Sign up for my newsletter to receive news and updates!

Posts Tagged ‘short stories’

Fascinating Title Goes Here

The Internet has this magical ability to cough up stuff on whatever topic you’re thinking about, even when you aren’t looking for it*. At the moment, that’s this post by Jay Lake, which led me through daisy-chain of other posts by Seanan McGuire, Edmund Schubert, Misty Massey, and David Coe, all on the topic of titles.

I have titles on the brain right now for two reasons:

1) I just sent my crit group the most recent Driftwood story, which doesn’t really have a name yet, though my tongue-in-cheek dubbing of it as “Two Men in a Basket” might end up sticking just for lack of anything better.

2) I still don’t have a title for the Victorian book.

These two situations have different root causes, I think. Thanks to the first three installments in the series, the Victorian book is hedged about with all these requirements that I should fulfill if humanly possible: it has to be a quote, the passage the quote comes from has to work as an epigraph (ideally for the last part of the book), it should have a verb (ideally at the end of the phrase), etc. Finding a piece of Victorian literature that will fit all the requirements at once is proving much more difficult than I expected — to the point where I may well have to compromise on one or more points, though the perfectionist in me doesn’t want to. For the Driftwood story, on the other hand, the problem is that I don’t have any requirements. It’s a wide-open field, and so I end up standing around in it, not sure where to go.

And it’s made more complicated by the fact that novel titles and short story titles aren’t quite the same kind of beast. Certain things could work for either, and in fact I think you can generally port novel titles onto short stories without too much problem. But short story titles can’t necessarily go the other way. “Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood” strikes me as only working for the short form; “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual” would NEVER go on a book. Short story titles are allowed to be wordier, because they don’t have to function as a piece of marketing in the way their novel-related cousins do. (Exceptions like The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making are just that: exceptions.) Cleverness in book titles is somewhat limited to humourous work, while a broader range of short stories can get away with it.

I’ve said before that my best titles usually show up at the start of the process; my average titles are the ones I stick on after the fact. (I have some bad titles, too, but let’s not talk about those. They’re after-the-fact efforts, too.) What makes a title good? It has to be evocative — which is one of those vague, hand-wavy descriptors I actually kind of hate, but I don’t have a better one that manages to combine the concepts of “striking” and “memorable” and “suggestive of more than it’s saying.” Lots of writers try to achieve evocative-ness (evocativity?) by throwing in nouns that supposedly carry that quality: Shadow. Soul. Dragon. Yawn. My attention is drawn more to odd juxtapositions. Queen isn’t a terribly interesting word, but the contradiction of The Beggar Queen is a lot more intriguing.

And then you have to worry about titles in a series, and how to make it clear these books belong together. I have to say I’m not a fan of the Mercedes Lackey answer to this question: Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, Magic’s Price; Winds of Fate, Winds of Change, Winds of Fury; The Black Gryphon, The White Gryphon, The Silver Gryphon . . . well, if you dropped all the books on the floor it would be easy to sort the trilogies from one another, but exciting this is not. I prefer Dunnett’s approach with the Lymond books, where the titles may not be individually brilliant, but the running chess metaphor connects them all. This is why the pattern of the Onyx Court titles matters to me, too, because the structural characteristics are what advertise “this is part of that series!”

But you still have to come up with the title. For the Victorian book, I go looking in Victorian literature, but what about stories or novels where the title could be anything? How do you even get started? I swear, sometimes it’s harder than writing the actual stories. If you have any brilliant thoughts, please do share them in the comments.

*By which I mean that our brains have this magical ability to notice stuff that matches the pattern of what we’re interested in. But it’s more fun to say the Internet gets credit.

rounding up the week

More collated linky, and then maybe next week I’ll get around to posting about Ada Lovelace and her wings.

Another guest-blog: me at Tiffany Trent’s LJ, talking about researching in order to get things wrong.

More “And Blow Them at the Moon”: the giveaway is ended (Scott will be picking a winner soon), but if you’d like to listen to the story, the podcast version is now available. I enjoyed this recording immensely — like, meant to just check it out, but ended up listening to the whole thing — because Scott arranged for a British reader, who does a marvelous job with the accents. He even does a Cornish accent for the knockers! Or something I presume is a Cornish accent, anyway! (I have no idea what they sound like. Which is Reason #17 why he’s a better reader for the story than I am.)

