Interview: Tom Black

For years I have been saying that the alternate history you find on the Internet is as good as or even better than what you can find from traditional publishers. So when I heard that Tom Black and other members of AlternateHistory.com were starting a publishing house, called Sea Lion Press, for web original alternate histories, I was overjoyed and immediately reached out to Tom for an interview. Here is what we talked about:

Who is Tom Black?

Tom Black (left) and Jack Tindale

I am a proud resident of Croydon, South London. I have lived there my whole life (apart from three years studying History at the University of Leeds) and currently work as the general manager of the Croydon Citizen news magazine which I co-founded in 2012. In addition to writing alternate history, I write plays and occasionally perform with DugOut Theatre. I'll be 25 in September.

What got you interested in alternate history?

When I was about 13 years old, I was a big player of WWII Online, the cult MMOFPS set in the Battle of France. Someone on the forums began talking about Worldwar, Harry Turtledove's series about aliens invading during WWII. That sounded cool to me, so I got hold of the first book (it was in my local library, something that still astonishes me) and very soon found myself hooked. After Worldwar, I moved on to Turtledove's Timeline-191 books, and began looking for other ways to explore alternate history. Soon I was playing Hearts of Iron II (I was briefly part of the team for the Kaiserreich alternate history mod for that game) and posting on the ParadoxPlaza forums, mainly about alternate history. From there, I saw AlternateHistory.com get talked about more and more, and so I decided to post my first major timeline, "The People's Flag", on there. It was an attempt to flesh out the very complex and highly implausible backstory of the Kaiserreich mod. It therefore wasn't very plausible, but it was an awful lot of fun to write. By then, I was studying History full-time at Leeds, and I was hooked to AH. The rest is (alternate) history.

You are a member of AlternateHistory.com, correct? How would you describe the place to someone who has never been there?

I go on AH.com more than I go on Facebook. It's introduced me to some of my closest friends, and has a community that has not only helped me grow as a writer and as a historian, but also been there for me in low moments in my life. I've been a member for five years, and I would describe it as an online forum full of alternate history discussion, debate, exciting new writing and often very witty humour. It also has a political and non political chat section, both of which generate fascinating discussions that enrich my life and have introduced me to different viewpoints I otherwise wouldn't come across.

What inspired you to create Sea Lion Press?

It all happened very quickly. A few months ago, I was talking to Jack Tindale over a pint and remarking that there really is a lot of very good writing on AH.com that a lot of people would never get to see. It's hard to get non-forum users to read through stories on web forums. It's also not the best medium for it.

I got a Kindle about six months ago, and was quickly impressed with how readable ebooks are. After realising Andy Cooke had already had success with some self-publishing on Amazon, I put two and two together and decided that the best way to bring AH.com (and alternate history in general) to a mainstream audience was to set up a unified publishing house that could develop a name for itself and thus help its authors. I passionately believe that there are a lot of potential readers of AH out there who like the sound of it but wouldn't know where to begin: history is just so broad, and everyone has different areas of expertise.

So that's how it came about. The plan is now to make it bigger and bigger, publishing stories about any period, any place, any theme. The only requirement is that the stories are well-written to the extent that a mainstream audience will not object to paying for them. The hope is that over time, Sea Lion Press will introduce new readers to the many worlds of alternate history, in addition to generating a little bit of income for those of us publishing our books through it (every author gets 100% of their royalties, Sea Lion Press doesn't currently take a cut as there's no real costs for us to need to absorb). It doesn't matter that none of us will grow rich from this - it's already immensely satisfying to make even a small amount of money from something we all do as a hobby. If my hobby can buy me a pint of cider every once in a while, that's a great bonus.

When will you open up Sea Lion to unsolicited submissions?

