In which I complain about people who write about twins

Sometimes, the only proper response is withering sarcasm.

Or: Stop Twin Nonsense 2K15!

A couple of years ago, my sister and I came up with what I’m going to call Leda’s Law.* It goes like this: in a fictional family with more than four children, two of the children will be a pair of twins. Try it out for a second. The Weasleys in Harry Potter? Check. The Stantons in The Dark is Rising? Check. George R. R. Martin managed to avoid this with the Starks, but that’s probably because he already had a pair of twins on the board. I don’t know for a fact that Leda’s Law is more prevalent in science fiction and fantasy than in other genres, but I do know it’s prevalent enough to be irritating.

Here’s the thing. Like most tropes, Leda’s Law exists because it is convenient for writers, and like most tropes that are convenient for writers, the reason for its convenience is pretty gross. Writers decide that they want a particular family to have a mystically significant number of children—say, seven. But they don’t want to go through the effort of devising seven distinct characters. They think the solution to this problem is to write in a pair of twins who are, for all narrative intents and purposes, the same character.

Writing seven physical descriptions? Now you only have to write six! Coming up with seven mystical powers? Now you only need six! Killing off seven people in a series of contrived coincidences? Now you only need to contrive six!

I wish I were kidding.

I ran into Leda’s Law yesterday while reading a short story in the archives of a popular online SF magazine. I’m not going to name and shame, but I will say that the structure of the story entailed one section dedicated to the death of each of five siblings. Well, each of four siblings, because of Leda’s Law—the twins had to share a section. From a narrative point of view, the twins were the same character.

Writers, from the very bottom of my heart, I am begging you: Please stop doing this. It is gross.

Please stop writing stories, scenes, and sentences in which twins function as a single character. Please stop writing sentences like “Castor and Pollux went to CVS because they had run out of cotton balls.” (Both of them coincidentally ran out of cotton balls at the same time? Or do you think they share a bag of cotton balls?) Please stop writing things like “Linda and the twins were waiting in the car.” (Linda gets a name but the other two people in the car don’t? Why is that?) Please, please, please stop writing bullshit like “The serial killer had six victims—seven, if you count the Smith twins.” (People who do this—do you honestly think one of the victims was going to stand still while the serial killer was going after their sibling? The day a serial killer tries to take on a pair of twins at once is the day that serial killer is going down, IMHO.)

I’m one hundred per cent sure that the people who write this kind of nonsense don’t bear any animosity towards twins. They probably even know twins in real life. (I assume most people know twins in real life? It’s hard to tell, since everyone who knows me knows a twin.) They’re just…I don’t know. Lazy? Unobservant? They think no one is going to care?

Speaking as a twin: I care. I care a lot. When I was eight, I cried when I read books with twins in them because fiction kept screwing us up. I’m a bit past crying now, but I have definitely cursed at my computer screen. I’m sure fictional representations of twins don’t have a major impact on my quality of life. But they are responsible for a lot of minor annoyances, and you know what? They make me feel terrible. I'm betting they make a lot of twins feel terrible. 

Maybe people have somehow gone through several decades of life without realizing that talking about individuals as though they were not individuals is insulting. If this is you, consider this your wake-up call. Stop writing about twins as though they were a single character. Stop publishing stories that do this. Stop reading stories that do this and letting it pass without comment. It’s a very minor thing. It’s a very gross thing.

Please, stop doing it.

And don't even get me started on people who write about twins as though they were the same constellation. 

*Ironically, one place where Leda’s Law doesn’t seem to apply is Greek mythology, where large groups of siblings (the Perseides, the Muses) are all singletons and the twins tend not to have other siblings (Artemis and Apollo)—or if they do have other siblings, those siblings are also twins (Helen and Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux). Of course, if you're siblings in Greek mythology, you probably already share a collective name and a catasterism, so your desire for individuality was probably doomed from the beginning. 

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Sunday, June 28, 2015

the writer in its natural habitat, twin nonsense, writing

The End is Now, again, and Mirror Dance

The autumn issue of Mirror Dance is up, and The End is Now, the second book in The Apocalypse Triptych, is now available. I edited the former,  I'm in the latter, and both, in my humble opinion, are excellent. Happy reading!

