I’ve been grinning a lot these days. It’s been hard not to. I had a big publishing milestone this past April when I received my first story acceptance at MetaStellar Magazine. For someone who has dreamed of being a published author since childhood, that first acceptance really is a very big deal. It comes with thoughts of, I did it! I finally did it! and a sense of unbridled joy and satisfaction that only comes when something you’ve been working at for ages finally happens.
I remember spending the summer of my 11th year trying to hit a baseball all the way across my yard from between the two peach trees to under the outer most bows of the white pine. In truth, it wasn’t a far distance, but to 11-year-old me it was grand slam material, and I wanted to be able to hit a ball that far so badly. So every day I went out and swung and hit and swung and hit until I was dripping sweat and had to stop. I remember the day the ball soared up in a high and perfect arc, came down within spitting distance of the target. I will never forget the feeling of victory, of bone deep pride and satisfaction that exploded inside of me when I saw that ball vanish into the bows of that pine tree. After weeks of swinging and coming up short over and over again I did it!
That’s how it felt when I got that email from MetaStellar. I f**king did it.
Once is a Fluke, Twice is a Stroke of Luck
Funny thing, though. A couple of weeks went by and I found myself mentally minimizing my publishing success, doubting it. Once is a fluke, I thought. Once doesn’t mean anything. But then it happened again. Another acceptance showed up in my inbox in early May, this time from Metaphorosis Magazine. It’s been an amazing spring season. I mean, to get even one story published was amazing, but two? And so close to one another. The acceptances at least; the first one’s coming out in mid-July. I don’t yet know when the second story will be published. Still, that little voice has been nagging at me. What if this second sale was just a stroke of dumb luck?
Three Times is the Charm!
Two weeks ago, my spouse and I went to an art opening at the Salem Art Association in Salem Massachusetts. He’s a member and had/still has art in the show. I was still glowing from news of my second story sale, but when Lover introduced me to someone and called me an “author,” I immediately felt compelled to clarify that I was a teacher, not an author. Calling myself an author felt hubristic. After all, I’d only had two stories accepted for publication, and neither of them have even come out yet.
But this past Tuesday I got a third acceptance email! A cozy sci-fi story I wrote back in February is going to be published in Uncharted Magazine!! I can’t believe it. Maybe the next time my spouse introduces me to someone as an “author” I won’t feel the need to demur.
In the meantime, I’ve got a story I need to get back to and do some work on, then send it out on submission, see if I can ride this recent wave of publishing success. But I had to take a quick moment and share the news.
Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!
Last time I posted, I shared some general life milestone moments culminating in the discovery thatI need reading glasses. This time, I have far more exciting news to share.
Life: A Long and Winding Road
I started submitting short stories to science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines in 2000. Back then, the internet was clunky and only accessible via dial-up modems. Barely recognizable compared to what it is today. Most (all?) fiction magazines only accepted submissions via regular mail. I remember making multiple photocopies of my stories at Staples, buying manilla envelopes and business envelopes in bulk, and regularly hitting up the post office to buy stamps. If you think the submission process is slow now, Odin Allfather, you have no idea.
For about a year, I wrote and submitted a lot of stories. Sadly, I was too full of self-doubt to sending anything to Asimov’s or Analog or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I mean, I loved writing, but I was a nobody, so I spent that year submitting my stuff to non-paying markets. Two pieces found homes in small zines that paid in contributor copies. Boneworld Publishing (no longer extant) gave me my first authorial milestone moment when they accepted a mother-daughter-survivor’s-guilt ghost story for their magazine, Barbaric YAWP. The second venue I landed a piece in was Samsara: The Magazine of Suffering. Have a look at my very first acceptance letter! Handwritten on what looks like a piece of scrap paper. No contract sent or signed or anything. It was a different time back then, for sure.
Then, a whole bunch of general life milestone moments happened. In 2000, I started teaching high school science–biology, chemistry, and physical science. I had no background in teaching at all, just a bachelor’s in science. To say the learning curve was steep would be an understatement. For about two years, my life looked like this: Wake up at 6am. Eat breakfast, go to work and teach until 3:30. Go home and sleep for 3 hours. Wake up and eat dinner. Grade and lesson plan until midnight. Repeat. There was no room for anything else. Creative writing fell by the wayside.
In 2003, I got married and switched schools. I gave birth to my first child in 2006. In 2007, my spouse went back to school. The banks went belly up in 2008. The economy tanked, and I switched schools again. In 2009, I switched schools yet again. In 2010, I had another kid…
I didn’t return to writing and submitting stories until 2016. Even then it was only in sporadic and inconsistent bursts. Between 2016 and 2021, I wrote a total of five short stories and submitted them unsuccessfully to a total of eighteen places. Five stories in five years is underwhelming. I would be embarrassed by that lack of productivity, except I don’t really count 2019 or 2020 (or even 2021). I’m a teacher, remember. The pandemic was a time of fear and confusion and frustration and many moments of despair for me. I’m still not fully recovered from the trauma of it (who is?).
So, a flurry of writing and trying to get my stuff published a little over two decades ago and then a whole lot of not much. Until this past year.
Having a Community to Support and Motivate You Matters
In the summer of 2020, trapped in the isolation of the early days of the pandemic, I joined an online community of writers and authors called Codex Writers. The effect of doing so was immediate and motivating. I started writing more consistently than I had been, and I started submitting what I was writing with more intentionality. It was great, but it was also kind of terrible.
The Codex Writer’s community is largely made up of published speculative fiction authors, and I’d kind of snuck in because I’d gotten a masters degree in creative writing in 2018 (a fact I felt barely qualified me for membership). Despite trying my hardest to write something good enough to get published in a pro- or even semi-pro market, the rejection letters piled up. Very occasionally, I got a personalized message from an editor. Usually not. That’s just how it goes, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been slowly wearing me down. Failing because you aren’t trying feels a lot different from failing when you’re trying your hardest, you know?
In interacting with other members of the online Codex group, though, I felt supported and encouraged to to keep writing and keep submitting my stuff.
Milestone Moment: This is the Year I Get A Story Published (and Get Paid for It!)
One of the stories I wrote in 2020 was a slipstream piece of science fiction that I loved, but it was tricky and difficult and experimental. I wanted it to find a home so badly. It had a couple of near misses, but I just couldn’t seem to place it.
At the very end of December 2022, B. Morris Allen over at Metaphorosis magazine sent me a revision invitation on the story. The offer wasn’t an acceptance, but it was a huge step in the right direction. It felt pretty great to know that someone saw potential in the piece and wanted to work with me to make it great. Let’s call that R&R a “mini” milestone moment.
I spent a lot of this past winter juggling work shenanigans and family demands, but every so often I was able to draft a revision and send it Morris’s way. Each time, he responded with very encouraging feedback, suggestions, and a follow-up revision request.
