Canister X – A.P. Fuchs: Zombie, Paranormal Romance and Superhero Novelist, Blogger, Artist, Publisher

From the archives:

You Can’t Right, er, Rite, er, Write!
Originally published on-line January 21, 2006

So let’s pull out the big weapon against self-publishing: the editing. Here, folks, is where the heart of the issue lies. If it weren’t for the poorly—if at all—edited books that take up most of the self-publishing bin, self-publishing would be, as a guess, just as valid as “regular” publishing. I mean, really, the only difference, at its core, that separates self-publishing from traditional publishing is the author acts as the publisher and not someone else. I agree that the author can wear many hats when he/she publishes their own work (i.e. writing the actual book, laying it out—though only recommended if you know what you’re doing—even doing the cover—again, if you know what you’re doing) but when it comes to editing, GET SOMEBODY ELSE TO DO IT!! This should really go without saying but the biggest gripe against self-published works are not against the stories themselves, but the writing of the actual stories, that is the final presented form of these tales and how these stories were edited prior to being released.

Rule 1: A writer should edit his/her own work up to a final polished draft. For some it’s 3 drafts, for others it’s 4. Others do even more, as high as 20 or 30. You should never submit a first draft to an editor.

Rule 2: Get a professional editor to edit your work once you’ve taken it as far as you can go, defined as you think your final draft is perfectly edited. I promise you, it’s not. If you can’t afford an editor, save up until you can. Editing rates can vary from as little as a half cent per word to as much as $4.50 a page or higher. Find one who works within your budget but who also does a good job (see Rule 4).

Rule 3: See Rule 2.

Rule 4: When seeking an editor for Rule 2, this editor has to be either a) a professional editor, defined as they edit books for a living, or b) a seasoned writer with professional writing credits who is accessible and edits manuscripts on the side, and whose work you have read and who really seems to know their stuff. Even give them a sample page or two to edit to see how well they do the job. If they return the sample back to you with only a mistake or two corrected, odds are they didn’t edit thoroughly enough or—and this rarely happens—you are too good of a writer and only made one or two mistakes.

Rule 5: An editor should not be your best friend, your father/mother, your grandma or any family member distant or close, or anyone you’re close to.

Rule 6: This editor MUST give you constructive feedback and, more importantly, YOU MUST apply it to your work. Word choice is one thing to argue about, but if the editor says you’re doing such-and-such wrong in your grammar, LISTEN TO THEM! The greatest fault of any self-publisher is thinking they know best and they want their work to appear as they want it to appear, which basically means zero editorial application to the work in question. I’m not talking about an editor rewriting your work; I’m talking about them correcting stuff that needs to be corrected, like spelling, grammar, story continuity, character continuity, etc.

Rule 7: Once you’ve received your marked up manuscript from your editor, go over their suggestions/corrections then go over the book again yourself for anything that might have been missed by both of you. And, to be extra thorough, go over it yet another time just in case. At this point you’re pretty much going to have an as-close-to-perfect-as-possible manuscript which you can then take to the layout stage.
And even after laying it out, go through the book again one final time just in case anything got screwed up in the layout process.

A serious self-publisher has an editor. Period. If every self-publisher had a professional editor, the overall quality of self-published work would go way up, which in turn would change its image and help beat the stigma back a mile or two. One self-publisher doing it right helps the next. What a wonderful world it could be if every self-publisher went the distance and had their work edited. It’d give the industry one less thing to gripe about when complaining about self-published work.

Get to it.

The good folks over at ZombieHoard.com has just posted an interview with me on their site.

I really enjoyed doing this one. Lots of questions, lots of fun.

The interview can be found here.

Thanks.

Bigfoot War, the hardcore blood-and-guts creature feature by Eric S. Brown, has been re-released with an awesome new cover and interior to match!

Not only that, but we here at Coscom Entertainment are so excited about this book that we’ve made it even cheaper than the previous version because we’re so sure you’re going to love it.

The new edition of Bigfoot War is now available at the following on-line retailers:

Paperback:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Barnesandnoble.com
Other On-line Retailers

eBook:

Amazon Kindle
Drivethruhorror.com
Mobipocket.com
Smashwords

Synopsis:

Jeff Taylor was an ordinary boy growing up in the small town of Babble Creek, North Carolina, until one night his life was changed forever when a sasquatch brutally murdered his family.

Taylor fled the town, hoping to leave the painful memory behind.

Years later, after two tours of duty in the Iraq War, he’s back in Babble Creek seeking vengeance.

Taylor’s lust for the blood of the monster that slew his family sets in motion a series of events that soon has the entire town fighting for its life as a tribe of sasquatches descend from the forests and hills into Babble Creek to declare war upon its citizens.

