Tom Marcinko
Excerpt
How about a taste of "Temperance," then:
The lounge crowd went ooh and aah as the mushroom cloud erupted from the pillar of fire.
Sunday’s lips and jaw tightened as he gave the blast a long, cold look. He’d brought us here to make a point:
“This is the atomic age,” he said. “This is modern America. We can do this -- and Temperance thinks she can control us? With an absurd superstition? The time of her kind is past.” He gestured toward the blast as proof.
Bio
I was born in a crossfire hurricane, and I -- oh, wait, that's somebody else. I'm from Pennsylvania but now somehow live in Arizona. For most of my life I've wanted to be a writer. I went to Clarion West during the last year of George I's regime. A lovely and brilliant woman who went to Clarion Classic that same year is now my wife. We're parents, yet. My first novel, a "new space opera" entitled Goddess of Mercy, is making the rounds of agents on an island off the coast of North America.
Publications
My most recent story is "Temperance," in an e-book called Bites of Passion: An Anthology of Vampire Erotica, ed. by Cecilia Tan. You can get it here (inexpensive!).
I've sold two other stories to Circlet Press that are so blazingly explicit I felt the psychological need to blush behind a pseudonym. They're in the soon-to-be-released e-books Like Clockwork and Like a God's Kiss.
Others:
"The Nixon Wrangler's Tale" -- EventHorizon.com (edited by Ellen Datlow; you might find it on the Wayback Machine)
"Whiter Teeth, Fresher Breath" -- Interzone
"The Dark Nightingale Returns" -- 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories
"Faith in a Higher Power" -- Rosebud (written during Clarion West)
"Deep Space Sein" -- Science Fiction Age
"Henry the Human Flea" -- The Edge
I think of myself as being all about the outer space, but it does seem that vampires have been good to me.
Writing Description
I've tried all kinds of genres and styles. It seems that when I write still-lifes about sterile lives and stunted emotional growth in small dead mining towns (some people can pull that off, really, and I enjoy that sort of thing), nobody likes my stories, but when I write stories where things happen, they're somewhat better received.
Goals
Several projects are nipping at my heels, begging to be completed, but I think it's time to finish the novel I began to write just for fun about this time last year. Working title: Grand Theft Spacecraft. I pitched it to myself as "Two Lane Blacktop -- in space!" but it seems to be turning into something else. It has talking squids in it. Word count so far: 33,000. If I can get that up to 90K, I'll be happy.
Website
http://tomaq.livejournal.com/
http://twitter.com/TomMarcinko
http://blip.fm/the_night_manager
http://www.new.facebook.com/tom.marcinko