I hope to do this very soon. The response to the Press' launch has been extremely heartening, and I would love to bring more and more authors on board. However, simple time and workload are the obstructions at the moment. I won't bore you with the details, but obviously a bit of work has to go into each book we publish. Right now, I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (working with DugOut Theatre, who I mentioned above) and am also juggling my day job at the Citizen. There's no way I would have time to read through unsolicited submissions at the moment.

Thankfully, spreadsheet wizards like Andy Cooke have helped me put in place some processes and documents that will make it easier to produce books at a faster rate. While I wouldn't like to be much more specific than 'very soon', I think we will open our doors to unsolicited submissions after the next wave of publications. That's currently meant to happen in September.

What can you tell us about your Sea Lion stories: "Shuffling the Deck", "For Want of a Paragraph" and "Zonen"?

They're three very different kinds of AH, which is why I chose them as my own contributions to our first wave. "For Want of a Paragraph" is probably the most accessible, at least in terms of style and form. Its subject matter is supremely geeky - the rulebook of the Labour Party and the slow downfall of Gordon Brown - but it is told as a traditional narrative, with viewpoint characters and so on. I recommend it to fans of The Thick Of It, The West Wing and House of Cards.

"Zonen" is written in the style of a long-form journalistic article, about a narrator travelling around present-day Denmark and Germany to learn about the Danish Zone of Occupation in post-war Germany. It's a more personal tale than anything I've written before, and was really an attempt to explore how a potentially big change can lead to very few major changes over the years in the history books - but still big impacts on individual people's lives.

"Shuffling the Deck" is simultaneously the geekiest and the most light-hearted of my three currently available works. I co-wrote it with Jack Tindale based on a premise of re-ordering Britain's post-1945 Prime Ministers. Their reputations are also altered as a result, so we end up with Anthony Eden becoming the hero who won WWII, Ted Heath dominating 1980s politics and reshaping the economy, and Harold Macmillan remembered as bumbling do-nothing. It's very much aimed at political geeks and people who like the more 'parlour game' aspects of alternate history, but it does also make some interesting observations about circumstances being more important to historical events than the great man theory.

Any other upcoming stories that will be published under the Sea Lion label soon?

At time of writing, we're about to publish Andy Cooke's "The Fourth Lectern" and "The Fifth Lectern". These explore a very different British political scene from 2010 onwards. You can find them on our website already.

In our next wave of books, in September like I said, we'll be publishing at least half a dozen. There's a couple more by me, including "Meet The New Boss", which explores a Soviet satellite Britain. I'm very excited to revisit that one during the editing process. There's also two more from Ed Thomas, author of the tremendously popular Fight And Be Right. His works "A Greater Britain" and "The Bloody Man" (which we're splitting into volumes) are part of the second phase. Jack Tindale's "La Isla Blanca", in which the Spanish Armada annexes the Isle of Wight, is coming too.

As for new authors, we've got Steven Digena's "Bombard The Headquarters!", a novella about Lin Biao successfully assassinating Mao in 1971. Other far eastern work we've got in phase two includes the first volume of Paul Hynes' Decisive Darkness series, in which Japan doesn't surrender in 1945, and we have another very exciting major project about China in the pipeline.

We're also going to publish a collection of short vignettes, tentatively titled Ten Prime Ministers Britain Never Had. These will be by various authors, old and new, and have been selected for their inventiveness, imagination, and entertainment value. We think this will be a popular work with our more mainstream audience.

Our website is updated regularly, and we have a 'coming soon' page there - I recommend bookmarking it!

Sea Lion Press appears to be very British-centric with its alternate history library. Is this intentional or do you plan to expand into other areas of history?

The name 'Sea Lion Press' and our first wave of titles are deliberate choices, made to attract attention in the British book market, where there is a small but growing alternate history genre reaching mainstream consciousness. From an artistic perspective, this decision is also in part because of the 'British renaissance' of timelines on AH.com in the last few years: there have been a lot of British political TLs written, and many of them are the kind of well-written timeline that made me think 'these really are worth publishing for a wider audience'. There's also the simple fact that I and many of our authors so far are British ourselves, and so we have written about what we know.

