Tags
'Creative Nonfiction, author's words, Cranky Editors, cranky publishers, HORROR, nickolaus pacione
I am presenting the gauntlet with this submission call and offering $30 for editor’s choice. Since the assholes at Skullvines Press keeps insulting me by calling me a fan fiction writer in the Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft fandom (I just have a style that just echoes those influences.) I want to see them do a creative nonfiction story that is horror. Not many in the business can actually do this and the nonfiction writers on The Ethereal Gazette proved they can do this, but I want to see the naysayers attempt a creative nonfiction story that is downright scary — from dark Christian testimonies, Near Death Experiences, Close calls with death, Hospital Horror stories, to overcoming drug addiction and escaping from homosexuality and the occult. I am looking for stories of people who had to deal with the horrors of bullying, and the extent that some went through with the bullies — from harassing phone calls, harassing mail, and fliers accusing you of being a child rapist.
As a horror writer, some people wonder where I got the ideas for horror stories. I am relating some of this when I am writing my Christian testimony out for Broken Mindframe Books, and I talked with Jordan Bobe in private about where I got the idea for Damnation Observes. I was the only writer on the anthology who took the story from a dialog I had with a former classmate. I am even challenging my most famous critic Ramsey Campbell to try to write a horror take on creative nonfiction. I don’t think he can capture his horror in a true story. In the small press the only people who managed to this was my More Frightening Than Fiction anthology. I am looking to repeat the results on a bigger scale. I am looking for stories with no sexual content because in creative nonfiction it would be porn. This is the anthology that I designed Lake Fossil Press for. Victoria Taylor Murray’s story in Tabloid Purposes One was true.
I mixed it up with Quakes And Storms by including nonfiction submissions in the anthology. This is the trait that made my company unique to the small press for a long time, Tales of the Talisman broke me out as a nonfiction writer first. Misty and Cinsearae were next to break me out. Apt. #2W was the first creative nonfiction story that captured my horror fiction magic. Pattern of Diagnosis was something I called my most mature of the creative nonfiction catalog. Dirty Black Winter carries some of my creative nonfiction stories, the longest and most personal one shows up in here where for the first time I wrote about the loss of faith. So I am looking for writers who can do the same here, capture the magic of their horror stories in the territory of creative nonfiction. I get jackholes who claim I can’t write, but the publishers who ran me over the years will tell them otherwise. I am giving them an open challenge to try what I do with creative nonfiction, because I seriously doubt they can. Misty said my voice was in creative nonfiction and the more I do it. I am beginning to agree. It was since 2002 I introduced my creative nonfiction to AuthorsDen.com, and horror writers who reviewed it were going “DAMN! He can do this with true stories like he can with his fictional ones.”
I am presenting this gauntlet to Mike Brendan since he is trying to tell the damn world I can’t write when the contributors who saw my work and will say otherwise. I sent one of my unpublished Creative nonfiction stories to Joe via e-mail and in a message on facebook he blurbed me saying I know how to capture the reader. I was trying to pitch an anthology of dark Christian testimonies via facebook but there was not enough interest. I am trying to see if the naysayers will take me up on my challenge here as writing creative nonfiction stories that are actually scary. Misty wanted to keep the original voice of Apt. 2W when she published it. She didn’t publish the story for people to laugh at. A lot of people didn’t know her reasons, I did. She suggested that Blood Contender was a chapter of a much longer novel because I had a huge host of characters and a detailed back story for the main character.
When I sent Misty “The Room Mate” for Withersin she replied laughing “Hell no, I know who you made the joke about.” This story is the one where she knew the back story about what went into it. I was swiping at Crazy Michelle because she made it impossible for me to get cable again because she failed to return the cable box to Comcast leaving me with a $500 bill. I remember Ray Wise’s reaction to The Room Mate, and when we were at The Blind And The Dead premiere in 2008 he was still laughing about it because the person who it was about was head of their street team in Chicago. That was why I did the video talking about The Room Mate on video and was laughing when I did it. I am also looking for stories about Roommates From Hell for this anthology. I can relate two stories about having room mates from hell. the first room mate from hell was named Chris. He locked me out of the duplex stealing my TV I bought when I Was 16, my VCR and the boom box I got for Christmas when I was discharged from basic training. When I returned to Illinois in November of 1999 I returned with just the clothes on my back. The breakup from Melany was a few months old. A year later she tried putting my e-mail address on gay.com then would say I suck as a writer when she said I was really good.
So I am looking for horrors of hardship and poverty. I am a struggling author and publisher, I pay authors out of my own pocket with my disability check. I started Lake Fossil Press to keep me sane. I started Broken Mindframe Books in 2007 to house my memoir. I am doing this submission call for Broken Mindframe Books’ first anthology. I am doing this anthology call as a gauntlet to the naysayers who say I can’t write, but homosexuals are not allowed. The house rules of Lake Fossil Press also apply for Broken Mindframe Books. I am going to have my anthology and magazine alumni give the anthology a title when I have the body of the anthology. Then will enlist an oil painter to do the cover for it. In the 9 years as a publisher, I refused to look at a homosexual submission — that is because of my convictions with my faith. There are people who want my blood for banning gay submissions, they are screaming “homophobic asshole” when they refer to me because I say no to them. Angry yaoi writers got pissed and got me thrown off Deviantart.com because I said in the comment homosexual writers need not apply.
Kody Boye was the first writer who made the statement of me being “homophobic” on a message board. He almost fagged up Tabloid Purposes IV. When I saw his story in Dark Gothic Resurrected I Was thanking God above he wasn’t included because he broke a lot of my house rules when it comes to submissions. I get some complaints because the rules are strict. I want quality stories and have the writer do their best work with the guidelines given, being if they were up to the challenge of the submission call. This submission call for horror takes on creative nonfiction is an open challenge to the writers who claim I can’t write. They can’t capture the horror they do with fiction in the territory of creative nonfiction. “The Ward” is one that captures my psychological horror style from 2000 when I wrote Anathema plus the darkness I captured on 21 Days. If you are going to submit this is the following requirements.
3000-6000 Words Single space paragraphs, use the ruler to indent paragraphs. Don’t indent first paragraph. Book Antiqua, font 10 pt. Send three attachments: .doc or .odt (Open Office Document Text) for the manuscript, .doc for third person bio, and .jpg for author photo (location portrait) Submission e-mail address is nickolauspacione@aim.com subject line “Creative Nonfictional Horror” Writers must use either their real names or a pen name that sounds like a real name All writers will get a .pdf contributors copy of the anthology when it is finished. Artwork submissions, artists will see the body of the anthology before they even start doing the artwork. When they see the anthology they have a full range of creativity to work with.
If you are associated with that jackhole “AngryInIllinois” putting your bylines on my titles with the bogus covers that are made public then you are not welcome to submit to this. “AngryInIllinois” does not own Lake Fossil Press, The Ethereal Gazette or Broken Mindframe Books. I don’t have a title for this anthology yet but when I get the submissions and the body of the anthology. I am going to send the body to some of the more trusted alumni on the roster to pick the title for it after they read the stories. I am going to be writing the introduction to this anthology when I get the body of the book. The deadline of the anthology is when filled. I am inviting fellow magazines and publication peers to submit to this. The peers of the publishing company will also be looking at the writers too to see who they want to take a look at for their respective publications.
