The Maine House

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Nebula Nominations

This is my first year nominating for the Nebulas. I’ve read only one of the novels people are talking about for that award–Naomi Novik’s Uprooted–and few of the novelette and novellas–I’ve been meaning to read “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman Malik most of all, but haven’t had the chance–so I’m only going to nominate for short stories, of which I’ve read many. I also slushed my way through dozens of those on SFWA’s reading list.  Here are my five:

  1. “Bilingual” by Henry Lien, F&SF. Made me wander my kitchen after reading it, dreaming of how I could have helped the protagonist were I in the story. (I’d have given her my jacket and hat so she could get away more easily.) Here’s what you can do in the real world to help Akari.
  2. “La Heron” by Charlotte Ashley, F&SF. Great use of magic, especially the mushrooms. The story’s not online, but an interview with the author about the story is.
  3. “The Fox Bride” by Mari Ness, DSF. I read this in a little coastal tourist town between Toronto and Niagara Falls while waiting outside a clothing story my wife and daughter were shopping in . Made me want to put foxes in all my stories, but I don’t think I could do it as well.
  4. “The Plausibility of Dragons” by Kenneth Schneyer, Lightspeed. Utterly compelling. An interesting model for what I want to do in “The Dragons of America.”
  5. “What Wags the World” by Sarah Pinsker, DSF. The last paragraph is heartbreaking.

I hope they all win.

 

 

The Week in Review

It has been a pretty good start to the year, with a fourth story taken by AE, “No Less Constant.” It was originally called “The Fire and the Rose Are One” after a line in Eliot. Duff also suggested some very good edits to the end, and it was published quickly. You can find it here. Once again AE illustrated it with a wonderful piece of art.

Also my story “The Revivalist,” which was one of the first Sips Cards stories, is going to be podcast by Gallery of Curiosities,  which is evolving out of the steampunk podcast Tales from New Babbage. Another site where I subbed it as a reprint loved it, but thought it should actually be the beginning of a novella, which completely fired my imagination. I dream of writing novellas, despite the market being very limited. (Michener’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri is the perfect model, structurally). I’ve already outlined one, in fact, The Dragon Knight’s Daughter, but I stalled in writing it, I realized the other day, because I haven’t created a more concrete view of the world. Similarly, to write a “Revivalist” novella I have to figure out what happened to the husband. These will have to wait a while, though. Novel first.

I’m in the middle of outline three of chapter 7 of Dragon Tower, which tries to recover from what one of my characters did in chapter 6: up and kill another character while I sat at my typewriter watching helplessly. Fortunately, a third character showed up to help with the body, so I’ve got that going for me. I’m not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that I’m no longer writing the book. I’m just reporting on what these characters are doing. Ideally I’ll finish the chapter by the end of the week.

I think I’ll get through chapter 8, then start on the first draft. That way I can be surprised by the ending too. In Dragon Round, I did the same thing–the entirety of the third outline for what became chapters 8-10 was, “X character goes to place Y”–so hopefully lightning will strike twice again. That way, I can also say I finished the third outline, mentally due 1/15, somewhat on time.

Finally, my found poems are included in the 2015 Unlost Journal Anthology. There’s some great work in there, especially the poem built out of Google search results. That’s just a brilliant idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So This is Christmas

All

I got three gifts early this year.

The first was my fourth acceptance from Daily Science Fiction for a the story “For Your Light Affliction.” The story was originally accepted by Halloween Forevermore which, after a year, informed me that they were no longer publishing fiction, so I sent it to the place I should have in the first place.

The second is the book This Is All a Dream We Dream: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans. I had books under contract from both authors when I was at Wiley, and both were sadly cancelled after the trade publishing lines were sold. While neither of those books will come out, they did lead in some ways to this one, which made me laugh out loud with the first story I read at random.  Best of all they even signed it for me. You Deadheads with gift cards, this is what you want under your tomorrow tree.

(You might also buy The Pizza Tapes Extra Large 3CD edition, which my brother-in-law Scot gave me tonight.  I’ve been singing “Man of Constant Sorrow” for the past two hours, which got me to stop singing “Box of Rain,” as inspired by the Jackson-Gans title. )

The third gift was a realization. As I’ve written elsewhere, I do three progressively longer outlines of a novel before writing a draft under the theory that for each successive outline I only have to write a 2-3 words for each word in the previous one. In practice, though, I’ve found that instead of doing that expanding literally, it’s better for me to read the section I want to expand, then write up only what I remember. The rest isn’t important or doesn’t fit, although the cut material could be repurposed elsewhere, and the looseness of the approach allows more room for invention.

I got the idea from Jonah Berger’s excellent Contagious, which describes an experiment in which ad was shown to a person, who had to describe it to another, who had to describe it to the third and so on. What information reached, say, the sixth person was what the ad was apparently about (whether that was intended).   Same should be true of outlines.