Babble Creek is about to find out Bigfoot is very real and there’s more than one of the creatures that want to fill the streets with blood.

What Others Are Saying:

“Brutal and visceral, what was once the joke of the Cryptozoological world is now back where it belongs: at the top of the monster food-chain.” – Scott A. Johnson, author of City of Demons and Deadlands

“Eric S. Brown breathes new life into the Bigfoot mythos. Grizzly, gritty . . . gripping, Brown pulls you in from page one and doesn’t let go until the very end. Even then, he still haunts your nightmares. Bigfoot War is not to be missed!” – James Melzer, author of Escape: A Zombie Chronicles Novel

“Find a big gun, and catch your breath when you can. The raging, relentless pace of this book will grip you until the last page. Mr. Brown has entered new territory and the residents are large, strong, intelligent, and very, very angry . . .” – Stephen A. North, author of Dead Tide

“Eric S. Brown transmutes myth into horrifying reality. Through key people of Babble Creek, Bigfoot War instantly pulls the reader into a small town facing obliteration. A powerful, unique voice shines here, leaving you white-knuckled until you finish, thirsty for more.” – Ben Eads, dark fiction writer and host of The Dark Fiction Show

The last Coscom Entertainment release: Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead by A.P. Fuchs

For our full list of books, please see: www.coscomentertainment.com

Copyright 2010 by A.P. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
13: Home Again

So I’m sitting here, writing all this stuff out for you, my body still lined with a sticky film of sweat about an hour after this all occurred. I can’t even remember why I went outside to begin with.
Wait. Let me check.
Right. Needed some peace and quiet so decided to bust some heads. Got a little carried away, I guess.
My hands are sore, achy, and if I stop and just let them “sit” for a sec, I can still feel the flesh and bone tingling from smacking those zombies with the slugger.
It feels good.
Before, just as I was approaching my apartment, I was partly delighted yet disappointed to see only a handful of the dead standing outside my building. Despite how tired I was, I want to take out a few more.
Overpowering another life, yeah, that’s what it was about. More like overpowering an unlife, but still. You do it once, you’re left in a state of shock, wondering what just went down and it’s even possible for you to kill someone else. Do it again, it suddenly becomes about survival and self-defense. Do it a third time and it becomes a game because you realize that what you’re killing isn’t a person anymore and whoever they were had check out a long time ago and all that’s left is a skin-and-bones piñata without the candy inside.
The five that still hung around my building were taken care of easily enough. I drove the end of the bat pretty good into the face of one and sliced the neck of another so much so she that her trachea spilled out. The other three came at me all at once, slow and clumsy, and each one was dropped with a cracked skull. I had to step around the brains to get back in the front door.
And now I’m here, still covered in blood, stinky and sweaty, the memory of being out there killing zombies something that happened to someone else yet at the fore of my mind all the same.
…
…
This is the first time for me to write anything, I mean really write something long and, hopefully, with meaning, so I just went back to the first entry and skimmed it over. I was going to tell you about what happened “six hours ago.” Guess it’s not six anymore. Too much has happened since. Let’s just call that time period “before” and call it good.
Let me tell you about what happened before.
Selena. She was my before. Even before I met her, she was my before. I’ve always known her, saw her in different people (as you know) until I met her for real one day. You also know the overview of it not working out and all the rest.
But there’s another before you need to know about.
One involving Selena, a zombie, me, and a whole lot of blood.
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Here’s a clip from the upcoming animated DC Entertainment movie, Batman: Under the Red Hood.

Available at:

We’ve had some Net trouble here on our end in that the main machine I worked from was unable to get online for browsing, hence no blog post yesterday.

We just underwent a much, much overdue hardware upgrade here, so I need a few days to get things back up and running. I’m able to access the Net again, but my work–both publishing and writing–is on the other machine. I’m still aiming for a Zomtropolis update tomorrow, but there’s a small chance it might not appear until Saturday. Please check in tomorrow to see if it was posted or not.

Likewise, Coscom Entertainment work has been backed up as a result, too, since a good portion of the business takes place on the Internet and all its files are on the other machine. Time to start transferring.

Thank you for your patience.

I’m a fan of the original series from the ’60s. When I heard they were doing a feature, I hoped it was the ’60s show just updated for 2011.

Seems I’m getting a healthy dose of camp instead.

However, I’m willing to give that the benefit of the doubt because since this is a Seth Rogen film, perhaps the studio strung together all the funny bits just so they could market it as a Seth Rogen film.

Then again, maybe my habit of believing in the best of people will come back and bite me on this one.

