Category Archives: Process

In Which We Make Mistakes

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WRITING 02A couple of days ago I got an email from Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, pointing out that I’d made a slight error in a previous post when I said it was the first time I’d made it into one of his year’s best compilations. Quite true. I did have stories in his 2005 and 2007 books, but in my defense I’ll say that I wasn’t completely wrong, either. This is the first time I’ve been included in one of his combined sf & fantasy editions, since for many years the fantasy and sf volumes were separate. The two previous times I’d been reprinted by Rich were in his exclusively fantasy volumes. Yet I did misspeak (mistype?) and Rich was right to bring that to my attention.

Just as it was right for the reader yesterday to point out I’d included a physical impossibility in one of my scenes from Power’s Shadow. That’s also the reason I was hesitant about this experiment in the first place. See, this is the first time I’ve let anyone other than First Reader see one of my rough drafts, and there are good and solid reasons for that. What the reader has a right to expect when they pick up one of my books is that I’m not going to waste their time with sloppy work. Yet here’s the thing—this is a first draft. Almost by definition it’s going to be a little ragged around the edges. First drafts are the perfect place for mistakes, and don’t they know it. They show up and settle in with deep sighs of contentment. First drafts are made for them. Or as I’ve pointed out in the writer’s groups I’ve belonged to and elsewhere when a colleague was complaining that they get bogged down in this or that piece of minutiae when trying to get a project done, here is your mantra:

“It is not the job of a first draft to be perfect. It is the job of a first draft to get DONE.” Continue reading →

Rich Horton’s Year’s Best SF&F 2015

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MorningRainbowHere’s the final Table of Contents as posted by the publisher. As soon as I have an open link to the final cover, I’ll post that too:

“Sadness” by Timons Esaias (Analog 7-8/14)
“Schools of Clay” by Derek Künsken (Asimov’s 2/14)
“Someday” by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s 4-5/14)
“The Instructive Tale of the Archaeologist and his Wife” by Alexander Jablokov (Asimov’s 7/14)
“Heaven Thunders the Truth” by K. J. Parker (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/2/14)
“The Manor of Lost Time” by Richard Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/26/14)
“Every Hill Ends With Sky” by Robert Reed (Carbide Tipped Pens)
“Wine” by Yoon Ha Lee (Clarkesworld 1/14)
“Pernicious Romance” by Robert Reed (Clarkesworld 11/14)
“The Magician and Laplace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld 12/14)
“The Long Haul” by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld)
“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson (F&SF 7-8/14)
“Aberration” by Genevieve Valentine (Fearsome Magics)
“Ghost Story” by John Grant (Interzone 3-4/14)
“Skull and Hyssop” by Kathleen Jennings (LCRW 12/14)
“The Endless Sink” by Damien Ober (LCRW 9/14)
“Drones Don’t Kill People” by Annalee Newitz (Lightspeed 12/14)
“How to Get Back to the Forest” by Sofia Samatar (Lightspeed 3/14)
“Selfie” by Sandra MacDonald (Lightspeed 5/14)
“Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” by Theodora Goss (Lightspeed 7/14)
“I Can See Right Through You” by Kelly Link (McSweeney’s, #48)
“The Wild and Hungry Times” by Patricia Russo (Not One of Us)
“Invisible Planets” by Hannu Rajaniemi (Reach for Infinity)
“Trademark Bugs: A Legal History” by Adam Roberts (Reach for Infinity)
“A Better Way to Die” by Paul Cornell (Rogues)
“Fift and Shria” by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Solaris Rising 3)
“Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale” by C. S. E. Cooney (Strange Horizons 7/21/14)
“Grand Jeté(the Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Summer/14)
“The Scrivener” by Eleanor Arnason (Subterranean Winter/14)
“The Hand is Quicker” by Elizabeth Bear (The Book of Silverberg)
“Break! Break! Break!” by Charlie Jane Anders (The End is Nigh)
“Sleeper” by Jo Walton (Tor.com 8/14)
“Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts” by Cory Doctorow (Twelve Tomorrows)
“Collateral” by Peter Watts (Upgraded)

Thing One and Thing Two

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Step4-YamadaYamada_BTG_cover-V06b-Prime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for another update, since things have happened. Things don’t always happen, you know. It’s that whole “Feast or Famine” situation I’ve mentioned before. Most days the only update would be, “Wrote XXXX number of words today. Can’t think straight. It all looks like garbage right now.” I mean, can you imagine 360 blog posts exactly like that, with maybe five about something else? No one would read that. Heck, *I* wouldn’t read that.

