beneath ceaseless skies

Someone mentioned this as one of their favorite stories of mine, and I wanted, for selfish and egotistical reasons, to use it for the subject of a blog post, but I hope that I can in pulling it apart and explaining some decisions, shed a little light on both my process and writing in general.

If you’re not familiar with the story, it appears here on the excellent online publication Beneath Ceaseless Skies, or you can buy an e-copy on Amazon or Smashwords. If you’re too impatient, here are some of the pertinent details: steampunk world, asylum for those injured by the war, nurse with a secret, doctor with an evil crow, wacky hijinks ensure.

The story takes place in a dystopian steampunk setting that I’d wandered around the edges of previously in “Clockwork Fairies” and “Rare Pears and Greengages”. This story got me far enough into that territory that it spurred others: “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart,” “Snakes on a Train,” and “Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?” I’ve been calling the series Altered America, and you can see some of the images I’ve used for inspiration here.

And the amount of effort involved in writing the protagonist that appeared to me scared me. Transgendered, Native American, poor, and disabled. How could I write that other without offending someone? Better folks than I have battered themselves against that question. But you can’t do something without trying, so I gave it a shot. I strove to do my best by my protagonist: to explain his background, his history, the way he thought, and his relationship with Jesus. Which is another way my character is unlike me: he is struggling with his Christianity, while I’m Unitarian, a faith that has taught me a great deal, and which I embrace, but which draws on, rather than consists wholly of, Christianity.

Almost a decade ago I was part of a terrific workshop run by Walter John Williams and Connie Willis in the Taos Ski Valley. It was a talented group, and the two week session was a happy blur of lots of writing, lots of critiquing, and lots and lots of shop talk, plus assorted movies and a lot of wine.

One of the participants mentioned that he planned to start a literary fantasy online magazine. Since he happened to like the stuff I was workshopping, I figured that would be a surefire sale. So as soon as he opened up the magazine, I fired off a submission.

And he rejected it, because he didn’t feel it had the right flavor for his magazine.

My story, “English Muffin, Devotion on the Side,” is up on the Daily Science Fiction site. Please let me know what you think, and spread the word if you like it!

The audio version of Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight, read by the most awesomest Folly Blaine, will be available!

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.

Love the Easter Bunny and want to find out what happens next? Support Cat on Patreon in order to have a say in what she writes next, as well as getting other snippets, insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon.

We just got back from a two week trip to California, which was lovely, and are back to the scramble of getting the condo ready to sell. Painting, hanging blinds, replacing doorknobs, wheee! We hope to hit the road sometime between July 1 and July 15.

If you’re in the Seattle area, I’m part of a group reading at the Wayward Coffee House this Friday evening.

“The Moon and the Mouse” has been accepted to Daily Science Fiction, which “The Ghost-Eater” (a Tabat story) will appear in XIII from Resurrection House. I just finished up the final edits for “Eggs of Stone,” which will appear in next month’s 3-Lobed Burning Eye. (I’m trying to beat last year’s 19 original stories published, and looks like I’ll make it.) In reprint news, “Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane” will appear in Heiresses of Russ 2014, edited by Steve Berman and Melissa Scott

I just sent off a story to the Blackguards anthology, “The Subtler Art.” It’s a short but funny piece set in a city that recently appeared on my internal landscape, and one of the characters appears in “Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest” forthcoming from Beneath Ceaseless Skies as well.

I’ve been very absent from the blog of late, and I apologize for that. I’m actually in the process of radically trimming down our belongings, packing up Chez Rambo, moving us into temporary housing, and then getting this place ready to sell. Then Wayne and I are going to travel a bit while we figure out what we want to do. There will be plenty on that to come, but it’s why I won’t be teaching in the latter half of 2014 and will generally be unreceptive to anything other than requests for stories or reprints during that period as well. I do plan to write steadily while on the road, which should be a new and interesting experience. Advice from other road-warriors is welcome.

For people wondering how that’ll affect my tenure as SFWA’s vice president, which seems increasingly likely barring the eruption of a singularly well-organized write-in campaign: not too much. That’s one reason I’ve cut a lot of other responsibilities. As before, I’ll be stepping down as head moderator of the SFWA boards, which takes a good slice of stuff off my plate. I did commit to driving the third iteration of a SFWA cookbook (more on that to come as well), but I’ve got the capable Fran Wilde co-leading that effort as well as a nice long deadline, so all’s good there.

