2014 Writing and 2015 Stuff

2014 Writing

A review of the year, with links galore:

• The UK edition of When the Blue Shift Comes, with Robert Silverberg, was published by Gollancz. Seeing it on the shelves at Blackwell's in Oxford during our WorldCon trip was so cool.

• Throughout the year I wrote 17 new stories. I started 3 other stories I didn't complete but will continue working on in 2015.

• I sold 14 short stories: 11 to pro-paying markets, and 3 to non-pro markets.

• I had 9 new stories published in 2014. Here they are:

1. "Fires of Night" appeared in the anthology Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse, edited by Alex Shvartsman and William Snee.
2. "Coffee in End Times", with Alex Shvartsman, was published in Nature. It was also podcast by Nature.
3. "Hot and Cold" was published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
4. "Eine Kleine Nachtfilm" appeared in Galaxy's Edge.
5. "Waste Knot, Want Knot" appeared in Nature Physics.
6. "The Memory-Setter's Apprentice" was published in Fantasy Scroll.
7. "A Vision of Paradise" was published in Bastion SF.
8. "Dumpster Diving" appeared in Nature. It was also podcast by Nature.
9. "Miranda's Wings" was published in The Journal Of Unlikely Entomology.

• My poem "Conservation of Energy" was published in Apex.

• My retrospective essay on Norman Spinrad's work, "Iron and Chromium: Five Key Novels by Norman Spinrad" was published in The Los Angeles Review of Books.

• My essay on the theme of drugs in science fiction, "“We’re All Dreaming,” Arctor Said: Drugs in Science Fiction, from the 1960s to the Present" appeared in Clarkesworld.

• My short essay "A Craving for Endings: The First Line of Knut Hamsun's Hunger" was published in the lit magazine The First Line.

• I wrote an introduction for the new Fairwood Press paperback edition of Jack Skillingstead's short story collection Are You There and Other Stories.

• I reviewed two non-fiction books for Brian Clegg's Popular Science blog: Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction and Magnetism: A Very Short Introduction.

• I started a new bi-monthly review column, "Another Dimension", for the magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show. My first column covered the anthologies Solaris Rising 3: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction and Time Travel: Recent Trips.

• I interviewed Chuck Wendig, Ann Leckie, Robert Reed, Jo Walton and Kameron Hurley for Clarkesworld.

• I interviewed Nancy Kress and Jack Skillingstead for the Locus blog.

• I interviewed Steve Rasnic Tem and Christa Faust for SF Signal.

• I edited a number of guest posts and Roundtable discussions for the Locus blog and wrote a couple of my own.

2015 Forthcoming Stories

• "Repeat After Me" is my first middle-grade SF short story, and will be included in the 2015 anthology Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, edited by Corie and Sean Weaver. I've seen the ebook version of this, and think physical copies will prob start shipping in Jan or Feb.

• "The Obvious Solution", in which I resurrect a famous SF author, will appear in Buzzy Magazine. This is scheduled for publication on 02/06/2015.

• "The Romance of Flying on Dead Languages" will be appearing in the first issue of Bahamut (scheduled for June 2015), edited by Rima Abunasser and Darin Bradley, with quite an extraordinary line-up of authors.

• Mike Resnick bought "The Rose is Obsolete", about time-travel and the challenges of old age, for Galaxy's Edge. Not sure yet when this will come out, but will be in 2015.

• Rose Lemberg picked up my experimental piece "And Now You Are Alone Among the Stars" for the anthology she is editing, An Alphabet of Embers. Not quite sure of publication date yet.

• "The Black Hole and the Entropy Collector" will appear in Nature Physics. Again, not quite sure of publication date yet.

• "Gate of Sun, Gate of Moon" will be appearing in the anthology Ruins Excavation edited by Eric. T Reynolds. The theme of the anthology is archaeologists who are women of color. My story is science fiction, but other entries will be in different genres, as well as mainstream. No final publication date yet.

• The Hugo-nominated podcast StarShip Sofa has recorded an audio version of "The Memory-Setter's Apprentice" and this should be appearing in early 2015.

• A French edition of When the Blue Shift Comes, from ActuSF, is forthcoming, and will most likely appear in 2015.

New Story Published in Basement Stories!

A new SF magazine has arrived ... please provide a warm round of applause for Basement Stories!

The first issue was published earlier today and may be found at Issue One of Basement Stories.

I'm very excited about the launch of this new 'zine, which is edited by Carol Kirkman and James Dent (for an interview, see here; for the "About" section see here). The first issue contains fiction by Aaron Polson, Spencer Koelle, Erich William Bergmeier, Rajan Khanna, Gary Cuba Ericka Kahler and George Potter. I'm not familiar with their work but look forward to checking it out shortly.

This first issue also contains my story:

"Nor Youth Nor Age"

Hope you enjoy it!

