Cover to Cover #447: Justin Gustainis

News: The guys talk about the argument going on where publishers are pushing to “limit” on the number of times an ebook can be borrowed from a library and read, as well as restricting the regional coverage as to where a person can borrow an ebook from.

Talk also covers Random House’s recent agreement to the agency model, and the attraction of ease of use as compared to the extra work involved with trying to obtain a product under the table.

Interview: This week, Justin Gustainis joins Mike and Mike to discuss his new projects, including the recently released Those Who Fight Monsters, an occult detectives anthology he edited for EDGE SF. Justin talks about why he put together this anthology, who he had contacted to contribute, what he expected and what he didn’t expect during the creation of this book.

He also talks about the long-delayed third book in his Quincey Morris series, Sympathy for the Devil, and working with a publisher that was in the process of being sold, and what he might have to do with a book under contract to a house that might no longer exist.

Fortunately, the Solaris sale proceeded and the book will be released in July, along with Hard Spell, which is the first book in a new series from Angry Robot Books.

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Michael R. Mennenga: And welcome back to more Dragon Page Cover to Cover! I’m Michael R. Mennenga

Michael Stackpole: and I am Michael Stackpole

MRM: Living the High Life in Las Vegas.

MS: Yes, calling from here from our lavish Las Vegas studio.

MRM: And joining us on the phone, we have Justin Gustainis. He has edited a new collection, just out from Edge Scifi, Those Who Fight Monsters is the name of the book, containing occult detective stories. Sounds fascinating! Welcome to the show, Justin.

Justin Gustainis: Hi, how are you doing?

MRM: Not too bad. Well, we’ve had you on the show a few times, it’s nice to have you back. Thanks for joining us again to talk about this new thing that you’re doing. So I’ll throw it to you. Tell us what you’ve done!

JG: Okay, well this anthology, which as you said is called Those Who Fight Monsters, is based on an idea that I had, there are a lot of people who are writing series novels in urban fantasy. And I had the idea that if I asked some of those people to write short stories featuring the character that they have in their series novels that a lot of people want to buy the book, because if you’re a fan of even one author badly enough you’ll buy a book with a story just to get that author’s story, it seems to me. And so the idea was that with all of these people with all big fan bases — and I was careful to choose people with big fan bases — that the book would be popular because it would attract people who were fans of each of the different authors.

And I was really pleased that a lot of people who are pretty big name writers said, “Yes” instead of saying, “Who the heck are you?” which is what I expected in a few cases [laughter]

But everybody was very nice, except for, well, we don’t have to talk about her.

[laughter]

MRM: Dishing the dirt already…

JG: One name writer, I never got to talk to. One of her people told me that she doesn’t do this kind of thing.

MRM: Ooooh.

MS: Ahhhh.

JG: But even the other people who had to turn me down were very nice about it and and I got, as you can see from from looking at the book a lot of people who are pretty well known in urban fantasy circles.

MS: Wellwhy don’t you give give us a list of just some of the people you’ve got in there since this is audio so… paint that picture.

JG: Okay well, Kate Connor from the Julie Kenner series. She’s the demon hunting soccer mom. John Taylor, the private eye from the Nightside by Simon R. Green. Lilith Saintcrow’s demon killer, Jill Kismet is in there. Marla Mason, who was in a series of novels by T. A. Pratt, has a story in there. Tanya Huff has been writing a series the last few years called Smoke and Shadows. It’s about a guy who’s a production assistant on a TV show, who’s also a wizard. Well, she contributed a story about him, and Jackie Kessler wrote one about her succubus character Jezebel, which has been very popular.

MS:Excellent. Wow, that’s a good, good little lineup right there.

JG: Yeah. And I even have a story in there. We got in because I’m tight with the editor.

MRM: Very nice, very nice. So putting a compilation like this together, obviously it’s time consuming, but it had to been a lot of fun.

JG: It was when it wasn’t aggravating. One of the things I was most worried about, that did not really happen was… I mean, I had to edit these stories. I didn’t just take everything that came in and in automatically say, “OK, that’s fine.” I edited each of the stories. And I learned how to do that at the Odyssey Writing Workshop.

And in some cases, the editing involved like three or four words. And in some other instances, it involved rather more. And I was waiting for somebody, because all of these people have got four, five, six books in print to tell me “who the heck are you?” You know, when I said, “well, I think we should get rid of this paragraph or maybe move this other thing further down here. I think it would work well…”

I kept waiting for somebody to get all, you know, Big Deal Urban Fantasy Author on me, but nobody did. Not one person said, “okay, I’m not going to take editing from you because I’ve got more books and print than you do, pal.”

