Cat Rambo's Blog
Posted by Cat Rambo
The pdf is free - certainly an unbeatable price. I'm glad to see this piece reprinted. For one thing it was my first pro sale, since it took second place in the Chiaroscuro short story contest and was bought by them as a result. For another, I simply like it - it draws on an issue that has been coming up in my family over the past few years, whether or not my grandmother should move into a nursing home or not. It's a move that she's resisting bitterly, and I think part of her motivation in that is a fear she'll meet the same fate as the grandmother in the story.
Is it fantasy or literary? I think it shares elements of both, and is a decent example of how a story can straddle that particular line. To my mind, it could appear in a magazine featuring either kind of writing -- as could a lot of the excellent spec-fic I've seen, despite a certain weird anti-snobbery thing that I see on occasion, where editors declare that knowing someone has an MA in writing is something that makes them less likely to read their stories. I'm not sure where that attitude is coming from, but given the hostility academics sometimes show towards genre fiction, I suppose it's understandable.
Posted by Cat Rambo
News from a mailing list this morning - Lloyd Alexander passed away today. He died in hospice care at home. He survived his wife of 62 years, Janine Denni, by two weeks. The two met in Paris while Alexander was attending the University of Paris.
His last book, THE GOLDEN DREAM OF CARLO CHUCHIO, will appear this August from Holt. Alexander said of the book, "I have finished my life work."
In the course of his career, Alexander prroduced over 40 books, primarily fantasy aimed at young adults, the most notable being THE PRYDAIN CHRONICLES, which consisted of the five books, THE BOOK OF THREE, THE BLACK CASTLE, THE CASTLE OF LLYR, TARAN WANDERER, and THE HIGH KING, which won the 1970 NEwberry award. THE BLACK CAULDRON was the inspiration for the Disney movie by the same name released in 1985. Other series by Alexander included THE WESTMARK TRILOGY and the VESPER HOLLY series.
Alexander was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1924 and decided he wanted to be a writer at the age of 15, an declaration that horrified his parents. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army in intellgience and counter-intelligence. Many of his books are set in Wales, England, where he did much of his Army training and Welsh mythology and the Welsh work THE MABINOGION heavily influence his stories.
Posted by Cat Rambo
The New York Times covered NBC's new fall line-up today and mentioned the shift towards fantasy and science fiction, occasioned by the success of such shows as "Heroes" and "Lost". I've got to say that of the new shoes that they mention, none of them seem particularly appealing, but who knows? - the new Bionic Woman may end up vastly more interesting than her predecessor. They also seem to stray a lot harder in the direction of science fiction than fantasy - a time traveler, a computer scientist, and a cyborg are the different protagonists.
I'd love to see more good F&SF on television, certainly. The Dresden Files is a series that made me happy to see on television. Although the show doesn't do the books justice, it has its moments, and the actor that plays Harry seems like great casting to me. And the idea of George R.R. Martin's GAME OF THRONES appearing as a mini-series makes me salivate like Pavlov's dog.
There's plenty of other series I'd love to see done well on television, but I have my doubts that the writing would do any of them justice, to tell the truth. Nonetheless, here's a few that I think would be particularly good.
Martin's WILD CARDS series was a shared world superhero setting that would make a killer show and blow "Heroes" out of the water, I think. The special effects might be expensive, but holy cow, would it be nifty.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books are great space adventure, have a charming and challenged hero, and would make spectacular TV.
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser similarly feature great, engaging heroes and would make a wonderfully atmospheric fantasy series - not as campy as Hercules, but with some of the same sense of humor and willingness to poke fun at the genre on occasion. For that matter, you could do a sci-fi series based on his Change War concept that could have the same episodic nature of StarGate - but with a significantly more interesting premise.
There's a couple of my votes - what would you pick?
Posted by Cat Rambo
I'll be doing the Clarion West Write-a-thon again this year. It's like a Walk-a-thon, but instead of pledging per miles or kilometers, participants set their own goals, which may be a certain number of words per day or a story a week, or some variation thereof. I asked people to pledge per story and ended up writing seven over the course of the Write-a-thon.