[For the record, this is my first fiction sale for which I was paid at a rate of cent-per-word, rather than a token or flat fee payment -- which surely isn't a big deal at all, except it is for me! Every measure of progress is encouraging :-)]

New Story Published

My story "Half a Block Away" has just been published in the second issue of online magazine New Dead Families.

The venue publishes pieces of "imaginative work of a non-realist nature" and is self-described as a "a cross between H.L. Gold’s Galaxy, and Gordon Lish’s the Quarterly, and/or Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions."

The second issue contains stories and illustrations by David Backer, I. Fontana, Robert Kloss, Sam Luke, Jennifer Oakes, Amber Sparks, Tetsunori Tawaraya and Barry Yourgrau.

I originally found out about this through Michael Hemmingson, whose story "Brothers" appeared in the first issue. "Brothers" is dedicated to Barry Malzberg, so naturally, I became interested...

\ Monkey Business \

My last wordcount update was back in April; one seems overdue.

Date: 05/05/2010
Wordcount Since Last Update: 9,060
Work in Progress: 2010 Story # 04
Year-To-Date Wordcount: 41,330

First Sale to NYRSF

My review of Jack Skillingstead's dazzling first novel, HARBINGER, was just published in the March 2010 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction (p. 12-13). That's my first sale to this fine publication.

2009 Nirvanas

What new SF stories published in 2009 took you to new places? Transformed you? Exceeded your ability to contain them?

I'll probably be writing a piece about 2009 stories that caught my eye some time next month, and will soon be going back to stuff I put aside or missed entirely. I have a list of the stories I've read so far, with comments on some, and several ideas as to candidates. The final selection will probably be no more than six stories.

I've got a few resources in mind as prepping tools:

• The short fiction reviews published regularly in Locus for various critical responses, as well as several blogs.
• There's been interesting short fiction discussion at Torque Control's Short Story Club.
• There's a plethora of recommendations over at the Asimov's forums in the thread "The best new stories of 2009."
• There's a small stack of original fiction anthologies from 2009 around here somewhere; and
• Your thoughts.

Review of Stephen Baxter's ARK @ Strange Horizons

This is the fourteenth review I've written this year, and the twelfth to be published. I encourage anyone who enjoys grand-scale hard SF with a mild but distinct existentialist bouquet to seek out Baxter's novels FLOOD and ARK. ARK is the better of the two.

My review appears with Jonathan McCalmont's take on the same novel, meaning you get two different viewpoints for the price of one (or, in this case, for the price of zero).

Link-y:

• Review of ARK by Stephen Baxter @ SH.

Story Rejections and Self-Esteem

All of this will be redundant to most aspiring writers. But it serves as a useful reminder to me, so that may be justification enough for putting it down here :-)

I received a story rejection today and it got me to thinking about the connection between "rejections" and self-esteem in writing.

So what is the connection? It would seem obvious that receiving a rejection is a discouraging thing. After all, in nearly every other field of professional endeavor, being turned down is a measure of lack of success, or lack of success in reaching a particular goal or standard.

Does this apply to submitting short stories?

Nope. First off, I shouldn't even worry about how Good a story I wrote is in some objective sense, because there's no way for me to know (as I remain trapped in the double subjectivity of first being me and second being the me who wrote it). So I have no access to the "real" quality of the piece -- which is, at best, consensus-based anyway. The acceptance or rejection may be indicative of whether the story has achieved a certain consensus quality, but market variability is a factor too. So I can't get far down this road.

What should I worry about, then? I should write the best damn story that I am capable of at the time of composition – and this I shall define as my level of Good. Now, discipline alone almost guarantees that my level of Good will increase over time. (And I have more than discipline on my side. I'm not merely repeating a task here, but actively seeking to better it, by studying it, practicing it, receiving guidance etc.) At some point, my level of Good will coincide with or exceed the level of consensus Good being sought by a particular market I've submitted to. (I've already demonstrably crossed this transition, by going from unpublished to non-pro published). Now, no matter how Good my stories get, it will never guarantee a short fiction sale. Even Top Pros occasionally get rejected by some markets when they compose unsolicited stories (and even stories they've been asked for, though more rarely – but then they get asked less often, if that's the case).

Therefore, all of this means that having a story rejected is not logically connected to professional discouragement, as it doesn't indicate any inherent lack of success. It seems unintuitive, but really there is no link between a story rejection and my self-esteem as a writer.

In addition, consider this – by the time I get a response from a Pro market to a story I should have written so many new stories I probably won't even remember it! (If I'm eagerly "waiting" for a response, it's an indication I'm not writing and submitting enough. Waiting is to writing as oil is to water – it just sits and floats over the surface of what you're trying to accomplish, and it never gets you to the bottom of things.)

