The Year of South African Genre Fiction - Part 1

Okay so it's a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes I feel like I read to live. Like the books are my air and water and that they feed me.
I have just recently had the most wonderful run of books, starting late last year with Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls, Charlie Human's Apocalypse Now Now, Sarah Lotz's The Three, straight onto Sarah's partner-in-crime (or at least horror) Louis Greenberg's Dark Windows and their third SL Grey book, The New Girl. Somewhere in there I also read the Deadlands Trilogy by Lily Herne (another Lotz collaboration, this time mother and daughter)
It only dawned on me recently that everyone of those books is by a South African author, (a lot of them by the same author).

As an avid reader who has been devouring books since as far back as I can remember (I think I was reading Agatha Christie by the time I was 6 or 7) I cannot remember ever having read this many books by local authors in my life - cumulatively.
South Africa is definitely going through some kind of genre fiction rennaissance and the fact that I know most of these authors personally is just a little disorientating for me, but also kinda cool.
In the last year alone seven authors whose names I first read in the Something Wicked slush pile have nabbed themselves international publishing deals, three of those six-figure deals.
Now that's all very well, but are they any good?
My feelings on Lotz's The Three have been made public over at Arcfinity, as for the rest of them?
Varying degrees of brilliant.

The Shining Girls is the book that probably needs the least raving from me as most of the world has done that already, and quite rightly so. For Beukes it is a gigantic leap in both her writing ability and storytelling techniques, not that either were lacking before, but The Shining Girls is in a different realm from Moxyland and Zoo City (both books I loved, by the way). I wait with baited breath for Broken Monsters.

This is a book about zombies
destroying the world. Also,
there isn't a single character who looks
like this in the whole fucking book!!

The Deadlands books started out great with Deadlands, and I was desperate to read the second, Death of a Saint, as soon as it came out. Unfortunately Penguin decided to rebrand the books and shoved one of the most tedious, clichéd covers on it that completely put me off reading it. Now I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but, Jesus, have you seen this cover? It's such a crap cover that it actually made me question my memory of Deadlands. This cover looks like it belongs on some kind of fantasy romance book for 13-year-old girls. It totally put me off the series for years.
It was only after having read The Three that, feeling starved for more Sarah Lotz, I finally picked up the book and started reading, laying it face down on the bedside table at night, just like I used to do with the Stephen King's when I was in my early teens because the covers frightened me.
Not that I should've been surprised, but Death of a Saint is brilliant. Sarah and Savannah really hit their stride with this second book, it is much darker and a helluva lot more violent than the first (so why change the fucking cover, guys!)
By the way, there is a character named Saint in the Deadland books. This is what she looks like:
Yep, she ain't white.
Death of Saint takes our characters out of the enclave and across the South Coast of South Africa - it's a fantastic road trip book that offers both insights into just how bad the situation is, but also grows the characters wonderfully.
My only complaint is that Lele,. who was kind of with it and cool in the first book is mostly turned into a lovesick and jealous pain in the ass, but that is more of a personal complaint than an author complaint - she's supposed to be a pain in the ass - she's the pain in the ass character, for this book at least.
But all-in-all it's a great book that moves the story at a much faster pace and with more urgency than Deadlands did. It also ends with a helluva cliffhanger, so when I finished it at around 2am I immediately went in search of book three... only to discover that it hadn't been released yet.
So I emailed Sarah and begged.
By the time I woke up the next morning I had The Army of the Lost sitting in my inbox.

Army of the Lost blows the previous two books out of the water.
The cast and scale of the story suddenly explodes. After the general intimacy of the first two books (where you're following only five characters on their journey) this one multiplies the cast list by hundreds.
No longer are we traveling through the countryside or safely tucked away in the Cape Town enclave, now we're in the big city.
Army of the Lost takes place completely within the borders of Johannesburg, or rather what used to be Johannesburg.
It is by far the best of the three books, the characters, the pace and the story just pick up and fly. In keeping with Death of a Saint, Army of the Lost takes a further step into the darkness. The body count is high, and a lot of the time just not fair.
I tried to pester Sarah for the fourth book, but at the time she hadn't finished it yet.


Continued in Part 2 (coming soon).

Conspiracy? What Conspiracy?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, in fact I openly mock them and laugh in their faces (HAAHAHAAHA hollow moon, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!), except for my best friend, whom I love dearly and hate to get into pointless arguments with, but…

… is it just me or does it feel like the big entertainment companies (and I include publishers and Marvel and DC in this) are desperately trying to kill the web, not because of the never-ending Piracy/IP debate, but to stifle the huge influx of free and ingenious entertainment that is being created daily by internet users around the globe.
Consider this; Entertainment companies are dying, not due to piracy or archaic practices, but because technology today puts the power in the creator’s hands.
Once upon a time there was simply no way to create your own product and distribute it to the world. The technology needed to record an album, or shoot a movie, cost more than most people would earn in their lifetimes. But then came video, and then digital technology, and now the internet.
I love the internet, it's like the wild fucking west. Everything and anything can happen here, good and bad. But for creators of any medium, this place is gold.
So nowadays, musicians don’t need to sacrifice 98% of their sales to record companies anymore, comic-book artists and writers no longer need to relinquish the ownership to their works, writers can self-publish and for filmmakers there is the wonderful world of YouTube.

