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Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

I’m back. (What’s left of me.)

So, I got married. And then I went to Vegas. (With a pause in there to teach two more days of class; I couldn’t just cancel a whole week.) Now I’m home.

Very, very glad to be home.

I’m trying to recover enough brain to deal with the backlog of e-mail that has built up over the last month or more. Most of the truly crucial stuff has been dealt with as it happened — I hope — but there’s a lot of non-crucial stuff owing. If any of that stuff involves you, Dear Readers, then please bear with me as I try to wade through it. Cerberus (my collection of three e-mail accounts) has grown a fine new set of teeth on all of its heads; dealing with those will take a little while.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying my return from the land of Flashing! Lights! and Brightly! Colored! Things! and did we mention the Obnoxious! Noises! The shows we saw (Penn & Teller, and Cirque du Soleil’s Kà and Mystere) were fabulous, but right about now, I’m taking deep pleasure in reading unmoving black text on a white page. And even writing a bit of my own; one of the flash vignettes that will make up the story “How They Fall” (if that ends up being its title) got scribbled down during my office hours today. I have hope this signals the return of my brain. It’s been missing for several weeks now; I’d love to see it again.

just great . . . .

They didn’t call John in until the bullets had finished flying, until everybody who was going to surrender had surrendered and everybody who was going to die had died. By that point, of course, she was long gone.

Oh, lordy. I do not need my hindbrain offering me story nuggets whose research requirements start with “telephone the FBI.”

good news, of a minor sort

In the first part of this year, I did a good job of writing new stories and getting fresh material out the door, but I should have foreseen that the novel would kind of destroy any prospect of keeping that up all year long, as I originally intended. Anyway, between the death of that plan, a coincidence of assorted delays at places I’ve sold stories to (meaning nothing’s actually appearing any time soon), and a general lack of sales in the last few months, I’ve had no short story news to report.

So, like a TV program broadcasting random “human interest” stories when news is slow, I’ll mention that “Kingspeaker,” one of this year’s accomplishments, has been passed along to the senior editors at Baen’s Universe. It now stands a still small but non-trivial chance of selling, which is cool.

And I’m not just saying that because they pay well, either. <g> I made an impulse decision to subscribe a month or so ago, said impulse being driven by reading the first part of Elizabeth Bear’s “Cryptic Coloration” and wanting to read the rest. (matociquala, I blame you. It was the vividness of Matthew’s description that hooked me in — that, and the subsequent classroom scene.) Anyway, I’m patchy about subscribing to things, because I have yet to find a magazine I like consistently enough to stick with for more than one subscription. Baen’s hasn’t hurdled that bar by any means; in fact, most of the SF I read for a scene or two and then gave up on. But the nice thing is, they publish a lot of both SF and F every issue, plus articles and the like, and don’t cost much at all relative to what you get; six bucks for an issue, thirty for a year, and every issue is about the length of a Robert Jordan novel, with far more happening in it.

I liked enough out of this current issue that I’d say it’s worth the price of a subscription. We’ll see what I think of future issues. But it would definitely be an awesome market to appear in.

back to the desert

After a long hiatus, I’m back to work on “Once a Goddess.”

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meterZokutou word meter
2,351 / 4,000
(58.0%)

As usual, the word count is estimated, but I think this one will be on the shorter side. (I’m hoping so, because if I keep it below 4K I can send it to Clarkesworld, which I think might be a good market for it.)

Can I finish it before the end of the month?

Certainly — if I can just figure out how it ends. I know where it’s going in general terms, but not what exactly that will mean on the page. There’s a big difference between saying your ending will be “they defeat Sauron,” and knowing they’re going to throw the Ring in a volcano.

a few more thoughts on technopeasantry

If you are not a writer, but you wish to celebrate International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, then may I suggest this? Post about a writer whose work you originally found unline and then subsequently searched out more, or an online magazine you particularly enjoy, or similarly related topics. You see, one of the big arguments against Dr. Hendrix’s conviction that we’re all stabbing our industry colleagues in the back is that by posting work online, we may well reach readers who would never have picked up an issue of Asimov’s or Realms of Fantasy, who may then go looking for more of our work, which may lead to them buying things that aren’t posted for free — in other words, that we’re trying to increase the size of our readership by doing these things. So if you’ve ever experienced that effect, tell us about it!