Why did I sign up for the Write-a-thon - besides wanting to do something for Clarion West? Because it forced me to write. Would I have written without that impetus? Well, sure, but I don't think I would have written quite so much. John Gardner said any motivation for writing is valid, and I'll take it wherever I can find it.
When I was attending Clarion West, one of the things we were told was that a few people stopped writing afterwards. I was terrified that would happen, so after I took a week to catch up on sleep, I kept on producing a story a week for the next six weeks. I imposed that expectation on myself, and managed to live up to it. One of those stories will appear soon in Best New Fantasy 2 soon - "Magnificent Pigs".
Some people do NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, in November each year, in which the challenge is to write 50,000 words in the course of a month. I've done that a couple of times, once successfully, and once very close - 46,000 words before a Thanksgiving trip derailed the effort. Neither writing turned into an actual novel, but one ended up as a solid chunk of writing that will turn into a novel somewhere down the line.
It's hard to write, and I don't know why. When I'm in the groove, the words flow freely, and time disappears. But getting myself into the seat, starting my fingers typing, and avoiding the temptations of internet quizzes and kitten pictures. Anything that helps me focus, gets me into that wonderful, enjoyable, miraculous groove is totally worth while. So on with the Write-a-thon! I'm getting ready even now.
Posted by Cat Rambo
I have always appreciated the existence of the Tiptree award, whose presence (in my opinion) acknowledges the vast power of speculative fiction to examine not just the implications of hard science, full of quarks and protons and string theory, but what are traditionally known as the "softer" sciences, such as anthropolgy.
The Tiptree award is named for James Tiptree Jr. aka Alice Sheldon, a writer who presented themself as male to correspondants and in the SF world for years before being "outed". One of the Nebula nominees this year is Julie Phillips' excellent biography, and recognizes science fiction and fantasy works that expand or explore our ideas about gender.
The reading featured writers whose work appears in one or more of the award anthologies (the one being released right now is the third), and it was a fine line-up. Ruff led off with an excerpt from his upcoming novel BAD MONKEYS and DuChamp followed with an excerpt from TSUNAMI, the third book in her series, the Marq'ssan cycle (which I highly recommend and will talk about in another post). Gunn broke the pace a bit by reading a piece of Star Trek slash fiction in which Kirk and Spock are having a child, followed by Dalkey reading from her Tiptree piece, "Lady of the Ice Garden", which appeared in the first anthology, and McIntyre reading an excerpt from the wonderful "Little Faces", also up for a Nebula award this year.
Afterwards there was a lively discussion about gender and science fiction, which ranged from 13th century French literature to contemporary transexuality. I would have gone to see any of these readers solo -- having all of them reading together was awesome.
Posted by Cat Rambo
On April 16th, the Pulitzer Board announced a special citation to author Ray Bradbury for his distinguished, prolific and influential career as a science fiction and fantasy author. This special recognition is not a Pulitzer Prize, but is a recognition of life achievement. A citation was also given
posthumously to tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.
Ray Bradbury is one of the best known figures in the science fiction genre, with work is as diverse as the novel Fahrenheit 451, the novel and play Dandelion Wine, and the screenplay to the movie Moby Dick. In 1999 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and fantasy Hall of Fame and in 1989 he was recognized as a Grand Master by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon with Ray Bradbury when I was in grad school, and it was amazing to get a chance to listen to someone whose work I've always loved. I've mentioned before how much I love "There Will Come Soft Rains", one of the short stories from the book The Martian Chronicles. I don't think there was anyone in the room whose breath wasn't taken away just by getting a chance to hear him talk about writing.
Posted by Cat Rambo
It's hard to do justice to the concept of LIVING NEXT DOOR TO THE GOD OF LOVE -- I will leave it at this: it involves the God of Love, or one, at any rate, and a wonderfully complicated set of realities, told with a keen eye for the nuances of emotion and crazy-wonderful language.
