Missions Unknown » SA Writers

McKinney Nabs Two Stoker Preliminary Nods

Mission Control — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:00:51 +0000

Joe McKinney

This year’s Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot was released last week, celebrating the best of 2009 in horror literature as recognized by the Horror Writers Association. Congrats to San Antonio’s own Joe McKinney who has two of his works on the list. QUARANTINED is a preliminary selection in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel and his story “Plague Dogs” is a preliminary selection in the category of Superior Achievement in Short Fiction. According to the Horror Writers Association’s website, its members “will vote to choose final nominees from this list, and then vote again to determine winners. Winning titles will be announced at the World Horror Convention, March 25-28 2010, in Brighton, England.” Note that the Preliminary Ballot is NOT an official Stoker nomination, but merely the preliminary round before nomination, sometimes known as a “long list”. McKinney says, “I couldn’t be happier. There’s some stout competition this year, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

SA’s Broderick in ASIMOV’S Feb. 2010 Issue

Mission Control — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:51:24 +0000

San Antonio’s man of sf letters, Damien Broderick, keeps trucking with a short story called “Dead Air” in the February 2010 issue of ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION, now on sale. Other stories in this issue include the novella “The Ice Line” by Stephen Baxter; novelettes “Stone Wall Truth” by Caroline M. Yoachim; “The Woman Who Waited Forever” by Bruce McAllister; and “The Wind-Blown Man” by Aliette de Bodard; and the short story “The Bold Explorer in the Place Beyond” by David Erik Nelson. The issue rounds out with editorials and essays by Sheila Williams, Robert Silverberg, James Patrick Kelly, and Peter Heck, as well as the 24th Annual Readers’ Award Ballot.

Scott Cupp gets OCD

Sanford Allen — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:32:03 +0000

Looks like San Antonio author Scott A. Cupp’s new “Geek with (Lots of) Books” column in SF Signal is off to a fine start. This week, Scott details his obsession, talking about his accummulation of Edgar Rice Burroughs books, his collection of Joe R. Lansdale books and the difference between the two.

If you ever feel like your collection of books, comics or movies is growing out of control, it’s nice to know you can look up Scott’s column and breath easier. You will suddenly feel like the paragon of moderation.

SA’s Scott Cupp Launches New SF Signal Column

Mission Control — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:00:59 +0000

CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE: World Fantasy Award-nominated anthology edited by Scott Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale

San Antonio author Scott Cupp has joined the team of SF Signal, one of the leading science fiction news sites. His new column is called Geek With (Lots of) Books and the first installment went live this week. Check it out!

SA’s Broderick in August ASIMOV’S

Mission Control — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:30:48 +0000

ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION / August 2009

San Antonio resident and multi-Ditmar award-winning author Damien Broderick has a new story published in the August issue of ASIMOV’S, available now. “The Qualia Engine” is a full-length original novelette, and is featured along with new stories by Michael Blumlein, Derek Zumsteg, Robert Reed, Steven Popkes, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Broderick is the author of several new books including UNCLE BONES, I’M DYING HERE, and QUIPU.

Made In SA: Damien Broderick

John Picacio — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:37:49 +0000

SINGULARITY RISING: Science fiction author/editor Damien Broderick sees it -- and where we might be headed. (Photo by Cat Sparks)

DAMIEN BRODERICK is a native Australian and five-time Ditmar Award-winning science fiction author, editor, and reviewer. He has written or edited approximately forty books, seven of them with Rory Barnes, and has been dubbed “The Dean of Australian Science Fiction”. He sold his first short story collection at age twenty, as an undergraduate at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. THE DREAMING DRAGONS is listed in David Pringle’s SF: THE 100 BEST NOVELS. Winner of several awards, including four Aurealis Awards and the IAFA‘s 2005 Distinguished Scholar, he recently held a two-year Australia Council Literature Board fellowship to write a two-part novel based on the Singularity (GODPLAYERS and K-MACHINES) and is currently science fiction editor for COSMOS Magazine. In 2007 he published a study of recent parapsychology, OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE. His most recent edited popular-science book was YEAR MILLION, a look at the very far future by Gregory Benford, Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski, Robert Bradbury (who invented the Matrioshka Brain hyper-structure featured in fiction by Charles Stross and others), and a dozen others. This year Damien expects to see eight books newly in print. He is a Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. He lives with tax lawyer Barbara Lamar in San Antonio and Lockhart, Texas.

