mariness

Whoops - I didn't realize that I forgot to post here about a rare double publication day for me this week. First up, The Ceremony, a gender bent tale of Supreme Court, over at Fireside Fiction. Second, The Water Beating Against Your Skin, a poem more or less about the natural springs in Florida.

Enjoy!

My story, You Will Never Know What Opens, just popped up at Lightspeed Magazine.

You can also get a copy of the issue for $3.99, or, better yet, buy a year's subscription for $35.88 - which is a savings of about 25% off the cover price.

I had a horrible time trying to figure out a title for this story.  That's not one of my skills to begin with - thus the questionable titles for many of my pieces - but this one was particularly difficult. I finally submitted the piece under the title "The Doors," only to have the editor, John Joseph Adams, tell me that the title was not very good.

I couldn't argue the point, and focused on coming up with more titles. Alas, the Lightspeed editors were equally unenthusiastic about:

"You Are Incapable of Summing Up This Story with a Decent Title"

"For the World Is Hollow and I Can't Think of a Title"

and the one I still kinda regret not going with

"Hamlet, Because That's Been a Pretty Successful Play, and Maybe the Title Is Why"

Ah well. At least the story has a title now.

Enjoy!

The second part of my short story, "The Huntsmen," a retelling of "The Twelve Huntsmen," a tale originally collected by the Brothers Grimm in the early 19th century, is now up at Truancy.

As a kid, I loved the story because it featured girls Doing Things - cross dressing, tricking lions, hunting, tricking adults - all great stuff. It took me years to realize just how weird the story is, even apart from the cross-dressing, and to find myself asking questions. A lot of questions. Which turned into several short stories, including this one, with at least one more coming up in Daily Science Fiction next year.

Meanwhile:

Part one.

Part two

Enjoy!

The latest issue of Fireside Fiction just went live, and with it, my short story, The Middle Child's Practical Guide to Surviving a Fairy Tale, the story I read at last year's World Fantasy Con and this year's ICFA. Originally written as a Twitter joke, it slowly grew into a blog post, as these things do, and then mutated into a short story.

Also just going live, the latest issue of Lightspeed, available for subscribers or as an individual issue, which includes my short story, "Deathlight," along with new short stories by An Owomoyela, Seanan McGuire, and Wole Talabi, reprints from a number of well known names including Tim Pratt and Elizabeth Hand, and Hugh Howey's "The Plagiarist."

I may have a bit more to say about this one once my individual story goes live on the web on May 17, but for now, I'll just note that the two stories are, I think, quite different - and not just because one is more or less fantasy (if a bit snarky about it) and the other marks my return to hard science fiction.

Enjoy!

The first half of my latest venture in fairy tales, "The Huntsmen," is now up at Truancy. The second half is coming soon.

Enjoy!

Accidental double publication day!

First up, a day early, The Petals, over at Daily Science Fiction, the latest in the ongoing series of flash fairy tales that I genuinely do hope to finish, with the framing story, at some point. (Glances at the Excel sheet tracking that series.) Whoops! Well, in the meantime, at least this one is out.

Second, issue 7 of Lackington's is out, with my story, Sometimes Heron.

Let's chat about this one for a bit. "Sometimes Heron" was written in 2008, when I was at the Mayo Clinic. Not a typo. I wrote it in bits and pieces. After a few rejections, it sold to a publication which closed down a few months later. A few more rejections, and it sold to a second publication - which also closed down a few months later.

By that time, to put it mildly, I felt a bit discouraged. On the one hand, I figured that the story couldn't be that awful, if editors were buying it (twice!). On the other hand, it seemed to be killing various publications, which seemed a bit unfair to said publications. I trunked it for a couple of years, and then started shooting it out here and there again.

I mention this mostly as an illustration of what the writing/publishing industry can be like. It's one reason why this can be a very depressing career - so much of writing/publishing is outside your control. I'm not just talking rejections/acceptances - though that's also outside your control - but things like this as well.

In any case, I'm very grateful that it's at last found a home at Lackington's, and I hope you enjoy both.

My latest short story, Inhabiting Your Skin, just popped up over at Apex Magazine, along with an interview with me.

In the interview, Andrea Johnston asks questions about why so many of my stories - including this one - don't have character names. Usually it's because I can't think of names, to the point where I deliberately wrote an entire story around that. In the case of this particular story, however, I knew from the first sentence that nobody would have a name - you'll see why as you read it, I think.

