Sword & Sorceress returns!

I’m sure others of you remember this anthology series. I won’t go so far as to say it had a huge effect on me, but it certainly had one; among other things, I was vexed when I saw teenagers getting published in it, thereby highlighting my failure to become a Child Prodigy. (Alas, I didn’t write any non-crappy short stories until I was twenty.) Anyway, it’s good to see that it’s back.

But what to send, what to send? (The reading period doesn’t open until March, but I’m looking ahead.) “Stories should be of the type generally referred to as ‘sword and sorcery’ and must have a strong female protagonist whom the reader will care about.” Clear enough, but where do I go with that?

Well, for starters, it turns out I’ve got a dearth of female protagonists on hand at the moment. Of the fifteen stories I’ve got in circulation, four and a half meet that criterion. (The half is “Driftwood,” which splits pretty equally between two characters, the other of which is male.) So the initial list is:

• “The City’s Bones”
• “The Drowning Ships”
• “La Molejera”
• “A Mask of Flesh”

TCB is urban fantasy, therefore probably out. La M is one of my strongest candidates for the label “interstitial,” which puts it pretty far away from sword & sorcery. That leaves me with TDS, which is not one of my stronger stories, and AMoF, which might count as having “explicit sex,” depending on how explicit they mean.

Which leaves me with stories not yet in circulation. (I’m very glad, now, for that recent short story census.) “Sciatha Reborn” isn’t ready to see the light of day, though I could try to get it there. “On the Feast of the Firewife” isn’t s&s enough. “The Last Wendy” isn’t what they’re after. “Kingspeaker” could go, but it isn’t my best bet. The faerie trouble story, even if I knew what to do with it, also probably fails the s&s test. I could try to go with “Once a Goddess,” if I can figure it out . . . or with the one story I forgot to include in that list, “The Waking of Angantyr.”

Which is based on an Old Norse poem and has a strong female protagonist dragging up the ghost of her father and brothers so she can get revenge for their murders.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner — if I can get the story working, which it isn’t at present. akashiver gave me some good advice on it, but I foolishly didn’t make use of that advice while it was still fresh in my mind, so I’m not sure where I stand. But I’ll give it a shot, I think.

What about you all? Anybody else thinking of submitting?

Today has featured two e-mails to random strangers about research questions (for writing, not academic purposes). Climatology and contact information for a Spanish musician — we’ll see if either turns up results.

(Yes, I’m still trying with “Hijo de la luna.” A very helpful person pointed me at the Spanish poem that inspired Cano’s song, but having translated it, turns out it doesn’t contain the elements I’m basing my story on. I did, however, come up with a purportedly official website for Mecano that had some actual contact information [unlike Cano’s own site], so I’m making another attempt to find the man and ask him if I can story-ize his song. The site is even in English! Though I said in my e-mail that I can correspond in Spanish if necessary. As tough as that might be for me, I kind of want to, partly to continue validating my supposed proficiency in the language, and partly to not be a Stupid Monolingual American.)

(Okay, that parenthetical digression ended up longer than the supposed body of the post. Oh well.)

I don’t need another fairy-tale retelling with a side order of unspeakable horror. Not
when I’m already trying to market three other stories like that.

But even less do I need another fairy-tale retelling with a side order of unspeakable
horror that is stubbornly quitting on me two sentences short of the end.

What an appalling offense to archaic grammar. But that doesn’t stop me from titling the entry thusly.

I have on my desk a letter from Delia Sherman that would have me bouncing in happiness if it didn’t happen to reject “La Molejera” for Interfictions along the way. She and Dora Goss seem to have put a lot of effort into writing the rejection letters, which is above and beyond the call of duty for editors. So yay, but at the same time boo.

The reason given for the rejection, incidentally, was that it was too identifiably a genre story to fit the anthology. This confirms my suspicion that, provided they do manage to put out a second Interfictions antho, and provided I have not sold it by then, “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe” may be my best prospect with them. (Of course, this also requires the provision that I get off my ass and do something with that first draft. It won’t sell to anybody sitting on my hard drive.)

