But What About Where There Are Only One Set of Footprints?

Friday 03rd September, 2010

When I was in primary school (ages nine to 13), the walk home took me about half-an-hour.  Most of it was on pavement along main roads, but there was some nice scenery.  I frequently walked home alone.

I had a rough time when I was at school.  Right from the day I started at age 5 to the day I left at age eighteen.  On my walks home, I’d tell myself stories–or maybe daydream, depending on how you want to define things.  A frequently recurring daydream I would have was that I’d be walking home, and an adult would call me over to sit down next to them on a wall surrounding a garden.  They’d call me over using my secret name, the name I used to talk to myself that no one else knew.  That would be how I knew I could trust them.

I’d sit down and they’d say, “hey [name], I just wanted to tell you–it’s going to be okay.  Trust me, it’s going to be okay.”

Then they’d give me a brand new school jumper, and disappear off somewhere.

I still tell myself stories and daydream, of course.  Last night, I was falling asleep and I made this daydream where I could go back in time to when I was in primary school and wait for an eleven-year-old version of myself on a garden wall.  I would have gone down the school earlier in the day to purchase a new school jumper (I worked out I would have to pay for it in pound coins because they wouldn’t accept our bank notes in 1991, and they certainly wouldn’t accept my chip-and-pin debit card).  I’d call my younger self over with his secret name, and tell him, “you know, it’s going to be okay.  Trust me, it’s all going to work out okay.”  Then I’d hand him the jumper, and disappear.

I didn’t remember about the daydreams I used to have until after I’d thought all of that.  I hadn’t thought about our secret name or that particular daydream for well over a decade.  It was only when it was all set in my mind last night that it connected with the memory.

Suddenly I was back in 1991, looking at the whole thing through a pane of glass.

A few years ago, all that hurt and heartache would have twisted me up inside and driven me on a weeks-long down spiral.  Last night, though, it just made me sad.  Very very sad that I felt so alone and desperate all those years ago.  And today, I’m still on my feet, doing what I do.

It’s easy to say, ‘what I went through made me who I am today’.  But if I had a time machine, I’d go back.  I’m walking down the path of my life with a whole host of past-me’s and future me’s, so I’ve never really been alone.  I don’t think it would destroy the timeline to let myself know that when I needed it the most.

Notes from the (Now Cleared!) SPM #8 Slush Pile

Wednesday 01st September, 2010

Well, the SPM #8 slush pile is now cleared.  Everyone’s either received their rejection, or has been passed up for Allegra to have look at.

The reading period was between 1^st April and 31^st May.  So clearing by the end of August isn’t exactly great, but at least it’s done now.  Something for me to work on in the future.

In total, we received 135 submissions, and I passed 22 up to Allegra.  I have no idea if that’s a good ratio or not, but it seems pretty good.

Main reasons for rejections

I always try to write a couple of hundred words to submitters to let them know why I’ve passed on something.  The rejections which I love to receive are the ones where I get feedback, so it seems like it’s something I should do.  I go to great lengths to avoid phrases like, ‘it just didn’t grab me’ or, ‘it didn’t pop off the page for me’.  It may be true, but it’s not useful and there’s a reason behind it, which may very well be useful.  So by banning myself from using such phrases, I have to look a little deeper and maybe say something helpful.

I don’t provide feedback on illustrations, though.  I don’t have the knowledge to understand why I don’t think something is suitable, I don’t have the language to articulate it to the artist, and I don’t have the expertise to offer suggestions on how to make something more suitable.  All I know is something either fits in the SteamPunk Magazine-shaped hole, or it doesn’t.  I feel like a Yahoo grunting and shrieking at the canvas when I try and say anything useful, which is embarrassing for me and a waste of the artist’s time.

(Also, being the needy author that I am, I always like it when someone writes back to their rejection.  I only got two, ‘fuck you’ responses back this time.  Everyone else was exceptionally kind.)

So, why did I pass on some pieces?

