David Murphy

                                

                                

May 13: The short story collection LOST NOTES is at last available in electronic format. It can be downloaded as a PDF for just €6.49 at the Aeon Press location www.albedo1.com/aeonpress.html  (the novella BIRD OF PREY is also available in PDF format for a bargain €4.00 from the same site). More information on either book can be found behind the ‘Lost Notes’ and ‘Bird of Prey’ tabs on the toolbar at the top of this page.

 

April 26: Two items this time: the first a bucket of praise, the second a raving rant. First, the nice bit: watched a double-bill of the first two episodes of The Bridge on BBC Four last Saturday night – just the thing to plug the gap now that Homeland has ended. The Bridge is a new series, a Danish-Swedish co-production based on the discovery of a body placed exactly on the Swedish-Danish border. Where’s that? I hear you ask. To find out, click on the ‘Film & TV’ Reviews tab above … now for that rant:

Yet another paper turd plopped into my porch yesterday, my letterbox being the maildrop for books sent to Albedo One for review. Long ago, in ancient BSJ times (Before Steve Jobs), writers usually had to acquire a typewriter or a pen and reams of paper to produce a manuscript which then went through the acceptance/rejection process of a proper publisher. Now with the advent of word processing and Print-On-Demand publishing, anyone can cobble together a heap of junk and self-publish it. There’s nothing wrong with the noble tradition of self-publishing. Neil Jordan and Roddy Doyle did it, to mention a couple of local examples of an acceptable practice that is being mangled now by POD technology. This latest tome to arrive for Albedo’s perusal? A typo on the title page sets the tone. A quick flick through the text reveals that two point-sizes have been used: miniscule and downright invisible. There’s no publisher’s name or logo on the spine. Neither is there an imprint on the lead-in pages. If only this had been an uncorrected proof or galley copy sent out for review purposes. It wasn’t. To cap it all, the writer is threatening the world with Volume 2.

The problem this creates for small presses like ourselves at Aeon, or the sadly defunct Silver Lake or equally respected imprints like Tartarus or Golden Gryphon, is that we are being undermined by the relentless POD invasion that threatens to turn into a flood that will drown out the small press tradition because potential readers will glance at a book’s imprint, let it be Aeon or whatever, and automatically rubbish it because they will deem it to be yet another vanity-published piece of POD crap.

On a different note entirely, the Albedo Spring Sale of back issues (no charge for postage!) might still be open. Check it out at http://www.albedo1.com

 

March 21: Below is a shot of poet and author John W Sexton with a well known writer at the launch of the Seven Towers anthology CENSUS 3 in the Irish Writers’ Centre in February (photo: Rafael Joacim).

I’ll be reading from the new novella BIRD OF PREY at the  upcoming Last Wednesday event in the Twisted Pepper, Middle Abbey Street, on Wednesday next, March 28. Copies of the book will most definitely be available.

 

February 23: The cat that has adopted us since Pepé died is looking forward to the first royalty statement from Damnation Books, due at the end of this month. It should tell a lot about how BIRD OF PREY is doing Stateside. The amount of food the cat will get will be dependent on US sales. No wonder she’s eyeing me anxiously right now – the poor thing has turned peroxide with the hunger. The book is available, and selling well, in Dublin’s Forbidden Planet shop on the quay by the Ha’penny Bridge and copies of it are spreading through the libraries like a virus.

A pleasant evening was had by all at the Irish Writers’ Centre last night for the launch of CENSUS 3 – the latest anthology from the dynamic Seven Towers – containing “Collateral Damage” a mainstream story about a son who shoots his father during the dark days of the Northern Ireland conflict. Another story of mine, “Night of Our Red Eye”, is a work that defies genre so should sit well in the pages of Albedo One #42, a magazine that itself defies genre. Being a long-time editor I’m delighted to be back in Albedo for the first time since 2005. For news of all things to do with the magazine (we’re planning a Spring Sale of back issues to be launched very soon), Aeon Press and the Aeon Award for short stories, visit http://www.albedo1.com

I’ve been checking the little black book lately and was struck by the amount of short story acceptances I’ve had that never saw the light of day because, for a variety of reasons, the magazines that accepted the stories disappeared off the radar before getting around to publishing them. Here’s the full list: Auguries, Maelstrom, Odyssey, Highcliff, Dark Eyes, Kimota, Roadworks, Doorways, Membra Disjecta. Some of these closed for reasons that are unclear (Roadworks), others due to illness on the part of editors or pressures of time or financial difficulties. Most were paying markets and at least one of the above paid a pro-rate. Sadly, such closures are more frequent now with the economic climate and the rise of digital publishing. Can anyone out there match that list?

 

January 10 2012: The novella BIRD OF PREY was published in the US by Damnation Books on December 1, 2011. A contemporary fantasy based on the Russian myth of the Firebird, it combines a hint of darkness, the supernatural, and the odd touch of humour. It’s available in all e-book formats (for Kindle, Nook, Sony, etc) as well as paperback either directly from the Damnation Books website www.damnationbooks.com or from the usual online shops (Abe, Amazon, iTunes, etc). The e-book is priced at $4.50 from Damnation. That’s about a dollar less than the Amazon price. The paperback is $12.89 and is available through Barnes & Noble and all the other online outlets. Signed copies are available from this site for 12 euros, 9 UK pounds or 16 US dollars – including post and packing. For more info on the book click on the new ‘Bird of Prey’ tab on the menu bar.

For signed copies via Paypal email: dmbc(at)gofree(dot)indigo(dot)ie – or send a cheque to the Albedo address (2, Post Road, Lusk, Co Dublin, Ireland). All of 2011′s rolling news/blog items are archived now on a new page – click on the ‘Blog 2011′ tab on the menu bar above to access last year’s items.