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Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

two days left

“A Question of Heresy”

3,322 /
5,000
(66.0%)

I may have to revise my length estimate upwards, as Last is only now planning Qoress’ trip for him. Serves me right for dropping my usual estimate from 6K to 5K.

If I ever get to publish a collection or chapbook of Driftwood stories, I’m going to have to revise them. It’s an unfortunate truth of the place that I can’t write a story in Driftwood without explaining Driftwood; even once I start selling these pieces, I won’t be able to assume that my readers are familiar with the ones already published. But in a collection, I’d have to snip out all the repeated information; otherwise it would get tedious.

Time to go pick up the laundry; then I write more. Ah, the scintillating life of a writer.

ick time

“A Question of Heresy”

That’ll do as a working title, and possibly a permanent one.

2,317 /
5,000
(46.0%)

Qoress is not happy that I made him drink someone else’s spit.

Got derailed for a good chunk of time this evening, but good progress on the whole; I did about 1800 words today. Dude whose name I still don’t like is onstage (it was his spit, but to be fair, he drank Qoress’ in return), and the moral dilemmas will come fast and thick now.

I’ve noticed a strong tendency to skip over things in this story. It’s a technique I’m still mastering, I think. Certainly there are virtues in describing intervening events, but those virtues are mostly native to the land of novels; in this case, I think it’s a good course of action to skip them. Mind you, we’ll see what my readers think when this story is done. Might be I’m wrong. It’s happened before. (And it was called “On the Feast of the Firewife.” I still need to go back and write the damned in-law scenes for that.)

Bedtime now. More story tomorrow.

poor Qoress

Untitled Driftwood Story #3

1,762 /
5,000
(34.0%)

This story may be called “A Question of Heresy,” but it isn’t sure yet.

Poor Qoress. The man is afraid he won’t have any morals left by the time I’m done with making him surrender them.

Onward with the progress. If I’m to be done by week’s end, I need to keep at it.

story three

Untitled Driftwood Story #3

1,164 /
5,000
(22.0%)

Getting a much later start in the week than I wanted to, but them’s the breaks. I finally managed to make progress by dint of glossing over much of the scene that had me stuck; I may have to go back and fill it in, but right now I’m operating on the assumption that if I had no interest in writing that bit, then Hypothetical Reader would have no interest in reading it.

I think one of the things I like best about playing in Driftwood is that I get to pull random worldbuilding bits out of my ass without worrying about whether they contribute to a coherent whole. Driftwood isn’t about coherent wholes. It’s about bizarre fragments. So I get to just Make Shit Up, turning off my inner anthropologist, which I don’t often get to do.

reading in Chicago

It’s a bit short notice, but if you’re in the Chicago area, I will be at the Twilight Tales reading series next Monday, the 12th. Show starts at 7:30 at the Red Lion Pub; more info is available on the website. I’ll be reading three short stories: “Silence, Before the Horn,” “Centuries of Kings,” and “The Twa Corbies.”

In unrelated news, man, after spending half an hour struggling to come up with Xie Meng-lu’s name (for the lurking short story idea, “Xie Meng-lu Goes on Pilgrimage”), I’m convinced I need to buy a good, comprehensive book on historical Chinese names. I don’t suppose anyone has a recommendation? I want to write a series of these stories, and that’s going to be a nightmare without a good desk reference. The Internets simply do not cut it in this case. (With the result that Xie Meng-lu’s name is subject to change — but I needed something to call him, since his name is half of the title.)

Two Down, Two to Go

I neglected to mention, when I was posting updates on Kit, that there was more going on than simply me getting that story out of my head at last. Akashiver and I have formed a pact to write four short stories in four weeks, of which that was the first. Tonight I managed to knock out a longhand copy of “Waiting for Beauty,” the story Kit mugged on his way to the forefront of my brain. It turned out to be quite short; about a thousand words, I estimate. We’ll see when I type it up.

But that counts for week two, which means I’m halfway to my goal. Next up, I think, will be the Driftwood story I started at ICFA. After that? Your guess is as good as mine. I have a list on my computer of story ideas composting in my head, but none have shown Kit’s initiative in wanting to be written. Some (“Hannibal of the Rockies,” “Mad Maudlin”) require irritating amounts of research, which makes me reluctant to tackle them on this schedule, especially after my adventure through Elizabethan history last week. Some (“Once a Goddess,” the faerie trouble story) haven’t the blindest clue where they’re going. Some I could maybe write, but I just don’t feel much desire to.

