mariness

Poet extraordinaire Amal El-Mohtar has been yelling at everyone to do this, so --

Writing is an odd thing: what you are actually doing, and what others see, is often far apart.

2013 was a classic example of this for me.

I know I've talked a lot about not writing as much as I should, but the first half of 2013 took this down to an all time low. I barely wrote at all; which made me feel even worse about my writing. In July, matters improved, but improved only in comparison to the first half of the year; it was worse than previous years. And all this while my fellow writers were happily totaling up booming word counts and publications on Twitter. Gulp.

But you might not guess any of that from my publications in 2013. As I noted earlier, I managed to publish nine full length short stories this year, five of them at "pro" rates, including one at Tor.com; three flash stories, including one over at McSweeney's; and five poems. That's rather fewer poems than in recent years, but I haven't been writing as much poetry, so the decline is to be expected.

Anyway, here's the rundown of the stories:

Probably the most widely read and popular (barring a couple of dissenters) was In the Greenwood, Tor.com, December, a folktale retelling, which has popped up in a couple of best of lists for 2013. Publishing being what it is, this is also the oldest (in terms of when I wrote it) story on this list.

Runner-up probably was The Princess and Her Tale, Daily Science Fiction, May, another folktale retelling.

Other retellings of folklore and fairy tales included The Gifts, Daily Science Fiction, September; and "Godmother," "Marmalette" and "Palatina" in Missing Links and Secret Histories, Aquaduct Press, July 2013, which more people should read, because the other stories in it are hilarious, and no, I'm not just saying that. I still pull out the book to cheer myself up.

Stepping away from the folklore retellings for a bit, we have the only story set in my "Stoneverse" setting, An Assault of Color, Apex, October 2013, which has started to appear, much to my surprise, in a few best of lists for the year. This surprising because no one seemed to notice it when it first came out. Remember that reality versus perception thing I was mentioning? Here's another example.

And something that was not a folktale retelling or tied to anything else I've written was The Dragon and the Bond, about, well, a dragon. And a Bond. But not James Bond, despite the obvious joke that several people picked up on after the story was published. I have to say I missed that entirely; then again, one of the hardest parts of writing for me remains coming up with a title. This story is called "The Dragon and The Bond" because, well, not to give too much of the story away, it has a dragon and it has a bond and after spending far, far too long trying to come up with a title I just went with two things that were in the story.

And there's the writing process in action, everyone!

Anyway, title issues aside, "The Dragon and the Bond" was one of my personal favorites from last year, along with Stronger Than the Wind, Stronger Than the Sea, Demeter's Spicebox, July 2013; a combination of science fiction and fairy tale.

And then the three pieces of flash fiction:

What to Expect When You're Expecting Cthulhu, McSweeneys, August 2013, humor, and the only piece this year that I cackled over as I wrote it.

Seaweed, Daily Science Fiction, August 2013, part of the fairy tale series that yes, I do plan to finish one of these days, along with the connecting bits.

A Winter's Love, Goldfish Grimm, December 2013.

And poems:

"Gleaming," Mythic Delirium, Issue 28, April 2013

"Walking Home," Dreams and Nightmares, Issue 95, June 2013

Iron Search, inkscrawl, August 2013

Mountain, Through the Gate, August 2013

The Loss, Strange Horizons, September 2013.

Along with this I also published one or two posts per week over at Tor.com, covering works by Mary Norton, Roald Dahl, Lloyd Alexander, Christopher Moore, and Georgette Heyer. That turned out to be a bit too much, so since the Georgette Heyer reread is over, this is going to drop back down to the usual one post per week plus very occasional extras -- yes, yes, I am looking forward to that upcoming Oz movie -- to let me breathe a little.

Now to see what 2014 brings. If the stars align, it should bring at least three short story publications, two flash fiction pieces, one novella, and one poem so far....but we'll see.

Just before the Thursday morning Stroll With the Stars I heard a rumor that Programming was having some issues thanks to last minute cancellations and other things, with several panels having empty slots. Eyes rolled over in my direction.

