The Kennedy Curse releases 10/1/13!

The Kennedy Curse, the new anthology from Big Pulp, is scheduled to be released on October 1.  I'm excited, of course, because my story, "The Cuban Exile Crisis," is included.  And even more exited, because it marks the first time a Space Corps story is published by someone other than me.

Of course, it's not just Space Corps, my sprawling space opera epic, that interests me about the story or the anthology, but my long interest in JFK and his whole family, something I picked up from my mother and I've enthusiastically continued.  I'm one of those people who believes in the conspiracy theory, that the events that will be commemorated for their fiftieth anniversary this coming November may not be exactly how history remembers them.

But my story isn't about that.  It's set in the future, actually, and as the title suggests occurs in Cuba, where a descendant has ended up.  She finds herself entangled in another international incident, although this one unlike the other one comes in the midst of a full-blown war the whole world is facing.  In the Space Corps universe this is humanity's introduction to the Danab menace.  The story doesn't worry too much about this war so much as the main character's troubles as she attempts to figure out where she stands and what if anything she can do about it.

And other people contribute other stories, too!  Here's the Amazon link.

Big Pulp - The Kennedy Curse proofing

I just finished proofing my entry in the upcoming Big Pulp anthology The Kennedy Curse, which includes my story "The Cuban Exile Crisis."  For some reason, the editors capitalized the "p" in my last name.  I'm sure my far more French ancestors did that, and I know my brothers have done retrofitted it back that way themselves (while my sisters both sport married surnames now), but I'm carrying on a tradition here, and have for all my previous published work.  Retaining the exact spelling of "Laplume" proves all the more important to me considering a decade ago I was fully convinced that I would write under a pseudonym.

(This has always been something of a small joke for me, considering "Laplume" translates to, variously, "the feather" or "the pen."  My own name is a pen name!  I like to imagine future generations, should I be lucky enough to be remembered as a writer, just assuming that it's not my real name.  To those prospective fans, I will now reveal my true surname: Firefox.  My name is Tony Firefox.)

Another reason to be particular about my last name is that I come across very few French surnames in the world of books, excepting of course French writers themselves and the occasional Cajun. 

"The Cuban Exile Crisis" has another distinction that I've referenced in the past, in that it will be the first official publication of Space Corps material, "official" in the sense that I didn't release it myself.  Reading through the proof, I'm reminded that I took a very deliberate literary approach to the story, "deliberate" in the sense that it reads like ordinary prose, not exactly the style I normally use.  Even if this is ends up being the only Space Corps story published this way, I think it'll give people a small idea of what the rest of it was about. 

The anthology is centered around the Kennedy clan and its legacy, and so is "Exile Crisis" (the title of course is a pun on JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis), but it also reflects the basic struggle between humans and the alien menace known as the Danab that lies at the heart of the saga.  While approached obliquely, the emphasis on the human toll carries the weight I would expect from an Space Corps story.

I'm excited for this Big Pulp release.  I should be getting my contributor copy sometime this month, and the release is scheduled for September.  I'll keep you posted.

Accepted into a Big Pulp anthology!

In the first bit of publishing, as opposed to self-publishing (including the "Project Mayhem" anthology) to come around this blog since its inception, I've gotten a short story accepted into a Big Pulp.  Pretty happy about that.

Although now that I think about it I've also got one in Martin Ingham's forthcoming Temporal Element anthology, and that's pretty cool, too.  Ingham was the host of last summer's Shootout, one of the infamous writing exercises that caused me some misery in 2012.  The Shootout's winner in fact was the first story accepted into Temporal Element.  After swallowing my pride, I decided to write another story for him, and then rewrote it, and had it accepted.  I've done an interview for him as part of the run-up to publication, and will let you know when that appears.  The other thing I owe Ingham is the inspiration to do "Project Mayhem" in the first place.  His Curse of Selwood was scheduled to be the next book published by the company that would have released my own Yoshimi (as a reminder, I'll be releasing that myself in the coming months through installments), and when that company fell apart, he decided to set up his own label, and that's where Element where come from.  I took his idea as a sign that maybe I ought to look into that sort of thing myself, although my efforts are far less official (he has a website for Martinus, I have a link here for the Mouldwarp Press Presents series, which includes details on the next anthology, "Song Remains the Same").

Big Pulp is pretty big, though.  I have no personal connection to these guys, so that's one of the reasons why I'm proud to have been accepted into the forthcoming Kennedy Curse anthology.  I was born almost twenty years after JFK's assassination, but for some reason he's always loomed as a pretty major figure in my life.  Fun fact!  My mother once made a robe for him.  No kidding!  The anthology covers the whole family, which has had a series of tragedies affect it over the years.  My entry, "The Cuban Exile Crisis," will also be the first official publication (i.e. by someone other than me) of the Space Corps saga, so that's another reason I'm excited and proud to have accomplished this.  I'm getting paid for this one, a free copy...it's like someone thinks I'm a real boy!