Writing

Fantasy For Good: ToC Announced

Received the galleys for “Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology” today and I’ve got to say it looks awesome. The release date has been set for 9th December 2014 and the Kindle edition is available to pre-order already. The trade paperback from Nightscape Press will also be pre-orderable soon (see links below).

All proceeds from the sale of this anthology go directly to Colon Cancer Alliance, a charity dedicated to the prevention of this deadly disease, as well as funding research and supporting patients who suffer from it. Having now read the moving foreword by the editors Richard Salter and Jordan Ellinger, the introduction by Trent Zelazny about his father’s silent battle with this cancer and the very important lessons he’s drawn from it, hearing about the involvement of Jay Lake and others touched by this terrible disease — it’s very much clear this anthology has been created from the heart. I hope it does really well and raises a hell of a lot of money for CCA.

Here is the table of contents. I’m humbled and feel privileged to be a part of it.

Table Of Contents
“Horseman, Pass By – An Introduction” – Trent Zelazny
“The Edge of Magic” – Henry Szabranski
“Annual Dues” – Ken Scholes
“The Kitsuneís Nine Tales” – Kelley Armstrong
“Elroy Wooden Sword” – S.C. Hayden
“In the Lost Lands” – George R.R. Martin
“Worms Rising From the Dirt” – David Farland
“Snow Wolf and Evening Wolf” – James Enge
“Knightís Errand” – Jane Lindskold
“Languid in Rose” – Frances Silversmith
“Green They Were, and Golden-Eyed” – Alan Dean Foster
“Golden” – Todd McCaffrey
“Mountain Spirit” – Piers Anthony
“Moon Glass” – Megan Moore
“The George Business” – Roger Zelazny
“Only the End of the World Again” – Neil Gaiman
“Lenora of the Low” – Marina J. Lostetter
“Trufan Fever” – Katherine Kerr
“Undying Love” – Jackie Kessler
“Dancing With the Mouse King” – Carrie Vaughn
“Showlogo” – Nnedi Okorafor
“The Bluest Hour” – Jaye Wells
“Pandal Food” – Samit Basu
“Loincloth” – Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta
“Man of Water” – Kyle Aisteach
“Bones of a Righteous Man” – Michael Ezell
“Timeís Mistress” – Steven Savile
“Little Pig, Berry Brown and the Hard Moon” – Jay Lake
“The Grenade Garden” – Michael Moorcock
“Sand and Teeth” – Carmen Tudor
“The Seas of Heaven” – David Parish-Whittaker

Kindle editions can be pre-ordered here:

Canada Pre-Order Link: http://www.amazon.ca/Fantasy-Good-Charitable-George-Martin-ebook/dp/B00NJY4GUE

Pre-Orders for the Trade Paperback edition will be available soon the Nightscape Press webstore: http://nightscapepress.wix.com/store 

If you do the Goodreads thing, you can add it to your “To Read” list here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23167420-fantasy-for-good

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#SFWAPro

Being Good Is Not Enough

Here are a few verbatim excerpts from some recent rejection notes I’ve received for different stories from different markets. Hopefully the editors and first readers who wrote them don’t mind — any advice or encouragement they take the time to send is always gratefully received. But it just goes to demonstrate that having an editor or slush reader like or even love your story isn’t enough. As well as being flawless, the fit and timing have to be just right.

Note: I’ve omitted the inevitable qualifiers, the list of perceived faults and deficiencies, the particular reasons the submission wasn’t appropriate for that market at that time, etc…so the skew here is obviously to the positive.
 
“This is well written, and riveting. The characterization is strong, the ending is just right. Your descriptions and narration were great…A beautiful story, expertly told…”
 
“I think this idea has great potential and I hope it finds a home. Your story made it quite far in our process and I’m sorry to let it go.”
 
“This is a perfectly good story…”
 
“… this piece is fantastic. Absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed the read…I loved this story — and I really do: the prose, the idea, the pace — …”
 
“…This is a very fine piece of sf…”
 
“…all the staff agreed that this story was very good…”
 
“…It had good imagery and the prose is fluid, so you can write well for sure…”
 
“This is a good story and I enjoyed reading it…”
 
“This has an inventive setting and the main character is interesting, and there are some beautiful bits of prose…”
 
So if all the above are true, what, then, does it take to achieve a sale?
 