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll do something with “Kingspeaker.” It was trying to get itself written a while back, after all; maybe I can wake it up again.

But it’s good to have short story productivity again. Which is, after all, the point of the exercise.

Ding, dong, the story’s dead

“The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”

3,247 /
3,247
(100.0%)

Okay, so it ended much more quickly than I expected.

I don’t know, at present, whether the story works. All I know is that I’ve written a story with nary a speculative element in it, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I mean, I can only think of one other time I’ve done that, and it was on commission for the Microsoft Intern Game. I guess enough writers read this journal now that I can ask: where does one send such things? (Other than Paradox, the obvious one). Are there any other spec-fic markets that are friendly to non-speculative historical fiction? What about non-speculative markets?

I should, by the way, record my gratitude to Peter Farey, for applying Occam’s Razor to the Le Doux theory and finding under the surface, not a Marlowe/Shakespeare conspiracy, but Anthony Bacon. For someone who had made a fairly scholarly and thorough argument for Marlowe as Le Doux as Shakespeare, it’s impressive to see a follow-up where he sighs and demolishes his own argument to kindling. It saved me from this turning into a Marlovian story, hence the gratitude.

Anyway. It’s written, and it can bloody well sit for a while before I deal with it again.

not dead yet (this time)

“The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”

2,805 /
5,000
(55.0%)

Stopping short of the third death because I have to go do other things. I probably won’t get a chance to write any more today, but methinks the end of the story approacheth. I’ve dropped the estimated count to 5K, and it may well be shorter than that.

Kit entertained me with his ego in this scene. I may have to go back and work that in a little more pervasively — provided I can do so in a way that won’t point me at a “then he wrote Shakespeare’s plays!” conclusion. This may be a Marlowe story, but I refuse to make it a Marlovian story.

Oops, he died again

“The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”

2,061 /
6,000
(34.0%)

Inexplicably passed out for two hours, but after I woke up, my brain was ready to tackle the second version of his death.

The 6,000 is a standard estimate, by the way — I don’t know how long this will turn out to be. Currently I think it might be shorter, but everything depends on what the hell the end of this story is supposed to be.

It’s requiring an irritating amount of mid-writing research and revision (looking up the names of the guys hanged for sedition and the members of the “School of Night,” getting rid of this reference to espionage and instead putting it in that part of the story), but at least it’s getting written. After lurking in my brain for something like a year plus.

Happy yet, Kit?

“The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”

1,153 /
6,000
(18.0%)

I expect I’ll write more before the end of the day, but it encourages me to post an update. Kit’s died once so far. There’s at least two more to come.

Does England go on Daylight Saving Time? Kit died (or didn’t die) at 6 p.m. on May 30th, and I’m trying to figure out what the light would have been like. Sunset’s at about 9 p.m. right now in London.

Forward Movement

As Amazon has finally posted the cover image for Warrior and Witch, and Doppelganger has been out for over a month, I took some time to update the sequel’s webpage with things like the back cover copy. SPOILER WARNING: do NOT go look at that page if you haven’t yet finished the first book.

The revisions I promised my agent got sent off yesterday, so you know what that means? Yes, little chickadees — it means it’s time for me to make good on my promise to Kit that I would pay attention to him soon. Stupid amounts of research for not a very long story, here I come. (Again.)

Mail Call

Today’s mail held not only my contributor’s copies and check for Fictitious Force #2 (with my story “Sing for Me”), but my contributor’s copy for Dark Wisdom #9 (with my story “The Wood, the Bridge, the House”). I don’t even recall proofing that latter, but whether I did or not, here it is. Neat!

Also in the mail a couple of days ago was a copy of the Romantic Times Book Club review of Doppelganger. It seems they cover a lot more than just romance — which, given that they apparently review something like two hundred and fifty books in every issue, ceases to be surprising. Anyway, much of the review is a plot synopsis, but at the end it says:

Kudos to Brennan for writing such a remarkable first novel and creating a distinctive fantasy world that poses a unique magical and ethical question. The twin heroines follow an electrifying knife-edged journey that takes readers to uncharted territory. An exceptional debut for what looks to be an intriguing series!