Meanwhile, the Codex Writers Group announced a mid-winter, six-week-long flash fiction challenge they called: Weekend Warrior. Here’s how it worked. Every Friday evening for six weeks, the contest runners posted five writing prompts. Participants (who registered and got sorted into groups) then picked a prompt and wrote a not-longer-than 750 word story that had to be submitted by Monday morning. Your story got read, rated, and given constructive feedback by the other 15 to 20 people in your group. It was amazing. Amaaaaaazing! I wrote six stories and got encouraging and helpful feedback on them from successful and talented authors, some of whom I secretly harbored (and still harbor) hero-worship-style crushes on.
Truthfully, I had no intention of doing anything with any of the stories I wrote for that challenge. I’d never written flash fiction before. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I certainly didn’t expect to produce anything good. I took part in the challenge to keep myself writing, try something new, and make some new friends.
The thing about communities, online or in real life: They nurture and support you and build you up. After the competition, I kept reading posts by other folks who were submitting their “WW” stories to magazines. Apparently, it was a common thing to do, and some very kind and incredibly talented authors (Carol Scheina and Phoenix Alexander) told me I should, too. Okay, I thought, why not? Out I sent them, with no real expectation of anything coming of it.
In April, however, I opened my email inbox and gasped like they do in the movies. A flash story I’d written had been accepted for publication. That little voice in my head that had been saying, “You really should stop this nonsense,” went “Huh, maybe you aren’t a complete hack.” You know what that means? Not counting the two stories I sold for contributor copies, 2023 is the year that I get a story published and get paid for it, because it was MetaStellar who took the story! They’re one of the top paying pro-level magazines out there, and the stuff they print is damned good. You should 100% check them out.
Milestone Moment #2: This is the Year I Get TWO Stories Published!!
Less than a month after getting the great news from Metastellar, B. Morris Allen emailed me with an official offer of acceptance on that strange slipstream SF story he’d been editing with me since December! That makes not one but two story acceptances in 2023, both in paying markets. Metaphorosis isn’t a top-paying magazine, but they publish equally fine stories, and I just can’t believe mine will be one of them!
I’m thrilled. I’m also quietly terrified that I won’t see anything else published for another 20+ years, except I know that won’t happen. I’ve still got several other stories out on submission, and now I have actual evidence that I can in fact write publishable stories, so I’m feeling highly motivated to keep at it. Consistency really is the key, it seems. Maybe I’ll give the Ray Bradbury method a try and attempt a story a week for 52 consecutive weeks.
Summer vacation is right around the corner, too. The timing of all of this couldn’t be better. This spring is the first time since we all went into lockdown and life went sideways that I’ve felt mentally healthy again. Not 100%. I take life one day at a time now, but this is the first time in a very long time that the good days outnumber the bad days. I’ll be going into the summer months feeling fresh and excited and ready to go.
2023 has been quite the year for milestone moments so far. Let’s see if I can’t create a few more great ones in the coming months.
That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing!
I recently had the pleasure of reading Nicholas Kaufmann’s newest horror novel, “The Stone Serpent.” This sequel to Kaufmann’s 2021 novel “The Hungry Earth” takes place a year after the events of the first book and follows the main character, Dr. Laura Powell, as she tries to re-establish some semblance of normalcy in her life. The story’s premise (which you can read over on Goodreads) was a lot of fun, and the fast pace kept me engaged from start to finish.
Kaufmann does love his research. In all his novels, he adds a sense of authenticity by including numerous (and often terrifying) scientific details. The science was one of the things I enjoyed so much in his vampires-on-a-submarine horror novel, “100 Fathoms Below.” As with his other books, “The Stone Serpent” is packed with interesting and accurate scientific facts and descriptions. That said, the science sometimes felt wedged into scenes without good reason. Often, descriptions felt included just for the sake of serving up a creepy or interesting fact. More than once, I wondered why a small-town medical examiner would know about so many facts unrelated to medicine. Nevertheless, all those not-necessarily-needed scientific facts were so interesting (and morbid) that I enjoyed their inclusion regardless.
The main character, Dr. Laura Powell, is a woman I could easily root for–smart, self-confident, capable, and caring. Booker, her boyfriend, is equally likable if a bit passive. His role in the story was mostly to offer emotional support for Laura and to tell her to be careful. There were a few moments when I wanted him to step up and step in, saying, “No, sorry. I can’t let you do this crazy thing because I care about you. It would be irresponsible to let you do such this incredibly dangerous and poorly thought-out thing.” But, this is a somewhat campy horror novel we’re talking about, and characters acting illogically is part of the genre.
As Laura navigates her way through a new crisis, she grapples with a prickly new police Chief, Elana Morales. The chief’s cold affectation and constant micromanaging makes her highly unlikable. Once Kaufmann shared her backstory, though, I started rooting for her as hard as I was rooting for Laura.
A general issue I had with this book was with Kaufmann’s heavy use of exposition as a writing technique. While some explanations helped establish setting or provided context, the abundant exposition did occasionally detract from the immediacy of the action. I wanted to be told less and shown more. A related issue was with the use of dialogue to explain things. There was a lot of “as you know, Bob” conversations throughout this story.
There were two subplots to this story competing for the readers’ attention. One involved the cutting-edge pharmaceutical company, Thurmond Biotech. The other was a plot involving a fringe religious community (the details of which reminded me strongly of Warren Jeff’s extreme sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Of the two competing plots, this was the one that got the most time on the page, yet I found it to be distracting from the main premise of the novel. The characters dominating the religious plot line were, in my opinion, clichéd and two-dimensional. I would have liked more development of the dodgy biotech company and its involvement in the creation of the main threat of the novel: killer snakes!
Ah, the snakes. I won’t say too much about them lest I spoil the horror of them. Let me simply say that if you are naturally squeamish about snakes, this book will have you crawling out of your skin (haha, pun intended).
The final confrontation between the main characters and the snakes was intense and well-written, and the resolution felt earned. As a reader, I felt fully sated. Overall, I would definitely recommend “The Stone Serpent” to fans of just-for-fun, campy horror novels with some cool science packed into the terror.
It’s become an annual February event in my household. What has, you ask? Valentine’s Day weekend? No. Presidents Day weekend? Definitely not. No, I’m talking about Boskone weekend!!
What is Boskone?
Boskone is the longest running science fiction convention in New England. When I was studying to get my MFA in creative writing at Lesley University back in 2018, one of my professors directed me to it, and since I do love my speculative fiction, it made sense to go. Also, I live close by–just north of Boston (home of Boskone). On top of that, it’s one of the most affordable SFFH writing conventions around. A $55 membership gets you full access all weekend long.
That first convention back in 2018 hooked me. To read about that awkward but incredible first experience, check out my blog post, Gearing Up for Boskone56.
