BookFest Post-Mortem and New Mailing List

Anthony and Jay pose for a photo at the first annual Asbury Park BookFest.

Last weekend was the first annual Asbury Park BookFest, and Anthony and Jay had a great time talking to fans and fellow writers alike at the art629 gallery on Cookman Avenue.  Some highlights from the weekend:

• We kicked off our festivities even before getting to the art gallery by downing some gigantic burritos courtesy of Bubbakoo’s Burritos in West Long Branch.  If you have to sit in one place for the next three hours, hell, why not Mexican food? (I seriously recommend Bubbakoo’s… one of the best burritos I’ve ever had!);
• We met some great writers and general literary types, including our table-mate, Jean Criss (author of My Pain Woke Me Up: A Survivor’s Tale of Breast Cancer, Love and Life); fellow pulpster Kevin Michaels (author of Lost Exit and contributor to the great Fight Card series of two-fisted tales); fantasy author Harry Aderton (author of Heaven’s Night), the crew from The Idiom literary magazine (including one dude who looked like a disheveled version of Jack Arnold, Kevin’s dad from The Wonder Years), and many others;
• We got to — briefly — see our buddy Kathy Kelly from Paranormal Books and Curiosities and drop off some swag for her;
• Special thanks to words! Bookstore in Asbury Park, and to owners Scott Asalone and Jan Sparrow, who graciously hosted a kick-ass post-game reception in their store for all the authors involved in the BookFest;
• Extra special thanks to Steven Froias, publisher and editor of Asbury Pulp, for organizing a great event!  Looking forward to participating in the future, if you’ll have us back!;
• and a special shout-out to the crew of the Serenity… hope you guys like the books!
• We ended the evening with beers and beef at The Brickwall Tavern.

We had a great time chatting up fellow creative types, selling a few books, and generally enjoying the great artsy vibe of Asbury Park.

If you’re on Instagram, Anthony has set up a new account to give you, the readers, a behind-the-scenes look at Episodes from the Zero Hour! and Pulp Tone.  Moving forward, he said that he wants to use it to share ideas, give readers a glimpse into our creative process, or just gawk at how much food we can stuff in our bellies before sitting at a signing or other promotional event (hint — it’s a lot).  He has a bunch of photos posted from Saturday.  Check ‘em out, and maybe pass along a like or two, if you can spare it.

And if you haven’t heard already, we’ve created a mailing list to keep folks up to date about the latest releases from Episodes from the Zero Hour! (including the any-week-now release of Episodes from the Zero Hour!, Volume 4).  If you’re so inclined, you can check it out here.

Episodes from the Zero Hour! at Asbury Park BookFest!

While we’re still slogging away on the copy edits for Episodes from the Zero Hour!, Volume 4 (more to come on that soon, we promise!), Jay and Anthony will be at the Asbury Park BookFest on Saturday, April 20 promoting the entire line of Zero Hour! books.

The Asbury Park BookFest is a weekend-long celebration of the written word, organized by Asbury Pulp Publisher and Editor, Steven Froias in partnership with some of Asbury Park’s many great downtown businesses (including our friends at Paranormal Books and Curiosities).  For more information about the many great events lined up for the first ever Asbury Park BookFest, visit: http://asburypulp.com/2013/04/asbury-park-bookfest-writers-films-workshops/

Jay and Anthony will be at Art629, an art gallery at 629 Cookman Avenue, Asbury Park, NJ, from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM on Saturday the 20th.  They’ll be selling some books and promotional items, signing whatever you want (body parts, yes… personal checks, not so much), and talking up the Episodes from the Zero Hour! book line.  Stop on by if you’re in the area and say hi!

So you want to be a book designer… ENTER, THE PULP-O-MIZER

So, one of the keys to a great modern pulp book is a great book cover.  Of course, not everyone has a guy like Anthony Schiavino in their pocket to design said-cover, and not everyone has access to the talent pool of brilliant artists that we’ve been able to work with to produce some really amazing artwork for our covers.

However, now there’s hope.

Thanks to our friends over at io9.com (great source for your geek news fix), you too can be a pulp publishing magnate, because they’ve clued us in to the Pulp-O-Mizer!

The Pulp-O-Mizer is the brainchild of Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual (another site that we’re going to have to bookmark).  You choose from some pre-approved banner headers, background artwork, and character pieces, you fill in your own text, and boom — easy peasy pulp cover, complete with authentic weathering around the edges!

Of course, we encourage you to build your official book cover from scratch, and only use the Pulp-O-Mizer as intended… a fun way to kill some time on the Interwebs.  If nothing else, fooling around with the Pulp-O-Mizer might fan the creative flames and provide a new angle for your own cover, or even an idea for a new story.  Have fun playing around!