The actual problem I had with this story was with the title. I went through 30 different titles for this story, all worse than the last. "Inhabiting Your Skin" wasn't, as it happened, the final title - by mistake, I sent Apex the story with an earlier version of the title. By the time they responded, I'd realized that the final title was even worse, and told myself I would just try to think of a new title before the story was published.

Which didn't happen. Oh well. I can only say now that in my opinion - for what that's worth - the story is a bit better than the title. Enjoy!

I'm back, more or less, but only in the physical sense: I'm mildly feverish and very fatigued. But just to note a few things that happened while I was away:

1. Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, popped up for preorder everywhere, and also started collecting its first (favorable) reviews. The anthology includes my story "Memories and Wire," AND short stories by Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Ken Liu, Rachel Swirsky, Genevieve Valentine, and E. Lily Yu. It should be available in September.

2. Uncanny Magazine met not only its initial Kickstarter goals, but also its stretch goals, meaning that we have a full year ahead filled with fantastic fiction – including at least one little poem by me.

3. I continued to blog for Tor.com, covering the Green Knowe books by Lucy M. Boston. I bring this up largely because this month included the first book, in about five years of blogging for Tor.com, that broke me.

Available for purchase today, the July issue of Nightmare Magazine, which includes my story "Death and Death Again." You can pick it up here. It's a little foray into pure, unadulterated horror.

And available for preorder today, Upgraded, an anthology of cyborg stories edited by Neil Clarke, containing my story, "Memories and Wire." You can preorder it here. The book should be available later this month; I'm really looking forward to seeing the other stories in it.

That both these pieces are appearing in the same month is a fun coincidence, given their somewhat similar themes and tinges of horror. Well, ok, in the first story, not tinges so much as outright horror.

(The other little story coming out this month from Daily Science Fiction is something else entirely, but more on that later.)

Various tidbits that we will pretend make a post!

1. I spent most of last week and weekend at ICFA, the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, which for many people is an academic conference offering important insights about fantasy and the arts (literature, film, television, apparently tarot cards) and for me is a time to have a nice drink by the pool. Various personal issues and getting extremely sick prevented me from enjoying this conference as much as I would have liked, but I did have a chance to do a reading with Eugene Fischer and Dennis Danvers By a complete coincidence, we had all managed to choose stories on a similar theme: horror stories about the process of creating story. And by horror, the excerpt from Eugene's novella strongly suggested that we are all going to die, Dennis' story chatted about a puppy strangler – and by this, I mean, someone who strangles puppies, and my story had a house built from the teeth of small children. All very cheerful for a Saturday morning, though the puppy strangler story had us all collapsing with laughter. I think you have to read it to understand.

Special thanks to Julia Rios and Keffy Kehrli for helping me out during the conference.

2. Alas, attending ICFA meant I missed going to Megacon – and seeing many of you – but it looks like next year the events are on separate weekends. I'll keep my fingers crossed that golf is on a separate week.

3. While I was at ICFA I did get various tidbits of good news, including:

The release of Mythic Delirium 0.4, April-June 2014, available from Weightless Books here, which contains my poem, "The Silver Comb." (If you check, you will also see that it lists my name right under Jane Yolen, which is pretty awesomely cool.)

The news that Upper Rubber Boot Books will be reprinting my short story, "Twittering the Stars," as part of their new upcoming SOLES series.

I'm particularly delighted by this second bit since prior to this, although "Twittering the Stars" was hands down my most widely and best reviewed story (well over 40 positive reviews the last time I checked) it was also only available in an anthology that briefly popped up in bookstores and then mostly vanished, although the ebook is still available, which in turn meant that it was also one of my least read stories. I've been hoping for a chance to have it released into the wild again, so this is pretty awesome.

I'll also just note that Upper Rubber Boot Books offers a lovely selection of poetry books.

4. And while I was at ICFA and recovering from ICFA, Tor.com blogging continued! Two more posts on Mary Poppins, here and here, and also a second post chatting about Once Upon a Time and Oz here where I am VERY DISTURBED about the biological implications.

The Once Upon a Time Oz posts are not going to be a weekly event, primarily because so many parts of the show leave me wanting to throw things at the television or slam my head against something, and this sort of emotional reaction is a) not appreciated by the cats, who, as they have noted, do not deserve to have their hard-earned cat naps disturbed by this sort of thing and b) not really helped by friendly contact from the ABC publicity department (though I appreciate the effort.)

5. But regarding the upcoming Game of Thrones season four: yes, I do plan to snark individual episodes here, but I may be a bit delayed depending upon when exactly the new computer arrives.