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Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

recipe for banishing ick

I don’t do stomach bugs. No, really. The last time I had one like this, I was five or so. Ergo, being laid out flat today by such a thing is both deeply unpleasant and highly annoying, since it means no karate for me.

But! Nothing like some good news to perk me up a bit.

Mike Allen, the excellent gentleman behind Clockwork Phoenix and my story therein, “A Mask of Flesh,” has just purchased another story for Clockwork Phoenix 2!

This is “Once a Goddess,” which long-time readers of this journal have heard me mention before. It is the current (and hopefully future) champion of the “longest stretch from idea to draft” contest, as I came up with the seed for it in the summer of 2001, and only shoved it through to completion because I was bound and determined to submit it to the anthology this fall. But now it also holds the title for “shortest stretch from draft to sale” — in fact, it is the first story I have ever sold right out of the gate. So it took its own sweet time coming out of my head, but the result was worth the wait.

The opening line, as cited before in that “first line of unfinished stories” meme:

For eleven years Hathirekhmet was a goddess, and then they sent her home.

This story goes out to all the real-world girls who have been Kumari, and then had to find their way in life as ordinary women.

my brain = sieve!

I meant to post this on Thursday. That tells you something of the state of my brain. (Hey, at least it didn’t fall by the wayside straight into 2009 . . . which some other things in my inbox are in danger of doing.)

If you have not much time for reading, but you do have time for podcasts, check out Beneath Ceaseless Skies‘ audio department. You can download individual stories — including, oh, say, “Kingspeaker,” which went up on (you guessed it) Thursday — or subscribe to the RSS feed, or get updates via iTunes. Instructions for those methods are behind that first link.

Now I’m going to go put on some music. Because while it amuses me that my mental stereo put on the Hallelujah Chorus when my editor told me she liked the revisions I did on Ashes, I’d like something different now.

research query, especially for the Brits here

I know that properly doing this would require reading more than one book, but I’m trying not to fall down the research well, here.

If I were to read only one book to get a sense of the life a pretty and popular young woman (age circa 18-21) would have lived in late 1940s post-war London, what book should that be?

For my purposes, fiction would likely suffice as well as nonfiction. I’m looking for a sense of culture and society here, rather than specific facts.

another open letter

Dear Brain,

When I said I was going to work on short stories, I meant I was going to try and reduce the backlog of half-started ideas. That was not an open invitation to half-start something new.

Especially something that of all things in the world kind of resembles “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.”

Especially when that means I’ll go to bed with that song stuck in my head.

Cut it out, and go back to developing the sacrilicious idea. Even better, stop being so finicky about working on “Chrysalis.” STOP ADDING TO THE LIST.

Love and kisses,
Swan

I should have saved the egotism link for a little while longer, so I could pair it with this news: Rick Horton, editor of a Year’s Best antho series, is doing his year-end roundup of magazines, and in the post for IGMS he singles out “A Heretic by Degrees” as one of two stand-out short stories they published this year. Woot! Go, Driftwood, go!

linky

Three totally unrelated links make a post, right?

THE SELF-CENTERED LINK: a mini-essay about my story “A Heretic by Degrees.” Me musing about Driftwood and how I created it.

THE INTERNETS ARE FULL OF WEIRD LINK: since this is only photos, not video, it might be rigged, but the “action shots” make it look pretty real. Paintings created by an elephant. And here I thought creating art was the last bastion of “things humans do that other animals don’t” . . . .

THE ARMING FOR INTERNET SLAPFIGHTS LINK: might be of particular interest to jaylake. Pursuant to a discussion elsewhere, regarding whether the Mumbai attacks would have been stopped faster if India had an armed civilian populace, the abstract for an article on American gun ownership. Money quote: “For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.” That’s twenty-two injuries or deaths for every one incident of defense. Mind you, that doesn’t factor in possible cases where the gun acted as a successful deterrent without anyone being hurt, but I rather doubt there are twenty instances of that for every one of the other. I wouldn’t say I want to see guns completely outlawed in the U.S., but these numbers make a good counter-argument to the “but I need to defend my home from burglars!” justification, as well as the “an armed society is a civil society” idiocy you get from some corners.

pronoun update

Tied for first in the poll are “they” and “yehuatl,” which I find interesting. “Sie” is in second place. But I think the winner will be a candidate not in the original poll: aliettedb‘s fabulous suggestion of “ome,” which is the Nahuatl word for “two.” This is both short and easily pronounceable; also, it carries a benefit for my hindbrain, which is that it evokes Ometeotl, the (mostly abstract) Aztec deity of duality. Since I already had it in mind to port Ometeotl into the setting as the patron deity of the xera — particularly those xera in this character’s condition — that looks like a win all around.