Yes, the distribution available from the big studios/publishers is impossible to compete with, though in some cases that’s not always true, but more and more musicians are signing distribution deals with record labels, rather than signing publishing deals. Radiohead has been an extremely successful independent band for years now, and yes I know they were an extremely successful signed band first, but my point is still valid. Jonathan Coulton has never been signed; he is a 100% internet success.
I think what is happening is the major studios are becoming distributors of content instead of publishers, and this is pissing them off. I honestly think these guys are running scared, they have no (decent) new content coming out, more and more creators are turning to alternative sources for funding and their library of limitless bounty is slowly dwindling away, either through age (if the length of posthumous copyright doesn’t keep growing) or overuse (over-abuse), and so now they want to take away our playground.

But for the little guy this is pretty much the best time in history to be a creator, the resources available are near infinite.
Sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Wreckamovie are proving that crowd funding is not only possible but is a faster, and in some cases more successful, means of funding a project, and crowd-funded projects remain the property of the creators. No evil studios to decide that your beautiful one-shot comic should be turned into a never-ending, soul-sucking, creator-destroying franchise starring Nicolas Cage (I’m looking at you Marvel – you are literally turning into comic-book villains. Get it? See what I did there?).
Ten years ago I could never have published an internationally-distributed magazine from my lounge. It was just not possible.

Maybe I am talking total shit here, but it definitely feels to me like there is a bigger agenda here, and I don’t think censorship is it, at least not the way we perceive censorship. I think this is about killing competition and maximising profits from rehashed crap.

I say Fuck ‘em.
What do you think?
PS, some awesome creator owned and independently financed stuff for you.
Jonathan Coulton's Music
Star Wars Uncut - brilliant crowd-sourced version of Ep 4
The Death and Return of Superman - short film by Max Landis
Play By Heart (indie film, this one’s mine)
Bandwagon: Season 1 Playlist. (With Emma Caulfield)
Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog (Joss Whedon magic, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicai Day and Nathan Fillion)

Digital vs Paper, Why Can't We All Be Friends?

As most of you know, I run an online/e-book fiction magazine called Something Wicked. My entire market is people who own e-readers and enjoy downloading our magazine, so it is fair to say that I depend on e-reader customers to finance my magazine. I myself own two Kindles, and have downloaded dozens and dozens of books and magazines. I have subscriptions to six short-fiction magazines, five of them e-mags, and only one in print.
I think it is fair to say that I am a fan of e-books and the e-reader technology.
Now, as I’m sure you know, there has been an ongoing debate,(for what seems like years) around e-books versus paper books. Each side of the argument tends to be presented with vehemence and certainty, ‘e-books are the future’, says one, ‘noooo, e-books will never replace the beauty and sentimental value of paper books’.
The general gist of the debate seems to be that pro-ebookers tend to think that the printed book is on its way out and those who simply cannot relinquish their sentimental attachment to books say that this technology will never beat a good book.
In the spirit of spewing more words into this debate I decided to put forth my opinion, because I think it is a point of view that neither side has touched upon, or if they have, I haven’t noticed.
What most people seem not to take into account is the fact that, however fantastic and extremely useful e-readers and e-books are, they cannot replace written words on paper, not because they won’t, but because they shouldn’t, for various reasons, but most obvious, is their cost.

A lot has been said about how cheap e-books are compared to real books, but what people forget is that, an e-book is only cheap if you have a $100 e-reader, an internet connection and a credit card. If you don’t have any of those things, then e-books are as easy to come by as a family vacation on Mars.
The world is an extremely different place to the way Americans or other rich nations see it. Most of the population of this planet earns less than $200 per month, in some countries $200 is a good annual salary, but, if you’re literate, poverty or lack of earning power has never made books inaccessible.
Books are not prejudiced about their readers, anyone who can read, can read a book. But without the initial financial outlay for the e-reader, be it a computer, or Kindle, or Smart phone, or iPad, very few people are able to read an e-book.
The ease of transference of literature has made successful entrepreneurs out of people with poverty stricken beginnings. There are millionaires who grew up with barely enough money to feed themselves, but they had books given to them by friends, family, or employers, or found them on the street, and they buried themselves in the imagination of stories, or the knowledge of passed-down or discarded text-books, encyclopaedias, newspapers  - and redefined their financial position.
How will this happen in a future where all we have is e-books, how will you donate your old books to your library, or your gardener if they’re all tied up in licensing restrictions and, more importantly, sealed shut inside your Kindle or iPad.
Even if you actually gave your gardner your old Kindle, how would he even power it if the shack he lives in has no electricity?

The other thing about relying solely on e-books is we are voluntarily tying ourselves, indefinitely, to a single company, whether it’s Amazon, or Barnes & Noble or Apple, is irrelevant, the end result is the same; if you want to keep the books you paid for, you’re locked-in.
I read a tweet today;

“@scarthomas:Let's face it, Amazon's not going to be around until the end of time.Give it 5 years & Kindle will look like a floppy disk”.

Where will our books be then, where will our literature go?
So what happens when a couple of years down the line the battery on your iPad finally gives up, no worries, you can just buy the latest iPad and transfer all your purchases across, or the latest Kindle or Nook, or whatever, which brings me back to my first point, most of the world can barely afford to buy one of these toys with a month’s salary, even if the books themselves are cheap, so when their battery dies, they toss the e-reader, (you couldn’t even use it for firewood) and all that knowledge and money and fiction has been totally wasted, never to be read again.
Now again I reiterate that I love my Kindle, I love that I can fill my it with out-of-print public domain books. I’ve read more classics since purchasing it than in my entire life before then. But short-fiction magazines are what I love the most on Kindle. One of my favourite online magazines at the moment is Lightspeed Magazine, I have an e-subscription and I absolutely love that every month their new issue is delivered right to my Kindle. I LOVE IT, you hear me? LOVE. IT. As someone who used to spend in the region of $150 to get a single subscription to a magazine posted to South Africa, e-books and e-readers have saved me a bundle.