Include a website where your books are available, facebook fan page, or an e-mail address where readers can contact you directly. This is the first anthology I am editing using the laptop. I am currently editing a book written by an alumni of The Ethereal Gazette who started editing anthologies with Static Movement. I saw the attachment the book was originally done with so I am breaking the book up into segments for him to upload onto lulu.com. I am treating the book as I would when I did my own books and anthologies. This is the first book I edited for another author in nine years. The first book I edited for Lulu.com for another writer was my ex-girlfriend Serena Carrington. I edited the book using two word processors. I would edit the stories in word then paste them to Open Office then format the stories and do the typesetting on the title and bylines. Static Movement editors are invited to submit for this anthology if they want to give their anthologies more exposure, I am extending the invitation to the owner of Static Movement to submit to this anthology because she was a Tabloid Purposes 6 hopeful. I am planning to do some more sequels for Tabloid Purposes. I haven’t stopped with Tabloid Purposes, just the guidelines got too hard for the latter books. I am encouraging peers of Tabloid Purposes IV to submit to this one.
An Author's Blog 
Look jackhole, I paid Ray Faraday Nelson $30.00 for his story. I used to offer bonuses to writers who were also part of Tabloid Purposes. A Tabloid Purposes alumni would been looking at $25.00 for their story early on. I was a paying market from the very beginning. I offered payment to some of the writers of the first Tabloid Purposes, they actually refused payment. I am having the allumni help me look for the author that would be editor’s choice then I would invite the editor’s choice author to do a guest blog on here. I published three 4theluv anthologies so far. The first one like this was one I did just for shits and giggles because I had downtime between Tabloid Purposes 3 and the next issue of The Gazette. Two of my Issue 3 contributors decided to join me on More Frightening Than Fiction, a fan from Don Henrie’s message board who read some of my freebies submitted and a contributor who wrote a nonfiction story for Quakes And Storms: A Natural Disaster Anthology rejoined the fray plus a member from a group I was active with. I was just accepted for Withersin but didn’t hear back for a street date so I thought I would include the rough draft of the story that was accepted for them.
I am doing this as editor’s choice like Coach Culbertson did when he edited Coach’s Midnight Diner and Relief Journal, The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 10 was peers with Relief Journal and Withersin. Coach’s Midnight Diner: Jesus Vs. Cthulhu Edition was Tabloid Purposes IV’s contemporary. I bought the anthology when it first came out then e-mailed Coach saying, “I have to take you with me as my signing mate for Gothicfest 2007. Here’s a copy of Tabloid Purposes 3 to read, I am just trying to finish Tabloid Purposes IV. I am looking for an anthology that balances out Tabloid Purposes IV’s dark nature.” Coach agreed to join me and he hand delivered my print copy of the Diner — I devoured this book in one day and renewed my faith in God that night. Some of the writers in the Diner wouldn’t be out of place in a Tabloid Purposes. I almost worked with the breakout star from that anthology on a project that was going to be distributed to schools but the computer crashed and I was working on the anthology that eventually reworked making the project more personal got in the Poe Museum. That anthology was something I planned as something I could give away at shows I did as a promoter. The first namesake came from the leftover submissions I had from Tabloid Purposes IV when I issued out a contest on WritersCafe.org. I was thinking of an idea for a story I got published in the UK of where to give it a home in the United States. The story got me a following in the Goth scene in the UK it was a Goth Zine that was put out in the underground there, the editor of that magazine had another magazine that published me and Eric S. Brown in the same issue. My story was originally for an urban legend contest. The story my ex-girlfriend wrote featured in Issue 4 was her entry for the contest. I gave a story I wrote called The Temp a home in Issue 4. Issue 5 saw a story that was simil-released to Dark Gothic Resurrected. When she published and I published it — we were planning to release the issues at the same time. I sent this story to the cover model on Insomnia Magazine as a first look, it was a story that I wrote when I thought I lost a story I previously wrote on the computer in the back bedroom of my Justice, Illinois, apartment. One of the authors on the second namesake immortalized my old address after she read Apt. #2W.
Mr Pacione, please at least do your homework and read my non-fiction. It refutes your comment.
I doubt you’ve written a true paranormal account. I doubt you did a memoir that is actually scary. I want to see you take me up on this challenge because you;re too damn critical of what I do as an anthologist on Shocklines when I was announcing submission guidelines for anthologies I would do just for fun. I took a lot of my latter material from my real life. Wandering In Darkness I was trying to write a story that drew the seed for my Gothic Horror breakout story that caught the attention of Horror Critic Joe Bobb Brigs in 2003. I wanted to revisit the character I created based on the illustrations of heavy metal illustrator Pushead. I came up with a dark elaborate horror that was a library of journals written by the dead about how they died. It became my most revisited story with other stories I wrote from my catalog. I revisited the story quiet a few times in my career, one of the authors published on Chimeraworld likened the story to a dark sermon.
I wrote that story on a typewriter originally then when I transcribed it to the computer it became 3000 words. One of my readers who read the rough draft of this story was a die hard Poppy Z. Brite fan until she read this story. She saw the story, turned around gave Poppy the finger saying it was much tighter than her catalog. I had a blogger earlier on reading my work after reading Poppy saying, “I read the both of you and must say you are more noteworthy.” What made me unique in the genre is I didn’t do zombie apocalypse or gay vampires — I invented new archtypes for horror. I wanted the contributors on latter Tabloid Purposes to create new archtypes. April when she read my Lovecratian Horror called me very close to what Lovecraft did, an author on AuthorsDen named M.J. Hewitt called me Lovecraft’s Secondcoming. In 2010 I started to become more open with my Christian faith with my horror fiction, I took a more visceral approach like I did when I was 20-24 years old. It got smarter and more well read. One of the characters in the story references Aliester Crowley by his given name. The given name was mentioned in a book I read called Lucifer Dethroned by a Christian who wrote a very graphic and detailed escape from Satanism. I read the book because I was on the bill at Gothicfest 2005 and 2007 with a Satanist. I was accepted on a publication from a publisher that was a member of The Church of Satan. When I came open with the genre’s open secret about me, they removed my story from future editions because they didn’t want a Born Again Christian showing up the Satatnists about writing dark horror.
The publisher behind Dark Moon Press originally accepted one of my stories for their first anthology then realized that I was uncomfortable with gays and transsexuals so he let me go. He published one of my anthology’s alumni on this anthology.
That particular alumni gave me the Judas Kiss on Brian Keene’s blog — I wish him the best but I wish he didn’t badmouth the second publisher he worked with. He got published in Red Scream and was interviewed by Horror.com. He was the first of the Tabloid Purposes writers to breakout, the other one stayed on for four of the Tabloid Purposes installments and became my highest paid writer. He lost his inspiration to write horror over the years, he started doing horror in the purest of forms after finding my work on FictionPress.com. One of the other writers on the anthology came on the 12th Issue with a story that learned from my tricks when writing Lovecraftian Horror. She was one of the founding writers of my company. She writes romance novels under her own name, but when she writes horror she knows how to turn on the afterburners. Some writers on the roster parted company but others would be part of the think tank for future anthologies. I confided to the star of Tabloid Purposes 3 and the protege that there would be a Tabloid Purposes IV in an private message. The star from 3 said she couldn’t wait for IV, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the guidelines at the time because they were a bit rushed and written up on a myspace blog I had for the anthology. Some joker created a fake profile of the book with a cover that dripped with faggotry.