Favorite authors, sf novels, and science books include:

THE STARS MY DESTINATION by Alfred Bester, THE CITY AND THE STARS by Arthur C. Clarke, THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein, THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula Le Guin, MORE THAN HUMAN by Theodore Sturgeon, the work of Philip K. Dick, CAMP CONCENTRATION by Thomas M. Disch, SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson, THE FEMALE MAN by Joanna Russ, PROFILES OF THE FUTURE by Arthur C. Clarke, THE SELFISH GENE by Dawkins, GÖDEL, ESCHER, BACH by Hofstadter, MIND CHILDREN by Moravec, and THE ANTHROPIC COSMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE by Barrow and Tipler

What brought you to San Antonio and what did you think of this place when you got here?

I married Barbara Lamar, a Texan, who was living in the wilds of central Texas on her 160-acre permaculture farm, and we decided San Antonio was the nicest city nearby we could afford. I have to confess a hankering for Austin, but their real estate is insanely expensive. But I like living here; the weather is not unlike Australia’s (they’re both hellish hot at times and troubled by droughts), and there are good libraries and medical, and the locals are friendly.

You’re currently a multi award-winning author and the fiction editor for COSMOS Magazine. Do you have a set routine for how you balance the two, or is it more organic?

There’s no rhyme or reason to anything I do. Well, I read for COSMOS on a daily basis when we’re not on submission hiatus, and then edit the stories we buy, but it’s only one piece every two months. I read a lot, and when I get into writing mode I turn into an obsessed fiend, terrifying to behold. That muttering you hear is me talking my way through a story or book.

You’re credited by many as inventing the term “virtual reality.” What’s the story there?

It’s a phrase I used (along with “virtual matrix”) in a novel I started writing in the late ’60s and only sold a decade later. THE JUDAS MANDALA came out in 1982, and was one of the many sf novels and stories that made use of the idea of realities not quite as real as everyday reality but usually more enticing. (Clarke’s THE CITY AND THE STARS actually opens with a VR adventure game, and that was in 1956.)

Broderick's K-MACHINES: The 2006 Aurealis Award Winner / Best Novel

As a noted futurist, you evaluate how humans and technology affect each other. Where do you see that relationship heading right now?

We’re continuing to converge with our technologies, as we’ve done for tens of thousands of years. Modifications of body and mind and ecosystems is inevitable and accelerating, even though we’re still only in the foothills of the slope. Meanwhile, in the depths of recession, it mightn’t seem that way, even for people effectively wired to iPhones and Twitter. But I do still expect a Singularity or Spike… not that I’m likely to be around to see it.

What do you think about the current state of today’s science fiction literature? Optimistic about its future?

It feels overwhelmed by what Adam Roberts wittily calls fatasies. But a lot more good, even great, sf is being published than ever was, on the whole, in Golden Ages past. Possibly not as fertile and astonishing as the cascade of genius that spilled out in 1952 and 1953, but some fine work is coming along—even if a lot of it is being published by small devoted presses rather than the megacorp publishers, who prefer to be safe with franchises churning out the mixture as before.

Which of your novels would you most recommend to someone who’s encountering your work for the first time?

I guess THE DREAMING, which is my preferred title for THE DREAMING DRAGONS from 1980; it missed the Campbell Memorial award (Harry Harrison told me) because one of the judges got his votes in late… (I bit my tongue savagely.) It’ll be out in a revised edition from Fantastic Books in the next month or so. I like the GODPLAYERS / K-MACHINES diptych from 2005-6, but a lot of readers had trouble with a narrative that works more like frantic music than like traditional plot. Anyone interested in sampling my short fiction should try UNCLE BONES, just out.

You’ve got several short stories lined up for 2009. What’s coming, and where will it be published?

I had a burst of short fiction writing last year, and Sheila Williams took five stories for ASIMOV’S (one of them, “The Qualia Engine”, is the title story in my next Fantastic Books collection, due around the end of the year). One of my favorites, a tribute to Cordwainer Smith, will be out in mid-summer on Tor.com. Jonathan Strahan has a rather Ballardian piece in the issue of Subterranean he’s editing. And Paul Di Filippo and I have a rather naughty tale titled “Cockroach Love” due around the end of the year from the Aussie zine ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS.

