I just sent my scheduler in to Bellevue College last week – I’ll be teaching the Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction class again this spring as well as the Blogging 101 class. I’ll post the dates for that when I have them in hand.
With both classes, I’ve gone through my notes, getting them together. With the blogging class I’ve been using a new online tool I saw mentioned during the great “Yahoo is getting rid of Delicious!” flak, Trailmeme.
WIth Trailmeme, the central metaphor is “trails” of links, which you can annotate. So I’ve used the outline from my Blogging class to collect my Delicious links on the topic. Here is the Blogging 101 “trail”. A cool feature of Trailmeme is the ability to discuss links – please feel free to make suggestions and/or forward the link to the trail along to people who might find it useful. I know a lot of those links are ones I’ve frequently referred to and often continue to use.
One of the reasons I’ve gone to that trouble is that I’m pushing a couple of consulting services next year, and one of them is a critique of your blog or website talking about its current structure and organization, its search ranking and strategy, how you might use it more effectively, how you might be using social networks, and directions you might want to take it in, based on what a student gets out of that class. For $100, you get a 500 word write-up. If you want to go more in-depth, contact me and I’ll give you an estimate.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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WIP: The Ghost Installers
Here’s a bit from the story I’m trying to finish up today, a young adult piece tentatively entitled “The Ghost Installers.” It actually came out of a dream that I had – a good reason to be keeping a dream journal.
We talked about that recently in a class – the need to listen to your unconscious mind, to pay attention to dreams and serendipitous slips of the tongue. To nourish it with a variety of arts and make sure its senses are satisfied. To give it space in which to express itself. Sometimes when I’m drawing, that’s when a story that’s mentally knotted begins to untwist itself and show me what my mind is trying to do with it.
The dream was just a moment, an image/situation that I won’t describe for fear of spoilers. Talking to Wayne about it the next morning, I found a story idea emerging, which we batted back and forth, applying the classic try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed algorithm, until it was fleshed out to the point that I jotted down a 250 word outline. Now I’m working through that from scene one till the end, but I think if I get stuck along the way, I might try moving to the ending and writing it, advice from this excellent post about writing process by Kameron Hurley that I wanted to point to.
Here’s a bit from the beginning. Penny and her dad have just moved into their new house, so new that pieces of it are still being worked on. It’s two in the morning, and she’s just snuck in after hanging out with her friends in a nearby park.
She had a penlight in her pocket, although the battery was almost out from using it in the park. She crept towards the attic stairs. The solidity of the little light wrapped in her fingers reassured her, although it could hardly be used as a weapon.
Maybe some animal that wandered in? A raccoon or something. Maybe a cat?
She held her breath, as she crept up the stairs. Was that”¦voices?
“Goddammit, Mysa, hand me the calipers, this one’s a bitch,” someone said.
“Keep your voice down, Brian! There’s a family sleeping downstairs.”
“Who futzed up the schedule? These are supposed to go in before anyone arrives.”
“That’s why this one’s high-priority. They moved in three days ago.”
A mutter of Irritation. “Everything’s high priority.”
Penny swallowed down the lump of fear in her throat. Who are these people and what are they doing here? They sounded like the sort of people who’d been working on the house all along, but why were they installing something at two in the morning? She hesitated, then progressed upward a few more steps. A few more and she’d be able to see what they were doing. Speculations raced through her head, but she couldn’t figure out anything that would fit. This was all too weird.
But the pair, once she could glimpse them, seemed ordinary enough. They wore black coveralls and matching black stocking caps. The taller one was fiddling with something attached to the highest point of the roof. And then she noticed what wasn’t ordinary at all. His feet hung in the air. Unsupported, dangling just enough to show that he wasn’t standing on something that she couldn’t see.
In Celebration of International Women's Day: Feminist Futures Storybundle
I’m so pleased that my Feminist Futures Storybundle came out in time for International Women’s Day! This bundle celebrates some of the best science fiction being written by women today, gathering a wide range of outlooks and possibilities, including an anthology that gives you a smorgasbord of other authors you may enjoy!
This is my favorite bundle so far, although I’m already assembling one in my head for next year that will be even better and more diverse. Why? Because I used to work in the tech industry, and there I saw how diversity could enhance a team and expand its skillset. Women understand that marketing to women is something other than coming up with a lady-version of a potato chip designed not to crunch or a pink pen sized for our dainty hands. Diversity means more perspectives, and this applies to science fiction as well. I am more pleased with this bundle than any I’ve curated so far.
