Doug Lain is teaching a six week writers workshop through the Woodstock Community Center and Portland Parks and Recreation starting on July 1st. The course will be run on the Milford Model, but will also feature presentations on aspects of writing from various local writers, including me.

The full lineup of guest speakers is: Jay Lake, MK Hobson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Eileen Gunn, Ken Scholes, and Tina Connolly.

The course description is:

Everyone has a story to tell. Join other raconteurs in a comfortable environment & gain confidence in your inspired abilities. Enjoy guided practice & constructive critiques stirred by imagination & life experience.

You can sign up at the Parks and Rec website for “Writing Creative Stories.”

Since the day was nice I decided to bike out which I’m feeling pretty good about. Now. Tomorrow I expect I may feel differently since it was a 36 mile round trip.  (For the locals, I should explain that I took the bus to Sauvie’s Island and biked from there. Biking from my house would have been insane.)  It’s a beautiful ride, if you can ignore the traffic noise. In a car I’d tell you that it’s level all the way out, but being on a bike really makes you aware of the rise and fall of the land. Fortunately this was all pretty gentle. Getting somewhere under my own steam is very empowering. I really enjoy it.

On the way back I stopped for Dairy Queen — coffee heathbar blizzard — and tried to ignore the incongruity of massive bike ride and junk food.  Mmm… blizzard.

So all in all, a very good day.

I’m so happy for my friends and can’t wait to meet the young ladies.

Through the magic of wireless, Ken snapped a photo of the girls and I’m posting it here, with permission, for your viewing pleasure.  They are about three hours old in this photo.  Ken reports that they are the most beautiful babies in the world.  I find it hard to disagree with him.

Ken is one of my dearest friends and he’s also one of my favorite authors, which is a handy combination.  If you’re in the Seattle area, you can head over the the U-bookstore for his signing.   But if that’s too far away and you want a sampling of Scholes, Tor.com has one of his short stories up.

A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon by Ken Scholes.

Frederico leaned close to smell the poison on his thirteenth wife’s cold, dead lips. It tickled his nose and he resisted the strong desire to kiss her that suddenly overcame him.

That you might lose yourself from sadness by my lips, my husband and Czar, her open, glassy eyes promised him. He looked away, uncomfortable with her empty, inviting stare.

Behind him, the Minister of the Interior cleared his voice and spoke. “The cabinet feels it would be more stabilizing to consider this an assassination. Jazrel was a most popular wife.”

As a bonus, they have an audio version available as well, read by me.

Go congratulate Jen and Ken Scholes who say:

“My flist may or may not have noticed that I’ve been somewhat absent the last few months. Though I’ve been quiet, I’ve not been idle. .. I am now 12 ½ weeks pregnant with identical twins!”

The rules on this one are simple. For 8 days, post 1 thing every day that made you happy. Then tag 8 other people.

Here’s mine. Last night I sat in front of the fire in my parents’ house with Rob and talked to my folks. Look! The stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

I tag Alethea Kontis, Ken Scholes, David Anthony Durham, Nora Jemison, Rick Novy, Amal El-Mohtar, Sean Markey, and Cat Rambo.

On my left wrist, you see that corsage?  My friends Ken Scholes and Jen West gave me that.  Jen loaned her husband to me for the night as my escort.  See, I’d told Rob to stay home because I was so sure that I wouldn’t win but Ken volunteered to be my date.  Never did a girl feel so supported.  It was like going to the prom, but so much better.

Honestly, as much as the Campbell award means to me, the larger thing that it represents is embodied in these guys.  I am daunted by their talent, but at the same time, I know that I am supported by them.  And that support is why this is my favorite picture.

On the other hand, Elizabeth Bear introduced me to Jay Lake, who in turn set up a meeting with Ken Scholes, and he recommended Mary Robinette Kowal, who became a new client of mine last month. (That makes it Mary’s turn….) So, it certainly has its advantages. They still all had to write really, really, really, really ridiculously good books.

Which set me thinking… See, the thing is, that Ken’s introduction let me jump the slush pile. BUT if I’d sent in my first novel, Jennifer would have rejected me. The novel I signed with is the fourth that I’ve written.

