carpe glitter

It’s that time of year again when I urge my students and mentees not to be shy about spreading word of the great stuff they’ve done over the course of the year. I’ve blogged before about how important it is particularly for marginalized writers, and you can find my usual round-up of such posts here along with A.C. Wise’s here.

What did I publish over the course of the year? The thing I’m proudest of is my novelette, CARPE GLITTER, which just came out from Meerkat Press. It is available in both electronic and print form. If you’re reading for awards and need a copy, please let me know.

Other things I had published include:
A Merchant Has Maxims (novelette) UNFETTERED III, edited by Shawn Speakman

A Merchant had a journal since first learning to write. A Merchant without one felt that lack like a missing limb, something Essa kept reaching for and not finding. She already missed being able to flip through it at night, to figure out the results of different actions and what part each God had played, from small ones like Kepterto, who handled tailors, or Rilriliworhaomu, Trade God of Hypothetical Marital Alliances, to the larger ones like Enba and Anbo, Want and Supply.

Big Rural (short story), THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, edited by Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller

She gulped down the last of the water and stuck the bottle in her purse. The tomato red sun rolled on the horizon, sending long black shadows walking across the land, towards the enormous black square that was Phase One of the Sol Dominion power plant, glittering in the last of the sunlight. You could barely see the storage structures scattered among them like enormous alien flowers, many petalled and made of dark carbonized plastic with an oily undersheen of cobalt and purple.

Arms folded, she looked towards the town bordering that square to the east, where lights were flickering alive. She could name most of them. The gas station. The diner. The tiny grocery/hardware/drugstore locals just called “the store.” The two block strip that was Main Street, the grade school on one end, the high school on the other, but meeting in shared sports fields: baseball, soccer. Still no football stadium. The coal plant, unlit now.

When you came home again, even “the big rural” as the song called it, things were supposed to have changed. Here the only change was that black square. Between the town lights and the scattered but symmetrical lights surrounding the plant, a dark strip, perhaps a mile wide, stretched, unlit. As though town and plant had turned their backs on each other.

A Hand Extended, (short story), CITIES OF DUST, PLANES OF LIGHT, edited by Todd Sanders

The person closest to the mage was an Ettilite, all four arms folded. Despite stiffly formal body language, he was dressed simply for his race: plain brown tunic drawn over his humanoid torso’s purple skin, and matching trews and”¦were those boots? On shipboard you never needed such a thing, and coming down to Tarn had been a revelation to Niko in her flimsy ship-sandals. Imagine having to dress for a totally random circumstance called “weather”? It was absurd. She hated this place.

Niko gnawed at a cuticle, then caught herself and dropped her hand back into her lap. Stay calm and don’t expend energy. Save it for the Threefold Gauntlet.

How I Come to Be the Queen of Treacle, (short story), WONDERLAND, edited by Marie Keegan and Paul Kane

When we grimbled, how we grambled, children, down in those treacle mines, with a slow syrup slurry that clung to your boots, your hands, and every bit of skin, so you’d lick your lips, vicious-like, and taste gritty sugar and wonder what was happening up in the blue-sky world. And then we grimbled and we grambled more, and when we were weary walking, sleep stepping, we came up to the wasty world and tumbled into our blankets, and then in the morning before the sun came into the sky, we went back down and did it all again.

Broken all My Boughs and Brittle My Heart (short story), UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe

It was a lizard dropping on her face from the ceiling that woke Ambra in a panic. They ran back and forth all night, feasting on spiders and midges and the slower moths, but they were sticky-footed and rarely lost their grip. This one scampered away while she smacked herself in the face, much harder than she’d intended, so that she saw stars and bit her tongue, all at once.

Dawn, seeping gray, outlined the window, showing the shutter slats as faint lines of light. She nursed her tongue, which felt awkward and painful in her mouth, and swallowed blood as she swung herself up and out of bed, abandoning thought of sleep. Once she’d had a soldier’s knack of being able to sleep anywhere, anytime, but nowadays that skill was long gone and she was lucky to pluck a few uneasy hours from a night.

Cold stone struck her feet as she stood, and she fished around under the bed for the knitted socks that served her as slippers, disreputable and threadbare but warmer than being barefoot. The narrow chamber had only the single window; she moved to it and swung the shutters open, then leaned out on the wide stone sill.

