My thanks to Phantasmagorium for selecting my story “The Need to Desire” for their weekly feature, just posted here.
This one’s short, but packed with bodily disintegration, lust and romantic betrayal. Check it out!
“The Lure of Devouring Light” Upcoming in Apex Magazine
Maybe you’re sick of seeing another entry in this blog announcing a new story acceptance. Let me tell you, though… after such a long dry spell, the flurry of story acceptances this past two months has been most welcome. I don’t imagine I’ll ever get tired of reading editorial messages that say “I like your work and want to publish it!”
This morning, the latest good news arrived from Apex Magazine. Editor Lynne Thomas accepted my story “The Lure of Devouring Light,” which should appear in 2013. Here’s the cover of their latest issue, released today.
All the acceptances so far have been special and important in their different ways. Sometimes it’s a matter of the acceptance coming at the right time, or being from a publication you believe in, or the story might be a perfect fit for a themed anthology. The significance of this one will be obvious to anyone who follows the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres.
Those of you who aren’t SF/F/H geeks might be wondering why I’m so excited. Apex Magazine is a very prominent, professional level monthly publication. It’s a nominee for this year’s Hugo award for “Best Semiprozine.” My upcoming appearance there will be highly visible. Given the quality of talent usually published in Apex, I’m likely to be rubbing elbows with established authors. Different writers have their own priorities for where they’d like to appear, but I think it’s safe to say that most writers of interesting speculative/fantastic fiction would rank Apex among the handful of most prestigious places to land their work.
I’ll offer more information as publication day approaches.
My Fourth Acceptance of This Summer
Lovecraft eZine just confirmed acceptance of my story “Nectar of Strange Lips.” That makes four of my stories currently awaiting publication. I’m pretty excited about this recent stretch of fiction-writing success.
Not only that, I still have at least three other pieces on various “short lists” under final editorial decision, so there may be more good news soon.
My backlog is shrinking! I’ve read other writers describe the tipping point after which they no longer just wrote stories to increase the number of things they had to submit, but instead saw their backlog shrink when acceptances started coming in faster than they could write new stuff. Looks like I’m getting there, as I’ve only finished 3 new pieces since the first of these 4 acceptances.
My thanks to Mike Davis, editor of the always fun and interesting Lovecraft eZine. Run on over there and read a few stories for free, and if you like it as much as I do, buy some eZines or a t-shirt.
Recap of Recent Fiction Writer Action
So much has been happening lately, after a long stretch without any breakthroughs since May 2011. It’s a bit hard to keep track of all my latest news! To recap:
“The Need to Desire” has been accepted by Phantasmagorium and should appear fairly soon as a weekly featured story on their web site. I’ll post a direct link when it’s available.
“High Desert, Starless Sky” has been accepted by Sirens Call Publications for their post-apocalypse themed anthology Carnage: After the End.
“May Dawn Redeem What Night Destroys” has been accepted by Jordan Krall for the Current 93 tribute anthology Mighty In Sorrow, to be published by Copeland Valley Press.
And for those who missed it, “Remodel With Swan Parts” was published in Electric Spec last year – direct link here.
In addition to the above, I have fifteen or so other stories out in submission, including a few in various stages of “final review” or short-list consideration. Maybe I’ll be adding to this list soon.
Guess I’m going to need to set up a bibliography page to keep it all straight!
Story Acceptance: May Dawn Redeem What Night Destroys
I seem to be on a pretty good roll lately. Just received word my story “May Dawn Redeem What Night Destroys” has been accepted for inclusion in MIGHTY IN SORROW, a fiction anthology tribute to the amazing band Current 93.
This is very exciting! I love the band, and had all kinds of fun creating something to fit the theme. Can’t wait to appear in the same pages as some great experimental & weird fiction writers. My thanks to editor Jordan Krall.