This Year, Boskone went Virtual
The good folks who put on this convention each year – the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) – had the foresight to put together a micro-virtual convention in July called ReCONvene. Much shorter, just one day. I attended. It was great. Especially since ReaderCon, the other wiring convention I strive to attend each year, had been cancelled because, you know, pandemic.
The NESFA folks learned lots of important tech and logistical lessons from the mini-con in July. From that experience, they crafted a truly excellent virtual Boskone event. Check out the line up of special guests!
The Pros and Cons of a Virtual Conference
It goes without saying that a virtual event can’t fully replace an in-person experience. After almost a whole year of social isolation, I definitely missed seeing and talking with other real-life people as opposed to in-the-computer people. Still, I think this year’s virtual Boskone had some uniquely positive elements.
How nice to snuggle on my couch under blankets with a cup of coffee while listening to panelists talk shop. I certainly couldn’t have sat and painted my nails during a panel discussion last year. The virtual dealer’s room didn’t have the same feel as the real thing. What could? The look of all those shiny books, the smell of their pages, the feel of the paper beneath my fingers. Nothing will ever replace that, but because I didn’t drop $300+ on hotel and travel, I was able to buy more of the books panelists recommended when someone asked the inevitable question, “If you could recommend just one book that you think exemplified X, what would it be?” Yeah, my TBR list got a LOT longer this weekend, and what a wonderful problem that is!
Here’s what I bought (a fraction of what was recommended):
The weekend proved to be a whirlwind of wonderful. Here’s what I got up to.
Let the Friday Fun Begin!
I wanted to kick things of with the “Fountain Pen Show & Tell Discussion Group” at 3:30, but I didn’t finish up my teaching day until 3:30 and didn’t get home until 4:30. But, through the grapevine I hear it was a lot of fun.
Bouncing Round the Rooms
At 5:00 pm, I hopped in and out of the Opening Ceremonies event, the “Science of Fantasy” panel discussion, and “The Transformative Power of Women in Horror” panel. All while ordering dinner online and writing end-of-trimester comments for my students. Being able to unobtrusively enter and leave zoom panels was definitely a plus. So was knowing that most of the panel discussions would be recorded. No more agonizing over which panel to attend at time X because they’re both so amazing I don’t want to miss either one. They’re all available for viewing at my leisure moving forward! Huzzah!!
A Conversation about Craft
“Admiring the Scene-ry” was a fantastic panel to listen in on as I ate dinner in my living room. John Chu made some great connections between improv theater techniques and writing crisp, in-the-moment, engaging scenes. Scott Edelman offered up the time-honored advice to get into a scene as late as possible and get out of a scene as early as possible. Michael Swanwick swooped into the conversation to defend the effectiveness and merits of the narrative “hook” in writing.
What does the future hold for us?
From there I tuned into the 8:00 pm panel discussion, “Bizarre Biotech” with Jeanne Cavelos, Colin Alexander, Frank Wu, and S L Huang. Frank cued up some google slides showcasing several examples of authentically bizarre biotech in development around the globe. The panelists (and attendees via the zoom chat) spent the hour cracking each other up as they discussed the merits (or lack thereof) of various tech ideas. Energy producing “urine socks” anyone? No? No takers? Shocking.
Snuggle In and Tell Me a Story
I capped off my Friday evening listening to Joe Hill and Paul Tremblay take turns reading from existing or in-progress works. After the reading, they hung out with the audience members who had zoomed in and we all had a relaxed and down-to-earth chat about… oh, you know, stuff and things. It was super chill and really excellent.
Final Thoughts on Virtual Boskone
This post would grow much too long if I attempted a summary of every panel and kaffeeklatsch I attended on Saturday and Sunday. If you’re desperate to hear more, let me know in the comments and I’ll consider a “part 2” post. For now, know that Saturday and Sunday were as good if not better than Friday. Despite never leaving my house, I was surprisingly exhausted by the end of my final activity on Sunday night (a kaffeeklatsch with Joe Abercrombie).
Boskone 58 was a smashing success, even in its modified virtual form. I’m glad I went, but I do hope it’ll be in-person next winter. Nothing can replace the excitement of traveling to the hotel, eating way-too-expensive hotel food, dressing up a little nicer than usual, and bumping into like-minded folks I haven’t seen in six months between panels and at the “after-con” evening gatherings.
If you’ve got questions about Boskone, drop them into the comments or you reach out on Twitter and we can compare notes!
Did you attend Boskone this year? What were the highlights for you?
Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.
Tony shared some of his gorgeous photographs of wild places, green spaces, and rare species. He opened up about his fear that the next generation will grow up having no knowledge that these species and places ever existed. What kind of psychological and social impact will losing our green spaces have on our children, he asked?
Tracy talked about how she dealt with the theme of climate change and loss of habitat and home in the third book of her Jumbies series. She revealed that sea-level rise is predicted to eat up her childhood home of Trinidad. The island is going to vanish beneath the waves, where it might become mythologized like Atlantis in the minds of future generations. Who will she be, Tracey wondered, without her home?
Andrea spoke about her experience purchasing 500 acres of clear cut land in Maine. She (and others) planted thousands of hardwood saplings on the site to restore the native habitat. The farmhouse and barn on the property sat atop a plot of land whose topsoil had been stripped off and sold. Andrea and her husband used permaculture techniques to bring it back to a lush and productive garden in a single season. She then co-founded an art and nature nonprofit called the Newforest Institute (no longer in operation).
I focused on the power of writers (and all creative artists) to inspire the imaginations of the general public. I pointed out that, when it comes to writing about climate change, we have generally failed to do our jobs well. For decades, there has been a collective failure of the imagination. I challenged the audience of MFA candidates to do better.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
We are, as the title of Jonathan Gottschall’s book indicates, storytelling animals. The stories we read (and write) have the power to influence cultural values. They can spark technological innovation. They can inspire people to take action and make changes. Consider the works of H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Vern, Isaac Asimov, Jack London, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, among others. Their stories changed the people who read them.
Writers are a rare and valuable breed. We’re blessed with active imaginations paired with an ability to use the written word in ways that let others imagine things they might not otherwise. And sometimes, when we do things right, our stories influence humanity’s path forward. Consider Jules Verne, who wrote about men flying to the moon in rocket ships in 1865. Or Mary Shelley. To this day, Frankenstein invites readers to consider what consequences may result should science and morality become uncoupled. Michael Crichton updated that cautionary tale for modern readers. He got people thinking about the unforeseen repercussions of genetic engineering technologies and demanding regulation and oversight.
When it comes to imagining mankind’s future in the face of large-scale environmental disasters, however, writers have historically given the topic only the most superficial of examinations.
Most of what’s been written thus far are plot-focused action and adventure stories. While such stories definitely have their place, they are meant to be an escape for readers or viewers. They are entertainment. They are NOT stories intended to spark reflection in the hearts and minds of the masses.
