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Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

I am now free to say . . .

. . . that Mike Allen has picked up “The Gospel of Nachash” for Clockwork Phoenix 3.

In the beginning God made the world, and on the sixth day he made creatures in his image. Male and female he created them, and they were the bekhorim, to whom God gave dominion over every herb bearing seed, and every tree bearing fruit, to be in their care. Mankind he formed from dust, but the bekhorim were made from air, and their spirits were more subtle than that of man.

Old Testament + New Testament + Jewish midrashim + Secret Ingredient = this story. All done in the style of the King James Bible, no less. I don’t know if it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s up there, and I’m very glad Mike bought it; the minute I finished the draft, the Clockwork Phoenix series was the home I envisioned for it.

By the way, all the CP2 stories are available now in the SFWA forum; if you’re a member, you can read them there for Nebula consideration.

Nebula update

I didn’t realize the transition to the new Nebula rules means stuff published after July 1st of last year is still eligible, so my list also includes “Kingspeaker” and “A Heretic by Degrees.” (Possibly also “A Mask of Flesh,” but it’s right on the borderline, so I’m thinking no.) You can read or hear the first, and hear the second, in their entirety; details at those links.

on the topic of Nebulas

If you’re eligible to nominate for the Nebulas, you might be interested in an offer from Mike Allen, editor of Clockwork Phoenix 2: he’ll provide a PDF review copy to any SFWA member who wants to give the anthology a look. (Details about halfway through that entry.)

That antho, of course, has my story “Once a Goddess,” which has been getting some very pleasing attention in reviews. Other stories of mine out this year are:

Those first two and “Waking” are free to read in their entirety online; click through to find the links on their respective pages. Also, of course, I had a novel on the shelves this year.

Here endeth the obligatory Nebula-eligibility post.

Took the damn thing long enough.

I spent a stupidly long time wrestling with the last paragraphs of this bloody thing — write two grafs, delete one, write another, delete both, write one, delete it, replace it with the two previously deleted, wipe the first one out but leave the second, etc — before I finally hit something I was willing to hit “save” on.

But “Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing” is finally complete, at 3100 excessively difficult words. I suspect there’s some interesting theme buried in there, that I can try to unearth when I go back to revise, but for now, we’ll call that a draft.

Look! It’s, like, actual short story production!

1663 / 4000

I miss the Zokutou meter. <sniff>

If I weren’t getting sleepy, I might try to finish “Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing” (the story I blame mrissa for) tonight. But I’ve done more than 1300 already, and I suppose it’s just as well to spend a little extra time pondering just what Hel might say to Loki, especially while there’s a snake dripping venom on his face.

(Or more to the point, while there’s a snake dripping venom into the bowl above his face. Because Sigyn’s going to be sitting there during this whole conversation. And won’t that be interesting.)

But hey. It’s like I’m actually writing a short story or something. I’d forgotten what that feels like . . . .

State of the Swan

I don’t have to report for jury duty today — yay! So here’s an update on where I stand work-wise, in the wake of the India trip and A Star Shall Fall.

1) I do, of course, have to deal with copy-edits and page proofs for Star. Not sure yet when those will show up, though, so for the time being that work is in limbo.

2) Next after that one is the Victorian book. Due to the vagaries of my last few years, this, the fourth Onyx Court novel, will be the first one where I’ve had more than a month or two of lead time in which to do my research before I put words on the page. You have no idea how wonderful that feels. In order to give myself more time for the actual drafting, I plan to start that at the beginning of April, but that still leaves me five months for a leisurely, low-pressure campaign of prep reading. Look for various “help me o internets” posts as I figure out what I want to pick up first.

3) Writing full-time means I need to hold myself to a higher standard of productivity than I did while teaching or taking classes. Ergo, I’m also starting work on a pure spec project. For those not familiar with the term, writing “on spec,” i.e. “on speculation,” means you’re doing it on your own time, without a contract promising money when you’re done. This project, code-named TLT, is a just-for-me novel; if I don’t finish it, or if I do finish it and then decide it isn’t really for publication, then that’s okay. I’m doing it because I want to, because I think it’ll be fun. And “having fun” is an important part of this job, for the preservation of sanity. Anyway, the plan for this is to aim for 5K a week, with weekends off, and if I don’t make my goal then I won’t beat myself up over it.