Further reviews of A Star Shall Fall: Mark Yon at SFF World, which he sums up as “An ambitious tale and a pleasing triumph. Wonderful.” His comments make me very happy. Watch out for borderline spoilers near the end of the review, though. Locus also had a very good review, though it isn’t online, but this bit is pretty quotable:

There’s a sly brilliance to Brennan’s ongoing tales where the city of London moves through history . . . A Star Shall Fall has room enough for intellect and emotion, great issues as well as an array of individuals and personalities: self-mocking wit, bluntness, and ardor among others. As fear of the Dragon mounts, humans and fae come together in powerful scenes that both reflect and find ways to transcend the gap between beings with such very different experiences of Life and Time.

Finally, another public appearance for me: I’ll be down in SoCal on October 23rd for the SCIBA Author Feast and Trade Show (yes, it’s really called that). SCIBA is an independent booksellers’ association, so this is an industry event rather than a fan one, but if any of you will be there, be sure to say hi!

Er, that’s only four things. Uh. Here, have cats in an IKEA store.

Sing it with me!

Happy Bookday to me, Happy Bookday to me . . . .

Actually, Happy Bookday to all of you, if the release of A Star Shall Fall was something you were looking forward to. As of today, it ought to be on the shelves of discerning bookstores everywhere (in the U.S. and Canada, anyway).

Now seems a dandy time to link once more to my essay on the merits of buying a book from a bookstore, rather than from an online seller. If you have a choice of which way to go, choose the physical store; it will help keep me in business as a writer, just a bit more than an online sale would. (E-books are a whole different game, of course.)

Or, if you’d like to try and get a signed copy direct from me instead, you have two ways to do it (both of ’em with fairly good odds). First, you can participate in the discussion threads on the community: the fifth and final thread is up today, asking about the city of London, and previous threads are here, here, here, and here. I didn’t realize there would be a fifth question today, so I’m extending the deadline on this giveaway a little bit, to the end of the day on Friday; any comment left on one of those threads before then will make you eligible to win a copy of the book.

Second, you can read “And Blow Them at the Moon” (an Onyx Court short story over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies) and join in the discussion for that in their forums. For this giveaway, you have until the next issue goes live at the end of Wednesday next week.

If you’re looking for other goodies, like my London photos or the soundtrack for the novel, all of that is on my site.

Aaaaand I think that’s it, at least for now. If anybody needs me, I’ll be here in the corner, alternately bouncing and chewing my fingernails off . . . .

there’s always one more thing to fix

It didn’t even occur to me that part of the American-ness of the copyediting for the Onyx Court books was the order of dates: August 26, when the British would be more likely to order it as 26 August.

But somebody pointed that out over on the BCS forums, so we’ve gone in and changed the ordering on the dates for “And Blow Them at the Moon.” My apologies for the error; we went with British spellings (everywhere we could spot them, anyway), but didn’t think to change the date formatting.

It’s ‘splody time . . . .

<bounce> I’ve been looking forward to this.

“And Blow Them at the Moon” has gone live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is an Onyx Court story (though not the one I sold yesterday), and I am very pleased with how it’s turned out. It also constitutes the last pre-publication goodie for A Star Shall Fall, which comes out (eek) next Tuesday; Magrat, the main character from this story, will be showing up in the novel, too.

And, because chances to win a signed copy of the book are just FALLING OUT OF THE TREES, YO, the editor at BCS has conspired with me to give one away over there: all you have to do is leave a comment on the story thread in their forums. (You’ll need to be a registered forum user, so we can contact the winner.) That runs two weeks, i.e. until the next issue goes live. Together with Laura Anne Gilman’s virtual birthday party and the Onyx Court discussion threads on the Sirens community, you have three, count ’em three chances to get your hands on a copy. And don’t forget, there’s the secret history charity auction, going until Saturday! Bidding stands at twenty dollars, and every bit of it goes to help flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

(I promise actual content will return to this LJ pretty soon. But I’ve got a friend’s wedding this weekend, and the book release next week, so at the moment spare time to write interesting posts is in short supply. If you want reading material from me, have a story.)

the Onyx Court news keeps rolling in

If you’ve looked at the Onyx Court charity auction, you’ve seen my note about how I may end up writing a short story from the historical prompt the winner chooses. That was, in fact, the outcome of the original auction, for the Haitian earthquake relief; in writing a summary for the winner, I thought of a way to frame it as a short story. So I wrote it, and I sent it out, and now Beneath Ceaseless Skies has bought it! The story is “Two Pretenders,” and I count it as Onyx Court continuity, though it’s a bit different in period and tone from the rest of the series. The winner got to read it a while ago, long before the rest of you, so if you want a backstage pass like that (and the pleasure of knowing you were a part of the process), head over there and put your bid in.

