New Story Up at Grievous Angel!

My flash horror story, I FORGOT TO LOCK THE DOOR, is now live over at the marvelous Grievous Angel Magazine!

This story was written towards the end of the summer in 2015, just a few months after we moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs. We knew nothing about our new town before moving here, except that the few people we met who'd heard of it said it was great for families. Low crime rate, excellent schools, people moved here just to raise their kids. Sounds good, right?

But we didn't really know anyone in the town when we moved. The kids were not going to camp. We didn't have a babysitter. No daycare. Because our former landlord screwed us over, we could not afford to join the town's community pool. So that meant a summer of just me and the kids finding things to do for nine weeks. We discovered a nearby skate park and my older son picked up skate boarding. We joined the nearby science center. I let the kids ride their bikes in the street. I set up kiddie pools in the backyard. None of this kept my kids amused for very long, and by the time the first day of school arrived in September I wept with relief.

I had this idea that when we moved in, suddenly families with kids would pour out of their houses on our street and my kids would be outside playing all day every day all summer long, but instead we met almost no one.

Things have changed, certainly. We have friends in town, the kids have plenty of play dates, we have babysitters, we've joined the community pool in the summer, and we know which camps the kids like. Our summers are now full of friends, camp, vacations, and spending long afternoons socializing poolside. But that first summer is burned into our psyches: long, empty days full of quiet and boredom. And that's where this story comes from.

#SpecFicByWomenOfColor

This year I focused the bulk of my reading on books of the speculative fiction genre written by women of color (WOC). Why? Here is what I posted at the beginning of the year.

I didn't get to read as many as I'd hoped, for various reasons: some books I started but couldn't continue because the writing was just not good; I had some reading promises to keep to others; and, then, once in a while I found something else I wanted to read that just so happened to be either not spec fic or not by a WOC.

After certain recent events, I researched online ways I could support small, Black-owned businesses. On one website with a list of Black-owned online retailers, an idiotic commenter asked, "What about a list of White-owned businesses?"

The answer to that is, I think, similar to the reason why I focused this year on spec fic by WOC: Because White is already considered the norm, especially White and male. I'm betting that anyone reading this can name, offhand and without a lot of thought, at least five White, male fantasy/sci-fi writers. I know I can.

Now, can you name five women?

Can you name five women of color?

When you come from a place of privilege it's easy to have a blind spot when it comes to the "other." As a White woman I felt it my duty to make the conscious effort to expand my literary world.

Between the hideous and utterly misogynistic "social movement" Gamergate and the Ferguson, MO court ruling, I think that right now is the perfect time to support female writers (and all lady geeks!) and geeks of color. Female writers don't have cooties; they don't all write romance (my short stories have 0% romance in them, and only one of my novels has a romantic relationship in it, which is more of a side plot than the feature); they don't all write about periods and babies and shoe shopping. Writers of color don't only write about how hard their lives are, or how exotic their native lands are, or how much they hate White people. Certain things are universal, and that's the main takeaway I found in this project: Alienation. Longing. Acceptance. Fear. Growth. Guilt. Redemption. Regret. And yes, love. Love is not a woman thing. It's not a girly thing. Even men need love in their lives, whether it's romantic or something else...something more.

Black writers do not write only for Black people. Women do not write only for women. To think so, and to go through life enjoying only books that match your demographic, is to miss out on some of the greatest, most interesting and entertaining works out there. And, that's also sort of missing the point of being into spec fic, isn't it?

I'll be keeping this list in the column to the right up on my blog for the foreseeable future, and as I go forward and read more spec fic by WOC I'll add them to the list. For now, here are some resources I have been using throughout 2014 to find books to read, as well as some other links I like.