Places Where My Book Reviews Go
I always read a lot. Lately I’ve been writing reviews of almost everything I read, and posting those reviews in several different places. Here’s where they go, in case you’re a reader interested in seeking out other places to read book reviews, a writer whose work I’ve reviewed who wants to see all the places those reviews appear, or an amateur book reviewer looking for places to put your own reviews.
GOODREADS – (Goodreads profile)
In most cases I post the review first to Goodreads. Serious readers and book lovers who don’t know about Goodreads should check it out. It’s a place to see what other people are reading, and many members post reviews, which in some cases are useful. There are lists, suggestions, book groups, all kinds of stuff. Some of it’s good, some of it’s self-promotional and lame (lots of self-published people spamming groups with announcements and sales efforts) but I really like Goodreads.
AMAZON – (My reviews on Amazon)
I crosspost the same reviews to the book’s Amazon product listing, assuming it has one. If you see a review of mine that you like, remember to mark my review “helpful,” which increases Amazon’s ranking of my reviews’ influence. This way my review will be shown more prominently, with other reviews considered helpful. One way you can help influence how the books you like (or don’t like) are perceived is by rating Amazon reviews “helpful” or “not helpful,” which will make them more or less likely to be viewed by other shoppers. I prefer my reviews to be seen by as many people as possible so I like those “helpful” ratings.
BLOG – Livejournal – (griffinwords.livejournal.com)
This began as my main blog, the one I usually told people about, but I’ve gradually evolved to having the same blog entries cross-posted to three blog platforms. More and more, I’m pointing people to my WordPress just because it looks better. That, and Livejournal seems to be a dying community.
BLOG – WordPress – (griffinwords.wordpress.com)
As mentioned above, this has the same entries as my Livejournal, but WordPress looks better and has nicer tools for announcing posts to Facebook and Twitter in a nice, automated way. Increasingly I direct people toward the WordPress blog, and I may eventually narrow it down to just this one blog.
BLOG – Dreamwidth – )griffinwords.dreamwidth.org)
Dreamwidth began as an offshoot of Livejournal, and there was some indication that DW might carry forward some of LJ’s community or “social network lite” benefits. In the old days, the real benefit to LJ was the “friends list” and the centralized way it let you review all your friends’ recent blog entries on one page. Not many people ended up switching over to Dreamwidth, though I suppose it could still happen.
FACEBOOK – (Facebook profile) and TWITTER – (Twitter profile)
I don’t post the reviews themselves here (at least not in full), but links to some of the above do appear. I have fun with these things, make smart-ass little remarks, post pictures, but neither one of them is really built for posting serious or even half-serious writing. Obviously the benefit here is reaching a larger number of people quickly, so I use these for announcements and links to heartier content at the various places above.
I welcome “friends” and “followers,” especially people who share similar interests.
Words In: Radiant Days by Elizabeth Hand
Radiant Days begins in 1978 following Merle Tappitt, fled from an abusive redneck childhood for the only slightly greater comfort of art school. She explores her own artistic impulses and means, and makes a few friends among fellow students, as well as one female teacher who takes a special personal interest. Stimulated by the nascent scenes of punk rock music and graffiti art, Merle herself takes up graffiti, inspired by the work of “SAMO” (a real-world tag which belonged to Jean-Michel Basquiat before he became an art world superstar). Her signature tag gives the book its title.
Before we get too far into the story of Merle, the story switches to 1870 and the point of view of a teenage Arthur Rimbaud, likewise going through parent-related difficulties and struggling to find his muse. Although Merle Tappitt and Arthur Rimbaud are separated by an ocean and more than a century, they inexplicably meet, after each has an encounter with a mysterious old fisherman. Rimbaud speaks French and Merle English, yet they understand each other without trouble, cross briefly into each other’s worlds and apart again.
I love the depiction of the lives of young, rough-edged creative people. As in her Cass Neary novels (Generation Loss and Available Dark), Hand portrays the gritty, often unglamorous daily life and struggles of the creative person in a way that seems true, equal parts grim and inspiring.