Look at some of these emotional complexities:
He tipped his head a degree to one side with the missed timing of someone who's been exhaustively coached, though Valkrie fancied he deliberately got it wrong.
His dark minotaur eyes looked at me, hard and calculating for an instant, and he drew and let out a breath in a very measured way, but didn't finish.
I felt that I could do anything I wanted and he'd never turn to me with the cold face that lets you know you've gone too far and fallen off the invisible pedestal you never knew you were on.
It's all just terrific and the language is fabulous. If I had any qualms, it would be that there's a sudden proliferation of characters somewhere around the three-quarters mark that gets a tad confusing. But the ending is satisfying and wraps them all up well.
I think younger or unsophisticated readers may not like this as much as they could, but writers and those with sense finely attuned to the fantastic will like this. A lot.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Gaylaxicon 2007 will be held in Atlanta, GA this year on the weekend of October 5-8. Selina Rosen is the Toastmistress and Laura J. Underwood and Toni Weisskopf will be a guests. More info at their website at www.gaylaxicon2007.org.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Subterranean Magazine's move to an online format continues to take advantage of the web to do things it couldn't in print, such as serializing stories. Now they've released a podcast of Kage Baker's short novel, RUDE MECHANICALS, read by Mary Robinette Kowal.
RUDE MECHANICALS continues Baker's series relating the adventures of the time-traveling cyborgs of Dr. Zeus, this time in 1934. Temporarily relocated to the environs of the Hollywood Bowl, German theater impresario Max Reinhardt attempts to stage his famous production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The inevitable complications ensue, and Kowal does a wonderful job of conveying Baker's prose.
Posted by Cat Rambo
"We will read until May 31, 2007 (postmark date) for the Fall "Fantastic Women" issue AND the open Winter Issue. Fantastic Women--an issue celebrating the women writers working with an emphasis on the fantastical-- has a very limited number of slots open for poetry, fiction, and Lost and Found essays. Winter is open to any and all themes and ideas."
Looks like a nice high-end literary market - worth a try!
Posted by Cat Rambo
Upon noticing that the ballot for SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association) featured only one candidate for president of the organization, John Scalzi has tossed his hat into the ring. One of the things that has arisen out of this discussion is SFWA presenting the discussion of the presidency in the public area of the SFF.Net groups, where anyone can follow along in the discussion.
I joined SFWA as an associate member when I first qualified (one pro sale) on the advice of Ann Crispin, and it's been mildly useful, at times. But it does seem somewhat hidebound, and its website reflects that, with its 1990s feel. As the discussion rages, I find myself with more and more questions as people refer to events that I've never heard before. What was the deal with Robert Sawyer? What's the full story behind this inappropriate loan people keep referring to?
I've applied to become a full member so I can vote for Scalzi. I'd like to see someone in the Presidency who has experience with electronic publishing and who has a good sense of today's market, and I'm not convinced the other candidate has that, although he has much, much experience with SFWA where Scalzi does not. Scalzi's opponents point to his lack of experience with SFWA specifically, but I'm not sure I see that as the drawback that they do - sometimes it's an outsider who can best see the problems everyone else has been ignoring for years.
At any rate, it's led to much interesting discussion and some funny campaign videos on YouTube, along with at least a few people signing (or re-signing) up. I can't help but think that anything which stirs up so much controv ersy and gets people thinking is a very good thing.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Sponsored by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the entries may be written in Catalan, English, French or Spanish. They must be 70 to 115 pages double-spaced, and two copies must be submitted. Manuscripts will not be returned.
The awards are 6,000 euros for the best work and two special mentions, each worth 1,500 euros, as well as a chance to attend the awards ceremony in Barcelona
The deadline is September 14, 2007.
Posted by Cat Rambo
The subcultures covered in this nifty little book include Americans in Antarctica, beekeepers and birders, cat fanciers, cavers, magicians and mediums, online gamers, puppeteers, scuba divers, snow blowers, truckers and UFO believers. All in all, 65 is a wealth of lingo, from grognard (gamer) to rettysnitches (ham radio operators).