Dig Deeper
What we need right now are stories that will get people engaged and thinking, not checking out. Only when people engage with a problem and start thinking about it can they then solve it. If you, as a writer (or an artist), feel anxious when you think about climate change, dig into your emotions and unpack them. Use that brilliant imagination of yours to visualize your fears in a visceral way.
Worried about widespread famine, war, disease, a population crash? Nuclear Annihilation? Write about it, but do so in a way that is emotionally honest and that has character, not plot, at its core. Make it believable. Draw your audience in, connect readers to your characters. Write a narrative that strikes a deep emotional cord and demands reflection for years, decades, centuries to come.
We need climate change stories that will get people thinking–really thinking–about the messy moral and ethical issues tangled up in large-scale ecological disasters. I’m thinking of stories like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or P. D. James’s Children of Men. More recently, HBO’s dramatic series Chernobyl highlighted what a failure of leadership could bring about during an environmental crisis.
Is There Space for Happy Endings?
I would argue yes. Showing hopeful outcomes is not just okay but necessary, as long as they’re handled in ways that are emotionally honest.
Neal Shusterman’s YA novel Dry is an excellent example of how to write a hopeful ending that doesn’t patronize readers. Shusterman wrote about characters uniting despite differences. They pooled their resources, developed believable solutions, and then implemented them successfully. But they made all kinds of mistakes along the way. They suffered, and they almost failed. Shusterman used his power as a writer to make his readers care. He made them WANT to avoid a catastrophe. And isn’t that the point? Because if we can divert the disaster, we can avoid the suffering that will come with it.
A Call to Action!
If you’re a writer and you’re feeling anxious in this time of climate change, pick up your pen and do what you do best. Write a story daring enough and honest enough to inspire the masses, influence thought and maybe change the future. Be the next Mary Shelley, the next H. G. Wells, the next Jules Vern. That was my message to the audience at the panel discussion two weeks back, and that’s my message to every writer who reads this post.
Do you feel anxious whenever you think about climate change? Have you attempted to explore your fears through your writing? If not, maybe it’s time to start.
This past Friday night, between bouts of puking my guts out (thank you, ill-timed stomach flu), I submitted my entry materials for this year’s #pitchwars competition. Now, as I await news… or silence… or whatever, I thought I’d distract myself by writing up a quick blog post. Quick being the operative term because I’m still fending off this vicious stomach bug and it’s difficult to type with my arms wrapped around this giant “just-in-case” mixing bowl in my lap.
So, let’s talk about the Pitch Wars organization because what else would I want to talk about while trying not to think about it?
What is Pitch Wars and How Does it Work?
If you’re unfamiliar with the organization, pop over to their website and have a quick peek. Pitch Wars was started by author Brenda Drake back in 2012. I heard about it when a fellow Lesley University alumna tried out for the competition in 2017 (or 2016, I can’t quite remember) and got in. She had an incredible experience working with her mentor. So, when I was working to finish the draft of my thesis manuscript in 2018, she encouraged me to try out, too.
To sum up, the organization offers aspiring (read unpublished) writers a chance to work with a mentor (read published and agented author) to revise a completed manuscript in preparation for an Agent Showcase (happening in February this year). If an agent likes what they see during the showcase, they may request a query and first pages. It’s an incredible way to build community, connect aspiring writers with established writers, hone craft skills, make friends, and perhaps even launch careers. It’s also insanely popular. This year, over 3,500 aspiring authors tried out.
Here’s the big ol’ donkey kick to the abdomen for applicants, though. They can only submit to FOUR participating mentors, and most mentors get well over 100 submissions. Some get upwards of 400 submissions! Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
My First Attempt at Pitch Wars:
As I said earlier, I tried out in 2018. Alas, I did not get in, but the experience still carried tremendous benefits for me.
For one, it kept me from stalling on a manuscript I was struggling to finish. You see, Pitch Wars requires applicants have a full manuscript completed, and fear of not getting the end of my novel absolutely perfect had been paralyzing me from writing the third act. The Pitch Wars competition was just the motivation I needed to get over my fear of a terrible first draft. Good, bad, or ugly, I got the damned thing done.
Which, by the way, is kind of the whole point of Pitch Wars. The organization pairs up established (and agented) authors who have walked the path new writers are trying to walk. They have written their own terrible first drafts. They’ve revised them, no doubt multiple times. They queried agents and did so successfully. Many of them did so as Pitch Wars mentees, and now they’re paying it forward as participating mentors despite being super busy promoting debut books of their own and writing their next novels.
So, I didn’t get accepted, but I got motivated. Actually, I then used all of NaNoWriMo18 to revise the beast! Huzzah!!
Pitchwars, Take Two!
As I said on my #BoostMyBio page, I’m nothing if not persistent. A year has passed and a lot has happened since last fall. That includes revisions of my manuscript. I’ve got strong feelings about my story. I’m not ready to give up on it yet. So, I’m trying out for Pitch Wars yet again. The manuscript still needs work, and the competition is a chance to work on it with someone who knows a lot more about the publishing industry than I do.
A mentor who shall remain nameless (but whom I am keeping my fingers crossed picks me to mentor) put it succinctly when she tweeted that she’s not looking for perfect. A perfect manuscript doesn’t need grooming with a guiding mentor. She’s looking for an imperfect manuscript with potential. A diamond in the rough, so to speak. I paraphrased all of that, by the way.
If I Don’t Get In… Again?
Then, at least I will have tried. And, it won’t mean I stop working on the manuscript. It just means I’ll be revising solo instead of with the guidance of an established author. Is one scenario preferable to the other? Sure, but you get what you get and you don’t get upset, as my kids’ favorite saying from camp goes.
If you, like me, are an aspiring writer with a finished manuscript and dreams of landing an agent who will help turn that manuscript into a fully realized book, I urge you to investigate Pitch Wars and try out. There’s nothing to lose and so much to gain, even if you don’t get chosen.
Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.
I bought the kindle version of 100 Fathoms Below after one of the authors (Nicholas Kaufmann) pitched it to me at a convention as “Vampires on a Submarine.” Sold! If there’s any type of monster on a sub, it’s a movie I’ll watch or a book I’ll read.
The authors did a tremendous amount of research with regard to military protocol and life aboard a US navy sub. Their attention to detail was excellent. If you enjoy stories that immerse you in military life, you will enjoy this book for that aspect alone.
Submarines didn’t launch on a single order; they launched with a dialogue. The submarine corps choreographed its procedures to the last detail. It was the officer of the deck who began the dialogue.
‘Bridge rigged for dive,’ Penwarden reported. ‘Last man down.’
I now know so much more about both the physical layout of submarines and the day to day coordinated effort of living in one and operating it. Doctors rarely enjoy medical thrillers because the authors get the details wrong. Lawyers shy away from reading legal thrillers for similar reasons. Put 100 Fathoms Below into the hands a naval vet and he’ll be hard-pressed to find fault with this story. The authors were determined to get all the details right. I think they succeeded.