Ahem. Getting off course a little bit. The things: First of all Rich Horton has picked up “The Manor of Lost Time” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #150 for his Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015. This will be the first time I’ve had work in one of Rich’s YBs, so I’m pleased.

The other thing goes a little beyond a reprint fee and an ego boost: Both books in the Yamada Monogatari series, Demon Hunter and To Break the Demon Gate are “Out of Stock.” Now, this does not mean that there are none left. Amazon and B&N still have a few of Demon Hunter and a few more of To Break the Demon Gate, but the book’s distributor does not have any more. Which means that the distributor cannot fulfill new orders and there is a backlog of orders waiting, especially with the second book. As a result, TBTDG is going back to press for an extra 1500 copies, which brings the total run up to 4500. Bear in mind, Prime Books is a relatively small publisher, so this is a big deal. It’s even possible that DH will get a reprint as well, though that has not been determined.

Now it’s likely that the next in the series, The War God’s Son, will get a larger initial run. I’m happy, the publisher is happy (astonished, but happy), though with larger runs comes larger expectations. We’ll see how it goes, but for now at least it’s a Good Thing.

Publisher’s Weekly Comes Through

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Yamada_BTG_cover-V06b-PrimeOne problem with the writer existence is that it’s feast or famine, and there is an awful lot of famine. But, now and then, a feast. Last night I got an IM from my publisher telling me to check my email, and sitting there was a link to a Star Review in Publisher’s Weekly for Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate. I’ve only gotten one of those before. You can read the entire review here, but one takeaway is in the final line.

“Playing with Japanese demonology and political scandal, Parks creates an absorbing and original tale.”

I’d only quibble with the first line of the review, wherein I am proclamined to be “prolific,” which I know I am not, or at least not nearly enough. As for the rest, you can’t beat that, not even with a really big stick.

Doc, It Hurts When I Do This….

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WRITING 02Yeah, I know. Old joke, but then old jokes come to mind when I find myself repeating old mistakes. Stale humor goes with stale habits.

Some time ago a friend asked me to comment on another story in a magazine I was also in, and I did. Regretted it immediately, and belatedly remembered why I stopped doing that. I see it as no win, at least from my own perspective. Whether I honestly like a story or not, and especially when I have a “stake” in the issue I can’t see it as anything other than 1) sucking up to my peers or 2) dissing the competition. You see the problem — I don’t trust my motives. I consider this wise, because anything I write about the issue will involve my own writerly ego, which is an extremely unreliable narrator. The ego is important and extremely useful, but move it out of its proper sphere (getting the work done, dealing with either the hostility or (worse) indifference that usually follows) and it becomes a liability. By extension and in hindsight this is why I stopped reviewing, period (though of course I never reviewed a magazine issue I was in). Now, reviewing was a useful phase and I’m glad I did it when I did. It helped me analyze my own work when I had to figure out what was wrong (or right) with a story I was reviewing. I think I was a very decent reviewer while it lasted, never pulled a punch or skimped on praise when appropriate. But then it was time to stop, and wanting more time for my own work was only part of the reason. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I was never comfortable with it and was never going to be. I will do it now and again, but only when I can’t help myself. The infrequency of reviews posted here should attest.

Oddly enough, in the context of a writer’s group I have no problem at all giving very harsh criticsm when I think it’s required. That, of course, is when the story can still be saved. Sometimes, it comes down to telling a proud parent that their baby is really, really, ugly. I have a problem with this. Other writers don’t.

Shrug.