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Monday, September 01, 2014

anthologies, apocalypse, editing, Mirror Dance, writing

I, for one, welcome the oncoming apocalypse

My new story, "Houses Without Air,” will be published in THE END IS NIGH, the first volume of The Apocalypse Triptych, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. The book goes on sale March 1, but is available for pre-order now.

Here’s the cover copy:

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.

But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories.

Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.

THE END IS NIGH features all-new, never-before-published works by Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jamie Ford, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Jonathan Maberry, Robin Wasserman, Nancy Kress, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, and many others.

"Final  Exam" will also be reprinted in Wastelands 2, the follow-up to JJA's very successful Wastelands anthology, coming February 2015. The table of contents is crazy impressive! 

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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

anthologies, apocalypse, publishing, weird fiction, writing

Bridges and Iron and Bone

As I continue the at times surprisingly slow process of moving from one state to another, I'm discovering drafts of stories that changed direction so radically that when their offspring finally saw the light of day, they didn't even look like the same species as their parents. "Bridges of Iron and Bone," from the notebook I carried between September and December 2009, is an early version of "The Suicide's Guide to the Absinthe of Perdition." It didn't satisfy me for some reason. It's a story that I wouldn't write now, or if I did, I would write it very differently. Be that as it may, it struck me, as I reread it this last week, as a story that wanted to be shared.

* * *

Bridges of Iron and Bone

The first thing you learn in Pandemonium is that you cannot stop an angel who truly wants to fall.

His bed faces south, towards the black struts that gape like a dragon’s ribcage and the sun and the low red clouds. This is hard-won victory on her part. There are so many patients, so many broken bones and minds and pinions snapped like flower stems with red and marrow-sweet sap, and why should he have the south window, he who cannot see it? The other nurses with their crisp white uniforms and fangs and perfume of myrrh and grave dust look at her with anger, smirk with derision. It is not their place to care that he feels the sunlight on his face, or that his legs are shattered from the fall like a favorite teacup, or that the doctors snap their pointed tails and hiss that he will never see again.

But after everything, she is still human, and she cares.

He came on a Friday evening, folded into a stretcher of yellow rags like an envelope bearing news of a death. Blood matted his hair and sheeted over the empty black eye sockets. His mouth was beautiful and raw as a wound. She found an empty bed for him and pushed it into the sunlight that fell like jaundice through the scarlet sky.

On Sunday morning, when she opened his lips for a sip of milk, she heard him whisper. “You cannot stop an angel who truly wants to fall.” The words became a gray vapor in the air, smelling of salt.


She stroked his forehead, and felt the pinprick scars of his Fall like blind letters beneath her fingertips.

*

There is only one bridge in Pandemonium. It is taller than the tallest tower and the city crouches in its shadow, black and silent. Like the world serpent, it swallows its own tail, enclosing the earth that bore it without beginning or end. The river beneath it is black and hard as concrete. It smells like sulfur, like funeral flowers, like a slaughterhouse, like rot. It smells like a suicide's perfume. The water runs as thin as the backing on a paste diamond, or as deep as a mother's sorrow. It doesn't matter. Skulls, wings, hearts, promises - everything breaks when it hits the river.

On Monday, he fingers the bandages above his eyes. They are clean and hard and white, like bones stripped by crows. He pushes against them as though he is trying to reach the emptiness underneath, the horrible scar of his sanity, for it is only the mad who keep their vision here. If he could see the things around him, twisted and terrible and beautiful, perhaps he would know his blindness for a blessing.

But then, he cannot see her. 

His broken lips twist but he does not make a sound. Slowly, he trails his fingers down across his hollow cheeks, his skeletal chest, his hips, until he finds the place where his legs are nothing but skin and fragments of bone. 

"It was a long fall," she says. "No one could have survived it."

He begins to whimper. Blood soaks his bandages instead of tears.

*

The bridge over Pandemonium is built of iron and bone. They weave together like a net, like a thousand crosses, and the tarmac road beneath is as smooth and oily as skin. The road is narrow, the gaps in the skeleton so large, it would be perilously easy to fall by accident. But no one ever does.

