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The Virtual World, Interrupted

2015-05-30T01:45:04Z

Well. Been a crazy bit of time. Travel for work. Travel to Balticon. More travel for work.

Balticon was fun, met some new cool people, saw some old friends I haven't seen in too long. Vodka may have happened.

Got copies of a book I have a story in (A Bard's Day Knight, ed. Michael Ventrella, available in PB and e-book). This is the third anthology in this series, and the best cover so far.

Got to pimp and sell copies of The Flesh Made Word. About half the copies I went to the con with sold. That's better than I expected, since I'm crap at pimping my own stuff.

Speaking of this lovely book of erotic writing about erotic writing - the first of a series of author interviews went up on Wednesday, and I failed to mention that anywhere for reasons that will become clear toward the end of this post. Rather than a formal interview, we decided to do this as more of a conversation between two of the authors in the anthology, Delilah Bell and A.B. Eyers.

Eyers: Have you written much erotica? Were you at all hesitant about writing/submitting the story?
Writing is usually a pretty intimate/personal thing for me, but this project kind of…exaggerated that for me. I can’t get much more personal than sex and words.
Bell: I love the more sensual side of stories and writing the piece felt a bit like sky-diving without a parachute — liberating but, oh, just a touch terrifying. I agree. The juxtaposition of sex and words proved unexpectedly escalated the intimacy of the writing process.

Read the whole thing here!

So, back to Balticon. Met a young writer named DL Wainright, who just launched her novel, The Hollow Sun. Turns out she's also a voice actor. We talked. Today she sent me a sample reading a small piece of my story, The Evil Gazebo. And she's brilliant. I can't wait to share this with you. (But I will.)

What else? Oh, had two really good panels on editing, a very fun panel on Rule 34, and a really good group erotica reading with Nobilis Reed, Alessia Brio, Bliss Morgan, and Jesse Sharpe. Each of us had 10 minutes, which is really a nice amount of time for a lingering taste... I read from a WIP, a typewriter smut novel that I really need to finish one of these days.

There was another reading, in the last time slot on Sunday night. That one... didn't go so well. One of the authors decided to launch straight into a monologue about drinking to excess, including vivid descriptions of all the food items she puked up in her escapades. Needless to say, nothing got read that night, sexy or not. (~still angry~)

So, Balticon winds down, and off I run to Virginia for work. Get home around midnight Tuesday. Wednesday morning, my server went belly up. Yeah, the one that has my and Linda's personal email, our websites, the legacy Journal of Unlikely Entomology website, and some other stuff. Been working on recovering stuff, getting things set up on another machine.

I lost 15,000 odd emails from my inbox. A good deal of things that were emailed to me on Wednesday got lost permanently. Some of my emails that I've sent since then haven't gotten to their recipients.

So if you have emailed me and haven't gotten a response, please let me know.

Balticon

2015-05-22T01:09:40Z

Tomorrow, I head south (and west) to Baltimore for Balticon 49. My panel schedule is fairly light, and mostly late night. So, if you're down for Balticon, drop in and say hey.

FRIDAY

11:00 PM - Tack (50 minutes)
Rule Thirty‐Four of the Internet: Everything Is Sexy. EVERYTHING
Jay Smith (M), Bernie Mojzes, Nobilis Reed, Alessia Brio

Dinosaurs. Bigfoot. Tentacle Monsters. You name it; there's porn of it, especially when it comes to self‐published ebooks. Well‐written or not, there's no doubt that weird erotica has gotten popular. We'll talk about why folks like it, how to write it, and what makes for a good sex monster. [18+]

SATURDAY

11:00 PM - Tack (50 minutes)
Science Fiction and Fantasy Erotica Readings
Nobilis Reed (M), Alessia Brio, Bernie Mojzes, Jesse Sharpe, Bliss Morgan

Authors read spicy excerpts and flash fiction. 18+

SUNDAY

6:00 PM - Salon B (50 minutes)
Editing for Magazines
Martin Berman‐Gorvine (M), Mike Allen, Bernie Mojzes, Mike Pederson, Hildy Silverman

A look at what it takes to be a magazine editor from those with the chops to tell you what it's all about.

11:00 PM - Chesapeake (50 minutes)
Reading: Late Night‐ Alessia Brio, Stephanie Burke, Bernie Mojzes

MONDAY

12:00 PM - Salon D (50 minutes)
What Do Short Fiction Editors Want?
Scott H Andrews, Mike McPhail, Bernie Mojzes, Alex Shvartsman

What is the behind‐the‐scenes process of what happens at a magazine? From Slush to Sale panel

Paper Skin

2015-05-06T21:24:31Z

Totally on topic: I came across this courtesy of Caitlin R. Kiernan.

http://www.usbtypewriter.com

The Flesh Made Word was released yesterday. We're almost at the end of our mini-excerpts. Today's is from "Paper Skin" by Sasha Payne.

It was a bitter morning, dark and biting, and I cursed the moon for her disloyalty as she hid her face behind the dirty clouds. Perhaps the stars were out, I couldn’t tell. A miasma hung over the city in those times like the flies gathered thick above a corpse. Smoke choked from the factories each hour of each day. Black, grey, and sulfurous yellow smoke alike twisted into the air and hung there, contaminating the sky. Grime clung to our clothes, soot clotted in our hair, and stink saturated our lungs.Yet in the crispness before the dawn there was a kind of peaceful tranquility as I limped from shadow to shadow. It was my saving grace, my limp.The army wouldn’t have me, not then, but I was healthy enough to live.

I was heading to Leon’s bakery that morning. Bakers live in the twilight hours and the police, even the dreaded security police, thought little of a baker being at his business in the early hours of the morning. I had no such excuse for being on the street and if stopped, if questioned, I could hardly avoid being forced to tell them the truth. Not something anyone in my position would relish. The thought of it quickened my step until I was fairly hopping down the street—hardly something to lessen the suspicions of any onlookers.

