We’re coming up on the end of the publishing year, which in some ways for me has been a little thin this time around. There are reasons for that, yes, but they don’t change the result. I’ve published four stories this year in the traditional way, and I use that term loosely since only two of those were print publications. Electronic media’s becoming the new “traditional,” and soon the idea of paper except for very special projects and limited editions will be seen as positively quaint. I was on track to publish five original stories, which is pretty typical for me, but we all know what happened to Realms of Fantasy. So it goes. I started to compile what would have been a very brief summary when it occurred to me that to consider only the traditional venues marginalizes what else I’ve accomplished this year, projects which I am rather proud of, frankly, both for breaking new ground in my attitudes and pushing my comfort zone into the 21st Century. So for the first time ever I’m going to give my yearly breakdown in two separate sections: Traditional, and eBook.
Short Stories Rock: Thoughts on a WFC Panel, 2002
This is a rant, of sorts, triggered by my participation on a panel at the Minneapolis World Fantasy Convention of 2002. I wrote it soon after the event and filed it away. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the 2002 model thought. That was then and this…well, it isn’t. For instance, I like writing novels, too. I even like the idea of having a readership. But at the time this was where my head was at, for what little that might be worth.
The panel itself wasn’t bad, though it kept devolving into “Are short stories stepping stones to a novel career?” which rather annoyed me, but that’s what the audience was interested in, so you go with the flow. My bluntly-stated “If you want to write short stories, write short stories. If you want to write novels, write novels. Doing one isn’t going to teach you the other” wasn’t exactly popular.
Can of Worms? Meet Can Opener
There exists, somewhere on the net, a small old-fashioned (seems odd to say it, but it’s true) discussion board. An eddy in the current of the internet, if you will, or rather a backwater. It was designed before blogging was a twinkle in the would-be pundits’ eyes, and hardly anyone goes there anymore. Except me, and a few other die-hards. We’re a self-selected and dwindling group at this point, but we hang on, and the reason we hang on is that we can talk about things there that no one in his or her right mind would put out on the internet. This place isn’t secret, but it isn’t indexed either, and the discussions there don’t propagate or get linked, and that’s how we like it. All as a preamble to a question that rather threw me. So much so that I’ve decided to consider it here.
The question was simple: “Do you, as a male fantasy writer, ever feel isolated in a field dominated by women?” Continue reading
Love in the Time of Trunk Stories
If you follow the field at all, every now and then you’ll hear disparaging remarks about something called a “trunk story.” An editor for a new magazine or anthology (or a new editor for an old magazine) will usually make it part of the submission guidelines: “Send me your best. I don’t want your trunk stories.” For the perhaps two of you at most who don’t know what that means, a trunk story is just one that hasn’t sold, and hasn’t sold in a persistent or dramatic fashion, to the point that the writer either loses confidence in it—if they ever had any—or simply, for want of another suitable market possibility, files it away. Sort of a “time out.” The “trunk” part was probably always metaphorical, unless one had enough manuscripts of that type that they required a physical trunk to contain them. Back in the days of paper subs, I found that a cardboard box worked just fine. Continue reading
Let it Snow…Within Reason
At the last writer’s group we got another assignment, but several people had to leave early and there wasn’t time to finish it, so we essentially got the challenge with a week to finish. So what would have been a piece of flash fiction grew into a 3300 word story that I wrote yesterday. I may want to do something else with this one, once I get the tweaks tweaked and the bugs debugged. Working title is “Have a Good Day,” with a nod to Jerome Bixby. If you don’t get the reference, clearly you haven’t watched enough of the old Twilight Zone tv series. You’re also probably an infant. Continue reading