Now, for various reasons, I haven't been on any panels at science fiction/genre conventions before (other types, yes). Partly this is because I still feel like more than a bit of an imposter at cons, but mostly, this is because I have a very unpredictable illness which may mean that I will have to cancel at the last minute – and may not be able to let anyone know that I am cancelling.

However. Thursday morning I was high on sugar and caffeine (thank you overpriced Starbucks) and trying to figure out how to cancel my ongoing guilt/imposter feeling. So after the Stroll With the Stars a very kind person took me to the convention center, where I met up with another very kind person who offered to take me to Programming.

Through no fault of WorldCon, Programming happened to be located in arguably the Most Difficult To Find Place in San Antonio. The volunteer and I went Round and Round and Round, and then, for a change, Round, and then more Round, before finally finding the place. There I met a clearly overworked woman desperately trying to work out con schedules. I gave her my brief bio and what I'm sorta known for (Oz, poetry, short fiction, children's literature.)

I was offered the Disability in Science Fiction panel.

I use a wheelchair.

I was also warned that the Disability in Science Fiction panel did not have a ramp to the stage but since I was now part of the panel she would try to find a solution. I was also put on the How to Publish Your Poetry panel, and then I took the little Water Taxi back to the hotel.

About an hour later, a poetry editor rejected a couple of my poems, kinda solidifying my thought that this whole paneling thing was really not a great idea, unless everyone wanted to learn How to Get Your Poems Rejected. That, I'm really really good at. I was also worried about the Disability in Science Fiction panel, largely because I mostly read biographies and mysteries, not science fiction, and I knew the other panelists knew more of the field than I did. A couple of very nice conrunners/SMOFs from another con assured me that even if I threw up on other con panelists worse things have happened. So, I stayed on.

Saturday morning Rachel Swirsky texted me to say that Nancy Hightower was moderating a Prose by Day/Poet by Night panel at 11 am which now only had two people on it and could I fill in? I said yes and got more coffee. Another very nice person pushed me over to the SFWA meeting which started at 10.

At 10:30 I left the SFWA meeting to make it to my poetry panel. I pulled out my little Helpful Map where my route had been marked out by a Worldcon volunteer. This meant going down carpet (check!) going up an elevator (check!) following my little map and going forward (check!) finding myself at another convention....

Uncheck.

After a short discussion with the People Magazine convention we agreed that I could cut through their convention IF I was escorted. I put my hands up and didn't look at anything (then) and made it to the other side. I decided to visit a bathroom, which went as those things do until I came out and someone accidentally spilled hot coffee over my right hand. Ouch. I headed over more carpet and looked at my watch and my little map and decided to ask for the most efficient route. Luckily at this point Juan Sanmiguel spotted me and took me to the panel, arriving at 10:59. Yes, it had taken me nearly a half hour to get from the SFWA meeting to the panel.

Where the three other panelists (L.E. Modesitt had joined at the last minute) were all up on a stage that did not have a ramp.

So they stayed on the stage and I stayed on the floor with a mike.

Otherwise I think that panel went well although I admit I was kinda sad when Locus came in to take a picture and missed me because they didn't realize I was part of the panel (it was when the others were talking). Oh well. Otherwise, it was a great discussion.

Sunday I headed over to the Disability in Science Fiction panel. There was no ramp to the stage. Instead, tables had been set up and we all sat in front of the stage to accommodate me. This was a relatively large room and people in the back apparently couldn't see me (some people later told me they couldn't figure out why we weren't on the stage until I mentioned that I was in a chair, but even then, they couldn't see that access to the stage was up steps, not a ramp. Also, the panel did not have an ASL interpreter. (I don't think any panels did, but for the Disability panel, that would have been a nice touch, especially since the subject of the Deaf community/writers did come up.)