You’ve been busy. Two new books, the aforementioned UNCLE BONES and I’M DYING HERE, just released. UNCLE BONES is a collection of four long stories. Were these conceived together originally, or did they seem to fit together in retrospect?

Nope, they represent slices through my entire writing career. Half the book is the short novel “The Game of Stars and Souls”, which is a massive revision and extension of the very first novelette I ever sold, in 1963, when I was 19. The title story was in ASIMOV’S in January. The other two are from the early 1980s; both were published in US original anthologies. If I’d been living here 25 or 30 years ago, part of the network of young sf writers, I’d probably have been far more prolific and, well, visible. Before the internet, it was pretty hard for people outside the UK or USA to make an impact. But I’ve always been equally interested in other topics as well, such as parapsychology and popular science writing. When I was 42 I went back to university to do a PhD on the ways scientific and artistic forms of discourse intersect and differ. But instead of staying and becoming a formal academic (my honorary position with the University of Melbourne as Senior Fellow has no duties and no pay), I went back to writing books, mostly, and criticism or reviews. I’ve had six books of theory and critique published—which I wrote because they were fun.

You co-wrote I’M DYING HERE with Rory Barnes. How did you decide to collaborate?

Rory and I were pals at Monash University at the dawn of time. Monash, in suburban Melbourne, is now a world-famous center for biotechnology and medicine, but back then it was a newly opened scatter of stark buildings afloat in red mud. Rory and I and a few other guys and grrls shared a sort of half-rural “urban commune” down the road from the campus, and managed to set the kitchen on fire and burn half the building to the ground. We’ve written several books together, by every conceivable means—hot keyboard, where one stands up and the other sits down and tries to finish the paragraph, chapter-alternating by email, one of us taking an entire novel by the other man and changing the setting entirely. In my forthcoming novel QUIPU, from E-Reads, I stole some great scenes from one of Rory’s abandoned novels and inserted them into my book (with his permission, of course). TRANSCENSION has only my name on it but large slabs were drafted by Rory before he lost interest in the book and I went through and changed a lot of it into a strange vernacular of the future… Something similar with I’M DYING HERE. It’s all been extremely interesting, technically, and a lot of fun. Hmm, maybe we should write one bi-continentally.

What are you currently working on?

Oddly enough, nothing in particular. I’m hoping to sell an original anthology of popular science essay on the topic of mind uploading, along the lines of 2008’s YEAR MILLION, but that’s still under consideration.

What’s your favorite place in San Antonio?

The northern extension of the Riverwalk has been my favorite place to walk for the last couple of years. Watching it slowly accrete out of what sometimes looked like a sun-baked open sewer into the marvel it is today has been truly pleasing — and rather uplifting. People can do this!

Favorite San Antonio food?

I always enjoy a good dish of Red Chili Kangaroo Tail and Koala Enchiladas, washed down with a Foster’s lager. Damn, the name of the eatery has slipped my mind. Somewhere on North St. Mary’s, I think.

Broderick’s Latest Enters World of High-IQ Clever Dicks

Sanford Allen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:00:06 +0000

Cover of Damien Broderick's QUIPU

How about San Antonio’s DAMIEN BRODERICK? Talk about a guy on a roll…

Beyond having a spate of new sf releases and stories appearing this year in ASIMOV’S, Damien’s new mainstream novel, QUIPU, is coming out from E-Reads in both print and ebook formats.

In QUIPU, a reimagining of Damien’s prize-winning 1984 novel TRANSMITTERS, one character, Caroline, is going batty. Another, Joseph, can’t talk to women, even if he is a certified high-IQ clever dick trying to take snapshots of the end of the universe. Ray and Marj have their own hassles with in-laws, but student terrorists get in the way. Meanwhile Brian, misogynist and wit, appalls everyone in the quipu world. Quipus? They’re the scandalous fanzines that hikes traded before blogs were invented. Hikes? Why, high-IQ clever dicks, of course.

The book’s drawn some rave reviews too. Arthur C. Clarke Award winner GEORGE TURNER called it ”far and away Broderick’s best novel.”

Oh, and it just so happens MISSIONS UNKNOWN will have a Q&A tomorrow with the prolific Mr. Broderick. This guy’s fricken everywhere!

