Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest #9

by Apex Authors

  "Yup,” the boy replied. “Ready."

  Becker held out his hand. “I'm Becker."

  The boy half smiled and shook back.

  "Hi,” he said. “I'm Jeffrey Dahmer."

  * * * *

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Part 1 of 4

  To be continued in our next issue...

  June, 2007

  For #9

  Poppet's Left Impression~

  * * * *

  Black eyed poppets offer Grim's reminders of a strange affair;

  Oh, effigy in hand, 'I dare'

  Do you sleep? Third eye wide awake—

  Her body lies seemingly peaceful,

  Your heart too close for comfort addressed a convulsive shiver~

  Her cold warmed hand glides down your chest a-quiver,

  Flexing muscles spasm fear? Excitement—

  Eyes to eyes reflect Un-rest;

  What is wicked? Those following hours...

  Do you speak of the ember bed?

  Through a red hot iron door you were led and not blindly,

  'You’ smoky darkened soul~

  She wears the colors—You dressed her that adorable scorpion,

  Trade for trade, now all is fair in lust and battle

  9 seared into your palms—

  A name she whispers, yours and yours...

  Crude doll knows a face,

  You cannot return the clock to her welcome~

  She said ‘Good-bye, Good-bye'

  Curtains go down there is no view,

  She harbors a fugitive behind her breast

  That criminal con of cons—

  Blink a lie of innocence,

  Sadly thing of shallow breath,

  Would you disprove the woman's twisting lack of sentiment?

  Vertigo Impression sculpted a stone figure,

  He named her—

  'Poppet Within'

  * * * *

  Poetry by Brandy Schwan www.apexdigest.com/grimtrixter

  What Wouldn't Kevin J. Anderson Do?

  Interview by Alethea Kontis

  In the course of doing all these interviews over the past few years, I've made an interesting observation: the better I know the person I'm interviewing, the harder it is to come up with questions. Since I know lots of stuff about them already, I wouldn't ask the same sort of questions other people would ask. I would more likely ask the sort of questions that would be nobody else's business. This doesn't exactly make for a stellar interview.

  Or, rather, it might make for a slightly TOO stellar interview.

  I met Kevin J. Anderson (and his lovely and talented wife Rebecca Moesta) a while back—as fellow Dragon*Con frequenters we were bound to bump into each other eventually. Kevin is both a fantastic guy and a machine, together in one neat and tidy package. He juggles other worlds (like Star Wars, X-files, Dune, and Krypton) along with his own books (like the Saga of Seven Suns series), the books he writes with Rebecca (the Crystal Doors trilogy), and other offerings like Slan Hunter, where he finishes the last book in SF legend A.E. van Vogt's catalog. He also keeps a MySpace page (as well as a blog and a newsletter), mentors a young man with Asperger's Syndrome, donates hundreds of books a year to charity auctions, and appears at libraries and SF conventions all over the world.

  In 2006 alone he wrote and delivered over 750,000 words.

  I feel like a slacker just thinking about it.

  With all this stuff on a plate bigger than my house, in order to cover all of it adequately, an interview with Kevin would need to be as big as this magazine.

  I had a feeling Jason was never going to let that happen.

  Help! What was I going to do?

  For crying out loud, I answered myself, it would be easier to do an interview about what he doesn't do...

  * * * *

  Alethea Kontis: Since you do absolutely everything on God's green earth and I have no idea where to start asking you questions, I decided to make the theme of this interview: “What Wouldn't Kevin J. Anderson Do?"

  Kevin J. Anderson: (laughs hysterically)

  AK: What TV show would you never watch?

  KJA: I had a niece who got married not too long ago, and she was watching all the wedding makeover shows, and the how to plan your wedding show. In the morning, Rebecca had on the Martha Stewart Show. Those are things that I really don't need to have in my mind.

  AK: What color would you never wear?

  KJA: I have no fashion sense or style. I can't think of a color I would never wear. But my wife might have better opinions on that.