I'm not going to rehash that panel here except to say that yes, I was upset, and no, honestly, I am not dealing with illness related stuff, including the wheelchair, right now all that well at all (in case it wasn't incredibly obvious.) Working on this. I also suspect that my disappointment about the Alamo (separate post) played a role.

Anyway.

A Florida friend not at the con told me to get away from the con for a bit, so I did, avoiding everyone. And took a nap. Then I came out and crept back over to the convention center for the How to Publish Your Poetry panel. This was me, Jo Walton, Rachel Swirsky and another older gentleman whose name I didn't catch. Jo asked us all to explain why we were on the panel. In answer to this, the gentleman noted that he'd been asked at the last minute to join the panel and be a warm body, and that he had last published poetry in the 1960s. Somewhat later he noted that he had written poetry to pick up girls, and that he had stopped writing poetry when it didn't get him any girls. Rachel Swirsky, who is awesome, instantly responded, "I don't know. I get plenty of girls."

I thought this panel was otherwise ok, although apparently some of my residual anger/emotional reactions were still around; the audience later said they found me intimidating. I don't feel particularly intimidating, so this is a hard word to wrap my mind around. I'm also not sure if I got my main point across, which is that we are currently in what I would call a miraculous, marvelous age for speculative poetry, with poets doing incredible work with traditional forms, experimental forms, fun forms, and just transforming words into beauty, so marvelous I want everyone to be a part of it.

It was an interesting experience overall, but I think I should probably stick to not being on panels for awhile.

Edited to add: To be clear, compared to a couple of past events, this was relatively accessible. The Marriott Rivercenter was mostly ok except for a few hiccups. The real problems happened outside the Marriott Rivercenter hotel, and were generally more associated with San Antonio/typical accessibility things.

1. Today's mail brought something fun: my copy of One Sentence Stories, featuring -- spoiler -- 16 stories told in a single sentence, one by me. You can get the pdf for free at the link, but I have to say, this is a seriously cute little book in printed form. I have it up on my bookshelf of Things I Am In, pulled out from the other books before it gets lost.

2. Speaking of short little pieces, I also have a tiny poem in the latest issue of Dreams and Nightmares, which you can order for sample $5, pdf $1, paypal jopnquog [at] gmail [dot] com.

3. And speaking of tiny creatures, the latest Tor.com post, about the Borrowers again, is up at Tor.com.

Over on Amazing Stories, blogger Paul Cook has written a scathing commentary on science fiction poetry, saying that it all sucks.

Here's the slight problem with his argument: he is basing it entirely on some poems from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com.

Now, I don't want to knock either zine. (Especially and for obvious reasons Tor.com.) But, and this is key, neither Asimov's nor Tor.com focuses on speculative poetry. Tor.com publishes a few poems to celebrate National Poetry Month once per year. Asimov's publishes more, but the chief focus there is fiction.

Thus, it's not surprising that only one poem from Asimov's and one poem from Tor.com were mentioned in the very long complete list of last year's Rhysling nominations. (The list from this upcoming year hasn't been released yet, so I just took the most recent one.) The winners were all published in other zines, both online and print. The last time a poem published in Asimov's won a Rhysling Award was in 2003. Not a single poem from Asimov's or Tor.com appeared on the Dwarf Stars list either. Versification, which focuses on reviewing speculative poetry zines and collections, doesn't mention Asimov's, although it does review a Tor.com poem. This...actually might speak well of Asimov's from Cook's point of view, since he also calls most Rhysling Award winners "puerile and, more often than not, embarrassing." Which may or may not be true* -- except that rather than looking at actual Rhysling Award winners, he looks at Asimov's poems, which are not necessarily the same thing.

I'll just skip over Cook's comment that science fiction poets receive "too much sycophancy and worship" (speaking of which, when do I get the sycophants? Is there an order form someplace) and his analysis of the Asimov's poems, and use the polite term for this sort of review: cherry-picking. Because Cook has managed to denounce all of science fiction poetry (yes, the first sentence of the post says "the three main short fiction journals in the field" ** but then assumes, and I would argue incorrectly, that these journals are representative of the speculative poetry field, even though none of these three journals claim to focus on the field) based on limited reading -- and while ignoring the zines that specifically focus on speculative poetry.