The horror story aspect of the story? Interesting, to be sure. Who doesn’t love a good vampire story, and this one has the added bonus of happening in the inky blackness of the deep ocean, crammed inside a claustrophobic tube of groaning, creaking metal. But for all that, I struggled to feel any real dread or horror as I read this book. There were definitely several “omg, that is deeply unsettling” moments. The torpedo tubes, people. That’s all I’ll say. But, most of the time I felt somewhat emotionally detached from the story. Could be I’m emotionally dead inside, but the rising tension didn’t have me biting my fingernails. The horrific acts (the attacks, the killings, etc) were mostly handled “off the page.” I like to see, hear, feel, smell the moment when a monster attacks. Nothing too overtly gory, but more than what I was given in this story.
Bodine’s blood–that was what he smelled, the source of the sweet, enticing scent. Stubic hadn’t been hungry all day. Just the thought of eating had sickened him. But now, suddenly, he was hungry. So very hungry.
He reached for Bodine quickly, faster than he ever thought he could move.
That’s all you get, folks. The rest of the attack is left to our imagination. While I fully understand that nothing can scare us more than the things we can imagine, there are times when I don’t want things left up to my imagination. I want the author to walk me through the horror of an event–like a vampire’s first kill.
Another problem I had was that it wasn’t entirely clear who the main character was versus all the secondary characters. If you read the blurb for the book posted on Amazon or over on Goodreads, it hints at this lack of protagonist identity. Not that there wasn’t a main character. There was, but numerous secondary characters took up as much time and space and emotional weight on the page as did the protagonist. As a result, my attention felt too equally divided across too many characters. I couldn’t get deeply, emotionally invested in any of them.
100 Fathoms Below is definitely plot-driven, not character driven, but you know what? That’s okay. It’s a well written, fast-paced military thriller as much as it is a horror story. And really, don’t you want to know how one survives being trapped on a submarine, in total darkness with a vampire hunting you inside and the Russians hunting you outside? I’ll give you a hint. It doesn’t involve stakes, crosses, or holy water.
I’m more than comfortable recommending 100 Fathoms Below as a fun, quick horror read.
As always, thanks for stopping by and happy writing to you.
Last year at this time, I was a hot mess. Boskone55 being my very first convention ever, I had no idea what to expect. I knew authors were going to be there, talking on panels, signing autographs, walking around in the halls, talking to people, and existing in the real world! What that would be like, I could only imagine.
Bumping into a famous author, like Mary Robinette Kowal, would probably be akin to the time when 7-year-old me rounded the end of the aisle in my local FoodMart and came face to face with my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hogan.
Startling. Disorienting. Somewhat surreal and frightening.
So, yeah, that was basically how it went down when I met Ms. Kowal last year. It wasn’t even a surprise encounter. Then, at least, I could have chalked up my mumbling awkwardness to being caught off guard. No, the author I admire and respect was signing books. A structured event at a scheduled time, giving me an opportunity to plan out what I would say to her in advance.
“Hello, Ms. Kowal. Big fan. Loved GHOST TALKERS. Would you mind signing my copy? Thanks so much. I was wondering what your daily writing process looks like?”
That’s what I wanted to say to her. What I actually said was, “[incomprehensible mumbling].” Between that and my face purpling with embarrassment, it’s a wonder she didn’t think I was having an aneurysm and call for a paramedic.
So, while I thoroughly enjoyed the panels at Boskone55 (see my wrap-up post here), I spent a lot of time sitting or standing by myself, eyeing from afar authors with whom I wanted to talk and cursing myself for being so damned awkward. Pretty sure Marshall Ryan Maresca thinks I’m a crazy stalker fan. I’m totally not a stalker. Crazy is debatable. Certainly a fan.
Never again, I vowed, will I be such a social tool at a writing convention. Within a week of returning from Boskone, I registered for ReaderCon (which happened this past July). You can read about my adventures at that epic convention here and here.
Me and Sam Delany!
ReaderCon was a totally different experience. I actually spoke to people! Even more amazing, some of them were authors like Samuel Delany! All of them (except the rando at the bar) were friendly, approachable, excellent people. Which brings me to the reason I’m so excited about Boskone56.
This time, I will know some of the folks there! I’ll have a few social “anchors,” as it were. Now, I’m not suggesting I became besties with any of the authors I met at ReaderCon, but I did talk with several folks during kaffeeklatsches and after panels. Heck, I even shared a drink with a couple of them at the bar and chatted up a few others at what was basically a meet and greet disguised as a party. And, I’m jazzed because several of those most excellent people are going to be at Boskone56 this year.
Who I’m Looking Forward to Seeing (Again):
So many people! Couldn’t fit everyone on this list, so know that there are many more folks I’m eager to shake hands with and say, “Hello” or “Hello, again.”
Many of the above I had the pleasure of meeting at ReaderCon. I got to hear many others share their thoughts on various panels at last year’s Boskone55.
My goal for Boskone56?
Say hello to as many authors who I admire as possible. Might even find the courage to strike up an actual conversation with some of them, about writing, and books, and… I don’t know stuff. If I could do it at ReaderCon, I can do it again. Deep breaths. It’s going to be awesome!
Are you going to be at Boskone this year? Who are you looking forward to seeing? If you see me there, say hello. I'm friendly, I swear, once you get past the socially awkward exterior.
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means. It’s #IWSG Day! The question this month is…
What pitfalls have you encountered on your journey to publication that you can share with others?
Well, uh… hmm. I don’t actually know of many pitfalls from direct personal experience. To date, I only have two minimal publishing credits to my name. This post, therefore, will focus on the one that I feel is the biggest and most fatal pitfall facing all of us creative folks: the pitfall of giving up.
But first, allow me to drop a plug for the Insecure Writers Support Group. The IWSG, founded by the esteemed Alex J. Cavanaugh, is an online space where writers (insecure and otherwise) can come together to share stories, successes, struggles, and all the rest of it. The website is chock-o-block full of great stuff. There’s a Twitter Pitch (just happened in July), contests, books, swag, conferences, and more. Be sure to jump over there and check them out!
Okay, back to this month’s topic: pitfalls to void.
A Lesson from Stephen King!
Back in my early 20’s, right around the time I got married, I bought a copy of Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical craft book On Writing. In it, King shared his youthful adventures in writing an submitting short stories with blind optimism to the magazines he loved to read: Analog, Asimov’s, Amazing Stories, etc. He started submitting in his early teens. As you can imagine, he got a lot of rejection letters.
King did something great, though, in turning the submission/rejection thing into a game. Upon receiving his first rejection letter–a form letter–, he drove a nail into the wall of his bedroom and impaled the letter upon it. How quickly could King accumulate enough rejection letters to overwhelm that nail? Understand, please, that King didn’t compromise the quality of the stories he wrote and submitted in an attempt to grow the stack with artificial speed. That would have been cheating. His primary goal was always to write the best story he could and get it published. He merely created a synergistic secondary goal that he could work towards when he wasn’t making progress toward his primary goal.