On Tuesday he refuses to eat. He lies in bed as though it is his coffin, perfectly still, until the sun finds his southern window and forces its way in. Then he tents the musty blankets over his face.

At dinner time, she tries to force a spoonful of soup between his teeth. He clenches his jaw and turns his face away from her. But when she stands to go, he catches her hand in his fist. She stops still, her pulse hammering, but he says nothing. Only rolls the tiny bones between his fingers like rosary beads.

*

There is also a bridge in the town where we grew up. The road beneath it is local limestone, green and white with lichen, and its frame is orange steel. She loved to stand barefoot on the limestone curb, bracing herself against the blood-orange bones, and watch the green river come tumbling over the jagged rocks below. The water ran fast, like madness, like a nightmare, and in the cool evening it looked as smooth and soft and inviting as silk.

On Wednesday, he begins to speak. The doctors listen for a moment, shaking their horned heads, and the other nurses rush past with impatient frowns. he sits on the low chair beside him and strokes his forehead, ever so lightly, and feels the words like nails in her palms.

"She hid it well at first," he says, "but it began to break through her conversation, little mice nibbling through a stone wall. She'd mentioned siblings she never had, jobs she'd never held. Just little slips, so easy to dismiss, so difficult to ignore."

She breathes deeply. His words smell like sweat and lithium.

"Then there were the accusations. She said that I was drugging her food. She thought the medicines were poisoning her, the psychiatrists and therapists were rapists and torturers. I pleaded with her, I argued. I thought about grinding her pills to powder and sneaking them into her tea, but I knew she'd never forgive me for it. That still mattered to me, then."

Of course it did, she thinks. You were still human.

"So I watched sanity leave her," he says. "I watched her welcome the madness."

Drops of blood blossom on the bandages over his eyes, and she strokes his forehead, and she weeps. She wants to tell him that she forgives him, that you cannot stop an angel who truly wants to fall, that he was only human, that none of it matters. But he is so broken, so blind, and she sees the sun passing the window in its veil of blood, and she keeps her silence.

*

We used to stand in the river beneath the bridge and listen to the cars as they rumbled overhead. It was dark and cool and it smelled like rain, like damp earth and open graves. Children and drunks had painted things in bright colors on the limestone, but we didn't. We never intended to leave a mark. All we wanted was the silence, the peace, the river at our feet, the bridge as high as heaven above our heads.

On Thursday the words come like vomit, spilling out of his bloodied mouth with the smell of brimstone and ash. "I didn't want her to jump," he says, again and again, clutching her hand, grinding the bones together. "I never wanted her to jump. I thought about what a relief it would be, to stop watching her, to stop worrying.  To stop spending every moment on guard against sleeping pills and brandy and nooses and knives.She was so clever. It didn't have to be poison or a slash to the wrist. She could turn the gas on while we were sleeping. She could slit an artery in her thigh and hide it beneath her stockings and I'd never know she was bleeding to death while we danced. I wanted the fear to stop. But that didn't mean I wanted her to jump."

She kisses his mouth and feels his words pouring into her, the blood and the fear and the guilt, the smell of brimstone and ashes, the taste of iron and bone. "I know," she says, and he swallows her forgiveness, choking.

*

She fell like an angel. Her back arched, her hair streaming around her, her eyes wide and unseeing. She fell, and I saw her blood flowing redblack over the limestone, and I stood on a bridge of steel and skin, iron and bone. And I flung myself after her, I threw myself into her shadow, because I was overcome with relief, because I didn't see the black river below me, because even though I've known forever that you cannot catch an angel who wants to fall, still, still, you have to try.

On Friday he sits up in bed and screams, screams until blood spills over his chin. The other nurses look away as she takes him in her arms and rocks him like a child, rocks him to the beat of the pain that pulses through her ruined skull. She remembers the orange bridge and the bridge of bone.  She remembers the way he watched her as she fell, his eyes black and whole, and he screamed her name futilely, as she will scream his name, endlessly in this hospital below the bridge that goes on forever--futilely, because the first thing you learn in Pandemonium, the first truth that is the hardest to swallow, that sticks in your throat like bone, is that you cannot save an angel who truly wants to fall.