You can’t read the RTBC reviews online, but you can see what they rated things, and when Rachel alerted me that they’d reviewed Doppelganger, I went and took a look. They gave my book four and a half stars; I presume that’s out of five, but I can’t be positive, since nothing else in that issue got more than four and a half stars.

^_^

And, just to keep my ego in check, some rejection letters in the mail, too. But I’m used to those at this point.

He’s a pushy bastard, for a dead man . . . .

Half an hour ago, “Waiting for Beauty” was the short story I was planning to write next, and “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe” was one of those ideas that sounded vaguely nifty, but had been sitting around for quite a while and was never actually going to get written.

Now, thanks to matociquala posting her new opening paragraphs for The Stratford Man, Kit’s woken up again in my subconscious. Woken up again, found an opening line, found some more lines, mugged “Waiting for Beauty” and dumped it in a dark alley, cracked his knuckles, picked up a sap, and begun casting a speculative eye at the novel revisions I promised to send my agent soon.

Uppity little bastard. The structure of the story did a brief do-si-do, and I still may not be entirely sure where it’s going, but I know what half or more of it will be, and that’s more than enough for me to get started writing. Just as soon as I, y’know, read every bit of information and crackpot speculation about May 30th, 1593 that I can get my hands on.

And do those revisions. They should get priority, and a novel’s big enough to take a short story in a fight. But Kit’s a sneaky bastard, in addition to being uppity, and I fear he may dodge through the novel’s defenses and emerge in the lead.

In which case, the only real solution will be to write his story as fast as possible, so I can get on with the things I ought to be doing.

“The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe”

117 /
5,000
(2.3%)

This Writing Life

The updates keep piling up, and I keep being too busy to post any of them. There was supposed to be a brief window to relax in right about now, but just as I reached it, the copy-edited manuscript for Warrior and Witch arrived on my doorstep. <sigh>

Anyway. Further reports of Doppelganger, all over the place; unless you’re in Hawaii (where my parents are right now), it ought to be in stock.

Or unless they’ve sold out. Which has happened in a few places.

I’ve gotten some extremely nice e-mails from readers, one of which told me to take the Amazon reviews with a grain of salt, since I’d probably end up with people declaring me the coolest thing since sliced Tolkien and others howling that I can’t write worth a rat’s ass. This prodded me to go check Amazon again (which I hadn’t done in a couple of days), where I found four reviews had been posted: the Harriet Klausner one from a while ago, Mike’s very flattering words, and two others that were entirely new to me. No Tolkien comparisons yet, but I’m entirely fine without those, and more to the point, no rat’s ass comparisons yet, either.

Having nothing whatsoever to measure this experience against, I can’t really evaluate it based on anything more than gut feeling, but so far, my gut is quite happy. Doppelganger is on the “New in Paperback” stand-alone racks in a number of Barnes & Noble stores, and an endcap display in at least one Borders, which is always good to hear; visibility can help sales along. I don’t know when I’ll first see sales numbers — whether those are quarterly, yearly, or what. I also don’t know when I’m likely to start seeing trade-publication reviews; we’ll see how those go.

Now, in writing news that has nothing whatsoever to do with Doppelganger, I just got pointed at a review of Summoned to Destiny, the anthology my first story “White Shadow” appeared in. It very nearly had me fainting out of my chair. A sample:

Brennan’s story achieves the elegance of a Bruce Holland Rogers fable, and is told in a voice as assured as Le Guin in her early Earthsea writings. The same sparse directness of scene; the same simple sentence structure, yielding prose passages of surpassing clarity and power.

I think I’m going to go hug that review and giggle until it’s time to head to class.

inconvenience

I have not spoken with my own voice in nearly seven years.

Great, just what I need. “Kingspeaker” has acquired a first line. I’ve got the Driftwood story I started at ICFA; I don’t need this pestering me, too. Let’s hope the lack of plot idea keeps this one in check. (I’m deliberately not letting myself write the next line — something about how the priests ritually took her voice away when they gave her the king’s — because that way lies narration, description, things that might turn into plot.)

unexpected finish

This really wasn’t my plan for the night (I thought I’d write a bit, then stop), but I finished “A Mask of Flesh.” Total of 4296 words, when all is said and done; 2538 of that was tonight.