In my household, this book has been wandering from room to room because it's a fun book to dip into. The terms are lively and intriguing. Who wouldn't enjoy finding out about what fantasy notes and body bags mean to coin collectors, or learning where a motorcycle's "jesus clip" is?
Beyond that, I've had occasion to dip into it a couple of times now to find just a couple of words to seed into a piece of dialog to give it a more authentic feel. The section on goth culture gave me some of the words I used for "Niobe in the Seattle Rain", which is appearing soon from Dark Recesses as well as some of the circus lingo in "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said." While I wouldn't go too heavy-handed with this method, I think one or two (I would probably never go more than three, unless it was for a deliberate effect or a very long piece) carefully salted into a story can go a long way to establishing the world in which the piece is set or the character using the expressions.
The book could also be used to generate writing exercises by taking one or two terms and using them in a passage of description, scene, or piece of dialog. Or combing two very different terms to create a title or writing prompt.
All in all, for $15, this is a good and useful book well worth having on a writer's reference shelf. I highly recommend Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures, which is available from Writer's Digest Books.
Posted by Cat Rambo
I know I've been lucky enough to have pretty straightforward contracts, but on occasion I've had questions about rights, and I've certainly heard a lot of horror stories about complicated or oddly worded contracts. The American Society of Journalists will review contracts that are for commercial publishers as long as you're willing to read through the contract and explain your concerns so they can answer them.
Here's the original press release:
Got a question or a contract?
Fax questions or contracts to 415-532-1324, including your email address for
a response. To send an email, go to http://www.asja.org/contact.php and use
our Web form. (Sorry, but the email was getting clogged with spam.) We do have
three requirements to review a contract. First, you must name the publisher, as
it helps us aid others in the future. Second, it must be a commercial
publisher and not a vanity publishing house that makes its money off you. Third, you
must read through the contract yourself and explain your concerns. We'll look
through the whole document anyway, but things go better if you are really
involved in the process.
The American Society of Journalists and Authors encourages reproduction and
distribution of this document for the benefit of freelance writers and
photographers, and other publishing content creators. Reprint or post as many items as
you wish, but please credit ASJA for the information and don't change the
content.
Contracts Committee
ASJA
1501 Broadway, Suite 302
New York, NY 10036
Telephone: 212-997-0947
Fax contracts to: 415-532-1324
Email us through our web page:
www.ContractsWatch.com
ASJA Home Page: http://www.asja.org
Contracts Watch Page: http://www.ContractsWatch.com
Posted by Cat Rambo
My story, "Foam on the Water", is up at Strange Horizons right now here. Other good stuff in this week's issue includes an article on megastructures by Paul Lucas that I found useful and Deborah P. Kolodji's lovely poem, "Casting Her Lot".
I'm glad to see that story find a home. I wrote it the first week of Clarion West, when we were all trying to figure each other out and get adjusted to life with seventeen other weirdos in a sorority house. I've always been interested in fairy tales and mythology - when I was a kid and was running low on fiction in the children's room of the library, I was glad to find the folklore section -- and this story is an attempt to look at the oldest versions of the Little Mermaid and what a cruel story lies at its heart. Because it is, to some extent, a story about unrequited love and its pain.
In other news, I just sold my story about P.T. Barnum and Jumbo the elephant to editor Edmund Schubert at Orson Scott Card's online magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show, whose upcoming issue #4 features another Clarion West-produced story by Ada Milenkovic Brown.
People interested in some bite-sized morsels of fiction might check out the progression of Escape Pod's flash fiction contest, (board registration required) which is in the semifinal stage. I've got a story still in the running there, as do so of my Clarion West classmates, but I won't tell you which stories they are!
Posted by Cat Rambo
One of the things that I notice about this time of year is the number of people who are applying to one thing or another and are second, third, sometimes fourth or fifth-guessing themselves as they assemble their application packets. Are third or first person narratives better? Send two stories or a chunk of novel? One chapter or two?
