Short post to spread the word that Estranghero Press has announced the table of contents for their Demons of the New Year anthology. Amongst the select few are Ruin and Resolve contributors Catherine Batac Walder and Eliza Victoria. Congratulations to all the writers, and to co-editors Joseph Nacino and Karl de Mesa.
Our friends over at Estranghero Press have been busy lately, so I thought it might be best to gather some relevant updates in this post.
First off, everyone remembers that the deadline for story submissions for their Demons of the New Year anthology is on January 15 right? Well if you didn’t remember, now you do, so no excuses. Procastinators and crammers (I think that covers about 90% of the people I know) have around five days to polish up those horror stories and send them to co-editors Joseph Nacino and Karl R. De Mesa.
Second, Estranghero Press now has a facebook page so go add them up if you’re a fan.
Third, head honcho Joseph Nacino has posted the digital press’ guidelines to shed some light on how it will be run and how often they plan to release new titles.
For your pre-Christmas edition of our link round-up, we’ve got a site launch, writing tidbits and a smattering of history:
Site Launch:
Books and the Writing Craft:
Event Coverage:
Historical Documents: (via Filipiniana.net)
Contests and Sales:
)Joey Nacino of Estranghero Press has announced a new anthology “Demons of the New Year: Horror from the Philippines“. This is Estranghero Press’s second anthology following “The Farthest Shore” and this time Joey will be joined by horror-meister Karl “M.F.” de Mesa, of Damaged People: Tales of the Gothic-Punk and the upcoming News from Shaman. You can find the rest of the submissions guidelines here, but here’s an executive summary:
Theme: Horror with demons – “This collection of stories will be an anthology about demons– but don’t let that stop you from coming up with a really good idea about what constitutes your ‘Demons of the New Year.’ Like I said in an earlier post, don’t let a particular idea stop you from writing a good story”
Deadline: January 15, 2010.
(Slider image by Gazzmundo found here, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0)
“On the Far Shore” is what I’m calling this series of interviews with the authors/editors of “The Farthest Shore” an anthology of secondary world fantasy from Filipino writers. The anthology is available here . Today we speak with Joey Nacino, one of the anthology’s two editors, and also the author of “Brothers-in-Arms“.
How did you come up with the idea for “The Farthest Shore”? Why focus on secondary world fantasy?
As I’ve talked about in the book’s introduction, Dean and I were talking about our love of secondary world fantasies and how as Filipino writers we couldn’t write about them because of the lack of Filipino elements in such stories. So we decided to hell with expectations and come up with an anthology of secondary world stories written by Filipinos.
I came up with the title “The Farthest Shore” in honor of Ursula K. Le Guin’s third Earthsea book and thought it apt given her definition of what ‘the farthest shore’ meant. Likewise, I thought the title evoked the feeling of islands, which is really what this is all about: secondary world stories from the Philippine islands, as far as it can be from the US or international readership.
How did you go about defining “secondary world fantasy”?
The basis of our definition of secondary world fantasy stems from the epic doorstoppers like George R. R. Martin’s and Robert Jordan’s works, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. However, we also thought that this kind of definition is somewhat limiting given the other kinds of secondary world ideas, i.e. the portal-to-a-fantasy-world like Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books or the new weird stuff like China Mieville’s Crobuzon tales.
So we thought of making the definition a little vague in order to give our writers free rein to interpret what secondary world fantasy could mean. Hence, in this anthology you will find stories about pseudo-Filipino myth-laden realms (like Rod Santos’ “Queen Liwana”), a girl’s imaginary world of justice fulfilled (like Eliza Victoria’s “The Just World”), a New Weird-ish story of generational turtle ships (like Dom Cimafranca’s Rite of Passage), etc. Of course, those descriptions are my reading of the stories and may not apply to others. *wink*
You’re obviously well versed in some of the classic secondary world stories. Do you have a few more obscure secondary world favorites to recommend? Those that deserve more attention and acclaim?
Well, people can always try the late Paul Zimmer’s Dark Border novels (“The Lost Prince”, “King Chondo’s Ride” and the stand-alone “A Gathering of Heroes”) and P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath books (“God Stalk” and “Dark of the Moon” which was later collected in “The God Stalker Chronicles”; “Seeker’s Mask” and “To Ride a Rathorn”, which was collected in “Seeker’s Bane”). Zimmer’s books chronicles a cold war fantasy world wherein evil is just a border away. However, though the heroes of the Dark Border are quite compelling, they’re also tragic. Istvan the Archer is a famous swordsman who foreswore the bow after a massacre that made his name. Hodgell’s books are similar in that evil also lies over another border but her adventure stories of Jaime are leavened by a sly sense of humor. Both have their strengths and weaknesses but overall, they made quite an impression on me—especially since I managed to acquire copies of these more-than-likely-out-of-print books at secondhand bookstores. Unfortunately, there aren’t any Dark Borders books anymore since Zimmer—the brother of fantasy granddame Marion Zimmer Bradley—died in 1997. Fortunately, Baen Books have been publishing omnibus copies of Hodgell’s books and it looks like a fifth one is in the offing.
In the course of putting together this anthology, what was your biggest challenge? Your biggest surprise?
For myself, the biggest challenge was having enough stories that fit the bill to fill the anthology. Despite the popularity of fantasy/SF books in the Philippines, it seems like Filipino writers aren’t as keen to write about non-Filipino stories. Or maybe that’s just my perception. The biggest surprise? Filipino writers can write good secondary world stories.
Ah, now there’s a statement that might be misconstrued. How was that a surprise? what were your initial expectations when you and Dean began the project?
Well, the submissions did open my eyes to what could be considered as secondary world fantasy. Prior to this, my perception of a secondary world story was limited to the Western type ( i.e. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth or George R.R. Martin’s Westeros to China Mieville’s New Crobuzon) though I never realized it. Good thing I found myself seeing past this as I read stories that were non-Western– sometimes non-Filipino– but still apply a very Asian context to the idea of secondary worlds. An example would be Crystal Koo’s “Wildwater” story about a poor yet ambitious fisherman who goes off to find fame and fortune in the big bad empire. Ironically, Charles once pointed out one time that the submission guidelines describing the secondary world theme as “too vague”. Good thing that worked out to our advantage.
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