It was crowded in the bakery, not with men but with the smell of fresh baking bread; food was still plentiful then, and I helped myself to a small rye-wheat loaf for my breakfast. I slipped it into my trouser pocket as Leon reached into the cupboard and took out the small box. It was warm in the bakery, which was why I never minded undressing there. I always shivered at first, as the air kissed my bare skin, but then the warmth penetrated and I relaxed. Leon was an old man to me then, more than fifty, with round blue eyes and a thick head of silver hair. Some men grow soft and doughy as they age but Leon was rugged, like teak.

He had huge hands, calloused but not callous, like Leon himself. I watched him take the dip pen from the box and test the nib against his leathery fingertip.Too sharp or too fine and it might pierce my skin. Oh, there would be no tears shed for any injuries, we were at war after all, but it’s impossible to write a letter when you have torn and blotted the paper.

My stomach tightened when I saw there was only Leon there. “Where’s Josef?” I asked.

“Ach, don’t ask questions.” Leon put down the pen and carefully opened the cipher paper.

We changed codes regularly, though I never knew them. The resistance didn’t need me to know them; the scrolls know nothing of the scriptures they bear. Josef said I couldn’t be forced to tell what I don’t know.That was Josef, taking the first step and calling the race won. As our group dwindled, as members vanished in the night, he became frantic about keeping the ciphers secret. As if that was the reason we were being cut down. I couldn’t tell them the cipher but I could tell them the names and addresses of those that could. He never thought of that though.The only true protection was anonymity and we all knew each other. We knew too much about each other, but not the things we most needed to know.

I leant against the countertop as Leon wandered over to me with the pen and the cipher. He was a meandering sort of man who always moved deceptively fast. I felt his left hand rest on my hip and the warmth of his breath against my neck. Leon pressed the nib against my skin firmly, drew it down, withdrew it, and then pressed it against my skin again. In this way, Leon worked across my shoulders and down my back, not stopping until the message was finished and his need fulfilled. Then we dressed me in a shirt of patchwork silks that we had salvaged, the better not to irritate or disturb the message already swelling on my skin.

“To the place in the park?” I asked.

“No, a bookshop by the university. Do you know it?”

Now Available: The Flesh Made Word

2015-05-05T16:40:01Z

I'm very happy to announce that, at long last, The Flesh Made Word, erotic stories about writing, is available. It's available as an e-book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords, and of course, at Circlet you can select your preferred format — epub, mobi, or pdf — or get all three, as well as read an extended excerpt of A.C. Wise's story, "All the Spaces In-Between."

It's also available as a trade paperback. What does the paperback have that you can't get from the e-books? Well, there's a little space toward the back of the book to write your own smut.

So here's the deal: the first 5 people who buy the paperback and write their own smut in it, and post a photo of it online (and, of course, send me the link for it), will receive a free story critique (up to 8000 words) from Yer Humble Editor. What you write in the book has to be erotic for it to count. The story for critique can be any genre.

Today's mini-excerpt is from "For All to See" by Kannan Feng.

On Sunday, I started seeing words written on the people around me. At the grocery store, I saw the word “heartbroken” on the wrist of the girl who handed me my change, and I would have passed it off for a tattoo if I hadn’t noticed that the elderly woman behind me had the word “cruel” printed on the back of one hand and “survivor” across the other.

I blinked and shook my head to see if the words would disappear, but then it was like seeing the trees instead of the forest. The boy bagging my oranges and lunch meat had the word “submit” written in curly cursive around his throat, and the other cashier at the register behind me had “poisonous” in an old- fashioned typewriter font across her chin.

At this point, they were all staring at me, and I realized I had been staring at them. I muttered an apology, gathered up my groceries and scuttled away.

I thought it would go away, but it didn’t. Every person I saw had at least one word written on them somewhere visible; some had as many as seven or eight. I worked as a waitress, and after I saw a calm-faced professor type walk in with the word “devour” printed across the bridge of his nose, I ended up at my best friend’s apartment, spilling my guts.

“So is there anything written on you?” Sama asked thoughtfully.

I grimaced.

“Yes,” I said, and I tried to put a note of finality there that told him that I didn’t care to answer any more. Of course, if he listened when I used that tone, we wouldn’t be as close as we were, and at his raised eyebrow, I sighed. He was good at this. He had more than ten years of experience pulling things out of me that were better left unseen, and there were very few secrets I’d managed to hold on to in spite of his silences and his questions.

“Broken,” I said flatly, pointing at the flat area behind my ear. “Healing,” pointing at the curve of my belly.

“Loved,” my right inner forearm.

“Loving,” my left inner forearm.

Sama’s smile was soft, and he nodded.

“Sounds right,” he offered. “At least there’s that.”

The Prophet Scroll

2015-05-04T15:55:58Z

The Flesh Made Word is slated to come out tomorrow, May 5th. Tomorrow, there will be a proper book launch page with a longer excerpt of A.C. Wise's "All the Spaces In-Between," and it'll be available from Amazon &etc., but for now we'll have to settle for the Circlet Press Books for Sale page.

Today's mini-excerpt is from "The Prophet Scroll," by Delilah Bell.

The storm began just as she left Capitol City Station, fat drops of hot summer rain that soaked the delicate fabric of her robes in minutes and plastered the material to her skin with merciless fi- delity. Tanis plucked regretfully at the ruined fabric. She should never have let Zia talk her into buying new robes for this night- mare. Such pointless vanity. Now, they were soaked and she had almost nothing left for frivolities like calling home.

Despite the weather, street hawkers still clogged every corner, peddling their Match Day wares.

“Commemorative t-shirts! Genuine and approved by the Sibyl himself!” one man bellowed, waving handfuls of soggy fabric.

