WIP: Doctor Fantastik Part IV

An Instructive Listing of the Notable Markets of Tabat, being Pamphlet #4 of the first series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

The Rain Market: To the north and east of Tabat lie the great marshes, half salt water, half fresh water. While the struggle to drain them and transform them into cropland presses on each year. The vast marshlands, a mix of salt and fresh water, seem unthreatened. The grasses that grow here are colored, like most of the marsh’s vegetation, by the purplish and green clays and minerals that underlie the marsh. Their pliant grasses colored lavender to dark purple and shades of olive, grow in abundance and are harvested for the purpose of making the tight-woven rain-gear that fills the Tabatian square known as the Rain Market.

Open come rain or sunshine, the Market sells, beyond its hats and shell-shaped overcoats of woven grass, baskets and other containers in whatever size or shape you might need. Bring the object there and they will weave a basket to hold it, from spiky pine-fruit to a glove shaped case from a wooden prosthetic hand of the sort the 12th Duke wore. Clatter chimes, lengths of hollow reed string on cording and meant to be hung from windowsills or bank tills to scare away sea-ghosts are sold here exclusively in this market in the shadow of the Slumpers.

Also near the Slumpers are the shops that sell its wares: tiles and china and porcelain goods. At the very edge of Rose Way is the complex of shops devoted to brownie wares: miniature dishes many use to coax brownies into their houses as well as other wares designed for smaller Beasts and animals.

Spice and Fish Square, only a block away from the main dock, supplies goods just unloaded from fishing and merchant ships,. The freshest sea fare can be found here and many vendors are prepared to cook your dinner on the spot. The air smells of brine and rot and smoke, and the nearby alleys are scattered with fragments of scales like silver spangles underfoot.

The Stable Markets are housed in what were once the city stables, since relocated to the northern edge of Tabat. Sitting on the fourth terrace, the building is filled with swarms of tiny shops selling this, that, and the other thing. Some stalls have existed here for generations while others are new traders, come with merchandise they want to dispose of quickly, if sometimes not cheaply.

The Midnight Market, located on the lowest terrace within sound of the sea, operates only from dusk to dawn, in the spaces that will be occupied by traders, merchants, and sailors during the day’s daylight hours. Anything and everything can be purchased here, and many of the vendors, as in the Stable Markets, are Beasts acting as representatives for Human masters.

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#sfwapro

Jeff VanderMeer mentioned this on Facebook and it got me thinking about it. This is the season when speculative fiction writers (and other genres as well, I believe) start thinking about awards. Nominations for the Hugo and Nebula Awards are coming up. There will be others, such as the Locus and World Fantasy Awards, but for most it’s the Hugo and Nebula, with a small group thinking about the Campbell Best New Writer Award and trying to figure out how to make the most of their two year period of eligibility for it.

Complicating this is the fact that neither award is really very democratic. You can only make Hugo nominations if you’re a member of either last year’s WorldCon or this one. Nebula nominations are made by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, many of whom are hoping to make it onto the nomination ballot itself. In either case you could love the book and want to vote for it, but unless you’ve paid the dough for either a WorldCon or SFWA membership, you’re not going to be able to.

One of the words that gets mentioned around this time is “log-rolling,” the act of exchanging favors, along the lines of “You nominate my novella for a Hugo and I’ll nominate your short story for a Nebula.” Recent changes, such as no longer being able to see who nominated something for a Nebula, are encouraging, but the awards still sometimes seem less about the merit of the work than about the popularity of their author.

Beyond that, people use the power of the Internet as much as possible: blog posts, Facebook mentions, tweets, and so forth, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not so much. Why? Because it works. If it didn’t work, there’d be a lot fewer people doing it, and (imo) the award lists from the past decade would be significantly different. Does that make the award process something you should just opt out of and hope for the best? Well, certainly people have done that in the past (and saved themselves some work in the process), but I’d rather have as a take-away the idea that one shouldn’t despair if you don’t win.

Awards are shiny. Most of us like shiny things. And more importantly, they’re testimony to what we really want: affirmation that someone read and liked our work. That’s the real pellet that keeps us pressing the button marked “Pimp my work”.

It’s hard to know where to draw the line. Factor in, also, that what one person considers acceptable, the next may perceive as a gross breach of etiquette. I like the approach the Codex writers have taken: there’s a discussion thread where people can opt in and say they’re willing to read for the awards as well as a place where people can post pieces for consideration. I appreciate this because it helps me discover some writing that I might not otherwise have found. Here’s what I said on Codex in a discussion about it:

I think it’s certainly possible to go too far in pimping your work, but in my experience, that line is farther out than one might think. This is an area where the bolder people have a definite advantage, and sometimes you have to force yourself to be bold about it. You are the best champion your work has, and you might as well do your duty by it.

It would be lovely if all one had to do was write a good story, but the nature of things is that those who are good about promoting their work go farther than those who aren’t. Promotion’s not a substitute for good writing (in most cases), but it sure helps. My collection wouldn’t have gotten nominated for the Endeavor Award if I hadn’t sent them copies of the book, for example, and while I thought at the time it was a pretty long shot, it ended up being quite worthwhile.

To me the most important point is this – don’t just throw your work out there. If you’re going to be sending people your stuff to read, then do some reading and recommending yourself, and do it based on what you like, what you think is good, or ground-breaking, or worthy of recommendation. In that spirit, I’ll be posting some recommendations in the next few weeks, and hopefully guiding y’all to some excellent fiction that you might not have read otherwise. Please feel free to make recommendations to me in return, either on this post or upcoming ones!