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Saturday, January 11, 2014

revising, short story, the writer in its natural habitat, writing

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

It's always Summer in our dreams...

My story "The Huntsman" - a mash-up of at least three different fairy tales - is now online at Lightspeed. While you're there, check out the reprint of Ken Liu's incredible "Mono no aware."

The June issue of Mirror Dance, Watchers: Stories of Angels and Demons, has also appeared (and been appeared for a little over a week now. Apologies for my belatedness!). The poetry in this issue is some of the most incredible work we've published - check it out!

On a different front, last Friday I finished my student teaching semester, and with it, my B.A. in English and Secondary Education. Insert joyful noises here. As of tomorrow, I will be spending the rest of the month visiting the multi-talented Therese Arkenberg in Washington DC, where I intend to catch up on a semester's worth of writing! And, you know, see some museums and pandas and stuff.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

editing, fairy tale, fiction, Lightspeed, Mirror Dance, Therese Arkenberg, travel, writing

Wiscon 36

Despite being a lifelong Wisconsin resident, I hadn’t made it out to Wiscon until this year. I know, I know, where are my priorities? The convention was capital-A Awesome. Getting the program was like being handed a menu where every entrée is chocolate, or a course catalogue where every literature syllabus includes M. R. James. Unfortunately, due to that work-thing that pays the bills, I could only stay for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.

If you were there and are wondering if you saw me, I was the young woman with long, very straight brown hair, wearing a waistcoat and carrying a black-and-gold brocade bag. My companion, the other young woman with long, very straight brown hair, was my sister, novelist Therese Arkenberg.

The first panel we attended was “Considering the Female Villain,” which discussed such varied issues as sexuality and sexualization, maternity, mental illness, and the all-important motive and motivations. The panelists hit on pretty much everything that an author has ever done to annoy me with their (mis)handling of a female villain: tracing her villainy back to some man who had done her wrong, overseuxalizing her, redeeming her through her relationship with the (male) hero. Allison Moon raised the excellent point that a female villain’s sexuality makes her less dangerous, since it offers the male hero a way into her affections, while a male villain’s sexuality (if it ever occurred—outside of the fandom-generated “Draco in leather pants” phenomenon, I can’t think of many sexualized male villains) would make the villain more dangerous, since the accompanying threat of sexual violence would be, in Moon’s words, “capital-S Scary.” Why, in this equation, female sexuality is seen as humanizing while male sexuality is violent and de-humanizing is another topic to consider.

The only academic panel I made it to was “Theorizing Vulnerability in Feminist Science Fiction” (Kathryn Allan) and “The Tribe of the Maiden and the Tribe of Monsters: Reconfiguring the Monstrous Feminine in Cathrynne Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales” (Suzanne Boswell). Both panelists were wonderfully articulate. The first paper dealt with a number of cyberpunk texts, a bit outside my area of interest, but the second offered an astute reading of Valente’s reimagining of the maiden/monster spectrum (not dichotomy!) and reminded me how badly I need to reread The Orphan’s Tales.

Saturday evening was the Tiptree Auction with the hilarious Ellen Klages: highlights included Ellen auctioning off her own shirt and Mary Robinette Kowal’s erotic reading of an early twentieth-century children’s book. Then off to the Outer Alliance reading, where Therese read a passage from her epic fantasy The Last of the LesserKings; Catherine Lundoff read from her werewolf novel (with a mature adult protagonist!) Silver Moon; Julie Andrews read a story about an alien robot invasion; Julia Rios read a modern extension of Hansel and Gretel; and Keffy Kehrli read an awesomely disturbing story about suicide. The reading went to well past my bedtime. At the end of it, I seem to remember turning to Rose Lemberg, brilliant poet and editor of Stone Telling, who happened to be seated next to me, and mumbling something inarticulate like “totally love your magazine.” At least, that’s what I meant to say. It probably came out “askdlfjlsStoneTellingyay!”