And I think I even have a name. Cenquiztli may not be the world’s most user-friendly set of phonemes, but phonetic friendliness has never been a real priority in this setting. (One of the reasons I doubt I will ever write a novel there. I rarely even bother telling anybody the setting is called Xochitlicacan.)

So my thanks to Aliette, and to all of you who pitched in on the problem. Now I go back to renaming Matzoloa, and trying to figure out where I got vay zodtz from in the first place.

pronoun problems

Finishing “Once a Goddess” reminds me of the great appeal of short story writing: instant gratification. Instant from the point of view of novel-writing, anyway; I cranked out the bulk of that story in a single evening, and it’s a rare story that requires more than three days of me sitting down and adding words to it. So I’m going to see if I can’t finish two more before the end of the year.

One is the sacrilicious story, provisionally titled “The Gospel of Nachash.” I figure I’ll save that for closer to Christmas. ^_~ I need to figure out a name for one of the characters, and then I need to figure out what happens to him; everything around that is more or less in place.

With that one on the second burner, the immediate project is “Chrysalis.” And here, gentle readers, I need your help.

See, to make the structure work, I’m pretty sure I need an additional character at the midpoint of the story. I know who that character is; what I don’t know is what to call him/her/it/them. Said entity is a character perfectly balanced between male and female — which might mean perfectly androgynous or perfectly hermaphroditic, I’m not sure which. Anyway, this being English, where we’ve jettisoned grammatical gender pretty much everywhere except our pronouns, I’m not sure which one to use.

My preferred gender-neutral default in speech is singular “they,” which has been in use for centuries and has the advantage of being a solution people actually use. But in a story situation like this, it can leave the reader thinking I mean more than one person, and generally undermines the sense of unity I want the character to have. “It” would work if I decide on androgyny, but I’m not sure I like the way that renders an individual into an object. (There’s a reason I had the witches call a doppelganger “it” instead of “she.”) Beyond that, I’m looking at a bunch of neologisms like “sie,” all of which I fear would kick the reader out of the fantasy-Mesoamerican setting and into the twenty-first century. My final option — thanks to Wikipedia — is to go the other direction and dig in the dusty corners of English past, which gives me three possibilities: “heo,” which was replaced by “she” because it started to sound too much like “he;” and “ou” and “a,” both of which were used in Middle English. (Is the latter what we see when Ophelia sings “And will ‘a not come again?”)

Or I could use the Nahuatl third-person pronoun yehwatl. Or the K’iche Mayan are. (Sorry, had to repost the poll to add those.)

Anyway. I have options; I just don’t know which one I like. So we have a poll. Check all that you like, and feel free to present your case in the comments.

(Edited again to add: okay, it looks like “yehuatl” might be shortenable to “ye” or “yehua.” If I go with that option, I will very much need to consult with someone who knows Classical Nahuatl, since the way it handles pronouns is very alien to English, and I don’t trust myself to make up the appropriate substitutions without help. But if the length of that word is keeping you from voting for it, there may be shorter alternatives.)

along with that

Can anyone tell me how to make the Biblical Hebrew noun rwkb — transliterated in my source as “b@kowr” — into a plural? (Alternatively, tell me if Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have plurals.)

Edited to add: Okay, I suspect this word is more often transliterated as bekhor, which makes the plural either bekhorot (the form generally used when talking about the Passover slaughter) or bekhorim (if we’re talking classical Hebrew, which apparently flings around masculine and feminine plurals without much concern for the gender of the original noun). Interesting. This is what happens when it’s two a.m. the night before Thanksgiving: I wander off on impromptu lessons in Hebrew grammar.

Now I need a way to turn the feminine noun chereb into something that could pass for a man’s name.

yay redundancy!

The “Chrysalis” notes I know are scribbled on two or three small yellow sheets of notepad paper somewhere on my desk have never made it into electronic format (and therefore are not on my laptop), but it turns out enough of their content ended up in the notebook I have with me for me to at least get by. Which is to say, I know the character names.

This has led to me holing up in the guest bedroom with a handful of pocket change, trying to diagram the story’s weird structural tricks, and wishing I were in Britain because those tuppence coins sure would come in handy right now.

But I’m going to put that aside for a while and see what I think of “Once a Goddess,” now that I’ve slept on the ending and hopefully have some perspective.

first lines meme

With “Once a Goddess” finally moved from the “unfinished” folder to the “finished” one, it’s time for another roundup of story fragments.

[untitled fairy tale story]

“Two crowns says he doesn’t make it past the blackberries.”

[untitled quasi-superhero story]

They didn’t call John in until the bullets had finished flying, until everyone who was going to surrender had surrendered and everyone who was going to die had died.

