On-sale date January 12, 2012!

It’s a huge honor to be included.

Thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussel and Susie Bright for noticing the piece and selecting it!

Writing Rules vs. Rules of Thumb

This week we’re talking about writing advice I hate. I hate a lot of it, if not most of it. I think writing advice is fine…in its place. But my view is that writing advice should be considered a “rule of thumb,” not a rule. When writing advice starts to look like “rules,” it too often shows the cognitive, social and creative shortcomings and prejudices of the person who came up with it.

Mind you, please don’t think I’m talking about the rules of grammar, composition, POV, etc, which I think if possible you should know like the back of your hand, and respect; however, you should also break them willy-nilly if that serves the Work. (See what I did there, with the capital “W”? That’s an example of messing with The Rules to make a point. There! I did it again!! Wasn’t that awesome? Doing it just because you’re pretentious is also allowed, but it will annoy the hell out of everyone around you, as I surely just did. But that’s their problem, right?)

Beyond those very limited rules of grammar and composition, I think advice that makes the jump from rules-of-thumb to rules-to-live-by is anathema to creativity. Every work of fiction is different, and it should all exist on its own terms.

Read the Rest of this post at Night-Bazaar.com.

Borderlands Books

The location is gorgeous, gorgeously-appointed, luxurious, low-key, and most importantly packed with great books. The staff is gracious, chill and knowledgeable about the fields of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and often about associated genres like noir.

And my novel The Panama Laugh is on the Borderlands Books trade paper best-sellers list for September, according to the Borderlands Books newsletter and Hellnotes.com.

It’s wedged between William Gibson’s Zero History and Max Brooks’s World War Z…two of my favorite writers.

In fact, when I was writing the scene in the middle of Part II of The Panama Laugh with the busted shipping containers, I had some of World War Z‘s amazing subtexts about of globalization in mind.

I’m reading at Borderlands on October 15 as part of Litquake’s Litcrawl, with Ray Garton, Richard Kadrey and Naamen Tilahuh, by the way. Litcrawl readings are some of the funnest I’ve ever been to. So come see us, hear some zombie fiction and argue with me over whether “funnest” is a word.

In it, she says, in part, “The Panama Laugh by Thomas S. Roche grabs you by the throat and punches you in the face from beginning to end, and I mean that in a good way.”

And did I mention she said this? “There is a lot to like here. The voice is perfect, as are the characters. The pacing doesn’t give you much breathing room, which I liked.” Read more here, and THANKS!

I like getting praised — who doesn’t? But if someone hates a piece of fiction I wrote, I feel like I should thank them for that, too…at least they took the time to read it, which is more than I can say for some people who hate on my nonfiction articles.

Regardless, thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to read The Panama Laugh, and thanks to Ms. Swails for the great review. I’m sort of extra-stoked because Swails’ bio says she is a clinical laboratory scientist by profession, which must mean that however egregiously wrong the science is in The Panama Laugh, there’s at least one scientist my fake-science wasn’t boneheaded enough to piss off!

I put a fair amount of work into figuring the logistics, but science speculation is not one of my strong points. Though I’ve read and loved science fiction my whole life, including quite a bit of hard science fiction, I’ve always felt like more of a crime and horror writer. I take forays into being a fantasist, but bona-fide SF has always been a stretch for me

I was awful proud of myself that The Panama Laugh technically crossed that line.

And I’m awful proud that people seem to be enjoying it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and review the book!

The truth is, it’s a charming mid-sized town just a bit smaller than Oakland and a nice change of pace. The rivers are gorgeous, you’re spitting distance from the Sierras, and there’s a cozy not-too-crowded downtown with plenty of old buildings, evocative scenery, funky little restaurants and an astonishing number of trees.