One-Two Punch from SA’s Damien Broderick

Mission Control — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:46:23 +0000

HOT OFF THE PRESSES: Two new books from award-winning sf author Damien Broderick

San Antonio resident and five-time Ditmar Award winner Damien Broderick recently celebrated two brand-new book releases. UNCLE BONES is a collection of four sf novellas, published by Fantastic Books. I’M DYING HERE, “a darkly comic crime caper that leaves no taboo, or cell phone, unviolated” was co-written with Rory Barnes, and just released from Point Blank.

MISSIONS UNKNOWN will feature Broderick in a “Made In SA” interview feature later this month. For now, here are a few words from Spider Robinson about Broderick’s place in the sf continuum: “For quite a few years now, readers have been asking me, Who is the new Phil Dick? Who’ll be the Zelazny of this generation? Where is the next Frederik Pohl, the replacement for Robert Sheckley, the Damon Knight of the new millennium? Who’s writing stuff like they did in the Golden Age–stuff that surprises and delights me with new, unexpected ways of looking at the universe, new ways of telling a story, new ways of thinking? It is nice to have at least one answer: they’re in Australia, and their name is Damien Broderick.”

Made In SA: Joe McKinney

Sanford Allen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:10:06 +0000

Joe McKinney

San Antonio-based writer JOE McKINNEY hit the literary scene in 2006 with DEAD CITY (Kensington, 2006), a zombie tale that moves with the speed of the super-fast reanimated corpses in the recent DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. His latest book, QUARANTINED (Lachesis Publishing, 2009), ventures into apocalyptic sf, and he’s also published about 30 short stories in anthologies and magazines. Joe works as an SAPD homicide detective when he’s not cranking out zombie prose.

Although you grew up in Houston and Boston, you went to college and grad school here in San Antonio. What made you decide to continue living, working and creating in San Antonio?

I came to San Antonio back in the summer of 1987, right before I started my freshman year at Trinity University, and I fell in love with the town right away. Houston was great while I was growing up, but it was already changing, growing denser and denser, and most of the marshlands I used to love exploring as a kid were filling up with housing developments and businesses. I had a sense that an important part of my childhood was being invaded, taken over, in a way, by people who would never get to see or appreciate it the way I had. Then I came to San Antonio. I had never seen so many hills, so many old neighborhoods, so much history. For me, it just clicked. This town’s got personality, character. One of my hobbies is Texas History, and frankly, I couldn’t be in a better place to indulge that passion. It was like I was a kid all over again, except this time I had a whole city to explore. That thrill has yet to fade.

You have a M.A. in English lit. Why did you decide to put it to use writing genre fiction instead of something folks view as more highbrow? Anyone give you flak for devoting your energy to such pulpy endeavors?

You know, I’ve never felt like I was slumming by doing genre work. I remember once I was at some writer’s conference in Austin, and what it amounted to was a lot of old ladies sitting around talking about writing memoirs and biographies of pioneer women and the histories of small Texas towns. Then they turned to me and asked me what I had written. I told them I write about zombies and plagues and seedy criminals and sometimes spaceships. I swear you should have seen the looks on their faces. It was like I had just handed them a dog turd. But I don’t take that stuff personally. What’s the point, right? I write what I’m passionate about, and that, by and large, is scary stuff. What’s the point in doing this mentally exhausting and sometimes demoralizing task of writing if you’re not enjoying it? So that’s my answer, basically. I write genre stuff because I care about it. That’s my thing. Perhaps one day I will write a deeply moving and profound exposition of the human condition, but I guarantee you it’ll still have a car chase in it.

"Dead City" by Joe McKinney

Your first book, DEAD CITY, is about San Antonio being overrun by a zombie horde. Your latest, QUARANTINED, is a sf murder mystery set in the Alamo City after the military walls it off to contain a killer virus. What’s the fixation with apocalyptic scenarios? And why do you keep devastating poor old San Antonio?

I really do love this city, I promise. I know I’ve leveled it to the ground on numerous occasions, but it’s nothing personal, I swear. Seriously, though, it’s like that old adage, “Write what you know.” I know a great deal about San Antonio’s civil engineering projects, its terrain, its susceptibility to particular types of disasters. I know how it responds to disasters in other nearby jurisdictions. A good deal of my police career has been spent training in disaster mitigation, and so I take advantage of that rather unique knowledge. And that’s why I tend to set stories in San Antonio.

