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I Got More Records than the KGB: Or, an update

December 17, 2017 Magen Cubed

Hi, hello, how are you? It's been a while since I've posted an update. Nearly a year, in fact. Here's a list of things I've been up to.

I released a F/F short horror double feature for Halloween, A MONSTROUS LOVE. Now available on Amazon.

I announced my M/M monster hunting romcom in the upcoming Image Comics anthology series, TWISTED ROMANCE. Coming this February to a comic book store near you. You can see a preview here from Entertainment Weekly.

I was recently interviewed on Comicosity about TWISTED ROMANCE. I have more interviews coming soon.

I also have bylines at Ms En Scene, the film/TV sister site of Eisner-nominated Women Write About Comics. You can find my latest writing here.

Catch you later.

MC

Tags Blog, Personal, Writing

A List of Things that Happened in 2016

January 1, 2017 Magen Cubed

I graduated from college.

I spent 10 days in Florida with my girlfriend Melissa.

I wrote two books. I published three.

I cried more than I expected I would.

I turned 30. It was raining on my birthday. I felt incredibly alone.

I let some things go.

I realized I no longer belonged here.

I didn't really sleep.

I was in a car wreck. It should have killed me. I didn't get hurt.

I was sick a lot.

I tried to help people when I could. It didn't always work.

I spent the anniversary of my 2015 breakdown in my therapist's office.

I was too depressed to write as much as I wanted.

I found out who my friends were.

I took a lot of selfies.

I was given some good advice.

I started trying to repair things with my parents.

I thought a lot about art and how to be a better writer.

I grew my hair out.

I hugged my dog every day.

I drove to places I'd never been to before.

I felt like someone died on November 8th. I stayed in bed until November 10th.

I was scared all the time. Even when I wasn't, I was.

I made hard decisions.

I sat by the ocean on Christmas Eve.

I sat in the sunshine whenever possible.

I didn't think I would make it.

I did.

Tags Blog, Writing, Personal

Out of the Flames, Back from the Dead: The Crashers

September 19, 2016 Magen Cubed

It seems fitting that a book about people who die and come back would have the story that it does.

In case you don't know the story, a long time ago, I was signed on with a publisher named Booktrope. Booktrope published my superhero novel The Crashers back in April. Then at the end of April, Booktrope announced they were folding. Cue three months of confusion, waiting, frustration, and playing Rights Roulette with all of my assets as my publisher quietly closed their doors with a lot of shrugging and empty platitudes.

Needless to say, that was the opposite of fun.

Now, fast-forward to September. I have my manuscript, my cover, and all my licensing squared away. Fast-forward to tomorrow, upon which time you'll be able to purchase The Crashers as it rises from the grave and to warm your Amazon Kindle. Perhaps, if I can get enough money together, I can pay to have it published in paperbacks again. For now, you'll have to settle for being warmed by the glow of your mobile book reading device of choice. (It'll also be on OmniLit in PDF and Epub formats if that's your thing!)

So, what now? Good question. To be honest, I have no freaking idea.

All of this is happening on a wing and a prayer, so I push my love letter to slash dissertation on contemporary superhero comics and culture back into the world. I tried agents and publishers and, while I got a lot of thumb-ups and compliments, I was told the book was unmarketable. So here we go. Enter: self-publishing!

I've sent out review copies, submitted review requests to blogs and podcasts, and have done all the marketing I can afford on a shoestring budget of a broke liberal arts student. The next book in the seven-part series, The Crashers: Koreatown, is still in the editing phase while I wring my hands about going back to finish it up. The next several books are in various stages of plotting. I have a small but vocal fan community around the book that has championed me on and helped me stay positive amidst the chaos of the summer as I waited for the legal minutia to resolve itself.

But, beyond that? I'm self-publishing books while finishing college. I have no marketing budget, no PR, and no publisher. All I have are characters that people seem to love, a story that's quickly tumbling out of my hands as it strives toward bigger, dumber, loftier things, and readers who want to see how it all plays out.

That's all I'm doing now: seeing it plays out.

The Crashers will be available 9/20/2016. See you all in Koreatown.

Tags Blog, Books, The Crashers, Writing, Publishing

Upcoming Horror Anthology: I Felt Their Teeth In My Bones

July 14, 2016 Magen Cubed

There are two things I have to tell you:

1. You look very nice today. Is that a new sweater?

2. In a desperate bid for relevancy in this cold and empty void, I'm putting out an anthology of horror, weird tale, creepy romance stories, and other odd things.

