Lois Tilton at IRoSF reviewed Clarkesworld, which includes “Clockwork Chickadee.”

The chickadee hatches a plot with the live mouse, but it’s hard to believe that the sparrow would have been so foolish as to fall for their trick. I don’t think the chickadee is very nice.

Hee hee. I don’t think the chickadee is very nice either.

Scott M. Sandridge at The Fix reviewed Clarkesworld Magazine, #21, which included my story “Clockwork Chickadee.”

…don’t let the surface innocence of the story fool you. Kowal delves into shades of gray and exposes the grayness in a fairy-tale style trapping often used (at least in modern times) to compare the usual black-and-white view of morality. All these reasons and more make this story well worth reading.

Shortbits reviewed Clockwork Chickadee and closed with this line.

This is a fun little steampunk parable whose apparent moral lesson (pride comes before the fall) is somewhat subverted by the cold, calculated nature of Chickadee’s schemes.

What’s interesting to me is that I thought about putting an actual moral at the end, but decided not to because it defused the story. I asked some early readers what moral they would put and they all said, “Well clearly it’s [x].” Except [x] was different for every one of them.

So, now I’m curious. What do you think the moral of the story is?

This month, Clarkesworld magazine is offering my story, “Clockwork Chickadee,” as one of their two fiction offerings. Plus, “The Secret in the House of Smiles” by Paul Jessup, and non-fiction by Ekaterina Sedia, Jeff VanderMeer and Neil Clarke.

The teaser:

The clockwork chickadee was not as pretty as the nightingale. But she did not mind. She pecked the floor when she was wound, looking for invisible bugs. And when she was not wound, she cocked her head and glared at the sparrow, whom she loathed with every tooth on every gear in her pressed-tin body.

The sparrow could fly.

The story is available in two flavors, written or read aloud. Clarkesworld is offering audio fiction now, and my story kicks that off.

They’ve got a comment thread, so do let them know what you think.

Clarkesworld Magazine just posted a preview of the June cover art, which will have my story “Clockwork Chickadee” in it. I am thrilled to be sharing the issue with this creepy art by Eli Effenberger.

Yesterday, while working at the theater, I ran to an internet cafe so I could check on the status of a prop I’d ordered. Two things popped up in my email.

1. Your account has been suspended.

2. An IM from Neil Clarke asking if I’d like to sell him “Clockwork Chickadee.”

So, while I’m on the phone with technical support, I’m also having a conversation with Neil about the story. See, the funny thing is, that I didn’t submit “Chickadee” to Clarkesworld. I sent it to Fantasy Magazine. Yeah… A week or so back, I had a conversation with Cat Rambo, editor, about how she liked the story but had reservations about anything clockwork, because she’s expecting a deluge of them due to the Shimmer Clockwork Junglebook issue.¹ But she liked the story, so she showed it to Sean Wallace, who then showed it to Neil and they decided to move the story to that venue.

This is, I think, the most roundabout way that I’ve ever seen a story of mine take, but I couldn’t be more delighted. It’s due out in June.

1. To which, I’m not allowed to submit anything because I’m on the staff [↩]

I thought you might be curious to know how it ended up…

Neil says:

The three covers in the poll were presented in chronological order and represent a sampling of our favorites. During the 24 hour period prior to the poll, there was a lot of discussion about color, framing, fonts, and such. I have to admit to being a bit of a troublemaker. As reflected in the poll, there was a lot of support for cover #1. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the portal-effect the framing had on the art I had selected, so we pressed onward.

REALMS is now available for preorder at the Wyrm Publishing website and should be listed at Amazon and (hopefully) other bookstores within the next few weeks.

In appreciation for all the input I received, for the next week, I’m running a special 30% off promotion on preorders for this book.

I’m doing the cover design for Realms, the anthology of Clarkesworld Magazine. There is a poll to see which of the three versions people respond to most. Please hop over to the Wyrm Publishing webpage and cast your vote.

Which one do you most want to read?

Cover 1	Cover 2	Cover 3

I was ordering a subscription to the Clarkesworld Magazine chapbooks (which look gorgeous) and the order form asks “Who is your favorite author?” This stopped me dead in my tracks. Favorite. I was just having this conversation with my husband last night about The Sparrow. It is the book that I always recommend when people ask me to recommend a book. But it’s not my favorite book. My favorite book is probably Lavender and Old Lace by Myrtle Reed.

This is favorite defined as “a person or thing regarded with special favor or preference” because it’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it makes me cry everytime and I love it. She wrote in 1902 and it’s a straight ahead romance, with mild fantasy elements, and yes there is purple prose. But the characters are very real and the descriptions are evocative. I mean look at this line, “The faded green shutters blended harmoniously with the greyish white background, and the piazza, which was evidently an unhappy afterthought of the architect, had two or three new shingles on is roof.”

So, favorite author? Orson Scott Card, Mary Doria Russell, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis…? Lordy. I should just put down Myrtle Reed and confuse the living daylights out of them. I regard all of them with special favor.

I think I’ll go with Steven Brust though, because of three things: I won a interpretive reading competition in college with an excerpt from Brokedown Palace; I had my first fan girl squee! over him; I read The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars whenever I’m creatively constipated and that always gets me over it. I have a special regard for him for that.

So who’s your favorite author?

Shimmer made the list for Clarkesworld Bestsellers for the Week Ending June 25, 2006! Woo-hoo!

Magazines
1 - Weird Tales
2 - Fantasy & Science Fiction
3 - Paradox
4 - Asimov’s
5 - Shimmer

Okay, it’s a small thing, but I’m still pretty excited about it. Shimmer made the top five bestsellers list at Clarkesworld Books for the Week ending April 23, 2006. Kind of cool.