In other world-shaking news, “Tears of Clobbersaurus” is live on Thousand Faces. It’s short! Read it and understand why modern art is a sham.
Because it has failed to depict dinosaurs often enough.
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As a writer, it is my duty to stare into the darkest recesses of the human experience and not flinch. It was inevitable that this duty would one day lead me to write about killipedes.
Click this here link (it’s a PDF) and check out my (very) short story on this growing menace. Scroll past the juvenalia for which Space Squid is known to page 9. The story will take five minutes of your time. You’ll be a little sadder and a little wiser for it.
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I do sell stuff from time to time. My heartwarming inspirational tale “Killipedes” will appear in august Austin publication “Space Squid” at the end of the month.
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My very serious essay on the creative process (while in a zeppelin) has been published at Every Day Weirdness. Read it!
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I wrote an essay this morning, a helpful essay entitled “The Difficulties of Writing a Novel (in a Zeppelin Fortress)”. I posted it as a journal entry on this selfsame webpage, and, amused, sought to share it with anyone who happened to be in gmail chat at that moment, including N.E. Lilly, editor of some fine web publications. He recommended I take it down and submit it to everydayweirdness.com, which I did. It’ll go up January 28th. It… is… FUNNY!
Felt good to write again, I tell you what. It’s been a month. This vacation has rotted my brain.
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… for “Crocodopolis”. That means my very unlikely story is still in the running. They have one more set of HMs to announce, and then the semi-finalists and finalists. I’ve never had a story go this far before - why should it be this story of all stories?
Not complaining, mind you. I’d love to see my sharp-stick-in-the-eye narrative in the WOTF antho… it’d just be hard to explain to all the other writers. “See, I thought it’d be funny to kill a bunch of Congolese. It’s ironic use of genocide. We’re laughing through our tears. You get it, right? Right?”
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“Ars Draconis” has cracked the top ten of the past thirty days - it’d be nice to crack the top ten of ALL TIME - and it’s just two hundredths of a point away! Click here, vote, vote!!
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Head to Every Day Fiction and read “Ars Draconis” (”Art of the Dragon”, not “Dragon Arse,” thank you). It’s a funny little piece. Please vote for it!
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You’ll notice that the “Publications” page over there on the right has been updated: a full menu for your dejeuner à la Jens!
Finished reading Nana. It was okay. Not my favorite Zola, not my least favorite. It suffered from being serialized in its original incarnation. According to the preface, it had something of a tortured writing process, with Zola struggling to meet deadlines. It shows, particularly in the final postmortem scene, where we have a wilting anticlimax rather than the emotional payoff for which we’ve endured 467 pages. Bad form, Monsieur Zola!
I took a break for some Conan - sex on a battlefield! Wow! - and then began Shards of Honor, a Hugo winner and the first (chronological) book in Lois McMaster Bujold’s lauded Vorkosigan series. I loved her complex characters and graceful use of science in Falling Free. She’s got something like twenty hundred dozen books in this series. I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with my new favorite living authoress. I even used her name in Papillon (in a subtle, non-copyright-infringing kinda way) for that of a barbaric spirit-swallowing tribe.
“Gasp! Not - the spirit-swallowers of Bujold?!”
It works better in context.
Today I coalesced (is that a transitive verb? Is now!) my pages of notes on “untitled Franco-Prussian war story” into a concise, well-plotted outline. Circumstances - school botheration - prevent me from working on it tomorrow, but Friday - WATCH OUT! I have the happy feeling that I am about to bring forth something monumental. I’m also hungry. This work will be complex, texturally rich, and quite possibly boring to the point of inducing tears. Still working on that last one. I theorize that if I write with radiant style, engrossing characters, and irrefutable wisdom, I will prevail. Anyone can do that!
Once I got a rejection letter that said the editors found the dialogue too dependent on italics for emphasis. I’ve since tried writing around them (I’m venting my italics in this post). I find that makes my style cleaner, and allows for greater impact when I do employ italics - nuances with which you can crush a car into a cube!
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First, head over to EDF for “Why Pews Don’t Come With Pistols,” by Talented Friend Stephanie Scarborough. It’s droll!
Second: the first round of Honorable Mentions for the Writers of the Future contest has been announced. My story “Crocodopolis” is not among them. That means it’s either headed for an Honorable Mention or - something greater. I’m collecting these Honorable Mentions like bobbleheads!
Third: Jordan Lapp, editor of EDF, won first place in last quarter’s WOTF. Wow. This is the most competitive contest in speculative fiction, and it’s amazing and awesome to place first. Congrats to him.