  AK: What book are you exceptionally glad you did not write?

  KJA: The book I'm glad I didn't write is the OJ Simpson If I Did It book.

  AK: What sport would you never play?

  KJA: There are a lot of sports I don't play. I was the kid with the thick glasses and the skinny arms and the clumsy gait. I was always the last to be picked for the team. I couldn't catch a ball, because I had bifocal glasses. When I lifted up my hand to catch the baseball, I would turn my head up and go to the second lens in the bifocal ... so then the lens would make the ball shift...

  I'm a very active person. I climb mountains. I hike for 23 miles a day. I go swimming and snowshoeing. I do all kinds of stuff, but that's me doing things. I don't do team sports. I'm a freak of American society in that I don't like to watch football or basketball. I vaguely understand it, but I don't see what the excitement is.

  AK: What superhero would you never write about?

  KJA: When I was a kid I read so many comic books. I found something cool in everything, whether it was Man Thing, or Man Wolf, or Man Geek, or whatever. I loved all the different incarnations of The Green Lantern, the Flash, The Hulk—DC or Marvel—I used to read stacks of them. I have such a love of superheroes, I would be happy to write just about anything.

  The great superheroes are very hard to write about—X-Men, Spiderman, or Superman because they've got such a backlog of history behind them. The fans know all 1000 issues that Superman was in or Spiderman is in.

  AK: What difficulties did you have with the Krypton book?

  KJA: For The Last Days of Krypton, the biggest difficulty was trying to tell the strongest story using as much of the Superman mythos as I could. There are so many contradictions in the universe—from all the different comic incarnations to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies to the new Superman Returns to the Smallville TV show—all of them have varied interpretations.

  I got to pull all the things that I thought were all the coolest parts of Superman history and wrap them all together into a big story. It's a big space opera on an alien planet with a cool culture which is very almost Greco-Roman.

  One of the things that people think is a strange thing about The Last Days of Krypton: they're all ON Krypton, so none of them has superpowers. It's a book that's about Superman, but nobody has superpowers. Nobody flies in this book. Nobody gets shot at by bank robbers who then throw guns at them at the end of it.

  AK: What food would you never eat?

  KJA: I live in Colorado, and I like to try just about anything. I'm a very adventurous eater. I've eaten insects on live TV, I've eaten all kinds of sushi—some I like and some I don't. It's not that I'm not willing to try them. I've had duck feet in a dim sum restaurant. I've had calf's brain. I'll try just about everything.

  But in Colorado, we don't have oceans. So when you see something on the menu that says, “Rocky Mountain Oysters,” it's not really oysters. It's cow testicles. I have heard they're very good, but I couldn't get up the courage to order them. I would, however, like to say I've tried them if somebody could trick me at one point so I wouldn't know what it was until after I'd eaten it.

  AK: What country would you never visit?

  KJA: Right now, Iraq. That would be a sure thing. Afghanistan has some very beautiful mountains, but I think I'll cross that off the list right now too. Somalia and some of the really squalid African countries I have no interest in.


  I love the United States too much. I've been to most of the 50 States. I've spent time out in the Rocky Mountains, the Utah Desert, Death Valley, the Sierra Nevadas, and the Grand Canyon. I'm so much in love with all of those things and I know that I can't possibly see it all in my lifetime, so I wouldn't want to bend over backwards to go to a place I'm only half-interested in.

  AK: Do you know what States you haven't visited?

  KJA: I haven't been to Alaska, but I would love to. I'm sure we will go sometime in the near future. I haven't looked at the exact map and checked them off, but off the top of my head I don't believe I've ever been to Arkansas. There are some of the little New England States that I might not have been to, but I think I have. I've been briefly to Maine, in the airport and stuff, so that doesn't really count. But I have been to most of them. I want to go back to a great many of them.

  AK: What kind of beer would you never drink?