They were in the Sibyl’s traditional black-and-silver scheme, though Tanis sincerely doubted he had approved anything that read ‘Sibyl Inviolate—The Celibate Prophet.’Then again, almost ninety years of unrelenting sexual abstinence had done unfortunate things to the man’s reputation.

“Laser pointers!” yelled the woman beside him. “Get your laser pointers here!”

The phallic silver pen lights projected images of the last Sibyl and her Scroll on the side of a call kiosk, depicted in flagrante at their last appearance as they predicted the loss of prophecy in the realm because of their own son’s inability to find his Scroll. The Sibyl, a petite woman in life, was depicted as a fierce warrior woman with wildly curling hair, crouched on all fours. Her Scroll, whom Tanis remembered from her school lessons as being a thin, scholarly man with a perpetually constipated expression in all his interviews, looked momentarily savage and distinctly unscholarly as he fucked her from behind, head thrown back, his trademark egret markings trailing their way up his arms and across his hips.

In a nice nod to authenticity, those, at least, flashed blue.

...

New Year's Sun

2015-05-03T15:16:45Z

Today's mini-excerpt is from "New Year's Sun," by Nadine Wilmot, which appears in The Flesh Made Word from Circlet Press.

Sandrine stood in the center of the dimly lit room, transfixed. It was the lantern-light that did it, capturing her attention and hold- ing it while temple attendants removed her garments. She stared half-lidded at the lamp in its stand against the opposite wall, soak- ing in its gold-yellow glow like intangible bathwater, and re- hearsed the ritual-words painstakingly taught to her by the mantis.

One of the attendants brushed tangles out of Sandrine’s dark hair while two more gently and efficiently bathed her with warm water sponged over her skin.They kissed her brow when they were finished, and having bestowed this silent benediction, they slipped past her and left. Sandrine stood alone, clad only in the lantern- light.

She felt him before she heard him. He had always been remarkably silent on his feet. Andriu’s breath was a warm curl against her shoulder, an immediate presage for his lips, which pressed there momentarily.

Sandrine turned her head and watched him as he came around to stand in front of her, and his eyes held the same sorrow as the mantis’s had contained. She smiled softly at the sight of him.

“You brought your ink.”

Coming May 5th, 2015

Words are a dangerous thing

2015-05-02T21:29:40Z

Today's The Flesh Made Word mini-excerpt is from Trish DeVene's "Words are a Dangerous Thing."

We are words. May we kiss your clean brow where black hair parts in its sleek cascade? You sing. You are a soulful singer, using your words to caress and carry. But who sings you?

As you stand in queue for your coffee, sweatshirt lounging loose, body relaxed, can we sing your black hair, the deepest night sun-infused, the slope of your gentle nose, those soft eyelids, wide beds drawn for dark-iris thought?

Will the consonants of our vision hold you, keep the room from liquefying at your departure? Today your practical howdy and farewell are skylark sung, skimming east over black river shine. In your voice, our vowels rush to rescue themselves from melting drizzle.

On stage, we name you in marquee lights; each bulb sizzles to speak its letter.You curl over your guitar and let vibrating strings release your ardor. A critic will use words to describe the performance. Our words become yours: smokin’ affliction corner change.

You see life’s struggles, but you smile. On stage and off, your laughing smile carries, fringed neatly, to carry the black-shine descent, your hair a starling’s shine on your shoulders. Do we write cotton-polyester at the touch of your shirt, or raw white buffer, as you roll the sleeve up polished skin, unveiling colorful ink, a picture of your passion. Sometimes words aren’t needed.

Available Tuesday, May 5th

rival pens

2015-05-02T00:12:07Z

Today's wordypr0n mini-excerpt, Rival Pens, is an epistolatory story, written as letters between two rival playwrights. We have to cut it short, here, as it gets explicit fast, and we don't want to trip the puritan-filters.

Rival Pens Benji Bright

M.,

I do all my best writing in whorehouses. Boys, girls, it hardly matters. As long as there are naked bodies and laughter, wine— cheap or expensive—and skin.What a wonder is the human form! My direct inspiration. In the original copy of this letter I wrote, my erect inspiration, but I worried that your clerk would burn the note before you had a chance to see it should I include such a puerile pun. And to you, dear clerk, who I happen to know screens these letters: you should go out and get fucked. It would do wonders for your dreary temperament.

Anyway, I’m writing, Morvent, to tell you that I have done it. I have cast the boy who will be my Alessio. His lips are soft and red as plums, they’re decadent against his snow-white skin. Unblemished skin. It brings to mind a virgin newly plucked.

He calls himself Rien.

I met him when I stepped out to meet my factor, M. Durant, for lunch.

Can I tell you? I never made the meeting.

So entranced was I with this Rien, who seemed to appear before me as a vision or a portent. I had to have him, but he was coy. We flirted in the street. Shameless! I know it well, but what could I do but fall into those blue, blue eyes?

The Flesh Made Word will be available on May 5th.

clowns and flesh and words

2015-04-29T16:35:54Z

The Clowns kickstarter is drawing to a close. 36 hours left until I can stop doing the NPR pledge drive thing. Please consider helping us in our clown cultivation project, and get a book and possibly other fabulous prizes. There are story critiques and limited edition clown limericks by Mari Ness. Artwork by Linda Saboe and Bryan Prindiville. Limited edition Microfictions by Sara K McNeilly. Or maybe you'd prefer to get your very own snarky review of a movie of your choice by Carlie St. George?

Now is the time to act.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/788055090/clowns-the-unlikely-coulrophobia-remix

Today's mini-excerpt from The Flesh Made Word (forthcoming from Circlet Press in early May) is from Intrinsic Pleasures, or Twilight in the Bookstore, by Andrea Zanin.

I should be writing.

Instead I am sitting on the floor in the bookstore office, stacks of old tomes towering, teetering around me. My knees are dusty, my nose tingles. The books don’t speak; they wait, bindings crackling quietly, pages settled, covers yellowing. Cheap pulp novels about cops and farmhands and hustlers placidly share the floor with transsexual memoirs, shiny queer theory textbooks and hefty histories—HIV in Africa, lesbians in film, Harvey Milk in late November 1978.