But, the instant Lightspeed Magazine announced their Year One anthology in paperback, I rushed off to buy it. It took three weeks to arrive, but when I took it out of it’s parcel I pawed it longingly, all the awesome stories I had read over the last year, collected, in paper, in a book, which I could keep forever, and put it on my shelf and maybe in ten, or so, years my daughter might find it there and pick it up and read it, and discover those stories for the first time again.

Something Wicked does the same thing, we publish exclusively online and through e-books, but we do a bi-annual anthology in print. We do this because, as the editor, I want a permanent copy of the stories we’ve published. I want to hold it, and show it off on my shelf, and to be able to lend it to people and be discovered by my kids and my kid’s kids.
Also, books smell great.
Ask anyone who is a lifelong reader what is one of their favourite things about books, and most of them will tell that it is the smell, the smell of ink on paper. Nothing can beat that smell.
My Kindle smells of the leather case it’s in.
And now my point.

The point I am trying to make here is that we should stop debating whether one format is better than the other, stop trying to get rid of legacy, or dead tree publishing and understand that both mediums are needed. We cannot replace one with the other because the losses would be too great. E-books are an amazing and vital augmentation to printed-paper, the two together can rule the world in perfect harmony (crack that Coke and sing along).

One is super-efficient and immediate, it allows us to consume at a voracious rate and pay little for our books. It gives (some of) us access to millions of lost and out-of-print books, but, as Jonathan Franzen, points out, there is a sense of permanence to books; they can be lost, or wet, or forgotten or donated or tossed in the bin, but they can also be re-discovered by someone else. The print continues to exist regardless of who is reading it, or whether the batteries are flat. And again, try to remember that most of the world cannot afford the technology that so many of us children of the internet take for granted.

It is vital, especially now at this juncture, that knowledge and imagination be freely available, and even though it might technically not be free for the original purchaser, for everyone else that picks up that book over the years, it can be, whether through a charity or a library donation or a box of magazines delivered to a retirement home.
When I was at school, back in the mid-eighties, we would be given our school textbooks at the beginning of every year.

We would open the front cover, and at the bottom of a long list of names, (sometimes twenty or thirty of them) we would write our own name. Those textbooks had been passed down from student to student for, in some cases, twenty-odd years. They would be filled with arcane doodles from students that had graduated years before we had been born, sometimes the answers to math questions would be scribbled in the margins, or passages underlined as important, and we should learn them for the exams.

I don’t see that happening again anytime in the near future, do you?
Tell me again that e-books are permanent, and that they are forever.

Cold, Grey and Quiet.

There are few things in this world as wonderful as sitting and writing while listening to music with my gorgeous cat Sam sitting by my side. Sure she is a bit of critic (I don't think she likes Björk) but in general she's the sweetest thing.

In case you're wondering, I'm enjoying my first day off in the last two months. That's not entirely true as it isn't exactly a day off. I'm catching up on some correspondence with people I've not made contact with in over 6 months.
I'm writing scripts and I'm reading stories. But most importantly I am home, on the couch, with my cat. Outside the world is grey and cold, in here there is warmth and good lighting.

Speaking of music I've fallen in love with online radio. My latest discovery is Radio Paradise. Probably the official radio station of Something Wicked. If you've not heard of it I would strongly suggest you go an have a listen at www.RadioParadise.com or click here.

24k AAC+

It is an awesome collection of eclectic, alternative, ambient, acoustic, folk, glam, world music, blues, jazz and classical. In any given hour you may hear Radiohead or Elbow, beck or Björk, Depeche Mode, Regina Spektre, Tori, Jethro Tull, Peter Gabriel or even Beethoven, Simon and Garfunkel and a whole slew of bands and musos I guarantee you've never heard of but whose albums you will be purchasing very soon.
Being stuck with Telkom's restrictive bandwidth policies means that I have to listen at 24kbps instead of the awesome crystal clear 198kb bit rate. But still this radio station has seen us through more deadlines than anything else.

So today I'm hoping to start some work on the next batch of scripts for Cool Catz (E-TV weekdays at 14:30). My best friend got me this gig and it's been a bit of a mixed blessing. On the up side it means I can actually earn a salary through the Cape Town off-season (when most actors are unemployed for 6 months), on the down side it has its moments of utter despair.
I've never written professionally for a deadline before (not fiction anyway) and so I was not expecting the total despair that comes with staring at a monitor for four hours as the clock ticks closer and closer to dawn and all you've written is the first page of a 19 page script. I am in awe of the people who can do this every day of their lives. I'm sure it gets easier but so far it's still like pulling teeth. Except for the times when it isn't. I wrote a couple of episodes last month that took about three hours from start to finish. Unfortunately that is the exception rather than the rule, but practice makes perfect, as they say.

So that is my Tuesday in a nutshell. Write, Read, listen to music, cuddle cat.
I actually have a voice booking for tomorrow so that means I can pay my rent this month and Wednesday there is a peaceful protest outside the SABC building in Sea Point.
If you're in the area why not pop on down - wear something red.
What are we protesting? The usual, better pay, better working conditions - but more importantly, when dealing with the SABC, we're protesting for the right to own our work. To be able to make a continued living for the work that is created and televised again and again and sold off to other channels and broadcast on satellite to millions of people. You know, just the little things. It's called Intellectual Property and it works very much like real property.