I got mad then started to do the guidelines saying, “Let’s do this motherfucker!” A lot of the writers who came to Tabloid Purposes IV were fresh from Chimeraworld and appeared on The Blackest Death. K.H. Koehler found out that two of her alumni joined Tabloid Purposes IV then in a public posting denounced them. One of the contributors I saw come to that anthology was a writing team consisted of two brothers so when I did the TOC for the fourth anthology I billed them as The Davis Brothers. That was my second submission I received that was a collaboration I chose the author who said I did the work of two writers by myself to do the introduction. The roster were riled up and really inspired to take the book to a much darker tone after seeing the introduction. I had one backstabber who submitted to the anthology, I paid him but he turned around and stabbed me in the back. I took his story out and the other writer who fucked me over was Jane Timm Baxter which originally agreed to be a part of two previous Tabloid Purposes anthologies but the bitch had the books pulled because she wasn’t getting enough face time. Paul W. Finch, Barbara Malenky and Everette Bell got the most exposure because of their decorated publishing histories before joining Tabloid Purposes II. Everette came to me on loan from Wild Cat Books. He was the alumni who called me the work horse in the business. He became one of my standbys on the roster from Tabloid Purposes, he came back for the fourth book then joined me with the first namesake reboot and followed me to Quakes And Storms: A Natural Disaster Anthology. Three from Tabloid Purposes II thought the idea of of a natural disaster anthology was cool so they jumped on board. The hostess of the anthology became part of Tabloid Purposed 3. Her early notoriety came from being one of the moderators of the gotblack.com message board. She was the Goth community representative that joined the roster. My future co-author was first ushered in with Quakes And Storms: A Natural Disaster Anthology, then when she wrote for The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 2 she wrote a story using one of my approaches as an open tryout to be a collaborator with me. That collaboration got us published with Naked Snake Press, and fresh from that she joined Tabloid Purposes IV — when she was writing House of Spiders 3 with me she was expecting a baby and was writing her second novel. In her second novel she thanx me, but she went MIA over the years.
Naked Snake Press was her first sale. She first joined Tabloid Purposes as her maiden name. When I rebooted it I changed her last name to her married name. Working with Barb I learned how to write a faster interval. She was at root an action writer so she allowed me to go at a faster pace with the action. House of Spiders when I first wrote that one I gave it a fast paced ending. It was my idea to revisit House of Spiders, she included her characters from some of her short story collections and wrote with an accent. She gave House of Spiders 3 a Canadian Horror flare. I was going holy shit, I am going to reconnect with my Canadian following here. I got discovered first by a Canadian author in 1997, and in 2006 I was published by two Canadian publishers. I wrote my UFO story like a Canadian author, I used Canadian English when I wrote that story using spellings they would use in Canada for Theatre and Centre. I first tested the story on VOIVOD’s fan message board. The line up for Tabloid Purposes 3 voted for my story to go in via e-mail. I joked, “If you think the story sucks, blame the line up because they picked it.”
>I doubt you’ve written a true paranormal account. I doubt you did a memoir that is actually scary.
You can doubt all you like. You’ll still be wrong. I’ve read Ramsey’s non-fiction. You clearly haven’t.
Ramsey Campbell has already written the most horrific non-fiction you’ll ever see. The fact that you don’t know this just shows your lack of research and knowledge of the genre you claim to be a master of..
And what the hell does “Presenting A Gauntlent” mean? I presume it’s a typo?
If there’s a typo in the heading of your submission call, how the hell do you expect to be taken seriously?
Fixed. My horror takes of creative nonfiction draw from my real life. From witnessing a horrific crash when I was 11 to surviving two car accidents — one when I was 19 and the other when I was 20. Apt. #2W was about an EVP that was picked up on some speakers my room mate had, the EVP called the room mate by name but there were a lot of strange events leading up to it — I saw a light bulb explode too in the apartment and I saw a ghostly woman walking around in a white dress in my apartment’s dining room. Chronic Disease and Pattern of Diagnosis were about my fragile health problems I had at the apartment, it was part of the reason I couldn’t fully promote Tabloid Purposes 3 and House of Spiders 3 — 12 Kellogg and 21 Days were about my time in RUSH MEDICAL CENTER in Chicago (I am writing a full length about this, started in 2008 became too personal so I had to put it down.) String of Nerves was about my first radio appearance and dealing with hecklers on the radio. I got called a master of the genre by April Derleth in 2004 and Terry Lloyd Vinson gave me the nickname The Maven. The magazine that published me for both my nonfiction and fiction coined me The H.P;Lovecraft of Natural Disaster Horror. The one thing I developed when I did this style was really capture the horrific carnage of a natural disaster.
I fucking hate contracts. I am a token payment publication from the very beginning Mike. You want to be a holier than thou asshole tearing down other Christians and support the gay agenda do it on another blog. I am good enough to appear in different magazines. The editor who published me in my first sale saw one of my nonfiction stories on my diary-x journal — he liked it so much he reprinted it in the magazine then asked me of I had photographs of the place. You are too fucking greedy as a writer, the thing that you hate about me is this — I don’t really care about the money. I am happy to be published in a 4theluv publication as long as it gives my publishing moniker some exposure.
&nbsop; I got endorsements from April Derleth early on in my career and she encouraged me as a publisher along with my transition from being a horror writer exclusively to doing my parlor tricks in genre fiction (talking of the start of my science fiction writing period.) Writing Science Fiction for me is still a parlor trick. Writing Horror takes on creative nonfiction, a magazine publisher reviewed the story with two words “Holy Shit” then she invited me to contribute to her magazine. The magazine I sold my first horror story to in print knew I was in the sister magazine. I got taken seriously when I started doing horror takes on creative nonfiction. You are too much of a stuck-up prick to appreciate what I’ve done. When Misty picked me up for her magaizne, I found my voice as a creative nonfiction author. My horror fiction that got published in print became more potent. I got more daring with the subject matter — one story I actually tackled censorship. When I accept a story for Tabloid Purposes I would call the author and say, “Welcome to the asylum, consider yourself in.” If a writer sent me a story that broke the house rules I would tell them to fuck off in the most offensive way Other token payment magazines don’t use contracts — they encourage the writer to keep the e-mail exchanges as the contract. I am the only publisher who takes submissions in real time — making my AOL instant messenger screen name available and I would talk to the writer in real time looking over the manuscript. When I got the breakout for The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 5 — we did a manuscript trade. I will sometimes go back to manuscript trading for submissions, that was how I got my start in 1997.
My practices as a publisher are a little unorthodox, I will let writers who submit see examples of my work. When I do theme anthologies I write a test story using the submission guidelines to see if the submission call isn’t too hard to follow. When I did Tabloid Purposes 6’s guidelines the writers found the anthology guidelines the hardest to follow in the series. I had to put the sequels on the back burner. I got the best writers in the small press for The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 12. They didn’t care if they were looking for an additional publishing credit, they just wanted to appear with Ray. Ray was the most professional and gracious author I ever worked with. I was surprised he gave me permission to reprint his story, I never thought i would actually get the permission to publish it. When A.R. Braun submitted, the asshole got way too greedy. He wanted $50 for his story. I wasn’t going to pay a relative unknown higher than my editor’s choice payment. The writers who appeared on Tabloid Purposes IV didn’t complain about not having a contract, they called me the editor they had the most fun working with because I encouraged them to go as dark as they can go with the story, ruling out sexual content and banning gay fiction — other than that I let them go apeshit with the subject matter I hate grammar-nazis especially since I write the stories by ear. I edited them using a program that didn’t have grammar check so I had to do it all by trial and error. That was how i learned how to be a publisher. Trial and error. I wasn’t afraid to seek out advice from other small press publishers who did anthologies and we compared notes. Bob Gunner taught me how to really be Lake Fossil Press, Naked Snake Press brought Lake Fossil Press to the next level. Naked Snake Press is part of Lake Fossil Press’ family tree. Other contributors on Lake Fossil Press went on to be editors and publishers themselves. Adam Francis Smith first submitted to me for the 7th Issue then appeared on the 8th Issue, I liked what he did so much I invited him to play around with my shorter works. He picked one of my darkest of my shorter works which was originally from my diaryland journal. Craig Smith took me up on the invitation to do a Lake Fossil fan fiction story, he gave me the finished submission as a Christmas present — he had me as a journalist because he noticed my examples of journalism. Issue 6 saw my first published interview I conducted. The horror host did the interview in character. I know how to write you fuck. I just have different devices to write stories with being I write in second person and not afraid to put myself in the horror, The Room Mate I took a jab at myself while taking a jab at the ex-room mate who made it where I couldn’t get another Comcast account. I wrote that story for the same reason I did Writings From The Grave in 1997. To entertain my friends on myspace — I submitted that story for Withersin and she responded, “I am not running this because I know who the joke is about.” She and I were talking on the phone laughing when I submitted it. She actually laughed at the Outer Limits humor I did with it. It was the third thing I wrote showing I did have a sense of humor. The problem with you is that you are too stuck up, you don’t want to accept I am actually one of your goddamn peers and you condemn other Christian writers because they are willing to speak out against the sin of homosexuality. Being I was one of those authors who did this, A lot of gay writers want my head for it, and want my company closed down because I refuse to look at gay submissions. I will publish a Christian author before I would publish a gay one.