Research the market you’re submitting to. Read what it publishes. Always follow the submission guidelines. Don’t forget that any story can always be improved: carefully consider the advice given, even if it can sometimes be contradictory (different editors have different tastes, target audiences, and visions for their market). If a common criticism emerges from different readers then take particular note…in the end, you can’t buck the market.
 
And always take this piece of advice to heart, because very few of my published stories sold to the first market they were submitted to, or to a market I had never been rejected from before:
 
“Please consider submitting to us again. Best success selling this story elsewhere.”
 

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Brain The Size Of A Star System…

“…and they ask me to calculate what?” (Apologies to Marvin the Paranoid Android fans.)

My flash story “Within Without” is now up at Lakeside Circus. There’s also a podcast version, read by the inestimable Don Pizarro. Various beta-readers commented on the machine-like quality of the “voice” in this story, yet Don manages to inject both a sense of gravitas and escalating urgency to his performance. I’m really pleased with it.

“Within Without” features a Matrioshka Brain, a solar-system sized calculating engine, facing an existential crisis. The story arose from a prompt requiring the use of frames — a story set within a story set within a story, etc. In the end I didn’t write anything like that at all, but instead used a nested structure. And even that was drastically abbreviated. So basically I utterly failed at satisfying the prompt criteria. Still…as to the story itself, you can judge for yourself.

A spiral structure in the material around the old star R Sculptoris. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Maercker et al.

A visualization of a spiral structure in the material around the old star R Sculptoris.  Not a matrioshka brain at all. No.
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Maercker et al.

Aslant

July. An uneasy, humid heat pervades the land. As far as I’m aware, no stories of mine are going to be published this month. (This is not something unusual.) Instead I’m concentrating on writing new stuff. Trying to finish off works in progress that have been stewing for months. Blasting out new ones before they get a chance to atrophy. Making sure the word engine stays ticking over. Making sure I keep looking at the world…aslant.

Dawlish Pier, photo by Henry Szabranski

Dawlish Pier, photo by Henry Szabranski

I See Faces In Things. Don’t You?

Pleased to announce my dark flash story “Animus” has been accepted by Horror D’Oeuvres.

I wrote this story whilst tossing and turning in bed with flu, so that may explain some of its hallucinatory fever dream vibe. Combine a high temperature with a writerly imagination and all sorts of strange visions may result. Once I was laid up with tonsillitis and I still clearly remember the weird fish that swam across the ceiling during my illness. And a fever wasn’t always required before I started to “see things”. As a child I was taken to the doctor because I claimed disembodied faces floated about my bed at night and stopped me from sleeping. A course of placebo sugar pills later and the apparitions faded away…or so I assured my worried parents.

Nowadays I hardly ever hallucinate. Apart from the boys’ toys (which are always chattering away to us and to each other), I haven’t heard common household items speak to me for a good long while. Although I admit I do hear voices emanating from my phone from time to time.

“Animus” will “go live” later this month, at 12 EST on 20th June (to be more or less exact). A site subscription is required to read the full story.

Update: “Animus”‘ is now live at the http://www.horrordoeuvres.com site.

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Fantasy Circus Or Lakeside Scroll?

Happy to learn a couple of stories have been accepted in the past few weeks. “Within Without”, a hard(ish) SF flash piece at Lakeside Circus, and a 5K story “The Dragonmaster’s Ghost” at Fantasy Scroll Mag. The latter is the third and very probably final instalment in the “Mevlish The Mighty” sequence of tales that started with “The Edge Of Magic“ and continued in “The Clay Farima“. I’m really pleased all three found good homes and readers can follow the whole saga (if they wish!).

Pure coincidence, but the current Issue 1 cover at Fantasy Scroll Mag by Jonathan Gragg is actually a pretty good match for the theme of “The Dragonmaster’s Ghost”. More details about this story and “Within Without” closer to their publication dates.