When my good friend sex educator Violet Blue came up from San Francisco to visit me in Sac earlier this year, she landed at the breathtaking Citizen Hotel, whose marketing folks turn out to be huge fans of her books. The Citizen is one of the most gorgeous hotels I’ve ever laid eyes on, and as a former professional meeting planner, I’ve seen hotels all over the country. It’s a seriously evocative noir-ish masterpiece where you’ll expect to see guys with fedoras pulled down low carrying violin cases through the lobby. It’s right upstairs from Grange, a serious high-end restaurant that, if you can spare the lettuce, represents one of the few expensive eateries I’ve ever been to that I feel actually warrants the expenditure. the best of Sacramento locovore culture in a region where the local produce is fresh as hell because the surrounding country grows vast amounts of what all y’all eat…hence our little burg’s crimson-red nickname, The Big Tomato.

What’s more, The Citizen is in my kind of neighborhood — less than a block from the Main Library. Hellz yeah!!

Now the folks at the Citizen have set up the “Roses are Red, Violet Blue” romantic-getaway package for couples (singles, triads…you get the pic) interested in adding a little salacious romance to their weekend away. It celebrates the fact that Violet finished her most recent book, Sweet Confessions, while staying there. From a PRWeb press release:

This Fall, Joie de Vivre’s Citizen Hotel in Sacramento, debuts its fabulously naughty “Roses are Red, Violet Blue” package. The package was inspired by acclaimed sex author and expert Violet Blue, who finished her most recent book while staying at the hotel. Guests who book the package will stay in the very same room where she found inspiration in the hopes that they can channel their inner erotic adventurer. The perfect retreat with a lover—or a weekend away with someone you might like to get to know better (in more ways than one)—guests will be tantalized with an array of erotic and exotic treats, including a silk blindfold, four ties, a bottle of tequila to get the party started, a list of Violet Blue’s recommended websites (to teach them everything they need to know), and much more.

The Roses are Red, Violet Blue package includes:

• One-night stay in the same deluxe guestroom which Violet Blue stayed
• Valet parking
• Signed copy of Sweet Confessions
• Access to Joie Connect with list of websites recommended by Violet Blue
• Naughty box
• Silk blindfold
• Four ties
• A bottle of Joie de Vivre Herradura Tequila served with citrus & salts

For more information on The Citizen Hotel, please visit http://www.citizenhotel.com or call (916) 447-2700.

The aforementioned Sweet Confessions, incidentally, is only one of the books Violet worked on this year — add to her list Best Women’s Erotica 2012 (release date December 13, 2011) and One Night Only (release date March, 2012). To tell you the truth, Violet does so damn many of them I can’t always keep track of what she’s working on at any given moment! I believe One Night Only will make twenty-four, if I’m counting correctly…amazing!

The great science fiction writer Roger Zelazny was an amazing reader. A few years ago, with some effort, I tracked down an audio cassette of him doing a wonderful reading of his novel The Courts of Chaos, the last of the first Amber series and about the only cassette in that series I could get my hands on at the time.

My most vivid memories of him reading, however, come more from Dark Carnival in the late 1980s, where a photo of me with him was taken, and I seem to recall that at my family members’ insistence (several are Zelazny fans, and were in attendance) I gave him a copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine with my first professionally published fantasy story, “The Beast With Blood-Red Eyes,” which was rather intentionally Zelaznyesque. (Incidentally, it was a gift I would not have been given had I not been pushed into it, something I considered sort of pompous and self-aggrandizing, in the presence of a dude like the Zman. But my family has always been far more supportive of me than I am of myself.)

I’m confident he made much more of an impression on me than I did on him. I also saw him at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans in 1994, alongside some friends of his who were distant acquaintances of mine (now, sadly, I forget who). He was very graci0us when told that I admired his work and he was a huge influence on my writing. He smiled and shook my hand. He died of colorectal cancer about seven or eight months later. His was the one hand in science fiction I really wanted to shake.

But it was his voice, and his fiercely otherworldly presence, that I remember most vividly. Many a grizzled, expressive, hard-assed, brilliant and slightly terrifying character I’ve written has been based on my having heard Zelazny speak in person at those two events and several others in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He’s a writer I miss almost every day.