4) I also have another sekrit projekt on the back burner, code-named FY. No wordcount goals for this one; I just want to play around with it and see what happens.

5) Short stories. I’m beginning to accept that short stories aren’t likely to happen while I’m drafting Onyx Court books, but the result is that my pipeline of stories has gotten fairly empty at every stage — very few upcoming publications, because very few sales, because very few submissions, because very few stories prepared, because very few stories awaiting revision. Between now and April, I’d like to make some progress in fixing that. The tentative goal is to finish both Edward’s untitled story and “Serpent, Wolf, and Half-Dead Thing” before the end of the month; we’ll see if I can manage it or not.

Now I head up to the city for errands and the Borderlands signing tonight. India pictures later — hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

idea: good, timing: less optimal

Dear Whoever Puts the Inspiration Juice Into the Shower Water,

I appreciate it — I really do. But couldn’t you have waited to give me the opening paragraph to that Onyx Court story until after I was done revising this Onyx Court NOVEL?

Love,
A writer who was trying to stay focused

***

On the bright side, now that I know this and “An Enquiry into the Causes” aren’t the same story, I can write this one without doing any particular research at all. I’ll have to look some details up, sure, but I’ve read the necessary books already.

It’s kind of refreshing, after Deeds of Men.

oh hey

It turns out today is the first anniversary of Beneath Ceaseless Skies — which I discovered when I, proud of the fact that I’d almost caught up with back issues, clicked onto their site and found not two but FOUR new stories awaiting me. Yes, folks, it’s a double issue, in celebration of their anniversary, and I’m busy enough between now and when I leave for India that I’m going to come back to find myself almost as far behind as I was before. Oh woe!

Also, it seems they’ve added e-book formats to the usual web publication and audio podcasting. So if you have an e-reader, you can download their content as a PDF or Mobipocket PRC file. Which is nice and convenient.

Anyway, congrats to editor Scott Andrews on making it through a full year, with great fiction every two weeks like clockwork. That’s a hell of an achievement, in the world of web magazines.

a few bits of linky

The Mermaid’s Madness is out! This is the sequel to The Stepsister Scheme, which was a fun, Charlie’s Angels-ish take on the world of fairy tales, with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White teaming up to save the kingdom. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the story go on, since I’m a big sucker for that kind of thing. But I’m not allowed to buy the book until I finish my own revisions (which I hope to do before I leave for India next week), so you all should go buy it now to make up for my own delay.

***

I posted a while back about Save the Dragons, a crowdfunded novel whose proceeds are going toward paying the quarantine costs for the author’s pets, a group of rescue cats and dogs he does not want to abandon when his family emigrates to Australia. That’s made good progress so far, but he needs to pull together the remaining money by Christmas, so if you can spare him a few bucks, please do.

***

Looks like the Dell Award has a spiffy new webpage! This was the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing back when I won it; the name has changed, but the mission has not. If you’re an undergraduate, or a recent graduate (i.e. you left college last spring), you’re eligible to submit short stories. If you’re neither of these, but you know some college-age SF/F short story writers, pass the word along. It’s a great award, and I would recommend it even if I hadn’t won.

***

A review of the second issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. In discussing “The Waking of Angantyr,” the reviewer says “A piece of heroic fantasy starring a woman is a nice surprise.” Even after twenty-some-odd Sword and Sorceress anthologies, heroines are still enough of a rarity in that subgenre that they’re worthy of comment. I bring this up because it would warm the cockles of my heart to see HFQ get a slew of good stories with female protagonists, so that we can take another little step towards a world where characters like Hervor aren’t unexpected.

a bit late, but whatever

It turns out October 1st was Support Our Zines Day. So it’s appropriate, I guess, that (all unknowing) I posted about “The Waking of Angantyr” going live at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and also about the return of the website for Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

In fact, it’s worth pointing out that I noticed the absence and return of the BCS site because I’d fallen behind on their stories. When I found myself with a little bit of spare time to read something, BCS was where I decided to spend that time. Unfortunately, the site was down, so I kept checking back until it returned. (And making sad faces in the meantime.)