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Fantasy For Good

Very pleased to announce my story “The Edge Of Magic” will be included in the upcoming charitable anthology “Fantasy For Good”, edited by Richard Salter and Jordan Ellinger, published by Nightscape Press. Net proceeds will be going to Colon Cancer Alliance.

The anthology’s contributor line-up includes some of the best known names in fantasy writing. Frankly, I can’t believe I’m sharing a ToC with these people: Michael Moorcock (I grew up reading Elric, Corum, Von Bek, et al: they’re a part of my writerly DNA), Piers Anthony (again, I grew up reading early “Xanth” novels, “Kirlian Quest”, “Blue Adept”, etc.), Alan Dean Foster (before “The Empire Strikes Back” was more than an improvised twinkle in George Lucas’ eye, the only Star Wars sequel that existed was Foster’s “Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye“), Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Orokafor, Carrie Vaughn, Jay Lake…the stellar list goes on (see more here). Oh, and there’s also some guy called George RR Martin, who’s recently enjoyed some modicum of success with a popular long-form tale involving dragons, knights and zombies — but to me, he’ll always be the author of “A Song For Lya“, “Sandkings“, “In The House Of The Worm”, “The Way Of Cross And Dragon“…some of my very favourite SF stories.

Oh, and the anthology cover. Lookit that cover by Paul Pederson. Judge the book by it. Go on: judge it.

So yeah. Many, many reasons to rush out and buy multiple copies of this anthology when it comes out this summer.

I’m honoured and humbled to be a small part of it.

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Heart Of Darkness

If you’re popping over from the DSF e-mail blast of “The Key To El-Carim’s Heart” scheduled for Monday 2nd December — welcome! If you’re not — welcome anyway!

As mentioned in the story notes, “El-Carim” was inspired in part by my recollection of a film I saw as a child, “Captain Sindbad“. I haven’t seen it since, but I do still remember the seemingly impregnable tower with the villain’s heart locked in a chest. As it turns out, the villain in question was actually called “El Kerim”, so in one sense the name of my narrator and the title of the story is based on a badly researched Wikipedia entry (tip: don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, kids). Never mind, there’s not much else in common with the film apart from that central image of the heartless villain attempting to defy death itself.

Pedro Armedariz (left) as "El Kerim" (Captain Sindbad 1963)

Pedro Armedariz (left) as “El Kerim” (Captain Sindbad 1963) is pleased by the work of his cryptographic wizards.

Some beta-readers questioned the viability of a cryptographic key stored not as a computer file but printed on paper or parchment. Believe me — it’s been done, even if it’s not necessarily the most convenient method of storage or distribution.

“Carim” is a rather dark story, and that also was another issue some readers had, indeed I questioned it myself. Hopefully it will serve to remind us all to take more care of our precious keys.

“The Clay Farima” Reviewed

What’s the very worst that can happen after a story is published?

Terrible reviews? Death threats from readers? Death threats from the publisher? Being disowned by your spouse and children?

No.

Roaring silence. That’s the worst thing. Was the story any good? Was it really bad? Did anybody like it? Did anybody hate it? Did anybody read it at all? 

So I’m really pleased to see these reviews that came in for “The Clay Farima” after it was published in BCS #128 last month.

Terry Weyna for Fantasy Literature: Magazine Monday reviews BCS #127 & #128:

“It’s a fascinating tale” … “and my favorite in these two issues.”

Michelle Ristuccia for Tangent Online:

“From Farima’s direct and vivid introduction to the dramatic choice she faces at the end, Szabranski provides an engaging tale full of enjoyable complexities ranging from the magical to the familial.”

Lois Tilton for Locus Online:

“Surprisingly, this ends up being a story of love.” … “As the author is a theoretical physicist , the Source seems to be casting the working of magic in those terms, which more SFnally oriented readers may appreciate.”

…which all sounds great, don’t it? But hold up. Lest my head explode, giddy from praise, note also that Lois says:

“Farima as a narrator is too overwrought particularly in the beginning”

and Terry notes the story is:

“a trifle clumsy at times”

…but, hey. That’s cool, too. I still consider myself very much a beginner in the business of story writing.

It’s great to get any coverage and input from reviewers. It really helps.