Imagine, if you will, that you have built a house. You designed it, you paid for the land and all the equipment, (the bricks, the cement, etc) and you built the entire structure by yourself.
Now normally as the owner of property, you have a choice, you can rent it out, or you can sell it. The equation is pretty simple - if you're selling the cost is high, if you're renting the cost is low but ongoing. Now the way the SABC, and indeed most of South African television works, is like this: You either sell your property to them for a very low price and receive nothing else ever again, or you can go unemployed.
The lack of competition in (everything) broadcasting in South Africa means that the broadcaster lays down the rules and if you don't like it then you don't work.
Scripts get sold for anywhere from R300 to R6000 in South Africa - when you consider the amount of time it takes to write a script even a R6000 (minus tax) per script salary is not awesome, BUT it would be a fair price if the writer got some royalties from the screening of the programme, or from DVD sales. Unfortunately as things stand at the moment, even the creator of a programme never sees a penny of royalties. Even if their series is the biggest selling DVD in the country. Imagine an author or musician who didn't earn royalties - they'd be destitute.

If you are a disgruntled television viewer in South Africa please understand that most of the reason South African television (mostly) sucks is because producers/ writers/ actors are not being paid enough. The SABC keeps dropping its budgets lower and lower and lower.
As far as I know the entertainment industry is the only industry in the world that is expected to continue creating product at a rate of negative inflation. At this time where every single industry is putting up their prices to deal with the recession, we're being offered less money than we were earning in 1997! I shit you not!
I've done work recently for rates that were average in 1997 - and yet we're expected to keep producing the same level of quality and product.
It is simply not humanly possible.

So the next time you see a piece of shit South African television programme know this: those producers, writers, crew and cast are probably doing the best they can do for the very little that the SABC is offering them.

Anyway - rant over.
See you on Thursday!

Joe is currently reading:
SW submissions

And listening to:
Radio Paradise

It's All About Perspective

Short one this time.
Just read an article titled "Britons Soak Up Spring Sunshine" - on Yahoo! News
Apparently "London has become warmer than Istanbul...In the capital, office workers were seen sunbathing in parks as temperatures soared to 15C"

Now, I may be going insane here, but the word "soared" and 15C shouldn't really ever be in the same sentence.

Right now Capetownians are freezing our asses off as temperatures have dropped to 15C - and that's our minimum!
Seriously - we've been sitting at temps in the upper 30's for the last three weeks and since Sunday our temps have dropped to around 22C-25C and I'm freezing my ass off! The idea of basking in soaring 15C sunshine sounds like hell.
A really really cold hell.

But it's all about perspective - I know if I was still in London I'd be thrilled to be getting 15 degree weather in Mid-march. I remember being there in March 2001 - 21st of march to be precise. It was snowing and the maximum temperature for the day was 0.
Man I love living in Cape Town - bring on the sunshine, seriously, I'm really really cold.

Five Day Forecast for CT:

Thursday 19 March 26º Fine with the wind a moderate south-easterly 16º

Friday 20 March 26º Partly cloudy with the wind a moderate southerly 16º

Saturday 21 March 28º Partly cloudy with the wind a moderate south-easterly 17º

Sunday 22 March 29º Fine with the wind a moderate southerly 18º

Monday 23 March 28º Fine with the wind a moderate south-easterly

Source: http://www.uncoverthecape.co.za/weather-report.htm

Devil's Peak Fire

So Vianne and I were catching up on some BSG when she heard some sirens and decided to check out the back door to see if Signal Hill was on fire.
She stepped out, looked around and saw nothing and so turned around to come back in at which point I hear - "Joe come here now!".
I flew up and out to find out what was going on.
This is what we saw:
The words that crossed my mind were "The fires of Mount Doom". That's what it looked like, like some monstrous volcano had erupted in the middle of the city.
I grabbed my camera and we ran out to see what was up.

These were taken between 1:30 and 2:30 am from the bottom reservoir in Gardens.

Vianne wrote the following:

It's 2am on the morning of 18 March 2009.
As Devil's Peak continues to burn, a small group of city bowl residents gather at the Gardens reservoir to stare in horror and disbelief at the lava-like trails of flame visible between billowing clouds of dense black smoke. A car pulls up. A woman and her daughter, evacuated form their Vredehoek home, get out with dogs in tow. The woman is clearly distraught. A moment later another vehicle arrives, followed by a scooter. The interior light goes on and we can see several cats in the car. The driver, a woman named Birgid and her son (on the scooter) Nils, tell us they've been evacuated from the townhouses adjacent to Disa Park, at the foot of Devil's Peak.
Burning, wind-borne embers have traveled as far down as the Fairview complex on Ludlow Street, they say. We huddle together against the cold wind, periodically calling friends to check on them or replying to smses from concerned relatives.
Ironically, from here, we can hear the sound of water running into the reservoir - water that, if it were daylight, could be used bythe choppers to douse the flames. All else is sirens and the white noise of the relentless wind.
There is nothing we can do. And for these women, waiting and watching is the only option tonight. Only dawn will answer the frightened question in their eyes. Only then will they know whether their homes and belongings have been spared. Until then, there is nothing for it but to watch from the relative safety of the car, and pray that the wind dies down.

- Vianne Venter/Source: Eyewitness News - http://ewn.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=9110

We left just before 3 as the wind was howling and it was getting bitterly cold.
Nobody is sleeping tonight in the City Bowl as we all wait by our radios and windows to find out if we're next on the evacuation list.
Reports so far suggest no buildings have been affected yet, though for some terrifying moments from our vantage point it seemed that one of the towers of Disa Park was ablaze.
We're going back out now to see what we can see as my flat has no clear line-of-sight.
To all those who have been evacuated our wishes are with you. We're holding our breath for the dawn and for the choppers to start flying.

