URL updates

I've (finally) purchased a non-blogspot URL for Mirror Dance. The new address is www.mirrordancefantasy.com. Old links should still take you to the correct page on the website, but please let me know if you find a broken link in the wild.

In the same vein, you'll notice that the URL at the top of this page is now blog.meganarkenberg.com. Sub-domains: the wave of the future?  Or just darn sexy?

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Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Mirror Dance, public service announcement, updates

August: writing, Mirror Dance, new publications

I'm back in California after a relaxing beer-and-sausage-filled trip back to Wisconsin, and my timing could not be more perfect. I missed the worst of the wildfires and arrived in time to enjoy a stretch of unusually temperate days: the breeze stirring the loose pages on my desk is a mere 88 degrees. The sunflowers are blooming in the fields alongside the freeway. This is the weather that makes people want to move to California.  

So what am I up to now that I'm back? Well, I'm spending nearly every waking hour reading for my upcoming prelim exams. My progress on short fiction this summer can be measured in inches, although I'm wrapping up a flash piece for the next volume of Rhonda Parrish's alphabet anthology series, C is for Chimera. (So what is L for? You'll have to wait and see!). I'm also poking at a Bluebeard story that I started ages and ages ago. It was missing a vital piece in the main character's motivation, but I think I've figured it out as of last month. 

The Autumn 2015 issue of Mirror Dance is ready to go for September 1st. While our Autumn issues aren't themed, there's a general focus on vocations and professions in the short stories this time around. On the other hand, I've been seeing a noticeable uptick in mermaid and selkie stories in the slush pile. Hypotheses? I'd blame it on the drought, but we see submissions from all over the globe.

I have two new stories out this month: "Love in the Time of Markov Processes" in Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists (Lethe Press) and "And This is the Song it Sings" in Nightmare. The first is about alternate universes, Tam Lin, whale falls, and unrequited love; the second is about ghost stories and hitchhiking. Also serial killers, symbiosis, and Rilke (maybe). I talk about that in the Author Spotlight. 

And now: back to reading.

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Monday, August 24, 2015

Mirror Dance, short fiction, the writer in its natural habitat, updates

TSFAQ (Time-Sensitive Frequently Asked Questions)

Hey Megan, where are you right now?
Glad you asked! Right now, on this fifth of September 2013 at nine hours post-meridiem, I am in my hotel room in Lincoln, Nebraska.

What on earth are you going there? Don’t you live in Milwaukee or some place?
Well, until this morning, I did live in Milwaukee. I'm now in the process of moving to Davis, California, and Lincoln is the first stop on my itinerary. I'll be arriving in Davis on Sunday evening.

Why are you moving? Was it the weather? I bet it was the weather.
It was not the weather. I'm entering the Ph.D. in English Literature program at UC Davis. In the unlikely event that you know me personally and this is the first you're hearing of it...well, surprise!

Grad school, huh? What are your research interests?
Victorian literature (especially ghost stories and works with supernatural elements), Gothic literature, and Queer Theory.

Okay, that sounds cool, I guess. How's the writing going?
Much better than it was going last semester. I'm aiming to have five new stories in submission by the end of this quarter. At one time, that would have been a modest goal, but considering the approximately fifty thousand things that have complicated my life over the last year, it now seems positively ambitious.

Oh, and "Sister Philomela Heard the Voices of Angels" placed third in the short poem category in this year's Rhysling Awards, which was pretty cool. So writing is going well.

How's the editing?
Mirror Dance is going well - we just put out a new issue on Sunday. We also have Facebook Page now because all the cool kids are doing it. Watch for updates about Lacuna in early October. (Read: Lacuna is still in e-zine limbo.)

Hey, what did you do to your website?
Sorry, still playing with the formatting. I'm trying to find a template where the main column is wide enough to hold a full line of text in my bibliography, but not so wide that story excerpts become hard to read. I also realize that I never finished my biography page, so that should happen once I finish moving.

Anything else you should update us on?
I got nothing. But check out the the brilliant theme for an upcoming special issue of Lightspeed magazine!

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Thursday, September 05, 2013

editing, grad school, Lightspeed, Mirror Dance, my English major is showing, preaching to the invisible choir, Rhysling, the writer in its natural habitat, travel, updates, writing

Magazine Updates

1. Mirror Dance's Spring 2011 issue is now online. "Online" being a relative term, since I misplaced one author's poem and now I can't find my review of Walter Rhein's excellent The Bone Sword in my files. This is incredibly embarassing and will be corrected before the end of the day.

