Category Archives: short stories

My October Projects*

Novel editing has taken a pause in order to attend to two anthology submissions I want to finish. The good news: finished one last night, edited it tonight, will submit in just a bit. It takes place in the world of The Aldersgate, featuring three familiar faces to those who follow such things: Sir Gawen, Sir Renmen, and Sir Din. It takes place ten years before the events in the book, and tells the story of how Sir Gawen–once known around the Continent for his prowess and crazy mad skull-crushing skills–gave up his cushy captainship and joined the Order of the Asp.

The second story is posing more of a challenge. I am setting it in 1920s, post-Revolution Mexico City. And it has a jazz singer in it, as well as a Zapatista woman. Details are a little murky. Hoping to tease that one out in the next few days. (Now that I’ve written this down, chances are when I start to write I’m going to end up in Zimbabwe or something entirely different than I planned.)

Additionally: it’s almost Halloween! And it’s my husband’s birthday this weekend. So, I’m in Betty Crocker mode. Tomorrow is going to be dedicated to the making of sugary things, the sewing of creepy and cool things, and the entertaining of the child whilst attempting order. I have some truly intriguing stuff planned, including a host of squid-themed cocktails (a Squid Blood Martini, anyone?), spider chocolate eggs, and oh yeah, a birthday cake for my husband. I’m debating whether or not I should go for geeky or sappy. I have one idea that would likely make him cry in front of his friends.

At any rate, writing will stall out this weekend most likely. But once this second story is done, I’ll be able to resume edits on Pilgrim of the Sky (at the moment, it’s entirely a re-write; I’ve decided that the end needs to be redone. For the better. Really, truly, it’s a good idea… and only about 50 pages or so… parts of it I’m keeping, but the… well, clearly this requires a post in and of itself, but that will have to wait!).

I should totally be in bed.

*October Project was also a delightful musical group. I have them to thank–and my friend Elijah who introduced me to their album–for finishing my first novel, Peter of Windbourne, the first time. I finished it two other times since then, but y’know… The characters in the book are inextricably related to their self-titled album; I can’t even listen to it without thinking of scenes from the book.

New Places to Read My Stuff

Well, I’ve been a bit behind on stuff in general, and while I’m not yet entirely lucid (one might argue that I rarely am…) I thought I’d share two bits of very cool news.

First, you can now find my short story “The Monastery of the Seven Hands” in an anthology of dystopian fiction edited by Jason Sizemore entitled Dark Futures at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com. Pretty nifty, eh? I’m a particular fan of that delightfully dystopian cover. The TOC is impressive to say the least, and I’m looking forward to reading all the pieces once I have my copy. Go forth, buy! I had this to say about the story when I announced the acceptance, and it still holds true: in a nutshell, the piece is about body-snatching monks in a dystopian future, living beneath a city called Abbassus. Very dark, very weird, and very fun to write.

Secondly, I just found out that my short story “Without a Light” is going to be in the first issue of the Brandon Bell/MBrane-SF new publication Fantastique Unfettered. Aside from having a very cool name, I really like the idea behind the magazine. In this day and age it’s wonderful to see new publications cropping up, especially those who really want to add something new to the genre. It’s especially nice that they are striving to pay pro rates, which you see less and less of these days.

And that’s the news from here. For now. :)

Homesick for fiction.

Having finished the draft of Indigo & Ink, which has occupied the last seven months of my life, I’m now feeling a bit down in the dumps. You know, I really miss writing the book. After that last edit, I had a sense of finality, and while it was very thrilling, in some ways it also left me feeling a bit empty. This probably explains why when my friend Karen mentioned she’d read some of the first chapter, I about fell out of my chair in excitement.

Yes, writers are weird. If you hadn’t figured that out yet, you just haven’t met enough of us.

Anyway, I haven’t stopped writing, but nothing’s had that zing since finishing Indigo & Ink. Though I did hit a milestone. I wrote a short story in a respectably short amount of time without freaking out and hating it–and then I actually submitted it. I’ve been writing about 1.5 short stories a year lately, which is pretty pathetic in all honesty. And I can whine all I want about it simply not being my medium, but in actuality I think short stories are a hell of a lot harder to do well than novels. For me, anyway. To develop a character in under 6,000 words terrifies me. Which probably explains why I wrote The God Who Played, aforementioned short story, in first person.

Regardless, I have some thinking to do about what to write and when to write and how to write and all. I have surgery coming up next month, and Dragon*Con before that, so tossing myself headfirst into a novel is probably not the brightest ideas.

But then again, when have I ever been one to listen to reason? ;)

The State of Things: Bull Spec Magazine

Today I had the pleasure of being on The State of Things, a show hosted by Frank Stasio on WUNC, along with Samuel Montgomery-Blinn (the editor of Bull Spec), John Kessel, Richard Dansky, and Paul Celmer. We talked a great deal about speculative fiction (with leanings toward science-fiction) and touched on steampunk, technology, the line between reality and fiction, women writing in the genre, and how the genre is changing. You can even hear a version of my short flash piece, “Sand” that was put together especially for the episode.

You can find the whole transcript here! Ah, the magic of the internet.