The evolution goes like this:

• Novel 0: Took ten years, starting from high school, to write. It is well and firmly trunked. (Shape-shifting cat/human aliens with wings anyone? Did I mention my D&D character has the same name? Yeah… trunk. TRUNK.)
• Novel 1: Middle-grade Fantasy – Six months. I think this has potential, but there’s a flaw in the first three chapters that I can’t seem to fix. I sent this out to publishers on my own for a while, and always got requests for partials but no requests for fulls. Now. This is book one in a series. Did I write the second book in the series next? No.
• Novel 2: Science Fiction/Murder Mystery – Four months. Better. It needed revisions, so I set it aside to think about before diving into it. Meanwhile, I wrote:
• Novel 3: Urban Fantasy/Chick Lit – Three months. Good. Needs revisions… Meanwhile:
• Novel 4: Regency romance/Fantasy – Three months. Good! This immediately felt stronger than the others and I had a clear view of what changes needed to happen. So I didn’t wait on the revisions. This is the one I signed with.

The point being, that it took a while for me to learn to write something salable and that if I’d sent in any of the others, I think I would still be without an agent because those books aren’t there yet. I do think they can be, but the course I chose to take — and mileage varies — was to write novels in several different genres to see which one stuck. I have sequel ideas for all of them, but until I knew that I had a book one that worked, it didn’t make sense to invest time in a string of books in the same world.

At the moment, I’m doing revisions on Novel 2 and continuing to work on short stories. Right now, I’m at a point in my career where I have the luxury of taking a year off from a novel before doing revisions. Since I’m a better writer now than I was a year ago, waiting to revise the novels is like earning interest on my skills. Seriously. I re-read Novel 2 and it was dead easy to see where it had gone astray. The revision process is like swimming downstream.

Now, let’s say that Ken offered to introduce me before I’d written Novel 4. I knew Novel 1 was flawed, so sending it in would have been wasting that opportunity. What’s more, it would have been embarrassing to Ken.

I’m sure that someday I’ll introduce a writer to Jennifer, but I can almost guarantee that it won’t be with their first novel.

And then I ran around in circles, weeping and giggling.

See, I don’t blog about everything but back in January, I made the very hard decision to leave to leave my agent. The details aren’t important, but it wasn’t easy to decide to jump back into the dating pool. It really did feel like I was breaking up with a boyfriend to be single again.

While I was moping, Ken Scholes told me that I should send my manuscript to his agent, which I had already wanted to do. She’s done wonderful things for him and I liked everything I heard about her. It was nice, though, to get Ken’s blessing before sending in that manuscript.

And today, oh man, today the acceptance email came in. I have to tell you that I looked at the subject line and thought, “this is going to be a rejection.” And then it wasn’t and I burst into tears. Yes, I can be very girly.

Really, when people tell you that an agent/author relationship is closer to a marriage than anything else, I think they know what they are talking about. After courting Jennifer Jackson, I do feel like I’ve just been proposed to.

I’m looking forward to what the future holds. It feels very, very bright right now.

Subscribe to Shimmer by January 10, and you’ll get 4 issues of terrific new speculative fiction and art for only $17.00 (plus postage). We’re going to raise our rates then, so this is your last chance to subscribe at this price.

Bonus: We asked Shimmer favorite Ken Scholes to write a special holiday story for us – and he came through with “What Child Is This I Ask the Midnight Clear,” a post-apocalyptic Christmas tale. We’ll be posting the story on our site soon; but as a special thank-you, anyone who subscribes (or renews!) by January 10 will get a lovely signed chapbook of the story.

Me? I’m printing up stage money and putting blood on the dog.

So let me point out a good guy fellow who has just gotten what he deserves. Ken Scholes, one of the hardest working and most talented writers I know, has just sold his first novel to Tor. That’s sweet. But what makes it sweeter is that they want his entire five book series. If you ask me, that’s just dessert.

ON MY SHELF
Prime Codex, edited by Lawrence Schoen and Michael Livingston:
I picked this up at CONduit last weekend at a reading by Eric James Stone, who has published multiple stories in places like Analog SF and IGMS. He’s a member of the Codex Writers Group, and stories by members of that group comprise this anthology. Eric’s remarkable and moving story, “Salt of Judas” joins stories by new and exciting writers like Mary Robinette Kowal, Ken Scholes, and Tobias Buckell. So if you want to read what the best of the new writers are writing, the Prime Codex anthology is a must-buy. Get your copy here.

