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Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

point to Gardner Dozois

In the most recent issue of Locus (requiescas in pace, Charles Brown), Gardner Dozois reviewed Clockwork Phoenix 2 and had this to say about me:

[. . .] Marie Brennan’s “Once a Goddess” (sort of a fantasy version of Ian McDonald’s “The Little Goddess”) is also good [. . .]

Which I bring up because that made me go poking around online, which led me to discover that the aforementioned story is available full-text online. So of course I read it, and it turns out that Dozois is precisely right, perhaps even more than he realized; McDonald’s story is based on the same Nepalese religious tradition, the Kumari Devi, that inspired my own piece.

McDonald plays it closer to home: “A Little Goddess” takes place in near-future Nepal and India, whereas I ran off to a secondary world and an invented tradition only modeled on Kumari. Also, since he’s writing science fiction and I’m writing fantasy, we (unsurprisingly) have fundamentally different approaches to the divinity of the goddess’ avatar. But it was interesting for me to see the places where we intersect, the shared issues of life after divinity — blessings, marriage, and so on. And without giving spoilers, I’ll say that McDonald’s ending is the one I originally intended for “Once a Goddess,” before realizing that just wasn’t the kind of story mine wanted to be.

I definitely recommend his story. It was published June 2005 in Asimov’s, and nominated for a Hugo (in the novella category — it’s also a lot longer than mine). Follow that link above to read it on the magazine’s website, and if you’ve read my story, I’d be curious to know how you think the two compare.

minor neatness

The small neatness is that “A Mask of Flesh has apparently earned an Honorable Mention in the twenty-sixth Year’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. (I had no idea he also recced fantasy; that story is definitely not science-y in its speculation.)

The much bigger neatness is that I’m one of NINE Clockwork Phoenix authors so honored — which, for an anthology with eighteen stories in it, is a damned impressive success rate. Congrats not only to my fellow authors, but most especially to Mike, for putting together such a great volume!

(Now might be a good time to mention that you can buy the second volume in the series . . . or the first, if you haven’t already. I’ve got stories in both.)

One door closes; another one opens.

Sadly, it appears that Talebones is closing. When I sold them “The Snow-White Heart,” I hoped that meant the magazine would continue on, but Patrick Swenson has decided to call an end, after thirty-nine issues. I hope the plan to perpetuate it as anthologies works out, though; I’ve enjoyed my dealings with Patrick, and the anthology market appears to be reviving after years in a moribund state, so that may actually be a viable course of action.

Let me segue from that bad news to some good news that arrived while I was on the road, hence not posting it until now. You may recognize the name of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the biweekly online magazine that has brought you (among other things) my stories “Kingspeaker” and “Driftwood.” I’ve discussed them magazine before; they’re publishing good, strong narrative fantasy that happens to cover a broader range than usual of settings. In the nine months they’ve been running, I’ve seen Middle Eastern settings, African ones, Asian, Mesoamerican, frontier Western . . . Scott Andrews, the editor, has a real commitment to exactly the kind of experimentation I like.

I bring them up because Scott has recently completed arrangements for BCS to qualify as a non-profit, and that means he’s started seeking donations. (I don’t know for sure, but I think he was funding it out-of-pocket before.) He’s paying pro rates for a nice diversity of stories, both in print and podcast forms, and As You Know, Bob, the number of magazines doing that nowadays is shrinking steadily. I don’t know about you, but I want to see this one survive. It’s the only magazine I’ve ever encountered where I read every story (though not all of them work out for me), where I will in fact make the effort to go back and read issues I’ve missed, if I was busy or traveling when the new one(s) went live.

I can’t give it a stronger recommendation than that — without pretending it provides you with a free flying unicorn that shoots lasers and is a ninja whenever you read a story.

How much you donate, and on what schedule is up to you. You can give a lump sum now, or chip in fifty cents every time you read (or listen to) a story you like. Whatever. But check it out, and if you like what they’re doing, give a thought to supporting them. This isn’t charity; it’s a business model, and I hope it succeeds.