I should be writing but instead I am sorting and analyzing. Recent publications versus out of date ones. Double copies versus rare finds. Occasionally my hand whispers over or under the covers, peeling them open carefully to unearth a copyright date. The sound is a subtle tearing, a protest; I am not supposed to be here, this information is not mine, these books do not belong to me. My friend Sophie, the manager, thought I would be a good person to help out with the huge number of second-hand books they’d received as a donation from the GLBT community centre. She invited me to come in during office hours. I declined. I work best alone.

I was supposed to be finished this task long ago, and be back at home tapping away at my keyboard. But these books are absorbing, distracting, and I can’t quite seem to speed up my pace. I linger on unusual titles, stroke the textures of embossed covers, read a paragraph or a chapter heading here and there. Something’s keeping me here. I feel a glimmer of understanding, but it flits away, leaving a pinch of wordless, formless arousal.

Amanuensis

2015-04-28T21:44:12Z

Wordypr0n news: today, A.C. Wise's story from The Word Made Flesh, All the Spaces In-Between, went live in podcast form over at Nobilis Erotica: http://nobilis.libsyn.com/episode-324-all-the-space-in-between-by-a-c-wise. For obvious reasons, this is one you might not want to play over the PA system at work, especially if you work at a high school or something.

Today's excerpt comes from Amanuensis, by A.B. Eyers.

May

It’s Sunday. The office is empty when Kitty palms the door open, but the coffee maker is on automatic—it hears her and hums to life.

She doesn’t plan to drink any, but when she passes the machine on the way to her desk she is stopped by the smell. Rich, heady, dark. She is fifteen again, her mother’s silk scarf draped casually over her shoulders, desperate to impress David Fowler, who’s three years older and smells like cinnamon. She’s sipping his americano, pretending to like it....

Kitty stands frozen in the darkness, smelling the richness of her first coffee. She pours herself a cup now, wraps her hands around its warmth and then sips. Deep bitterness floods her mouth.

Suddenly the worn, comfortable craving is something else, something roaring in her, something that will not be denied or forgotten.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

She turns.

He is sitting at a desk, his palms flat on its surface.

“I’m just picking up some papers,” Kitty says.

He is ugly. She is not sure why; the pieces of his face are fine, but the composite... she looks again, and her first impression settles into fact. Ugly.

“That machine is set for the committee meeting this afternoon,” he tells her. “You are Kitty Dunn, legal aid. I can fix the settings of the coffee maker if you wish.”

Her hands tighten on the cup. His mouth twists into a grin that looks painful.

“No thank you.” She sips her coffee. Bitter kisses with Dave behind the gas shelter, his lips forbidden and delicious. “Who—” she begins to ask, and then stops, because his fingers twitch.

You can always tell by the hands.

His are too thin, too long, too oddly angled.

“I haven’t had coffee like this since I was a girl,” Kitty says. “It’s stronger than I’m used to, look.”

She crosses the room, hand outstretched. Her fingers are, indeed, trembling.

Under his folded hands are smudges of ink.

“Were you taking dictation?” she asks.

In answer, he taps his fingers onto the stain-absorbent skin of the desk. Letters form. Words.

Without knowing quite why she does it, Kitty puts her coffee down, reaches out, picks his hand off the desk. His skin is like recycled paper: dry, harsh. His expression stays blank. Kitty turns his hand over—there is no resistance, just the odd rasp of his skin against hers—and inspects his fingers. On the pad of each one is a glossy black oval, a featureless patch of skin that looks smoother than glass.

“You’re one of the new androids,” she says.

“Yes.”

She wants to touch the pads of his fingers. Partly she’s curious, wants to understand them, but mostly she just wants to know if they’re as smooth as they look, if they’re wet with ink. There is something uncomfortably intimate behind his blank stare, and so she puts his hand down, speaks. Her voice like a startled bird, ungainly and awkward; anxiety made audible.

“I thought they were just household models. What are you?”

She cannot look away as he taps her words into the table.

“Amanuensis,” he says. “Model t-792, experimental. The ultimate secretary.”

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Nor did I.”

That ugly smile crouches at the corner of his mouth. He taps one finger against the desk and a series of small dots appear, a line of ellipses.

“Excuse me,” he says, and stands. Jostles her coffee cup so a little of the precious liquid splashes out. “I am wanted elsewhere.”

Kitty lets out a breath as he crosses to the door. She stares at their conversation spilled out on the desk, the ink mingling with her little pool of coffee. She stretches out a finger, touches the dark mixture. Already their words are sinking in.

As she leaves the room Kitty brings her finger to her lips, licks it clean.

Against All Odds

2015-04-26T23:27:39Z

Strip away everything external, and the act of writing becomes profoundly physical. What's more intimate than expressing the hidden self upon a surface, transforming it in the process? Ten writers explore the erotic possibilities of the written word, from a typewriter that awakens ghosts of desire to a woman whose skin holds the stories of her lovers.

Against all odds, The Flesh Made Word will be coming out early next month. Probably May 5th, as long as the proof that comes back from the printer has no massive problems. Have I announced the Table of Contents before? I think I must have, but this has been such a long, drawn out project that I forget where. Facebook, perhaps? Who can find anything on facebook after a week's gone by? Here it is, set in stone-like pixels:

All the Spaces In-Between by A.C. Wise

Amanuensis by A. B. Eyers

Intrinsic Pleasures or, Twilight in the Bookstore by Andrea Zanin

Rival Pens by Benji Bright

Words are a Dangerous Thing by Trish DeVene

New Year's Sun by Nadine Wilmot

The Prophet Scroll by Delilah Bell

For All to See by Kannan Feng

Paper Skin by Sasha Payne

Compitalia by Sunny Moraine

Today's mini-exerpt is from A.C. Wise's "All the Spaces In-Between."

