So I’ve been yelling about this across various social media platforms, but here it is again:
I have signed the contracts for my dark fantasy novel Crowflight (which was formerly known as A Murder of Crows), which will be released in September by Masque/Prime Books.
Which is really very exciting except that now I have to go write the other books in the series.
Will update with more details when I have them.
Today, on the Feast of the Superb Owl, I got word that my shortish take on fairy tales and the Monstrous Feminine “To Increase His Wondrous Greatnesse More” is going to be published by Apex Magazine later this year. Which is happy-making.
What’s even more happy-making is that I’ve been feeling a little frustrated by my writing lately, and that Apex is one of those markets that I’d sort of wondered if I’d ever sell to. And hey, I have. And I also have chicken and chocolate chip cookies.
All hail the Superb Owl and her fearsome beak and catchsome claws.
Posted in Fantasy, Horror, Sale
Tagged apex magazine, fantasy, feminist sf&f, horror, monstrous feminine, story acceptance
By “a bunch” I mean “three”. Three recent story sales, all of which I’m extremely pleased about. Here they are:
“The Horse Latitudes” should be out in a couple of months. “Love in the Time of Vivisection” will be out this summer, as will We See a Different Frontier. I am excite.
Hi.
Yeah, it’s been a while. And while I really enjoyed the audio posts I was doing, I think I need to call a hiatus on them for the time being; some of it is hosting issues and a lot of it is just that lately I haven’t felt much motivation to sit down in front of my dinky little mic and ramble at you. So if you were enjoying those, thanks so much for listening, and this is me telling you that I really hope that they’ll return at some point soon. Possibly when I’m in a better place, mental health-wise.
There’s something about spring semesters, I swear.
There is news, though.
That’s pretty much it for the moment. Given that the audio thing is on hiatus I’ll be trying to post here more regularly, though. Who knows: I might even try my hand at actually writing things about things again. Shock and awe.
Posted in News, Sale, Science fiction, Slipstream
After a couple of years of trying, I’ve finally sold a story–“Chinvat”, a ghost story inspired by an odd confluence of real events and Zoroastrian mythology–to Shimmer. So I’m really excited about that. I’m not sure yet which issue it’s going to appear in–I mean, I assume the next one but I’m not positive–but I’ll post more news when I have some. I’ll also have a bit more to say about how the story came to be; it’s a story whose inspirations are, I think, even more interesting than the story itself.
Aside from that, life goes on much as usual. I’ve got departmental funding for the summer in the name of getting a couple of articles edited and sent off for review, and I’m using that breathing space to also get some work done on the novel draft I’ve been plugging away at. I’m posting a lot more day to day in my Dreamwidth/Livejournal and reserving this space more for especially pertinent news and especially pertinent essays, but I’m always happy to see people over in either of those two places.
Wiscon was amazing. Thanks so much to all the delightful people who made it so. I can’t wait to see you next year.
Posted in Fantasy, In progress, News, Paranormal, Sale
So today I sold a story.
The story in question is “Memento Mori”, a strange, slightly surreal little piece that was hugely inspired by the closing passage of Bob Doto of Quiet Earth’s review of Werner Herzog’s My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, which remains one of the best movie reviews I have ever read. It’s finally been sold to Shadows & Tall Trees, which is a new annual 
publication; being that they seem to feature strange, slightly surreal fiction, it’s a good fit. I’m very happy to have placed it there.
However, I’m mentioning this not so much to toot my own horn–though I’m always happy to spend time on that–but instead to highlight the journey of this particular piece, which I think is illustrative of some things.
Some numbers: I originally wrote “Memento Mori” in the spring of 2010, so it’s almost a year old. Since then, it has gone through eleven rounds of submission, counting this one. It has been rejected nine times. It got one rewrite request, which eventually resulted in one of the nine rejections. As a result of that rewrite request, about a third of its original length was cut. It’s been cut further–though not as much–with this acceptance, because the editor at S&TT was nice enough to say “I really liked this but I think I could only accept it if the last couple of paragraphs were gone; would you be okay with that?” To which I naturally said yes, because the story was honestly better without those paragraphs. I count myself extremely, extremely lucky that I happened to send it to an editor who would take the time to look carefully at the piece and then point out what would improve it. Twice.1
Icarus Magazine has accepted my SF shortish story “The Shapes of Shadows”, which tells of intrepid exoarcheologist Professor Gordon Eburuoh and his encounter with a mysterious alien ruin. This is actually the prequel to something bigger–or it might be–and it was a fun little experiment. I’m not sure I was completely successful in doing everything I hoped, but I do think I ended up making something interesting, which I chalk up as a win.
The story will be in the winter issue of Icarus. For those so interested, there is an excerpt under the cut.
Posted in Excerpt, Sale, Science fiction
Strange Horizons has accepted my weird little tale of a lesbian robot in Uganda, “The Thick Night”, for publication sometime next spring. I originally wrote this for a benefit for Pakistan, so this means Médecins Sans Frontières is going to be getting some more money from me, which is awesome. I’ve also been trying to crack Strange Horizons for over a year, so this is awesome for that reason as well.
This marks my second SFWA pro sale. Hoping for a third soon.
I’m honestly a tiny bit nervous about this story; I was writing far, far outside my own experience in just about every possible way, and although I tried to be careful and tried to do good research, there’s always a risk there of having gotten something extremely wrong. I’ll get a chance to make some final edits, but at this point I only hope I didn’t inadvertently put my foot in any orifice where it doesn’t belong.
And even if I did… hey, learning experience. We all have them. Or we should.
Posted in F/F, Sale, Science fiction
Got an email tonight that I was hoping for and very happy to get: My odd little bit of cyberpunk erotica, “Wetwire”, has been accepted to the Agony & Ecstasy anthology coming out next fall from Berkley Books.
The thing that kills me is that it’s such a weird little story, I honestly never thought the editor would take it. I was mainlining William Gibson when I wrote it–more than normal, even, because it’s a Thing That I Do–and what started out as porn in my head turned into the exploration of two ideas that struck me as insanely interesting:
I got so caught up in this stuff that I almost forgot the sex, and I was worried that the story lacked a center because of that. But apparently not. Apparently it’s good enough, anyway.
The anthology itself won’t actually be out in print for another year. But right now I’m more thrilled than impatient, so yay. As always, watch this space for news.
Posted in Erotica, Kink, M/F, Sale, Science fiction
It gives me a lot of pleasure to announce that my short story “Starcrossed” will be featured in the anthology Help: Twelve Tales of Recovery, which will be a benefit for Médecins Sans Frontières. The story in question is yet another piece that ties into the universe of the novel that is currently in the editing stages–it tells a short bit of backstory for one of the major secondary characters. One of the things I love about a world this expansive is how new stories keep emerging from it even after the central story is told.
There’s no release date as yet, but watch this space for news. I’m really excited about this project and I hope it’ll raise a lot of funds for a very good cause.
Posted in Sale, Science fiction
A Trick of Light 