But you asked about apocalyptic scenarios. Is there any way to explain why some people like this stuff and others don’t? My wife hates it, for example. Every time I sit down to watch one of those asteroid strikes the Earth documentaries or Life After People, she leaves the room. But I can’t get enough of it. I suppose, on some level, apocalyptic scenarios are an offshoot of my horror and science fiction interests. I suppose it’s also a little more general than that. Who hasn’t wondered what the end would be like, you know? But I think the apocalypse, and horror in general, gives me a great way to tell stories the way I want to tell them. You see, I think a story should not only attempt to reclaim a character’s past, but should carry his or her future forward from there as well. I point to Pat Frank’s ALAS, BABYLON, with its ending borrowed from PARADISE LOST, as a great example of this.

By day, you’re a SAPD Homicide detective. Has the department ever given you guff over your fiction-writing career or how you depict police officers and police procedure in your fiction?

A little bit. When I first starting spreading the word that I had a book coming out, I got approached by a supervisor who wanted to know if I was giving away police patrol or investigative strategies, or if my book would in some way compromise SAPD’s ability to respond to a disaster. I told him, “Well, my book is about a zombie apocalypse. So, if you’re planning on us having one of those sometime soon, then we may have an issue. Otherwise, I don’t think my book will be a problem.” That was me having fun with him, of course, but I understand where he was coming from. He was looking out for the officer on the street, the one out there wading into situations that could turn nasty or even fatal in no time flat. I get that. I’m a cop, too. My Department has very specific rules about writing for publication, and I’m not going to violate those rules. Most everyone in my Department has had a chance to realize that by now.

Being a homicide detective seems like it would be demanding, and I know you’re also a devoted husband and dad. How do you juggle all of that with a writing career?

Basically, it’s the same as any passion. If it’s important enough to you then you will find the time to do it. But unlike gardening, or rebuilding a ’72 Chevelle from the tires up, I was lucky enough to find a passion that is readily translatable into full time work. And really, it comes down to organization. I try to write every morning, and again at night. I set achievable goals of 1000 to 1500 words a day, and I keep at it until it’s done. Some nights I don’t get much sleep. But again, it’s important to me, so it does get done. Plus, I tend to write from outlines. In the same way that you plot out your directions before you take a road trip, I plot out the general shape of my story before I begin writing. Some people might think that compromises the creative flow of a story, but I find the reverse is true. The trick is to be willing to go off-map whenever the story or the characters demand it. I’m not afraid to do that, but I keep it under control, too.

As someone who writes zombie fiction, how do you keep the shambling undead hordes fresh and interesting when so many other writers are tapping the same vein? Are zombies in danger of overexposure in horror film and lit?

That is a challenge. Of course, the thing to remember about a zombie, or any monster for that matter, is that they are rarely just a zombie. Take Romero’s original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as an example. That film not only established the zombie as the shambling undead (remember, before that, most zombies were portrayed as Haitian voodoo zombies, which are different), but it also set the standard for making your zombie story about something other than the shambling undead coming to feed on the living. In NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, for instance, you have an older white guy who spends most of the movie fighting with a young, angry black man for control of a house, and all the while this tightening ring of paranoia and hostility is closing in upon them. Remember that NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was made in 1968. Now think what America was like in 1968, the race riots, the war, the dynamic shifts in our workforce and cultural values. Did anyone come up with a better metaphor for racial tension in America than Romero? It’s that kind of flexibility, I think, that keeps zombies as a viable horror trope. Really, the only restriction is on what you have to say, and not in the monster you choose to say it with.

You’ve dabbled in straight-ahead crime fiction as well. Any chance we’ll see you shift gears and focus more of your energy on that genre?

Very likely. I love crime fiction. And truth be told, a lot of today’s top crime writers have learned some valuable lessons from the horror genre. There is an exhumation scene in an abandoned graveyard in James Lee Burke’s SUNSET LIMITED, for example, that would make any horror writer proud. So I think it wouldn’t be a terribly big leap for me to make the transition. It worked for Martin Cruz Smith, for example. And I’ve already completed the first book in a new series I’m starting about an SAPD Internal Affairs sergeant who can’t seem to keep his fingers out of ongoing homicide cases, and I’m nearly done with a stand alone crime novel I’m doing for a start up publishing house called Gutter Books, which will be an updated and edgier version of the Hard Case Crime series. So, yeah, crime fiction I think will be a significant part of my future.

