I got an email yesterday letting me know that I’d sold a story, “The Sorrow of Rain” to Weird Tales. I have a fondness for that old magazine, in all its incarnations. I hadn’t placed a story there in years, so I was doubly pleased.
That is all.
Category Archives: Writing
The Ferris Wheel and the Werewolf, or How to Annoy Pretty Much Everybody
The pitfalls of self-promotion is–unfortunately–a subject I’ve been forced to think about lately, so when author Jim Hines wrote a parody song that explains the nature of this particular animal, it rather crystallized some notions that I’d been turning over myself. First, to set the mood, I think it would be a good idea to sing along with Jim on this, so go here first and then come on back. I’ll wait.
Right, then. Some of you may remember an animated TV show from the 90’s called The Critic, starring Jon Lovitz as the voice of “Jay Sherman,” the movie critic of the title. In one episode a book tour goes horribly wrong because Jay’s publisher has an animatronic bookstore display of Jay holding his collection of movie columns and repeating “BUY MY BOOK!” on an endless loop. It not only kept the customers away, but at least one of the store managers was alleged to have committed suicide. Of course it was a exaggeration, a parody of the hard-sell, but not as far removed from reality as we’d like to think. Especially lately.
Now then. I’ll grant you, it’s possible to go too far the other way. In his introduction to Hereafter, and After, Andy Duncan quoted screenwriter Ben Hecht as describing a shameless publicity hound as “a cross between a Ferris Wheel and a werewolf,” to make the point that I wasn’t one. And it was true. I wasn’t. I pray I am still not, but what I was at the time was the other extreme—completely self-effacing (hard to believe, I know, but it’s true). I wrote the stories. I sent them out. They were published or not, but either way that was pretty much the end of it, so far as I was concerned. Then I published my first collection, then the fist novella chapbook, then the first novel, then my second and third collections, and somewhere along that line I finally copped to the obvious truth that hiding your light under a bushel is not a game plan.
New Story Time – “A Thing or Two About Love”
Looking back on this story now I can see that it’s just,oh, maybe a tad cynical about the subject. I acknowledge and own this, but I’m not going to apologize for it. You have to write from the place you are at the time, even if, apparently, in 1997 I was being a bit of a smart-ass.
Excerpt – The Heavenly Fox
I’m trying something new for the blog–snippets. Today’s post is an excerpt from The Heavenly Fox (PS Publishing 2011). To frame this bit, the fox vixen Springshadow has successfully brewed and and imbibed (how often do I get to use that word?) the Golden Elixir of Immortality, and now she’s awaiting the results with her friend, a Taoist immortal named Wildeye and the goddess/bodhisattva Kuan Yin who showed up unannounced for reasons of her own:
Springshadow stood up. Her form was somewhere between fully human and fully vulpine; a transitional form that gave her human hands and other aspects of humans that were useful, without fully surrendering her fox senses, and she’d used it often. Only now there seemed to be more to it. Several “mores,” actually.
“My tail feels funny.”
“Say rather your tails, girl,” Wildeye said, and started counting.
“You’re a Heavenly Fox now, Springshadow. Look up,” said the goddess.
Springshadow looked up. There, in the distant sky far beyond the clouds, far beyond the mortal world yet clearly visible, clearly reachable, was a magnificent floating city with towers of gold and walls of the finest jade.
Wildeye gave a grunt of triumph as he finished his count. “Nine! And each as magnificent as the last.”
“What are you babbling about? Nine what?” Springshadow said, unable for the moment to take her eyes off of Heaven and the floating city.
“Tails, of course,” he said. “Yours.”
That finally got Springshadow’s attention. She quickly glanced behind her like a courtesan checking her appearance. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing, but she finally saw what Wildeye saw–fox tails.
Nine in all, and all, as Wildeye said, belonging to her. Attached.
“Nine?!”
“Nine.” Wildeye nodded in grudging respect. “You have to admit,” he said, turning to the goddess, “that’s pretty damn impressive.”
Meditations in Metalwork – AKA Follow Your Bliss(es)
For those who don’t know, the closest thing to a hobby I have is repairing the mountings or fabricating new ones for old Japanese swords. One thing about those swords was that they were hand-forged by different smiths following different schools and traditions, and using a special form of iron created in batches that also varied from year to year. In short, you’d be hard pressed to find two blades exactly alike, even though they both might be made by the same smith. As a result, blade collars (habaki), scabbards (saya), hilts(tsuka), etc, were all custom made to fit the blade they were to be used on. Traditionally, each was created by a specialist (and sub-specialist. The person who created the scabbard was probably not the same person who did the lacquer finish. Different specialty). In practice, I don’t have access to any of those specialists, so anything I need that requires a precise fit I will have to make myself. If I don’t have the skill, I have to acquire it.
For anyone still reading this (whose eyes haven’t glazed over), there’s actually a connection between this wild hare of mine and the writing. In fact, to call it a connection is to understate the case. They’re part of the same thing and there’s really no separating them.