Sunday morning, I got up bright and early (well, definitely early—your mileage may vary on “bright”) and attended “Steal Like an Artist” for a spirited discussion about influence, fanfiction, deconstruction and cultural appropriation. No one actually mentioned the Anxiety of Influence, but that was definitely an undercurrent in the discussion: when all art participates in a dialogue with previous art, how do artists assert their originality? Highlights included Alexandra Erin’s concise rebuttal to the obnoxious “there’s only three/seven/fifteen/four-hundred-eighty-six-point-three stories in the universe” accusation/defense: “If you squish everything down to a nutshell, it’s going to look like every other nutshell.” Also, did you know Fifty Shades of Gray was originally Twilight fanfiction? I didn’t, because every time I get within thirty feet of a copy, the hair prickles along the back of my neck and greenish waves of nausea wash over me like the tsunami that will one day herald the rise of Cthulhu. (To be fair, similar waves of nausea washed over me when I saw there was a panel on rape fantasies at Wiscon. The whole topic of male-dom/female-sub is a Cthulhu-sized squick for me, in the classic and non-moral sense.)

Therese persuaded me to accompany her to the panel on “Writing the Singularity,” which is something I’ve never done but something she is interested in doing. I entered with no idea what the Singularity was or how I would go about writing it; I left with a slightly better idea of what the Singularity is and a very long reading list. *Adjusts Monocle-of-Fantasy-Writing* I say, what funny things you science fiction writers come up with!

My last panel of the convention was “It’s Actually Quite Hard to Rip a Bodice,” a panel on research and historical fiction lead by Vylar Kaftan, Lucy Adlington, Ellen Klages, Elizabeth Bear, and Alex Dally MacFarlane. (Side note: MacFarlane’s ““Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu” in The Mammoth Book of Steampunk was perfect. You should go read it. Yes, now. I’ll wait.) The panel addressed the proper use of research, the challenge of stopping research, how to record and map out one’s research, and the difficulty of bodice-ripping. Conclusion: research is considerably more seductive than the ripping of bodices.

Next year I’ll hopefully be able to make it down for the full three-day weekend. I’ll also hopefully remember to bring a notebook so I can jot down and remember all the clever things people say at eight in the morning when I’ve been up until one the previous night. My human frailties aside, it was a fantastic, enlightening experience.

Now, off to find everything this weekend has added to my reading list.... 

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

conventions, feminism, historical fiction, outer alliance, publishing, queer fiction, research, writing

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen

I know it looks like it, but honest to goodness, I don't live under a rock. I'm just really slow on announcing things sometimes.

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen appears in Fantasy Magazine this week (which, by now, is almost last week). There's also an Author Spotlight where I talk about clockworks, lessons, and trolls.

In other news, I'm revamping the guidelines for both Mirror Dance and Lacuna. No major changes, but I'll be making my fiction philosophy a bit more explicit (so when I say "this isn't quite what I'm looking for" in a rejection letter, the author doesn't scream in frustration). Stay tuned.

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Friday, September 09, 2011

editing, fantasy, steampunk, writing

Works in Progress

First things first: "The Copperroof War" appears as a reprint in the current (and, sadly, last) issue of Labyrinth Inhabitant. Go check it out!

Second things second: It's that time of [insert time cycle here], where I look at my list of stories that I ought to finish one of these days, and instead of thinking about ways to finish them, I do a first line meme. I meant to refresh my list at the beginning of the year, but life (read: classes) got in the way. So here's what I ought to be writing, in no particular order.

"The Improbable Library of Asmodeus Foster"
Rosamund Solomon found the body in a footnote on page 217.

Weirdly, I see that the exact page with the body-containing footnote has changed from 216 to 217 and back to 216 (and now back to 217) in various drafts of this story. That's not important. What is important is that the murderer's identity has also changed in each draft, and I'm not really satisfied with any of them. So, back to the sketch pad or whatever.

"The Basilisk and Sophia Kadare"
If, as Sophia Kadare claims, all poems are serpants, the sonnet sequence of Pasiphae Isaac is a basilisk.

Sophia Kadare is a literary critic attempting an interpretation of the famously lethal sonnet sequence of Pasiphae Isaac.

"The Ninety-Nine Houses of Irene Dobrokost"
No first line yet. Hebene Yacob attempts to steal a house from Irene Dobrokost, who owns every abandoned building in the city. Also, ghouls.

"All in a Hot and Copper Sky"
I have written her a thousand letters.