What one aspect of police procedure do writers consistently get wrong?

Most crime writers fail to appreciate the sheer volume of cases the police handle. Put another way, they don’t realize the amount of work that needs to be done versus the number of police officers assigned to do the job. Take that show COLD CASE. It’s a great show. They do a wonderful job of building dramatic stories and showing the dynamic between the cops in the unit and all that, but what they don’t show is that the detectives in that unit are actually working sixty other cases at the same time. You will rarely see a unit directing all its resources at one particular case, because there are usually three or four major cases working at any one given time. And that doesn’t say anything about the cases that carried over from the weekend before, or the weekend before that. It’s like standing in the middle of a river and being told you have to drink every drop of water that comes by. A real detective’s time is so fractured, so spread out over all the other cases he or she is working on, that it wouldn’t make for good TV. You would need a score card just to keep up. Even the more realistic cop shows, like THE WIRE, fail to capture the fractured nature of the job.

Name something you can only find in San Antonio and tell us why it’s special to you. (Could be a food, a location, an event, whatever.)

That would have to be our unique blend of cultures. We have cowboys. We have old world Mexico. We have poor, rich, German, Jalisco, English, Scottish, you name it. But they have all come together to form this wonderful pidgin culture that is puro San Antonio. That is the San Antonio I love.

Just the facts, man: McKinney’s faves…

Top 5 Books

Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, or The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, or Ghost Story by Peter Straub, depending on my mood
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein (Yeah, I know it’s not the best SF book ever written. Hell, it’s nowhere near the best SF book ever written. But it was the first book I ever read that made my eyes pop out of my head with wonder, so it has to go on this list.)

Top 5 Authors

Peter Straub
William Tenn, or CJ Cherryh, or James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon), depending on my mood
Cordwainer Smith
Stephen King
Manly Wade Wellman

Made In SA: Scott A. Cupp

John Picacio — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:35:39 +0000

Scott A. Cupp. Photo by Jayme Lynn Blaschke.

SCOTT A. CUPP is a John W. Campbell Award-nominated short story writer and World Fantasy Award-nominated editor who frequently deals with the West (mythic and otherwise) in his fiction. He’s published eighteen works of fiction and an assortment of non-fiction articles and reviews over the last thirty years. He co-edited the World Fantasy Award-nominated anthology CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE: TEXANS CELEBRATE ROBERT E. HOWARD (2006, FACT/Monkeybrain Books) which honored Howard in the 100th anniversary of his birth. He lives and works in San Antonio with his wife, Sandi, and a Bengal cat, Tygrr, who tolerates him.

Favorite authors, books, and comics include:

Philip K. Dick, Joe R. Lansdale, Fritz Leiber, JG Ballard, Stephen King, THE NIGHTRUNNERS by Joe R. Lansdale, UBIK by Philip K. Dick, THE LAST STARSHIP FROM EARTH by John Boyd, NOVA by Samuel R. Delany, THE HEREAFTER GANG by Neal Barrett, Jr., CREEPY and EERIE (different titles but pretty much the same in content and tone), WEIRD SCIENCE FANTASY (Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood and EC Comics), UNCLE SCROOGE (Carl Barks is a hero), HAWKMAN (the Murphy Anderson version), GREEN LANTERN or THE ATOM (Gil Kane is still an all-time favorite). Full interview behind the cut.

What first brought you to San Antonio, and what made you stay?

I’m kind of a yo-yo with San Antonio. I have lived here on at least four separate occasions, depending on how you count some college time. My dad was in the military and we moved here in 1967. I stayed until I got out of high school and then moved to Austin for most of the next six years (with one brief interlude back in SA while I tried to accumulate cash to continue school. I moved to Houston for a brief period and then came back to SA in 1977. I found work with Montgomery Ward later that year. I met my future wife here in 1979 and was then promptly transferred to Laredo. We got married while I was there and in 1980 we moved to Dallas where we stayed for 20 years. I got a chance to move back to San Antonio in 2000 as District Controller for Wards and stayed in that position until the company imploded and liquidated in 2001. Since then I have had three jobs which included travel but San Antonio has a big enough airport that everyone seemed happy. I like SA. Anthony is my rarely used middle name, so a city named after my personal saint is cool.

What are your earliest fond memories of genre, whether it be sf, fantasy, or horror?