The important lesson I took from reading his book was that it’s possible to find ways of turning failures into successes. There are ways to immunize ourselves against the discouraging sting that comes with rejection. A sting that all too often ends up crippling creative individuals and ending their careers before they begin.
Playing the Game
Upon finishing his book, I decided it might be fun to try my hand at King’s game. I’d been writing stories all my life and harbored secret fantasies of becoming a successful author. But that required sticking my vulnerable neck out and submitting the stuff I wrote. The “Rejection Game,” as I called it, gave me permission to expose myself to the volley of rejections I knew would ensue.
Over the course of the next year, I researched and submitted to close to fifty magazines. This was in the very early days of the internet, so most venues still required print submissions sent via snail mail with self-address-stamped return envelopes for letters of acceptance/rejection. Of those fifty submissions, I received 48 rejection letters. Two magazines took a story from me. Tiny publications that paid out in single contributor copies, but still, two out of fifty. I was pleased.
Confession: I miss getting rejection letters in the mail. Even a form letter felt a tiny bit nifty when presented in a physical envelope that arrives in your mailbox. A digital email just doesn’t carry the same special weight.
Watch Out for That Pitfall. It’s a Doozy.
If only I’d kept at it! Remember, this was happening the year after I got married. And changed my job. And got pregnant with my first child. Guess who stopped writing and submitting stories? Yeah, me.
Thirteen years would pass before I sent out another story on submission. What can I say? Life got busy. I got distracted. Not an excuse, just my reality. I didn’t give up intentionally. Many folks probably wade into the pitfall of giving up slowly, day by day. So many things can fill up our lives that we can feel as though we’re drowning in quicksand. I was certainly feeling that way last October when I wrote my post, “Life, Will You Just Chill Out Already?”
Lots of people never figure out how to strike a balance between their writing goals and life obligations, or maybe they fail to immunize themselves against the sting of having their creative work turned down over and over again. That didn’t happen to me, but I’ve witnessed it happen to other writers. Without some way to turn each “no” into a positive, the weight of all those “thanks, but no thanks” can accumulate until it’s crushing your soul. And Odin knows, it’s the easiest thing in the world to set that weight aside and do something else.
Mr. Reynolds, an incredible writer and mentor in our program
On my way out the door of my MFA program at Lesley University, I was reminded of the lesson I’d gleaned a decade and a half ago from Mr. King’s book. If you want to succeed, you must keep writing, keep submitting, keep querying. Young Adult author Jason Reynolds told me and a small classroom of other impending graduates that the difference between those that make it in the publishing industry and those that don’t is persistence. The authors who find success are the ones who don’t give up. They kept playing their very own “Rejection Game” until something stuck. Talent helps, but even the most talented writer in the world can fall into the pitfall of giving up.
Lessons from Vigo Mortensen
Have you ever seen the movie G.I. Jane with Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen? I love that movie. Whatever. Don’t judge me. I’m not judging all the fans who love 300. It’s all love here!
Anyway, there’s a scene in that film where the cadets are doing push-up’s and leg lifts and other generally awful forms of exhausting exercises in the ocean. They’re right in the middle of the breaker zone, icy waves crashing down over them again and again. It’s been hours. They’re soaked, sand-blasted, shaking with fatigue and the early stages of hypothermia. And the Master Chief (Viggo) is walking up and down the line shouting all kinds of philosophical musings at them. This is the moment when he delivers a few lines that resonated to my core.
“Pain is your friend, your ally. It will tell you when you are seriously injured. It will keep you awake, and angry, and remind you to finish the job and get the hell home. But you know the best thing about pain? It lets you know you’re not dead yet.”
Viggo’s basically telling his cadets to embrace their pain and frustration and exhaustion because it means they haven’t given up. Stephen King and Jason Reynolds were preaching less intense variants of the same philosophy.
As creative folks, rejection hurts. Of course it does, but that sting you feel means you’re still playing the game, you haven’t quit, you’re not dead yet. So there you have it. Giving up is the first and biggest pitfall you can fall into on your way to getting published.
Don’t give up.
Find a way to turn the rejections into positives. Make the pain be your friend. Keep writing, or painting, or sculpting, or composing, or whatever it is that you make. In this world that is becoming more and more obsessed with consumption, we need folks who engage in glorious acts of creation.
What’s your strategy for staying resilient and skirting the pitfall of quitting? Help the rest of us out by sharing in the comments!
Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy writing to you.
This year’s ReaderCon event was so huge and so fabulous that I couldn’t fit it all into one post, so here’s the rest of my incredible experience. Click here to read about the first two days of fun.
Recap of Saturday’s Fun:
I kicked off Saturday with a delightful Kaffeeklatsch hosted by Victoria Janssen, a skilled writer of erotic fiction. If that strikes you as an odd choice on my part, given that my focus is on writing YA and MG stories, check my part 1 post for the explanation. It was a great conversation that ran the gamut of topics from industry trends to work-life balance. During this Klatsch, I met Sam Schreiber, whom I re-met later the same day. More on that in a bit.
Maybe they didn’t expect many people to attend it? They put her in one of the smaller Salons in the hotel room. Big mistake. By the time I arrived at 9:04, every seat was filled, and folks were beginning to sit on the floor, myself included. No way was I going to miss Susan’s workshop.
I’m fascinated by government systems as portrayed in fiction. And, since my current project is all about the upheaval of an existing government system, I thought it would be good to sharpen my world building tools.
Also, I saw Susan for the first time at Boskone in February. She participated in a panel called “Governmental Structures in SFF” that was outstanding. I wrote a summary of the discussion here.
I don’t know if Susan was inspired to create this workshop from the Boskone panel discussion or not, but she gave an epic workshop. She made all of her slideshow available on her website, too. Check it out.
Topics discussed:
What governments do.
What forms governments can take.
How governments go bad.
Current government structures with examples from the US, Iran, and Italy.
Historical government structures with examples from medieval Europe and China.
Questions an author should ask/answer when creating a fantasy or science fiction government.
Serendipitously, I was working my way through The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017 Collection, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu. I had picked it up during my final residency for my MFA in creative writing program at Lesley University at the end of June. Catherynne has a story in the collection called The Future is Blue. I hadn’t yet read it when this Klatsch happened, but I’ve read it since then, and Odin it was so good! Space Opera is now on my TBR list.
The rest of my Saturday at ReaderCon was a whirlwind of panel discussions, followed by an awkward encounter at the hotel bar with a man who unintentionally offended me multiple times as he tried to chat me up while I ate dinner. Thank Thor, Sam Schreiber turned up and gave me a reason to extricate myself from a bad conversation for a much, MUCH better one. Sam is a member of the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Group, and he helps produce the podcast Kaleidocast.