Update................... 5:05am
Just went out again and it seems to be a lot better than it was. Though the wind is still sporadically blowing quite hard the bulk of blaze seems to have gone out.
If the conditions remain calm then hopefully the choppers will have it all out once the sun comes up.
Till then, goodnight.

Roll On 2009

I have to admit - 2008 has been a rough year for many people I know. It hasn't all been daisies and bunnies for me either.
But... it has also been one of the most amazing years for me as an actor and for Something Wicked.
We started 2008 with no money and pretty much ready to throw in the towel with SW. It was sad and heart-breaking but it had been coming for awhile and I had several contingency plans in place as to how to keep the magazine going without sucking my bank account dry.

Around the 2nd week of January we received a call from the National Arts Council to inform us that our application for funding was under review. A month later we were told we had been successful.
The funding from the NAC allowed us to plan ahead, for the first time ever since the inception of Something Wicked we were able to take a long-term view and actually put a marketing and distribution strategy in place.

So we started the year out by sending out 50 mags to A Night of Horror film festival in Australia. We contacted a US distributor and managed to get SW on to the shelves in US and Canadian book stores.
We were able to increase (fractionally) our pay rate for artists and writers and we began to see an increase in sales and subscriptions.

Don't get me wrong here, we are by no means out of the financial shit, but the funding helped bolster what little available money SW has in its coffers.

From an actor's perspective, with the release of Starship Troopers 3, I began to receive my first ever fan mail and interview requests (through my performance website at www.JoeVaz.com) and through the year have been in a few more films and series (including ITV and AMC's remake of the classic 60's sci-fi series The Prisoner - due out next year). I've done a bunch of commercials and have been enjoying a boom in the voice-over market - all of which helps to finance Something Wicked a little more.

In 2009 we are hoping to try and get the mag to the UK, planning our first ever Radio Play (hopefully the first of many) and hoping to finally put our first anthology together - yes we've been promising for years, but this time it's going to happen.

All in all it has just been the most thoroughly exciting and fun year.
I am finding December, however, a little frustrating. The Christmas and Summer holidays tend to slow down the momentum of a year and I'm finding myself frustrated at the enforced holiday I have to take. I just want to keep on working - I have a thousand things that need to be done and I can't wait for the New Year.

2009 is gonna be a kicker!
Our funding will run out in SW10, but we are hopeful that we will be able to apply for more funding for another year.
In the meantime - please. please, please - go out and buy SW for your friends and family and for anyone else you may now.
Buy, buy, buy -tis the season for buying!!!

All the best for the holidays and may you have a Merry Christmas and a phenomenal 2009
Joe

currently reading:
Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Listening to:
Oldies from Thomas Dolby and The The

I Love Technology part 2 - Dead Space

Found an online review for this game - it is apparently a motherfucker of a frightfest.
For your viewing pleasure below is the trailer.
Wow - it looks better than most sci-fi movies.

I Love Technology part 1

Sometimes I am utterly blown away by where technology is taking us. I love where the world is going.
In the last couple of days I have come across some amazing shit.

Games

Firstly there is EVE online, a Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), where I spent sunday morning talking and flying with a good friend of mine in Joburg through the depths of space.

I'm the little ship on the right

We met up at a space station and made our way to a deadspace encounter with some baddies where we shot the shit out of them in a spectacular 3D BSG kinda graphics way - all the time talking to one another on skype.
Now some of you may nod your heads and go, "Yeah EVE rocks!!", while others may shake your heads and go, "Geez, Joe, we thought you were so cool. How wrong we were". But pay attention to what I'm talking about - I'm talking about technology.
When I was kid (way, way back in a galaxy far far away, endearingly referred to as The Eighties) we couldn't even have dreamed up the stuff that most of us take for granted today. Let me re-iterate - I was talking to my friend, through my computer, while playing a fully-immersive science-fiction space game with unbelievable Hollywood-type graphics. Are you getting this? Huge block-buster movies 20 years ago did not have these kinds of special effects. Seriously, go dig up your original Betamax video of Star Wars - it's brilliant, but the SFX on EVE are better. And you control them! It's your ship!
I can hang out with my friend in another city, or continent for that matter, and we can play online together while talking to one another. This is unreal, man, it is totally fucking incredible.

Blogs
But wait, it get's better.
Check the blog links I have down the right side of this page. You see any names you recognise? Thomas Dolby, Madam & Eve, John Connolly, Neil Gaiman? These are like famous people, right? I mean, I own Dolby CD's. I've bought Gaiman's books and own all the original Sandman comics - but technology, and more importantly the Internet, has allowed me access to their thoughts and ramblings. Or more to the point, it has allowed them to interact with their fans and allow them a behind-the-scenes view of the creation process of their latest album or book while still maintaining a level of anonymity and privacy.
In the old days if you wanted to communicate with the writers, singers or actors you admired you'd have to hunt down their "Fanclub" address and then send them boring old letters and wait months and months and years and years for a response - if you ever got one.
I remember sending Stephen King a fan-letter when I was about 15 or 16 and waiting for 3 months before the damn letter came back to me with a stamp across saying "Return to sender - Postage insufficient"!!! (So because I hadn't put enough stamps on the letter to cover the journey from Joburg to Maine the post office posted it back to me - costing them twice as much as it would have if they had just delivered the damn letter in the first place. Come to think of it I probably did have enough postage but it took so damn long to reach the States that the currency had changed making my postage insufficient! - Rant over)
By contrast, today I can log onto the Stephen King Forum, ask a question of the man himself and NEVER get a response. Okay, bad example.
But Gaiman has his agent's address and phone number on his site, Pratchett used to have a publicly accessible email address and Alastair Reynolds can be reached through his blog. This is incredible.

