We went down to Newport, Oregon for New Year’s. In past years we’ve gone to the San Juans, and we figured this time we’d try a change of pace.
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We went down to Newport, Oregon for New Year’s. In past years we’ve gone to the San Juans, and we figured this time we’d try a change of pace.
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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."
Start the clock! Release the kraken! Let the hockey players sharpen their blades, let the audience stir restlessly and go one last time for popcorn and sodas and beer, glorious golden beer that tints the ice with its microbrewed haze.
Because there is a haze tonight, that’s for sure, folks. Tonight Seattle’s surrendered to the supernatural forces that have been creeping up like uninvited shoggoths in recent years. The world’s gone weird and wacky, and why not krakens, why not tentacles spilling out from the Space Needle, infesting the sky? It’s Seattle, after all; it’s raining so it’s not like they block out the sun.
Who’d have dreamed that magic and hockey would mix this way, a mash-up made of bloody sticks and smashed spell bottles? Seattle’s wizards have come out of hiding for this game, emerged from their lairs in Greenlake and Mercer Island, driven their Teslas over to park in interdimensional folds where they won’t get scratched like normal cars.
Only an hour’s worth of game, and then the magic runs out, deflates like a sodden pumpkin, milked for all that tentacle and terror juice. Will it be enough to keep Seattle entertained for another evening, keep it from imploding like Scherezade in reverse into ennui and coffee beans? Cities don’t resort to supernatural hockey games until they’re really in extremis and no one is really sure what this one will – or even can — achieve, given a world of murder hornets and sapient bananas and well, you remember the last few months as well as I do, particularly what happened to the butterflies.
The clock’s ticking. The skaters are moving back and forth over the ice, and things are stirring in the depths underneath it, things that will fuck a Zamboni up and shred ice like tissue paper. That’s how close the danger is to us all. That’s how dire things are.
Let’s stop now, before another spray of ice goes up, before another player gets a bloody nose and melts the ice with that, so things can crawl through from another dimension. It’s not too late. Where’s the entrance? Where’s the exit? Why does this ice hold me so fast?
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I’m finishing up my essay and the story edits for the Women Destroying Fantasy issue of Lightspeed, as well as some other articles, trying to get those finished before hitting the road. Stories coming out soon include pieces in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 3-Lobed Burning Eye and Shattered Shields (edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt).
I’m going to be setting up a Patreon campaign, because I’ve got a big backlog of stories and figure releasing them on my own while on the road will probably work as well as worrying about keeping them submitted. If you might be interested in subscribing to get two short stories each month, please sign up for my mailing list, and drop me a comment here to let me know what sort of things you might like to accompany that. What sort of cost would be appropriate for a subscription that lets you supply a prompt or get a Tuckerization, for example?
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In three days, I become Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. I look forward and am somewhat daunted by the prospect.
Today I am putting down linoleum as the next part of the great remodel while Wayne does some sanding. We’re still on track to leave July 15, +/-3 days. We’ll be heading eastward, with stops planned in Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, and Philly-area, arriving towards the end of July. August we’ll spend some time knocking around on the eastern seaboard, and towards the end of that month, we will go somewhere. Just not sure where, but Australia, Europe, and South America are among the strong contenders, continent wise.
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