The Carl Brandon Society works "to help build further awareness of race and ethnicity in speculative literature and related fields." http://carlbrandon.org/index.html

Worlds Without End's Award Winning Books by Women Authors. You might have to dig a little to find the WOC, but they're there. https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_women_winners.asp

The Nerds of Color. Just an all-around great geek site. http://thenerdsofcolor.org/

An article on Asian spec fic writers. http://carriecuinn.com/2013/06/18/list-94-asian-speculative-fiction-authors-with-links/

Another good all-purpose list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction_by_writers_of_color

This list is YA-heavy, but hey, there is some damn fine YA out there. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36880.Speculative_Fiction_by_Women_of_Color

For 2015 I will not be focusing on authors; rather, I'm going to attempt to put a dent in my rather large pile of unread books I already own. Some of them might be by writers of color; some are by women of color. I'll keep you posted. 

Two New Acceptances!

I apologize for the delayed announcement, but my short story ATHEISTS IN THE CEMETERY, is now available as part of Burial Day Books' latest anthology, GOTHIC BLUE BOOKS IV: THE FOLKLORE EDITION! 

Buy the book in e-book or paperback on Amazon.com, here.

Also, my short story TINY LIGHTS (formerly known as THE HEALER, formerly known as DEATH OF THE GOOD DOCTOR), has just been accepted by Fiction Vortex for either their November 2014 or December 2014 issue!

TINY LIGHTS has been out on submission for nearly two years, with sixteen rejections before this acceptance. It's had plenty of positive feedback from editors all over the genre fiction marketplace, but no love until now. I've always known it's a good story, and now my little baby finally has a home. Which just proves: determination is a writer's best friend. Believe in yourself. Remember that the only way to never get published is to quit. 

Red velvet cake on me, everyone! Party time!

Revisions

Having finished my second novel, THE HOLLOW QUEEN, and having let a few months pass, I've now started the excruciating process of revising it. I have to go through and do this at least once before I'll let my critique partners read it. When they're done critiquing, I'll go through it again. And again. And maybe one more time before I let them read it a second time. And then I'll revise some more. And maybe more after that.

The first draft, of course, is terrible. Awful. I hate it. HATE it. I wrote it as quickly as I could and paid little mind to good grammar, active voice, and sentence structure. I also wrote it for the purpose of getting the story out, not necessarily telling the story well.

Since this is only my second novel, revising is still a major process for me. However, there are a few things I learned from my first novel, which I am putting into practice this time around to make life a little easier on myself:

1. Don't let anyone read the first draft. ANY. ONE. I already have a page full of notes I made as I was writing the first draft, of things I need to change. There is a huge continuity error in the middle. Names change halfway through. Characters' entire religions and ethnicities change, and I have to fix all so it at least makes some kind of sense to human beings.

2. Don't let anyone other than my three critique partners read the second, third, or fourth drafts. Too many cooks, and all that. By the time I let my loved ones read my work now -- even short stories -- I'm pretty much at the point where the piece is ready, or very nearly ready, for submission. This way they get to experience the work the way I want other readers to experience it.

3. Make notes. Lots, and lots of notes. Like I said, I have a page full of them: things I wanted to remember to add earlier on in the story, names that have to be changed, points I need to look up and clarify.

4. Use this resource to identify overused words, and change them.

5. Do a search for the following, and change them: "-ly," "that," "seemed," "tried," "began," "felt," "knew," "it," "was."

6. Comb each chapter for character motivations. Since this novel is multiple POV, make sure each character has a distinctive voice.


Only when all of this is done, will I feel comfortable sending a draft to my crit partners. Even then, I know the manuscript will not be the best it can be...yet. I'll get their notes back. Some I'll agree with, and make changes. Others I'll disagree with and leave alone. I'll revise yet again, and probably think of a few new things to add or remove from the ms. Then I'll send out a draft again. And then I'll keep revising until I feel like the only real "changes" left are small, insignificant ones. That's when I know it's ready: ready to query to agents, ready to pitch on Twitter contests. Ready to be read by my husband and other loves ones.

But that journey is still a thousand miles from where I am right now. I'll get there, and hopefully this time around I'll get there quicker than the three years it took me with my first novel. Until then, I try not to beat myself up too much, and just focus.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Rainbird" by Rabia Gale

Before I go into my review of Rabia Gale's novella, I take great pleasure in announcing that my short story, "Atheists in the Cemetery," has been accepted for publication in Burial Day Book's upcoming anthology, "Gothic Blue Book 4!"