Music
Most recently I was on Thomas Dolby's blog and discovered that he is recording a new album. He did a small tour last year and has, thankfully, been bitten by the music bug again, (this is a man who has released 4 albums in the last 27 years!) So it is with great excitement that fans of Thomas Dolby will welcome this news.
On his blog he has been documenting the writing and recording process through which I heard about eSessions.com. eSessions is basically an online recording studio and session muso database. Most solo artists don't have bands and so what they do is write and demo their songs alone and then when it comes time to record the album versions they book a studio and hire sessions musos to play the instruments.
Traditionally this is a time consuming process as not all the session musos you want are always available at the same time, so unless you have access to your own studio you will end up paying multiple studio fees to go in and record multiple sessions. For example, let's say I've written a song, but now I need some piano laid down, a drum track, guitars and maybe some horns. But I can only get hold of the drummer in two weeks time, whereas the pianist and guitarist are only available this week. So I have to hire the studio twice, once this week to record piano and guitars and then again in two weeks to record the drummer. It's a long and expensive process.
Enter eSessions. Most of the session musos available on eSessions have their own home-studios. So you enter a search string for drummers and find out who is available and book them. You pay the session fee, they record the part in their own studio and upload the full-res file to the server. So what's so amazing about this? I mean the technology is great, but what really blew me away is exactly who is on that database.
I won't bore you with names you won't recognise but here are some of the artists available to record on your next album, (for a fee of course), the life-long bassist for Peter Gabriel, the saxophonist for Tom Waits, the drummer for Portishead, the keyboard player for Goldfrapp. This is utterly mind-blowing.
Tony Levin is available for a session??? On my song??? Holy shit!!!

And speaking of accessible musos, following on the success of their last experiment, Radiohead have once again released the "stems" of another of their songs, Reckoner. Basically, they've split the parts of the song and separated them into "stems". You get a vocal stem, (which will only have Thom Yorke's vocals on it) and a Bass stem, and a Guitar stem, and so on and so forth. These stems are available through iTunes and 7Digital and you can download the individual tracks of their song and then remix it in anyway you want. And when you're done you can upload it to www.radioheadremix.com where your friends and others can vote for their favourite remix. Imagine, a Joe Vaz remix of a Radiohead song. This is extraordinary. This is what technology is about - allowing you to jam, interact and communicate with your favourite artists, actors, musicians and writers. Never before in history has this been possible.
And all thanks to the internet.
Are you beginning to understand my excitment yet?
There's more.

to be continued...

Superglue

Went to see a good friend's album launch last night at the New Space Theatre on Long Street.
Awesome venue by the way - very much still in the construction phase, the Space is a four story Art-Deco monstrosity that used to house one of the great theatres of the eighties. It will be re-opening at the end of the year with Sondheim's Assassins musical (which I auditioned for but didn't get in).
All of which is an aside to Ian Henderson's Superglue album launch - awesome setup, awesome gig, great album (listen to some of the tracks here: www.ianhenderson.com).


Ian Henderson 'So That's What It's Like' (Superglue, 2008) from maxthepanda on Vimeo.

One of the things I love about Cape Town is the social nature of this city. I love that almost every night there are bands playing somewhere within a 15 minute walk. I love how prevalent independent artists are - that there are so many great bands and solo-artists out there that are financing their own productions, recordings, gigs and albums.
So go check out Ian's site and buy his album - this is the future of music, artists taking over from the studios.

13 Stories!!! Really?

Well here we are.
Looking through the last couple of blogs I've written it is becoming apparent to me that the only time I get round to updating this site is when I finish a deadline.
Bad Joe! I really must try and write more often in here.
The problem, of course, is when you spend every day writing, reading and editing stuff that you have to, you feel kinda pooped out and not really in the mood for more writing. The other problem is that trying to update this blog regularly tends to bring home the fact that my life really isn't as interesting as you may think it is. So it makes sense that the only time I feel like I have something to talk about is at the end of a Something Wicked deadline.

Which brings us to the topic at hand - Something Wicked #8.
What a daunting task this has been - so many excellent stories, so many rejections. I go into more detail in my Editor's Letter in the mag, but it has been a rather harrowing process.
I guess I should stop whining and be grateful. Better to have too many excellent stories, than not enough. But by the same token I am a little concerned.
SW08 features 13 stories - by far the largest number of stories we've ever published. What if you guys, the readers, find it a little cramped. What if, in an effort to hold on to as many of the stories we've received, we've actually overdone it and filled the magazine to such capacity that we'll overwhelm our readers?
What if the stories are not as good as we think they are?

These are the constant questions that go through my and the other slush-reader's minds. You never know. It is probably one of the most petrifying things about being an editor is that you never actually know if the choices you made are any good.
The process of putting together 56 pages of cover-to-cover fiction is incredibly daunting, not only because of the cold, calculating choices you have to make when the page count starts diminishing, but also because we're so insulated during the creation process that only after the magazine has come back from the printers and hit the shelves do we ever know if the choices we made were any good.