~ ~ ~

The typewriter came to Leon in the way all typewriters did, which is to say—of its own volition and in a way unlike any other.

But exactly like the others, every other stretching as far back as he could remember, it touched him first in dreams, reaching for him and pulling him into wakefulness.

Leon woke to a shaft of pale light lying across the too-large bed. The sound from his dream remained, a soft tap something like rain, but much more like the strike of keys. The taste of ink and a hint of metal coated his tongue.The room smelled of smoke, though he hadn’t burned so much as a candle in years.

His bones creaked as he rose, and his skin ached around them. Leon crept down the stairs.Typewriters flocked to him like strange birds, crowded every shelf and covered every available surface in his too-small shop. Grey light seeped through the windows and lay heavy atop the sorrow permeating the room. A glance flicker- quick took in each machine, everything in its right place. In silence, Leon greeted each by name, by the scent and flavor of their dreams.

Here, one tasted of mud and water. It had called him out of sleep with a siren song so terrible and wild he’d waded into the river to save it from drowning.There, one smelled of dry earth and vegetation just on the edge of rot. He’d found it in a corn field, watched over by a scarecrow, with a black feather stuck between its keys.

~ ~ ~

The Flesh Made Word will be available from Circlet Press in early May, in e-book and trade paperback, at the book retailer of your choice.

Clowns: The Kickstarter

2015-04-26T02:27:02Z

Oh LiveJournal, how I neglect thee.

I last posted in August. In September, I started full time with a startup out of San Francisco. Still living on the east coast, but heading west regularly.

I've totally failed to mention here that, hey! look! We've got a Kickstarter going.

We're down to the last few days of the kickstarter. What are we doing? We're putting together an anthology of clown stories, slated to come out Halloween this year. We've reached our funding goal, but the more we reaise, the more stories we can include in the anthology.

We're also opening up for submissions for this anthology on May 1st and will be open until the 178th anniversary of the death of Joey the Clown, May 31st.

Anyway, come check out the kickstarter. Watch the video - you get to hear clown-themed music by Shriekback, watch a video created by Greg Bossert, and see me get a pie thrown in my face.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/788055090/clowns-the-unlikely-coulrophobia-remix

It's August, already. For fuck's sake.

2014-08-02T15:58:46Z

July having been a whirlwind of activity, most of which involved (continues to involve) changes in the day jobbe. But which also involved an infiltration of Massachusetts by persons of the Mid-Atlantic persuasion for the purpose of attending Readercon.

Although not an official participant, I did end up on 2 panels - one being a Circlet Press group reading (wherein I read from my story in the upcoming erotic horror anthology, What Lies Beneath (which you should totally buy when it comes out - I share a TOC with A.C. Wise, Annabeth Leong, Lucy A. Snyder, Kaysee Renee Robichaud, and Kannan Feng). Sunny Moraine read from her story in the forthcoming anthology, The Flesh Made Word (which you should totally buy when it comes out - I edited it, and it has stories by A.C. Wise, Andrea Zanin, Sasha Payne, Trish DeVene, Benji Bright, Kannan Feng, Delilah Bell, Sunny Moraine, Nadine Wilmot, and A.B. Eyers).

The other panel was on Unlikely Cartography - turns out that half the authors from Unlikely Story's just-released Unlikely Cartography issue were going to be at Readercon, as were both of the editors. Despite being in the penultimate Sunday afternoon time slot, enough folks came out to hear what A.C. Wise, Carrie Cuinn, Sarah Pinsker, and Shira Lipkin had to say about maps to give us enough of a turnout that we didn't feel lonely in one of the large rooms.

In other news - it looks like Unlikely Story has been getting more exposure, evidenced in the volume of submissions. We just closed submissions for the next issue (Unlikely Entomology) yesterday, with nearly three times as many submissions as we've received for any issue in the past, and submissions for the issue after that (Unlikely Cryptography) have started off at a good clip.

So, the plans for this weekend are: clean the house; read slush. There's also yardwork for to be done, but Alas! rain threatens.

the best laid plans...

2014-06-23T04:53:19Z

This weekend was supposed to be productive.

And we did get the new issue of Unlikely Story published, so that's a thing. That's productive, yes?

But.

I was also supposed to accomplish: install an air conditioner; clean the gutters; powerwash the siding on the house; 5 loads of laundry; go to sword-fighting class; mow the lawn; get a long-overdue chapter written on a novel.

But something happened yesterday. A low pressure front? Existential angst? I dunno, but most of yesterday was a total wash. My bones ached, and I blew off class. I did get the air conditioner installed today (and in the process found a book that I'd promised to loan to a friend but then couldn't find). And the laundry is a little bit done?

And I got the issue done.

Which is what matters, in the end.

The Journal of Unlikely Cartography

2014-06-23T03:43:26Z

The Journal of Unlikely Cartography (aka Unlikely Story Issue #9) is now up and live.

Featuring stories by Sarah Pinsker, Carrie Cuinn, Rhonda Eikamp, Kat Howard, James Van Pelt, and Shira Lipkin, and art by Dywiann Xyara, Vivian Gu, Egle Ghe, and Linda Saboe.

Some Half-Asleep Thoughts on Short Fiction Markets

2014-03-15T17:58:23Z

Yes, it's noon already.

Yes, I just woke up.

In my inbox were some calls for submissions, some of which are non-paying. So I thought I'd share my thoughts on that.

I have had some experience with non-paying markets, from when I first started selling stories. At the time, the drive was to get things published, to get my work out where people would see it, and, being filled with self-doubts and hating receiving rejection letters, I sent my work out to places I thought had a high likelihood of not sending me a rejection letter. How did I determine this? I sent my work to online magazines that published stuff that was noticeably worse than my early work.