Various publishing news: Just turned in the last edits for “Rappacini’s Crow”, which will appear in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. There’s another story going through edits there right now, “Call and Answer, Plant and Harvest,” which features a city, Serendib, that I sense will become a working part of my mental universe as far as story production goes. “English Muffin, Devotion on the Side” will be popping up in Daily Science Fiction. “The Raiders” (formerly “In Andersonville”) will pillage in the pages of Fiction River’s Past Crimes issue, edited by Kristine Kathyrn Rusch and “Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart” will unfold in Fiction River’s Recycled Pulp issue, edited by John Helfers. “Elections at Villa Encantada” will appear in Unidentified Funny Objects 3.

Christy Varonfakis Johnson, aka Folly Blaine, will be narrating both of my collections and is currently working on Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. PseudoPod will include “The Worm Within” in an upcoming podcast.

I will pick up the “You Should Read This” posts again soon! I’m finishing up a review of two new Jo Walton books for Cascadia Subduction Zone right now, but once that’s done, I’ve got a number of old as well as recent reads I want to talk about.

So…plenty to do. And plenty more to come.

There’s plenty of room left in my upcoming online classes.
The big news is that I will be guest-editing the Women Destroying Fantasy issue of Lightspeed. We are still working out details, but it will be open subs.
I provided a teaser from WIP Laurel Finch, Laurel Finch, Where Do You Wander?
I made it onto this list of women horror authors you need to read. (Here’s the book they suggest, which is serendipitously 2.99 as part of promotion for next week!)
I talked about good things on the 27GoodThings Blog.
I sold a story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, huzzah! Also, ten stories completed so far this year, which feels terrific.

For Writers:

• If you’re writing a character who is experiencing a particular emotion, this article may be useful.
• Great post from Teresa Frohock about Being a Woman and Writing Dark Fiction
• Bud Sparhawk talks about our recent collaboration
• Please consider supporting this Kickstarter of bisexual fiction.
• A writing book Kickstarter worth supporting.
• Mary Gordon on writing by hand
• Kurt Vonnegut teaches.

Books I Talked About for You Should Read This:

• My favorite YA novels of 2013, including books by Holly Black, Chelsea M. Campbell, Sarah Beth Durst, Em Garner, Lydia Kang, Cori McCarthy, and Sean Williams
• Science fiction classic Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Things of Note:

• Victoria Strauss writes about a recent SFWA controversy in On Petitions and Flame Wars: My Thoughts About SFWA and Change
• Charles Coleman Finlay also talks about some aspects of the controversy.

Timewasters!

• Kids read to shelter cats. Heartmelting.
• Photos of a dikdik, the world’s smallest antelope
• Pictures of rats with teddy bears

Tina Conolly’s lovely podcast, Toasted Cake, has run “Coyote Barbie“.
EscapePod has a new story up, “Grandmother.”

If you enjoyed my story “Love, Resurrected,” I hope you’ll consider voting for it as a reader favorite over on Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

I have been noticing a lot of these over the last couple of months, and I was going to skip it, but then I was totting up the publications from last year, and I’m proud of the fact that I had 19 stories published.

They are all either short story or flash (Swallowing Ghosts, Futures, Lost in Drowsy Dreams, The Forbidden Stitch) and are eligible for various short story awards. There’s some favorites from last one (marked with *), but the one I’m hoping will get some notice is “Long Enough and Just So Long” which appeared in Lightspeed in February, 2011.

Here are links to the online stuff:

Long Enough and Just So Long – Lightspeed, SF

Love, Resurrected – Beneath Ceaseless Skies, fantasy
Pippa’s Smiles, Swallowing Ghosts – Daily Science Fiction, fantasy
Bots d’Amor – Abyss & Apex, SF
Karaluvian Fale – Giganotasaurus, fantasy
Whose Face This Is I Do Not Know – Clarkesworld, horror? sf? fantasy?
The Immortality Game – Fantasy Magazine, fantasy
TimeSnip – Basement Stories, sf
Lost in Drowsy Dreams and The Forbidden Stitch -10 Flash , fantasy
Futures – The Dream People, sf? fantasy?
Zeppelin Follies – last issue Crossed Genres, sf

I am happy to send the stories not available online to anyone reading for Hugos, Nebulas, Tiptree etc. They are:
Close Your Eyes – Apex Magazine, horror
A Frame of Mother-of-Pearl – Intergalactic Medicine Show, fantasy
A Querulous Flute of Bone – Tales From the Fathomless Abyss, sf
Flicka – Subversions, sf
The Coffeemaker’s Passion – Bull Spec, fantasy
Aquila – Shadows and Light II, sf

I loved Kris Dikeman’s Silent, Still and Cold in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It has a high fantasy sensibility mixed with zombies, which always seems like a win-win to me. Also in this month’s issue is Jesse Bullington’s The Adventures of Ernst, Who Began a Man, Became a Cyclops, and Finished A Hero. Both stories have great titles, which is one of the things that’s been obsessing me lately.