Something Elizabeth Hand does better than anyone is show the way impressionable creative types juggle influence and inspiration. A painter might be influenced by music or poetry, might try their hand at charcoal portraits, join a band, or spend a year doing graffiti art. That’s the way real artists find their way, develop a personal style or voice, yet it’s rare to see this path to artistic selfhood portrayed in fictionalized lives of artists. The struggle toward creative self-expression is messy, non-linear, full of self-defeating detours and periods of fallowness and frustration. Radiant Days captures the young artist’s struggle for clarity, for insight and direction.
Though Radiant Days is marketed toward the “Young Adult” category of reader (and I’m much older than that), I enjoyed it for Hand’s clear, expressive writing and the honest way she depicted the struggle of the artist, using both the fictional Merle Tappitt and the drawn-from-life Arthur Rimbaud.
The Times, They Are A-Changing
I think the most important and useful advice any writer can follow is “Just keep writing.” I’ve followed that, have dedicated more and more time to it, and I think it’s made a big difference for me.
Another thing that’s harder to condense into a pithy advice one-liner, though, is the idea that you shouldn’t just keep working without thinking about what you’re doing. Probably the most important development I’ve made in my writing last year didn’t arise from just pushing ahead with constant practice, but from stopping what I was doing, reassessing what was working and what wasn’t, and taking the difficult step of resolving to make significant changes.
I changed my subject matter, I changed my style, and I changed my work’s emotional tone.
I shelved about half the stories I had considered “finished.” Some of them I reworked heavily (frustrating at first, since I had already put in tons of work “finishing” them before), others remain on the shelf. I started some brand new work. In some ways I became a beginner again. I set myself back, the way a golfer who changes his swing to correct for some fundamental flaw actually becomes a worse golfer for a while before he gets better.
After all this reinvention, I “felt” my work getting a lot stronger earlier this year. The responses I’ve been getting from editors have changed. Not only do I have two recent acceptances. There are more personal rejections, more rewrite requests. This past week or so marks the first time since I’ve been writing and submitting that I’ve received more pieces of good news than bad news. Some of the good news is of the “can’t pass along yet” variety, other bits may still not pan out into what I hope for. The thing is, it feels like it’s starting to click. I’m starting to see a future for myself in which I’m able to consistently write the kind of thing that’s compelling and interesting to tough-minded editors, and doesn’t just impress friends who read it with a heavy dose of benefit of the doubt.
Second Story Acceptance In a Month
Wouldn’t it be great if I had more of these good news blog posts and fewer of those “woe, it is so hard!” ones? Well, I’m trying.
Just received another story acceptance. This isn’t the one I mentioned about a month back – still don’t know quite when that’s going to happen, though I’m told it’s definite. This new one’s definite too, contract signed and everything. My story is “High Desert, Starless Sky” and it’s been placed in an anthology called Carnage: After the End with a post-apocalyptic or dying Earth theme. It’s from a small press called Sirens Call Publications, and the page is here, though it’s not so much a promotional page for the book as an information page about submissions, which have closed. I’ll post more information when I have it.
This acceptance was especially nice as it came out of nowhere. It’s funny, all the short-listed and “recommended to our editor” stories have ended up rejected, and the three acceptances I’ve received have come with no hint, no advance notice of the possibility.
Words In: Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
I wanted to like this… awards, a beautiful cover. A dark fairy tale, people said. Negative reviews mostly objected to rape, incest and bestiality in a Young Adult book. I’m not easily offended. Things began well. Lovely prose.
The problem was dullness, monotony. Scenes repeated, seemingly without aim. Man-bear nuzzles up to vulnerable human female… how many times? I got it the first time. Even for readers accepting of harsh content, the middle 150 pages are tedious. Lanagan’s short fiction is intelligent, beautifully written, but despite lovely prose I can’t recommend Tender Morsels except to (very patient) fairy tale lovers.
GriffinWords 