Also, since I was in a hurry to post about “Calling into Silence” this morning before going to class, I didn’t get a chance to expound on one of the things I said, namely my reluctance to post stories I haven’t already sold.

I want to talk about that more because on the surface, it seems like I’m saying such postings aren’t a good thing. Not what I mean, though. Partly it’s a matter of my current status: putting a sale to the Intergalactic Medicine Show on my cover letters does me a lot more good than saying I posted a story on my website would, and it’s true that sales breed more sales. So I’m trying to make as many sales as I can, not because I disapprove of offering work for free, but because I’m trying to build a base of credits for myself.

Having said that, I would post unsold stories . . . but all the ones I’d be interested in posting are currently under submission at a variety of markets. Had this been announced with more lead time, and they had come home in the interim, I might have kept them here, and today you would be reading an online version of my ludicrously-titled story “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual.” But according to papersky, “Today is Sant Jodi, when people in Catalonia give each other books and roses. It’s also Shakespeare’s birthday.” So today’s the day, and “Letter Found” is not at home, and I don’t want to irritate any editors by e-mailing them to ask they root through their slush and pull one of my stories out.

The other thing I might have posted was a Doppelganger novella that’s too bloody long to sell anywhere, but the thing needs substantial editing, and I didn’t have time to get it done by today. But I probably will at some point, and that will go up for free, and then we will see that every day is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day.

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

Remember the little ‘splosion I linked to a while back, where the vice president of SFWA called a bunch of people some highly insulting names for having posted their work for free on the Internet, claiming they were somehow stabbing the industry as a whole in the back by doing so? One of those names was “pixel-stained technopeasant wretch.” Because SF/F writers are a snarky bunch, and because a lot of us think Dr. Hendrix is wrong wrong wrongitty wrong about such things, Jo Walton (papersky) has adopted that phrase for the first-ever International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, i.e. today.

So today, you may read good stories all over the Internet, because many writers are answering her call to post works of professional-quality fiction on their websites for free.

My contribution? “Calling into Silence”, my Asimov Award story from a few years back. I chose to post that one for three reasons:

1) I can’t post stories I’m trying to sell if I actually want to sell them, which I admittedly do;
2) I don’t want to inflict on you guys stories I gave up trying to sell, or never tried to sell at all;
3) this story gives me a neat opportunity to mess around with font colors for effect. (I almost messed around with fonts, too, but the color adjustments ate enough of my time yesterday that we’ll leave it as it stands.)

I may post something else later today, too, but for now, that will do.

And if you want to read more pro-quality fiction posted in honor of this day, check out papersky‘s roundup over here.

well, drat.

Made it to the final cut for Sword & Sorceress, but not through it. I had so very much hoped to sell “Kingspeaker” on its first trip out the door — that would have rocked.

<woeful sigh>

I’m rather bummed about this one, I must admit. It’s easier to deal with rejections that aren’t near misses: you send the story, they don’t like it, you move on. Being told that they almost bought your story is spectacularly frustrating.

that whole resolution thing

At the beginning of the year, I set myself the challenge of writing a short story a month.

First off, I need to remind myself that I didn’t challenge myself to write a good, saleable story a month; sometimes one produces a clunker, after all. So I am hereby officially accepting the fact that I didn’t actually finish “Kingspeaker” until the beginning of March, and my February short story was “Schrodinger’s Crone.” Doesn’t matter that SC actually needs to be a poem; I wrote it first as a story, and if it’s a bad story, oh well.

Which is me telling myself that I can officially not kick myself over the fact that “Once a Goddess” (theoretically my March story) isn’t done. “Kingspeaker” was my March story. This is my April story.

But the real issue is on the horizon: Midnight Never Come. (And the wedding.) I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a short story a month while also writing a historical novel with lots of research. (And planning a wedding).