The tactic worked. The stories were published. One was even published before I was notified of acceptance. There was no editing.

Which is to say (to paraphrase Cerebus the Aardvark), sometimes you can get what you wanted, and still not be very happy.

They say you get what you pay for. As a writer, the same applies, with a twist: you will get what the publisher pays for. The non-paying market field is filled with people who look at e-zine publishing and think, hey, I can do that. Chances are, no, they can't. When I launched The Journal of Unlikely Entomology in 2011, I had no idea what I was doing. None of us did. BUT. We were committed to it, and there was money on the table. We were paying our authors and our artists. We weren't going to take a story that I wasn't willing to spend money on, and, having spent the money, we were dedicated to making sure it was as good as it could be before it went out into the world. Without having made an investment in the project, there is little incentive for the publisher to do the hard work of actually creating a valuable product, and most of the time, they don't.

And sadly (or perhaps fortunately, given the general lack of editing), even for the purpose of having your work where people will see and read it, getting published in non-paying markets often doesn't even provide that. What exactly is the readership of a non-paying zine? What value does having a short story out in a non-paying market have for me? None.

THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS, and your mileage may vary, as they say on teh Intarwebs.

In the literary/mainstream field, non-paying short fiction markets seem to be the rule rather than the exception, until you reach a certain level of notoriety, at which point you get paid well - very well, by genre standards.

There are, also, some conscientious editors out there putting together good zines, without the means to pay. Most of them, however, will find some way to pay at least a token amount - a couple bucks via paypal or something. If you're considering sending your work to a non-paying market, take a look at their recent offerings. What is the quality of the stories? What about editing - are there lots of typos, misspelled words, horrifying sentence constructions? What about the presentation? Impossible-to-read blood-red type on a black background? Background images that obfuscate the text? Look for a clean, professional presentation and stories that look like someone actually paid attention to editing them.

One gentleman of my acquaintance was working on a short story collection which he planned to self-publish, and sent a number of the stories out to non-paying markets simply for the ability to put "previously published in" in front of enough of the stories that his self-pubbed work would be seen as something by someone whose work has been vetted through a traditional editing/publishing process. I think that's a valid reason. I've seen his work - it's certainly good enough to get picked up by paying markets, but he was looking for a fast turnaround.

AND - probably most importantly - there are markets that exist as benefits. This is what I received in my email overnight. If there's a good reason to give away one's creative work, it's for the purpose of generating awareness of a worthy cause, and of generating revenue for that cause. Coming Together is an erotica imprint whose tagline is "Doing good while being bad. Erotic fiction to benefit charity." The email I received informed us that they will be starting calls soon for two new projects, one a science fiction themed anthology that benefits the International Still's Disease Foundation, and the other an ongoing line of Steampunk themed stories to benefit the National Math & Science Initiative. If you feel like doing good while being bad, either as a reader or a writer, check out their site to see their offerings and the charities they support, and to see what calls for submission are currently open.

http://www.eroticanthology.com

http://www.eroticanthology.com/submissions.htm

A Quick Note About Cover Letters

2014-02-18T20:03:40Z

This post applies to short fiction submissions. Things are a bit different when pitching novels, querying agents and whatnot.

Over the past three years, we've received a lot of submissions, and a lot of cover letters. After reading these, there's some things I want to say about them.

Let's get one thing straight right from the start: There is very little you can say in your cover letter that will improve your chances of having your story accepted.

This is an important thing to understand. For short story submissions, the cover letter exists to convey specific pieces of information that the editor wants to see. It is not a sales pitch. In the case of Unlikely Story, we want to see the following: your name; your story's title; the word count; if it's a reprint where and when it was first published. This is so that we can populate our spreadsheet when your submission comes in without having to first download your story, then open it in a Word or equivalent, just to find out the title or word count. We don't mind a short bio - one or maybe 2 sentences - simply because if we like your work, we may want to look to see what else you've done, if we have time for pleasure reading. If we've met somewhere, it doesn't hurt to include something like, "It was a pleasure meeting you at Balticon last year," or something like that. And that's it. Last month I met the editors of another online zine, and they said "we mark that field in the submission form optional because we don't want to see cover letters." Why? Because their online form already gathers all the info they need, and anything you say in addition to that is either of neutral value, or will actually harm your chances.

So here's an even baker's dozen of Don'ts when it comes to cover letters:

Don't get the salutation wrong. That's disrespectful. Get the names right. Get the honorifics right. If you're unclear on what the right honorific is, use full names. Alternately, go generic. I typically use "Greetings," as my salutation, as it applies equally to junior and senior editors, and to slush readers. (There are some editors who dislike the generic salutation.)

Don't only address the male editor(s). I can't tell you how often this happens.

Don't be overly casual, unless you know the editor personally.

Don't be rude.

Don't be unprofessional.

Don't NOT provide the specific information requested in the submission guidelines.

Don't give us your complete multi-volume autobiography.

Don't give us your complete bibliography of every story you've ever had published or self-published in the history of your complete autobiography.

Don't I repeat DO NOT summarize your story in the cover letter. If we can't figure out what your story is about by reading your story, we probably don't want it; when you tell us in advance what to expect, we can no longer look at the story objectively, and it's points off.

For the love of everything anyone has ever held sacred (including Pete), DO NOT tell us how we are going to feel about your story.

Corollary to #10, don't tell us how your story is going to catapult our magazine to fame and glory.

Don't tell us how stupid and blind to great art all the other editors who rejected your story in the past are, or even that it has been sent out before and been rejected.

Don't ignore the posted submission guidelines for the market you are submitting to, even (especially) if they contradict anything I've said in this post.

There are a couple things that you CAN do:

Include a brief bio of 1-2 sentences, mentioning the most prestigious markets you've sold to to date.

Be comfortable with the fact that you haven't sold anything yet - as my karate instructor told me, long ago: "We all start at white belt." Being previously unpublished will not hurt your chances of selling a story. In fact, most editors are very happy when they get to be the first one to publish someone who shows real potential.