Along with that, the last round of book discussion is up over on , asking about urban fantasy in a historical context. Previous questions about mortal and faerie love, pov and non-linear time, and the interrelationship of the Onyx Hall with London are still open.

And y’know, yesterday I got this big honkin’ box of author copies of A Star Shall Fall, which need to go to good homes. So I’m thinking I might select a random commenter from the discussion posts to receive a copy. Add your two cents’ worth on one of those four posts (or more, if you feel so inspired), and you might be the lucky winner!

Yay Driftwood!

Finished another Driftwood story. Wrote most of this one on the Bahamas cruise, because it wasn’t really work work, it was fun work. (Especially since the goal of this one is to have a Driftwood story that isn’t depressing.)

Current title is “Stone and Sky,” but I hope to find something more interesting before it gets sent out to magazines. It needs to sit for a bit and get critiqued first, though, so the title fairy has some time to show up.

(Right now, my subconscious wants to call it “Two Madmen in a Basket.” It is possibly a silly enough story to make that work.)

sale!

One of the odd perks of my sleep schedule (going to bed circa 2 or 3 a.m. West Coast time, waking up circa 10 or 11 a.m.) is that most U.S.-based people have started their business day before I get up. And that means a disproportionate number of the e-mails I get saying “I’d like to buy your story!” are in my inbox by the time I shuffle into my office, starting my day with a smile.

Which is by way of saying that Pseudopod will be doing an audio reprint of “The Snow-White Heart,” which originally came out in the final issue of Talebones.

Best of Talebones now has a cover

No release date yet that I know of, but Patrick Swenson just posted the cover for the Best of Talebones anthology. I’m really looking forward to this one; I have some past issues of the magazine, but only a few, so it’ll be nice to have a one-stop shop for the highlights from its whole run.

short story news, not all of it mine

I’ve done another reading for Podcastle: “Väinämöinen and the Singing Fish,” by Marissa Lingen (mrissa). My apologies to both Marissa and my erstwhile Finnish teacher for any mispronunciations I may have committed in the course of recording that story.

(This is what I get for telling the Podcastle editors what foreign languages I’d studied. Though in checking that e-mail, I see I didn’t even mention the Finnish, because I only studied it for only two weeks. I hope they never find out about my two weeks of Navajo . . . .)

Also, it turns out that both “Once a Goddess” and “Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual” got Honorable Mentions from Gardner Dozois in the most recent Year’s Best Science Fiction. Given that I only had seven stories out last year, I’m pretty pleased with that average.

two bits of short story news

First, Clockwork Phoenix 3 debuts today. This contains “The Gospel of Nachash,” which is my Bible + Sekrit Ingredient story. The whole anthology series has been pretty awesome, full of (as the subtitle has it) “beauty and strangeness;” I highly recommend all three volumes. (And not just ’cause I’m in them.)

Second, there will be audio of “And Blow Them at the Moon,” the Onyx Court Gunpowder Plot story. Which hasn’t been published yet, but I still wanted to mention the audio version is coming, if you prefer to consume your short fiction aurally.

Driftwood in your ear

That header sounds painful, now that I think about it.

Anyway, if you would prefer to listen to a story about Driftwood rather than read it, you can now download the audio from BCS. (Which also has a new Aliette de Bodard story this week, one of her Aztec pieces. I haven’t read it yet, but I am very much looking forward to it.)

I’ve also put up an extra tidbit for the Driftwood fans: “Smiling at the End of the World.” It’s a piece of flash fiction from Last’s point of view, but since Driftwood flash doesn’t stand on its own very well, I’ve chosen to just post it to my site as a freebie. Enjoy!