I might be able to, were it not for the fact that many of the short story ideas on hand also require research. “Hannibal of the Rockies” (which is technically on ice at the moment) requires me to know about elephants, Siam, the Civil War, and nineteenth-century mountaineering. “Mad Maudlin” needs research into mental health care. “The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots” might pass, since half of it’s the same research I’m doing for MNC anyway, but “Xie Meng Lu Goes on Pilgrimage” and all the subsequent stories I want to write for it require me to learn about imperial China, and what I presently know about imperial China would fit comfortably in a thimble. Etc. The stories that don’t need research mostly aren’t developed enough to be written yet.

I had a secondary goal for this year, though, which was to get a new story out the door each month. This isn’t the same thing as writing a good, saleable story a month because I have a small backlog of things I’ve written but not revised. So I think I’m revising my intentions: the submissions will be the real priority, and the writing will be something to aim for but not freak out if I fail to achieve it. I have two non-researchy things I can write in May and June, and then I can let myself slide in July, August, and September if I need to, picking myself back up in the fall, after the novel’s turned in and I’m officially hitched.

This sounds wise. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen. But ultimately, the point is to aim for it; any progress I make toward the goal(s) means I have more short story production than I’ve had in the last year or two, and that is a Good Thing.

Now I have it right.

With a nice bit of distance between me and the story, I finally went back to “Kingspeaker” and got it right. It is the story I thought it was; I just needed to put an omen here, chop out that bit of awkwardness there, and play around a bit with the horses.

I think it works now.

If the folks at Sword & Sorceress decide they don’t like “The Waking of Angantyr” (which is in their hands right now), then I’ll send them this. Otherwise, it will be off to F&SF in the nearish future. Either way, I’m happy.

Mind you, this doesn’t finish “Once a Goddess,” which is supposed to be done this month. I really ought to have made notes of the ideas that were in my head when I set it down a while ago, but I was distracted by other things. My bad, and now I’m paying for it. But I’ll get some dinner, and then see what I can do.

shiny

Today’s trip to Indy resulted (quite randomly) in the purchase of a lovely new fountain pen.

Now I have a burning desire to write something with it . . . but I don’t know what.

Maybe if I can settle on the tack I want to take with the Bluebeard story, I can write that. It ought to be short. All of my dark-and-twisted fairy-tale stories are pretty short, and this would be a good pen to write one with.

numbers to chew on

When the Sword & Sorceress antho call went out, I sat down to see how many stories I had around with female protagonists (as that’s one of the requirements). I was startled to find the answer was: not many. Which surprised me; I thought I wrote female characters on a regular basis.

So I sat down and did some counting. These numbers have changed some since the original count (story sales, new stories in circulation), but the pattern’s still there, and still interesting. (At least to me. Your mileage may vary. If so, skip this post.)

Number crunchiness ensues

Huh.

Maybe “Kingspeaker” is the GT story, after all. Since I just tried to revise it, taking those parts out, and they stubbornly migrated to other parts of the story, rewrote themselves, and generally burrowed in deeper. I’m not sure if it quite works yet, but now I believe it might eventually.

I think maybe I need to work out, for my own edification if no one else’s, the mythical backstory for how the kingspeaker thing got started. If I know that, I’ll know why this story needs to be the story it is apparently trying to be.

Um. Right. Enough with the vague babbling, methinks.

it’s back!

“Once a Goddess”

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meterZokutou word meter
1,266 / 4,000
(30.0%)

I celebrate the return of the Zokutou meter (which was down for a while) by showing the progress I made after last night’s post.

The 4000 total is just an estimate. I have the beginning of the story, now. I’m formulating the middle, and I’ve got a vague niggling that might turn out to be the end. This is farther than I’ve ever gotten with this story (remember, this is attempt #5), and I’m pretty sure it’s got the legs to make it to the end.

next!

Man, I miss the Zokutou word meter. I’ve embarked on my fifth attempt to write “Once a Goddess” and I’m 472 words in, but I don’t have a visual way to show it.

(Yes, I know there are other word meters. I don’t like them as much.)

Hey, if I do well enough with this story, do you think they’ll put me on the Nebula ballot like ksumnersmith?

Dude, how cool is it that a writer I know personally — not “hey, I’ve had conversations with her” but “hey, she’s about my age and we’ve been in an anthology together and shared a room at a con” — is on the freaking Nebula ballot? And not just on it; her story got the slot reserved for the Nebula jury’s hand-picked choice.