Which made me realize that BCS is, hands down, my favorite magazine these days. Slipstreamy interstitial what-have-you is all well and good, but I loves me some secondary world fantasy, especially if it features a diversity of settings. I haven’t liked everything they’ve published, but they’re squarely in the mioddle of What I Want. So consider celebrating Support Our Zines Day a day late, and donating to BCS.

sale!

My Hel icon isn’t normally what I’d use for a story sale, being as how she’s not a very happy-looking goddess. But when the story in question is “The Waking of Angantyr,” based on an Old Norse poem of the same name, and the bastard child of my senior honors thesis on weapons in Viking Age Scandinavia . . . how could I use any icon but Hel?

So, yeah. “The Waking of Angantyr” has sold to the new magazine Heroic Fantasy Quarterly for (I think) their second issue. If berserker ghosts and cursed swords float your Viking longship, check it out when the story goes live.

short story meme

You know what? I think my short-story-producing brain needs a kick in the rump. So I’m going to meme for the first time in a while, with something I picked up by way of yhlee and mrissa.

Give me the title of a story I’ve never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got submitted to magazines, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I’d been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

(Incorporated Mris’ edit — the original phrasing had to do with “posting” stories, because it seems to have started among fanficcers. Also, as per Mris, I make no promises that these won’t turn into real stories. In fact, I’m kind of hoping they will.)

things I have a profound disagreement with

But before I get to the disagreeing: I’ve been so brain-deep in finishing A Star Shall Fall, I overlooked the fact that Podcastle’s audio of “A Heretic by Degrees” has gone live. So go, listen, enjoy.

***

Right, so, the disagreeing.

I find it interesting that Dean Wesley Smith begins this post with the assertion that “No writer is the same” — and then proceeds to make his point (on the topic of rewriting) with such vehemence and absolutism that it could easily be mistaken for divine, universal law. Which is a pity, because I think he has a good point to make; but the force behind it drives the point way deeper than I think it deserves to go, and as a result, people who find themselves disagreeing with the full version may miss the value of the reduced version.

I think he’s right that rewriting can hurt a story. It can polish the fire out, like focus-testing a product until it’s bland pablum that doesn’t offend anybody, but doesn’t interest them, either. Sometimes you get it right the first time.

But. He seems to be arguing (with the force of an evangelical preacher) that your critical brain will never be useful to you as a writer. This works because a particular rhetorical trick:

(more…)

more on free fiction

Reminder: you have until September 1st to toss your name into the hat to win a free magazine.

Since this has come up in e-mail, let me add that I’ll do what I can to match winners with appropriate magazines. If you already own one of those issues and have no need of a second copy, or there’s a story you reallyreallyreally want to read, let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate that as much as is feasible.

(Also — though no one has asked this directly — the thing you post doesn’t have to be gushing fansquee. You’re perfectly welcome to argue with my writing, too.)

Back to the salt mines I go.

Free fiction! Mine and other people’s.

One thing you get from being published in print magazines, that you don’t get from the online ones: author copies.

Sometimes, more than you need.

I’ve got a stack here of random magazine issues, each one of them with a story of mine in it, above and beyond the copies I’m keeping for posterity. I’d like to get rid of them, to good homes — but how to arrange that? With a contest, of course!

It consists of three easy steps:

1) Blog in some fashion about the Onyx Court series. It can cover any piece of the series: Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, Deeds of Men, one of the upcoming books. Your post can be anything you want: a review, historical nitpicking, speculation about what’s coming, fanfiction/fanart, pictures of your cat dressed in a homemade Invidiana costume — whatever.

2) E-mail me a link to your blog post. Send it to marie {dot} brennan {at} gmail {dot} com.

3) Profit! Or at least be entered for a chance to do so.

The items up for grabs are as follows:

That’s eleven potential winners, all told. You’ve got until September 1st to post something and notify me of it — which is plenty of time to sew that costume for your cat, so get cracking!

poll time! but not here.

Over on FFF, I’m polling people about side stories — pieces of short fiction an author writes that are connected to a novel series. (Like, say, Deeds of Men.) If you’ve got any experience with those, as a writer or a reader, go over and vote.

And feel free to spread this elsewhere, if your LJ readership is interested in this kind of thing. The more data, the merrier!