Dolores remembers her lover, Socorro Mariner, the Queen of Mars. The first line keeps changing, as does the format. Is this a diary, or a reminiscence, or an interview, or a letter? And how did everyone get to Mars in the first place?

"The Small Rain Down Can Rain"
"We think there might be some interest," Stephen said, "in a posthumous collection."

Laura travels through time, gathering poems for her sister Daphne's final collection. Someone is following her. Who are they, and what do they want with Daphne? I'm not quite sure.

"There was no King in Israel"
The girl called Requiem follows Levi to the edge of camp.

Post-apocalyptic retelling of the last chapters of Judges. The current draft is missing quite a bit of backstory, but I like what I've got. Now who'd be interested in publishing this...?

"Babel," "Danae," "Actaeon"
Some nights, when I grow weary of lying awake and listening to the incomprehensible murmuring of the world, I leave the city sleeping in its whithered gardens and go to the ruins of the Tower.
He likes the Owl best.
Over the burbling of the expresso machine behind the bakery counter, he hears the dogs.

Three retellings, one Biblical, two from Ovid. One magic realism, one fantasy, one--Lovecraftian? I have first drafts of all of them, and like what I see. Now, who'd be interested in publishing these...?

"The Dead Women of Bajos Court," "The Women of Arcadio Leon," "The Riverland"
Four dead women live in four gray houses at the end of Bajos Court.
My body is a map of places Arcadio Leon has loved.
Sixty-four miles past the Junction, the land becomes a red and vibrant place.

A Bluebeard story, a haunted(?) film strip, and man-eating lions. I've made no significant progress on these three stories since November.

"The Unbinding of Artemis Kale," "The Gardens of Revenant Road," "The Memory of Philippa Lune"
Lady Saraband burst into the tent. "Artemis is pregnant."
After the war, a woman calling herself Gethsemane Armand came into Moses Johnson's cafe and asked about the place at the end of Revenant Road.
They bought the house on Pall Street because it was where Anabeth Bellcross had died.

A murdered escape artist, a war criminal on the run, and a historian who can remember everything except her own life--and happens to be the prime witness in a murder trail. All of these are in the final brush-up and submit stage. Yay!

"Frankincense and Myrrh" [working title]
Balthazar was dead.

Vashti, Melchior's wife, tells us about the final years of the Three Kings. I love the magi, but the current draft of this story is rediculously cheesy. I also need a title.

"Cafe Macondo"
The scanner bipped, an ascending four-note scale of disapproval. "Sorry, ma'am," I said. "This coffee isn't in our system. It's from an alternate dimension."

Interdimensional coffee and the line between wishes and reality. Based on true events. Ready(?) to be typed up and submitted.

"The Reconstitution of [Museum Name]"
At precisely 4:00, Winter closed her pocketwatch and drew her pistol in one fluid motion.

Winter and her followers kidnap an entire museum to reclaim the artifacts that were stolen from her people. Action! Adventure! Archaeology! Missing corpses! Also, clockwork docents.

"Hunger Lake"
The morning they buried our father, Bel found wolf tracks in the ice over Hunger Lake.

A dying woman returns to her childhood home. When a stranger becomes trapped there in a snowstorm, Madeline must confront the truth about her sister's death. I've got to get this one finished and submitted before February. Wish me luck!

"The Butterfly Garden of Eliott Stone" alt, "Eliott Stone, Queen of the Butterflies"
No first line yet. Or rather, too many first lines (and scenes) to narrow down. The Queen's new summer home forces Eliott to leave the house where she has lived since she was fifteen. Little do the villagers know, the fate of the kingdom of butterflies is at stake. Okay, this one's seriously weird.

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Thursday, January 27, 2011

editing, first lines, writing

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

What? Already?

As far as I'm concerned, November is now over. The December issue of Mirror Dance is up and lovely and brimming with poetry and flash fiction. Go check it out!

As predicted, I utterly failed NaNoWriMo. I finished two stories--"The Gallery of Vespasian Marat" and "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen"--neither of which were on my need-to-complete list, and which combined total less than 10,000 words. If I'm allowed to count drafts of class assignments, I wrote approximately 35,000 words this month. Which isn't bad for me, so I'm not completely disheartened.