What is an EVP?
An EVP stand for Electronic Voice Phenomenon. When this first happened at the apartment, one of my then room mates explained it to me because he knew a lot about Thomas Edison and he mentioned a lot about it. I started reading up about it after writing Apt. #2W and saw the movie White Noise. It had me thinking about the true paranormal account I wrote a lot more, writing that one made me want to look more into this.
It is an intriguing subject matter to write about and started watching a lot of ghost hunter shows on TV where they had devices for EVPs. Sonja, thank for your reply because it was the first that wasn’t a damn criticism or an insult but genuine interest of what I covered in something I wrote. That was the first thing I wrote where I started reading into the subject further. Some of my other stories came from books I read were Leviathan’s Ghost where I got the idea reading the book by Dr. RIchard Fernicola about the shark attacks in New Jersey during the year of 1916. The shark attacks were mentioned in the movie JAWS, I saw the movie that the book was based on and I bought the book. The seeds for the story came from a discussion Wraith Knox and I had about the shark genre of horror being that was the first book I ever read. I was thinking about a supernatural take on the shark genre where the vicious shark attacks were done by a phantom shark. It was my foray of doing a horror story where it echoed the world when it was just flesh and teeth. The story I wrote came about from all the shark attack books I read as a child and paid homage to the first book I read when I was 10 in the downstairs tv room of my step-grandparents house in Hanover Park. That book was the first time I picked up the word “fuck.”
My mother and step-father when they were first dating and newlyweds were avid scuba divers so I read all the books they had about sharks. My step-grandmother gave me a shark attack book when I was 12 years old. Everything I read from that time went into my oceanic horror story.
I am a goddamn Pharisee and a whitewashed tomb that pretends to be a Christian. I like to tear down other Christian writers and say they can’t write because they choose to go semi-professional and token paying magazines. I am a greedy cocksucker who just wants to be a mass market cocksucker, I want to take part in the mid-list mass market ass-fucking party. When another Christian speaks out against Homosexuality, I get pissed because I support gay rights and the blasphemy of a traditional marriage.
I changed the comment to show what you really are, you like to look down on writers who publish with token payment magazines and editor’s choice payment publications. Don’t write those markets off because those are the ones who are the proving ground for writers before they decide to go pro or semi-professional. When Naked Snake Press went black on Lulu.com all the titles they published with Lulu.com became lost. I was very content to be on the roster of the micro-press helmed by the queen of micro-press publishing. When I did giveaways for Naked Snake Press, I learned how long she had been a micro-press publisher for. She was doing the publishing side in some form since 1996. I took from what I learned from being on the roster and applied it to doing the first namesake. Bringing Shenouda on board, it was Donna’s first new blood because Barb got her start originally publishing with iUniverse.com when I read Barb’s work on AuthorsDen.com in 2003 — I knew I wanted to co-write with her. I tried co-writing with other writers but they either couldn’t keep up or I couldn’t write at their interval. Barb was the first writer who captured my docuhorror style, I had her write a story using my style as an open tryout. I used The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 12 for her to use as her second proving ground. She was one of the writers who made their anthology debut on the anthology I really started to learn how to be a publisher and got the hang of doing a TOC. I was first introduced to FxFoto when I was editing this book and first started to learn how to embed images for the first time. I made a lot of mistakes when I first edited Tabloid Purposes by just using one word process, when I finished Quakes And Storms, I went back and gave the treatment to Tabloid Purposes using what I learned from Bob Gunner and Robert Raven. When all the contemporaries who deny me as a peer were bragging about getting publishing credits I started to want to get involved with being behind the scenes. In 2005 I was still learning how to be a publisher and didn’t quite figure out how to do a proper table of contents. By the time I did Quakes And Storms, I really started to get the publishing with stride. Tabloid Purposes 3 I started to get more fancy with the layouts and the arrangements. Tabloid Purposes IV when I rebooted it in 2008 made the anthology the apex of the series because everyone who came in was at the top of their game and had followings of their own. I went in and gave Barb’s story a last name change to reflect her married status.
Did you really just call somebody ELSE holier than thou? That may be the most tone-deaf thing you’ve ever said. And given your catalog of tone-deaf, that’s really saying something. Nick, I’m still struggling to find the “Christian” in your words and walk. The “Angry Bigot” easy pretty easy to find. But “Christian,” I’m not seeing.
The Jesus in MY New Testament doesn’t spend most of his time angrily cussing out everyone who ever said a negative word about him. In fact, grace and love seem to be His M.O. And, I don’t know whether you know this, but a “Christian” is meant to be a disciple of Jesus. A disciple is one who both learns from and emulates his master. I don’t see any of that here.
I’m a “whitewashed tomb”?? That doesn’t even make sense…
Oh, Nick. Don’t you realize that by altering my content to make it sound like your voice espousing your limited and erroneous world view, and then bragging about it in the following post only shows you for what you are. It doesn’t hurt me at all. In the least.
Don’t worry folks. I save copies of my statements, so I’ll copy paste them back in once I get settled into my hotel in Connecticut (business trip to a new site. Gonna be awesome).
Hopefully not Joe Lansdale, because that’s been thoroughly refuted and debunked.
He sent me a message on facebook with the blurb Brian Keene and Scott Colbert were lying about that. I pitched an anthology project to Joe Lansdale and John Shirley. John said, “If Joe Lansdale is in then I am in.” I never heard back from Joe about this anthology, I grew up with Joe’s work doing the scripts for Batman. I decided to show Joe Fifteen Minutes Before The 11th Hour.via my AOL account. In a chat with me on facebook over that summer I wrote the story he actually blurbed it. In 2003 I got a blurb from Joe Bob Briggs with Library Of Bones and Shadow of the Gathering via e-mail. I got in touch with Joe Bob talking about how much Scream sucked. I got in touch with Louis Duncan via e-mail a few years back mentioning about I read I Know What You Did Last Summer for a reading assignment my freshmen year. I invited her to read some of my material — she replied “I don’t do horror.” In 2007 I e-mailed Anne Rice suggesting when she came back to writing horror, she came back writing a much harder and dirtier style of horror and sent her the just completed Tabloid Purposes IV. I responded because she was getting flack for one of her novels. She responded giving the Tabloid Purposes IV line up her blessing.