I found the description in this story to be interesting. Ordinarily, me describing something (a person, a building, an object) is a sign that it’s important. For much of this tale, though, the two most important people in it — the lord of the land, and Neniza herself — were not described at all. Those omissions, surrounded by description that’s lusher than my usual and should probably get more lush when I revise, speak quite loudly. It’s an interesting inversion.

And I had fun with the description overall. I’ll need to go back and consult some visual references when I edit it, to make myself be even more concrete, but it was neat to sink my brain into a Mesoamerican context. So many details change. The people coming into the city don’t have carts, just packs — I didn’t have to keep to real-world Mesoamerican technology, of course, given that this is a fantasy setting, but I wanted to. They don’t eat beef or mutton or goat, but peccary and monkey. Clothing, even for the elite, is minimal, because of the heat of their environment. I had to fight not to shoehorn all of my ideas and research into this one vessel, and even then, I couldn’t resist slipping in touches like bloodletting and the World Tree. The whole point of this project, after all, is to present a society that is not what we’re used to.

So it’s done, which is nice, given how few short stories I’ve been writing lately. <looks around> Okay, what next?

returning to work

The boy is watching a movie I have no particular interest in seeing, and I’d rather stab myself through the hands than grade today, so instead I’m writing.

“A Mask of Flesh”

1,758 /
6,000
(28.0%)

I’m experimenting with a word meter to see if a visual indication of my progress helps promote a feeling of accomplishment. Of course, I haven’t the faintest clue how long the story’s really going to be — I believe the Zokutou meter was created for NaNoWriMo writers aiming for a set goal — so that 6000 is totally a guess. I know that Neniza is cooling her heels in the petitioners’ plaza, and the lord is about to show up, so I might be more like halfway through.

Or not, depending on how much description I find myself indulging in. This is a lush-description kind of story, and I haven’t even gotten to the lord.

Anyway, time to break, since I haven’t yet decided by which of two routes Neniza’s going to get to her goal. And besides, I’m hungry.

In Which There Are Many Stories

I sent in Warrior and Witch today, following a marathon of revision that turned my brain to mush. (It would have been nice if my brain had had all those good ideas about how to rewrite it earlier than the last minute — though I suppose it’s nicer than not having any good ideas at all.) My plan for the next few days involves lying around like a dead thing and doing as little work as I can get away with, but after that, what next?

First of all, I have five stories or so that have been awaiting revision — some of them for more than a year. I’ll probably ramble about them more in another post, but for posterity’s sake, on this list are “The Memories Rise to Hunt,” “Sciatha Reborn,” “On the Feast of the Firewife,” “Games in the Dark,” and “Apply Now,” which really needs a better title. I should do something with those.

I should also do something with the stories sitting around in various states of progress. “A Mask of Flesh” is probably the most likely to get itself finished soon, at which point I can think about turning the abortive mess of “Ink, Like Blood” into a related story for that one. There’s also “Even in Decline,” if I can figure out just where it’s going, though I refuse to work on that one until I get “Sciatha Reborn” out there (again, a related story — I like working in a setting multiple times). Then I blame for getting my brain back onto “The Deaths of Christopher Marlowe,” though that will certainly have to wait until I can do some reasearch for it. Similarly research-intensive will be “Hannibal of the Rockies” — I need to get back in touch with the relevant people on that one. (Hi, .) The Goddess Triumphant story to go along with “On the Feast of the Firewife” and its friends has a title now (“Kingspeaker”), but I’m not sure what exactly it thinks it’s about. Then there are older bits: “Once a Goddess” (I refuse to give up on that one), two different Driftwood story openings, another Twilight story, the “faerie trouble” story . . . .

Here’s the plan. Every two weeks, I’ll aim to get one of my completed stories revised and out the door. (Discussion of just what kind of effort that will take can wait for that other post.) Also, every week, I’ll aim to finish writing something. Not necessarily a short story; I know I don’t have the kind of time for that at the moment. It can be an essay for my website, or my ICFA paper, or my Pushing Boundaries paper if it gets accepted. But something. Every week.

And, in the meantime — yes, I’m delusional; why do you ask? — playing around with the next novel project. Which means revision of SotS-that-needs-a-new-title, and noodling with its sequel, which frankly I can’t wait to get started on. We’ll see what kind of schedule I put myself on for those.