And that’s that

The last Deeds of Men winner has been chosen. Thanks to everyone who signed up for the newsletter — I’ll make it as interesting and news-ful as I can.

Don’t forget that you can still post comments or questions on the discussion thread (same goes for Midnight and Ashes, of course). And I do hope to have more Onyx Court short fiction for you guys in the future — not while I’m plugging away on this novel, probably, but maybe after it’s done I’ll get “And Blow Them at the Moon” or “Bow Street Runner” written.

But first, novel.

Deeds of Men giveaway

The plan is to give away one signed set of both Midnight Never Come and (in advance of publication) In Ashes Lie each week between now and the book release, and the first winner has been drawn. If you’ve already signed up, you’re still in the running; if you haven’t, head on over to the page for Deeds of Men and provide your e-mail address, and you too could get an early copy.

Open Book Thread: Deeds of Men

If you have any questions or comments about Deeds of Men, this is the place for them. No LJ account required to post.

It is obviously a Spoiler-Rich Zone for the novella, but may (depending on what people have to say) contain spoilers for Midnight Never Come as well.

IAL teaser: Deeds of Men

London, 1625. A young man lies dead in a Coldharbour alley. Before his death, he uncovered secrets that could threaten the mortal world above and the faerie world below. Now, to find the murderer and protect both realms, Sir Michael Deven will need the help of a man with reason to hate the fae of the Onyx Court — the victim’s own brother.

*** *** ***

In between the novels, there are other stories.

Deeds of Men is a free Onyx Court novella, taking place between Midnight Never Come and In Ashes Lie. You can download it from my website in your choice of formats (HTML, PDF, or ePub), or order a bound copy via AnthologyBuilder.

This is what I spent February working on, what I was researching Buckingham for, what I needed copy-edited in British style. You don’t need to have read either novel first (though it does contain some spoilers for Midnight), and you don’t need to read it to enjoy Ashes, but it covers some of the events between the two books, like a DVD extra. I hope to do more Onyx Court stories in the future, too: there’s lots of fun bits of history that fall outside the scope of my novels, and lots of chances to explore side characters.

(Confidential to matociquala — it has dead Spaniard in it just for you.)

In a little while I’ll post a Spoiler Zone thread for people to discuss the story or ask questions. In the meantime, enjoy!

FYI

The free stories I posted for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day are now all available on AnthologyBuilder. In fact, there’s enough of my fiction up there now that you theoretically could put together your very own collection of Marie Brennan stories, since the minimum for an antho purchase is 50 pages of material. But I recommend finding a couple of other authors you like and making a bigger book, since $14.95 is kind of a lot to pay for nine stories, several of which are flash.

I really like the idea of AnthologyBuilder, and I hope it succeeds. This strikes me as the ideal approach to making an author’s short fiction backlist available, without depending on bookstore support for a collection.

gngggh

There’s something exhausting about the type of revision that involves radically expanding your first draft. It’s like being on a treadmill: you run and run and don’t get anywhere. I’m four thousand words into a story that was four thousand words long, and I still have two thousand to go.

It’s a lot better now, mind you, and I’m enjoying parts of the process. But tiring. And I’m on a deadline, too, because I want to submit this to a place that’s about to close its reading period. Gngggh.

audio time!

If you have more time for listening to stories than reading them — or if you just want to know how all those random names in “Driftwood” are pronounced* — you can now download the podcast. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it myself yet, but I was fairly pleased with “Kingspeaker,” so I expect this one turned out equally well.

*You should see the e-mails between me and the editor on this topic. I answered several of his queries with “uh, good luck?” There’s a downside to making up foreign words that maybe aren’t even supposed to be pronounceable by human tongues.