*

Just as the halfbreed title character of Rabia Gale's 31,000-word novella "Rainbird" belongs to neither one world nor the other, the story itself is neither one genre nor another. It has elements of Steampunk, but isn't, quite; there's a great deal of future noir, but it isn't all that; and the story itself is very heroic fantasy, without actually being heroic fantasy. It's a hybrid, like Rainbird herself.

And I love it.

I first discovered Rabia Gale while reading Sword & Sorceress 28. Her story about a kite-maker and the children she helps was done so well, the writing so tight and so ethereal, I had to look her up. I found "Rainbird" on her site and bought it without a second thought.

"Rainbird" takes place in some undisclosed time, presumably in our world, though even that's neither confirmed nor denied. What is told to the audience is that there is no more sun. No giant yellow ball of gas in the sky to provide light, heat, and life. Instead, the role of the sun is played by a giant heat lamp of sorts called the Day Sun, which travels on a track called the sunway across the land.

Oh, and that track? Runs along the spinal cord of a long-dead, continent-sized dragon who fell to earth.

Yeah.

Did I mention how much I love this?

Rainbird is half-human through her father Petrus, and half a species called eerie, angel-like creatures who resent the humans and their sunway and their Day Sun. The eerie have very specific rules about half-breeds, and Rainbird's mere existence is not part of those rules. As such, Petrus keeps her in hiding as his assistant inspector. They live and work in the skeleton of the dragon, helping the Company to keep the sunway running.

I. Love. This.

There's nothing about any of this I don't love. Gale's writing itself is strong and descriptive. She knows when to crank up the action and when to let you breathe. She knows exactly how much detail to give, and when. She's created a fantastical, whimsical, dark, world that is simultaneously familiar and utterly strange.

I love halfbreed stories, and I love stories of underdogs who become the hero through chance and circumstances. I love the sunway on the dragon's spine, I love the black market on Rib Three, I love the egg and mushroom houses along the dragon's bones. I love that a dragon fell to earth and got used in this way. I love the eerie's snark.

And I love the ending. Not giving anything away, but with a story like this it would have been very easy for Gale to take an extreme: either a very happy, sappy ending, or a very dark and sad one. She chose neither, and I respect that and love the choice she made.

I look forward to many, many more quality works from Rabia Gale, one of my new favorite writers.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "A Conservation of Shadows" by Yoon Ha Lee

I'm bad at math, and I don't mean that in a girlie-girl, giggly, "Tee hee, math is so hard!" hair-twirling kind of way. What I mean is, I think I have some sort of undiagnosed math learning disability. I struggled through pre-algebra, twice. In my junior year of high school I failed algebra II, despite the tutor my mom hired to help me, and had to go to summer school in order to graduate. The only math class I took after that was the one the College of Arts and Sciences at NYU required for gen ed; they might as well have called it "Math for Lit Major Morons." I barely passed with a "D."

So I'm a little bit in awe of people for whom math comes easily: my mom, my best friend of 26 years, and now, Yoon Ha Lee. I now have two reasons to be envious of her: she's good at math, and she's a brilliant writer.

To my mind, math and literature are two separate animals, but Yoon Ha Lee - a Korean-American math major - manages to seamlessly weave the two together in beautiful, almost poetic ways. "Conservation of Shadows" is both the title of the collection of short stories, as well as one of the stories contained within. It took me longer to read than I had anticipated because some of the stories get quite detailed with science and technology, and those are not my native reading languages.

As with most short story collections, some are more hit and some are more miss. With a few exceptions, I tend not to read a lot of space opera. Because of this, the stories "Ghostweight," and "The Unstrung Zither" were not my favorites; I could not finish "The Battle of Candle Arc." Yet I loved "Swanwatch," and "Between Two Dragons," arguably both space operas.

The stories in the collection I enjoyed most were the ones that did away with fancy theories of space travel or complicated technology. "The Shadow Postulates" has a brilliant plot device in the form of living shadows on a university campus. "The Bones of Giants" I wished was a full-length novel, with such strong world-building I was sad when the story ended.