But first, lying around like a dead thing. I feel I’ve earned it.

Inspiration Has Its Own Timetable

Ah, the beloved and detested tendency of inspiration to strike when I really don’t have time for it.

In less than twenty-four hours, I’ve gone from revisiting the thought that I should rip out the Changeling-specific and Earth-specific aspects of the Central American stuff I cooked up for the Changeling game and use it as the basis for some kind of fiction, straight to two hundred some-odd words of a story that really, really wants to get out of my head RIGHT NOW. Nevermind, of course, that I’m working on Warrior and Witch, and really need to be focusing on that, not questions like how many Nahuatl terms I can get away with before my readers will quit in despair. The point is, having passed very rapidly through the stage of “well, I’ve got a setting, sure, but no particular story ideas,” I’m having to push at this bitchy little tz’ite in my head (huh, should I go on using the term tz’ite, or find something else? NO NO NOT TIME FOR THAT RIGHT NOW) to get her to shut up.

This will only encourage her, but I figured I’d share the beginning of the story.

Sitting alone in the green heat of the forest, far from the road and any observing eyes, Neniza began to craft her mask of flesh.

She began with her toes, for the face would be the hardest part. She would have dearly loved to shape herself into the slender, delicate form of an amanatl, but it would never work. Oh, she could take the form easy enough, but the amanah were not common caste, and she could never hope to mimic the ways of court folk well enough to pass. Instead she crafted for herself the petite, pretty form of a young alux peasant. The lord took his amusements often enough with such. It would suffice.

Her father had taught her this work, their art, after her horrified mother saw what she had birthed and left it in the woods. He would have preferred a son, Neniza knew. Daughters were dangerous things. She had not told him where she was going, what she intended to do. He believed they should stay out of sight, accept their exile to the forests — nevermind that he himself went to town all too often, to court the women of other castes and sire more children for them to fear. It was all right for him.

But not for her. She was too dangerous.

That means I’m powerful, Neniza thought, and began to work on her face.

Now I’m going to put her away and go back to work on the novel at hand.

Okay, I promise I’ll stop posting soon.

Want to read Doppelganger right now?

You can buy it on eBay.

Seriously, it’s just a little bit surreal to find an ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) of your very first novel floating around the internet. And then disappointing to realize nobody’s bid on it yet. <g> I mean, I knew there was a secondhand market for these books — they get sent out to generate advance buzz and get reviews circulating — so I knew that yes, someday, there would be ARCs of my own work out there. Somehow, though, I just wasn’t expecting it so soon.

(Yes, I was Googling myself. Don’t ask me why Doppelganger got mentioned on a romance forum, but the person there said it was excellent. Woot!)

So I think I’ve entered two new realms of writer-hood today. This review business is one of them. The other, I was reflecting on this morning, as the reports start to come in of the lineups for Year’s Best anthologies.

In 2004, I published precisely one story: “White Shadow”. Other than a brief, wistful bit of dreaming when I heard there was going to be a Year’s Best YA Fantasy anthology, I didn’t give it much thought.

In 2005, I had five stories hit print: “The Princess and the . . .,” “Silence, Before the Horn,” “Shadows’ Bride,” “The Twa Corbies,” and “For the Fairest.” Now, mind you, of those all, only “The Twa Corbies” is more than five hundred words long — I published a lot of flash this year. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have hopes, though; I have a writer’s ego, which is to say volatile and capable of great delusions of grandeur along with pits of blackest despair. We’ll see if it comes to anything; I know Ellen Datlow was eyeing some stories from Jabberwocky, though I don’t know which ones. (I love all my creative children, of course, but some have special places in my heart, and “Silence, Before the Horn” is one of them.)

But the point is that I’m moving into a realm I’ve never been in before, namely, one where Year’s Best anthologies mean something to me as something other than just a reader. I might end up in one. I’m following their construction for the first time in my life, paying attention to who edits what, when they make their decisions, when they get published. I’ve
got seven more stories in the publication pipeline; they may not all make it out next year, but I might also sell more. I’m playing a new game now, and it’s kind of fascinating.

But that’s enough writerly procrastination for the night. I need to take the IRB test, which means getting into anthropologist-head.

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