You are so full of shit, look at Joe’d FB page, he clearly means you, you twat.
Look on Writings From The Grave. I have proof of the blurb right there. He and I talked one on one before he had the author page while he just had his private page. That is proof of the blurb right there. I am not taking the out of context.
There’s no answer from Nick now? Thought so, afraid of the truth.
My computer stalled and been busy with my testimony and three sets of submission guidelines. Mike, Naked Snake Press’ lulu.com released titles are all out of print it wasn’t just my story wasn’t carried anymore. Emma my computer was in sleep mode for three days and couldn’t get the damn thing out of sleepmode.
I got the blurb last summer before he became an author page. I am not lying about that. Say that it is a lie all you want — I am telling the truth about the blurb.
I am becoming a troll. So my comment gets edited, it means I am no longer welcome here.
There’s an easy way to prove it then; post the screen capture of him actually giving you the blurb. Not just quoting it, but actually showing the screen cap where he said it.
It was in a private chat that I got this blurb but I can’t screen cap it because when he said it I had my old computer at the time.
I really need more coffee before delving into this mass of incoherent, turd droppings.
Fuck off! You are producing the shit droppings around here. It you’re going to start this shit get the fuck off my blog you goddamn sodomite.
Pulling out the same can of worms that buried S.E. Cox? I buried Bandersnatch Books because of your bullying you never produced a single book in print since you started. I get criticism because I am a three market publisher Token payment with bonuses to contributors who appeared in the anthologies (hazard pay because they get harassed) 4theluv (I do some anthology calls just for fun) and the reading fee market (which I am still developing. Creative Nonfiction Journals have a reading fee you have to plunk down before you get your foot in the door.) I got referrals from other publishers for submissions or contributors on a magazine I appeared in find out about my magazine and seek me out. Of all the magazine line ups I had for The Ethereal Gazette. Issue 7 and I actually bonded. I was bringing a long time friend on as a contributor and a former classmate as a guest photographer. I gained a reputation for publishing former classmates and sometimes a family business because relatives had taken some of my photos in the magazine. So you want to libel my company you faggot, I will fucking bury you.
Incorrect, I’m holding in my hand a print copy of “The Dreadful Doctor Faust” by Bandersnatch Books, and when my copy went missing in transit they provided a free copy at no extra charge to me. In short, Nick, (edited because it because the thieving fuckbag did my number one pet peeve, don’t call me Nicky damn it.) in every respect they were a superior press to yours and should they return with books of interest to me I would happily buy from them
That shit trap of an imprint is nothing but cyberbullies who did fucking penny payments to my chipin on paypal. They are too corrupt to be a publishing imprint. One of their staff gave me a goddamned hissy fit about wanting to be out of Tabloid Purposes IV, he blew up my personal Inbox wanting out of the book. I told him it would take a bit because he was placed toward the middle of the book. When I saw his story in Dark Gothic Resurrected I was thanking God above he wasn’t included because would had broken one of my house rules. He would had broken the no gay content rule. The other one on the roster cried for my blood on twitter because I told him not to follow me because he would be hating me just like Poppy Z. Brite does. He tweeted, “Block npacione. he’s nothing but a homophobe and a momma’s boy.” I honor my mother and step-father, I use their marriage as an illustration that a biblical marriage still works.
Lies, lies, errors, deletions, delusions, and lies. Business as usual.
And you like to do a crusade against a magazine that the editor who published you is an alumni of the mag. I just will not allow complete insults at my intelligence in the comments on my blog. You’re little crusade to fuck my over my submissions is really pissing me off. You were published by Ray Faraday Nelson’s illustrator so I suggest you treat me with a little more respect.
There’s so much wrong here that I’m not even going to bother.
a couple of things I’d like to ask about:
Why are gay writers banned from submitting? I can’t think of a credible reason as to why they can’t, not one.
Secondly, as to your challenge to Ramsey Campbell…why? I’ve read most of Ramsey’s work, fiction & non-fiction, & have thoroughly enjoyed what I’ve read. If you’re challenging him to write a non-fiction account on bullying doesn’t that depend on whether or not he’s personally experienced anything in that vein? Personally I’ve been through a fair amount of situations in my life that I’d prefer not to write about, I’m already carrying on with my life & not pondering on it or using for any furthering of my career. I’ve dealt with it all personally with dignity & resolution…not everything needs to be unearthed. Some things should be dug back up, just like physical wounds need to heal.
The only time I have spoken, or written, about it is when my experiences could help another person. By the by I really don’t understand why you’d choose Ramsey for your challenge…
The reason why I don’t allow gay writers because I don’t subscribe to the homosexual agenda. As a born again Christian, I don’t want stories that glorify homosexuality. One of my former churches I was involved with firmly took a stand against homosexuality and one of the submissions in my magazine was a graphic Christian testimony that was a graphic escape from homosexuality and the occult. I got a lot of heat for publishing this, but I didn’t care. The guy who wrote it I knew for 20 years and we were in the same homeroom in middle school. I called Ramsey out on this challenge because he was too damn critical of my submission calls on anthologies that I would do just for fun and he said he pitied my contributors on my imprints apex anthology I wanted to write about one of his health scares or a close call he had.
I wanted to see him do something I became well known for in the small press and what made my imprint stand out because I was one of the few imprints that published dark creative nonfiction before Withersin came along. Withersin was in their infancy in 2006 and I asked her if she took nonfiction submissions. I had a true paranormal account I wrote in the 2100 word form I was trying to pitch to Weird Tales, but they told me they didn’t take true paranormal accounts. Withersin got the story, e-mailed me back asking me if I could expand it. In the small press I got sought after for my Gothic takes on creative nonficton. One magazine editor saw my memoir as a work in progress, then as an afterthought I asked her if she took nonfiction. I sent her a story that I also featured in my magazine. Not about bullying, I am expanding on this comment. The spin off anthology’s line up was validated by The Edgar Allan Poe Museum, and the museum was wondering about if I was to produce a sequel. The seeds of the sequel came when I saw the newspaper article talking about the first namesake. &nbs; I laid down the gauntlet because I had asshole rival publishers insulting magazines that published my work and called my published work fan fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve been bullied by Brain Keene, Ray Garton, RJ. Sevin, Nick Matamas, Darren McKeeman, Brian Knight, Timothy Lieder and David Nial Wilson.
They all started up on me at once because of a year long feud I had with Poppy Z. Brite. Poppy gets pissed with me because I openly speak out against the sin of homosexuality. I did this even in chat rooms in 1997. It is the thing that stuck with me even when I walked from the church in 1999, that was the aspect of my Christian faith remained. My first e-zine as an editor I had the no gay content rule, my web ring I had I didn’t allow websites that glorified the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah. I was an Atheist when I was a teenager but became involved with a Pentecostal church. Some of the things I brought with me into the industry came from an old sermon, “Political Correctness is morally wrong.” I stance on homosexuality is shared with Motor City Madman Ted Nugent I never got in touch with Uncle Ted, but he was an influence on the way I thought. I became open about my Conservatism in 2002 — it was on my tenor as the Goth LiveJournal Community I became open that I was a Conservative. Gothic.net targeted me because of my hard-line views. The shit reviews I got for my first book lay entirely on the hands of Gothic.net when Darren sent his underlings to warn the word. The first story where I expressed my views on homosexuality was The Fandom Writer, where I took a swipe at slash fan fiction because the slash writers harassed me the worst because I stood up for writers who didn’t need sexual content to write a horror story. I find sexual content distracting from the actual story. I got a lot of angry slash writers reviewing the story saying I needed to be fucked in the ass. I introduced a Conservative character for the first time and he is my alter ego named A.J. Poe and his girlfriend — they were raw, born again Christians who actually cussed. I believe in God, but the thing about me is I do cuss like a sailor. I am not afraid to drop the other f-word in my work. I used the other f-word when I was addressing the owner of LiveJournal when I joined Xanga for my first rant blog.