2. Lacuna is closed to submissions until June 1 so that I can clear out the backlog. My attempt at replying within a week with a rejection or a hold notice seems to have failed utterly. We'll see if I can come up with a more managable system before June.

If you have any questions about the status of your story, feel free to ask, though the answer will almost certainly be "I'm still considering it for the October 2011 issue." When I read through a batch of submissions, I'll make an announcement on the Lacuna submissions page, saying "All stories submitted before [Date] have now been responded to," and if your story was submitted in that date range and you haven't received a response, you'll know you're good to panic.

Until then, keep calm and carry on.

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Tuesday, March 01, 2011

editing Lacuna, Lacuna, magazines, Mirror Dance, publishing, updates

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

O Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness...

Hooray for autumn and the plentiful publication it brings!

1. The Autumn 2010 issue of Mirror Dance is live and lovely. Check out the great fiction, poetry, and a piece or two that falls between the cracks.

2. My story "Rosewinter" appears in the current issue of Niteblade. This is a pretty old story, originally written in fall of 2008, though reworked quite a bit since then. For those of you playing along at home, "Rosewinter" uses a spiral chronology similar to the one in "The Copperroof War," and is (along with "Cesare") one of the only villanous-woman's-first-name-titled stories I ever successfully completed, though I have ten or twelve sitting around in draft form.

3. My story "The Father of the Riverborn" appears in the current issue of Port Iris. This story is much newer, and the viewpoint character also plays a role in my novel-in-progress Jaquemart. This is also the only time you will ever, ever hear me talk about gender roles in fiction: "I’m familiar with psychoses...And this sexual-role nonsense sounds like a culture-wide psychosis."

4. I also have a story appearing in the September issue of Flagship, and poems appearing in Cabinet des Fees and Illumen. More on those as they come in.

5. The proof of Crimethink arrived today with all its pieces in the proper place! I pressed the fancy little approve button, and now you can buy a print copy from the Crimethink storefront: https://www.createspace.com/3476062. Remember that all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.

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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Mirror Dance, poetry, publishing, short fiction, titles, updates

Slush Pile Progress

As of this moment, I am down to seven stories in the Lacuna slush pile and three in Mirror Dance. This is the fewest I've had since...ever, I think.

Of course, those seven Lacuna stories are fighting for one spot in the April 2011 issue, so easier =/= easy.

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Monday, August 23, 2010

editing Lacuna, Mirror Dance, updates

Life - On Hold

If you have a story in the Mirror Dance or Lacuna slush pile that I have not responded to yet, please don't hold your breath for a response.

Crimethink is almost ready to go to the printers, but please don't hold your breath to get a copy.

If I owe you edits/a story/a book review for your magazine, please don't hold your breath.

And please send good and happy thoughts in the direction of me and my family. We need all of them we can get.

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Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Crimethink, Lacuna, Mirror Dance, No Exit, updates

June Things!

The June issue of Mirror Dance is now online, and my story "The Copperroof War" appears in the June issue of Ideomancer.

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Wednesday, June 02, 2010

editing, fantasy, publishing, short fiction, updates, writing

Open Question

Why has the submission volume for Lacuna increased about fifty bajillion percent over the last two days? I've gotten five submissions in the last hour, and Sunday is normally slow.

I'm not complaining; it's lovely, just inexplicable. If you have a theory, please share.

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Sunday, February 21, 2010

editing, historical fiction, Lacuna, updates

That thing, the one I don't have a name for...

I have finally realized the nature of my WIP. It is a documentary about an age that never was, and a man who never lived in it.

That makes it sound both more and less fantastically nerdy than it actually is.

(I have also described it as a story about Richard Wagner and Oscar Wilde getting drunk in a Viennese bar and merging personalities. Then I remembered that Wagner was a complete $*@%ing dick. I also remembered that I know absolutely nothing about opera. So Wagner = not so much.)

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

fiction, insanity, updates, voice, writing

The darling buds of January

More stories appearing in January:

- "Firstborn", at the Lorelei Signal

- "Fugitive 135711400", in 10Flash

- "Four Lies from the Mouth of God", in Strange Horizons

- "Song at a Cottage Door", in the January issue of Cabinet des Fees

Stay tuned!