I Felt Their Teeth in My Bones is coming to your Kindle later this month. At 43k words, this collection features nineteen stories written between 2009 and 2015, and is everything of mine worth collecting. Everything that I felt was worth collecting, anyway. You may not agree, and that’s quite alright. Most of what you see has been previously published, be it online or in print, in various original horror and weird tale anthologies. Some stories have never been published.

What kinds of stories do you have to look forward to? Glad you asked. I tried to make sure there was a little something for everyone.

Are you a romantic? Try At the Heart of Mina Jones or Molly’s Entropy. Looking for something a little more uplifting? The Dollhouse or In Case of Armageddon might suit you. People in search of the strange may get a kick out of The Aquarium, Harold’s Girl, or A Fresh, Clean Soul. And, of course, we begin with The Drain, a story about an octopus. Because octopuses are rad as hell, and that’s all you need to know about that.

Interested? I hope so. If not, have an excerpt for The Aquarium, a queer horror romance story about sea monsters:

It would be three days before Lily saw the shadows again, curling from behind the bedroom door in broad black arms. She paid them no mind at first. Blamed it on an overactive imagination or bad late-night television and willed herself to sleep, face buried in her pillowcase with a determined sigh. Instead of finding sleep behind closed eyes, Lily's mind conjured visions of black water and firework starbursts. The creak of the bedroom door – old hinges, she assured herself – gave her goose-flesh and she sucked in a breath between her teeth. She blamed that on the television, too. Perhaps she should be more like her mother and only watch the news. Her mother would like that.

Tendrils crept around her bedroom walls. With the slow, sticky sound of wet flesh the octopus’s arms wound down her bedposts in languid stop-motion to drop, drip, winding out across the floor beneath her bed-frame and slipping beneath her sheets. They curled to touch her toes, greedy suction cups biting into the bottoms of her feet, curling around her ankles as they slithered up her calves, wet and cold and alive. Each arm had its own mind, slow, determined, like the touch of the lover she did not have. Lily gasped.

Not your speed? Try Speak, the most recent story in the anthology, and one of the more disturbing entries:

You wake up in a cell. You don’t know how long you’ve been here. All you know is that you’re here now.

The space is small, damp, and gray. Every inch of your body hurts when you try to move, sitting up from your sprawl on the cold concrete. There is a bed against the farthest wall; the metal frame is warped and the mattress is flimsy. You were dropped on the floor instead. There are no windows here, only a fluorescent ceiling fixture with a dingy plastic dome and a switch you can’t reach. The insects that slipped between the ceiling and the plastic lip flutter, their beating wings like raindrops. It takes a while to notice this when your brain feels like it’s wrapped in cotton.

Everything hurts.

There is a door. It’s heavy, made of steel. You crawl to it, on all fours like an animal with the way your body aches. You pound on it. It doesn’t budge.

Eventually, you notice the person on the floor across from you. The person looks like a man, looks like an adult, and looks like he’s dead. He’s face down on the concrete just as you were when you awoke. His legs are limp and his fingers are curled in. His eyes are open and clouded. You flinch away from him at first, the light above making you blind before your vision settles. Once your pulse slows, you creep toward him to shake his shoulder. He never moves, something swimming behind his washed-out eyes.

“Speak.”

You flinch for a second time. There’s a speaker in the corner above the bed. It’s old and rattles in its battered metal casement when the voice grinds out again, “Speak.”

You ask them what they want.

“Tell us your secrets.”

So, there you have it. Expect to see I Felt Their Teeth in My Bones coming soon to a Kindle near you.

 

Tags Blog, Writing, Publishing

On Wasting Your 20s

May 26, 2016 Magen Cubed

So I just turned 30 last week.

I know, I know. I don't look 30. I still get carded buying cough medication and trying to get into R-rated movies. Moving on.

Despite the cultural pomp and circumstance surrounding the Big 3-0, my birthday was a non-event. It was a strange, kind of boring, kind of sad day, to be honest. I was sick and it was rainy outside, and I just felt a bit lonely. More than that, I just felt a little defeated. After all, you have to have some of that customary, "Oh my god, I wasted my 20s, drinking beer and eating sushi like a giant sad puppy in human clothes" malaise.