Best of Talebones semi-TOC

I’m calling this a semi-TOC because unless Patrick intends to organize the stories alphabetically by their authors’ last names, this is not the order the anthology will have in the end. But if you’re curious to know what’s going in the Best of Talebones collection, here’s the list:

Barth Anderson, “Landlocked”
Jennifer Rachel Baumer, “The Forever Sleep”
Marie Brennan, “The Twa Corbies”
Mike Brotherton, “Jack in the Box”
Jack Cady, “The Parable of Satan’s Adversary”
Stephen Couch, “The Dandelion Clock”
Aliette de Bodard, “Safe, Child, Safe”
Eric Del Carlo, “Nothing But Fear”
Alan DeNiro, “Comachrome”
Charles Coleman Finlay, “Hail Conductor”
James C. Glass, “Robbie”
Anne Harris, “Still Life with Boobs”
Barb Hendee , “The Winds of Brennan Marcher”
Nina Kiriki Hoffman, “Snow on Snow”
Kay Kenyon, “The Acid Test”
Mary Robinette Kowal, “Death Comes But Twice”
Jay Lake, “Tall Spirits, Blocking the Night”
Catherine Macleod, “Seepage”
Nick Mamatas, “Your Life, Fifteen Minutes from Now”
Louise Marley, “Night Shift”
Sandra McDonald, “Bluebeard by the Sea”
Terry McGarry, “God of Exile”
Paul Melko, “Ten Sigmas”
William Mingin, “From Sunset to the White Sea”
Devon Monk, ” Sugar ‘n’ Spice”
William F. Nolan, “Wolf Song”
Patrick O’Leary, ” 23 Skidoo”
Tom Piccirilli, “Caucasus”
John A. Pitts, “Three Chords and the Truth”
Sarah Prineas, “The Dog Prince”
Ken Rand, “Song of Mother Jungle”
Mark Rich, “Zothique Mi Amor”
Uncle River, “Love of the True God”
Patricia Russo, “Swoop”
James Sallis, “Roofs and Forgiveness in the Early Dawn”
Ken Scholes, “Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk”
Jack Skillingstead, “Two”
Bruce Taylor, “Spiders”
Steve Rasnic Tem, “Cats, Dogs, and Other Creatures”
James Van Pelt, “The Yard God”
Carrie Vaughn, “The Girl with the Pre-Raphaelite Hair”
Ray Vukcevich, “The Next Best Thing”

I’m very flattered to be in the company of some of those authors. Congrats to all, and especially to Patrick Swenson, who is making this happen!

miscellaneous bits of news

Proof I have gotten way too pale: I managed to pick up a bit of a tan in freaking London.

Anyway, onto actual news, of the writing-related sort. Various bits and pieces accumulated while I was gone, so in no particular order . . .

1) I’ve sold an audio reprint of “Kingspeaker” to Podcastle.

2) Go here for another chance to win an ARC of A Star Shall Fall (scroll down for details). Author Stephanie Burgis is, with permission, re-gifting the copy I sent her.

3) Clockwork Phoenix 3 has gotten a starred review from Publishers Weekly, with this to say about my own contribution: “Marie Brennan sets the bar high with ‘The Gospel of Nachash,’ a fine reinterpretation of the Adam and Eve legend from a fresh perspective.” Also, finalized cover art.

4) An interesting post about “Remembering Light” and Driftwood more generally. I remain faintly boggled by how strongly people react to the setting — boggled, and flattered. I really do need to get more Driftwood stories written.

5) My remaining bit of news will get its own post in a bit, so instead I’ll use this spot to mention that I’m still seeking a title for the Victorian book. For those not aware or in need of a refresher, my requirements are here and here; you can leave suggestions on one of those posts, in the comments to this post, or send them to my e-mail (marie dot brennan at gmail dot com).

Best of Talebones

For those who enjoyed my story “The Twa Corbies” (audio here), you’ll be pleased to know it’s going to be included in Patrick Swenson’s upcoming Best of Talebones anthology. I’ll announce the full ToC when he sends it out; given the great fiction the magazine published in its fourteen-year run, I expect there will be a lot of awesome names included.

Something I appear to have missed

I had it firmly fixed in my head that Running With the Pack was coming out in May. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered it’s been on sale since some time in April.

So if you were interested in reading “Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes” (the Fake Werewolf Paper), or generally like stories about werewolves, you’re in luck! The anthology is out. I’ve linked to Powell’s, but it’s available from other fine bookselling establishments, at least of the online sort; I don’t know for sure about physical bookstores. Anyway, enjoy!