If you want to check on the status of a submission, please feel free to query.

Which brings me to a brief digression for some writerly advice. Over the last few weeks, I’ve received a few queries about Tales of the Talisman and other projects. When writing a query, keep it short, on point, and avoid presumptuousness, no matter the reason for the query. A specific example comes to mind when someone queried to see if I’d be interested in reading an essay they’d written. About mid-way through the query, they said something to the effect: “This essay is longer than your guidelines specify, but the material is so interesting, I’m sure you’ll want to take a look.” A writer needs confidence, but this is not the best way to express it. Better would be a simple statement of the length. This would allow me to decide if I’m willing to bend the rules. Best would be to indicate willingness to work with the editor if changes are desired. In this case, don’t even indicate that it’s the length that’s at issue. The problem with the query letter was that it was so specific on the point of length that I suspected the author wouldn’t be willing to make any changes. Even if I had been buying essays for Tales of the Talisman, this would have made me less likely to consider the essay.

As far as the hiatus is concerned, I estimate I’m about two-thirds of the way through the time-critical projects that I knew would take a lot of my attention from the magazine. The experiment to see whether anthologies are a better product for Hadrosaur is really just gaining momentum. The upshot is that the hiatus will continue through 2016 as planned and will continue into 2017. About mid-way through 2017, I’ll take another look and see where things stand.

Of course, the one thing that speaks volumes to any editor or publisher considering a project is sales. The thing that would most convince me to bring back Tales of the Talisman sooner than later is a surge in back-issue sales, which actually brings me to another writer tip. For me, one of the hardest things about marketing is tooting my own horn. However, magazines and anthologies offer a way around that difficulty because there are great works by a number of authors. Instead of tweeting “buy my book” you can encourage people to “check out this magazine with an awesome story by Lee Clark Zumpe and an terrific poem by Beth Cato.”

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If you go to the “Issues” link at TalesOfTheTalisman.com you’ll find the four issues of Volume 10. More than that, if you scroll to the bottom, you’ll find links to all the past volumes. For an extra special treat, check out Tales of the Talisman’s predecessor, Hadrosaur Tales. Many of the back issues are available at the HadroStore! These older issues are a real bargain. If you’re a writer who wants Tales of the Talisman back as a market, why not recommend a few of these older magazines to your readers. I encourage readers to browse and find something they’d like to try. Even though the issues have dates, stories and poems don’t spoil. They’re just as fresh as the day they were published.