Publication! "The Pearls That Were His Eyes" in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine

Greetings!

My short story "The Pearls That Were His Eyes" has been published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine issue #75! They are based in Australia, and there is no physical edition of the magazine, though the ebook is a pretty reasonable $4.95.

"The Pearls That Were His Eyes" is a weird story, I'm not gonna lie. It fits into the same witchy world as "Sugar and Spice" (reprinted this year in The Overcast) and "Be Careful What You Wish For" (available on my patreon and in HML Writers Volume 1) and opens with a witch making a contract with a non witch who knows that they exist but that's about the extent of it. But, he needs a door opened, and mundane means aren't getting the job done.

(contains a dog!)  (yes, he is fine)

It is thematically on point with all of my witch stories, which I actually did-and-didn't do on purpose. Like, every one of these stories has been about power and curiosity and hubris, and the choices that people make, but it isn't like I make an outline (hah) with these bullet points (hah) to make sure that I cover everything. It's just the nature of the beat I suppose.

So, I do hope you check it out, and I do hope you enjoy it!

ALSO, I have two forthcoming publications in September! "Fundamentals of Search and Rescue" will be in DreamForge magazine on September 1, and "One Hundred Years" will be in Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline on September 3, so preorder today!  (both contain dogs) (yes, the dogs are fine)

Strange Horizons annual fundraiser!

Strange Horizons is a very, very good online magazine that publishes scifi/fantasy/whatever short stories, poems, columns, and reviews. I've been reading them for years, and been submitting stories to them for years as well. No "yes" from them yet, but I have gotten some very good personal rejections from them as well, not just forms.

They've got 8 days and change left in the fundraiser, and are at about $7500 out of their baseline $15,000 goal. It would be really great to see them reach it! They've got some great things they want to do, like publish stories in translation, do interactive stories, that kind of thing.

If you haven't checked them out, go. Do so. Here are some things I've really liked recently that they've published:

Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor, by Ada Hoffman

The Beef, by J.D. Moyer

Noise Pollution, by Alison Wilgus

little stomach, by Charlotte Geater


You can donate to them via Network for Good, PayPal, subscribe to them via Patreon, or even send in a physical payment.  Strange Horizons is a 501 (c) (3) not for profit organization and so in the United States, donations are tax deductible.

August 2016 goals roundup

I finished my August Story early this month, so I blog early this month.

I really should blog more than once a month. You think? I think. Here's my best Elka picture to make up for it

 

My second acceptance! Mosaics 2 (A Collection of Independent Women)

Well, ladies and gents, I've gotten my second story acceptance!

My fantasy short story, "The Lion and the Dragonslayer", will be in Mosaics 2 (A Collection of Independent Women), released by DayDreams Dandelions Press. You can preorder it for Kindle here, and I'll update this post when the paper edition preorder is live as well.

Volume 1 is being released on March 8 (Kindle preorder here), which is International Women's Day. Proceeds not going to contributors and costs will be donated to the Pixel Project, which is a charity to end violence against women.

Both collections are fiction, non fiction, and poetry and contain (I think?) 10 contributors. They plan on doing a Volume 3 with stories, essays, etc. from allies, if volumes 1 and 2 break even.

If you'd like to help spread the word regarding the anthologies, they've set up a project on this thing called Thunderclap, which you can use to authorize your social media account (Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr) to post about once, on March 8.

Edited to add:  You can now order a paperback Mosaics: A Collection of Independent Women from Amazon. for $12.99. It's got one review already, hopefully more come rolling in!

Flash Fiction Finalist (or, Close But No Cigar)

I post every once in awhile about how I take part in Janet Reid's 100 word flash fiction contests. Well, after some stiff competition this summer, I still didn't win, but I was a finalist for the final one of the season.

Even though I haven't gotten mentioned a whole lot, I do try to enter each one of Ms. Reid's contests. Writing a story in 100 words, beginning-middle-end, is damn hard. It's a writing muscle challenge, to be sure.