I look before me, to the Pros who write and sell stories and write and sell stories and write more and sell more stories, and I'm constantly inspired by their hard work and the fruit of their labor.

I'm thinking to myself, suppose I write 100 new stories.

Is there any way to tell, in advance, how many I'll sell? No. It's a useless question to speculate about.

But I'm curious about the answer. I need to know! How can I find out?

There's only one way. I'll sit down and write 100 new stories and send them out.

And as each rejection comes in I'll smile, file it away, and continue enjoying myself by writing new stories.

Review of Clarkesworld #32 at The Fix

This is the eleventh review I've written this year, and the tenth to be published. Link-y:

• Clarkesworld #32, May 2009, over at The Fix.

Interview with Robert Reed @ IRoSF

While I was in Montreal at WorldCon, my interview with Robert Reed was published:

• Improbable Journeys: Interview with Robert Reed @ IRoSF

I had a lot of fun doing it and Reed was a great subject. Thanks to everyone who left comments there or at the Asimov's forum in response to it.

And if you haven't yet checked it out, I hope you enjoy it!

Semi-Finalist @ Writers of the Future!

I placed in the semi-final category for the 2nd quarter of the Writers of the Future contest.

There are eighteen (myself included) semi-finalists and finalists combined, from what I can see on the blog, so that's pretty exciting -- I was within the top eighteen of over a thousand submissions.

It was really nice to get a phone call from Joni, the Director of the Contest, with the good news, and to let me know that my story will be receiving a critique.

Back in March I renewed my commitment to myself to do better than in previous quarters, in which I received Honorable Mentions. I'm really pleased I was able to keep to that and improve by one level.

My resolution now, inspired by progress thus far, is to take it up by one more level and become a Finalist. That would place my odds of actually becoming a winner, if all finalist entries were similar in quality, at about 40%. I do realize that's a specious argument, as it's not a lottery (lol!), but it's an easy way for me to visualize the goal ahead!

New Sale to IROSF!

An interview I recently completed has been accepted for publication by IROSF.

It will likely come out in the August 2009 Issue.

Who was the sf writer?

Here's a clue: I was recently up in Lincoln, Nebraska...

Any guesses? :-)

Review of Irvine's Buyout @ Strange Horizons

I enjoyed this novel quite a bit, as my review hopefully makes clear.

Link-y to:

• Review of Alexander Irvine's Buyout @ Strange Horizons.

This is the tenth review I've written this year, and the ninth to be published.

My New Review: A Mini-History of SF

The fourth issue of Fruitless Recursion has just been published, and with it my review of Science Fiction (Cultural History of Literature) by Roger Luckhurst.

This issue also contains two other neat reviews, one by Karen Burnham on Delany (incidentally, it looks like Starboard Wine is going to be re-issued later this year, which will make her review that much more timely) and one by Paul Graham Raven on James Gunn and co.

Link-y to my review:

• Review of Science Fiction (2005) by Roger Luckhurst @ Fruitless Recursion #4.

As I mentioned to the editor, this was probably the most involved academic book on SF I've read. Working through it and capturing my responses to it was both challenging and exciting. I certainly learned a lot from both the book and the process of its analysis.

In the introduction to the issue, Jonathan McCalmont notes that I've produced "a piece so detailed in its analyses and discussions that I think it comes close to being a cultural history of science fiction in its own right." Yay, my own mini-history of SF!

This is the eighth review I've written this year, and the eighth to be published.

Review of Clarkesworld #31 at The Fix

This is the ninth review I've written this year, and the seventh to be published. Link-y:

• Clarkesworld #31, April 2009, over at The Fix.

Review of Ken Scholes' Collection at IRoSF

This is the fourth review I've written this year, and the sixth to be published.

It came out today in the May, 2009 issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction.

Link-y:

• Review of Long Walks, Last Flights, and Other Strange Journeys by Ken Scholes @ IRoSF
  

My New Story Published at Neon!

My short story "The Man Made Only Of Straight Lines: A Rectilinear Fable" has just been stylishly published in Issue #19 of Neon: A Literary Magazine. I'm thrilled!

The story can be read online for free here.

Issue #19 can be downloaded as a free pdf here.

I was also interviewed about the story. The questions and answers are available here.

I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think :-)

Review of Clarkesworld #30 at The Fix

This is the seventh review I've written this year, and the fifth to be published. Link-y:

• Clarkesworld #30, March 2009, over at The Fix.

Another Honorable Mention

Another Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest for the most recent quarter, for the last story I wrote in 2008.

This is the same result as last time, and I'm making the same resolution as last time too: "I need to -- and will -- do better than this."

Review of Paul Melko's The Walls of the Universe at SH

This is the third review I've written this year, and the fourth to be published so far. It came out yesterday. Link-y:

• Review of Paul Melko's The Walls of the Universe @ Strange Horizons