In the above hour-long clip, he reads two stories at the 4th Street Fantasy Convention in 1986. The clip comes to me via Facebook from his son Trent Zelazny, who I’m told is also a kick-ass writer and a big fan of hard-boiled noir fiction, with (last I counted) two well-received books to his credit.

You can  Find out more about Litquake and LitCrawl here, and about events at Borderlands Books here.

Both events event are free, so come by and see us, bitte schön? Jawohldankeaufwiedersehen.

Litquake’s LitCrawl at Borderlands Books

With Ray Garton, Richard Kadrey, Thomas Roche and Naamen Tilahun

Saturday, October 15th at 7:15 pm

Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street (between 19th and 20th), San Francisco

We are delighted to once again take part in one of the most exciting literary events in San Francisco – the LitCrawl! This is a three-hour pub-crawl-style literary event with dozens of venues and hundreds of authors, all taking place right here in the Mission District. Between the bookstore and the cafe, we’ve got 8 fantastic authors in a mere two hours. This is always a super-crowded and immensely entertaining event.

…Also, the cafe next door has a second reading at 8:30, with some more sf-fantasy heavy hitters:

LitCrawl Redux at Borderlands Cafe

With Steven R. Boyett, Mira Grant, Kirsten Imani Kasai and Tim Pratt

Saturday, October 15th at 8:30 pm

Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia Street (between 19th and 20th), San Francisco

I wrote “St. John of the Throwdown” specifically for Violet to read at a promotional event for The Panama Laugh this month. She was the very first reader of the novel and gave me some incredibly helpful feedback that basically helped me put the whole latter half of the book together. I based the viewpoint character on what I know of her as a teen, drawing on some of her experiences being young and homeless on the streets of San Francisco.

After generously (and brilliantly) reading “St. John” at Z-Day 2011, Violet even more generously agreed to read and release it for free on Open Source Sex. Check it out on Violet’s Libsyn feed here, go to the direct download link here, or if you use iTunes, access open source sex here. Here’s what Violet says about it, incidentally:

Open Source Sex 88: (Non-sex) The Panama Laugh – St. John of the Throwdown
Sep 14, 2011

Tonight’s podcast is a non-sex short story about zombies – and me. Author of the (awesome) new zombie novel The Panama Laugh wrote a short story based on his novel’s universe where a young female street punk in San Francisco goes up against a pack of zombie frat boys. The author Thomas Roche based the story on my very real life as a homeless teen here in SF. If you like action, horror and zombies (and you like me), you’ll love it. If you don’t like those things, tune in for the next podcast which I promise will be delightfully naughty and fun.

http://violetblue.libsyn.com/open-source-sex-88-non-sex-the-panama-laugh-st-john-of-the-throwdown

“Deepwater Miracle” is Set in the world of my novel The Panama Laugh and features two teen refugees trying to reach Texas from Costa Rica, and encountering plenty of hellfire in their path. It features references to the 2010 Gulf oil spill, including a chocolate mousse deluge of Biblical proportions, as well as anti-immigrant hysteria and “patriotic” pirates in the form of right-wing Texan secessionist Minutemen-style groups.

 

Z: Zombie Stories, edited by J.M. Lassen

When the zombie apocalypse comes, it’s not just those crusty old folks who will struggle against the undead, it’s also the young people. What happens when you come of age during the zombie apocalypse? Z: Zombie Stories has the answer to that question.

Z: Zombie Stories gathers together some of the hottest zombie fiction of the last two decades, from authors including Kelly Link, Jonathan Maberry, and Catherynne M. Valente. These stories focus on those who will inherit a world overrun with the living dead: a young man who takes up the family business of dealing with the undead, a girl struggling with her abusive father…who has become a zombie, a poet who digs up the wrong grave, and a Viking maiden imprisoned with the living dead…

Featuring stories by Kelly Link, Jonathan Maberry, Thomas S. Roche, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Catherynne M. Valente, Scott Edelman, Darrell Schweitzer, Christine Morgan, David Barr Hirtley, and Scott Nicholson.

BUY Z: ZOMBIE STORIES HERE!