My views touch a nerve with people, the roster of the magazine and anthologies got used to it. Some the writers laughed at my charm for rubbing people the wrong way. Just being myself I rub people the wrong way. I make blue humored jokes, sometimes really black humored jokes about taboo subjects. One of those jokes got me in hot water because I made a joke about Jeffery Dahmer and Matthew Sheppard. One blogger called me evil because I didn’t relate to Matthew Sheppard, I actually related to the people who killed him because they actually reminded me of my friends from Glendale Heights. In the 1990s at our high school the word ‘faggot’ was thrown around a lot as an insult. I got unwanted passes by former classmates that had me actually punching them in the head. I am an author who grew up swearing and getting into fights, I developed my craft when I was spending time in detention and in Saturday school. One reader likened me to Hemmingway because he got into bar fights. My memoir is very detailed about the fist fights I got into. I used to make incest cracks to bullies suggesting if they had anything better to do such as fucking their mother in the ass. The bullying I got in the industry and the bullying my past publishers got were almost as much as I got when I was in grade school and high school. When I published Dan Willow, I caught as much heat as Donna did when she published me.
Didn’t your mommy tell you to cool it?
Look where exactly, on Writings From The Grave? Can you link us to something that proves this? Because Joe is denying it completely on his FB page! Or don’t you have access to his FB page? Nicky, you are a thief and a liar. Prove it or shut the fuck up already!
This is the actual blurb everyone says I lied about. Well Joe sent this to me before he got his author page on facebook and while he still had his personal page. It was about the time I was trying to pitch an anthology to a few writers. John Shirley replies, “If Joe is in, then I am in.” I didn’t hear back from Joe for the submission call so I sent thim the just completed nonfiction story about my being hit by a car I revisited in more detail. The story is on the other computer and it is the most lifted of my nonfiction titles.
 : The fuckstains “AngryInIllinois” and “LewisUnknown” thought it would be funny to lift an unpublished creative nonfiction title. I was saving it for an anthology I was trying to pitch but didn’t have enough people interested to get it off the ground. I asked Joe in a chat message what he thought of 15 Minutes Before The 11th Hour. I just completed the story at the time and he was one of the first people to see it.
When the Mojoe Storyteller gave me this blurb. I was going, “Holy shit Joe just blurbed me. This is up there with April Derleth coining me the hybrid of her father and H.P. Lovecraft and the curator of the Poe Museum calling me an updated version of Edgar Allan Poe. I should post this on Writings From The Grave because I can’t fucking believe it. It is up there with Joe Bob Briggs what he said of Library of Bones in 2003 via e-mail.”
15 Minutes Before The 11th Hour (unreleased nonfiction.)
You see I don’t lie about these things Amazon.com actually mentioned this in the author bio of my memoir. As for the faggot Marc Lyth libeling me as a repressed homosexual, I am not or ever will be gay. He lied about the anthology that is in the museum being all public domain horror stories plus my story. It is a mixed era anthology, stories from the 19th, 20th and the first decade of the 21st. The museum when they commented about the book in The Joliet Herald News called it a collected history of dark horror fiction. So when I see assholes flame this anthology it pisses me off because they have no respect for the history of horror and its roots. Doing the namesakes put me on par to Mick Mercer as a historian. Wild Cat Books and Litrix Books shaped me into becoming the genre historian. The museum validated the line ups of both namesakes. The second namesake challenged one of the more extreme horror writers in the business who had been a staple in the small press since the 1990s to tone it down. The story in the second namesake was his first time writing a story that was PG-13.
That blurb, Ladies & Gentlemen, is a lie. Lansdale refuted it.
I hate Born Again Christians and glorify getting fucked in the ass by another man. Think there is no place for an Evangelical Christian in the horror business and try to persecute Christians who speak out against Homosexuality. I try to force publishers who don’t glorify homosexuality out of business and call them raging homophobic assholes.
“I doubt you’ve written a true paranormal account. I doubt you did a memoir that is actually scary.”
Mr Pacione, please remain ignorant and unconvinced.
I already know what you are capable of doing with Horror, Ramsey I read the Cthulhu Mythos anthology you were in with Stephen King back in 1998 when I was living in Mason City. I don’t know if you can actually do a memoir where it is actually frightening take the inspiration from your real life. My goth characters are genuine because I actually know the people I model them after. Some of the characters I create are based on real life friends. A reader of the creative nonfiction story I wrote and published in both my own magazine and got published with Cinsearae was said to be darker than most writer’s fictional works.
“I don’t know if you can actually do a memoir where it is actually frightening take the inspiration from your real life.”
Yes.
Care to give it a shot? My memoir I actually go into detail about being at a psychic artist that my mother and step-father first saw on Unsolved Mysteries in the 1980s. They decided to look her up when we went to England. What I do with some of my horror stories is I draw from my real life. The Goth characters, I knew those people. They were my friends. Nicholas Kane is based on the industrial performer Apathademon, Author of A Dark Obituary For A Common Man. I draw from my close calls in car accidents for some stories, in 1996 I walked away from a car accident along Lake Shore Drive when I was 19 in February of 1996 then in December of 1996 I had something happen to me that is eerily similar to what happened to Stephen King except it happened to me first while I was coming home from a college class.
“I read the Cthulhu Mythos anthology you were in with Stephen King…”
The Mythos anthology I edited for Arkham House in the seventies, do you mean? i was delighted to include Steve’s tale.
“I fucking hate contracts.”
Of course you do. They’re all about accountability.
Look on Writings From The Grave, WHERE??? Where’s the proof? You say he said in chat, on private message on FB, but you don’t post a link or a screen capture. But, JOE LANSDALE posted publicly in a status update that he did NOT blurb you, and that you are a liar. Nick says Joe blurbed him, Joe says Nick’s a liar. Who am I supposed to believe here?
Where’s your proof, Nickolaus? If you don’t have any proof, then please stop lying about it.
Do you often edit comments Nick? I’ve just read two that sound the same, yet you’ve only admitted one.
As for being Christian, what does that have to do with not admitting that gay people may submit to anthologies, or have rights not to be judged in such a manner, which Bible do you refer to when studying the scripts? I was born & brought up Catholic & though my beliefs have changed over the years I’ve not read any particular parts of the book, apart from the Old Testament, that would back up your way of thinking. It’s just being prejudiced, not being godly or living in the way of the testament at all. Also, saying it as you see it is fair enough, but being a Christian & living a Christian life are two different things…treat others as you yourself would like to be treated. You reap what you sow after all.
As Willie & Ramsey said, as well as myself, I doubt the ‘gauntlet’ will ever be picked up as Ramsey has written both legible & noteworthy fiction & non-fiction. It’s not going to happen, that much is true.
As for the use of the blurb you said Joe gave you, as an endorsement writer myself, there are rules that must be followed when sharing anything…if Joe has said that he didn’t write those words I’m afraid it’s bordering on liable using them. I’ve checked the other site you’ve mentioned several times & found nothing that can be used as evidence to refute it.