Well, the best advice is first off not to get too hot under the collar about it. Pick recent stuff that you think shows you doing something well. Pick a story that you wouldn't mind reading aloud, and read it through that way at least once before you finish revising it.
Play by the rules. Send your app in by the deadline, and include everything that they asked for. Don't make extra work for the admins. Proof it before you send it, and then have a friend send it again.
My Clarion app stories were "Tick-tock Girl" and "Candles". One had already been accepted by CyberAge Adventures, the other still has yet to be published. The latter was described as "rather odd" by Octavia Butler - I can still hear her wonderful warble of a voice in my head as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say about it. Both stories had been written within the six month period before the application.
Currently I've applied for another workshop, and this time sent "Sugar", which will appear in an upcoming fantasy sampler and "Events at Fort Plentitude" (still unpublished). Again, recently written, and what's more, stories that I like, that I think show me doing several things well. Are they my best - could I even rank all my stuff with any sort of definity? Probably not, but they're representative.
And now they're off in the mail, and I don't need to worry about it any more. ;)
Posted by Cat Rambo
Weird Tales has been around forever, and it's one of the markets I've always wanted to get published in because how cool would it be to be part of a tradition that includes H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Robert E. Howard?
VanderMeer's a good and interesting choice - not to mention that as a female writer, I'm glad to see another female editor appearing.
Facts taken from the press release: She's been a publisher and editor for over twenty years, running her Buzzcity Press. Work from her press and related periodicals has won the British Fantasy Award, the International Rhysling Award, and appeared in several year's best anthologies. In addition, she has been a partner with her husband, Jeff VanderMeer, on such editing projects as the World Fantasy Award-winning Leviathan series and the Hugo finalist The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. A Best of the Silver Web is forthcoming from Prime Books. Currently, she is serving as one of the guest editors for the new Best American Fantasy, and is co-editing anthologies including The New Weird (Tachyon Publications), Fast Ships, Black Sails (Nightshade Books), Last Drink Bird Head, and Love-Drunk Book Heads.
VanderMeer will be accepting fiction submissions via email beginning March 6 at weirdtales@gmail.com. Writers lacking email capabilites are welcome to send hardcopy submissions to her, attn: Weird Tales, P.O. Box 38190, Tallahassee, FL 32315. Updated submission guidelines will be available online as of March 1 at www.weirdtalesmagazine.com.
Sci-Fi.com has an interview with her here, in which she talks about her philosophy for the magazine:
"So ... what does make a Weird story?" she said. "Whereas a science fiction or high-fantasy story makes you go 'wow!' and a horror story makes you go 'ewww!' a Weird Tales story should leave you, simply, speechless. Because you've never heard anything like that before."
Good stuff. Good stuff indeed.
Posted by Cat Rambo
I ran across this and thought it rather nifty: the Australian Speculative Fiction blog carnival.
It's a showcase of the most interesting weblog posts about Australian speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror), and its hosters have included Gillian Pollack and Simon Haynes as well as many others. It's been around since 2005, so plenty of back reading there, and you can get to know something about the Australian literary scene other than Clarion South and Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine. ;)
Lots of good stuff, worth checking out, for Australians and non-Australians.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Norilana Bookshas come to an agreement with the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust and will publish the next original book in the classic anthology series Sword and Sorceress, which will appear in November, 2007.
Sword And Sorceress is the twenty-year series of annual anthologies from DAW Books featuring sword and sorcery stories of strong female protagonists, warrior women and sorceresses, edited by the late f&sf writer Marion Zimmer Bradley. The series has featured the writing of such authors as Laurell K. Hamilton, Mercedes Lackey, C. J. Cherryh, Charles de Lint, Elizabeth Moon, Jennifer Roberson, Diana L. Paxson, Lawrence Schimel, Esther M. Friesner, Josepha Sherman, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Deborah J. Ross, Charles Saunders, Lois Tilton, Syne Mitchell, Jo Clayton, Jenn Reese, Rosemary Edghill, Jim C. Hines, and countless others who have gone on to become household names.