Thus the third outline for Dragon Tower continues apace. I reached the end of part one this week. I’ll finish a story called, currently, “Sunnyside,” then dive into part two.  I also have work to do on the first “Dragons of America” book, now called The St. Louis Blue, but “Sunnyside,” which I’m writing for an anthology with a due date, jumped in the way.

As for what else I want for the holidays, I’ll take a dominating Jet win over the Patriots. I have the same feeling going into this game, though, as I had when the Gators played FSU, the Pats of the NCAA: We are going to get badly exposed.

Happy Holidays.

S.

The Week in Review

A little update:

My story “Automatic Sky,” which AE published, will be reprinted by Evil Girlfriend Media, my first reprint. (Side note: I have to get more diligent about submitting reprints).

“River Boys,” which appeared in the anthology Faed, will be podcast by StarShipSofa’s Far Fetched Fables.

I have stories behind held at Daily Science Fiction, Grimdark, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Uncanny. Which means I’ve taken nail-chewing to a new level. And by mentioning this I’ve probably jinxed myself horribly.

And a book I commissioned and edited, We Are Market Basket, is up for the CEO-READ Best Business Book of the Year Award. If it wins, that’d be a huge feather in Amacom’s cap. That said, there are two other books on stakeholder management also up for the award, and if either wins I’d be happy. The message will get out, and that’s what’s really important.

How to Break the Story Addiction?

Many years ago when I was at Wiley, a colleague and I came up with an idea for a series: the “Penguin Lives of history.” The premise of the Penguin series was to get great authors to write short biographies of interesting figures, which were then beautifully packaged and sold in perhaps the last big use of display dumps. We would do the same thing for historical events, with the unspoken purpose of bringing bigger authors to Wiley and showing agents we had some cash to spend. While our packaging wasn’t great–that’s what happens when you design my committee–and our subject potential was hamstrung by our president’s insistence that we only do “positive events,” many of the books were fantastic. For me, for instance, Scott Simon wrote on the integration of baseball, Eleanor Clift wrote on the 19th Amendment and Tom Fleming wrote on the Louisiana Purchase.  And our whole list, not just our history list, was indeed jumpstarted.

I mention this because when I approached an agent about one of his authors, he said that he didn’t want his client to take on the project for a reason I hadn’t considered: not the money or the topic, but the time. The author would put his full effort into researching the book, and the 20-35,000 words he’d have to write would take up to a year. That would, in turn, take away from the researching and writing of his next big history book, which his agent didn’t want to happen because the author’s bread and butter were in those big histories.

I could use an agent like him to kick me in the butt about writing short stories. After I turned in “The Dragon  Round,” I set out to write stories to build a name for myself, with the goal of achieving enough pro sales to earn membership in the SFWA. My deadline was audacious, as all targets should be: one year. It took me 18 months, including my not including the four flash stories which didn’t earn the $60 necessary for a sale to count toward membership.

With fifteen stories still under submission, including two whose deals fell apart and had to go back out again, I then focused on outlining the sequel to “Dragon Round” and the first novel in a new series, “The Dragons of America,” which is based on one of those unsold stories. My goal is to finish the third outline for “Dragon Tower” by 12/15/15 and a first draft by 6/15/16 so I can submit it to my agent when DR comes out (hopefully to advance-swelling sales), alternating chapters with the second outline for the “DofA” book, currently called “The St. Louis Blue,” to keep myself fresh.

But these damn stories keep getting in the way–or, should I say, prompts, which are to me what the herring is to the seal. Show me one and I want to drop everything to balance a ball on my nose so you’ll toss the fish to me. In addition, there’s something very satisfying about spending a week on a story, then sending it out or giving it to others for feedback. This week, for instance, got lost to a still unfinished 1,600-word story called “Sunnyside,” given the setting, Queens in 2040, and there’s really no way I can hit my 12/15 date now. I’ll have to move it to 1/15.

Which leads me to wonder: so many great writers churn out stories regularly, but never get a novel off the ground. Would they profit from giving up the stories and their immediate gratification entirely, thereby forcing themselves just to concentrate on a novel, which is much more a marathon than a spring? How do I avoid the story addiction myself, especially when I can write just another 600 words to finish a story and feel gratified instead of the 50K more words of outlining I have to do just for DT, even if that’s broken up into myriad chunks?

Any suggestions?

 

Edit: Yes, in the last two hours I did revise that story to apparent completion and follow three people on Twitter who all posts links to articles that could inspire stories. I’m hopeless.

Primal Scream

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGG

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

STUPIDSTORYWON’TWORKANDIKEEPMAKINGIT

WORSE!I’MSTUCKINAWENDIGPLOTSTRUCTURE!