If you are curious, you can listen to the audio version of my story here, before you pick up the anthology.

Listen to “Rampion”

We also recorded the last of the pickup lines for Subterranean Press. I’m uploading the audio book now, but it’s giant so I’ll go to bed before it finishes.

I’ve sort of kept mum about one of them, I realize. You already know that my story, “Rampion” appears in the anthology. But there’s this other thing I forgot to mention.

After I sold them “Rampion,” I had one of those conversations with the editors, Lawrence Schoen and Michael Livingston, where I foolishly said, “Who’s your art director?”

I need to learn to stop asking this question. This is how I started working with Shimmer , too. Not that I mind, you understand, but it does seem to be a dangerous question because after a little bit of conversation the answer turned out to be, me.

Lawrence and Michael picked out David Ho’s fantastic art, before I came on board as art director, so all I designed was the cover and interior. It just felt a little awkward to mention since I have a story actually in the anthology and all. But, it does give you another reason to want the anthology, right?

Plus! Look at the table of contents:

1. James Maxey, “To The East, A Bright Star”
— from Asimov’s (December 2005)
2. Cat Rambo, “Ticktock Girl”
— from CyberAge Adventures (September 2005)
3. Ken Scholes, “The Man With Great Despair Behind His Eyes”
— from Talebones (Winter 2005)
4. Geoffrey Girard, “Wizards’ Encore”
— from Beyond Centauri (April 2005)
5. Elaine Isaak, “The Disenchantment of Kivron Ox-master”
— from The Worlds of Fantasy (2001)
6. Jim C. Hines, “Sister of the Hedge”
— from Realms of Fantasy (June 2006)
7. Mary Robinette Kowal, “Rampion”
— from The First Line (Spring 2005)
8. Eric James Stone, “Salt of Judas”
— from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (March 2006)
9. E. Catherine Tobler, “Button by Button”
— from Would That It Were (April/June 2001)
10. Matthew S. Rotundo, “Black Boxes”
— from Absolute Magnitude (Spring 2001)
11. Tobias Buckell, “Tides”
— from Ideomancer Unbound (December 2002)
12. Tom Pendergrass, “Urban Renewal”
— from Shimmer (Summer 2006)
13. Mike Shultz, “As the Stars of the Sky”
— from Leading Edge (April 2004)
14. Ruth Nestvold, “Rainmakers”
— from Asimov’s (June 2005)
15. David W. Goldman, “Radical Acceptance”
— from Analog (January/February 2007)

You can order your copy of Prime Codex at the Paper Golem website.

Or not. It’s also possible that we won’t go to Iceland at all.

Or that he’ll go and I will stay in NYC the whole time.

Or that we’ll both go on the May 1 and someone else will move us into the apartment.

Then there’s the question of where to put our cats if Iceland happens.

The short form of this is that although I’ve got plenty of material to write about, it almost all makes me feel stressed and reminds me that I should be packing instead of writing about packing. Sigh.

I did have a lovely, lovely time at Norwescon. I loved hanging out with Stephen Segal, Lisa Mantchev, Cat Rambo, Jennifer, Gordon Gross, Spencer and Chrissy Ellsworth, Patrick Swenson, Cherie Priest, M.K. Hobson, John Pitts, Ken and Jen Scholes (though not enough), Jay Lake…. the list goes on and on. I’d link to you all, but I should be packing.

Highlights of the convention: the Sesame Street monsters, meeting Kathy Watts, the Liars’ Panel, breakfast with Cherie Priest, Talebones Live, seeing the Earthling mockup, everyday at the Ellsworths’ and Easter dinner at the Pitts’ residence.

I am eligible for a Campbell, but I’m in my first year of eligibility, so I’d like to put a plug in for a few folks who are in their second, and thus final, year. Ken Scholes, Nancy Fulda, Cherie Priest, Cat Rambo and Eugie Foster.

(My apologies that I’m not listing everyone in their second year; these are the folks that I can vouch for and know that they are in year two.)

Also paying court to Miss Amodio were Jay Lake, Damian Kilby, Kai Jones, Cat, Benjamin and… here is where my facility for names falls apart, because I can’t remember the name of the last lovely gentleman. Ken will correct me, I’m sure.

