It’s a late festival season for the Codorus Press crew, but we’re getting things off to a great start with our second annual appearance at the Western Maryland Indie Lit Festival in beautiful Frostburg, Md.
The first time we hit Frostburg was a bounty of awesomeness for all our authors. Codorus founder Wayne Lockwood and co-founder Scott B. Pruden appeared on a couple of panels each, and the same goes for this year. We love to talk about writing and we’ll do it until your ears bleed, so please feel free to interrupt us before that happens.
Last year we also go to know über prolific author Jessica McHugh, who we’d originally bumped into at the Baltimore Book Festival, as her publisher’s booth was right next door. When Scott sat on the sci-fi and fantasy panel, he joined now Nebula Award-winning short story writer Andy Duncan, also a fellow University of South Carolina alum, in speaking on the topic. (They each managed to refrain from joining in a call-response cheer of “Game!” … “Cocks!”
We also got to know Gerry LaFemina, part of the faculty at Frostburg State University (which hosts the festival), and will be publishing his forthcoming novel Clamor before the end of 2013. Codorus author Tom Joyce, meanwhile, perpetrated the usual lunacy and built some buzz for his novel, The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report, which launched over the summer.
All in all a pretty productive visit, wouldn’t you say?
Tom will be back with us again this year with actual copies of Freak Foundation ( or FFOR, as we like to call it), promotional information on forthcoming title Silent City by Alex Segura, and we’ll also be joined by Junior Deputy Codorus Press Intern, Andrew Pruden, Scott’s 9-year-old son, who’ll be offering his own original work, the short story “Animal Crime Fighters.”
Perhaps best of all, we got to meet and interact with dozens of writers, publishers and – most importantly – readers. We have no doubt the same will be said for this year’s event.
We hope you can join us if you happen to be rambling around the mountains of western Maryland tomorrow at the Frostburg State University Creative Writing Center. Things get rolling at around 11 a.m. and we’ll be in the house until 6 p.m..
Dispatches from the Codorus Universe
The holidays are hopping around the Codorus Press offices as our band of elves looks ahead to 2013 (assuming we don’t all die in a flaming apocalyptic ball later this week … if so: Waiter? Another pint, please?).
But we’re not really focusing on the end of the world. We’ve got too much going on to waste our time on silly things like extinction.
Want to get an idea of how busy we’ve been? Just take a poke around the Interwebs, my friend. There’s plenty of Codorus Press treasure to be found.
You kn
ow you’ve made an impression on a book reviewer when a few months after he’s reviewed your book he’s drawing upon it to make a point in a subsequent issue of his publication.
That’s the happy situation our founder, musical director and shaman, Wayne Lockwood, has found himself in this month. Andrew Andrews, publisher and editor of the blog True Review, gave Wayne an extensive shout-out, referencing our great and glorious leader’s essay collection, Acid Indigestion Eyes: Collected Essays and Musings on Generation X, in his column Tyranny of the Same.
In it, Andrews riffs on personal damage the devastation of Superstorm Sandy wrought and notes Wayne’s assertion that the Internet has made it possible for all things from all periods of culture to exist at once. We’re nothing if not deep around here.
Earlier in the fall, Mike Argento, author of Don’t Be Cruel, announced the release of the novel’s e-book version through our friends at
Crossroad Press. That means the novel is now available for nearly every electronic reader device out there.
But Mike isn’t just an author of gut-bustingly hilarious crime fiction – he’s also a full-time (and highly regarded) newspaper columnist with some prestigious awards under his belt. You can always keep up on his latest work at the sight for his newspaper (and former employer of much of the Codorus crew), The York Daily Record.
We’re exci
ted about the spring 2013 release of longtime Codorus Press team member Tom Joyce’s first novel, The Freak Foundation Operative’s Report. This multi-layered satirical occult thriller promises to appeal to fans of everything from H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King to the Marx Brothers.
Over at Tom Joyce’s Chamber of the Bizarre, he’s been working away perpetrating his usual lunacy and taking some time out to post a favorable review of the new novel Pins by Jessica McHugh, a frequent flyer at many of the book festivals the Codorus crew attends and a valued friend of the press. Oh, and in case that isn’t incentive enough, her book is about strippers. Now, doesn’t that … Hey, where’d you go? Ah, never mind.
Those of you who haven’t abandoned us to go page through Pins looking for the good parts might also like to know that Scott B. Pruden, author of debut Codorus title Immaculate Deception, had a nice essay on his former boss Ray Daub published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec. 12. He followed that up with a blog posting relating how Ray influenced a particular character from his novel.
It turns out Ray, who Scott worked for as he designed, built and installed a 3/4-scale walk through display of Charles Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol in the mid-1980s, served as the physical inspiration for William Z. Robert, a low-rent, chain smoking demon featured as a major secondary character in Scott’s novel.
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Filed under Acid Indigestion Eyes, Authors, Don't Be Cruel, ebooks, Fiction, Immaculate Deception, Independent publishing, Marketing, Mike Argento, Promotions, Scott B. Pruden, The Freak Foundation Operative's Report, Tom Joyce, Uncategorized, Wayne Lockwood, Writers
Tagged as A Christmas Carol, Acid Indigestion Eyes, Andrew Andrews, book festivals, books, character, Chris Martin, Christmas, Codorus Press, columnist, comedy, commentary, Crime fiction, department store, Dickens, Don't Be Cruel, ebooks, Essays, funny, Generation X, holiday, hurricane, Immaculate Deception, independent publishing, indie publishing, Jessica McHugh, Macy's, mannikins, Mike Argento, murder, mystery, New Jersey, New titles, New York, Philadelphia, Pins, publishing, Ray Daub, review, Sandy, Scott B. Pruden, strippers, Superstorm, Tom Joyce, traits, True Review, Wayne Lockwood, writing, York Daily Record