The words to include were: remove, escape, away, lull, spare  (can use the word as part of a larger one)

And this is what I came up with:

When Becca was removed from her family and set up in our spare room, she was too old to be a kid and too young to be on her own. The only comfort she accepted was the lullaby of Grimalkin's burbling purr.

A person's ghosts are hard to get away from, but she was almost okay. Then the whispers started again. The knocking. Grimalkin hissed arched-back at empty corners, a tuxedo asterisk.

We labored over her escape plan, and there was no margin for error when we sent her off to prom, barred the doors, and set the fire.

May is going to be D&D month

The title says it all. See, somebody I'm Facebook friends with shared a post from Tumblr that had this picture in it....you get the idea.

Rather than post on Facebook, I figured I'd mine this for daily blog posts for a month, or 30 days of it anyway.

When I say D&D, I mean the spectrum of D20 based fantasy I've played, which spans from 3rd edition D&D, to 3.5, to Pathfinder, and now to 5th edition. Pathfinder was still "D&D", ish, as it was published using the D20 open gaming license.

 

But, I've talked a little bit about the characters I've played before, and thought answering these questions in blog form would be fun.

Also, it's funny that the die pictured is a 30 sided die, not 20; the only use I've ever seen for a D30 is a racing board game which was, I think, from France. I do not own a D30, nor do I aspire to. I wouldn't mind owning one of these rad metal D20's, though.

Just one more thing

I frequently have trouble going to bed. Want to do "just one more thing". Corollary, I'm sure, to the morning ritual of "five more minutes". I end up emailing or texting myself story or blog post ideas (like this one), dog groaning to sleep next to me, phone too close to my face in the dark because I've taken out my contacts.

I discovered, quite by accident, that while my phone has a miniature version of Word on it, there is no way to, using the Word app, send the file to myself. There is, however, a way to have my phone read it to me, which was startling to find out in the dark one evening. Text to voice programs tend to be fun, when one uses them voluntarily. Listening to the little robo voices can lend interesting perspective. And they are unforgiving if your sentences are crap.

Funny thing, though. In those dim days a few years back when Limewire was still legal, I got a copy of Ginsberg reading "Howl" at some university or another. It was amazing, because "Howl" is always amazing, but it was also interesting because he sounded somewhat like a text to voice program.  Obviously, there was a depth of feeling in Ginsberg's voice that I have yet to hear one of those canned voices replicate. I'm still wrapping my head around "Howl", even all these years later (though I can recite the beginning of it from memory), and I hesitate to declare what emotions I think those were necessarily. A certain defiance, but also a certain level of wistfulness. It's a unifying poem at times, particularly in the third part, with the "I'm with you in Rockland" refrain (which I've seen, on the Internet, make a neat tattoo).

The "I'm with you in Rockland" part makes me think of other...mental hospital? Sanitorium? poems. "Flee on your Donkey" and "The Music Swims Back to Me", both by Anne Sexton, both just as wistful. There's also a disarming level of frankness in Ginsberg's work, and Sexton's, that can at times make you check to see if anybody's watching you read. Or make you check to see if your fly is done or whatever.

Poetry, even if I don't like it so much, is so very naked at times. It lays you bare, past the clothing, flays you right down to the bone.Fiction, though I dearly love it and feel actually comfortable writing it, still leaves you a shirt at least. Most of the time. I think because it's longer it gives you time to catch your breath, adjust your mask.

This isn't to say there aren't fictional pieces like poetry. Sometimes the language a writer uses is just so. You savor it, rolling the words over in your mind like a smooth stone, or a new vintage at a wine tasting. You explore what they evoke. It's hard to maintain that paragraph after paragraph, page after page.

What is that called, anyway?

So, I got an email from CampNaNoWriMo that they're "cleaning out the cabins" or whatever in anticipation of the July session. I groaned a little, thinking a number of things. Isn't this camp motif being taken a bit too far? (I, being the antisocial person I am, opted out of cabins) Isn't July too soon? Do I really want to do this again?