  KJA: I've learned my lesson on some of them. I'm not a big fan of the jalepeno-chile beers. I don't quite see the point in that. Some of the really frou frou fruit basket beers: kiwi-blackberry beer and things like that don't even sound good to me. I don't want to drink the thing that most Americans call beer. I just don't want to be anywhere close to Budweiser or Coors, or the stuff that looks like some other flat, yellow substance that I don't really want to drink.

  AK: What kind of music would you never listen to?

  KJA: I would never listen to things like Country & Western or show tunes. I'm not a big fan of big band era music or Rat Pack/lounge lizard stuff. I like classic rock, heavy metal, progressive rock, classical music, and movie soundtracks.

  AK: Do you sing in the shower?

  KJA: I plot stories in the shower.

  AK: Is there anyplace where you would not write?

  KJA: In a vat of acid, or a boiling cauldron. Or on the hospital bed while undergoing open-heart surgery. But those are probably the only limitations.

  AK: Was there ever a time when you weren't writing?

  KJA: Between the ages of one and four I don't think I was writing. But I do remember I started writing when I was five. There was never a time when I wasn't absolutely convinced that I wanted to tell stories or be a writer. Since I was five that's what I wanted to do, and my whole life has been on that track.

  AK: What cliché would you never say?

  KJA: I think some of the people have complained that I've used about every cliché I could probably use. There is no cliché unturned. I don't use them on purpose, but when I write I try to write something that comes naturally. I don't want people to think they're reading when they're reading my books. They're supposed to forget that there are words on the page; they should just be living the story with the characters. That means that I write in a comfortable and conversational way. If it's something I use in every day speech, it may very well crop up in my writing. Other people may see that as a cliché.

  AK: What kind of car would you never drive?

  KJA: A broken one. I demand that my cars actually take me where I'm trying to go.

  I'm not a huge muscle car guy; I don't care what car I'm driving. I don't have any real prejudice different kinds of cars. A car is a vehicle that will take me someplace where I can go hiking.

  AK: Who would never elect for president?

  KJA: He's already been in office two terms.

  AK: Have you ever had George Lucas on speed dial?

  KJA: I've spoken with him, even met with him a couple of times, but never on speed dial.

  AK: What movie would you never watch?

  KJA: A George Bush musical where he sings lounge lizard songs as show tunes while eating Rocky Mountain Oysters.

  AK: What did you never want to be when you grew up?

  KJA: My dad was a bank president and my mom was an accountant. I never wanted to be a businessperson when I grew up. They were very successful ... it's just the thing about kids who don't want to do what their parents do. I majored in astronomy and Russian History. It really got my parents upset.

  My parents listened to Country & Western music all the time too.

  AK: Is there any flavor of ice cream you don't care for?

  KJA: No. At least, none that I've tasted. You can be gross and say “pickle and horseradish ice cream” or something, but I've even had garlic ice cream and it was tolerable.

  AK: My kind of man. What genre would you never write in?

  KJA: I tend to be like a chameleon as a writer. If I study something enough, I can get a feel for what the genre expects. At the moment, I haven't read more than a couple of romance novels—I'd have to do more research on it.

  But the artsy-fartsy literary genre is the one I just couldn't do. I couldn't stomach it. I couldn't write something that was flowery prose with no plot or characters.

  AK: Where everyone dies at the end?

  KJA: Where everyone dies at the end, yeah.

  AK: Is there anything you're glad you're not doing right now?

  KJA: As much as love hiking and snowshoeing, it's snowing in Colorado right now—it's apparently very cold and windy. So at the moment I'm glad I'm not snowshoeing up on a peak. But the moment it gets to be better weather, I plan to be up there doing it.

  Look for Kevin J. Anderson in 2007:

  Ill Wind (w/Doug Beason)—paperback reissue/March

  Crystal Doors #1 (w/Rebecca Moesta)—paperback/May

  Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (w/Rebecca Moesta)—hardcover/June

  Hunters of Dune (w/Brian Herbert)—paperback/June

  Slan Hunter (w/A.E. van Vogt)—hardcover/July

  An Interview With Liz Williams

  Interview by Lavie Tidhar

  Liz Williams is a three-time nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award (2001, 2002, 2004) and is one of speculative fiction's most respected short form writers. A novelist, a short fiction writer, and a regular blogger, the prolific Williams has recently found time to join the editorial staff of the British genre magazine Interzone.