I grew up watching things like THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, THE LONE RANGER, THE ROY ROGERS SHOW, and SKY KING on TV. I was already a good reader but there was a competition in the class to see who could read 100 books first. I tried hard but did not win. However, I did read SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE and a couple of other juvenile SF books. By the time I was 8 I had my own library card and was searching out TREASURE ISLAND and other adventure titles. I read comics from the beginning. I went to the movies frequently, seeing JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE TIME MACHINE, and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA when they were released. By junior high I was actively searching for genre titles. I read Verne, Wells, Heinlein. A friend introduced me to the works of Philip K. Dick via THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and I loved it. I read DRACULA early on. The scene were Lucy Westenra is killed in the tombs may be one of the scariest things I ever read.

Scott A. Cupp. Photo by Jayme Lynn Blaschke.

What made you want to write professionally in the first place, and why do you still do it?

Part of the writing thing was I always thought I would, even in high school. I would take vocabulary tests and try to make a sort of continuing story out of the words, featuring Captain Goodguy. When I got to college, I met my friend Henry Melton who also wanted to be a writer. For a year we went around together, worked on some short pieces, and listened to music via his reel-to-reel tapes. He has since gone on to produce some wonderful YA SF books and won a couple of awards. In 1973 I met up with the Science Fiction club at UT. Their sponsor on campus was the amazing Chad Oliver. Through the club I met Bill Wallace, Walton (Bud) Simons, Joe Pumilia, Lisa Tuttle, Lewis Shiner, Howard Waldrop, Jake (Buddy) Saunders, Bruce Sterling, Steve Utley, George Proctor, Tom Reamy and many other Texas writers. I saw them at the beginnings of their careers and I knew I wanted to do that. Then I met Joe Lansdale, Bill Crider and James Reasoner. Joe was doing horror, Bill was doing crime fiction and James was doing crime and western stuff. From them I got the final urge to go and do likewise and started producing some stuff.

I wrote my first sellable story “Night of the Blade” in one day in 1981 in Palestine, TX during a snow storm. It took me five years to sell. It was finally published in a semi-prozine called HARDBOILED edited by Wayne Dundee. Around this time I wrote the initial version of “One Fang”. It took 24 years to sell that one. But in 1988, things began to change. I sold a story to Lansdale for the western anthology THE NEW FRONTIER. While visiting Joe I was told of an anthology he was editing RAZORED SADDLES. He said “You really want to be in this thing. It is going to warp people’s minds!” He was right. I did want to be there but I didn’t have a good idea. He told me about an idea that Neal Barrett, Jr. had which he could never wrap up into a coherent piece. It was about the Texas Revolution and how, while fighting rebels, Santa Ana was also carrying out pieces of the Inquisition and was persecuting gay folks that he found. Neal had said “What if everyone at the Alamo had been gay?” I was blown away by the concept. So was Joe. He said he had noodled on it but had never quite gotten it to gel either. That night sleeping in Joe’s library I had a dream and woke with the voice in my head. By the time he and Karen got up I had half of “Thirteen Days of Glory” written. He read the fragment and immediately wanted the rest which I provided within the week. It was nearly (not really) called “They Died With Their Skirts On” or “Thirteen Days of Flaming Glory”. Nearly every review of the book mentioned the story in a positive way and it has been called “a minor classic” by Ed Bryant in LOCUS MAGAZINE. It was later translated into Spanish and caused some grief for Mauricio Jose Schwartz and Don Webb, the editors, of FRONTERA DE ESPEJOS ROTOS (THE BORDERLAND OF BROKEN MIRRORS).

Based on my two western/sf/horror pieces I got a nomination for the 1991 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the WorldCon in Chicago. I still write because I enjoy the finished product. Writing can be a big chore to me, particularly if I am not passionate enough about the story. That’s why I stop and start so often. When the time is right, the words come. And when they are good, I am very happy. Right now, I need maybe one more piece to be able to shop around a collection. With the book market in the toilet like it is now, it may take a while to sell. But, hey, I’m a writer, I’m used to rejection.

You’ve worn several hats in the publishing business. You’ve been an editor and a retailer, in addition to your career as an author. Do those experiences influence your writing life, and the choices you make in your writing? Or not?