• “Not a good fit for the aesthetic or ethic of the magazine.”

I’m prepared to forgive artists an awful lot, but this one kind of annoys me.  It annoys me because I don’t understand it.  I mean, the magazine is called SteamPunk Magazine.  It’s part of the email address you typed in to submit here.  So why would you submit something with no Steam, and no Punk?

I understand the shotgun approach to the market.  But there’s got to be some mediation, certainly?  Your piece is going to be sitting a slush pile for three months.  Why would you have something out of play for three months, to a market which you can be pretty sure isn’t going to accept it?

There’s degrees, obviously, and those I can forgive.  Some things focused on the jolly old time the upper classes were having without even acknowledging everyone else in the world.  If you’re going to have a gentleperson explorer/adventurer/captain or whatever, you’ve got to acknowledge and deal with the fact that their position is one of vast privilege and, if your world is anything like ours, it’s built on the backs of a lot of very poor, very unhappy people.

And replacing motorcars and computers with steamcars and difference engines isn’t what a Steampunk world looks like.  A Steampunk world looks like any other fictional world:  Bright; rich; diverse; with its own history and society.  Replacing electricity with magic, in a straight swap with no world-building around it, doesn’t make a story fantasy.  Replacing our gadgets with Steampunk-themed gadgets doesn’t make something Steampunk.

• “Idea needs more development.”

I’m working on a theory.

My dad told me that there are only so many ideas, same way there are only so many musical notes.  What’s important is how you play them, not how many times they’ve been played before.

In fiction writing, there are plot elements which are diffuse but made up of several basic concepts.  Things, like, ‘child confronts parent’, ‘person achieves their dream’, ‘person falls in love’, ‘a discovery is made which turns the world in its head’.  I’ve started calling these chords.  In a short story, I reckon you need one of these chords per 1,500–2,500 words.  That’s a figure based purely on instinct and no research.  When you have too few of these per wordage, the story feels underdeveloped.  Characters seem a bit flat, the world they live in seem a bit simple, there’s unnecessary prose in there, motivations seem simple and therefore unrealistic, the story generates unanswered questions which distract…  I’m sure you know the feeling–it’s like eating a burger which is mostly bun.

In poetry, you get what I call ‘revelations’.  These are the little truths about life which pass most of us by most of the time.  Things like, ‘nature is man made’ or, ‘we are defined by our memories, but we choose what to remember’.  I don’t think things are so easily defined with poetry as with prose, but I reckon if your poem is under five lines, you don’t need more than one, and if it’s more that fifteen, you probably need two.  Over 25 or thirty you probably need three.  Again, my intestines talking rather than my brain.  Ideally, these revelations should be nested inside each other and you should give me enough information to figure it out for myself, without making it obvious.

But wait… can’t poetry just be beautiful?

No.  You’ve got to do something with it.  Just the same way prose needs to have direction and purpose, poetry does too.  It should be beautiful, but it should go somewhere.

Articles have salient points.  That is, a point which either confirms or contradicts the argument of the article.  One of these every five-hundred words or so is good.

• “Something is missing.”

I’ve tried putting this phrase, and variations of it, into foreign languages to make it sound a bit more mystic and academic.  (Mae’r gweithwyr wedi mynd is my favourite.)  But what I mean to say is the English version, so why muddy the waters?

Sometimes, when I’m reading something, I get the feeling that something is missing.  I can’t put my finger on what.  It’s a taste at the back of my tongue that just isn’t quite right.  It’s seeing a jigsaw with pieces missing, but not being able to tell which pieces because I don’t know what the picture should look like.  It’s walking through a building, turning a corner and finding scaffolding and space instead of the room which should be there.

I get this when editing my own work, but it’s okay because I have the architectural plans.  I just have to spend some time working out how make the leap from blueprints to reality.  When it’s someone else’s work, I can’t make that leap because nothing in the building lets me know what the missing room should look like.  All I know is that a room should be there, and isn’t.  The best I can say to people is, ‘if this was me writing, here’s what I’d put there’, or, ‘here are some bits that could be developed, some bits where a lose end might be hiding’.