And in other Zero Hour! news…

Jersey Halloween, Round 2

Earlier this week, we celebrated our New Jersey Halloween do-over, and as promised, we have your annual Halloween Trick or Treat fix, albeit a few days after the fact.  But before we get down to that, I want to take the opportunity to plug a friend’s work.

Duane Spurlock is a triple threat — writer, illustrator and e-publisher.  We had the pleasure of working with him as the illustrator for Mac Samson: The Secrets of the Lost City in Episodes from the Zero Hour! Volume Three.  Well, Duane’s newest eBook, Three Witches: An Adventure of El Tigre Azul is now available on Amazon and Smashwords, with Barnes and Noble and Kobo stores to follow.  Modeled after the classic luchador films that came out of Mexico in the 1950s which pitted masked Mexican wrestlers against monsters, El Tigre Azul — the Blue Tiger — fights humans and monsters alike, with a sense of humor and reverence for the source material.  For more info, check out Duane’s website, InterroBang, where he has links to download in your format of preference.  Oh and that cover was designed by some guy named Anthony Schiavino, in case you were wondering…

So now, on to the Zero Hour! Halloween Trick or Treat.

Halloween postponed this year…

Since we began the Episodes from the Zero Hour! WordPress site a few years back, one of our time-honored traditions has been the annual Halloween trick-or-treat, where we give our faithful readers a taste of some of the creepy and macabre things working in from the edges in the Zero Hour! universe.

This year, horror took on a new reality for so many of our friends and neighbors that live on the Jersey Shore.

Episodes from the Zero Hour! is, at its very core, a New Jersey publishing company.  The founders are Jersey born and bred.  Many of the writers and artists that we work with are Jersey natives, or have strong ties to our home state.  We’re informed by our uniquely Garden State experiences.  Our sensibilities and predilections as creators of fiction are driven by our times spent in Shore towns and in the inland communities that make up this great state.

There has always been something very pulp about New Jersey.  We’re a state of extremes.  We’re tough and no-nonsense.  We’re weird and bizarre.  We have a Devil as our mascot, we have more all-night diners per capita than anywhere else on Earth, and we’re so full of attitude that we have to invent words to adequately express and contain that attitude.  Fuhgeddabouddit?  Exactly.

Halloween Trick or Treat…

It’s been awhile since we posted here.  Anthony and Jay are still hard at work getting Volume 4 ready to sail, and have been busy taking care of their respective fledgeling families (Zero Hour! editorial interns Jack and Ava Butkowski entered the world on June 14, and design intern Lily Schiavino followed shortly thereafter on August 5).

However, we just couldn’t let Halloween come and go without our annual Trick or Treat.

THE WEIRD: COMING SOON

It’s with great pleasure that we can debut the cover, lavishly painted by Dirk Shearer, for Episodes from the Zero Hour! Volume 4. It features seven weird stories from the eerie minds of Jason Butkowski, S.E. Dogaru, Bobby Nash, Anthony Schiavino, and Frank Schildiner.

Coming Soon. Cover art by Dirk Shearer. Design by Anthony Schiavino.

******

The back cover.

Anthony’s Hard-Boiled Flash Fiction — Jack Rose

While we’re busy at work putting the finishing touches on our next book, Episodes from the Zero Hour!, Volume 4, our weird fiction anthology, author and design guru Anthony Schiavino has been busy whipping up some great hard-boiled flash fiction for Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds blog (http://www.terribleminds.com).

The theme this week is cocktails, and Anthony chose one of the classics from the 20s and 30s, the Jack Rose, to base his 500-word flash fiction story on.

What we’ve been up to…

I know this site has been a little quiet in 2011 (…too quiet…), but with good reason.  You’re faithful Web administrators have been hunkered down at the Zero Hour! ranch, cooking up a new batch of pulpy goodness for the new year.  And this time, we’ve brought some friends along with us for the ride.

Episodes from the Zero Hour! Volume 4 is the first time we’ll be stepping away (not entirely, but mostly) from the serialized fiction model we’ve used in the previous three volumes.  It’s going to be a collection of stand-alone stories, and with this one, we’ve chosen a theme that’s in running with our eclectic tastes and the rich pulp history available to us.

Zero Hour! featured in 2010 Forces of Geek Holiday Gift Guide!

We’re happy to announce that the three Episodes from the Zero Hour! books are featured in this year’s first-ever Forces of Geek Holiday Gift Guide!  Seeing Knuckles and Rex standing toe to toe with All Star Superman and the 30th Anniversary of Springsteen’s Born to Run on somebody’s holiday wish-list is pretty surreal.  Special thanks to geek gurus Stefan Blitz and Elizabeth Weitz for including us in their inaugural gift guide.