Four stories stand out to me as favorites:

In "Blue Ink," a young woman is faced with a parallel version of herself who requests her help in a war. I love the idea of parallel universes and of traveling between them to visit other versions of ourselves. What would we say? What would we do? Would we be shocked by our otherselves? Would we help them? Would they help us? It's such a rich topic, yet so hard to do well. In this story, Yoon crafts clever and creative answers to those questions.

"Iseul's Lexicon" is my second-favorite story, and probably one of the most intelligent works I've ever read. How would a conquering culture best erase all traces of the previous culture? By, quite literally, erasing their words from existence. Not only was this story hyper-creative and stunningly written, but as an American, with full knowledge of Yoon's Korean-American background, and with full knowledge of my nation's recent history and current cultural hegemony around the globe, it was hard to read this and not feel a potent mix of guilt and sympathy. I mean that in a good way; Americans should not shy away from difficult topics, and white people definitely need to not shy away from stories that present points of view told by the victims of empire and colonization.

I really loved reading "The Book of Locked Doors." It was one of those stories I could have read forever. In addition to the subject matter at hand - what, exactly, is "terrorism" when you are defending your own homeland and cultural identity? - I love the idea of a living book that talks to you, a sort of self-aware Book of the Dead. Again, this story speaks to Yoon's fascinatingly deep levels of creativity and intelligence.

The last story in the collection is the title story, "A Conservation of Shadows," and it is far and away my favorite. Written in gorgeous, but not flowery, prose, it reminds me of one of my favorite short story writers, Cat Rambo. The story, so I've read, was inspired by Yoon's love of the Sumerian myth of the Descent of Inanna, but, like most well-written stories, could be interpreted in any number of ways.

Although this is a collection of unrelated short stories, a few common themes unite them: civil war, military occupation, lost of culture and language. Many of the worlds in the stories have Eastern influences, rather than the usual Medieval European influence, which I welcomed with open arms. One of the reasons I embarked on my "Speculative Fiction by Women of Color" reading project for 2014 was to explore new world building and cultural influences, and I wasn't disappointed here.

I will absolutely be seeking out more of Yoon Ha Lee's stories. Maybe one day, when she invents time travel, she can travel back to the early 1990s and be my math tutor so I don't have to go to summer school in 1993. A girl can dream.

Guest Post: Tony Peak

As we know, writing can be a lonely, solitary process. Thanks to the magics of the interwebs, writers have more ways than ever of connecting with one another, learning from one another, and finding our "people" out there in cyberspace.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to introduce you to three of my writing people: my critique partners. I like the number three for critique partners; if just one person disagrees with me, I'm never sure whether they are right and I should change something, or whether they just didn't "get" it; with two, they may completely disagree with one another ("You should totally cut that scene out," "You should totally make that scene longer,"); with three there is always a tie-breaker, and if more than one -- or all three -- say the same thing about a particular scene or short story, I know I can trust them.

Having a good critique partner isn't easy. It's a give-and-take process that requires an enormous deal of trust, communication and respect. The three people I'm spotlighting are writers whose work I genuinely enjoy reading, who are somewhere around the same place I am with regards to experience and position in trying to get published, and whose advice I take to heart.

First up is Tony Peak, my longest critique partnership to date. We "met" in early 2011 over at Online Writers Workshop when we found each other's work on the posting boards. Tony's work spans the gamut of what falls under the "spec fic" umbrella: from epic space opera, to dystopian underworld grimdark (his "Meridian" short stories are absolutely not for those with a weak stomach), to what I've termed "proto-steampunk historical fantasy." He's extremely prolific with one of the best imaginations I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Please visit his website over at http://www.tonypeak.net, and follow him on Twitter at tonypeak78.

Take it away, Tony!

Reading for Inspiration

All writers read. Well, writers who expect their work to ever get published, that is. For a writer, reading another’s work not only keeps your mind sharp. Maintaining a grasp of good grammar and spelling isn’t the only benefit, either. Neither is it keeping up with what’s trending, or what’s bowling over the best seller lists. Sometimes, reading is for inspiration.