Most of these zines are online. (Dreams and Nightmares, which started way back in 1986, and Mythic Delirium are two that remain in print.) These include Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, Astropoetica, inkscrawl, Through the Gate, and New Myths. And there's Strange Horizons, publishing a mix of poetry and fiction.

This is a very incomplete list. But what's striking about it is that at least two of the zines above -- Stone Telling and Strange Horizons -- are already publishing what Cook claims to want. (At least, Stone Telling is as close as I think any zine can come to "Sylvia Plath in space," although that's not exactly what Stone Telling is doing, and I type that knowing that its two editors may descend upon me in wrath for typing that phrase.) If you are looking for allusive, metaphorical, ambiguous work, poetry that stretches the boundaries of imagination and language, you might well want to look at the above zines.

And then we have his statement here:

There is a reason why SF poetry doesn’t work and it has to do with the nature of science fiction itself. (And that reason is the chief explanation why we don’t return year after year to science fiction poems when we return to Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, E.A. Robinson, and Wallace Stevens).

Well, except that among the best known poems in English are "The Raven," "The Lady of Shallot," and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," all of which have more than a touch of the fantastic, if not, I admit, robots. Also, Browning and Robinson explored the fantastic every once in awhile, suggesting that yes, we do return year after year to poems that stretch into the fantastic.

We all do this sort of thing all the time of course -- The Bachelor sucks! Therefore, all reality TV sucks! -- me included. And I'm all for speculative poetry criticism. But an indictment of an entire genre based on just a couple of examples from journals not even claiming to represent the field makes me gulp.

On a related note, to avoid the same type of accusation, I think I'll go back and add more to my discussion of sexism in The Count of Monte Cristo before posting that.


* I found the poems in last year's Rhysling anthology to be a mixed bag -- some excellent, some not excellent, but that might be a question of my personal taste.

** This is a problematic statement for other reasons. Analog, Asimov's and F&SF are major in the field, but I'm not sure they can still be called the only main short fiction journals in the field. This is admittedly hard to quantify because it's not always clear if page views come from actual readers or bots, but page views suggest that Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed have more readers than the three print journals. In terms of award nominations, which is an even more problematic method of judging readership/influence/etc., in the last three years nominees for the Hugo and Nebula awards have come from those three print journals AND Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex, Tor, and anthologies, in both the short story and novelette categories, as well as Giganotosaurus for the novelette category. So I'd say the field for major short fiction journals has expanded, which is an excellent thing for everybody.

The inaugural issue of Through the Gate has just been published, led off by my poem, Rahab. It also contains poems by several other marvelous poets, including Rose Lemberg, Sonya Taaffe, Michele Bannister, Adrienne Odasso and many more.

I'm extremely pleased to be part of the launch of this (and kinda stunned that my poem started things off...that I wasn't expecting.) If you need some myth and magic in your day today, given in words dripping with beauty, this would be where to start.

1. So while I was mostly out of it over the last few days, the goblins released the latest issue of Goblin Fruit, which contains my little poem Reversals But that's not important. What's actually important is that, as a special gift to me, the editors INCLUDED VILLANELLES. IN THE PLURAL. Here is C.S.E. Cooney's It Only Takes a Cauldron and a Dash of Thyme, AND ONE WITH A HURRICANE, Melissa Frederick's Hurricane Ophelia (no, really!). The issue has some other remarkable pieces in it as well, so go read it already.

(Mind you, I also sense that this means C.S.E. Cooney is about to outclass all of us again at the next poetry reading, but she just does that sort of thing.)

2. Also while I was out of it Freddy the Pig reread trotted on with chatter about Freddy the Cowboy. I think the next Heyer post should be up tomorrow -- there's been some hiccups in that process, mostly involving me, but I'm hoping we'll be back on an iffy schedule for that one soon.