Or, for a visual presentation of the revision experience:

 

Week in Review

The wave may not have risen that much this week, but higher than most:

NewMyths.com just published my story The Warmth of Sun in Winter, which was my first attempt at writing a positive story, that is, one in which no one’s disintegrated, evaporated or otherwise obliterated. Sure, the world is post-apocalyptic, but that’s downplayed,  and can the world ever really end if there’s someone you love still in it?

I finally finished a story called The Catskill Dragon, which took a week longer than I thought it would. I’ll send it out by tomorrow EOB after one more pass to make sure the i’s aren’t crossed and the t’s aren’t dotted. It’s set in 1863, and the main character, Cassaway Zenger, could be the main character for a whole new series, The Dragons of America. I’ve done the first outline of Book One, tentatively titled The Missouri Blue. Finishing that outline, along with the second outline for The Dragon Tower, allowed me to reward myself by finishing The Catskill Dragon. (The trouble with writing short stories is that they suck away the time you should be writing novels, the way side quests can distract you from the epic one.) Now it’s back to outline two for (OMG, I’m really going to write this) Mo’ Blue and outline three for Tower. 

At the risk of jinxing myself, I’ll say that I entered a story in Amazing Stories’s Gernsback  Writing Contest and it looks like I made the final round, that is, I didn’t get a rejection yet like some other people have according to the Grinder. There are 18 finalists, so all I have to do is beat 8 of them to make the anthology. Really, though, I just want to see if the ex-NASA scientist who is one of the judges thinks my science isn’t total nonsense. Curiously, the contest theme is a positive take on what our solar system will look like in 250 years. It seems grimdark may be ceding some ground to sunnier works.

Finally, if you have a Roku, get the channel for the 92nd Street Y. It has interviews with GRRM and Jimmy Page and many other fascinating folks.

 

The Week In Review

An important story for me was accepted by NewMyths.com, “The Warmth of Sun in Winter.” It was the first in which I consciously tried to be positive and vowed not to see someone obliterated. I’ve also found that more positive stories are more marketable. That doesn’t stop me from writing grim, dystopian ones–because I can’t help it–but my goal is to at least alternate between something grim and something a bit brighter, even if “a bit brighter” means only subtly indicating that a story happens have a apocalyptic event.

Meanwhile other stories were rejected and promptly sent elsewhere. I don’t like playing rejectomancy, though, or even publicly tracking submissions because, being very competitive, I then start rooting for the rejects. So they shall go unmentioned. The stories are good, I think. Someone will pick them up sooner or later. My average number of subs per accepted piece is 9.

What keeps me going is that I haven’t mastered even one of these, and I mentioned how competitive I am, right?

 

 

 

The Week in Review

Very good week as a writer. I had a story accepted by Lightspeed, Fade to Red, a triptych of interviews whose form was inspired by this interview by Bruce Fretts with Andrew Jarecki.

Plus the Beam Me Up podcast will read my AE story Automatic Sky. This is my second podcast acceptance, after MedusPod took my 365 Tomorrow story The Accidental TowerThe fun part will be coming up the sound effects for folding space and the ring tone for an ansible.

Sad week as a reader, though. After 35 years, I’ve finished reading all of Jack Vance’s novels, finishing with his last, Lurulu.  It was OK ending to an excellent career. Now I have only 25 scattered stories to go. Buying a used copy of The Dark Side of the Moon will get me 13 of them, as this chart shows (because I’m that obsessed):

 

Dream Castle Hard Luck Diggings Five Moons Rise Dark Side Moon Light Lone Star Magnus Ridolph Lost Moons Green Magic Worlds of JV World Btwn
Dream Castle * *
Sulwen’s Planet * *
A Practial Man’sGuide * *
Enchanted Princess * *
Hard-Luck Diggings * *
TempleHan * *
Phantom Milkman * *
DP! * *
Absnt-Mnded Prof *
Devil Salv Bluff * * *
Ecological Onslaught * * *
Alfred’s Ark *
DeadAhead *
Dover Spargill’s *
1st Star See * *
HouseLords *
Parapsyche *
PhalidFate *
Cat Island *
Sanatoris *
400 Blackbirds *
Sabotage S Plnt *
7 Exits fr Bocz *
Winner LoseAll *
Pilgrims *

Having created my own bibliography with dates and variant titles to track my progress, I was a bit bummed to find this bibliography today. It did clear up the variant titles given to five stories I need to read that are used in the Spatterlight collections. I don’t mind reading Vance as ebooks, but I kind of want to add to my shelf of titles.

Of course, when I’m finally done, I’ll do the obvious thing: pick up The Dying Earth again and start over.

I would say the toughest problem I face as a writer is not trying to sound like Vance, however oversubtle I try to be.

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