How so? Inspiration comes to writers like it does all other artists. The people around us, our everyday life, a certain song or film, even a botched order at a local restaurant (I said vegetarian fajita, not a chicken one!) can be mined for fiction ideas. [My idea for my current WIP came when my 5YO misheard something I said and asked what a hollow queen was. – MM] Another writer’s work can do the same: Tolkien has imbued countless authors with the need to wend through forests and dungeons with only a blade and a trusted friend; Stephen King has made us think twice about that sewer drain, or that beast of a dog the next door neighbor has. Nothing new to us who read and write. We all read the works of our favorite wordsmiths for inspiration.

But sometimes I think we forget what reading can truly do. When you read another author’s work, and you’re so caught up in it, you’re so lost in their world, wrapped up in their characters, that you forget you’re reading—that’s what I’m talking about. Anyone who likes books has experienced this. Yet there are times when a wonderful piece of fiction reminds us of what is possible. It raises the bar, makes us see just how far we can push our imaginative limits.

This happened to me recently. I’ve been a reader nearly all my life, and a writer for a significant portion of it. So I’m no rookie when it comes to my favorite genres and tropes. We writers tend to develop a sense of ‘I’ve seen it all’ and become jaded. Maybe we’ve read too many epic fantasy sagas, too many FTL/Hard SF trilogies, flipped through too many zombie stories. Add to this a writer’s constant wrangling and worrying over his or her own work, how it compares with what they are reading, or what’s selling. This is natural. It also leads to stagnation.

Sometimes we need a kick in the ass. I got mine lately from two science fiction classics: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, and Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.

Bester’s book hails from the 1950s, but it influenced many subsequent works. Thirty years later, you can still read shades of it in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels from the 1980s. The Stars My Destination is gritty, with a protagonist that commits heinous acts all in the name of vengeance. Regardless, I still felt compelled to continue reading. The lengths Gully would go to achieve his ends, how he’d use people, alter his body—nothing seemed off limits, and in the end, he implores the rest of humanity to look past the limits placed upon them by society and themselves. Like a phoenix rising from the flames of primal hate and selfish destruction, Gully is reborn into something that can literally think himself across space, thus hinting at the potential within all humanity. [Um, spoiler alert much, Tony? ;-) –MM] The stars really are our destination.

This book blew me away. Sure, these tropes were familiar—but this work was the progenitor of some of those tropes, and I could sense this as I read it. Once I finished the book, I was ashamed for not reading it years ago. It’s that good; that visionary.

It made me want to push myself to write something just as great. It’s been a while since a book has done that to me.

Next—as in, a half-hour after I finished The Stars My Destination—I started Solaris. While completely different in execution, style, and character, it still floored me at times. Kris’s anguish in dealing with his deceased lover, who has come back as a perfect simulacrum, raised many moral and ethical questions. Though some of the same questions are inherent to stories featuring artificial intelligence or clones, Solaris really made the simulacra feel alien. Frightening, even, without resorting to cheap horror tricks or gore. They are frightening because their originals are dead, the human characters know this, and struggles with getting too emotionally attached to a copy of a person taken from their memories. The dilemma presented, the vacant space station, the eerie, mysterious living ocean that creates those simulacra—these elements made Solaris intellectual and creepy at the same time. A real alien in all that word implies, made all the more so because it created things that looked just like our dead loved ones.

Like The Stars My Destination, this book made me want to write something immediately. I understood why there are three different film adaptations of it. I stayed up late to finish it.

This, then, is what reading truly does for us writers. It can rip down our preconceptions, force us to look at stories differently, and ignite a fire in our fingertips that can only be extinguished by tapping them repeatedly on a keyboard.  It’s rare to re-experience the virgin wonder of reading something great for the first time, but it can happen.

So don’t look at that next novel on your shelf or on your Kindle as merely another story, another badge of readership you can plug into your Goodreads account. See it for what it really is: an opportunity to reinvigorate your imagination, and your ability to transpose it into words.