-
Wait. Are you telling me Jesus was a dragon?
So. I’m editing. After talking with Kate at Candlemark & Gleam on a few plot issues, we agreed that expanding Pilgrim of the Sky in a few places is definitely the way to go. Initially my goal was to write an 80,000 word novel. For some weird reason in 2008, when the book was written, I was under the opinion that this was What I Needed to Do. Keep in mind that the second draft of The Aldersgate was a whopping 160,000, and you can probably see that my intentions were well-founded. However. To get the book to where I want it to be for publication I need to add…
-
I have an announcement…
Today is September 22nd, which happens to be the birthday of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, give or take. And while this day is perfect for gorging on cheese and mushrooms, taking walks in the park among the trees, and starting adventures, it’s also a good one for announcements (or so I’d like to think). No. I am not disappearing. I have no magic rings, and even if I did own one, I’d probably have lost it by now or else left you entirely. I’m far too much of a Took to let a ring sit in an envelope for years. The announcement is this: I have sold my first 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…
-
Picture yourself on a boat on a river…
I’m not terribly with it at the moment, but things are improving. Quite obviously I made it through the surgery, and after reacting horrifically to the anesthesia (I think I was actually throwing up before I woke up) I went home. For the time being I’m staying with my parents, and trying to rest. Really most of my day revolves around sleep. But hey, the body heals best in that state, so there you go. Right now it’s a matter of mitigating pain, which is, at times, pretty astonishingly intense. Yay for drugs. Other than that, I’m trying to catch up on some movies I haven’t seen in a while,…
-
Take a load off, Fannie.
I’ve gone back and forth whether or not to post about this at length, considering it’s a personal issue. But at this point I figure there’s no harm being candid, and I don’t want people thinking there’s something terminal going on with me. Plus, I figured if you’ve me me or seen most pictures of me, you’d probably figure this out sooner or later. In short, I was really looking forward to 2010 since 2009 really sucked. I mean, my sister had cancer and we lost our house that year. I figured there was nowhere to go but up. But things didn’t go so well. I mentioned being diagnosed with…
-
Weird Tales Uncanny Beauty Issue
I’ve been waiting to talk about this until it was official but, hey, look: official! And awesome. I had the privilege of coming up with a project together with Brigid Ashwood, a brilliant artist and fellow lover of speculative fiction. The piece in the upcoming issue is entitled “The Wakened Image” and it’s a look at some of the “made” women in mythology, taken from the Mabinogion and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Brigid helped me brainstorm the subject, and then I wrote a three-part poem in blank verse; Brigid provided some astonishingly beautiful pictures to accompany the text. The issue isn’t available yet, but soon. I’ll keep you posted. I am so…
-
The Great Inbetween
Oh hai. Yes, I have a blog. Sometimes I write in it. Right now for instance. Yeah, been busy. BUSY. Busy with stuff I can’t yet share with the world; some writing related (in the speculative sense), some blogging related. All busy related. So far, there hasn’t been time for much new writing. I have yet to catch novel fever on any one idea, but do have some projects I am trying to work on, anyway. Even if they are being difficult. I’ve had a few ideas that I’d like to pursue, but at the moment I’m sitting on a half dozen novels and feel, rightly so I think, that…
-
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,…
-
Draft One, Deeper Into the Murk
So, no longer Draft Zero, eh, Indigo & Ink? This is where things get interesting. I’m not one of those people who can let a book draft sit for terribly long. Okay, wait, no. That’s a lie. I can let it sit plenty after I’ve edited the crap out of it, but otherwise it pokes at my consciousness for days until I fix what needs fixing. We can’t always be as disciplined as Stephen King, and if we all wrote the same the world would be boring (or… something?). When I finished Indigo & Ink, I was in the zone, so I decided to keep going. The draft, at one…
-
NASFiC Schedule!
I’m a panelist at NASFiC, here in Raleigh, and I’ll be at the Bull Spec #2 launch party on Wednesday. In other words, I am painting the town squid ink black (as opposed to red, since it’s… more speculative? Um, I don’t know.) At any rate, if you are at ReConStruction, here’s where you can find me: GLB 008 – Is The Mainstream Ready for GLBT?- 08/05 @ 8:00pm MIS009j – Reading! Where I’ll Read Stuff Which Is Clearly Not the Actual Title – 08/06 3:00pm LIT 004 – Fantasy Environments – 08/06 5:00pm LIT 031 – The Worst Future You Can Imagine or Have Written About – 08/07 –…
-
Draft Zero? Oh Yes!
Indigo & Ink is officially moving from Scrivener to Pages. What does that mean? Why, draft zero has been achieved! So I ended up more than my original plan, but hey. That’s what drafts are for, right? Unexpected things happen. I thought at one point I might not even get to 90k. But this book, well, it’s got a mind of its own. Just like the Mother Squid. Anyway, this book has been very important for me to finish for a number of reasons. Things haven’t been great on a lot of fronts, but this story needed to be told. And I did it. In spite of the crap that’s…
-
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…