And I got two seperate ideas for two seperate novels, one of which I hope to get somewhere on over winter break.

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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Mirror Dance, NaNoWriMo, publishing, writing

Epiphawhatnow?

I just experienced two epiphanies in rapid succession.

1. Concerns objects petits a in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," and thus could not possibly be of interest to anyone but myself.

2. Relates to stories #3, #10, and #17 on Monday's list, which have all jumped on me at once and insisted they were siblings, or at least college room-mates.

If these stories are doing what they think they're doing, I now have not one but two projects that are either a) highly episodic novels or b) collections of interconnected short stories that c) share a common setting that happens to be a city whose name starts with the letter A. One, which I've been working on since writing this a year and a half ago, is called Argentorat, while today's fresh creation calls itself Andvarsuveld. Considering that I've already confused such dissimilar WIPs as "Juggernaut" and Jaquemart, I see great confusion for myself and my beta readers on the horizon.

Yes, 2. also could not possibly be of interest to anyone but myself. Bet you wish I'd spent a post rambling about Earth Mothers and the imaginary order now, don't you?

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

my English major is showing, NaNoWriMo, preaching to the invisible choir, writing

November drives a hard bargain...

It's that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month. Last year, I failed miserably in my goal to write 50,000 words of short fiction, and I look forward to failing miserably again this year. But for tradition's sake, let's look at the long list of stories who want so desperately to be written.

1. The Dead Women of Bajos Court
Four dead women live in four gray houses at the end of Bajos Court.

It started as a horror story and ended as a reimagining of Bluebeard with a blame-the-victim complex.

2. The Women of Arcadio Leon
My body is a map of places Arcadio Leon has loved.

Experimenting with a new framing technique. A man's neighbor gives him the accumulated detritus of the local film college, but the box includes on particularly interesting film. I got halfway through this one and realized I spent all of it introducing new characters. Several of them need to be eliminated, but I haven't decided which.

3. The Dream-Gardens of Revenant Road
After the war, a woman calling herself Theophile Saint-Armand bought the old Venusberg place past the curve on Revenant Road.

Botanical gardens, and a woman with a terrible secret. But how do the two connect? That's what I've got to figure out.

4. The Riverland
Sixty-four miles past the Junction, the land becomes a red and vibrant place.

Still magical lions, still railroads, still a woman building the former without being killed by the latter. I've located a narrator and several key plot points. Now all I need is a voice.

5. All in a Hot and Copper Sky
The boy who wants to write a book about Socorro Mariner sits on the edge of my couch, tapping a pen against his knee.

The ex-mistress of the Queen of Mars reminisces. But what does the boy who wants to write a book have to do with anything? And what were they doing on Mars in the first place? Bogged down in research purgatory.

6. The Treasures of Orfeo [Name]

No first line yet. A story about fairy gifts, and the gifts princes really need to survive.

7. There Was No King is Israel
The girl called Requiem follows Levi to the edge of camp.

A retelling of Judges 19-21 in a post-apocalyptic setting. I'm a little reluctant to put effort into it, considering how difficult it's been to find a home for its sister story "Jericho," but I love the characters.

8. How to Howl at the Moon
You are standing in the forest, waiting for the wolf to find you.

The most intensely autobiographical piece I've ever started. It's about mental illness. I won't be surprised if I never finish it, to be honest, but I feel I have to try.

9. Café Macondo
"This coffee came from another dimension's grocery store," I explained.

Finally, all those hours spent working in a grocery store pay off! Yes, it's about interdimensional coffee, and yes, it's based on personal experience.

10. 29 Florist Avenue
Above all, a queen of [city] must know how to die.

I have a first line, and a setting, and a cast list as long as my arm. The plot will show up later. I can't wait to get to work on this one!

11. The Small Rain Down Can Rain
"We think there might be some interest," Stephan said, "in a posthumous collection."

Time-travel poetry is a dangerous art. Sometimes, people die. Laura Blumenthal is left to pick up the pieces of her poet sister's final collection.