The Chosen One (flash story) Patreon
Neighbors Poem poem, Patreon
April Rain (poem), Patreon
Quick Gulch Poem (poem), Patreon
Poem for Sarah, this blog

Nonfiction and other sundry things

Patreon content varied but included things like this story wrangling session, special convention ribbons, and so many pictures of my cat Taco
Video tutorial on researching and evaluating story markets
Video on submitting to story markets
An on-demand flash fiction class
Nonfiction essay for Clarkesworld, Stories That Change the World
Edited political science fiction anthology IF THIS GOES ON

I’m off to Multiverse Con next week – it’s their first year, and I’m there as Industry Guest of Honor along with Seanan McGuire and John Piccacio. Come say hi if you’re there! Two weeks after that I’ll be up in Surrey BC as a presenter at the Surrey International Writers Conference.

In writing stuff, I am working hard this month on EXILES OF TABAT, which should go to beta readers on November 1. THE FIVE OF US, my middle grade space opera, just went off to readers at the beginning of the month. Next up in writing is the sequel to the Tor space opera, which will be my November project. In December, I’m going to focus on short stories and outlining three of my 2020 projects: a horror novel, a novella project, and the third space opera book.

I’ve been reveling in a chance to be productive and at home after a summer so full of travel, and have been getting at least 1-2k words in on most days, plus I’ve gotten back to early morning gym runs, so hurray me and boo for the fact that it stays dark later and later every day.

It’s very much fall and drizzling rain here. The raccoons have devoured the last of the grapes from the grapevine, shelf fungi has sprouted at several points on the front porch, and we’re experiencing an invasion of Seattle’s notorious Giant House Spiders, so I feel ready for October. Recent experiences include leading a trivia team in the Clarion West Trivia Night, lots of gaming, and taking Seanan McGuire to the Washington State Fair. Also so many spiders lately. Just so many. We have a detente and when I catch them I let them go under the bookcase downstairs but I have also warned them I will destroy any egg sacs I find in the name of sanity.

With projects and books, here’s what’s going on:

Lots of skipping around, often what I do when I’ve got several projects in the works.

So here’s the breakdown and total:
650 words on Circus in the Bloodwarm Rain
673 words on “Carpe Glitter”
534 words on “Prairiedog Town” (working title)
200 words and editing finished on a story in a semi-accepted state, plus sent off to the magazine that requested the changes.

Total word count: 2058

Not too bad, particularly when I’m working on getting back into productivity’s swing.

Today’s new words in Spanish: aire acondicianado (air conditioner), apogon (power outage), ballena jorabada (humpback whale), cafetera (coffeemaker), calambur (pun), picadura de mosquito (mosquito bite), la puerta de teja metallica (screen door), reinicializar (to reset, usually a machine).

And Wayne woke me this morning to watch three whales (we think a large humpback and two smaller ones) in the surf.

Today I have been writing! Costa Rica is fabulous, and we’re enjoying Jaco. Walked out for breakfast this morning and later on to the super mercado for groceries. My high school Spanish is, luckily, coming back in leaps and bounds.

I’ve been working not on a story set here, though, but one in Vegas. Here’s the beginning of what is looking like it will hit novelette length at least, “Carpe Glitter.”

Carpe glitter, my grandmother always said. Seize the glitter.

And that was what I remembered best about her: the glitter. A dazzle of rhinestone, a waft of Patou Joy, lipstick like a red banner across her mouth. Underneath all that, a worry little old lay with silver hair and vampire-pale skin.

Not that she was one, of course. But grandmother hung with everyone during her days in the Vegas crowd. Celebrities, presidents, they all came to her show at the Sparkle Dome, watched her strut her stuff in a black top hat and fishnet stockings, conjuring flames and doves (never card tricks, which she hated), making ghosts speak to loved ones in the audience and when she stepped off the stage, she left in a scintillating dazzle, like a fairy queen stepping off her throne.

All that shine. And at home?

She hoarded.

I mopped sweat off my forehead with the hem of my t-shirt and attacked another pile of magazines. No cat pee – I’d been spared that in these back rooms, closed off for at least a couple of decades. Grandmother had bought the house when she was at the height of her first fortune, just burst onto the stage magician scene, a woman from Brooklyn who’d trained herself in sleight of hand and studied under the most famous female stage of her time.

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