Trends

I think I found a new trope in the slush pile:  Clockwork hearts.  Had quite a few of these turn up and, like every trope, some were done really well, so not so much.

A lot of clockwork automata turned up, too.  In fact, I’d say these are pushing airships out the number one spot.  Clockwork automata are the things people have turned to now we’re all bored of airships, I think.

I’ve been trying to find out if there are any particular themes or ideas that people seem to be drawn to at the moment.  The poetry this period was a hugely varied bunch with subjects ranging from beauty to war to politics to a whole bunch of other things.

Nearly all the fiction was set on alternate-world Earths.  I can only think of one off-hand which was set on another celestial body.  So, a distinct lack of space travel.  Instead, there were personal stories set in the distant future, alternate timelines or alternate pasts.  I wonder why space fiction is out of fashion at the moment… I mean, age of Empire and voyages of discovery seems the perfect thing to send up among the stars.  No aliens, either.  Hm, a Steampunk first contact story.  I’ll have to write that…

Individual protagonists succeeded through their own merit and hard work, which I think is a particularly Western aspiration.  There was at least one exception that comes to mind.  Generally, though, it was protagonist-against-the-world.

Also had quite a few articles of what might be called light-hearted folk wisdom.  You know, stuff like, ‘the joys to be found in pipe-smoking’ made of friendly prose and anecdotes.  Things which would make pretty good blog posts, but not necessarily articles.  (We didn’t get one called that, just in case you’re wondering.)

That and a number of articles on the current state of Steampunk and its immediate future.  This has always been a topic of discussion between Steampunks so it’s hardly surprising.

And now for the numbers

I promised you numbers!  Numbers are good!

So that means…
16.30% of all submissions were sent up to Allegra.

And also…
55.56% of illustration submissions were sent to Allegra;
22.22% of article submissions were sent to Allegra;
18.60% of fiction submissions were sent to Allegra;
10.60% of poetry submissions were sent to Allegra;
And 0% of comics and other were sent up to Allegra.

And further…
28.48% were on theme.

Of which…
33.33% of article submissions were on theme;
24.66% of poetry submissions were on theme;
18.60% of fiction submissions were on theme.

So, keep your eyes on the SPM blog which’ll be the first place where we’ll announce when SPM #8 is ready and back from the presses, and when the reading period for SPM #9 opens.

Aliette De Bodard on non-Anglophone Sci-Fi

Tuesday 24th August, 2010

For the one person out there who hasn’t read this yet, Aliette De Bodard writes about the cultural context of science-fiction and the historical context it belongs in, in the latest edition of Asimov’s.

Although the tone of the piece is a bit more academic and dry than I usually like my articles, it’s a very intelligent and thought-provoking read.

My favourite bit:

To a large extent, this means that what we consider international SF today, what we think of as good stories, as unforgettable narratives, are in fact shaped by Western Anglophone culture—and above all by US culture, just as our movie-making is permeated by Hollywood, and our television is strongly influenced by American programs.

Does this make SF in other countries derivative? We might argue at first sight that it does. Many of the tropes of science fiction are Western or even American: the biggest one, arguably, is the scientific approach itself, which as we have seen originates from the West, and has often been imported wholesale (countries such as Japan are an amazing exception).

The Re-Re-Re-Release of the Jedi

Wednesday 18th August, 2010

As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Star Wars OT are getting yet another repolish and re-release, this time for Blu-Ray.  I’m sure I’m not the only fan to treat this news with an unpleasant combination of squeeing joy and despondent groans.  I’m sure I’m not the only one unhappy we’ll be seeing the 1997 re-releases instead of the original cinematic releases, or at least the 80’s VHS releases.  Those 80’s VHS releases are what we grew up watching, George, those are our films.