Bradley was a tremendous influence in the field of F&SF primarily because of the Darkover series, and the gender and gender roles exploration that she performed in that series, including the Free Amazons and a race that doesn't know what gender it will be until adulthood.
Guidelines are available on their site here. They include a couple of links, such as What is a Short Story?, which new writers should look at before submitting, to spare themselves the pain of having to read Why did my story get rejected? after the fact.
Suggestions based on what I know: cliches don't fly. Try to think outside the box and come up with something new and unexpected. Don't be afraid to do bad things to your characters. If you get rejected, keep on.
Posted by Cat Rambo
There's more details on this page, but here's the gist.
The 2007 Backspace Writers Conference brings together authors, literary agents, and editors for a two-day, two-track event featuring panel discussions, workshops, and socializing in the heart of the publishing world, in the Algonquin Hotel in NYC.
Two full-tuition scholarships to the 2007 Backspace Writers Conference will be awarded to writers whose work shows exceptional promise, and who have completed a novel and are actively seeking an agent to represent their work.
Tuition scholarships cover the conference registration fee, travel expenses to and from New York City, and hotel accommodations.
Applications can only be submitted by e-mail and must arrive between January 15 and March 1, 2007. Winners will be notified by April 15, 2007.
Judges will be Mark Bastable, Harry Hunsicker, and Eilzabeth Letts.
Posted by Cat Rambo
The Curious Dreamer is an online service that allows you to plug in a dream symbol and see what it's supposed to mean. One use I could think of this for writers is to plug in major symbols that appear in your stories and see what underlying patterns there are that you might bring out more strongly or clearly.
You might write up some character dreams and see what their interpretation would be as well. It's a fun webpage, and worth bookmarking. One of the pages that I found particularly interesting was the page with the top ten dream symbols and what their significance is.
Posted by Cat Rambo
The anthology calls for stories based on this episode of Dinosaur Comics, created by Ryan North.
Pay is $45, and the early deadline is March 31, 2007.
From their guideline page:
The premise of the anthology is covered in the book's introduction, above. Your mission, as a writer, is to come up with the best possible story that fits in the world described in the introduction. The only major difference between THAT world and THIS world is that people in THAT world can undergo a cheap and easy blood test to find out how they are going to die. So the stories that we're interested in are those that somehow explore that idea in an interesting or entertaining way.
This death-predicting machine is (at its mechanical heart) a modern version of the ancient Greek Oracle. It gives you a clue about what your fate will be, but it never tells you enough to really give you control of your life. You only have the illusion of control. So one kind of story that fits in this world is the kind of story that the Greeks loved -- a story about a person who learns his fate, who tries to escape it, but who ends up trapped by fate in the end anyway. There are a lot of clever ways to handle this kind of scenario in the modern world, but we also hope to get stories that push beyond this idea and explore other implications of the machine.
Do check out the entire page before submitting; they've included some guidelines as to what they are -- and, more importantly, aren't -- looking for.
Contests like this make good writing group challenges, in my opinion - they give everyone a spark of inspiration and a chance to finetune their technique, with a readymade deadline and an easy choice of first market to try. The current Escape Pod flash fiction has close to a dozen stories submitted by one of my online writing groups, and it's making watching the judging even more interesting.
The problem with anthology writing, on the other hand, is that a lot of people are going to end up stuck with unsellable stories. Just as pirate stories will be unsellable soon, after the advent of two anthologies and a theme issue in 2007. My personal prediction is that dragons will be the next pirates. Start on those stories now.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Their guidelines are available here. Payment is $10 and a contributor's copy.
No multiple submissions or reprints. Simultaenous okay. They say:
We are seeking stories of an absurdist or surrealist nature that are within the range of 2000 to 5000 words. They should not fit comfortably within any genre. We have peculiar tastes and recommend that you read an issue before sending in your work.