I just listened to the first episode of season two, by the way. The story, “Playing Nice with God’s Bowling Ball” by N. K. Jemisin, was quite enjoyable, and the woman who narrated the story, Tatiana Grey, did an excellent job.
Shameless plug, Sam (if you happen to read this), I would love to narrate a story for you fine folks.
I discovered the existence of the Boston Speculative Fiction Writers Group pretty much accidentally while at ReaderCon. Had Sam not mentioned it in passing during our conversation at the hotel bar, I might never have stumbled upon its existence. This was after I used him to extricate myself from a very uncomfortable conversation with some Rando who was making me very nervous.
Quick tangent…
The hotel restaurant was packed on Saturday night, so I asked to be seated at the bar for dinner since there were actual seats available there. They put me next to an older gentleman who was also eating dinner at the bar. I ordered my food, got my food, ate my food, and then decided that it might be fun to try my hand at “Barconning,” so I ordered a beer and sat, hoping to see someone I had already spoken to earlier so I could say hello and try to have a conversation with him or her.
Long story short, that was when the man sitting beside me, who was not part of the convention, proceeded to tell me that he’d like to beat the $h!7 out a fellow standing at a nearby table for laughing too loud.
Reg flags up, warning bells ringing, iceberg dead ahead. Course correction needed five minutes ago.
Then, he asked what the convention was about and I told him.
The man with the violent tendencies and hair trigger then said, “I always wanted to write a book because I’m a pretty good writer, and I bought this house once to renovate it but when I went inside of it, it had this feeling like it was possessed, like not just haunted, you know, but possessed by evil, like that Amityville house, you know what I mean, with the walls just and voices screaming at me to just, just get out, get out, get out like it was pure evil. That would make a pretty good book, right?”
The side of this boat has been torn off, folks. Evacuate if you can.
That’s when I saw the guy from Victoria Janssen’s kaffeeklatsch. What was his name? Loki, why am I so terrible with names? Sam! His name is Sam! Okay, be cool. Keep the fear and desperation out of your voice.
“Oh, hi there! You’re Sam, right? You were in Victoria’s Kaffeeklatsch with me.”
Sam’s smile was as glorious a sight as a life raft to a drowning victim.
I jumped ship and did so without a shred of guilt.
End of Tangent
On Sam’s suggestion, I skipped the Comedy Show happening at 9 PM in the ballroom and instead scoped out the Boston Speculative Fiction Writers Group, where I had a great conversation with author Elaine Isaak. [I later learned that the party was hosted not by the writing group but by the related Speculative Boston Readers Series Group. Not entirely the same thing.]
Elaine Isaak, at Arisia in 2013
She’s a member of BSFG, and I’d seen her on a few panels at Boskone. It was great to see her again and talk to her in a smaller, more informal setting. She told me about another organization, Broad Universe, and invited me to check it out. I did, and I’ll be joining the latter group while wishing the former group was open to new members.
At around 10:30 PM, I finally made it up to the eighth floor, where the ReaderCon Suite resided. All weekend long, folks had been mentioning the ConSuite up on the eighth floor. I had envisioned it as a secret VIP room for the chosen few where high powered con-goers sat around schmoozing with one another high above the lowly commoners (like me). A ridiculous notion, I know, but I’m still new to the world of book and writing conventions. Cut me some slack.
Sam Schreiber was the one who got me to swallow my misguided fears and get into the elevator. Turns out, it really was just a place to hang out, eat free food, drink free beverages, and chat with entirely ordinary people! I had a long conversation with a book dealer who woke me up to the existence of CanLit (Canadian Literature). We also discussed Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Plato. Peter, from Ontario, it was a pleasure debating the philosophy of myth and religion with you, sir.
I called it a night at 12:30 AM, an obnoxiously late hour for me.
Sunday:
Second Name Drop
See?! It’s me and Chip!
Ready for this?! I ate breakfast with Samuel Delany. Can you freaking believe it?
Despite getting to bed at a ridiculously late hour (for me), I got down to the restaurant at 7:30 AM for breakfast. Just in time for the rush, apparently. The guy standing in line ahead of me shifted, and I noticed he was wearing a ReaderCon badge (on a lanyard, so I had to stare at his belly to read his name and hope he didn’t notice and take offense).
Samuel Delany? Oh Sugar Honey Iced Tea, I must talk to this man. I must open my mouth and stammer out a hello to this giant in the sci-fi literature world. Be cool. Be cool. Just say hello. That’s all you have to do.
“Hi, are you Sam Delany?”
What a nice guy. Just as open and friendly as Ken Schneyer had been on Friday. After a few minutes of talking about the convention and the panels, the waitress said she was ready to seat him. He turned and asked if I would like to share a table with him because he was all by himself–his spouse, Dennis, had elected to sleep late. Gee, um, let me think. Okay!
So I got to spend Sunday morning chatting with Samuel Delany about his career, his process, his love of genre fiction, his love of ReaderCon, and other random stuff over eggs and bacon and oatmeal. He even let me snap a selfie of the two of us together, because who would believe me that I’d had breakfast with him unless I obtained photographic evidence?
After breakfast, Sam and I walked together to his and my first panel of the day:
Curses, World Building Through Explitives
It was, of course, a highly entertaining and thought-provoking hour. In hindsight, I wish Catherynne Valente and Scott Lynch had been on the panel, as they both make lovely use of expletives as world building tools in their writing. Still, Francesca Forrest, Sarah Smith, Vinnie Tesla, Yves Meynard, and Sam had the audience laughing and scribbling notes like crazy.
They talked about the fine art of inventing curse words. Vinnie brought up the standard technique of blending “high” and “low” into a contrasting and therefore ironic and insulting combination (“holy shit,” for example). Sam mad the excellent point that the preferred pejoratives a culture uses tell a lot about systems of power and dominance in a fictional world. A culture that tosses around “bitch,” “slut,” and “cunt” is probably patriarchal. Curses that invoke a world’s religion(s) or god(s) will always be blasphemous, and Yves Meynard brought up the use of swears that denigrate certain professions or geographies as excellent and quick ways to tell readers who the underclass are in a world.
The discussion kicked off by identifying familiar “criminal” archetypes in fantasy and science fiction. Rogues, thieves, burglars, tricksters are the big four.
The nature or purpose of incarceration both in life and in fiction generated lots of questions and comments from the audience. Is the primary purpose of imprisonment to punish the individual or to send a message to the broader populace? Or is it a tool to rehabilitate, and if so, who decides what constitutes “rehabilitated?”
The discussion was fascinating and unsettling all at the same time.
Final Panel of My ReaderCon Experience: How Horror Stories End
This was the panel I’d been most looking forward to all weekend.