“Chrysalis” [same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

The new ground of the milpa showed like a scar in the forest it had been torn from.

[untitled story, same setting as “Such as Dreams Are Made Of”]

By day their scales glitter in the sun, winding sinuously through the cities of the world.

“The Unquiet Grave” [ballad-based]

Fever took my love from me.

“How They Fall”

He runs as fast as he can, until his lungs feel like lava and the impact of each step jolts him to his skull, until he is blind with exhaustion and terrified hope, but still he is too late.

[untitled Driftwood story, same setting as “A Heretic by Degrees”]

Only idiots bother trying to make maps of Driftwood.

“Mad Maudlin” [ballad-based]

Peter found her slippers just inside the room.

“Ink, Like Blood” [same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

I’ve seen the look on your face, when your granny starts telling the old stories.

“Xie Meng Lu Goes on Pilgrimage”

Treasured wife — By now you will have heard the sorry tale of my disgrace at court.

[untitled Xochitlicacan story, same setting as “A Mask of Flesh”]

The tap of the workmen’s chisels was a distant, dreamlike thing to Tlacuilo’s ears, as if it came from another world.

[untitled Nine Lands story]

Having ink on your skin was an offense punishable by death.

[untitled Tam Lin story]

Faerie trouble never really goes away.

[untitled Driftwood story, same setting as “A Heretic by Degrees”]

Time’s one of the most untrustworthy and useless concepts in all of Driftwood.

“Even in Decline”

The boar charged along the forest floor, feet pounding out a furious beat, tusks slicing at the air.

[untitled JB story, ballad-based]

Let me tell a tale of my father’s kin, for his blood runs in me, and so to me falls this duty: to keep the knowledge, the past-thought, the shape of how it began, as my father gave it to me.

Aaaand I don’t appear to have any copies of “Prince of the Stone” here with me, so no snippet from that one.

That’s everything that has at least a bit written. Most of my titles, oddly enough, belong to stories I haven’t started; most of my started stories have no titles. Of them all, I think I’m the most motivated to play with “Chrysalis” — but the notes I have with me don’t include the character names, so that may be problematic. We’ll see. I know Konil, and I might be able to remember a few more. Or get by with placeholders.

Any preferences from the peanut gallery?

Brain!

That’s an excited cry of “brain!” — not a zombie mumble of “braaaaaains.”

The distinction is important. Those of you reading this who have written novels know whereof I speak; others may know it from similarly intensive mental endeavours. When you finish, it feels like a steamroller has come through and pasted every single potential thought into a pancake. It’s possible, sometimes, to get something done soon after, but mostly you turn into the next stage of Mr Earbrass.

Which is why it’s exciting that last night I finished a short story! And not just any short story: this is “Once a Goddess,” which probably holds the record for longest time spent sitting around refusing to turn from an idea into a proper story. There are four abortive drafts on my hard drive, not counting the one that got finished, and the earliest of them dates back to the summer of 2001 — which I know because the idea came from an article I read while indexing for Anthropological Literature.

Last night, I regrew enough brain to finish it. Yay me!

It’s nice for other reasons, too. I haven’t finished a short story since — Jesus. Just went to look at my notes, and that would be “Kingspeaker,” in March of last year. How’s that for pathetic? Sure, I’ve written three novels in the interim, and that’s not bad, but the other nice thing here is that “Once a Goddess” is secondary-world fantasy, which has been lacking in my life of late. I love writing the Onyx Court books and all, but it’s been a while since I scratched the worldbuilding itch.

Brain! It’s working again!

Maybe I’ll try finishing something else, too.

even more fiction

When it rains, it pours. But this time you get to listen to my fiction instead of reading it!

Yes, folks, it’s my very first story podcast. I’ve got two others on the way — Pseudopod will be doing “Shadows’ Bride,” and Beneath Ceaseless Skies has got “Kingspeaker” — but Podcastle hit the finish line first, with my exceedingly silly flash story “The Princess and the . . .”

I’ve been meaning to post about Escape Artists — the umbrella name for a trio of podcasts, dedicated to science fiction (Escape Pod), horror (Pseudopod), and fantasy (Podcastle). Of the three, I don’t generally listen to Pseudopod (since I’m not a big horror person, my sale to them notwithstanding), and my personal tastes generally mean that about half the Escape Pod stories are up my alley, but I adore Podcastle, and all three of them are very well done indeed. Ever since my trip to London last year, when traveling light meant I packed no leisure reading with me, I’ve become quite fond of being able to carry fiction around on my iPod. Short stories are perfect for sitting around in airports or on planes, since I don’t have to commit ten hours of my life to listening. If you’ve got an mp3 player and need to entertain yourself for half an hour or forty-five minutes, the Escape Artists productions are a good way to go.