Still, we should at least have the original voice actors of the storm troopers, Boba Fett and Anankin’s original ghost at the end of RoTJ, not Hayden Christensen.

Every time there’s a new release, it feels like trekking up a mountain for a dubious award at the top.  It’s making me tired, George, very tired.

Still, the Blu-Ray release has brought a few treats, such as this piece in the LA Times on Gary Kurtz’s parting of ways with George Lucus.  (Kurtz is a guest at Star Wars Celebration V, which Lucas used to tell fans about the Blu-Ray release.)  Kurtz helped shape the idea from its infancy, and produced the first two films (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back).

“I could see where things were headed,” Kurtz said. “The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that’s not the best thing for making quality films… The first film and ‘Empire’ were about story and character, but I could see that George’s priorities were changing.”

Read the whole thing.  Han got of lightly.

There’s also deleted scenes.  In case you haven’t seen the ‘lost’ opening scene to Return of the Jedi, here you go:

It continues to baffle me that Lucas can shoot whole scenes, and then decide not to use them.  Surely you should do all the editing to the script before you start shooting.  Or at least the major edits.  But not Lucas.  It seems like he writes the film as he shoots it, which can’t be cheap.

After a bit of hunting online, though, I did manage to find the original storyboard for this scene:

And if you haven’t seen The Phantom Edit, do so.  It’s what The Phantom Menace would be if it was a good film.  (Google will guide you to a watchable version.  I hear if you know what a torrent program is, it’ll be a lot easier.)

Review: Dark Faith, Edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon

Monday 16th August, 2010

Dark Faith can be purchased from the Apex Book Company around about here.

I’m not a man of great spiritual conviction, but you don’t need to believe in anything to see the extremes faith can drive human beings to–everything from the Pyramids in Giza and Lincoln Cathedral to any of the tales of genocide you fancy pulling out of the history books. I love the idea of faith, this quantity which seems able to push human beings above and beyond what psychology and our bodies would have us believe is possible. So I wanted to see how a bunch of horror writers approached the idea.

I was worried about getting a book full of Judeo-Christian morality tales, but I shouldn’t have been so close-minded.

Those stories with religious veins do seem to draw from Judeo-Christian roots. Even Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation by Douglas F. Warrick roots itself to a recognisably Western vision of Hell before branching off. So I was a bit disappointed by the lack of religious breadth. I was hoping for a window into religions I know only vaguely or not at all. Douglas branches out of our Anglo-centric sphere and Mary Robinette Kowal’s Ring Road is built from the stones of old Icelandic beliefs and folktales, but they’re the only ones.

Only a few stories, though, rely on religion. Paint Box, Puzzle Box by D. T. Friedman is a beautiful piece about art, love and life. The Greatest Artist in the World escapes Death by painting an entire world onto canvas. The world he paints contains people who paint their own worlds and the artist disappears in worlds within worlds within worlds. The ending is bitter-sweet, but eminently satisfying. The Days of Flaming Motocycles by Catherynne M. Valente is, as the back cover to the book says, the spiritual side of the zombie apocalypse. It’s a slow, gentle story that perfectly captures the narrator’s voice and builds to a revelation as awe-inspiring as the abductees finding the Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters. And Ekaterina Sedia’s You Dream is as cold and empty as a Moscow winter and the childhood the protagonist spent there. It has flavours of Jacob’s Ladder and Flatliners but that’s no bad thing–they’re damned good movies and Ekaterina makes them her own.

I’m glad that Kyle S. Johnson’s Go Tell it to the Mountain was so close to the beginning, because it told me something I should have known already: I’m going to like the stories who’s ideas of faith I agree with, and dislike those I disagree with. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like Wrath James White’s He Who Would Not Bow. I’ve never had much time for literal readings of the Bible, either explaining or condemning it. Maybe it’s also why I didn’t like Mother Urban’s Book of Dayes by Jay Lake. The Craft was an okay film when I was a teenager but the whole ‘urban witchcraft’ thing has been so over-done that not even the dog will eat it any more. And I guess I’m just so sick of the Lovecraft-inspired stuff that’s becoming ubiquitous these days that three such pieces in this one anthology was a bit much for me.