Okay, so here’s where things stand as of this writing:

Magic Man Plus 14 Tales of Terror: Just got this back from the editor. Just need to go through the edits and do one more draft myself and it’s done. The cover is also done. Just needs the synopsis. I expect press day to be sometime this week, which means a release in roughly 2 weeks or so.

Possession of the Dead: Still writing it, but it’s coming along smoothly. Still on track for a September or October release.

Zomtropolis: Once the above two wrap up, I’ll be switching to a twice-weekly posting of this story, with a trade paperback and eBook to follow either upon its conclusion or shortly before. (So you still get the story for free even when the official book and eBook come out.) I expect this around year’s end, though to get it out just before Christmas would be awesome.

There might be another book. All depends, but the above is the goal for 2010.

Copyright 2010 by A.P. Fuchs. All rights reserved.
12: Time = Meaningless

One of the things I noticed about the nature of time ever since the zombies came was that it no longer held any meaning. Living alone with only my back to watch had set me on a very open schedule. Day and night, though still separated by blue and black skies, were a non-issue. I slept when I was tired. Stayed awake when I wasn’t. No job to go to anymore. The boss and my co-workers were either dead or walking around dead. People took want they wanted when they wanted it, and those of us still alive, it seemed, preferred indoor life.
But time also had a new meaning when around the undead. See, movies and books and video games prepared us for it—kinda—helped us get lost in the moments when the dead came around and tried to kill you or the heroes in the stories. Only one habit was practiced when you watched on your projecto-screen the dead coming for the living: survival. It didn’t matter how long it took or which way it took you.
Same thing happened lying there on that sidewalk. I heard their low, raspy moans. I saw the sky above. My thoughts raced and yet I could think through each one clearly: get up and run; get up and fight; lie there and die; lie there, fight a little, then die some strange heroic death after one last stand.
So what did I choose?
I got up and fought.
Getting to my feet was the easy part; the adrenaline pumping through my system took care of any effort getting up that quickly might have took under normal circumstances. My head swooned a touch, my only thought locating my bat. There it was, off to the side a few feet, lying there like a sword begging to be plucked from a stone. I grabbed hold of the handle and felt its power surge through me.
Eyes level, I saw the dead approaching, a whole group of them, at least a dozen, the mass of dead flesh, gray and decayed stepping steadily toward me, their eyes bloodshot and dreamy, transfixed on me, their next meal.
I took a few steps back as I leveled the bat. Then I set my feet shoulder-width a part and wound up like a star hitter waiting for the pitch.
Closer. The dead came forward.
When the first one—a burly old broad with shoulder-length, dust-covered blonde hair—reached for me, I swung the bat hard and swift into the side of her head. Her neck snapped, the flesh along one side tearing from the impact. I came up from the other side, cracked her skull, ripping the blades through her flesh, and watched her tumble to the side as blood leaked from her ears.
An old man came in from the left and tried to grab me with his no-longer-functioning robo-arm. I brought the bat down on the apparatus just as a little kid who appeared about eight years old wrapped his arms around my waist and tried to take a chunk out of my stomach. I brought the butt-end of the Louisville down into the top of his head, shoved him away, then drove the bat between his legs like that Tiger Woods guy from years ago.
More zombies appeared. Lots more, coming in from each side, making their way around the smashed hover-cars crowding the street.
I got out of there.
The dead tried to run after me, most of them falling over as they suddenly tried to propel their legs faster than they could handle. Some stumbled a few steps then started walking regular pace, seeming to think they’d still be able to catch up with me. Nothing doing.
I ran home.
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Canister X Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 3

June 2010

About mid May CanisterX.com switched hosting packages and in turn allowed me to install WordPress onto my hosting platform instead of running the freebie version from WordPress.com. As a result, it has made the site more powerful and more capable than its predecessor, paving the way to a more interactive website and one to soon carry much more free media for you, the reader.

I’m really excited about the stuff I have planned for the new site. All I need now is the time to implement it which, as anyone thickly immersed in the publishing business will tell you, is sometimes hard to come by. However, my schedule this year as compared to last year should allow the extra hours required to take things to the next level in my career and also for my press, Coscom Entertainment.

Speaking of Coscom, I want to thank those of you reading this that have purchased our books for doing so. Your support makes it possible for Coscom Entertainment to keep putting out books for you and to keep bringing you stories. I do ask that, if you haven’t read any of my books or those of my colleagues, I kindly request that you consider it. As much as we love our craft, we, like everybody, have bills to pay and families to feed. We do that by providing you with entertainment, and really hope to keep doing so in the years to come.

Thank you in advance for your continued support.

As of this writing, the contracts for the Simon and Schuster deal went out this past Friday (May 14) and the first book, The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H.G. Wells and Eric S. Brown, is due out in December. The second book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain and W. Bill Czolgosz, is due out in April 2011.