Please use ONE space between sentences. Use indents for paragraph breaks rather than spaces. Specify the word count. Include a bio and mailing address with your submission. We ask for First North American Serial Rights and the copyright reverts back to you upon publication. Send an email if you don't get a confirmation in a week.
We prefer humorous stories where impossible things happen. It must be able to grab our attention from the very first line. And make every word count.
Our favorite authors include Steve Aylett, D. Harlan Wilson, Steve Erickson, and Mark Leyner.
Posted by Cat Rambo
I was looking over the details of the Taos Toolbox, a two-week master class in science fiction and fantasy being taught July 8th through July 21st. This year's instructors are Connie Willis and Walter Jon Williams, with a special guest appearance by George R.R. Martin.
This workshop looks like a blast, and I know from experience that Connie is an awesome teacher. Accomodation is at the posh-looking Snowbear Inn in the Taos ski valley, complete with nearby trout stream and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
I wish I had the dough for it, but $2400 is out of my price range this year, and there's no scholarships available. It looks like the Milford style of critique, where students are writing and critiquing fresh stuff rather than older, more polished pieces, and includes one on one sessions with the instructors. It looks like too much fun for words to me.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Involve every sense that you can. You can cheat a little on this - something like suing "lemon yellow" to describe something manages to evoke taste without directly making the reder feel the taste.
Less is more - pick the perfect detail that shows something, the curl of a vine's tip, or the way its leaves flare out in trumpet shapes. Provide the single precise word rather than a bland adjective backed up with a lot of qualifiers.
Ask yourself what sort of mood you want your reader to get from the description - sad? parched? scared? lusty? Back it up with word choice.
Take the time to run things through a spell checker or have them proofed by someone you trust. Nothing gets in the way of a good description as much as an irritating typo - it stands out and becomes the other thing your reader can focus on.
Posted by Cat Rambo
Escape Pod and its sister publication, Pseudopod, provide podcasts of science-fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. Right now Escape Pod's running a flash fiction contest, with the guidelines here.
The cool thing is that entries are being published in batches of ten on the Escape Pod discussion boards. Readers vote on their favorite three, and those go onto the next round. I spent some time this morning reading through the entries, and while the quality is wildly mixed, it's fun to see what other people have done with the same amount of words.
One of the things I like about flash is that they're quick reads, bite-sized morsels rather than an entire sandwich-sized story. The short form means that people have to make every word count, and there's an amazing array of strategies for doing so.
I know there's more entries to come - haven't seen mine yet, for one! I'm looking forward to having a steady supply of flash fiction for a few days.
Posted by Cat Rambo
I recently joined Planeta SF, an Argentine Yahoo group designed to bring together science fiction and fantasy writers from across the globe, and I've been really pleased and intrigued by the group.
A wise science fiction writer pointed out to me early on that having a name in countries other than the US is a way to increase sales. While I'd like to think I'm being forward looking and building up an audience, the truth of it is that I love reading through the daily digest of Planeta SF. People write in English, Spanish, German, French, Portugese and Italian, and it is vastly satisfying to me to find out my rusty Spanish is still good enough to be used to read posts. And I continue to delude myself that when I stare at a passage in Portugese long enough, it magically becomes Spanish and I can understand it. People who can do so are very good about posting versions in other languages, but not everyone speaks English, so the end effect is confusing - but in a GOOD way.
It's fascinating to learn something about the international SF scene, and I've already added several books to my wish list as a result. It's also fun to be doing something science fictiony that also seems self-improvey, since I can't help but think my Spanish is improving as a result of the practice.
<A HREF="http://ar.groups.yahoo.com/group/planetasf/?yguid=198006506"> The group was started last year by Sergio Gaut vel Hartman, who runs the Argentine science fiction magazine, <A HREF="axxon.com.ar ">Axxon</a>. A couple of my stories, along with the Suite 101 interview with Nancy Jane Moore, "The Revelation of Gender" will be appearing in Axxon soon, which is my first non-English publication! How cool is that?