So what am I saying? There’s bits of the anthology I loved, and bits I wasn’t impressed by. The bits I loved told me what I wanted to hear and the other bits were broadcasting on a different frequency to me. What a terribly dull book it would be for everyone else if I loved every story in it. There’s a large range of voices, styles and ideas contained in the anthology, things that comfort and confront and challenge with twists which left me feeling uneasy or satisfied or sad or all of them. It’s a collection of stories about humanity, as a collection about faith should be.

The caveat is that is it seems to be written by Westerners, for Westerners. Being a Westerner, I’m not going to complain too much. The Unremembered, by Chesya Burke, Lavie Tidhar’s To the Jeresulum Crater and Ring Road are exceptions. So maybe saying it’s about ‘humanity’ is a bit too broad. It’s about a part of humanity. But it’s about a part of humanity which includes me, and an awful lot of other people.

So did I get what I wanted? Yeah, I did. I found what I paid my money for. And the best part is that there’s a good chance a lot of other people will be able to find what they’re looking for, too. Well hey, isn’t that what faith is for?

For those of you who really give a crap about what some random guy on the Internet thinks, after the cut there are notes I made on each piece as I went through and read.

Read The Rest of This Post? »

Climbing the Mountain, One Rock at a Time

Tuesday 10th August, 2010

The Launch Pad lectures inspired me (well, Rachel’s notes on them inspired me) to write a story called Buckets of Light, a short piece about a black hole and how we don’t know everything about everything just yet.  That’s in the slush pile at Clarkesworld and it’s been there since Friday, so I’m expecting a response any time now.  I’m expecting a rejection.

My story set in the 1930s, The Ash Princess, is in the slush pile over at Apex.  It’s been there since the 3^rd August, so I’ve got a while to wait on that one.

Angeline of the Woods was rejected by Drollerie Press yesterday, and The Reason of Feathers Justice B. by Weird Tales on the 16^th July.

Symphonie Magnifique is under the editor’s critical eye for the Clockwork Chaos anthology.

Playing Red Dead Redemption has made me want to write a ‘sequel’ to The Ash Princess set around 1959, when the characters are older and winding their lives down.

The last piece of fiction I had published was Of Mice and Journeymen, in issue #6 of SPM.  That came out almost a year ago now.  Before that, I had Mind Games in issue #5 of Concept Sci-Fi, released in April ’09 and now sadly no longer around.

I guess I’m just feeling a little disheartened at the moment.  It’s not even like I can call it a ‘dry spell’, because that implies a period of wet.  Since my first acceptance in 2007, I’ve had 6 pieces of fiction and one piece of non-fiction published, all in non-paying venues.

I know you’ve just got to keep hitting at the wall until a chink of light breaks through.  I know my writing is becoming better and better.  And I write because I have to, because it’s the way my brain processes the world it’s stuck in.  And I want to have my writing published because there’s a conversation happening, an exchange of thoughts and feelings and ideas and I want to be an active part of it, because I’ve got something worth contributing.  So I’m going to keep writing, keep sending things out and keep getting rejected.

But what’s the point in having a blog if you can’t be a bit maudlin once in a blue moon?  What’s the point in being human if you can’t admit that it gets to you once in a while?

Ho, well.  My writing ‘career’ my suck at the moment, but the universe is awesome.  Full of black holes and main sequence stars and cosmic dust clouds and gas giants and rocky planets drifting through the goldilocks zone, and I’m a part of it whether I’m being published or not.

Feels good to get all this into words.  Although I do now want a bag of crisps or a bar of chocolate, which I really shouldn’t have because I’ve put on so much damned weight over the past couple of months.

So, I’ll be good.

Back to the blank page…