Especially if you're a new writer, do not be shy about asking for feedback. (DON'T DO THIS IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND WELL TO FEEDBACK YOU DON'T LIKE!) You won't necessarily get feedback (and don't be offended if you don't - there are legitimate reasons why an editor might not provide feedback), but sometimes you will, and that advice can be invaluable. When I first started submitting work, I'd include something like, "As a relatively new writer trying to improve my craft, any feedback is appreciated." The first story I ever submitted was rejected with a couple lines of feedback, which helped me fix the story and sell it elsewhere; same happened with another story, which went on to become my first professional sale.

So, that's it. Now get back to writing!

And now for something completely different

2014-02-17T21:25:43Z

It's supposed to snow tonight. It's like a fucking winter wonderland.

I might be happier about this whole gobs-of-ice-and-snow winter if I hadn't been combatting an array of maladies, meaning that shoveling is just one more thing to tire me out too much to brain effectively.

#include <grumpycatpic.h>

So, what's new? Well, if you've been following the Unlikely Story blogs, either on lj @ http://grumps-journal.livejournal.com/ or wordpress @ http://www.unlikely-story.com/about/news/ (or on twitter, or G+, or possibly on facebook, though they've started to suck as far as actually communicating with people anymore), you'll have seen that Issue 8 (which is our 10th issue) is now available. This is our first Cryptography issue, and given the number of excellent stories we had to pass up due to budgetary constraints, I have high hopes for when this theme rolls around again next year.

What else is new? Well, some of you might know that a while back Circlet Press put out a call for an anthology called The Flesh Made Word, erotica about writing. The editing process got derailed for a few personal reasons, but we're now back on track and edits are in process. Working with Cecilia Tan at Circlet has been both interesting and educational. In every slush pile (and also in every critique group) there are always those maddening stories that are good, but something about them just doesn't sit right — that are missing something critical, but damned if you know what it is. Cecilia is brilliant at identifying those things, and I feel very lucky to have had the chance to participate in that process. Anyway, more news on that soon.

The Meat Man

2014-02-12T22:56:55Z

So I wasn't home for this. I just heard it second-hand.

Today, the Meat Man came. He arrived in a van which was painted with pictures of meat. He and his partner were going door-to-door. He came to our door.

Lori answered.

"Hi," he said. "I'm from Delaware!"

"Excuse me?" Lori said.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "I'm from the Great State of Delaware!"

Lori saw the van at that point and said, "Oh, you're selling meat? Well, they're vegetarians here, so you're out of luck."

He laughed at that, but he didn't leave. Instead, he started to go into his spiel. At this point, Loki headbutted the back of Lori's knee and slipped past her, running at the Meat Man, barking wildly.

Lori said, "They're vegetarians, but she's not."

ice pellets? srsly?

2014-02-12T05:58:08Z

It's pretty much exactly a week from when the ice storm started that took out power to 69% of everyone in Chester County, PA.

Our power went out last wednesday at 6am. Somewhere around 4pm, our neighbor's tree came down. 60 year old oak tree, just tipped over under the weight of the ice. Came down into our back yard, taking out the electrical cables. Pulled the telephone poles on either side of it toward it. ~snap~ Yeah, that. It was like dominos, breaking two more poles down the line from us.

Power was out for 4 days, coming back Saturday night. PECO showed up around 10am Saturday. The tree contractor guys arrived shortly thereafter. Tree guys spent five hours taking down the tree. Brutal work in 25 degree weather. The lead guy wore no gloves. His hands were bright red, and bleeding from multiple wounds. "I've gotta feel my work. I can't feel it through gloves."

PECO was in a holding pattern until the tree was cut away from the wires. I talked with those guys. They looked exhausted. Sixteen hour shifts. In this weather. One problem was that they didn't own the poles. Verizon did. So they couldn't actually fix the poles. Verizon had to. The guy shook his head. "Yeah, right," he said. "Maybe in a month or two." "After the next storm," one of the other guys said. So, they straightened the poles to the best of their ability, tied them off to trees so they wouldn't fall over, and got the wiring fixed.

Ten hours of work between two teams of workers. Multiply that by 750,000 homes without power.

Yeah, being without power for 4 days sucked, especially trying to keep a couple tropical animals alive in sub-freezing temps. But kudos to the guys who worked crazy shifts to get people back up as fast as possible. As painful as the experience was, I'm cognizant of the sheer scope of the disaster, and I'm impressed with how hard they worked to get people back online.

Tomorrow night, seems there's a nor'easter coming through. Initial reports called for snow all day Thursday. Weather Underground forecasts "ice pellets." Fucking hell. Like we need 24 hours of ice pellets.

I'm hoping that the trees that were going to come down have already come down. I'm going to pretend that last week's ice storm couldn't have weakened other trees. Maybe if I pretend hard enough...

The Worst Song

2014-02-11T22:13:22Z

NPR.com has a lovely little article called The Worst Songs Of All Time, available here:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/02/06/272457460/the-worst-songs-of-all-time

It's worth reading through, and also the comments, which have many worthy candidates.

BUT.

Nobody mentioned the truly worst song ever. "The Night Chicago Died," by Paper Lace.

Glory be.

Interview in Black Gate

2013-11-12T15:35:29Z

The Unlikely Story crew (A.C. Wise, Linda Saboe, & I) answer important questions about the magazine and ourselves (such as "Doctor Who or Firefly?") at Black Gate.

http://www.blackgate.com/2013/11/11/unlikely-story-bg-interviews-the-editors/

Standard Manuscript Format

2013-11-02T18:41:08Z

Last weekend, I was a panelist at the Pocono Writers' Conference in Stroudsburg, PA. The attendees were largely beginning writers. At one point we were discussing the process of submitting, processes and pitfalls, etc. I mentioned Standard Manuscript Format, and found myself looking out at blank stares.

