Recommended Reading

I'm flattered to see that "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen" appears (with three stars!) on Tangent Online's Recommended Reading list for 2011.

Also, Lois Tilton gave "The Gardens of Landler Abbey" a "recommended" rating, which is wonderful and unexpected.

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Monday, January 02, 2012

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, fantasy, reviews, short fiction

Roses in December

The Winter 2011 issue of Mirror Dance came out this morning. We have some lovely retold fairy tales, surprising takes on folklore, entirely original pieces, and an insightful interview with Mike Phillips. I'm particularly pleased with the poetry in this issue, so be sure you check it out!

My pseudo-Jamesian secondary-world ghost story "The Gardens of Landler Abbey" appears in today's issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the very queer "Portrait of a Courtesan" appears in Crossed Genre's final issue. As a bibliographic note, "Landler Abbey" is my most recently finished story, having been drafted, edited, and submitted this September. Make of that what you will.

In other news, please think positive thoughts for my mother and aunt, who lost their beloved mother (my wonderful and elegant grandmother) on Saturday.

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Thursday, December 01, 2011

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, editing, ghost story, Mirror Dance, No Exit, publishing, queer fiction, short fiction

The Summer King

The Summer King is now live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Hooray for my longest published story! Not the longest I've written, alas, as there were...incidents...when I was a sophomore in high school. They are still available online. You are warned.

Anyway...How this story came about. In January 2009, I'm sitting on the chair in front of the TV and I see an advertisement for the oh-my-god-that-can't-be-but-it-really-is-a-modern-reimagining-of-King-David-squee! TV show Kings. Now, the show didn't quite live up to my expectations, but it had some lovely moments, and that is all completely beside the point, because the show hadn't even begun in January 2009. All I knew about it was the title and the huge orange banner with a butterfly on it.

And I was thinking about how simply epic that title was. I jotted it down in my little idea-notebook: The ______ King. After all, I thought, who doesn't like kings?

Two answers in quick succession. 1) The French, circa 1789. 2) The Americans, circa anytime. But, because I was in American History Class (R) that semester, the specific Americans I thought of were...ward bosses.

WTF? I know. See, I had misunderstood bosses a little bit. Okay, a lot of bit. I was picturing Robin Hood instead of Boss Tweed's machinery. So the whole gig sounded pretty cool--ruling the city from the streets up. As opposed to a king, ruling from the palace down. Throw in a National Convention--I've mentioned my obsession with French Revolutionary politics, yes?--and there's the political situation of "The Summer King."

I don't know where "summer" came from, incidentally. It was January. I was probably just longing for green grass and strawberries.

So now I had a title and a political situation. My main character, Boss Livy, showed up quite unexpectedly from American Literature Class (R), where I was reading (okay, suffering through) the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, I'm not Twain's biggest fan, but I like what he does with voice. (This shouldn't be a surprise--my favorite book series is Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths, where Mildmay 'speaks' in gorgeous vernacular.) And I guess it rubbed off, because all of a sudden, I was hearing something like a female Huck Finn with better grammar and a lot more profanity. (The profanity is probably courtesy of Monette's Mildmay, who did more than any other character to increase my comfort with swearing in fiction.)

So now I had a title and a political situation and a viewpoint character. And I just started writing. And writing. And writing. I had no idea where this thing was going to end.

Where it did end, finally, was with me in a bathrobe at the foot of my bed, frantically scribbling through the climax and the closing paragraph, while my impeccably dressed significant other waited for me to put on my gosh-dang dress so we could go out to eat already.

The writer's life is one of unparalleled grace and elegance.

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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, first person POV, preaching to the invisible choir, the writer in its natural habitat, writing

That Happy Nervous Feeling

My fantasy novelette "The Summer King" will be published in the December 30th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, y'all. This is very-happy making because I love this story and I love this webzine, but it's also a little nerve-wracking because I want other people to love this story as much as I do. We'll see how that goes. :-)

Expect a long rambling-ish post on the 30th as I tell you all about this story's conception. Here's a hint: it involves Huckleberry Finn. And the unfortunately short-lived TV show Kings. And a pretty dire misreading of a page from an American history textbook. And my facination with the French Revolution...

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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, fiction, updates, writing

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Podcast

Vote here for your favorite Beneath Ceaseless Skies story to be released as audio fiction in a future issue!

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, publishing, reading, vote, writing

I hope "caraicature" doesn't mean what I think it means!

This blog post may or may not be is a bad review of "Winterblood." My French is, shall we say, très horrible.

(Editor Scott Andrews has kindly provided a translation on the Beneath Ceaseless Skies forum. The last sentence in the review seems to say exactly what I was I was afraid it would say.)

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Friday, January 16, 2009

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, foreign language, review, writing

"Winterblood" on Beneath Ceaseless Skies

My story Winterblood appears today in Issue #8 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is my first professional short fiction publication.

I wanted to blog about the inspiration for this story, but wouldn't you know, I can't find a nice way to say it. Let's just say it was inspired by a story I hated violently disliked in one of the recent Sword & Sorceress anthologies. For the record: 1) it is not only primative societies that have myths and 2) you don't have to be virginal for the monster to get you.

That's all I'm saying. Truly.

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, fantasy, fiction, publishing, writing