I’ve also read the comments to the post where Ramsey offers you some suggestions. They are standard suggestions that any editor would offer, I’ve offered suggestions when being paid as an editor when freelancing that haven been met with such anger & disillusion by first time writers let alone one who has written many times, edited & published like you’ve stated.
I would not let any work go out to press without going through a manuscript with a fine tooth comb. It’s not professional & it will detract from the satisfaction of the readers.
He edits and deletes comments pretty regularly. He’s deleted several of mind from other posts. Because he’s a coward.
If someone didn’t care what others say then why edit them? I’ve never edited any comments on my sites & wouldn’t delete them just because I didn’t like them…
Oh, but he does care. If his ego were to physically manifest it would occupy a small city,
When I edited my first few anthologies I did it by ear. I had a poor man’s version of Word. When I did the second namesake I was using Word and Open Office in combination. The fine editing in word while I did the formatting and typesetting in Open Office. I encourage the writers who submit to get the story down on the first try because when I sold to magazines the editor didn’t ask me to do any rewrites I often got it on the first try. When I got the story from Deborah for the second namesake she wrote it on word pad so I had to do a lot of editing to get it seamless. I went back and forth with this writer on AIM then encouraged her to open up Word to work with it a little more. That was the only time where I had to do some serious editing. I had Altantis Ocean Mind only when I did the first Tabloid Purposes. The layout looked like shit — I wasn’t happy. When I did Quakes And Storms, I took what I learned with that anthology and reworked the first two using the methods I did with that anthology. My anthology method I call segmenting the worm. I edit the book body first. then when I get the PDF with the number pages, then I do the roman numeral pages, then the TOC section and then the title and copyright page. Tabloid Purposes IV was the fourth anthology I had a custom copyright page.
You’ve edited/cut my words now? Not nice.
If you’re such a supposed fan of HP Lovecraft, how come you’ve never visited his grave like some of your so-called “enemies” have: http://www.briankeene.com/2013/07/21/rumors-of-sobriety-with-a-side-trip-to-h-p-lovecrafts-grave/
I think now may be the time for proof…
Tut tut …. Remember the last time you threw your toys from the pram? Yep, I registered lakefossilpress.com. Interestingly, you can buy that now, I believe it is for sale for $2000. If you keep being a bad boy I will have to start a new website and take some of your readers (all two of them) and put a stop to your submissions….
Hey fucker — you are not going to stop me from doing my anthologies.. I am going to yahoogroups for the submission calls and sending them out by invitation and going the old school route Writings From The Grave got started by word of mouth. I have .org because the roster is a collective think tank brainstorming ideas for anthologies. You didn’t stop me from producing More From A Library Of Unknown Horrors or The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 12 and 13. Because of a death in a family I had to put the magazine on hold but relauching as a print and e-mail plus a yearly e-anthology that will be available as a $3 download. The magazine will be a $13.90 198 page 6.21 x 9.14 tradepaperback. Interior art will be taken as a donation while the cover art gets $20, I am offering payment for editor’s choice. I am relaunching as a hardcore dark horror magazine with dark alternative characters with a heterosexual’s point of view. My magazine was never a home for gay writers, I never allowed them when I started or when I started the company. I am not going to let a faceless faggot like you hold my company hostage.
“I fucking hate contracts.” Then you are unprofessional, Mr Pacione. No contributor to a market should waive their right to a contract setting out the deal in detail.
Ramsey I am a small press that started out a token paying magazine. The no contract practice is common with magazines that pay $10 for stories. 4theluvs have no contracts either. I tell the contributors to keep the e-mail exchanges and real time chatlogs between me and them because I let them know via AIM if they are accepted or rejected from a publication. I have a very informal approach to publishing. Sometimes I offer a contract if they ask for it but I am not very good at writing up contracts. I actually talk to contributors on the phone when I was in the mid-period of my company. I spoke to them over the phone while looking at the manuscript at great length then I would let them know from my own mouth via phone that they are part of the project. I never used contracts in the nine years of being a micropress. Donna never used contracts when she runs Naked Snake Press — we actually traded when we got published. When she submitted to me, I was in a transitional stage between moving into my own place from living with my relatives. I paid authors out of my own pocket via Disability check. I have no other funding. The publishing outfit started to do an anthology that would give some of the writers I took under my wing when I was 26 years old a vehicle. The lead author on Tabloid Purposes IV lost his inspiration after getting published in that anthology and hasn’t written a new horror story since. I am encouraging him to submit to Shocktotem. That author was my third protégé. My second protege turned on me and denounced the first anthology he appeared in then he started to turn into an asshole, so when I reworked Tabloid Purposes One — three of the original fictionpress six got cut. Some of my contributors come from a well known hobby I have, I play the role of talent scout by encouraging the writer to submit to an anthology I am editing. I sometimes see a story on fictionpress that I like I will make a one sentence review saying, “I fucking want this damn it. You have to give me permission to publish this story because it is too damn good not to publish.” In the beginning I had no idea what the ages of the fictionpress writers were, the authorsden counterparts were in my peer bracket or much older. My magazine I produced a lot of peers about 18 authors were my age. I was trying to do curiosity project back in 2004 asking the question, “How many authors graduated high school in 1994?” My high school produced one horror writer and a comic book illustrator — the comic book illustrator is a good friend of mine who was supposed to illustrate a book for an imprint where I got published on their magazine in 2006. That was my first shared royalty market. Most of the places I got placed Ram were token paying markets, don’t discount token and editor’s choice markets because authors like Kevin Lucia emerged from an editor’s choice anthology. I emerged from a contest. It is exactly nine years ago since I got accepted for that contest anthology. I called the publisher on my birthday asking him if I made the cut with the story because the story I wrote was an alternate for a story the spot was granted for. I wrote House of Spiders for the contest, the publisher e-mailed me with the suggestion of writing a story they never seen before so they couldn’t judge it. Then came the short story Bite of the Spider. The final edits were made by a future anthology mate on that anthology, I e-mailed her saying “Can you get this down to fighting weight?” My original entry for the contest the publisher told me I was a serious contender. On my birthday I joked about being accepted, “This is Poppy Z. Brite’s worst nightmare come true.” I got accepted with HorrorMasters in 2005 where it was a paying publication where we get paid when the sales rack up to an average of $10.00 — the stories were pay per download with one freebie. We submitted five stories for consideration. The editor of that site became a contributor on three of my anthologies because he thought I was doing was cool. He was the first one to submit for Tabloid Purposes 3 — I was editing this anthology in the process of moving to Justice. I finished the anthology from the families home in the Joliet area. I made that anthology a contest where the winner got $60 an the runner up got $40. I did Tabloid Puroposes IV as a mixed submission call. Part of it was a token payment and the other part I had to contest for some of the other contributors where two out of 40 were picked to be in Tabloid Purposes IV. Some of the others from the contest became part of the spin off anthology. The spin-off project I am a bit protective of because it got me in The Edgar Allan Poe Museum and I gave that one a real personal touch by having my handwritten synopsis on the back cover along with one of my illustrations I did when I was 22 years old and homeless at the time, the afterthought looking at the drawing it had my first time using my full name as the signature so when the book was rebooted I had my first presigned title. The namesake is a 4theluv. One of the alternates that came in the reboot was paid $30 in two installments of $15.00 — when I first rebooted the book I wasn’t quite happy with the back cover because I had a typo in the synopsis (you see the program I use to design my covers is a photo collage program that responds to HTML commands. I would design the back cover as I would when I would design a web site since my core root as a writer is also a web site designer. I designed Writings From The Grave myself