Fourth: I finished a Dixie O’Dell novella earlier this week. It’s merely okay. It needs work. I must get it polished before sending it to Space Westerns, my market of choice.
Fifth: I’m pre-writing a novella set in the Franco-Prussian War, specifically, the Siege of Paris. This was a fascinating conflict. I’m researching it by reading Alistair Horne’s The Terrible Year. The theme of my novella - and the war - is absurdity. I’m fortunate that the actual history provides so much fodder for this. For example, it’s the only war I can think of where hot-air balloons played a major role. How fortunate that the incompetence and occasional silliness of the French side, in the life-and-death context of brutal conflict, created a tragic absurdity that plays directly into the needs of this writer a century and a half later! When at last you enjoy the novella, reflect that only 250,000 men had to die for me to write it. Haha. I jest. The great thing about being a writer is picking over the bones of this senseless war (more senseless than most!) for scraps of sanity, and turning those scraps into meaning. For you, dear reader. The more prewriting I do, the better this story gets. I still have a lot of reading to go.
Sixth: Don’t forget to head to EDF on November 20th for my story “Ars Draconis”.
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First, Talented Friend Erin Kinch is published over at “A Thousand Faces,” with glowing words from the editor. The story is “Bridge Club,” the quality of which I can attest.
Second, EDF has published their TOC for November; Stephanie Scarborough has a piece up November 5th, and my own “Ars Draconis” appears November 20th. I wrote that story while drinking tea and eating papayas on the balcony of our Ubud bungalow in Bali, listening to the rain pelt the banana leaves… so from this Indochine scene we have a tale of medieval Europe.
Third and final, EDF has released the TOC of their “Best of Year One” print antho, and my humble “Socks and Banshees” is on it, along with tales from all the WI crew: Alex, Erin, Stephanie. Hurrah!
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And so that y’all don’t think I never publish any more, I will direct your attention to Big Pulp, where you can find my story “Thirst,” a pirate vengeance tale. This has a strong female protagonist, which I understand some people like. Also, murder, which even more people like.
“Spot of murder with your biscuits, dearie?”
Hahaha!
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Every Day Fiction is kind. They’ve just accepted “Ars Draconis” for publication. This is a heartwarming little story of a master mason with a dragon problem. It’s set in the “world” of “Papillon”, which is the same as our world, but with more dragons.
I wonder what they’ll think of “Killipedes”. That story is, as Harlan Ellison might say, “poison candy” - funny enough that it slips into your heart, and then horrible enough that it kills you. Figuratively. It’s awfulness in a comedy coating. I categorized it as “inspirational” in their submission system. Heh, heh.
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The aforementioned story is live on Every Day Fiction. Kindly point your browsers here, read, laugh, comment!
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September 26th on EDF. Mark your calendar!
Erin Kinch’s “A Castle in the Clouds” will be on EDF September 14th.
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“A Home of Wind and Water” has taken an honorable mention in WOTF. That means it was good enough for the judge to read all the way to the end, but not good enough to win, putting it in the top hundred or so of two thousand or so entries. Nice, but not as nice as winning.
There’s always next quarter!
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The Niteblade anthology “Lost Innocence” has just been released, and my story “Philosopher Quinn” is nestled inside it like spider eggs in a beauty queen’s face. Buy it!
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“Blankenship & Dawes in: Chrono-Conundrum!” will appear on Every Day Fiction! Hurrah! Over a thousand regular readers will be exposed to the wonder and fundaeity of B&D. No publication date yet; stay tuned to this web-frequency!
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The first part (of three) of “Corazon”, Dixie O’Dell’s inaugural adventure, is live on Space Westerns. Go read it! It’s a good one!
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“Tears of Clobbersaurus” has been sold! Wow! In five days! It’ll appear in “Thousand Faces”, not sure what issue. What a silly story.
I wrote a Blankenship & Dawes flash piece today, which was a challenge - the characters are defined by gleeful verbosity, so squeezing a story in under a thousand words was tricky. It’s a tidy little piece, though, entitled, true to form, “Blankenship & Dawes in: Chrono-Conundrum!” I now have a stable of three stories with these characters, totaling 31,000 words. Add Dixie O’Dell in “Corazon” (due to appear on Space Westerns August 3rd! Don’t miss it!), for her world is B&D’s world, and that makes 47,000 words - half of a novel. I have four more B&D novellas plotted: the zombie invasion of London, B&D versus Spiritualism, Atlantis, and the moon, plus one or two more D O’D stories, and we’ll have a pretty thick collection! Huzzah! Rule, Britannia, rule the waves…
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I encourage you to go here and vote for “Philosopher Quinn”, by me! We can’t let me not win!
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