Then I thought, well, I could write my memoir, but fictionalized. I don't mean with like, added superpowers or anything; just filling in blanks and telling a story that isn't entirely mine, but with some of my details. I've actually had people (well, my grandmother) tell me that I've had an interesting life. I dunno. It's my life. Obviously I'm enamored of it, but that's not necessarily a commercially reliable thing. I like a lot of things that were not commercially successful, like     and the movie Push (which you should watch if you haven't).

Then I thought, wait, what the hell is that called? It's not properly a memoir. Nor is it properly a novel. There's the "autobiographical novel", which sounds all well and literary, but not really waht I'm talking about. Here's a list of Top 10 Infamous Fake Memoirs, but it's really kind of boring and doesn't really get juicy until #8 (A Million Little Pieces which, working at a library, I saw some of the fallout of that "reveal". Including a woman in her 70's who slide it across the counter with a disgraced moue, saying "I am so disappointed." I then had to read it, of course. So, lady, disappointed? In what, that he wasn't actually a degenerate junkie scumbag? This is another one of those books I'm a bit shocked and perhaps appalled that my grandmother has read, like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and #9 (Love and Consequences, which I had never heard of before and sounds hilarious). I actually keep waiting to hear that Dave Pelzer actually made all of his shit up. People steal A Child Called It all of the time, and I'm unclear as to why. Pointers? Rolling papers? It certainly isn't "inspirational", though I suppose perhaps it's intended to be.

But, I digress.

I'm coming up with my own name for "fictionalized memoir" or "autobiographical novel". And that, my friends, is "moirvel". Say it with me. It's a bit like "marvel", which every life is, of course (*cue the rising music*). I wondered about novoir, which sounded like it should have to do with noir, which my writing only has when I wrote some short stories for my coworker. Memnov sounds like a Russian chess player or perhaps nuclear scientist (or both!)

Nope. Moirvel. I'll make the tshirts if you want 'em. 

Pennies from Heaven

Most people in creative fields have stock in inspiration. We're fond of that "ah-ha!" moment of epiphany, we carefully cradle our everyday creative spark, we pan for ideas the way  prospectors sought gold.

Of course, you can never predict when an idea might strike. Or how many ideas will strike in a given time period (or how few). You never know if a story thread will peter out or hit paydirt. You never know when your brilliant idea will be tarnished by the doubt of others. There are times for everybody, I'm sure, when they share a kernel of a thought that they're quite excited about with somebody, only to be diminished when they don't see that same joy in the other person's face.

I had a particularly rich vein of ideas when I was sick recently. I also frequently get them from dreams of the non-fevered variety. I get them from the news. I get them from some outside stimuli striking lightning in my brain stew. Or whatever. A muse? Maybe. I would have thought I'm too antisocial for one.

The point being, sometimes ideas seem like gifts.

I'm bad at writing thank you notes, but I wish I knew who to send this one to. 

Use of the word "That"

So, not only have I been remiss in blogging here, but I sort of dropped off the face of Absolute Write as well. That's all right, they probably don't miss me. Not because I've made myself a nuisance there; more because I haven't made a name for myself there yet either. No big.

But, one thing I keep in mind when I write, or think about writing or revising, is a thing that the Absolute Write-rs really try to hammer home when people are all "LOL, I have a first draft I just finished, will somebody read it for me?" is a very simple trick, really: look for instances in which you use the word "that". You can probably remove them safely, leaving the meanings of your sentences intact.

I'd never heard this before, and it boggled and intrigued me. I of course went to the anthology which I'm editing and hit "Find", and typed "that". Then I read every sentence which continued the word "that", and damn if they weren't right. Most of them, I could remove. Some I left intact, because really, that's how people talk. They say "that" all the time, sometimes twice in a row. I kind of like a colloquial voice, depending. It's once reason I enjoyed Stephen King for as long as I did, I think; the writing is very easy to read, which might draw you in.

I haven't tried counting the "that"s in published books I have laying around. I wonder if there will be fewer in fiction versus non fiction? Fewer in a classic versus a contemporary work? It's an interesting thing to have brought to your attention.