It was quite the experience–even though I’ve spent a lot of time behind a microphone, it was certainly a bit nerve-wracking. I’ve never been on live radio to speak about anything, let alone one of the things I’m most passionate about in the world (okay, wait, technically I was on the radio in high school to promote our production of Guys & Dolls, but I don’t consider that as, you know, a part of the whole writing career).

It’s great to have had this opportunity, and amusing to me that “Dr. Adderson’s Lens”–the story I talked a little about, and was reprinted in Bull Spec #1–has such legs! It was the first story I’d ever had accepted for publication, back the first time around, but it keeps cropping up. These things really do have lives of their own.

For the curious, I’m putting the text of “Sand” below.

SAND

Sand on rocks. Wind blowing. Sand sifting, swirling, making rivers of dust across the flat, red, rocks. Those smooth, hot rocks I made.

The wind, that’s Cass. Right now, she’s mad with me for making so many rocks. But it’s what I do. It’s all I do. I can’t help it.

So Cass makes wind; wind like daggers and chisels, wind that breaks down my rocks, hollows them out—turns the stone to sand.

Sometimes we make lovely things. Sculptures, rock-faces. But we always end up angry at each other, when one part doesn’t come out right, and we tear it down.

I don’t tell Cass this, but every time one of our sculptures fall, I love it. I love it like I love her. Just the same way, I think.

I can’t break her, though, even if I tried. I’m the builder, and she’s the breaker.

It’s what we do. It’s all we do. We can’t help it.

The Long and Short of It: A Cowardly Writer

I never started out writing short stories. Or even poems. In my mind, when I sat down to write at the ripe old age of twelve (spiral bound notebook and pen in hand) I was writing a frakking novel. It’s always been novels. Not to say that they’ve always been good novels, of course; simply, this is how my brain thinks. And that’s not surprising, really. I read more novels than anything else. I am a very choosy reader, but when a book takes hold of me I am in for the long haul. I know characters that have changed me for life; I have seen landscapes in print that I will recall to my dying day. Books are intimate journeys… they are friends, too. I write what I love and know. It’s not that surprising, right?

But it seems in this publishing profession, there’s an unwritten rule about getting short stories published. They can’t hurt, right? You write these pieces, you send them out, you mostly get rejections, but every now and again someone might actually pay you for the thirty some-odd hours you put into that work. Then, you can update your bio with said publication, and maybe even get into the SFWA!

This is my big problem: even though I’ve been writing for a very long time, I am still a short story newbie. Some of my short stories have taken longer to write from beginning to end than novels. (Yes, you read that correctly. The story “The Monastery of the Seven Hands” took over a year to write; Queen of None was drafted in six weeks, approximately, and edited in about a month. 4,000 words… vs. 85,000 words.)

I fret short stories. I fret and fret. I edit for hours upon hours. I rewrite. Then, I finally get them out the door and submitted and… yeah, then things get interesting.

When I first started seriously submitting short stories, I was on a roll. Most were accepted; those that were rejected were given lots of feedback. I felt very sure of myself. Then, I started getting rejections. Okay, I got three. Not a huge amount; far less than many people. But it was enough that, in the case of both of the stories involved, I just sort of stopped submitting. My assumption, however right or wrong that it may be, was that each particular story was just unpublishable. There was something so wrong, so innately off-kilter about the story that no one wanted it–and no one ever would want it.

So I put the stories to bed.

Then, inevitably, I opened up my “Submissions” folder, and these little stories looked back at me, questioningly… wondering, no doubt, what they ever did so wrong to deserve such treatment. So then I decided they needed to go back (from rejection to revisiting the Submission folder might take a month… maybe even more. I reason I’m simply too cowardly a writer to send it back immediately to another publication.) Back! Into the wide sea of submissions, that is!

But going back, man. That’s when the proverbial scat always hits the fan.

At this point, I’ve lost my faith in the piece. Everything looks wrong. The opening, the closing, the description; I poke holes in the plot, I roll my eyes at the dialogue. I don’t even know where to start editing. I wonder if I even wrote this story; or, perhaps, how much I had to drink when I did. One story I recently hacked in half. I literally cut it down by half the wordcount (assuming, somehow, that during that purge I’d omit the offending passages or something). But you know what? I still haven’t resubmitted that story. I’m still sitting on it.

DO NOT BE LIKE ME.

I suck.

No really. This is crazy. I realize this is totally crazy of me. I’m a writer, and I write short stories as well as novels. (Well, maybe not as well as, but in addition to?) I’m also a relative novice in the short story market–so the best thing I can do is try to place stories, and if they don’t place, write other ones.

(Note: I also need to stop taking so frigging long to write them, too.)

The difficulty of having been accepted so early on is that it puffed up my ego a bit. I don’t think I tried as hard with the stories that came after. Or maybe what I’m writing just isn’t hot right now. Or maybe they do suck as much as I fear.

Whateverseriouslyitdoesn’tmatter.

The point is that writers have hurtles. And rejection is part of the game. I didn’t think rejection bothered me, honestly. (I know, you’re probably laughing hysterically after reading this post, too!)  Sure, I didn’t cry. I didn’t write back angry letters to the editors who rejected me. But I did something worse: I stopped. I turned tail and ran.

I’m not going to do this any more. Just so you know.

Now where’s that liquid courage?