It’s so nice to shoot the breeze with other writers without the pressure of an actual convention. I think we were all in the same time zone, except Aimee. Poor sleep-deprived east coaster.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Green Lantern 80% Superman 80% Wonder Woman 80% Iron Man 70% Supergirl 65% Hulk 65% Robin 55% The Flash 55% Batman 40% Catwoman 25%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

My biggest question is… When did Catwoman become a superhero?

Anyway, this is probably more to the point anyway. What supervillain am I?

Your results:
You are Mystique

Mystique 68% Apocalypse 63% Poison Ivy 57% Dr. Doom 55% The Joker 53% Venom 51% Mr. Freeze 47% Magneto 46% Lex Luthor 45% Dark Phoenix 41% Riddler 40% Juggernaut 40% Catwoman 29% Kingpin 26% Green Goblin 20% Two-Face 4%

Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.

Click here to take the “Which Super Villain am I?” quiz…

By the time I got home, two people IMed me, knowing that I had been at lunch with Jay. Granted, he was closer to the restaurant than me, but still. There’s something a little odd about having lunch with someone in the same town, and having the news be instantly on someone’s computer, across the country.

Anyway, the lunch, as he reports, was fun. This is the first time I’ve gotten to hang out with Jay outside of a con, and he’s even more frighteningly intelligent when not sleep deprived.

During the course of lunch, we were talking about written versus oral storytelling. I think it sprang up, because I was talking about the cultural difference between a writers’ convention and a puppeteers’ festival. At World Fantasy, I told my Sleeping Beauty story, which is the tale of a puppet show gone horribly, horribly wrong. It’s always a good story, but the reaction that I got at WFC was much, much bigger than anything I get among puppeteers. At first I thought that it was because the material is familiar to puppeteers and unexpected to writers, but, after going to a party with a bunch of theater friends, I think there’s more to it. I think it’s that writers aren’t used to people who know how to tell a story, as a performance. When I was at the theater party, we all seemed to take turns telling stories, like miniature plays. We all have repertoires of stories that we trot out when they seem appropriate. I tend to tell the Sleeping Beauty story, the Stolen Van story, the Hot Chocolate story and the Time I Hurt My Wrist story with most frequency.

They do have titles. I love it when Jodi tells the Jello Salad story. Or when Sam tells the Beauty and the Beast Vomit story. It’s true in other fields, clearly. Ken Scholes’s Orange Bicycle story, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

But none of these are written stories. I could write down any of them, but it’s not the same as telling them. Have you read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories? He wrote them specifically to be read aloud by parents to their children. They are full of asides like, “O Best Beloved”

So the Whale swam and swam to latitude Fifty North, longitude Forty West, as fast as he could swim, and on a raft, in the middle of the sea, with nothing to wear except a pair of blue canvas breeches, a pair of suspenders (you must particularly remember the suspenders, Best Beloved), and a jack-knife, he found one single, solitary shipwrecked Mariner, trailing his toes in the water. (He had his mummy’s leave to paddle, or else he would never have done it, because he was a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.)

It’s a very different style of writing. In fact, Gentle Reader, it makes me wonder if that’s why the direct address to the reader used to be in style. Was it a holdover from when stories were predominately an oral form?

I’ve sometimes wondered if the blog and audio books will bring direct address back into style. Certainly, I address you much more than I would if I were writing Fiction with a capital F. As readers become used to that, will it come back into style? The Algebraist, which I’m reading now, begins with direct address. I quite liked it. It was exciting to feel as if an author were speaking to me. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve always liked Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series; I always feel as if Vlad were sitting across the table talking to me.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I think there are some ideas that are worth exploring. If nothing else, it will help me be more aware of my audience next time I’m telling a story.

But even with that, I had a great time. Most of the panels were interesting and I think I only witnessed one that was a dud. My workshop on reading aloud went well, I think. My reading on the other hand, while I think it was appreciated, did not make me happy. I didn’t have time to do my homework on the story this week and my printer ran out of ink on Saturday, which meant that I couldn’t print the story out until I got to the hotel on Sunday. It was mind numbingly stupid of me and meant I couldn’t mark the page up the way I like to. But, my audience of six didn’t seem to mind. I think they even forgave me when I realized that I had randomly inserted the word “not” into a sentence. Why does one do things like that? Anyway, I just reread the line and kept going.