Now that it's been a week, I've slept. I've taken some cold medication and gotten some work done. I took a walk or two. I feel better. And so, having come out of that particular funk, I'm had some thoughts about the whole idea of "wasting my 20s."

The age-old adage of "Your 20s are where you fuck up" is true enough, I guess. You're probably not very smart, experienced, or resourceful yet. You're somehow expected to arrive in the world as an adult, when your brain's probably not done being a teen yet, and have this whole grown-up thing Worked Out. You're also expected to completely fuck up. I mean, fuck it all up. Party all the time! Drink too much! Date the wrong people! Hell, marry the wrong people if you can! You're young! Burn your bridges! Time is on your side!

So many movies and books are dedicated to this hackneyed old plot, so feel free to fail. Culture condones it. Just make sure you finish school and get a great job and get your life together and buy a house and get married. Do all of those things to fuck up your life, but be sure to be successful while doing it. It's what you have to do. Make that 30 Under 30 list or die trying. Shrug emoji.

But...what if you didn't fuck it all up? What if fucked up stuff just happened to you in your 20s?

What if you spent your 20s being responsible for your parents or siblings? What if you're taking care of your children? What if you're helping take care of other people because they can't work, or because they're sick? What if you have to take a series of lousy jobs to keep the lights on? What if you have to drop out of college? What if you fall behind? What if you're broke because you've been sick for years? What if you've had an accident, or a chronic illness? What if you've had serious bouts of depression? Did you fuck it all up then? Are you fucked up?

What if you were too busy trying to stay alive to fuck up your 20s by partying and being bad with money? What if you didn't have time for fun? What if you had no Mumblecore coming-of-age moment? Did you waste your 20s then? Did you lose your youth? Are you really an adult if you went from teen to grown-up with no socially acceptable, commercially sanctioned in-between? If your 20s are the grace period for the rest of your life, was it all for naught?

So yes,  by the measure of many, I certainly fucked up my 20s. I dropped out of college and took shitty jobs to keep the lights on. I didn't make plans. I spent a lot of time working at places that I absolutely hated, and making sure other people were taken care of, and crying myself to sleep. There were years when I didn't know if my family would lose their house. There were years that I was certain I would be dead soon.

I never made it onto a 30 Under 30 list. I didn't those publish five novels. I didn't even move out. I'm 30 and just now about to wrap up my undergrad work while 20-somethings sit next to me in class in awe that I'm so old. Oh well. They're still young, and life can still disappoint them at any moment.

So, yeah. I turned 30 last week. I turned 30, having gone through my 20s assuming I would already be dead or homeless by now. So happy belated birthday to me.

Tags Blog, Personal, Mental Health

Buy This Book, Kill This Book, and Other Stories

May 21, 2016 Magen Cubed

On April 8th, my book The Crashers came out. It sold pretty well. It got some nice reviews. People seemed to enjoy it. It felt like the book was gaining some good momentum, for a little indie superhero book from a little nobody author. I was making plans to return to the sequel, The Crashers: Koreatown, to get it ready for publication by winter.

On April 29th, my publisher, Booktrope, announced that they were shutting down effective May 31st. My rights will revert back to me on June 1st. Otherwise, amid rumors, misinformation, mushy legal advice, and a general wave of panic, The Crashers is now homeless. Not dead, per se, but rather shambling toward a quiet, inevitable dark period.

And so it goes. Another small publisher bites the dust. It seems to be happening more and more these days, if the amount of small press authors venting on Twitter is anything to go by. With so many publishers soon to be closing their doors due to poor sales, it's hard not to feel disappointed, frustrated, and maybe a bit foolish for buying into somebody else's dream.

There's a lot of reasons these publishers are folding up, none of which I feel like getting into today. You have Google, friend. Use it at your own discretion.

Other than doing my fair share of screaming on Twitter, I haven't said much on the topic. There have been a lot of upbeat blog posts going around since the announcement. I, uh, wasn't among the upbeat. I wasn't even among those with coherent thoughts to readily dispense on the matter. It wasn't from a lack of trying, of course. I sat down four or five times to write something about it over the last few weeks, but always came up short. At best, I wanted to punch something. At worst, I just ended up crying. It always felt pointless, be it rage or tears. I'm not the first writer to have a publisher fold on her, and I certainly won't be the last. So it goes.