at the age of 20 — the layouts changed over its long history. I tweaked the layout as I picked up new HTML codes.) Ramsey, please call me Nick. When Ray Faraday Nelson granted me permission to publish his story for The Ethereal Gazette: Issue 12 I told him to keep the e-mail exchanges for his records because that doubled as his contract. I was never a professional market Ramsey — I never claimed to be a professional rate. When I started out I would negotiate the payment being the high end being $20 and the low end was $9.00. I paid $9 for creative nonfiction and offered $20 for interior illustrations where I paid $40 for the covers. The covers for the first two Tabloid Purposes were a gift. The cover for the first and second namesake were given to me as Christmas presents. A contributor gave me a special story based on my science fiction trilogy as a Christmas present too. I am the only micro-press who can say the writers give me submissions as Christmas presents. The second namesake — all the submissions were donated because I was editing the anthology with The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in mind. One of the staff members who read the first book asked me about doing a sequel for the book — I was wary about revisiting this book because choosing the public domain stories I wanted to use was hard. The cover for the second namesake was an oil painting based on my short story in there. Sue Wickham came to the roster as a package deal with Pamela Kinney on Issue 13 they worked together on a chapbook when she was part of Naked Snake Press — Pam was mentioned in a magazine I was featured in for creative nonfiction. I looked Up Pam and she submitted her short story for consideration to be used in the 12th Issue, by the time I accepted it the magazine was being prepped for publication. So I told her it would be the lead story in Issue 13. I left the magazine on a cliff hanger about Issue 14 — the original Issue 14 got lost and when my grandfather died I had to put the magazine on hold. I didn’t fold the magazine, just not enough interest because I took a real blow in 2010 from S.E. Cox when she did the accusation of me stealing manuscripts for the publications. My thing is I end up losing touch with past contributors after the story was accepted, when I go to e-mail them their e-mail address bounces so that is why I ask for their AIM screen name. I’ve been taking submissions via AOL Instant Messenger since 2007. I got a contributor who submits via file transfer, I got in touch with this writer originally six months before I put my card in the publishing arena. In 2006 I became a serious contender, I was peers with Cyber-Pulp Publishing, Naked Snake Press, Litrix Books, and Wild Cat Books. Cyber-Pulp’s publisher took me under his wing when I was doing Tabloid Purposes II so I could learn how to be lethal as a publisher. By the time I did Quakes And Storms, all the lessons he taught me were put to practice then I went back and reworked the previous two anthologies. When I edited Tabloid Purposes One Ram, I was using a single word processing program called Altantis Ocean Mind — the layout for the book looked like shit in 2004. I didn’t know how to set up a Table of Contents. By the time I did Tabloid Purposes II I was still learning how to do it. I wasn’t being fancy with the title fonts and bylines. Tabloid Purposes 3 I started to play with the story titles but I still didn’t get the typesetting right. I was working with two computers when I did Tabloid 3. It was the first Tabloid Purposes title I took cover designer credit. I wanted to make the cover doctor proof, assholes were doctoring the first two Tabloid Purposes titles by putting porn graphics in the panels. One asshole posted a picture of a big bare ass painted as a motherfucking pumpkin. When I did the guidelines for Tabloid Purposes IV, I was a little rushed because some prick created a fake profile for the fourth book and had a cover where it had two shirtless men kissing. I wanted to kill the bastard for creating that page. The stories turned out well for this one — in fact they were the darkest of the series. It was the first Tabloid Purposes that you can have a soundtrack with — I told them to listen to Blue Oyster Cult and Pantera to get the full effect of three of the stories in the anthology. Two authors had stories which referenced Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult and my story referenced Pantera. I was laughing when I saw the Blue Oyster Cult reference because I was blasting a Blue Oyster Cult CD when I was first working on the anthology. I was listening to a local classic rock station when I was trying to re-edit and reboot the book taking a pesky ex-roster member out of the book when the spoiled bitch got the book pulled. I had one copy in private listing so I could download the body of the anthology to re-edit the book in Open Office. I had to paste each part one line at a time until it turned out the way you see it. The reboot I actually included some fancy typesetting with the title and the bylines. Then when I did the title page, copyright page and TOC graphics — I looked to my own photography for the artwork for this. Making Tabloid Purposes IV the height of my creative powers making this anthology one of the imprints Apex anthologies. The other apex was Issue 12 of The Ethereal Gazette. I am trying to get the guidelines for a new anthology together where the guidelines are based off my involvement in the dark alternative subculture. I was a fixture in the Gothic Subculture since I was 20 years old when I emerged in via The Chatroom. My site was a chatroom entity. As an author I was an online entity, I was a staple on exposure e-zines since I was 20 years old. My first paid submission came when I was 29. I became a publisher a month after my 28th birthday. The reason I am a little wiser than the fledgling publishers by authors in their early 20s is I started when I was a little older. I actually had a following from when I managed the Goth Community on LiveJournal when my diary-x journal was linked to it as the maintainer’s journal. I attempted to become a publisher twice before — once in 2002 then in 2003 but couldn’t get enough interest for the publications. I was trying to do a Gothic Creative Nonfiction Journal featuring some of the members of the Goth community.
Authors Cherie Priest and Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc were active with this community journal. Mrs. Priest was a small press author at the time and Andrea wasn’t quite published yet or at least I knew. Andrea was one of my early readers in 2002 who was a friend of one of my future Tabloid Purposes One contributors, Rev. David Fry. I sent her a version of the just finished short story that is my most notorious title called The Fandom Writer. She e-mailed me back saying “Don’t get into trouble.” I met the Good Reverend on a message board one of my chatroom mates from Gothic Cathedral on WBS had on his personal website Lair of the Trenchcoat which relaunched as Trench Reynolds. He originally was on tripod operating from webtv and had a team of six people web-mastering his personal website because they all had PCs. My original website was optimized for viewing on Web-TV.
‘ “I don’t know if you can actually do a memoir where it is actually frightening take the inspiration from your real life.”
Yes.’
“Care to give it a shot?”
I thought I’d made it clear that I already have. The essays have been professionally published.
“The no contract practice is common with magazines that pay $10 for stories. 4theluvs have no contracts either.”
Not in my experience, ever.
Try submitting to the token paying markets and it would prove me right. When I was published with specficworld.com in 2008, there was no contract. I submitted the story in 2006, a week later he said “Good job with this welcome aboard.” It took him two years to get the story live and my third person bio was out of date. Tales of the Talisman when they published me the first time just took the entry from my single entry journal I had at diary-x. I had a huge paragraph block for a bio to a link to an old location of my website when my website’s address went by pacionesplot.
“Try submitting to the token paying markets and it would prove me right.”
Nonsense. I’ve been published in several charity anthologies for no payment, and have been reprinted in other anthologies for little or no fee in order to help folk get started. In every case I’ve had a contract that set out the terms of the deal – sale of rights in particular – in every detail. No writer should ever agree to less.
As somebody who has submitted to and edited both token and “for the love” markets, I call BS on the notion that they don’t use contracts. The nature of those contracts may vary, but Ramsey is absolutely correct: they are vital for setting out the rights of both the author and the market in question concerning a particular piece.
Any market that doesn’t offer a statement making clear exactly what rights are being granted the publisher, for exactly how long, which is agreed upon by both parties, is immediately suspect, and certainly too shady for any author who cares about his or her work to actually consider.
I don’t use a formal contract because I am a very small micro-press. I tell the author who is accepted to keep the e-mail exchanges and AIM chat logs for their records. I talk with writers in real time letting them know that they are accepted or not. I pay out of my own pocket when I do the paying markets — I have no other funding than my social security disability check when I run my outfit.