3. Finally, not about me, but I'm very pleased to announce that the Kickstarter for Clockwork Phoenix 4 managed to get fully funded. Which means that the goals just got a little loftier. If it gets just a bit more money -- say, hitting the $8000 mark -- editor Mike Allen will be able to pay professional rates. So, if you were considering this (and bear in mind that backers get ebooks and particularly generous backers get ebooks AND JEWELRY), consider harder!

(Course, this means I should probably think of actually writing something for this anthology, Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.)

First, the very good news: Issue 7 of Bull Spec is finally here, featuring the usual mix of excellent short fiction and fascinating interviews, along with a small poem, "Laurels," by yours truly. You can pick up either a print (directly from Bull Spec) or online (through Weightless Books or Wizard's Tower Books) edition.

Second, for those of you heading to Wiscon, I'm pleased to note that you'll be able to find my little poem "Encantada" in Stone Telling's Here, We Cross chapbook, which will be available at the con. Also available at the con, a book I'm not in, but which is also edited by the same person who brought us Stone Telling in the first place, Rose Lemberg: The Moment of Change. Rumor has it that if you go to the launch party for that particular book you will get cookies. Excellent poetry AND cookies, yay!

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In hopefully untrue news, Twitter is reporting the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His work has had a pretty profound influence on me, and this is sad news. ETA: Internet hoax.

Two completely unrelated bits of news before I head out on today's expedition:

1) Rose Lemberg is bringing back inkscrawl, that beautiful little zine devoted to tiny bits of speculative beauty, under the editorship of Samantha Henderson. You can read more about this here.

2) Legossss, my preciousses, Legos.... I'm almost willing to walk into Mordor for these....

Oh, and while I'm thinking about that, if you have a spare moment or so, you might just want to head over to Google Maps and request directions for walking to Mordor. You'll find them helpful.

1. As I announced in a couple places elsewhere, my poem Snowmelt was nominated for a Rhysling Award.

I don't often have favorites among my poems, but "Snowmelt" was one of the rare poems that entirely satisfied me, and hands down the poem I was proudest of last year. I have, you see, a slight – very slight – obsession with structured poetry, but I can only rarely make it work. "Snowmelt," which mingles a triolet, rondeau, pantoum and a sonnet in with other mirrored and structured works, takes that obsession to new levels, and I'm delighted that someone else has decided to indulge my obsession with a nice nod of recognition.

Assuming the goblins cooperate, I believe we'll have a bit more news about Goblin Fruit, where this poem initially appeared, in the next few days....although you never quite know with goblins. Tricksy creatures, they be.

2. And since it's Thursday, it must be time for another Tor.com post, this one about A Wind in the Door. I'll also note that people have already started chattering about A Severed Wasp in the comments on earlier posts, which suggests that we'll be having some interesting comments once we get to that book (not for a few more weeks.)

3. A few other good and interesting things are happening on the publishing front that I can't blog about quite yet, but, well, as they say, watch this space. Nothing good is happening on the writing front, where my work in progress can be best compared to that of a turtle who has decided that, you know, even this crawling thing is Too. Much. I've just been too tired to think clearly.

....why is the Batman theme song playing outside?

Anyway. Off to try to trick out a few more words.

Mythic Delirium #25 is here! Purchase information at the link, and yes, you want to purchase, you do, because this particular issue has a couple of poems by me and also includes poems by such luminaries as Catherynne Valente (catvalente), Sonya Taaffe (who incidentally also has a new poetry collection available from Papaveria Press, Rose Lemberg (rose_lemberg), Mary Turzillo, Rachel Manija Brown, and others.

One of these others is Ann K. Schwader, who I mention because this is the first time I've ever appeared on the same table of contents with the same person twice in more or less one month -- she also has some excellent work available in Future Lovecraft. That's either awesome, or further proof that Cthulhu's influence is spreading. Let's go with the explanation of awesome. Much safer that way.