This piece of flash fiction originally appeared in Sybil’s Garage Issue Five.
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This piece of flash fiction originally appeared in Sybil’s Garage Issue Five.
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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."
I spend literally less than a day at home, then get a haircut in the morning and head off to Sasquan in Spokane with my bestie, the fabulous Caren Gussoff. I’ve posted my convention schedule here, and if you’re wondering what sort of SFWA events I’ll be attending, here’s a video about that:
I’m working on a blog post about how to create videos like that — it’s much easier than you think. But you should make time for the SFWA auction, because there are some frickin’ amazing and very much one of a kind things for sale, including authors doing your voicemail message, supplying creative profanity, critiquing stories, and Tuckerizing (including one award winning novelist’s very first Tuckerization ever.) And lots of signed books, including ones from Worldcon toastmaster David Gerrold, George R.R. Martin, and Guest of Honor Vonda McIntyre.
I’ll also be spending a good bit of time at the Wordfire Press booth — please stop by and say hi (and buy a book if you like — I’ll have copies of both my new novel and story collection Near + Far!). If you’re coming to the con and are a vegan or vegetarian, here’s a handy list of food options.
In various news, Rappacini’s Crow will be reprinted in the BCS Best of Anthology and Abyss & Apex has accepted a novella that Bud Sparhawk and I wrote together, “Haunted.”
Tor.com had a nice piece about the SFWA cookbook — I’ll have copies of that with me for sale and there will be copies at the SFWA table in the Dealers Room and in the SFWA suite.
Here’s a piece from what I’ve been working on lately, near the beginning of Hearts of Tabat:
“Why do you always pick this teahouse when you are troubled?” Leonoa asked.
Adelina’s eyebrow raised and she smoothed a hand self-consciously over the garnet silk of her blouse. “I wasn’t aware that I did,” she said. And then, with mock severity, “That is the peril of associating with artists, Gilly. They are often dangerously observant.”
Gilly laughed nervously.
“But it makes sense. At one point,” Adelina said, “I became convinced that I was aberrant.”
Leonoa gave her a sidelong glance, but Adelina continued. “I thought I was different from all the other merchant children of my age, in that they all seemed very concerned with some sort of invisible game of unexplained points.”
Gilly frowned in noncomprehension.
“They all cared deeply about this game, and part of it was caring what other people thought ““ or more importantly, said ““ about each other. And I, honestly and completely, did not care what most people thought of me. My mother, the nurse who had raised me until the age of thirteen, my poetry tutor”¦ I did care about what they said, but no one else.”
“You were a prodigy,” Leonoa said wryly.
Adelina shrugged. “Perhaps not a prodigy. But I was one of those children who are capable of discerning the layers of adulthood mysteries that were truly not mysteries at all but simply things that adults were either too busy or bored or whatever to explain or which they thought were inappropriate for children for some reason or another.”
“Was there a moment of revelation?” Gilly asked. Her eyes were downcast, her voice a little lower. She’s flirting with me.
Adelina checked Leonoa’s expression and the wry flicker when the little woman realized she’d been caught amused and watching.
Not this one. Ah, Vyra Serena, send me someone eloquent, who loves words and will woo me with them, not innuendos and touched knees.
“I was given a child’s catechism of the Trade Gods,” she said, pulling her leg away from Gilly’s as she sat back.
Gilly looked nervous in the way one sometimes does when anticipating someone else is about to reveal some overly religious sentiment. Leonoa, who had heard this story before, maintained a polite, amused silence.
“The Trade Gods are an analysis of the way the world works,” Adelina said. “The ebb and flow of coin, of trade, of wants and necessities. Everything is there in the religion, because that is what it is. It is not that a God who is the personification of Coinage or Surplus or Fairspeaking, walking the street, the way the ignorant speak of such things.” She rolled her eyes. “Every religion is that ““ a way of understanding and teaching about the world.”
“But there is a natural order to things,” Gilly protested. “Surely someone came up with that.”
Adelina shook her head, one quick definite shake. “Not at all. As you said, a natural order, one that could not but happen to arise. It is the only thing that could given the circumstances.”
Gilly chewed her lip in perplexity, trying to summon a reply.
“It is not so,” Leonoa said. “There is no natural order, just happenstance. The reason that Humans are elevated over Beasts is that we are more numerous and they have not been able to successfully ally.”
Gilly’s eyes widened.
“Please,” said Adelina. “Before you get us all hauled in for Abolitionism, at least lower your voice when making such pronouncements.”
Leonoa pursed her lips but took a silent sip of tea.
ETA: And HEY I am part of this great Women in SF Bundle through the end of the month. Catherine Asaro, Janis Ian, Nancy Kress, Vonda N. McIntryre, Linda Nagata, Jodi Lynn Nye, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Judith Tarr — holy smokes can you really pass that up when you can get all that for as little as $15?
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Over halfway through the year, and here’s some of the happenings for July.
Online I taught workshops on Story Fundamentals, Flash Fiction, Writing Steampunk & Weird Western, Moving from Idea to Draft, and Editing 101. I’ll announce September and October classes next week. I also got a chance to teach at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference mid-month, which was terrific.
I wrote short stories “Say Yes,” “A House Alone,” and “Another Selkie Story,” all of which were posted for Patreon supporters. (You can see a pictorial version of my July Patreon here.) As always, I’ve got a crop that I’m working on: highlights include a story about a woman who buys a magical talking mask only to find she doesn’t agree with what it’s saying. I also worked on urban fantasy Brazen, about a magic-wielding post apocalyptic hellion.
Videogames I’ve been playing are Stardew Valley and Dream Daddy. Curse whoever introduced me to them. In RPG news, my Star Wars RPG game managed a session. You’ll be glad to know my prophet/conwoman continues to talk her way out of things successfully but the rest of the party didn’t want to take her suggestion of throwing a mysterious crate out a fifth-floor window in order to discover the contents.
I continue using Habitica, which I blogged about here. I have a follow-up post in the works.
SFWA work included working with the Galaktika settlement, answering a bunch of e-mails, a multiplicity of video calls, and nudging a couple of projects along.
Books I read included the following. I’ve bolded the ones I particularly enjoyed:
Karen Abott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
R.S. Belcher, The Brotherhood of the Wheel
Mike Caro, Caro’s Book of Poker Tells
Ramsey Campbell, Demons by Daylight
Tori Curtis, Eelgrass
Laurell K. Hamilton, Crimson Blood
Elizabeth Hand, Winterlong
Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future
Michael M. Jones (editor), Scheherezade’s Facade
Damon Knight, The Futurians
Tanith Lee, Red as Blood
Gabriel Squalia, Viscera
Glynn Stewart, Starship’s Mage
R J Theodore, Flotsam
Kentaro Toyama – Geek Heresy
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