  * * * *

  Lavie Tidhar: You've emerged as one of the most interesting new novelists in the UK in recent years, but—paradoxically—your books were first published in America. How did that come about?

  Liz Williams: I sent a proposal to an agent who was advertising in Locus for new clients. Her name was Shawna McCarthy and she had just left her previous agency to set up on her own. She was the first agent I approached. She did not take me on immediately, but asked me to rewrite Ghost Sister. I did so, and she sold it to Bantam six weeks later, her main focus naturally being the US publishers.

  LT: You draw a lot on cultural backgrounds we don't see a lot of in Western SF—Nine Layers of Sky for example is, I understand, inspired by your time in Kazakhstan—what draws you to that, and do you think the SF reading public is more open to such non-Western settings today?

  LW: I don't feel equipped to write a novel set in the US, as I have never lived there, and I don't think it would feel authentic. Also, so many books are set in the West and I get a bit bored with that. There are obvious issues relating to cultural appropriation and no, I don't think one can ever write from the point of view of another culture with total success. But the alternative is to play safe and I don't like doing that! Besides, I get gripped by ideas...

  LT: Many of your books deal with issues of gender—in Banner of Souls, for instance, there are no males, while in Darkland you describe a society that heavily oppresses women. Is this something you consciously think about and try to address?

  LW: Yes, it is. I am a feminist, and the role of women concerns me (I am one, after all). Looking at places like Afghanistan, which is where the world in Darkland and Bloodmind (coming out in February 07) is based on, one can see how quickly things can change from a relatively liberal climate to a profoundly oppressive one. I think societies like the one in “The Handmaid's Tale", for instance, are all too likely.

  LT: You are currently writing a series for Nightshade Books, the Inspector Chen novels, that take pla
ce in a future Singapore and, to a large extent, in the Chinese version of the afterlife. How did that come about, and what do you particularly enjoy in writing the series?

  LW: It's not actually in Singapore itself, but in a franchise of that city on the Chinese mainland (this was an actual idea that Singaporean government had, to make money. You can't make this stuff up!). I wanted to write something fun, and this is great fun to write. I'm also fascinated by Chinese mythology and by Hong Kong. A friend of mine used to live on a houseboat in Deep Water Bay and she went out for a bit with someone on the HK vice squad. So I know the city fairly well, and the stories just grew out of that.

  LT: You've written mainly stand-alone novels so far—what do you find is the biggest difference in doing series? Would you consider doing another at some point?

  LW: I like the continuity of series, and the room that they give you to expand. But my main work has been stand-alone—room in a different way, to play with ideas in many different contexts. I might do another series—we'll see what happens!

  LT: You're a prolific short story writer (and been in quite a few Year's Bests anthologies)—how do you balance short story writing with novel writing?

  LW: I tend to write short fiction at weekends, as a break from the novels. I like short stories, and I enjoy the instant gratification.

  LT: Speaking of short stories, you've recently taken an editorial position with Interzone. How do you find being on the other side of the fence, so to speak? What is the challenge—and what is the satisfaction—of being an editor?

  LW: I think you learn a lot from it. You get to see what works and what doesn't, and it gives you a chance to analyse why, which is always interesting. The Interzone team works well, I think—there's a remarkable degree of consensus.

  LT: Three of your books have been shortlisted for awards—two for the Philip K. Dick and one for both the Clarke and PKD awards. How important are awards to you?

  LW: It's always great to have that recognition, but I've no particular ambitions as far as awards go. If I get one, great, if not, then it's not the end of the world. I've lost one partner to cancer and nearly lost my current partner to the same disease. That tends to put these things in perspective.