I saw, but did not get to hang out enough with Jay Lake, Patrick and Honna Swenson, Ken Scholes, Jen West, Ellen Datlow, Josh English, Alma Alexander, Richard A. Lovett, Dave Slusher, Stephen Stanley, Dave Goldman, Kirsten Lincoln, Mischa and, and…you may recall that I suck with names. I am certain that I’m forgetting people.

The weekend is a complete blur, so I’m not going to try to tell you about things in chronological order. Because Beth and I were running around getting ready for the Shimmer pirate party, I only made it to a couple of panels. The panel on Alternate History sparked a pretty exciting conversation. The panel had been talking about “deep stories” as the point where events had changed in an alternate history. Howard Waldrop was talking about the Cone of History and used the words “Alternate Future.” I asked if anyone had every done a SF story with an alternate history deep story. You know, like, what would space look like if Lincoln hadn’t been shot? The panel stopped dead and then they all started saying that they couldn’t think of an example and wanted to write one. In one of those moments of telepathy, where I don’t remember having the conversation with Beth, we agreed that Shimmer had to do an anthology of Alternate Future stories. I announced that to the room at large and Paul Park said, “What are you going to call it?”

“Alternate Future. Is there another choice?” Howard Waldrop cautioned us that we needed to pay attention to Heinlein’s rule that you could only change one thing in a story. I know what he means, but I think with careful guidelines this could be an exciting project. So, anytime Beth and I weren’t working on the Shimmer Pirate party, we were hashing out beginning guidelines for the Alternate Future anthology. I’ll keep you posted.

I also got to hang out with folks from Codex, InkSlingers, Shimmer and meet new people. I finally met a whole host of online friends like Patrick Swenson, Lisa Mantchev, Cat Rambo, Eric James Stone, Deanna Hoak and Edmund Schubert.

Getting to be total fangirl to Peter S. Beagle and Charles Vess was very satisfying.

And then there were the folks I’d met before and getting to see them again made me happy. Mr. Fisher, Alethea Kontis, Jenny Rae Rappaport, John Joseph Adams, Ellen Datlow, Ken Scholes, Jen West, Jay Lake, Brad Beaulieu, Beth Wodzinski, Gavin Grant, Mike Munsil and his wife, Julia, Alan DeNiro and, and…there are more, but I suck with names and the weekend, as mentioned previously, is a blur.

The Pirate Party went off better than we could have hoped, since neither Beth nor I had thrown a con party before. We were totally stressed leading up to it but Melissa Tolliver saved our tails. Her son Adrick has a room decorated with pirate gear and very, very kindly let us use his stuff as part of our decorations. The piece de resistance was a giant Pirate Mr. Potato Head. Beth fell in love with it and bought one of her very own. We were also saved by Sulin, who cut lemons and got music going and took photos and generally filled in the gaps for us. I spent the party pouring drinks for folks, which was loads of fun since it meant that I got to meet everybody.

After it ended, I headed down to the Awards banquet to sit with Brad. The presentation on Six Fantastic Flags over Texas was very funny and I wish I had caught the name of the gentleman who delivered it. Everyone at the table was very nice, and despite the fact that we all introduced ourselves, I have forgotten everyone’s names except for Katie, Howard and John. I only remember them because we talked afterwards and I was able to stare at name badges and well, Brad blogged about them first. Sigh. I’ll have to come up with a better system for remembering names for the next con.

How about you? How do you remember names of people you meet at cons?

I abandoned the fun and games to go pick Beth up at the airport around 7:00 and we whisked straight back to the conference. I would have updated last night, when I had some hopeof remembering eveyone I ran into, but the free internet in our room doesn’t work.

I’m sitting in the lounge with Ken Scholes and Jen West. Hurrah!