Once again, we have a demonstration of the maxim that one should think, not twice, but seven or eight times, before deciding not to send a particular story to a particular market. It is the editor’s job to reject it, not yours; certainly you should not send it if it’s explicitly against their guidelines (your dragon-and-unicorn story to Analog, frex), but if you just think it’s a matter of taste, send it anyway. Case in point: the story I wasn’t sure was even worth submitting anywhere (“Selection,” the second-person thingy, for those who critiqued it) got past the slush reader at F&SF and garnered a nice alas-o-gram from GVG.

So I guess it doesn’t suck half so much as I had feared. Cool. ^_^

“The Moon and the Son”

1,495 / 1,495 (100.0%)

Even shorter than I thought it might be, which is both good (it means I was able to finish it today, despite stalling out Thursday and doing nothing Friday) and bad (it’s really more the skeleton of the story than the story itself). But hey, it’s done, and first drafts are allowed to suck. I think I wanted to be writing something else, but nothing suggested itself, and I wasn’t about to start something new with only a day to complete it.

So. Four short stories in four weeks; good for me. “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe,” “Waiting for Beauty,” “Degrees of Heresy,” and “The Moon and the Son.” (Hmmm — maybe “A Heretic by Degrees,” instead. Still not settled on a title for that one.) I realized, looking back at my records, that I needed this challenge more than I thought; in the fourteen months or so prior to starting it, I’d written a whopping three stories. (Marketable things; I’m not counting two very brief bits written for games.) Sure, there was a novel in there, but what about the months that weren’t spent on the novel? What about the days when I could write both at once? Three stories is beyond pathetic.

I don’t feel up to Jay Lake’s standard of a short story every week, without fail, but then again, the man also wrote a novel at a speed that makes even The Vengeance of Trees, my seven-week novel, look lazy. On the other hand, I can do better than three stories a year. I think I might try keeping to a standard of one a month. I can manage that, right? I think that if I just sit down with Peter Pan for a while, I can write “The Last Wendy,” and then I really want to come up with a Changing Sea short story for Clash of Steel‘s pirate issue. (Certain individuals I know might want to take note of that, too.) We’ll see if I can manage it, but really, I ought to be able to.

Now, however, I shall take a break, and try not to start mentally revising something already.

Not a good idea to put off starting my fourth story until Thursday. It’s going to be a stretch, getting this one done in time.

And what is the story, you may ask? Is it “Kingspeaker,” as I said it might be? Or “The Unquiet Grave”? Or even, perhaps, “The Last Wendy,” which made a raid on my attention recently?

“The Moon and the Son”

611 / 4,000 (15.3%)

Of course not. That would make far too much sense.

Another low estimate for length; who knows if it’ll be at all accurate. I hope so, what with the late start and all. Not to mention that I’m going to have “Hijo de la Luna” on repeat the whole time; for the sake of me having any liking for that song by the time I’m done, I hope this doesn’t take long.

And then maybe I’ll write “The Last Wendy.” Not on a one-week deadline, mind you, especially as I have to read Peter Pan and let it compost first, but soon after. And maybe “Kingspeaker.” And “The Unquiet Grave.” Just because they got mugged by a baby-stealing celestial object doesn’t mean they don’t deserve some love, too.

“Degrees of Heresy”

6,128 / 6,128 (100.0%)

“Everything comes to an end someday. That’s what this place is for. But it doesn’t make the end hurt any less.”

Speaking of ends, the last couple of lines sort of fall flat, but hey — this is a first draft. I can always fix that later.

Three short stories in three weeks, and I finished this one well in advance of the wedding I’m going to tonight. Yay me! Now I just need to figure out what I’m doing for the fourth and final week. “Kingspeaker”? “The Unquiet Grave”? Nothing involving research, and bonus points if it isn’t over 6K like this one was. We’ll see what comes to mind.

“Degrees of Heresy”

4,601 / 6,000 (75.0%)

Wrote about 400 more yesterday after the sale, then another 900 so far today. I’ve had to revise my length estimate back upward to my old default of 6K; I fear it may prove even longer than that. Things still have to go horribly wrong for Qoress, and then he has to make his decision. The title got changed, too; I realized that it isn’t really a question of heresy. It’s a lot of such questions. And Qoress is going to have to decide what degrees of heresy he’s willing to accept.