As it stands right now, on May 21st, as I wait for the clock to run-out on both Booktrope's existence and its right to my work, I'm trying to take my own advice. I'm trying to be calm. I'm trying to breathe.

It still stings, and I'm still mad as hell, but I accept it. I'm madder about how this whole thing shook out than the fact that it did, but I'm pretty sure the dirty laundry's been pretty well aired out by this point. That, and you can only yell at a brick wall so long before you realize the brick wall is content to go on its merry way, regardless of how you feel on the matter. (As a side bar, have you ever gone through the five stages of grief in one weekend? I don't recommend it.)

So, I hear somebody asking, what now? What next for me and Crashers? That's a good question. I'm still coming up with my thoughts on that. I've started drafting and sending query letters. I've gathered a list of agents. I've started banging on doors. Is trade publishing an option, or even a good option, for this book? I don't know. Is self-publishing the answer? I doubt it, because I have plans for more books, and it doesn't seem like a feasible long-term solution. I just don't see myself being able to afford the costs of paying the necessary editors and cover designers for the foreseeable future.

I don't have answers. But what I do have is a book and a give 'em hell attitude. So I guess that will have to do for now.

Tags Writing, Publishing, Blog, Personal

#AskMeAnything Vlog #2

May 12, 2016 Magen Cubed

Welcome to the latest episode of Magen Cubed's AMA vlog! Do you have creepy and invasive questions? Then I have creepy and invasive answers!

Want to ask me something? Check out my Facebook and Twitter for the weekly AMA threads.

Tags Blog, Vlog, Writing, Ask Me Anything, Publishing

Chaos Theater Podcast Ep. #106: The Crashers

May 2, 2016 Magen Cubed

Catch me on the latest episode of Chaos Theater, discussing my book, the world, the characters, and what comes next.

Chaos Theater talks about superheroes of a different variety as Magen Cubed joins us to discuss her new novel, The Crashers. Please note that after this episode was recorded it was announced that her publisher is ceasing operations. The book will be pulled from all storefronts both in print and digitally on May 31, so if you're considering getting the book, do so before then. Magen will be searching for a new publisher, but it's unclear how long that process could take.

Tags Blog, TV, Books, Writing, Interviews, Podcasting

#AskMeAnything Vlog #1

April 27, 2016 Magen Cubed

Introducing my new #AskMeAnything vlog! Do you have creepy and invasive questions? Then I have creepy and invasive answers! Books, writing, small dogs, TV shows -- anything goes.

Want to ask me something? Check out my Facebook and Twitter for the weekly AMA threads.

Tags Blog, Vlog, Ask Me Anything, Writing

Author Interview: From The Bookie Monster

April 19, 2016 Magen Cubed

The Bookie Monster Interviews Magen Cubed, author of The Crashers.

Magen Cubed is an author of novels about monsters, superheroes, and various other kinds of strangeness. Her first novel Fleshtrap was released in 2013 from Post Mortem Press. She is published and represented by Booktrope. Magen lives in Texas with a little dog named Cecil.  

Tell us a little about yourself, your work and how you got into writing.

I am a writer, student, occasional critic, and blogger-type-person from Texas. Starting out writing weird tales and horror, I wandered back toward my longtime love of superhero fiction, becoming a comic book reviewer for three years. You can find some of my writing on ComicBooked.com, Comiconverse.com, and a few other odds and ends places.

I initially got into writing many years ago, while under the delusion that I would be a comic book writer. Unfortunately, I’m terrible at scripting, so prose it was. My new book, The Crashers, comes out of my lifelong love of the comic book medium, as well as the superhero genre specifically. It’s very much my love letter to/deconstruction of superhero comics as we know and love (or hate) them today.

The book follows five very normal, very imperfect people who gain powers through a shared trauma, and how they deal with the consequences of this experience. People with anxiety and depression, illnesses and divorces, criminal records and kids to take care of. There are no capes or mustache-twirling villains – just people trying to keep their heads above water, thrust into something they don’t understand, and trying to survive it together.

I’m interested in using well-trodden genre convention to play with new ideas, and tell familiar stories from fresh perspectives that we don’t often see in the mainstream.

You can read the rest here at The Bookie Monster!

Tags Blog, Writing, Interviews
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