Everybody was very very professional, very constructive. Of course, I tried to be very constructive myself. I tried to avoid writing stuff like “this really sucks” in the margins. That probably wouldn’t help things.

MS: [laughter] No, no, that can that can set writers off.

JG: They taught us not to do that at Odyssey.

MRM: Yeah, the diplomatic way of doing things there you go. That’s good. Well, it sounds like a fantastic a little compilation and I can’t wait to take a closer look at it. But you’ve got a ton of other things going on, and before we run out of time, I want to give you a chance to talk about it. You do have Sympathy for the Devil, which is coming out and I want you to talk about that, because that’s very cool.

JG: At long last.

MRM: Yes, very long last. That’s awesome. You’re getting into George R. R. Martin territory here for us now.

JG: Yeah, well, it’s because my publisher got sold. Solaris Books was sold by its parent company and it was in limbo for quite a while. And then even when it got sold, I had to renegotiate my contract blah blah blah. So that’s the reason. It’s their fault, not mine, darn it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

(laughter)

JG: So Sympathy For The Devil is the third in the adventures of Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain. Quincey Morris being a direct descendant of the Texan who helped to kill Dracula, and Libby Chastain being a practitioner of white magic. And in this case, they’ve come upon a presidential candidate who is secretly possessed by a demon.

MRM: Okay.

JG: And any resemblance to politicians, past or present, is entirely coincidental and unintended,
and that also was my story, and I’m sticking to it.

[laughter]

JG: But so the idea is they find out that this guy who’s running for president is possessed by a demon, and what do you do about that? I mean, realistically speaking, the U.S. Secret Service would probably discourage you from tying him to a chair and performing an exorcism. You know?

MRM: Maybe…

JG: So it’s so it poses a very tricky problem of how do you, how do you do something that nobody would believe the necessity for in the first place? They’d probably lock you up in a asylum.

“I think this guy here is possessed!” “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it before.” So there’s that, and that’s going to be out at the end of July from Solaris Books in mass market paperback.

And I’ve also been working with another publisher, Angry Robot Books, which is another British company. I’ve started a new series with them, the first book of which will also be out in July. In fact, they’re supposed to premiere both on the same day, July 26.

MS:Oh wow.

JG: Totally coincidental. So I’m gonna be doing press her for two books at the same time which is which is, which is a burden I’m happy to bear. Let’s put it that way.

MRM: That’s a good one to have, definitely

JG: Yeah, the other book is and I think I mentioned this when I was on last time. It’s set in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but it’s an alternate Scranton. It’s a universe where supernatural creatures are existing and everybody knows they exist. And so my protagonist is a cop on the occult crime squad of the Scranton Police Department in this alternate universe where you arrest vampires on a regular basis. You have to check werewolves for concealed weapons, and all that kind of stuff.

So it’s called Hard Spell and that’s due out at the end July as well from Angry Robot Books. My protagonist’s name is Stan Markowski. Scranton’s got a very big Polish population, in fact the whole area does. And Stan Markowski is my protagonist and he’s a detective sergeant in the Scranton Police Department.

MRM: Very cool.

MS: Interesting! Now, take us back for a second to having to deal with Sympathy for the Devil and the problem with, Solaris being sold. And can you just sort of sort of walk us through, you know, what… I guess what went through your mind when you heard that the thing was sold and how you looked at the potential delays and what decisions you made to keep your career going when, you know, you hit this you hit this roadblock which is totally out of your control and not something you really uh… you know come to expect. What did you think about doing in in approaching stuff uh… keep things moving forward?

JG: Well fortunately I had the other series that I was just starting. I had already made my deal with Angry Robot Books before I got the news about Solaris. So I least i still had something on my plate even while the other thing wasn’t. But yeah, the problem was it was so uncertain. I had no idea if they would find one, they would find buyer or if they would.

It was possible that nobody would offer to buy them. In fact, I asked one of the people there, “well, what happens if you don’t find a buyer?” He said, “well, if we don’t find a buyer within, I think you said a year, we’re simply gonna cut everybody loose. We will abolish all your contracts. You can take your stuff anywhere you want to.”

And I thought “great, terrific.” But in about six months, they were picked up by Rebellion, which is a company that’s best known for video games.

MS: Okay.

JG: But Rebellion wanted to have a fiction book imprint, and Solaris used to be part of Games Workshop, which of course specializes in tabletop role-playing games.