12. The Improbably Library of Asmodeus Foster
Rosamund found the body in a footnote on page 216.

A great novel pulls you in, but what if you die there? A murder mystery, that's what! Like Laura in "The Small Rain Down Can Rain," Asmodeus Foster is protecting a poet sister's legacy, though I have the feeling Ms. Foster's is significantly more sinister.

13. "Four Burning Things" and "The Oracle and the Sea"
Mama Babel sets the coffee pot on the fire, stirring it with her bayonet to keep the gritty stuff from burning. and She hates the sea. For a long time, she thought it was the only thing she hated.

Are these the same story? If not, which pieces belong to which? I have complete drafts of both of them, but they seem to be lacking something, so I thought they might go together. But how? The quest continues.

14. Danae [working title]
He likes the owl best.

It began as a retelling of Perseus's birth, but now it has a healthy dose of sibling rivalry. And clockpunk—don't forget the clockpunk. I'm getting a distinctly "All the King's Monsters" vibe from this one, but that might have something to do with all the huge clockwork animals lumbering around.

15. Krahe [working title]
He wants to see the Crowgirl.

Ravens eat carrion. Zombies are carrion. Ergo, ravens must be the perfect defense against zombies. And being the alienated girl whom the ravens befriend could become very beneficial indeed. More sibling rivalry at work, and there remains the fact that I don't write about zombies and am not entirely sure where to go from where I am.

16. The Unbinding of Artemis Kale
Forty years later, when the murder of Artemis Kale had faded to a bourdon note in the amusement park's dying fugue, people still remembered the day Persephon Wilder came to Bluefish Bay.

Escape artists, and mediums, and murder in the sideshow tents. This story suffers from being loved too much. It desperately needs editing, and I can't bring myself to cut it into pieces. I need to see if I can coerce some family members into beta reading the current draft.

17. The Moth King
The National Library of Extinct Stories takes up three blocks of Vervain Street in downtown Andvarsuveld.

If Cathrynne Valente's gorgeous prose is a drug, I wrote this story in a drug-induced haze. It's missing huge chunks (I even marked them as I wrote the current draft: [huge chunk missing here]), so my task for NaNoWriMo will be shoving those in and making sure they fit seamlessly. Oh, yeah, and making sure the story doesn’t completely suck. Beta readers, to arms!

Whew! Looks like it's going to be a full November…

(Oh, yeah. The post title? Comes from a poem I also need to finish this month. My list of poems-in-progress is much, much longer than this.)

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Monday, October 25, 2010

first lines, insanity, NaNoWriMo, short fiction, writing

Issue 3 of Lacuna, and Kephalopods!

Issue 3 of Lacuna is now online! This is our fullest issue to date, and hopefully it's got something for everyone.

My story "Hieronymus" appears in Issue Two of Basement Stories. This one's a tough bugger to categorize; a secondary-world weird tale with a healthy dose of environmental conciousness. If, you know, your environment includes unspeakable creatures of the dark and damp...

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Friday, October 15, 2010

historical fiction, Lacuna, publishing, weird fiction, writing

The ballot! It has my name!

This totally makes my day.

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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

that's MY name on the ballot, writing

No, silly, that's a master's thesis!

So the part of my brain that is good at finding ideas hidden in texts went a little haywire today. It was supposed to help me find the post-apocalyptic drama hidden in the book of Judges, but instead, it formed silly ideas about tribal loyalties and moral ambiguity. None of which will be useful in the post-apocalyptic drama.

I think I was trained too well in high school. My brain wants to write essays about everything.

Now, open question; what would the psot-apocalyptic equivalent of the tribes of Israel be?

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Friday, September 03, 2010

fiction, nonfiction, The Good Book, writing

Good Things Come in Threes

1. Crimethink, while not entirely formatted, is now online.

2. My poem "What Sieglinde Serpentslayer Said to the King" is online at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

3. James Lecky's "Ancient Shades" is also online at HFQ, and I've never read a story of his that I didn't enjoy immensely.

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Thursday, July 01, 2010

Crimethink, editing, HFQ, publishing, recomendations, writing

"The Dead Women of Bajos Court"

In doing research for this bizarre little story, I got lost in Seville for an hour this afternoon without leaving the comfort of my chair. The internet is a wonderful invention.

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Thursday, June 24, 2010

research, writing

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