However, we are by no means going to stay solely British (indeed, we've already published books about Russia and Denmark). As I said above we have books about China and Japan coming up, as well as some American work. Other timelines we plan to publish in the near future are global in their scale, featuring dozens of countries. Alternate history is an international topic, and we are taking deliberate steps to include something of interest to everyone, be they a Sinophile, a Westminster geek, or a lover of Latin America.

Are you working on any new projects at the moment?

Alongside my regular writing partner Jack Tindale, I am currently working towards finishing "The UK Presidential Election", a novella set on an election night in a British republic. And before you ask, yes, the country is still called the United Kingdom. You'll have to read it to find out why! That should be finished in a month or so. I have some silly shorts planned after that, but for now my focus is mainly on getting Sea Lion Press up and running. And of course, Jack and I are steadily rewriting "Agent Lavender", our AH 1970s spy thriller, and getting it ready for publication.

What are you reading right now?

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, and Dominic Sandbrook's White Heat, a history of Britain in the 1960s. The latter on Kindle, the former in dead tree format. They're very different, but both excellent.

Any advice for aspiring writers and publishers?

For writers: join a writing community. They can take many forms (web forums, real life meetings, college classes etc), but I found myself writing a lot more regularly and trying out new things once I began regularly posting on AH.com. It's incredibly useful to have an audience - and it is not hard to find one - that wants to read what you produce and is happy to provide feedback. I would also repeat the old adage of 'read, read, read'. It almost goes without saying that the more you read, the more your own writing style will mature.

As for publishers: just do it. I was astounded by how easy it was to get Sea Lion Press off the ground. If you're the kind of person who can see a project through, you will be able to put together something like this. Find a genre you're passionate about, build relationships with people who are writing that kind of thing, and just do it. Set up a website, come up with some house styles, find a friend who can handle the graphic design and you'll be up and running in no time.

Interview: Christopher M. Cevasco

As my research on alternate history fandom continued, one name kept cropping up in my searches: Christopher M. Cevasco. Chris was the editor of Paradox, a magazine for historical themed fiction, including alternate history. Thinking it would be remiss not to talk to Chris, I shot him an email and here is what I learned:

Who is Christopher M. Cevasco?

I’m a writer, primarily of historical fiction. The vast majority of what I write is set in late Anglo-Saxon England, but I've also written about Roman Britain, the American Civil War, the 14th-century Black Death, Viking-Era Orkney, and a variety of other times and places. I've also written some fantasy and science fiction. Most of what I write tends to be rather dark in tone. I've had stories published in such venues as Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and the Prime Books anthologies Shades of Blue and Gray: Ghosts of the Civil War and Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages.

What got you interested in alternate history?

I've been a big history buff for as long as I can remember--since childhood--and I think it’s only natural that we ask ourselves how history might have turned out differently. I’m not sure that there’s any one moment or experience I can point to that sparked my interest in alternate history. But the more I started to realize how even seemingly tiny changes in the way historical events played out could have resulted in vastly different timelines, the more my interest in alternate history grew. I’m sure the fact that I look at history through a writer’s eyes helped stoke this fire, but even among purely scholarly historians, there is a long tradition of posing counterfactuals as a way of deepening our understanding of why and how history played out the way it did.

What was Paradox: The Magazine of Historical and Speculative Fiction?

Paradox was a print magazine that published original short historical fiction in all its forms. This included mainstream historical fiction as well as works of alternate history, historical mysteries, historical fantasy and horror, time travel, Arthurian tales and retold myths. The magazine also featured historically-themed poetry, reviews of historical novels and films, and interviews with notable historical novelists. I launched the magazine in 2003 and published thirteen issues through 2009. During that time, two stories published in Paradox were finalists for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, one story was recommended for a Nebula Award, and one story won the 2008 WSFA Small Press Award, presented annually by the Washington Science Fiction Association.