Go, Karina!!! When you’re a Big Name Author, I’ll be able to tell other people I once shared a migratory sun patch with you. 🙂

dangit

The irritating thing about having finished “Kingspeaker” is, now that I’ve done so, I think I might be wrong about what story it is. Originally it was supposed to be one of a set I’d love to publish as a collection someday, under the title Blood and Flowers. In shorthand terms (that won’t spoil the stories), I have the GR, FW, and BG stories for that set done, and this was supposed to be the GT story, which would give me one hemisphere of the set.

But then I finished it, and I thought maybe it ought to be the GR story. Which would be irritating, since I already have a GR story, but that one isn’t great, so I wouldn’t mind replacing it (except that I still only have three of the eight, then). The more I think about it, though, the less I’m sure that works. Maybe it isn’t a Blood and Flowers story at all. Which would be really irritating. Unfortunately, that seems more and more likely to me. (There’s a thematic link to the eight, and thematically, this one doesn’t seem to want to be a part of that. Mind you, it would explain why I had a hard time putting in there the thing that was supposed to be in there. It wasn’t supposed to be in there at all.)

So now I have a Sahasraran story that maybe doesn’t belong in Blood and Flowers — grand. And if it isn’t the GT story, then it could have been a political story instead of a military one, though I suppose a war never hurt any story’s chances on the market.

But we’ll let it sit for a bitsy and age before I make any radical decisions.

two months down

Fortified by a variety of over-the-counter drugs, I have mustered the energy to finish “Kingspeaker,” my required story for the month. (“Schroedinger’s Crone” is officially disbarred, on the grounds that we’re pretty sure it’s supposed to be a poem instead.) I still feel like I kind of had to shoehorn in that one thing, but hey, that’s what revision is for: to make the shoehorning look natural. Right?

4600 words for this draft, more than half of them written today. So it often goes, with short stories.

I think next month’s story will be “Once a Goddess,” after a fruitful discussion earlier this week. The thing’s been cooling its heels for nearly six years; high time it went somewhere.

odds and ends

First of all, Cat Rambo has done an interview with me over at Suite 101. She asks several nifty questions, both about my novels and my writing in general.

Also, Talebones #34 is available, containing “But Who Shall Lead the Dance? I haven’t had a chance yet to read the rest of the issue, but Talebones is good folks.

Regarding my default icon: the people have spoken. A custom icon leads the pack, but the Summer Queen is in second place with as many votes as all the other options got together. I will look into possibilities for something custom, and keep the Summer Queen until I find something I like better.

Finally, do please contribute to my recent post looking for suggested readings. I wish I had the time to assemble the list on my own by reading all the YBFH and YBSF anthologies out there, or the entire ouevre of the Hugo Award, but alas, I don’t. I need specific titles to choose from.

Schroedinger’s Story

Today in class I wrote something that may or may not be “Schroedinger’s Crone.” (Appropriate, no?) The reason for my uncertainty is that it’s 152 words long, and therefore consists entirely of “hey, look: idea.” I’m not sure if I want to try and come up with an actual plot to demonstrate the idea, or leave it as-is. My mistake may have been last night’s decision to observe the story, thus collapsing the wave form before I had come up with a plot.

Whether or not I count this as February’s story will depend on whether I can smack the second half of “Kingspeaker” into behaving itself.

two stories

Glorifying Terrorism, the anthology of political SF/F assembled in protest of a dumb British law, is officially out and about in the world as of today. It’s already netted a mention on Boing Boing, which constitutes some pretty awesome publicity. You can order it from the webpage above, though I’ll admit it’s on the expensive side if you’re an American like me (which would be most of the readers of this journal, I imagine). But my story “Execution Morning” is in it, and you want to read that, right?

It remains to be seen whether any of the UK authors involved in the anthology end up being prosecuted for it. They could be, in theory; that’s the point of the antho.

In much less politically provocative news, “A Thousand Souls” is live at Aberrant Dreams. You can read that one for free.

Man, this selling and publishing of stories is an addictive thing, ne? It’s only been a few days since my last sale, and already I’m jonesing for another. ^_^