The retailer and author pretty much go hand in hand. I love to read and tell people about things I like. I love to see someone discover a writer they have never heard of and have a whole new body of work to explore. Hand selling books is easy if you are passionate about what you are selling. When I write, I try to be memorable. I don’t have a passion to turn out 200 stories before I am gone. I will be happy for someone to read one of my stories and to have them say, “No one but Scott could have done that.”

Do you have a personal favorite amongst your body of work?

Perhaps the story I am most pleased with is “King of the Cows” which initially appeared in SOUTH FROM MIDNIGHT, an anthology given to members of the New Orleans World Fantasy. It was later adapted into a comic format for Mojo Press’ WEIRD BUSINESS, edited By Joe R. Lansdale and Rick Klaw with art by Matt Guest. I like it because it came to me in one quick storm while I was driving back from Conestoga in Tulsa. I had five hours to ruminate across central Oklahoma with little in the way of entertainment. I was stoked and ready to write (which is what conventions do to me) and from the combination of boredom, Sunday churches, and barb wire fences came the story of the bovine messiah. I am also high on “Johnny Cannabis” which had been percolating in my mind for a long time (over ten years) before it came out. And of course, “Thirteen Days of Glory” is hard not to love.

What are one or two of your most gratifying moments as a professional in the sf/f/h biz?

Finally finding a home for “One Fang” (in CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE) after 24 years and then having it make the Recommended Reading for both YEAR’S BEST SF AND YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR. And getting notified of the nomination for CROSS PLAINS UNIVERSE for Best Anthology at the World Fantasy Convention. We did not have a prayer of winning–the competition was too strong, but it still made me feel great. I was on Cloud 9 the whole weekend.

What’s your most recent published work, and where can we find it?

My most recent piece is my short story “Johnny Cannabis and Tony, the Purple Paisley (Sometimes) Colored White Lab Rat” which appeared online at Revolution SF.com. The story is the result of being an old fart who lived in Austin in the early 70’s, when much of the early portions of this story take place. I was a quiet, dull type, not the doper or stoner, though I knew folks who fell into those categories. For years I had wanted to do the ultimate doper fantasy (kind of like combining DESTINY’S CHICKENS and DIVINE RIGHT’S TRIP). I didn’t do that but I wrote what I think is a fine, fun story. I’ve had talking cattle twice in stories as well as the talking rat. And I had a giant horny toad. Nothing same and normal in my world. Or in Austin in those days. Nowadays, too.

What are you currently working on?

I am working on two pieces with Mark Finn (“Hell in a Boxcar” and “Jumbo, All American gorilla and Nazi Smasher”). Both stories are killers but they are difficult and I am slow when I am fast and right now I am in the really slow mode. I am also working on an alternate universe story involving the Texas navy, zeppelins and James Fennimore Cooper called “Monikin of the Gasbags”. This is probably what I will finish first for ArmadilloCon.

What’s your favorite San Antonio place?

There are several places which I have fond spots for. The Alamo is the setting of “Thirteen Days” and I love the whole metaphor revolving around it. I once used the Alamo as a reference to a Patti Smith concert at Randy’s Rodeo (Which had also hosted the Sex Pistols) as holding a small group of people who knew their cause was doomed but who hung on anyway. Also, the San Antonio Zoo. My first job was there in 1970, making cotton candy and selling refreshments. I made $1.45 an hour. It was tough work and, to this day, I still cannot eat cotton candy. The smell will make me sick. Also, I loved the old Wards stores. It still hurts to drive by Windsor Park or Wonderland and see those building being used for other purposes. I spent 23 years, 9 months, and 4 days working for Wards and would probably still be there today if things had not changed. 2001: A job odyssey. What a year. And, of course, there’s Atomic Comics where I get my weekly fix of books and conversation with the owner, John Minton. The conversations are as much fun as anything I do each week.

Favorite food that can be found nowhere else but SA?

I have maintained for years that you cannot get great Mexican food north of San Antonio. I love going to Panchito’s on McCullough (the Todo De Mexico platter is to die for–or because of) as well as their Olmos tacos. Warning: Do not be deceived by Panchitos at the Quarry. Not the same place, the food isn’t as good, though they have nice fideo. And Taco Taco on Hildebrand. My wife is really fond of Cachito de Mexico because their hot salsa is hot enough for her. It melts my spoon so I don’t go quite that far. I may love Mexican food but I am still a gringo. But, I can eat Mexican food many, many days in a row. And a Whataburger. Anytime. And the pastries at the Guenther House. To die for.