What inspired you to create Paradox?

My primary motivation was a perception that there was a gap in the short fiction market. As I mentioned, I myself write mostly historically-themed fiction, and the more purely historical a story I wrote, the harder it was to find markets for it; often even my historical fantasy work came back with a rejection letter indicating that the story was just a little too heavy on the history for the magazine's target audience. If I was experiencing this problem, I figured other writers were too, and that's when I started thinking about creating a magazine to cater to those writers.  I also hoped it would generate interest among readers who enjoy those types of stories. Historical novels abound, but back in 2003, there was no print magazine exclusively dedicated to short historical fiction. The Historical Novel Society was publishing Solander biannually with a single story in each issue, and magazines such as F&SF, Asimov's, Realms of Fantasy, etc. occasionally featured alternate history, historical fantasy, or time travel stories. But Paradox provided the only magazine to which fans of these types of stories could turn for a regularly occurring fix.

Did you receive many alternate history submissions to Paradox?

As far as I recall, I used to receive about a hundred submissions per month, and perhaps 20% of them were alternate history.

Why did Paradox stop being published?

I suppose the reason was twofold. One factor was certainly financial; it was becoming increasingly economically unviable to publish a print magazine. I also decided that the magazine was taking too much time away from my own writing, and it was time for me to focus more on that.

Will we ever see Paradox again?

I certainly remain open to the possibility. Paradox was always, foremost, a labor of love, and the decision to end its run was not an easy decision to make. If I do decide to revive it, though, it would almost certainly be as an online magazine rather than a print one.

What are you reading now?

I just finished reading Nicola Griffith’s wonderful novel, Hild, set in seventh-century Britain; I loved the book’s leisurely pace and the depth with which it brings its historical setting to life. I was particularly struck by how central a role the natural world played in the book.  Nature is something that would certainly have featured more prominently in the lives of men and women living in a pre-industrial age but it’s a factor that is often neglected or underutilized in fiction. Now I’m reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, something I've wanted to read for years but never have. I’m enjoying it immensely--it’s dark and funny and filled with so many memorable turns of phrase.

Do you have any current projects you want to talk about?

My current project is a sort of political thriller/murder mystery set in late 10th-century England. For now I’m still in the research and outlining stage, but the book is likely to involve the slaying of Edward the Martyr, the politics of the reign of Aethelred “the Unready”, and the Battle of Maldon. The last two books I wrote were set in the 11th century--one a psychological thriller that explores the legend of Lady Godiva and the other a tale of resistance and rebellion in the years immediately following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Before that, I wrote the first book in a planned alternate history trilogy that posits a different outcome for the events of 1066, one in which Harald Hardrada of Norway comes out on top over both Harold Godwineson and Duke William of Normandy. For now I’ve put that trilogy on the back burner, but I definitely plan to return to it at some point. I’m currently shopping these books around to agents.

I am currently an attorney as were you, what was it like ditching the legal world to be a full-time writer?

It was the best decision I could have made, and I haven’t regretted it for a moment. I was a criminal appeals attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County New York for ten years.  There were aspects of my work I found very rewarding, and I was working with some amazingly talented and dedicated colleagues, but by the end of that decade, I had become very disillusioned with the entire legal profession, and it was time to make a change. I was always more a writer at heart, so all I was really doing was setting myself more firmly on the path I should have been following all along.

Do you have any advice for would be publishers?

I could put my advice in the form of a joke someone once told me... Q: How do you make a small fortune in publishing? A: Start with a large fortune.  But all kidding aside, anyone who’s thinking of starting a publishing venture--specifically a magazine publishing venture, as I did--should disabuse themselves of any notion that it’s going to be a profit-making endeavor. Breaking even, financially, is a more realistic measure of success, and any profit is just icing on the cake. Perhaps the situation is less stark for an online magazine, with which I don’t have direct experience, but for print... such an undertaking has to be a labor of love, first and foremost.