Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Heartshot


Years ago, my buddy Mike Byers, former military pilot; expert artist in glass and constructions various; guitarist, and writer; produced a magazine-killer story, "Heartshot."


Those of you unfamiliar with the MK term, this is a story you sell to a magazine that then goes belly-up before it can publish the piece. Naturally, you blame the story, as well you should, and piss on all you writers who killed my markets thus ...


Mike's story, about a unicorn hunter, and written, I recall, to offset the warm-fuzziness that was rampant–sorry had to do it–in the fantasy field at the time in regard to such creatures as unicorns and winged kitties and like that, went on to kill a couple more magazines before he retired it.(My worst killed two 'zines for sure, and maybe a third; I bow to no master.)


Well, it seems that somebody he knows who has the wherewithal to do it wants to make a short film of it. Might kill the moviemaker's business, too–and I'm sure Byers has warned him; still, that's way cool. 


And you gotta love the logo ... 

1 comment:

Mike Byers said...

I wrote this piece a long time ago (it was written on an Apple IIe and printed with a dot matrix printer), and first sold it to Pulphouse. When Pulphouse folded, I sold it to Aboriginal. When Aboriginal went down the tubes, the story was picked up by DNA Publications and since I haven't heard from them since they were going to print it in 2003, I think it's safe to say they're defunct, too.

So it seems that between us, Steve and I have pretty well hammered the short story magazine business.

Maybe there will be better luck with film. Joe Taylor did the logo, and one of his guys also came up with a life-sized model of the bloodskipper, a creature that figures in the story. Nasty little bugger, and plenty scary, too.