Sun Nov 19 3:00:pm	Sun Nov 19 4:00:pm	How to Write About Something You Know Nothing About
Salon A		The joys of research. How much detail is enough to sound credible without bogging down the story. How to avoid “facts” that are irrelevant or inaccurate. How to become an instant expert in time to meet an editorial deadline.
Greg Gorden Theresa Reed Alma Hromic Deckert Mary Robinette Kowal Sara A. Mueller

Sun Nov 19 2:00:pm	Sun Nov 19 3:00:pm	Love, Romance, Dark Passion and Crossing the Genre Lines
Salon G		Enjoy a little romance in your SF and fantasy reading? Where does one genre end and the other begin? The blurring between romance and SF/fantasy continues apace, as romance publishers launch new “paranormal” and “supernatural” imprints and SF/fantasy editors seek the same type of story.
Theresa Reed Mary Rosenblum phyllis irene radford Mary Robinette Kowal Kara Dalkey

Sun Nov 19 1:30:pm	Sun Nov 19 2:00:pm	Reading: Mary Robinette Kowal
Salem		A reading by Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal

Sun Nov 19 12:00:pm	Sun Nov 19 1:00:pm	The Great Writers Blog
Salon A		Blogging — everyone’s doing it! And blogs are a great way for writers to chronicle their creative process and track their progress, interact with fans and other writers, and get free publicity. So, what are the keys to a great writer’s blog? Come to this panel and listen to some veteran “bloggers” talk about what they’ve learned.
Cory Doctorow Dave Slusher Joseph E. Lake, Jr. Mary Robinette Kowal

Sat Nov 18 4:00:pm	Sat Nov 18 5:00:pm	Juggling Jobs: Survival Tips for the Beginning Writer
Salon B		The delicate balance of job, family, and being a writer or artist. Assuming one has to have some income, is there a right kind of day job for writers?
Rob Vagle Bruce Taylor Ken Scholes Leslie What Mary Robinette Kowal

Sat Nov 18 1:00:pm	Sat Nov 18 2:00:pm	Turkey Readings
Medford		Find out about some of the stories that really, really didn’t make the cut. Or what happens to a manuscript from the time it arrives at the publisher’s office to the time the editor actually looks at it. What should the writer do, and what should the writer not do, to get out of the slush pile.
Mary Robinette Kowal David D. Levine Anthony Pryor

Sat Nov 18 11:00:am	Sat Nov 18 12:00:pm	Remember to Breathe- The Secrets Behind Great Public Readings
Salon E Table 1		You may be a good writer, but reading aloud is a separate skill.  In this workshop, learn to make your words sound as great out loud as they do on the page.  Using both demonstration and audience participation, we will explore voicing, narration and pacing.  Come with one paragraph of your own work; sample text will also be provided.
Mary Robinette Kowal

Sat Nov 18 10:00:am	Sat Nov 18 11:00:am	We Don`t Need Another Hero
Mt. Hood		From Kimball Kinnison to Dylan Hunt, strong-thewed heroes have strode the spaceways, protecting the galaxy from evildoers. But the trend in contemporary literature is shifting from “heroes” to “protagonists” to “viewpoint characters”. What are the ways that main characters can be used in science fiction? How can ensembles and event-based plots build great story lines and lovable groups?
Mary Robinette Kowal Sheila Simonson phyllis irene radford Jean Lamb Michael A. Martin

Fri Nov 17 4:00:pm	Fri Nov 17 5:00:pm	Other Worlds or the Same Ol`, Same Ol`?
Salem		Once upon a time, every SF story introduced us to new worlds. Now, SF can be alternate Earths or just around a too familiar corner. Why do writers use other planets? Why don’t they?
David W. Goldman Jean Lamb Mary Rosenblum Richard A. Lovett Mary Robinette Kowal

Fri Nov 17 2:00:pm	Fri Nov 17 3:00:pm	Constructive Critiquing
Salon A		How should a colleague/friend/editor go about critiquing a manuscript? Who is qualified to do a critique? How does a critique help a writer, and how should a writer use a good critique in their writing process?
Patrick Swenson Mary Robinette Kowal Mary Hobson Dianna Rodgers Louise Marley Mary Rosenblum

]]> http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-orycon-schedule/feed/ 2 http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/revolutionsf-edward-bear-and-the-very-long-walk-fiction/ http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/revolutionsf-edward-bear-and-the-very-long-walk-fiction/#comments Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:26:36 +0000 Mary Robinette Kowal http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/revolutionsf-edward-bear-and-the-very-long-walk-fiction/ Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk : Fiction by Ken Scholes

The simplest review I can give of this is, “Go read it. Now.”

Shimmer Magazine, the quarterly speculative fiction magazine, is offering “Action Team-Ups Number Thirty-Seven”, a story by Ken Scholes as a free MP3 download.

It’s a fun story and was recorded at Willamette Radio Workshop. Click here to listen

Shimmer is waiting to warm your winter nights with speculative fiction in print or online, according to your reading preference.

