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Lightning News Flashes: Stephen King; Joe Hill; New SF/F Writing Contest

A flash of lightning strikes across a night sky.
Credit: Pixabay.com

This has been the perfect evening for Lightning News Flashes—earlier there was a lightning storm outside! So these news flashes should carry a lot of charge! Lightning News Flashes are news briefs of events in the world of science fiction and fantasy. Today we have Lightning News Flashes of Stephen King's New England mansion, his son Joe Hill's new horror comics imprint and a new British science fiction and fantasy writing award. But first some news about my book, “The Boo Brothers”.


‘Boo Brothers’ Paperback Update

I’ve been working on the paperback version of my book of two short horror tales, "The Boo Brothers”, which includes the title story, and been having a hell of a time with the formatting. This has mostly been due to the Crimson font that I was using for the body text. I think there was a bug in the files for that font which I had downloaded from Squirrel Font, a website that offers free fonts. Overall, I've had good experience with Squirrel Fonts’ products, but the files for this set of type seems to have glitches. Anytime I applied the fonts to my document for the paperback they kept changing from regular Crimson to italicised Crimson. So I said screw the Crimson and used Times New Roman instead, which is already in the Word software that I use. I'll soon find out if the problem actually was the Crimson files. I only started using the Times New Roman for the manuscript yesterday.

King Mansion to Possibly House an Archive 

Horror author Stephen King's house in Bangor, Maine.
The house of Stephen and Tabitha King in Bangor, Maine
Credit: Pixabay.com

Stephen King and his wife Tabitha plan to convert their mansion in Bangor, Maine into a storage for their huge archive collection, says the Bangor Dailey News So they have requested a zone change from the City of Bangor. However, the appearance of this beautiful red Victorian mansion's exterior will remain the same. The Kings’ archive consists of numerous manuscripts, articles, photographs, notes and electronic recordings from Mr. King's writing career of 50 years. The house will also be used as a writers' retreat and will include offices for the non-profit charity, the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. Until last year, says the Bangor Dailey, the Kings' archive was held in the library at the University of Maine where Mr. King graduated with his English degree in 1970.

Joe Hill’s New Horror Comics Imprint  

Joe Hill, bestselling author of NOS4A2 and son of Stephen and Tabitha King, has organised a new DC horror comic imprint, Hill House Comics. DC released Thursday an online sampler of the first three titles of the imprint, one of which Hill wrote the story to, Basketful of Heads. The sampler also includes previews of two horror titles that the imprint will release in early 2020. Hill is also writing the story for one of these two, Plunge. Each issue of the Hill House comics will include a serialised horror comic strip titled Sea Dogs, also written by Hill.

Hill House Comics, a perfect commemorative play on the title to Shirley Jackson’s gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House, will make its launch date with Basketful of Heads on 30 October 2019, just in time for Halloween! Plunge is scheduled for release in February. For more release dates of the other titles check out DC Comics’ official website and, while you’re there, also check out the sampler!

New British Sci Fi and Fantasy Award to Promote Writers of Colour

British science fiction and fantasy imprint Gallancz, along with author Ben Aaronovitch (the bestselling Rivers of London series of novels) and the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organisation are getting together to start a new writing award catered to  minorities of colour. The award will be called the Gallancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award. This project is a response to the concern with statistics that show that less than 1% of speculative fiction in the U.K. is written by people of colour. The award will launch on 1 October and give Black, Asian and ethnic minority writers the opportunity to submit samples of their work for a chance to win mentoring and monetary prizes.


Be here Wednesday for another Insecure Writers' Support Group post! Do you ever have problems with your word processor's font? What would you do to get a chance to tour the King's Bangor mansion? Do you read horror comics, especially ones written by bestselling horror authors such as Joe Hill? Do you think science fiction and fantasy writers of colour are more acknowledged than they were10 years ago?

Until next time . . .
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Comments

  1. Alex J. CavanaughSeptember 30, 2019 at 5:56 AM

    Sorry the font gave you issues. I'm always so careful if I need to download a new font because you never know what could happen.
    I suspect the King's house will become quite popular.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Steven Arellano Rose Jr.September 30, 2019 at 7:23 AM

      Yeah, I'm just now fin ding that out about fonts that you download from outside. Even the recommended ones like Squirrel Font. The Kings' house will become popular among writers at least, especially horror and dark fiction writers, especially when they hold retreats there. It will be interesting to see what happens when that occurs.

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