crossed genres

Things are tense these days. I hope I’m not shocking anyone by saying that. There’s a lot of negative emotions going around, and people deal with them in different ways. One of the healthier ways is to engage with a good movie, game, book, or other form of media and get lost in a story. As a person empathizes with characters, they achieve catharsis as they experience their emotional journey together with the characters they empathize with. People enjoy dramas to release their sadness, they enjoy action to feel power over a world which often shows them to be powerless. Some enjoy horror for the endorphin rush, or to release pent up negative emotions in a more healthy way than going to the hardware store and looking for a chainsaw that’s light enough to chase someone with, yet not so light that it can’t get the job done.

Um, for example.

The Million Writers Award, which is a cool award for online fiction created by Jason Sanford, is open for nominations until April 9.

If you’ve got a favorite story that appeared online this year — yours or someone else’s — go nominate it!

(And if you’re wondering what stories of mine are eligible, they include Long Enough and Just So Long, Swallowing Ghosts, Pippa’s Smiles, Love, Resurrected, Bots d’Amor, Whose Face This Is, I Do Not Know, The Immortality Game, and Zeppelin Follies.

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.