Bloggasm

You can find Barth Anderson’s blog over here.

Barth Anderson’s work has appeared in Asimov’s, Polyphony, Talebones, and online his work can be found at Strange Horizons, Fantastic Metropolis and Lone Star Stories. Barth’s novel The Patron Saint of Plagues is forthcoming from Bantam Spectra, and his blog, Daddio, mainly address matters of writing, fatherhood, and food.

Simon Owens: Why did you and the other Rat Bastards decide to start Rabid Transit?

Barth Anderson: Kristin Livdahl, Christopher Barzak, Alan De Niro, and I each had odd, misfit stories that we knew were rock-solid yet weren’t getting any love from editors, so in 2002, we decided to publish them ourselves in a chapbook called Rabid Transit: New Fiction by the Ratbastards. All four stories earned Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror that year, and Terri Windling later said she’d never done that before, never awarded Honorable Mentions to an entire table of contents for an anthology.

Self-publishing wasn’t the key to Rabid Transit’s success, of course. If the stories had been simply “good” and not also “off beat”, no one would have paid any attention. Plus, if Livdahl and DeNiro hadn’t had the smart audacity to send Rabid Transit off to Asimov’s where Paul DiFilippo then agreed to review it, I don’t know how anyone would have ever heard of Rabid Transit thereafter. So here’s the Ratbastardly Secret Equation: High Quality + Weird + Smart Audacious = Win Big.

(But for the record, I’m not involved in Rabid Transit anymore. The trifecta of fatherhood, day job, and novel writing pushed it off my plate, I’m afraid.)

SO: As someone who has been published in both online and print venues, which do you prefer?

BA: Depends on the story. Generally speaking, online venues can’t touch print for beauty, and print venues can’t touch online for accessibility. I’m glad Alchemy printed my story “Sand Dollars and Apple Halves.” I liked seeing it an such a luscious venue. On the other hand, I’m glad Fantastic Metropolis published “Lot 12A: The Feast of the Dead Manuscript” It’s my strangest story, so I’m glad it’s linkable and not sitting in a box in my basement.

That said, online venue The Journal of Mythic Arts did a superb job with “The Parade of You.”

SO: Now that you have a novel coming out, do you think that the marketing aspect of selling it will cut down on your writing time?

BA: Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I don’t think so. I’m fortunate to have an encouraging and supportive partner who believes in what I do. I also have a flexible schedule at my day job and I’ve been slowly building up my vacation time in anticipation of this spring, when The Patron Saint of Plagues will be released. So I have some options, but writing time simply can’t be sacrificed. My deadline for the next book, The Magician and the Fool, is soon after Patron Saint comes out, after all.

SO: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

BA: 14theDitch (Jeff Ford’s blog)
Bruce Holland Rogers (though I wish he’d post more often!)
Angie Reed Garner: Diverse Works in Oil
Talking Points Memo
Pharyngula