Another offering is Peter J. Wacks' "The Little Airship That Could".I was pleased to be asked to participate in the very cool Fairypunk Stories project. Here’s a teaser from the version of Sleeping Beauty that I just sent off.
(From “Seven Clockwork Angels, All Dancing”)
If a clock has ticked, it must tock, and thus time moves along. And in every tick and tock, there’s a story. Sometimes more than one.
Once upon a tick and tock, there was a great Lord and Lady, who were Patrons of the Arts and Sciences. They endowed libraries and laboratories, and commissioned portraits and poems and marvelous machines that could pay chess or spin a silk thread so fine you could barely see it or build their own, even tinier machines that could make tinier machines in turn, and so on and so on, until they produced the head of a pin inhabited by seven clockwork angels, all dancing.
The Lord and Lady loved the works they commissioned, but they yearned to produce something of their own. One day it came to pass that the Lady announced to her Lord that they had collaborated very well indeed, and that she would soon produce an heir.
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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: Doctor Fantastik
(from the current story in progress, which is set in Tabat)
“This craze for exorcisms is a harmful fad,” Dr. Fantastik said to the man at his left. His tone was severe in a way that seemed at odds with the addressed man’s mien, for the lefthand man was wholely engaged in his newspaper, turning over the yellow sheets with an attention utterly untouched by Dr. Fantastik’s presence.
“A harmful fad!” Doctor Fantastik said, a trifle louder, and this time the man looked up, then left and right, as though trying to determine who the Doctor might be speaking to. Seeing an empty seat to his left and the Doctor to his right, he raised his eyebrows in a gently interrogatory fashion.
The Doctor nodded, and continued speaking as though the question of who his interlocutor was had never been in question. “It is a result of inflammatory and showy performers, whose “patients” are often accomplices and actors.”
This time the man outright shrugged. His attention dropped back to his newspaper, whose headline read (something clever to come).
Doctor Fantastik considered him. The Doctor himself was dressed in an out of heels velvet coat, of a style popular a decade or so ago. Although in neat repair, the hems were worn and shabby, and a darn spidered its way up one side. He wore ivory-framed spectacles that glinted in the tavern’s light. Like his vestments, his hair was neatly kept but had seen better days. Spots of wear shone on his scalp, uncloaked by the wisps of white hair that remained.
He seemed about to speak when his attention was caught by a young woman entering. He watched as she paused to cast an appraising glance over the clientele, which was sparse for an afternoon in Tabat, when most took to tea-shops and taverns to drink the spiced fish-tea that was the city’s favorite drink. Doctor Fantastik was not himself drinking such a thing; rather a mug of lemon and water sat before him as she picked her way across the uneven planking of the floor to sit down on his right side.
The newspaper man at first barely spared her a glance, but then he took her in more fully and began stealing admiring looks. She was worthy of such, her skin as fashionably pale as that of any upper-class maiden, her hair immaculate and well-brushed, shining as it fell over her slightly antiquated but quality silk clothes. Her doe-soft eyes were dark and lustrous, but they did not return the newspaper reader’s glance, but rather remained fixed upon Doctor Fantastik.
Creating an Online Presence for Your Group: Some Basic Steps
Trying to set up an online presence for your group or organization? Here’s some basics to think about.
One: Include a blog on your website that has new content on a regular basis.
This first step is key to a better social media presence, because it influences your search engine rankings. Better search engine rankings draw more traffic to your site, as do good keywords, and if your blog features information about the group, it’s pretty much guaranteed to have the appropriate keywords.
Establish realistic criteria for “regular”: daily? weekly? biweekly? What can you actually expect to do?
Figure out how you will generate such content. Some suggestions:
Group member announcements, interviews, and guest posts.
Group events and news.
Posts drawing on other social media, such as announcements of new videos on the Youtube channel (see point 4) or Pinterest boards (see point 5).
Calls for volunteer positions and interviews with volunteers.
Yearly best-of lists or review columns.
This blog should drive the group’s presence on social networks. Posts should automatically propagate to other networks, thereby relieving the pressure for someone to be managing and posting to individual streams, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as presenting a more unified and consistent approach.
Two: Keep your Facebook policy simple and free.
Social networks rise and fall, but currently Facebook’s attempts to monetize itself by making you pay for messages or pay extra to reach people is making it less useful to those of us who want the most bang for the buck. Simply put, recent changes make is so not everyone who’s liked your page or followed you is seeing your posts.
Basically all you need is a public Facebook fan page to which blog posts (generated in point 1) are automatically posted and which people can “like” in order to receive news of the organization via that social network. Here’s a sample of my writerly FB fan page and one I did for a recent book. (Feel free to “like” them!)
Three: Use Google+.
As Facebook’s popularity falls, Google+’s is rising, particularly internationally. There’s space to be innovative here. Set up an open community. Certainly blog posts should get propagated to here, but make the most of Google+ technology and encourage people to use Hangouts, share documents, etc.
Four: Use Youtube.
Users like more than just text, and video is one way to get more interest, if your group is one likely to generate videos of events, gatherings, speeches, etc. Each time a video is put up, there should be a blog post with a link and brief description, thereby generating blog content.
Six: Make it easy for your group members to connect.
Make social media information, such as Twitter or Facebook handles, available to users. Provide directories of alumni on the various networks. For example, someone joining Twitter might find a list of all group members currently on Twitter useful. Here’s my list of Codex members on Twitter.
Seven: Make it easy for your group members to create community.
Provide a way people can upload announcements to the blog for a moderator to check and post on a daily or weekly basis. Encourage people to reply to each other’s posts and pass them along on social networks by noticing and rewarding community efforts as well as by leading by example and being an active and responsive community member.
Eight: You don’t need forums or mailings.
Creating a log-in for a forum or subscribing to a newsletter is one way for people to reach you, but social media has the advantage of reaching out to new as well as established community members. It’s as easy — in some cases easier — for someone to check your group’s Facebook page as it is to log into a forum. Physical mailings are costly; e-mail lists need to be maintained.
Nine: Use the community.
Your members include people who are invested in the organization and are also social influencers. The organization should be making the most of this. Here’s some possible ways to do so.
Create social media posts that include calls to action, asking people to pass along information.
Generate guest posts for the blog from the community by calling for volunteers to write them.
Generate Youtube videos and Pinterest boards via the community by issuing calls to collect images or videos for a specific event or contest.
Ten: No matter what, have a succinct and coherent plan.
Figure out what the social media mission is (perhaps increase membership and establish brand). Establish (again, realistic is important) criteria for success in the various social media, such as number of website hits via Facebook each month, number of Twitter followers, etc. Check the success rate on at least yearly basis, perhaps better every six months or even three, given how fast social media can change.
Give things a unified feel. The background on the group’s Twitter page should be the same one used on Facebook or on the blog. Use the same font where possible.
Have someone who’s in charge of all this, rather than trying to do it by committee. Having someone oversee things makes sure that gaps don’t get missed.
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