Also as of this writing, Coscom Entertainment agreed to a mass market deal for another mashup. A publishing date for this one has yet to be set. More details will be revealed when I’m allowed to inform you.

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In other publishing news, things are going well for Coscom Entertainment. This year, after last year’s whirlwind, I’m slowing things down a touch and not publishing as many works by other people. Time is needed to finish up some stuff of mine that has been put on the backburner.

So far, 2010 looks to be a 3-book year for me. April saw the release of Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead. July will see the release of my first-ever horror short story collection called Magic Man Plus 14 Tales of Terror. September, if all goes to plan, will see the release of the second book in the Undead World Trilogy, Possession of the Dead. I’m writing that last one now and it’s coming along quite well, the scenes easily unfolding before my mind’s eye, transferring quite readily to my fingertips. It carries the same flavor as Blood of the Dead, but the story itself has a different feel as Joe and the gang go up against more than just zombies in this installment.

There is the possibility of a fourth book from me late this year, and that is the print edition of Zomtropolis. As of now, I still plan on maintaining the weekly schedule and leaving the chapters up for free even when the print and eBook editions come out. For those not yet reading Zomtropolis, it’s a zombie-meets-love-story-meets-futuristic tale following a guy who’s blogging about the experience of living in Zomtropolis after the city’s been pretty much wiped out by the undead, and his surviving therein along with dealing with the crushing heartbreak from an ex-girlfriend named Selena. New chapters are posted every Friday. The book can be accessed at www.CanisterX.com right here.

I’m giving some careful and serious consideration to doing a lot of anthologies coming up shortly, most of them zombie ones. More news on how this develops. I enjoy editing anthologies and reception for Dead Science and Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head has been positive overall.

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In terms of household stuff, my garden is growing very well, and the vegetables are having noticeable gains daily. I have no doubt this is owed to the crazy amount of compost I added to the garden prior to seeding. I took last year’s compost and buried it in the garden before winter. When everything thawed, I took the compost created during the winter season and buried that as well. I let that sit for a few weeks and then topped the garden off with some new soil (containing a special compost blend), raked that in, and then we seeded.

We’re also attempting pumpkins this year and have 8 or 9 shoots coming up. Never grown pumpkins before so this should be an adventure, especially since I had to dig a new patch for them right by the house. The idea here is once the pumpkins themselves begin to show, my boys can pick one or two each to take care of as their own special project. Teaches them responsibility and how to care for your environment.

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Been obsessed with Batman: Arkham Asylum recently and have been playing it religious. I beat the game (on easy mode so far) and am now just doing the side missions and picking up the rest of the Riddler’s riddles and also other tiny challenges that unlock for you as you go along. Once done, I’ll try and beat it again in normal mode.

The sequel is coming out this year last I heard, so my wife and I are eager for that as she is just as hooked on the game as I am. Today, she beat the game in normal mode so she’s got one up on me in that department, I suppose. Then again, she’s always been a hardcore gamer whereas, though I used to play Nintendo and N64 a lot as a kid, I’ve been out of the video game scene for the past dozen years or so. I sound like an old-timer here but, man, yeah, they’ve changed a lot. Almost like controlling real life now instead of blocky 3D items that still looked like cartoons.

Speaking of video games, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions is also coming out this year so that’s another one that’s on my must-buy list. Comes out September, I think? Somewhere around there.

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Back in book news, since the last issue I’ve done two book signings with my third to be done this Friday (June 18), all of them in an effort to promote Zombie Fight Night. I’ve also tugged along to each outing a giant zombie vs werewolf cut-out, life-sized, where you can step in behind it, stick your head through the holes above each character’s shoulders, and get your picture taken. This thing generates a lot of buzz around the mall, I can tell you that much.

Not sure how many more signings I’ll do for Zombie Fight Night. We’ll see, though I would like to set up another with one or both of my local Chapters stores.

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Lastly, after reading and editing Magic Man Plus 14 Tales of Terror, my eyes were really opened to something about my writing that I knew about but perhaps, on some level, didn’t accept.

See, ever since I began putting words to paper, my work has consisted of a similar theme throughout each story, most of them containing a certain kind of character and situation. For those who have read most of my stuff, it’s probably been apparent to you. For those who haven’t, well, I won’t spoil it, but yesterday I made the decision to make a change in my work, one that’s hopefully for the better. So though that old theme might recur now and then, it certainly won’t be as prominent as it has been for the past 10 or so years.

I do, however, want to thank you all for reading my work. There’s great pleasure in knowing that what a writer creates has made its way into readers’ hands and has been received positively overall. So again, thank you. Truly.

- A.P. Fuchs
Winnipeg, MB
June 17, 2010