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Saturday, January 02, 2010

fiction, reading, recomendations, short story, updates, writing

NaNoWriMo Update

Stories completed: 2 ("The Kindness of Ravens" and "The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois")

Words completed: approximately 9,000

Stories to go: 9 ("The Setting Sun" and "Jaquemart" are excluded from the list, by right of being too frickin' long)

Words to go: 41,000

Likelihood of success: 0.001%

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Monday, November 09, 2009

fantasy, insanity, short story, updates, writing

NaNoWriMo - Short Story Edition!

Once again, I am attempting to write 50,000 words of short stories in the month of November. Because, at the moment, my brain will explode if I write one more productive words, I am now going to do something decidedly unproductive--a first line meme.

Here are my projects for the month:

Naxos: The Ford died with a hiccup and a puff of smoke three miles out of Naxos, Wisconsin. I looked over at Ari in the passenger seat, she looked and me, and we said oh shit pretty much simultaneously.

The Prince of Skyrats: Skyrats swarmed in the gallows-yard the day their prince was hanged, both the gray and dull-eyed birds whose wings fluttered like tattered bits of rag, and the other kind, who were also gray and dull-eyed and ragged. The guards watched them warily, from a distance. The Prince of Skyrats did not see them at all; a black silk blindfold covered his face, leaving him blind and voiceless.

The Bluebeard Room: "No," said Evangline Leighton, "I would not open that door for all the jewels in the Tower of London."

Madam Pneuma: Mrs. Barlow stabbed a needle through the fabric, heedless of the danger to the black velvet of her skirt. “I still don’t understand it,” she said, ostensibly to the room at large, though her gray eyes never moved from mine.

Embers: It was a burning day.

Sixty-Four: [None yet.]

Oxymandias: [None yet.]

Four Burning Things: Mama Babel sets the coffee pot on the fire, stirring it with her bayonet to keep the gritty stuff from burning.

The Widow's Island: You will wake to the sound of singing.

Jaquemart: There was blood on the stage.

The Setting Sun: The night before she died, I dreamed of Sephone.

The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois: [See pictures here.] The house is called Summerfall, and it stands at the end of a long white drive lined with plane trees and elm.

The Kindness of Ravens: On your first day in the desert, they will bring you food.

Wish me luck!

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Friday, November 06, 2009

Every Day Fiction, fantasy, flash fiction, insanity, proprietary glee, short story, updates, weird fiction, writing

July Publications

Today...

...my fantasy flash fiction "The Dangers of Kafka in Cairo" appears the new flash magazine 10Flash.

...my mythic flash fiction "The Banquet of Queen Nitokris" appears in The Lorelei Signal.

...my horror poem "Flesh" appears in Fear and Trembling.

...my Sword and Sorcerery story "Batuli's Child" appears in Bards and Sages Quarterly.

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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

flash fiction, publishing, updates, writing

Lacuna Updates

I'm beginning to send out the first acceptances and rejections for Lacuna this week; I must admit, I wasn't prepared for the high number and quality of submissions for the magazine. I could easily fill four issues just with what I've received so far this month!

On the flip side, there are a number issues I'm encountering for the first time with a historical fiction magazine. For example, several submissions have included unsavory racial or ethnic stereotypes. Not cool. There's also a strangely large number of submissions with no definite historical content. While I love seconday world fantasy (see Mirror Dance above), it doesn't belong in a historical fiction journal.

Keep those submissions coming!

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

characterization, editing, historical fiction, Lacuna, updates

Computer Crash

Mirror Dance submitters: please be advised that I will be without computer access for the next few days and response times have increased accordingly.

If you have already signed the publishing agreement for your work, it is formatted for the magazine and backed up on my flash drive. If you have not signed a publishing agreement yet, assume I do not have a copy of your work on my computer or flash drive. This should not be a problem, but if the computer dry spell stretches for more than a week, it may mean that the Summer 2009 issue will go up a few days late. If this becomes the case, I will post an announcement here and on the Mirror Dance site.

I will still be checking my e-mail at the local library, so submissions and questions are welcome.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

computer, Mirror Dance, updates

Mirror Dance Updates

I am in need of one more poem for the Spring 2009 issue of Mirror Dance. There is one fiction and one poetry slot open in the themed Summer issue, "Villains and Antiheroes." Finally, I have nonfiction/opinion/art slots open in both these issues; the Summer item should relate to the theme, but I will consider a wide variety for Spring.

Submissions information can be found here.

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

art, editing, fiction, Mirror Dance, nonfiction, poetry, publishing, updates, writing