In her feminist literary theory classic How to Suppress Women’s Writing, science fiction author Joanna Russ talked about the forces working against the works of women (and minority) writers. A counter to that is making a point of reading and celebrating such work, and for me this bundle is part of that personal effort, introducing you to some of my favorites. Ironically enough this bundle idea started with a particular book, Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin, that fell through at the last minute sadly “” but that’s all the more reason to do this theme again next year for Women’s History month again. 😉 But don’t wait till then – you can find the Elgin book currently available online and it’s worth the read.
And in the name of expanding one’s knowledge and enjoyment of women writing SF, the majority of these books are first volumes of series, and I hope if you enjoy them, you’ll find the others as well as telling other people about them. The Kirstein series is the only one where not all the books are available; she’s currently working on book five and plans seven altogether. Many of them are independently or small press published, showing the depth and quality of work such publishing venues can yield.
I come to the task of writing these notes having just finished reading through a slush pile for an anthology I’m editing, If This Goes On, devoted to political science fiction. Some of the themes there are echoed in some of the works here, and it’s been interesting to note the resonances. Other books in the bundle are more lighthearted or escapist. I hope everyone will find at least a few they enjoy, and that many readers will join me in thinking they’re all swell.
I’ll be doing some video interviews with authors about their books – look for the hashtag #thefutureisfeminist on social media or subscribe to my Youtube channel or newsletter to make sure you get notified when they appear!
Here’s the bundle participants:
Athena Andreadis has produced multiple anthologies focused on women writers and I’ve had the pleasure of being in her anthology The Other Half of the Sky. Its sequel To Shape The Dark focuses on female scientists doing science in ways that move outside the traditional modes. This solid, intriguing anthology holds more than a few creative, inventive stories that you will enjoy.
L. Timmel Duchamp’s Alanya to Alanya is the first volume of her Marq’ssan cycle. Like the Gussoff book, it’s set in a near future Seattle and world that has become fiercely divided by gender, visited by aliens with very different ideas about such things. Political and intricate, this book pulls no punches in setting up a world that echoes that of The Handmaid’s Tale while remaining a unique vision. DuChamp is also a literary scholar and publisher; her Aqueduct Press is publishing great stuff.
Caren Gussoff’s The Birthday Problem is set in a near-future Seattle where a nannite plague has overtaken the world. It deals with issues of connection and mathematics in a multiple point of view narrative that showcases her ability with evocative, illuminating prose, and contains figures like former-WNBA center Didi VanNess and The King of Seattle, an ex-rockstar now living in one of Seattle’s iconic landmarks, as well as thirty cats named Ira.
M.C.A. Hogarth’s Spots the Space Marine features a military heroine who’s also a parent in a book that has aptly been called “Pollyanna meets Starship Troopers”. If you’re not familiar with Hogarth’s work, I urge you to check it out. If you’re a fan of furry fiction, you’ll particularly enjoy her Pelted Universe works, but another favorite of mine is Black Blossom.
Happy Snak by Nicole Kimberling is a fresh and funny romp detailing the travails of running a fast-food enterprise in space as unhappy proprietor Gaia Jones finds her life growing increasingly complicated. My only sorrow is that there isn’t a sequel, because Happy Snak is comfort food of the highest grade,
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein is the first in a fantastic series by the same name. This is a terrific book with a landscape that fascinates and a protagonist exploring that world and its challenges carefully and methodically, to the best of her efforts. I was delighted to be able to secure this book for the bundle.
Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan deals with a world where women’s roles are severely limited “” and details the struggle as they begin to fight back. Louise writes under a variety of names, including Cate Campbell, Louisa Morgan, and Toby Bishop, every time with an elegance and empathy that is showcased in this early book of heres.
Vonda N. McIntyre is a favorite writer of mine, and here I’ve stuffed a little extra value in the bundle for you with not one but four books in this Starfarers omnibus edition from the Book View Cafe. When a group of scientists find their alien contact project has been cancelled, they go to extreme measures to keep it going. Also: intelligent squidmoths. Does it get better than intelligent squidmoths?
Kristine Smith is working in military sf and doing it with panache and grace in the Jani Kilian series. Tight and fast, Code of Conduct will pull you into one of my favorite series, with a set of characters and fascinating worldbuilding that will leave you scrambling to find the next volume in this five book series.
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