I've read interviews with published authors who feel the same way. That space between sign-off of the product and waiting for the first reviews, or emails and crits to come back can be terrifying.
Up until that point you're working, head down, bent over the keyboard or the monitor, making sure that everything looks the way it's supposed to. That all the paperwork is in order, that all the images are the correct resolution, that every word is where it should be - you're too busy to worry about whether or not you made the right choices.
But on the day after deadline there is a lull.
You deliver the final version to the printers and then you wait...
It can take just over 24 hours from delivery to seeing the proof. It's an enforced quiet time. I can't start working on the next issue, or updating the site, until I know that Issue 8 has been put to bed.
So I wait and try and find stuff to do that keeps my mind off the tension.
I update this blog.
I catch-up on reading some of my other fave blogs (see column on the right).
I catch up on some TV series (I've recently discovered House - which I'm thoroughly enjoying).
I read for pleasure - I play my guitar.
And I wait.

Of course once I've signed-off on the proof tomorrow it all starts up again. Update the website, compile eBook version, sort out invoices and start paying artists and writers, start commissioning art for Issue 9, get ready for HorrorFest.

Actually, when I put it like that, there really is never a dull moment in the SW Office. Hmmm, interesting, I think I may have just blown my own excuse for not keeping this blog updated.

Something Wicked Issue 8 hits the shelves on the 23rd of October and we'll be launching it, and selling our usual T-Shirts and other merch, at the HorrorFest on Halloween.
See you then.

Recently read:
Sporeville, by Paul Marlowe
The Reapers, by John Connolly
The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

Reading:
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

About to read:
The Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds
Making Money, by Terry Pratchett
Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Listening to:
The Flat Earth by Thomas Dolby
The Pink Opaque by The Cocteau Twins
Random Selections by My Ipod :)

Something Wicked #7

Greetings

Whew... I swear these deadlines are getting harder and harder - I'm aging five years every issue and at this rate I'm about 95 years-old today (Happy Birthday me!!).

Well SW07 has been signed off and is currently being loaded up and printed. We should get the first copies back by Thursday or Friday and it will then be released to the public on the 11th of July at the ICON Roleplaying Game Convention in Jo'burg - yay!!!
Jesca Marisa did the cover for us and as you can see - it kicks dark & gruesome ass!!!

Anyway.
I got word today that a good writer friend of mine will be in town in two weeks and has invited us for dinner with him - so I'm in a tremendously good mood.
Over the last couple of years Something Wicked has opened some very interesting and exciting doors for us - we've met some incredible people, writers, artists, actors, directors - a lot of whom we've become friends with.

It is a genuinely amazing experience to hear that someone you know is having a book published, or is in a new movie, or has won an award - it's been a thrilling ride.

So as another deadline is finished, so begins the promotional work - update website, pay invoices, go to Jo'burg for Icon, start ploughing through the as-yet-unread short-stories sitting in our inbox.
But for right now, just tonight, I'm on holiday. My work is done and I can relax and catch up on BSG season 4 - finally!

Recently read:
House of Suns, by Alastair Reynolds
Pompidou Posse by Sarah Lotz

About to read:
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
Sporeville by Paul Marlowe
The Reapers by John Connolly

Listening to:
Rockferry by Dusty
Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow
Flavors of Entanglement by Alanis Morissette

Stupid Questions - A Rant

Helloooooo
Okay so it's been a while since last I wrote in here but we've been incredibly busy trying to rework and remodel Something Wicked.

As you know we came in a little behind schedule with Issue 6 due to late payments but we're setting up new systems that will hopefully allow us to get SW running smoothly from now on.

Now the title of this blogpost is Stupid Questions and to be honest I've been meaning to get round to this for some time.

Dear Writers
There is a website called www.SomethingWicked.co.za on it there really is quite a lot of information.
It has taken us quite a long time to put that information on the website. The reason we have that information available on our website is not, as some of you may believe, so that we can bring up the page and go, "oh cool, my words are on a screen," but so that you, the writers, can easily access answers to your most common questions.
Simple things like, "where do we send our submissions" can be found on the website. "How long should our stories be?" - answer... on the website.
"Can I send you a sort-story that is about a dog that eats his owner?" - use your imagination, is it horror? Then chances are you can.

Honestly it drives us crazy, and sucks up a lot of time, to constantly have to answer questions whose answers are freely available on the website.
More importantly it doesn't really put the author in a good light.
Bottom line; if you can't read, there is a very good chance you can't write.

Some simple guidelines:
If at all possible, it is considered good manners, not to mention good research, to have read at least one issue of Something Wicked before you submit a story to us. South African writers can pick one up at CNA, or Outer Limits for 30 bucks, or better yet you can buy it from us for R25 and it is delivered free to you. International writers can buy an eVersion through Fictionwise.com.
This is what freelance writers do - they research a market and then they submit to it.
If you have never picked up a copy of the magazine, or if the closest you've come is reading a flyer you picked up, then at least have the decency to check out the website.
We have Contributor's Guidelines available that let you know exactly what we like and don't like to receive.
There are also examples of the type of stories and artwork we publish. There are even examples of the kind of bios we publish.
It's all on the website, folks, that's why the website exists - we didn't build it 'cause we had some spare time on our hands and thought it might look pretty!
Read The Guidelines - it will help you, it will help us. It will definitely get you to the top of the slush pile. It really isn't hard to do.

So...rant over.
Go forth and write.
Joe

Roll on 2008

Well I've just got back from an extremely wonderful Christmas in Joburg.
One of the only downsides of living in CT is that most of my childhood friends and family are still up in Joburg, though I am trying to get them to move down here.
Trips to Joburg are usually insanely busy running around trying to squeeze in hundreds of meetings and business related crap - but this time around there was nothing at all to do except chil and hang out with family and friends.
The most seriously chilled 8 days I've had in a long time.

Of course the second I got back the panic hit - stories to read, acceptance/rejection letters to send out, artists to contact.... no rest for the wicked, hee hee.

