My story, Acquainted with the Night, can be found in a really fun anthology of superhero fiction put together by Lincoln Crisler, CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY?
I’m appearing at MidSouthCon this weekend as their Editor Guest of Honor. While there I’ll be giving a talk entitled “We’re All Bozos On This Bus: The Truth About Electronic Publishing.” I’ll put the text up on here afterwards.
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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: 99 Statues
Fen pre-empted any observation he could make about the weather. "The statues will be done by midsummer, they say. Later than anyone had hoped for, but still enough time to get to the coast before winter sets in."
Another Tabat story is brewing, this time explaining one of the city’s architectural features: the ninety-nine statues of figures from the history of Tabat, commissioned by a Duke to be placed along Salt Road. A mystery arises – what is it about the 99th statue that sets it apart from its fellows? Here’s a snippet from the beginning:
It was one of those rainy days that make up most of Tabat’s spring, a day when the clouds hung so low that the city’s upper terraces were shrouded in fog. When Nicolas started up the foot of Salt Road, it was clear, but as he ascended, the white mist around him thickened and he found himself breathing in cold moisture that made his lungs feel as sodden as the thick wool coat he had imprudently chosen that morning, thinking it would snow and he’d want the warmth.
He shivered and glanced sideways and slightly down at his companion. Feniker marched along with his hands in his pockets, smugly dry in his oilskin cloak and waxed leather boots, both brand new. An elaborate cockade was pinned to the black fabric’s breast.
“I see the Duke has chosen to outfit you,” Nicolas said.
Feniker glanced down at himself. “This is what all the expeditions are equipped with. Nothing but the best.”
“Still planning on going?” Nicolas asked. He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, but Feniker didn’t reply, just nodded and kept on walking.
Nicolas kept his pace in step with his friend’s, despite the discrepancy in their heights. He hunted for a safe topic of conversation but everything seemed fraught, tinted with departure.
By now, they could barely see the street, surrounded by a wall of meaninglessness, robbed of any sign of wall or fence or street-sign. The cobbles underfoot were slick with moisture. Tonight when the temperature dropped, Nicolas knew, they would become black ice, and most of the city would come to a standstill, with only the lines of the trams moving up and down the terraces.
I wrote this beginning of a steampunk Western story at ArmadilloCon this year. I’m transcribing a lot of stuff from my notebooks and thought people might enjoy this excerpt.
We came out of Texas with fire and iron in our blood. Our maker set us loose, said get ’em, gals! Then he stood back and spat.
She was in Kansas. Our leader, our model. We had to get to her.
So we walked, all thirty of us, dressed in tough black serge that tore nonetheless, got pulled away by thorns, and rough fingers of grass, and sand burrs. Bit by bit the clothes fell away and we weren’t a pack of black-bonneted little old ladies anymore. We were glittering steel and a spark of bright blue electricity in each eye.
Robot Carrie Nations, ready to spread the Temperance Word.
Let us backtrack and tell you the why and how that our Maker would have come up with. He talked about her all the time, had been in an Oklahoma saloon when she came through! Smashed it to flinders, used her famous axe on a whisky barrel till an alcoholic sheen covered the floor and old man Harcourt was there trying to lap it up off the planking. That was what made him see the Light, he said. A grown man, old enough to be his father, lapping up whiskey like a dog. That was when he took the Pledge, the same one engraved over each of our hearts.
We’re going to find Mother Nation. We’re his gift to her — thirty automatons, powered by phlogiston and hot blue liquid, ready to be set to work on the Crusade. His tribute. Another man might have sent flowers, or a diamond the size of a buffalo’s eye, or lengths of paisley silk. Not Thomas Y. D. Swift (or so the soles of our left feet read). Is he wooing her or enlisting in her army? We’re not sure. Humans are confusing sometimes.
