IGMS Issue 50 (21 page)

Needless to say, the whole thing is maddening for every author who writes in that sub-genre and does not, in fact, write bad vampire porn. And being labeled with the
wrong
unfairly maligned sub-genre is even more frustrating, such as Paranormal Romance. For any book to qualify as a romance, the story has to center around the relationship and needs to end with a Happily Ever After (or at least a Happy For Now.) Whether or not the book has sex in it has nothing to do with it. I flat out love reading romance (though I tend to gravitate toward Regencies since they're SO different from what I write.) But I wince when my books are lumped in with Paranormal Romance because they're
not romances
. It's flat out false advertising and bound to frustrate and annoy readers who want to read a romance.

(However, regarding the RT awards, those are given out to a variety of genres besides romance.)

Schoen:
We're coming to the end of the interview, and so in the spirit of endings I need to ask how long you see Angel Crawford and Kara Gillian running for? Do you have an endpoint in mind, and would you deliberately bring either series to a close, or would you rather keep writing one or both of them as long as the readers are clamoring for more? And because even the end of both of these series would hopefully not be the end of your writing, where do you see yourself going next? What would you like to explore, what's the Diana Rowland long range plan?

Rowland:
The Kara Gillian series will end at nine books, but there are a zillion other stories that are clamoring to be told in that world, so I'm sure there will be more of some kind at some point. The White Trash Zombie series is currently contracted through book six, and while I do want to write more Angel Crawford, I don't want to wring her out until she's dry and boring. I'll most likely take a small break from both worlds and work on other projects that have been waiting in the wings (such as
The Good Man
). Right now, I'm not tying myself down to anything. Mostly, I want to write the stuff I want to write and have fun with it (and hopefully make money off of it, too.) After all, I think that's all any writer wants.

Welcome to the 50th issue of IGMS, which will be my last as editor. It's been a privilege and a pleasure working with so many great people--the writers, the artists, the assistant editors and columnists and everyone--but the time has come to pass the reins to someone else.

Having said that, I'm especially pleased to announce that the specific 'someone else,' the new editor of
Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show
(personally selected by Orson Scott Card himself), is our own Scott Roberts, who has served IGMS as assistant editor for more years that I can count. He is a graduate of Uncle Orson's Literary Boot Camp and frequent contributor of great stories to IGMS (in fact, he had a story in issue #1, just like yours truly). Scott also guest-edited issue #41 back when I took a short hiatus to work on some writing projects.

So this is it, my last hurrah. Issue 50. Issue
fini
for Edmund. I think this is a good one to go out with.

Our cover story, by Jason Sanford, is "May Our Voices Sing Like Blood from Open Wounds:"

The vampire squats beside me, puzzled by my behavior.

"Who made you?" I ask.

"My master. Or more accurately, one of my master's predecessors. Who made you?"

I point at what remains of Siface's voice. I remember Siface giving me the opium and taking me in a daze to the barber. I remember the blazing star of the red-hot tongs before they cut my flesh.

Next up is James Maxey's "Cherry Red Rocketship:"

Remy was dead. Space Gorilla Max did not tolerate failure. The big ape barely tolerated success. The best Remy could hope for was that Space Gorilla Max would kill him by breaking his neck in one smooth, crisp snap, the way he had with Billy Big Lips.

Following that is "Jupiter or Bust" by Brad R. Torgersen:

Debra paused momentarily, closing her eyes and swallowing hard.

It had been stupid, to spend so much money to come all the way across the country for the sake of a dream. In the end, nobody had cared what her credentials were. Stanford or no Stanford. If the fish weren't biting, the fish weren't biting. Almost nobody seemed interested in space exploration anymore, except for the few, lone souls trying to get additional space probes pushed through the European Space Agency, across the Atlantic. And NASA? Gone. Slashed to nothingness by yet another administration more interested in buying votes than fulfilling dreams.

And wrapping up the regularly illustrated stories is our soon-to-be editor-in-chief, Scott Roberts, with the novelette, "Middle Child Syndrome:"

The scrap was crowded with writing. Symbols and weird little geometric designs covered both sides. Tara had taught Jack's Cub Scout den basic cryptography last year. Simple things like substitution cyphers. The writing on the paper wasn't anything like that. It looked more like Arabic or Hebrew... or maybe just really bad cursive. The longer she stared the more... dense the symbols seemed to become, as if every dip and peak held more than just a pen-stroke. The ink seemed to itch and crawl, somehow, drawing her vision down into them, to lose her sight in examination, and tangle her mind in...

Our audio, performed by Stuart Jaffe, is "The Silver of Our Glory, The Orange of Our Rage," by Jared Oliver Adams:

Hygeria, my left-mate, tapped her foreclaw against my neck. "No more will our race scrabble in the dirt," Hygeria said with the taps, gesturing at the dirigible with her mandibles.

I passed the message to Ryke, my right-mate, as was expected of me, but I kept my own thoughts unmoving lest I be suspected.

The dirigible lifted into the sky amidst a great clacking of foreclaws.

Lawrence Schoen brings us words from Diana Rowland, in the form of his as-always excellent interview, and this issue's reprint of Diana's "Schroedinger's Hummingbird."

And that's the end of that. I hope you enjoy this issue, and have found something enjoyable in each of the previous 49. I know I most surely did, and I'm grateful for every minute of it.

Scott, I am officially handing over the IGMS reins to you in 3... 2... 1...

Go!