"Who here knows what Standard Manuscript Format is?" I asked.

A handful of hands raised. (How's that for a badly constructed statement?)

"How many people have no idea what I'm talking about?"

A surprisingly large number.

But really, it shouldn't be surprising. If I look back at myself when I was at their stage, I'd never heard of SMF either.

SMF was standardized at a time when one's story was manually typed onto paper, using a typewriter (often with carbon paper), and the paper was thin to allow for better carbon copies and to reduce the cost of postage. Edits were done in red pencil directly on the page, and eventually (hopefully) the typesetting was done by a person reading that page, placing little bits of lead onto a printing plate. The rules were to give the editor plenty of space to write in, and to make things as uniform as possible to allow for easy reading and easy typesetting.

Many of the reasons for SMF have become obsolete (the typesetting requirements, for example). This is all done with software now, so there's no longer someone staring at a marked up sheet of carbon-copied manuscript trying to sort out if this is a comma or a period, of if that is italicized or not. Technology has rendered much of this moot, but at the same time has created infinite flexibility for writers to do stupid things.

Where before writers might feel compelled to stand out by sending in their manuscript typed on ornate stationary, liberally doused in perfume, now a writer might use a flowery, cursive script (switching fonts to a comic sans for the intentionally funny bits), and litter their manuscript with animated gifs.

Don't. Please. Please don't.

Standard Manuscript Format exists to keep editors sane (for some value of "sane"). When we're sitting down to read submissions, we're we're typically reading batches of stories, and the last thing you want to do is annoy the editor by having them have to reformat your work so that it's readable. The idea is that if the formatting is all the same, it becomes easier for us to consider the story based solely on the content.

So, what is SMF? This is probably the best guide out there:

http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

It is, however, still geared toward the idea of people putting sheets of paper in an envelope, rather than attaching a file to an email.

So, some key differences for electronic submissions:

Use headers for your headers. DON'T manually add the header information at the top of each page - there's a good chance that the person receiving your story will be using a different word processor, or even a different version of the same word processor, or is reading on a tablet, and there is no guarantee that the story will be rendered exactly the same on every platform. If you use the header function, it won't matter how many lines my Mac NeoOffice renders your Windows Word 2007, the header will always be on the top of the page. (If you are unsure of how to do this, it's typically an option under an "Insert" tab - you'll be able to find instructions for your specific software online.)

It's pretty standard nowadays to use italics for italics, rather than underlines.

Unless the guidelines for the market specify a required font, "some reasonable font" is usually adequate. Reasonable includes most commonly Courier or Times New Roman, but can really be any common font that doesn't distract from the editor's reading of the work. In the days of paper manuscripts, Courier was necessary so that the editors could easily estimate word count and layout. Now our software will give us the word count, so it's not as important to use a monospaced font. Remember that the further you stray from the standards (Courier, Times, Arial), the more likely that the font will not be supported in the editor's software, and the display will be unpredictable. My preference is for serif fonts - I find them easier to read. This will vary from person to person, so always read the guidelines.

File type - the guidelines will typically tell you what file type the editor wants. FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES. Typically, .doc and .rtf are safe bets. DON'T use proprietary file types. Don't use .docx unless it is specifically requested. .docx files in particular display strange behavior when being opened in non-Microsoft environments. If you use MS Word, it may be saving your files in .docx format by default. Consider changing your default so that you send out manuscripts that can be read by anyone, no matter what kind of computer or software they are using.

In case it hasn't been stressed enough yet: ALWAYS FOLLOW THE SPECIFIC GUIDELINES FOR YOUR INTENDED MARKET. Every editor works differently, and every market has its own processes and procedures. If some editor wants things single spaced in 9 pt verdana font, double-spaced between paragraphs with no paragraph indent, give them that. But for the vast majority of markets, some reasonable facsimile of Standard Manuscript Format will do you well.

Stupid Brain Tricks

2013-10-20T15:02:11Z

So, I was just in the shower. Wash hair. Song comes into my head. And I'm kinda mumbling along with the tune as I lather up the soap, and I think, "Who is this?"

Because I can't figure out 1) the title and 2) the musician.

Which is weird, because I can hear the song clearly in my head. I can hear the band, each instrument, all the string orchestration. I can hear the singer's voice, even the distinct syllables as he sings, the timbre of his voice. It's like listening to the song on the radio, but I can't made enough sense of the lyrics to identify the song. I can hear the syllables, but they aren't forming words.

It's fucking maddening.

I've identified the time period - late 70s to mid-80s. I've crossed some artists off the list, because the singer's voice is wrong, or their songwriting is too simplistic to have come up with this orchestration. Still.... nothing.

Finally, I finish my shower. Soap and conditioner all warshed off. I turn off the water. The little bath->shower water redirect knob drops down with a click.

Elvis Costello.

Writing Advice About Writing Advice

2013-10-19T21:48:56Z

Abraham Lincoln, in the Spielberg film, says:

A compass [...will] point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... What's the use of knowing True North?

So, you're on a journey. You're driving from Philadelphia to New Orleans, for coffee and jazz. Whatever, you're going from Point A to Point Z, and you're not entirely sure how to get to Z.

You can use a compass and plot a course and hope for the best.

Or you can plug your destination into a GPS, and follow the step-by-step instructions to get from point A to point Z.

Or, you can dig into the bottom of your glove compartment and pull out the old road map, the one that shows all the places you might be, all the places that you might want to get to, and all the connections in between. Yes, it's messy and confusing, and the damn thing never folds back up right, but it doesn't just show you the most efficient path. It shows you the world, all the places in-between and on the periphery, and you plot out the path that makes sense to you, the one that looks interesting. The one that makes the journey uniquely yours.

Avoid writing advice that looks like GPS instructions, and look for the writing advice that gives you a map, but doesn't tell you where to go.