But for today - repack magazine shelf, read some more of Alastair Reynold's Redemption Ark and probably do a little bit of Wicked admin.

Thanks again to all of you who have supported us through the last year - it has been amazing, and hard, and educational and fun.
2008 is gonna bring some changes the concept and distribution of Something Wicked - finances have finally necessitated serious action - and action there will be.
But for now, it's business as usual and I'd better get back to work.

I'll leave you with a picture of a disgruntled Sam, or Samta Claws :o)


Till later...
Joe

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Having missed last year's HorrorFest Finale of Terminatryx and Lark's original, live soundtrack to Nosferatu, I made damn sure I didn't miss this year's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I'd only ever seen snippets of the film on YouTube and, like all 70+ year old black and white silent movies it looks cheesy, corny and quite silly. But all that changed on the 31st of Oct 2007. Watching a classic like Caligari in a darkened theatre with a live 21st Century soundtrack suddenly brings back the scale of this picture.

What a fucking masterpiece - instead of giggling at the screen I found myself suddenly entranced. Hanging on every (written) word. The score, composed and performed by Paul and Sonja from Terminatryx, Sean and Fuzzy from Lark and The Crackpot Realists was beautifully pieced together, altogether haunting and kickass with a combination of acoustic and electronic sounds with vocal contortions supplied by Sonja and one of the Crackpot Realists. What they manage to achieve is to completely revitalise this classic.

For the first time I found myself completely enthralled by a silent movie - marvelling at the stylistic approach to the film making, finding the obvious inspirations of such great genre directors as Tim Burton and Sam Raimi.
With their soundtrack they managed to make classic breathe again, resurrecting it for a new generation of film-makers to marvel at the magic of silver screen.
Rumour has it they might be doing Metropolis next year - I can't wait.

Check below for some clips from the night.
The First clip has been synced up with the actual video of Caligari.
Apologies for audio this was recorded on my phone :)

To Do List

For the week ending 18 Nov 2007

1. Fix/Upgrade and move Forum
2. Follow-up on writers who haven't replied to editorial questions
3. Pay Artists and Writers for Issue 5 content
4. Chase-up outstanding invoices for Issue 4 Ads that have not yet been paid
5. Work on story edits
6. Update website with Issue 5 Writers and Artists and Issue 4 Artists
7. Start reading Issue 6 Stories

... needless to say, there will be more later.

Keep It Coming

Well busy-ness seems to be the theme for now.
We've had an incredible 12 days since finishing off the mag.
Started by heading straight into the HorrorFest and watching waaaay many horror films and meeting up with fans and stuff.
The Halloween night live music performance to Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was spectacular - check back soon I'll upload some short clips from that.

But in the meantime came across this on my recent web-travels and just had to put it up.
This is Lark's Heroin Mary - one of my favourite songs of theirs. Enjoy the video.
Vianne and I were actually at this concert and it was foooking spectacular.
Enjoy the vid.

At The HorrorFest

Check it out, the guys from zoopy.com did a quick interview with me at the HorrorFest.

The Death of a Legend

I know this is a bit of a detachment from the regular crap on this blog, but bear with me.

I read this morning that Patrick Mynhardt died early yesterday.
The man was a living legend. An actor through and through and one of the best this country has ever seen. I did not know him personally, though I had the honour of reading opposite him for an audition a few months ago.

Many of you might know him better as Oom Schalk Lourens in theatre shows such as A Sip of Jerepigo, More Jerepigo, Just Jerepigo, Cold Stone Jug and Another Sip of Jerepigo all based upon Herman Charles Bosman's short stories. Others might remember from Vyfster or even Suburban Bliss.
Patrick was the Laurence Olivier of the SA stage. The man was a fucking legend.

And as all legends must go, Patrick died this morning in London where he was performing his Boy From Bethulie one-man-show.
As someone said, "he died with his boots on."

After studying at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, he joined the National Theatre Organisation in 1953 as an actor and started touring the country, according to his website, PatrickMynhardt.com. In 1954, he left for London where he trained at the Central School of Drama.

Performing on stage and for the BBC in Britain, he worked with such luminaries as Peter Sellers, Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine and Judi Dench. At the end of 1960 he returned to South Africa.

In a 2002 interview with SouthAfrica.info he said he had no plans to retire. "Retire? What would I do? I can do nothing but talk shit," he said.

He added: "I just wanted to be a wonderful actor. Forget about regrets. If you've achieved your great desire in life, what else matters?"

- Mail & Guardian Online

I salute you sir, it was an honour to have known your work.
All hail the king.

The Coming Horror

So the HorrorFest starts tomorrow and I must admit I am really looking forward to it. Paul's managed to organised some awesome movies this year.
Particularly I'm looking forward to watching Alien on the big screen for the first time ever.
Many of us have seen the Ridley Scott classic so many times but most of us grew up with it on video. This will be my first time on the big screen.
I can't wait.

Of course the really exciting thing will be doing our first ever Cover Signing sessions on Saturday when our Issue 4 & 5 cover artists, Jesca and Vincent join us at the festival.
Issue 5 actually arrived today from the printers and it is really beautiful.
We were a little worried because we've completely re-designed the layout of the mag and I had no idea what it would look like printed. So huge relief all round. It really does look great.
If you haven't seen them already check out these sneak-peeks of the interior:

Bone Fire by Evan Morris with illustrations by Vincent Sammy

Hungry Whispers by David de Beer with illustrations by Kobus Faber

Auburn House by Stewart Langdon with illustrations by Nicolas Rix

Anyway... absolutely exhausted so I gotta go get some reading done and then sleep.
More tomorrow