Abyss & Apex has a slew of interesting stories in this issue, including J. Kathleen Cheney’s steampunky Of Ambergris, Blood and Brandy, C. J. Cherryh’s The Last Tower and Vylar Kaftan’s Mind-Diver.

Overall, 2010’s been a much better year than 2009, although it’s had its less pleasant moments, such as special assessment convulsions in my condo complex, my Grandmother’s death in November, and the usual array of rejections implicit in being a writer and sending stuff out. 🙂

On the bright side, my collection was a 2010 Endeavour Award finalist and I had fourteen stories published in 2010. Here’s the list, with a notable reprint and two podcasts to boot:

1. 2020 VISIONS, edited by Rick Novy. Therapy Buddha.

A dark story of data herds and contraband foods, edited by a fellow Codex writer.

2. CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 3, 2010, edited by Mike Allen. Surrogates.

An R-rated absurdist story telling of Belinda and Bingo’s love.

3. TRIANGULATION: END OF THE RAINBOW, 2010, edited by Bill Moran. In Order to Conserve.

A reprint from the collection, which also appeared as a podcast on Podcastle. A slim little political fable.

4. M-BRANE, January, 2010. Fire on the Water’s Heart.

Far flung tragedy of alien species interacting and sparking a doomed romance.

5. MOOT MAGAZINE, April 2010. Biosapiens.

Who is V-man, what does he want, and why does he glow under certain conditions?

6. MOOT MAGAZINE, April, 2010. The Strange Case of Maya Andaluz.

Graduate student and artist Maya is abducted by a strange alien light, leaving behind a fishbowl filled with desiccated fish and half-melted glass pebbles.

7. EXPANDED HORIZONS, June, 2010. Coyote Barbie.

Contains a favorite line of mine, “Barbies who run with the wolves”.

8. EXPANDED HORIZONS, July, 2010. Swamp Gas.

This was originally written for the Apex magazine contest asking writers to combine urban legends with UFOs – it’s my version of the vanishing hitchhiker.

9. EVERY DAY FICTION, August, 2010. The Investigation.

Flash fiction detailing events in a mythical location that I think of as vaguely French.

10. PODCASTLE, August, 2010. Sugar.

A Tabat story that originally appeared in the first Fantasy Magazine sampler and was later reprinted in my collection.

11. LIGHTSPEED, September, 2010. Amid the Words of War. (Kindle version)

One of my Clarion West stories, the first set at the brothel The Little Teacup of the Soul.

12. DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, September, 2010. Seeking Nothing.

2010 was a year for dark SF, and here’s another example of that.

13. CROSSED GENRES, September, 2010. Centzon Totochin.

Horror set in a small Mexican town.

14. EVERY DAY FICTION, September, 2010. Love Affair.

Written during my grad student days at Indiana University.

15. TOR.COM, October, 2010. Clockwork Fairies

Perhaps my favorite of the 2010 publications, this is my attempt to talk about some of the problems implicit in the steampunk genre. I -love- the accompanying artwork by Gregory Manchess.

16. REDSTONE SCIENCE FICTION, November, 2010. Not Waving, Drowning

A final dark story of a marriage between telepath and non-telepath to finish out the year.

In 2011, I have stories coming out from ABYSS & APEX (Bots d’Amor), BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (Love, Resurrected), BULL SPEC (The Coffeemaker’s Passion), GIGANOTOSAURUS (Karaluvian Fale, which Armageddon players should note is set in Allanak), DAILY SCIENCE FICTION (Pippa’s Smiles), LIGHTSPEED (Long Enough And Just So Long), SHADOWS AND LIGHT II (Aquila’s Ring, another story that Armageddon players will be interested in, since it takes place in Allanak and Tuluk). Podcastle will be doing an audio version of my collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon’s Tale.

I got a Kindle and discovered the joys of e-readers, and even converted my collection, EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT, into a Kindle version, as well as one for other e-readers.