A mixed wiktory

“Remembering Light”

Man, I finish this thing before game, only to find out game’s been canceled. Curse you, zunger! <shakes fist>

Oh well. Thanks to that deadline, I managed to get a fourth story completed before the end of April (if only just barely). It’s a flailing mess in places, because I kept changing my mind on certain details, like how Noirin’s world is falling apart and what exactly Last was trying to get out of all of this, but that is, as we say, what revision’s for.

I now have four Driftwood stories, of which two have been published; the other is a little flash piece that doesn’t mean much unless you’re already familiar with Driftwood, hence not something I’m every going to try to sell. But that’s enough for me to legitimately feel like this constitutes a set — especially once I find the time to revise this thing and get it on the market.

But right now, we’re going to go put something on the Magic Picture Box and drool on ourselves for a while. Because cramming three thousand words of this thing out of my head and onto the screen in a couple of hours has left me more than a little brain-dead.

Almost . . . there . . .

“Remembering Light”

Nearly 2K more on this story, as of this afternoon. Can I finish it before it’s time to go to game tonight? Ergo, before the end of the month? Let’s find out . . . .

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

Yes, folks, I’m doing it again. In fact, I’m doing it even more than in the past two years: I’ve decided to toss up, for free, on my website, all of my fiction published prior to the end of 2006.

Two things swayed me in this decision. One is the relative lack of value in the reprint rights. If anybody was going to put these in a Year’s Best anthology, they would have done so, well, years ago. I’m lazy about marketing the reprint rights to magazines, and (given the situation) my likely payoff on it is low anyway. And I’m not exactly at a point where anybody’s looking to put out a collection of my short fiction.

The other is that I’ve come across a couple of blog posts in the last year to the effect of, “here’s Marie Brennan’s website, she’s got some of her short fiction up there for free, and reading through it makes me want to buy her novels.” I gotta figure, that’s a good thing. And sure, that isn’t necessarily a reason to add more, but — see point #1 above.

So here you go, a (small) bonanza of my older stories:

The rest of the stories from that period are already available, either because I posted them in previous years, or because they’re still in the online archives of their respective magazines. The one exception is “White Shadow,” my first short story sale: since that’s in an anthology, I don’t feel I should post it with the rest.

Speaking of anthologies, though — I’ve submitted all of these pieces to AnthologyBuilder (which already has a couple of my stories), so as soon as those get processed, you should be able to have them printed in a POD collection of your own design. There isn’t quite enough yet to make an entire Marie Brennan collection, but it’s getting there. (Think of it like iTunes for stories, and you’ll have the general idea.)

For more technopeasantry, go here.

I might get this one done *before* the end of the month.

“Remembering Light”

I had about 700-800 of that already, from some work about a week ago; the rest is new. And this is, in fact, a new Driftwood story. I’m having fun riffing off the random idea I came up with for the world this one centers on, extrapolating the consequences of it. Yay for putting sunlight at the heart of a story.

Probably could finish this in two more days — possibly one — I just need to figure out how to steer the characters to the idea that got this story rolling in the first place. And decide whether I’m trying to stick that extra strand in there or not.

writing-ish things

Important one first: John Klima of Electric Velocipede is looking to move some stock and help out his finances to boot. Head on over there to see what’s on offer — back issues of EV, plus chapbooks. If you’re looking for my fiction, issue #13 is the one you want; that has “Selection,” which might very well be the oddest short story I’ve ever written. It also has Rachel Swirsky’s excellent “How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth,” which I suspect some of you would really dig. (If you perked up at the word “post-human,” then yes, I mean you.)

Sillier, but very true: a rant against Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. I’ve become more jaundiced about that book over time, so it’s good to see my jaundice backed up with some evidence.

And a distinct moment of oddity: someone on Amazon claims to be selling a copy of In Ashes Lie for the low, low price of $1,000 dollars. Yes, that’s a comma, not a decimal point (and yes, that’s American-style notation). No, I have no idea what’s up with that. Even if they’ve gotten ahold of an early copy, a thousand bucks??? WTF, mate.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled whatever you’ve been doing.