MS: sure.

JG: So in both instances the the owner is somebody who’s into, uh… is into gaming, except in this case the gaming is played on your TV. And so I had to wait six months, more or less. In fact — and this was not the fault of somebody at Solaris, there was a screw up okay? I read about the sale online. They were going to call me, but it leaked. The story leaked and some guy put it in his blog and then somebody else did.

And so I saw it the day before Solaris was going to contact all the writers and let them know what was going on. So it was quite a shock. You know, it was like 11 o’clock at night and I’m taking one more quick look at the internet before I go to bed. And all of a sudden I see this and I didn’t go to bed for a while.

MRM: I bet not.

MS: Yeah.

JG: So about six months it took for them to find a buyer, but then I had to renegotiate all my contracts or my contract, I only had the one. Because I hadn’t finalized the contract for Sympathy for the Devil before the sale.

MS: Got it.

JG: We were almost there. Apparently, there were just two more things my agent had to negotiate, and we would have been fine. And who knew? You know, if we’d known this was coming, we would’ve moved faster. So I had to wait for them to get all secured up again and then we had to negotiate my contract again and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and oh yeah by the way I’m late with the manuscript… But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

[laughter]

MRM: Yeah, exactly. Wow. It sounds like that was a… you’ve had quite the the little up and down roller coaster ride with this whole whole process.

JG: Yeah, it was quite the experience. And I wondered what I was going to do if they didn’t find a buyer. I did know who would be interested in picking up the third book in a series when they hadn’t published the first two.

MS: Right.

JG: But anyway, as I said, I also had the other series starting.

MRM: Yeah, let’s talk about that for a little bit because that’s, it sounds interesting that you had this other project going at the same time. Now if I understand right this was Angry Robot is a HarperCollins imprint, but this is…

JG: Not anymore.

MRM: Not anymore?

JG: No, no. In fact, they they cut themselves loose from HarperCollins and were picked up by
Osprey.

MS: Right. I actually I was just talking to one of Osprey’s, one of Osprey’s guys, because
I’m here at the Game Manufacturers Trade Show in Las Vegas. And so I had a long conversation with them yesterday, and they did mention that they just picked up this science fiction imprint, so they’re quite enthused about it.

JG: Yeah, and when I got the word that that Angry Robot was leaving Harper Collins. I thought “oh no, not again”.

MS: Yeah, yeah.

JG: But fortunately in the same email that they told me they were leaving HarperCollins, they told me that they’d also reach an agreement with Osprey and that you know, we were all still in business.

MS: Very good.

JG: You know, so, uh, yeah, that was, uh, that was, that was interesting as well. I didn’t realize there was so much uncertainty in the publishing world. I thought all the uncertainty was before they accepted your book.

MS: Uh, no.

[laughter]

MS: No, it’s like, it’s like going from the amateur tour to the pro tour.

[laughter]

MS: You know, different, different drama, just more money. yeah, that’s always the fun stuff.

MRM: Yeah. So now you have a tour coming up here fairly soon. Do you have any idea where you’re going to be?

JG: My tour will be virtual. I’m doing a blog tour.

I have learned that I don’t really have a big enough of a fan base in most around here, which is in upstate New York, that people in large numbers are going to flock to see me. If I were in New York City, I might get a decent crowd, but then it might not even, you know, the expenses of just getting to New York City might be more than I’d make off the royalties for the signing.

But, you know, with the first Quincey Morris book, the publishers set up a signing at a Borders — back when there were Borders — in Burlington, and it was on the day they were having this big festival you know and it’s like a lot of people are going to be around and there were there were a lot of people around and not a single one of them came to see me.

MS: I know that Borders because I grew up in Burlington.

JG: Okay it’s the one in the Church Street Marketplace.

MS: Yep yep.

JG: Yep what if they gave a book signing and nobody came? Well I can tell you what that’s like.

[laughter]

MS: Yeah, actually when I’ve done signings in Burlington, it’s always at the Barnes & Noble. I never did that downtown Borders.

JG: Yeah, that’s a much better store. Much bigger. Frankly when I do my shopping for books, I do it at Barnes and Noble. They have a great Barnes and Noble there.

MRM: Yeah, excellent, excellent. I tell you, well, thank you so much, Justin, for being with us today. And unfortunately, we’re completely out of time.

JG: Well it was a pleasure to be here, it always is. I hope I can come back again sometime.

MRM: Not a problem.

MS: Oh, I’m sure.

MRM: We’ll have you back on soon!

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