This story, though, won’t eat up that much time. When I say it’s flash, I mean it; I don’t remember how many words “The Princess and the . . .” is, but the entire episode, including intro and outro, is about two minutes. You can subscribe to the podcast in the usual way, or download it from a link at the bottom of the story post over on their website. Enjoy!

(Having linked to this, now I’m afraid what kind of answers I’ll get on the comparison post . . . .)

it worked!

I don’t often link to short story reviews. For one thing, they’re a lot less common than novel reviews, and probably play a much smaller role in convincing people to go find the story in question.

But every so often, one pops up that says, yeah, you know that thing you were trying to do with your story? Bullseye.

At least for this reader. (Warning: spoilers for “Kingspeaker.”)

It’s nice to feel, every once in a while, that you’ve hit your target.

free fiction

Many of you are no doubt making one of two transitions: either you’re cautiously venturing back onto the Internet, having temporarily exiled yourself to avoid all the political talk, or you’re trying to fill the empty hours now that you no longer need to obsessively check all your favorite political websites. Either way, I have something for you!

The new online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just put up my short story “Kingspeaker.” This is a Nine Lands piece, and the brainchild of something I read about in one of my folklore classes — surprise!

BCS is publishing two pieces every two weeks; my companion this week is the first part of Charles Coleman Finlay and Rae Carson Finlay’s “The Crystal Stair,” which will continue in the next issue. You can also read David Levine’s “Sun Magic, Earth Magic,” Yoon Ha Lee’s “Architectural Constants,” and Chris Willrich’s amusing “The Sword of Loving Kindness,” likewise delivered in two parts. But wait, there’s more! “Architectural Constants” is also being podcasted, and “Kingspeaker” is slated for a later episode. So if you don’t have much time to read, but you do have time to listen, check those out on the website.

pre-recommendations

I went to bed last night with that conversation rolling around in my head; I woke up to discover that Abyss and Apex has decided to buy the most ridiculously-titled short story I have ever written, “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual.”

***

So, you all know I like doing recommendations for good books I’ve read lately. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time to read as I would like, which means that the recommendations lag way behind all the cool stuff I see coming out. To that end, I’m going to start putting up the occasional plug for books I think look cool and am putting on my own TBR list.

First up is Elizabeth Bear’s All the Windwracked Stars. It’s a steampunky cyberpunky post-Ragnarok Norse fantasy-type-thing, and the sample had my Norse-geeky self squirming in glee. It just came out this week, I believe, and while I don’t have my copy yet, that’s more attributable to the fact that I haven’t left the house than anything else.

The other pre-rec for now is Diana Pharaoh Francis’s The Black Ship, second (but mostly stand-alone) installment in her Crosspointe series. I confess to a bit of jealousy here; the setting resembles the Changing Sea, home to a sailing-fantasy novel I want to write someday. But jealousy also translates to interest, so here’s a brief interview with Diana:

(more…)

grrrr

Judging by my progress so far tonight, I have not yet found the hole that noveling buried my story mojo in.

That, or having to consult Panlexicon, the OED, or a Latin dictionary — worse case scenario, all three — every sentence or so is killing my forward progress.

Probably both.

I should just write the damn story and worry about the language later, but I hear blood vessels rupturing in all the prose-stylist writers of my acquaintance, at the thought that these two things are separable. Really, I should just write the damn story and give up on the stylistic experiment I’m trying to carry out . . . but where’s the fun in that?

Can anybody recommend a translation of Beowulf that sounds as much like the original as possible? I don’t want accessibility here; I want the linguistic knack I had back when I was translating pages of Old Norse every week, for making my English flow in different patterns. But my Norse is too rusty, and this is supposed to be Anglo-Saxon anyway. Any Anglo-Saxon text would work, I suppose; I just keep turning to Beowulf because it’s the only one I know.

close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and honorable mentions

I have not yet achieved my ambition of getting a story into a year’s best anthology, but “Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood” received an Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. It also got a nod in one of the introductions, during the discussion of On Spec. I had my fingers crossed for this one, I must admit; I love all my children equally, blah blah blah, but “Nine Sketches” is one of my favorites.

(It’s actually my second HM, though. “Shadows’ Bride” got one a couple of years ago — and I can’t remember if I mentioned this, but Pseudopod has picked up audio rights for it, so you’ll get a chance to hear it some day.)

Thanks to jimhines for letting me know I could search the HM list through Amazon, rather than having to get off my duff and go to the bookstore already. Yes, the post-novel ennui+cold continues, and I am a lazy slug.

And congrats to everyone else who got a nod! Share your good news here.