Horror is my favorite genre. It lives and breathes deep in my psyche. In the second grade, I filled a notebook with short stories, all of them involving bloody deaths and vicious murders and witches eating babies for breakfast. All accompanied by my own gory illustrations in bright Crayola colors. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up meeting regularly with the school psychiatrist.
Nick opened things up by asking the question: Can a horror story have a happy ending?
Short answer, no. Not really.
Characters can survive. They can even defeat the enemy and save the day, but it still isn’t a happy ending because said characters have been forever changed (probably damaged) by their ordeal.
The discussion then shifted to the concept of definitive versus ambiguous endings in horror novels. Ellen Datlow professed that ambiguous endings get tiresome. She likes a story that ties up all the loose ends. [Correction: Ellen did not actually say that. That was my (mis)interpretation. Rather, she said that reading too many stories with ambiguous endings gets tiresome, and there seem to be many of them, so the stories with definitive endings are a welcome break from that. That’s not a direct quote either, but I think I’m correctly capturing the spirit of her words.] Other panelists tried to come up with concrete examples of horror stories that do that. The Haunting of Hill House was mentioned as a horror story with a concrete ending. I suppose it is for the characters, but (and I applaud Yves for pointing this out) it still contains a level of ambiguity because Hill House survives. It continues to exist, so the potential for future horrors remains. I thought of Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie. The ending is definitive for the characters, but King tacked on a “letter” at the end of the book that left the door of ambiguity open.
Panelists and audience members alike tossed out example after example, each with an ending that seemed to contain both definitive and ambiguous notes. Given that the human psyche wants neat endings, wants things wrapped up and resolved, wants problems solved. Ambiguity is inherently horrifying to us.
In my opinion, the only successful use of a genuinely definitive ending in a horror story would involve the heroes losing and the villains winning. I’m thinking of a recent superhero film that shall not be directly named, to half-heartedly dodge spoiling it for folks who haven’t yet seen it. Pretty unambiguous but definitely horrifying.
It was a great panel!
And Then I Went Home
By the end of “How Horror Stories End,” I was well and truly done. Fatigue slammed into me like a wrecking ball loosed from its chain. I might have actually staggered. I checked out of my room, quickly and without difficulty, caught the shuttle to the Redline, the Redline to North Station. So as not to miss my stop should I fall asleep, I set an alarm on my watch. Thank Thor for a bit of foresight, because I did indeed tumble into the land of Nod shortly after the train started moving. An hour later, I was home. It took me a week to recover from four days of high-octane interactions and very little sleep, but it was worth it!
So, that was my adventure at ReaderCon 2018. It took two ridiculously long posts to cover all the fun, I know, but I gotta say, I had an incredible time. If you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy stories, you have to get to ReaderCon. You won’t be disappointed.
Except, maybe, by the lack of towel hooks.
Thanks for dropping by and as always, happy writing to you.
Funny thing, though. A couple of weeks went by and I found myself mentally minimizing my publishing success, doubting it. Once is a fluke, I thought. Once doesn’t mean anything. But then it happened again. Another acceptance showed up in my inbox in early May, this time from Metaphorosis Magazine. It’s been an amazing spring season. I mean, to get even one story published was amazing, but two? And so close to one another. The acceptances at least; the first one’s coming out in mid-July. I don’t yet know when the second story will be published. Still, that little voice has been nagging at me. What if this second sale was just a stroke of dumb luck?
But this past Tuesday I got a third acceptance email! A cozy sci-fi story I wrote back in February is going to be published in Uncharted Magazine!! I can’t believe it. Maybe the next time my spouse introduces me to someone as an “author” I won’t feel the need to demur. 
Less than a month after getting the great news from Metastellar, B. Morris Allen emailed me with an official offer of acceptance on that strange slipstream SF story he’d been editing with me since December! That makes not one but 
I recently had the pleasure of reading 
As with his other books, “The Stone Serpent” is packed with interesting and accurate scientific facts and descriptions. That said, the science sometimes felt wedged into scenes without good reason. Often, descriptions felt included just for the sake of serving up a creepy or interesting fact. More than once, I wondered why a small-town medical examiner would know about so many facts unrelated to medicine. Nevertheless, all those not-necessarily-needed scientific facts were so interesting (and morbid) that I enjoyed their inclusion regardless. 
“Admiring the Scene-ry” was a fantastic panel to listen in on as I ate dinner in my living room. 
I capped off my Friday evening listening to 
We are, as the title of Jonathan Gottschall’s book indicates, 
Or Mary Shelley. To this day, 
We need climate change stories that will get people thinking–really thinking–about the messy moral and ethical issues tangled up in large-scale ecological disasters. I’m thinking of stories like Cormac McCarthy’s 
Neal Shusterman’s YA novel 
If you’re a writer and you’re feeling anxious in this time of climate change, pick up your pen and do what you do best. Write a story daring enough and honest enough to inspire the masses, influence thought and maybe change the future. Be the next Mary Shelley, the next H. G. Wells, the next Jules Vern. That was my message to the audience at the panel discussion two weeks back, and that’s my message to every writer who reads this post. 
This past Friday night, between bouts of puking my guts out (thank you, ill-timed stomach flu), I submitted my entry materials for this year’s 
Quick being the operative term because I’m still fending off this vicious stomach bug and it’s difficult to type with my arms wrapped around this giant “just-in-case” mixing bowl in my lap.
As I said earlier, I tried out in 2018. Alas, I did not get in, but the experience still carried tremendous benefits for me. 
So, I didn’t get accepted, but I got motivated. Actually, I then used all of 
Last year at this time, I was a hot mess. 
So, while I thoroughly enjoyed the panels at Boskone55 (see my wrap-up post 
Back in my early 20’s, right around the time I got married, I bought a copy of Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical craft book 
The nature or purpose of incarceration both in life and in fiction generated lots of questions and comments from the audience. Is the primary purpose of imprisonment to punish the individual or to send a message to the broader populace? Or is it a tool to rehabilitate, and if so, who decides what constitutes “rehabilitated?”
The discussion then shifted to the concept of definitive versus ambiguous endings in horror novels. Ellen Datlow professed that ambiguous endings get tiresome. She likes a story that ties up all the loose ends. [Correction: Ellen did not actually say that. That was my (mis)interpretation. Rather, she said that reading too many stories with ambiguous endings gets tiresome, and there seem to be many of them, so the stories with definitive endings are a welcome break from that. That’s not a direct quote either, but I think I’m correctly capturing the spirit of her words.] Other panelists tried to come up with concrete examples of horror stories that do that. The Haunting of Hill House was mentioned as a horror story with a concrete ending. I suppose it is for the characters, but (and I applaud Yves for pointing this out) it still contains a level of ambiguity because Hill House survives. It continues to exist, so the potential for future horrors remains. I thought of Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie. The ending is definitive for the characters, but King tacked on a “letter” at the end of the book that left the door of ambiguity open.