Subscribe now, and catch the next wave in fiction. The Winter 2006 issue will be available on Wednesday, January 18.

Table of Contents and Excerpts
The Black Back-Lands, by Jay Lake

They say the Silent People can hear you talking in your dreams. I guess ‘cause the Silent People only speak in dreams, they listen real good there, too. Kind of like the dead, maybe. But I always been told to keep my mouth shut when dreaming comes upon me, so’s not to give away too much of myself and get sewn into some woodspocket, and carried ever more through the fir shadows and pine bays while my body starves and fevers.

Action Team-Up Number Thirty-Seven, by Ken Scholes

Thursday, 3:32 p.m.
The dentures I lost on reconnaissance last week have come back to haunt me. Cavanaugh made a big show of it, waving them beneath my nose in the cafeteria line. Smug bastard. If I were ten years younger or if he were forty years older, I’d have shown him completely new uses for tapioca pudding. Regardless, I have my teeth back and that made lunch slightly more tolerable.

Sell Your Soul to the Devil Blues, by Tom Pendergrass

It gets hot in the Delta—evil hot—the kind of heat that fills a man’s lungs with fire and crushes his breath stillborn. Preacherman came through here, ‘bout a year ago, and said this is what it’s like in Hell, so you best behave and live straight. Now God forgive me, that preacher had no notion what he was talking ‘bout. But I met someone a few years back who does.

Route Nine, by Samantha Henderson

Good to see you, Tex. It’s been a while, I know. Haven’t been out this way since I got my route switched. Wouldn’t be here now except there wasn’t anyone else to drive it.

Why? Well, I guess there’s time to tell you. Nothing’s gonna happen till the bar clears out. Need another beer, though.

The Goldsmith, by Ian Creasey

Corinne closed the nail-studded door behind her, and walked down the narrow steps. The goldsmith’s shop was small, full of little cabinets lined with black cloth displaying brooches, earrings, and necklaces of thin golden chain. Corinne got the impression that the entire shop could be stuffed into a bag for a swift getaway from riots, pogroms, or excise men.

Music in D Minor, by Erynn Miles

I awake to the sound of a piano tinkling a low, sleepy melody. It is coming from Charlie’s body. This melody almost always comes from him as he sleeps. He lies in bed next to me, the sound swelling beneath his skin , seeping out of his pores. I hear it in the saliva dripping from his half-open mouth. His arm shifts a little and I hear a hint of lazy cello.

But it is not time yet.

Interview with Ellen Datlow

Neighbor, by Jason A. D. MacDonald

There it was again!

Water pipes groaned behind the drywall, like alpine horns blown by cockroaches. As I started my dishes, the upstairs neighbor had turned on his kitchen faucet. There was a three second differential between the flow in my sink starting and the echo in the wall. I put the dish soap down, stared moodily at the white stucco ceiling of my one-bedroom apartment, and cut off the hot water. Three seconds later, the mockery above stopped too.

The Persian Box, by Gerald Costlow

Pardon me? Oh, you’re interested in the box. Yes, it’s quite beautiful, and quite old.

From Persia, yes.

You’re not the first stranger to remark upon it. People are attracted to its beauty, but it is rare for someone to recognize its origin. You must be a scholar like myself. I am Angelo Demetrius, by the way. Pleased to meet you. Would you care to sit down? I find drinking goes best with a little conversation.

One-Leaf-Two, by Edo Mor

South Wind was blowing now. All today and all of yesterday as well. Cool and steady and persistent. Clenched in his fist (so that they wouldn’t blow away) were sweet, good things of earth: a sticky husk of anis and three gomabarros, helical and phosphorescent in the night, clay-red like the eyes of culebras. Squeezed together, they smelled tart, sweet, and spicy all at once, and his stomach riffled with expectant notes. But he couldn’t eat them. He would wait. They were saved things, saved for her.

Then I trotted over to the Mariott for a quick three hour visit to Orycon. I hung out with Ken and Scholes and Dave and Merilee Goldman, who are all super folks. Ken and Dave are both writers on Codex and we just realized three weeks ago that we all live in the same town. I got to hear both of them read.

Then back to the boat for my second shift. Somewhere in all of this I found a tiny bit of time to write and have hit 8118 words for my novel. Whew.