Things I Know I Know

My story, How to Hide Your Heart, is up at Strange Horizons:

He barely notices Beth in the bar, thin as a stick, clothes—oh, Jesus, her clothes—too-small cotton blouse with faded calico flowers, brown knit pants that slop over thick-soled black shoes. She has straw-colored hair pulled back flat with metal barrettes, a faded plain face that doesn't show well alongside the other girls she's with.

[I had other updates of interest I was going to post with this, but now have forgotten what they were. So...hmmm, possibly they weren't all that interesting.]

Posted by debco at 06:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Me: My god, this is the suckiest writing ever in the history of suck

Novel: ...

[Also, there are no puppies in this post. But soon! Because I have a whole bunch of new pictures to upload and we have started tracking and Blue has learned many new things and he his HUGE! and...hmmm, apparently this is a post about puppies after all.]

Posted by debco at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

...Before you call in an exorcist, it might be a good idea to look for any of a host of animals that may be making a nest nearby. Of course, if your couch slides across the floor with you on it, you can probably rule out squirrels. At that point, it is a good idea to look for help....

This is why I will always love the internets. And being a writer.

Finished my novel page for today. Realized that I am easily distracted by the internets and really important questions that I don't really need to know the answer to right this very minute.

Although I now know that the state animal of South Dakota is the coyote, the state musical instrument is the fiddle, and the state dessert is kuchen.

Posted by debco at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...but that's not what this post is about.

I put updates on Twitter, but not here. Why? Because Twitter only allows 140 characters so, you know, it's way easier. Not that you would learn much from my Twitter updates. But then, I'm fairly sure that's the point.

Anyway, my current writing goal is a page a day on the novel whether I think it's crap or not. I've managed two days so far. And I've relearned this thing I mostly have to keep learning over and over--my stuff is often the best when I think I'm totally stuck and I have nothing to say and I make myself write anyway. Sheesh.

The maybe kind of sort of puppy is looking like a pretty definitely puppy. I have sent in a deposit and everything. So I am considering 'J' names. I should warn you that I generally end up picking a name that hardly anyone likes but me. Currently, 'Jent' is at the top of the list. Chance thinks this cannot be shouted out the back door, but I have already tested it and she is wrong.

I got the December Asimov's today so the time has come to mention that 'The Whale's Lover' will be in the January issue. Tell your friends. There will be spaceships and alien planets and amazing snap-apart technology.

Posted by debco at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

An Asimov's letter to the editor says that I'm totally ruining Science Fiction (well, really Sheila is ruining it by buying my stories).

Yay me!

Posted by debco at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Just not making much progress. I'm still doodling on the novel, which I thought I needed to outline (and I do) but I also need to work on character interactions which means I need to write. So, I guess I'm stuck writing stuff I hate and pretending I don't hate it until I can fix it late.r

Also, I really need to get Cowgirls in Space finished and sent out. And figure out how to fix What Makes A River, which I tried to change from present tense to past tense but which really, really wants to be in present tense (sorry, Chance) so, hmm...more work to do there.

Posted by debco at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is my mother's Christmas present. Which she will probably not get this Christmas, though you never know. It's really only about a third done since there's still all the putting together and the quilting and the binding. But the piecing is my favorite part because it's like putting together a great big jigsaw puzzle.

Also, secret lilies!

Posted by debco at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I need to write two bios this week and they are very hard because I am the boringest person alive.

This is what all my bios sound like:

Blah, blah, blah, midwest. Blah, blah, blah dogs. Blah blah, IT. Blah, blah, blah, haven't sold anything to anyone because I'm the Slowest Writer in the World.

Also, it looks like 'The Whale's Lover' will be in the January, 2008 issue of Asimov's.

Posted by debco at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

--I just sold 'How to Hide Your Heart' to Strange Horizons, which makes me very happy because 1) I sold it, 2) to Strange Horizons and I haven't had anything to send them for awhile, and 3) because I like this story and am excited it's going to be published (yes, I know I'm odd, but I usually like my stories--at least the ones that are actually working)

--I am still working on the outline for 'Ghosts of Fear.' I am at a stuck spot, but I think as soon as I have a half hour or so to sit down and really concentrate, I can get past it.

--I'm hoping to settle in and revise 'Cowgirls in Space' soon. I am pretty sure I've figured out how to explain the certain inexplicable thing so I'm hoping I can get this one in submitting shape pretty soon.

--I'm working on 'Interactions with the Neighbors...' in a haphazard fashion, which is perfect because if and when I get this story to work it will be a very haphazard sort of story.

And that is all from the writing corner today....

Posted by debco at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So I have been visiting the various BitterCon venues here, here and here. But, really, there is too much non-bitterness for me. People are proposing actual non-bitter panel topics and how to have a more fun sort of imaginary con.

People, you have no idea how to be bitter. Work on that for next time.

For an actual demonstration, here is my panel proposal for BitterCon:

As this is BitterCon, I think we ought to have a panel called 'Why Am I Not Rich Yet?' in which we talk about how totally BRILLIANT we are and, yet, inexplicably, not yet filthy rich. Then we can complain about those stories/novels/whatevers that are rejected because they are just TOO DAMN GOOD!

And also everyone hates us and we have to eat worms.

Also, it can quit raining like the Flood Years any freaking time now.

In other news, I've written 1600 words on my novel.

Posted by debco at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have promised Chance five pages of the novel I haven't started yet by Saturday.

Posted by debco at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone but me is on their way to, getting ready to go to, or already arrived at Wiscon.

I would be more bitter about this if I hadn't just CLOSED ON MY HOUSE today.

Expect greater bitterness later in the week.

Posted by debco at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I finished 'What Makes a River' which is too long, in present tense and may have structural problems. I'm reasonably sure all of this is fixable and, I hope, not particularly difficult. But I probably need to set it aside for awhile before I make changes.

So, most likely up next, revisions to 'Cowgirls in Space,' which has been languishing a bit lately.

There is a SOLD! sign on my old house. So, I am all the happy. I have almost everything done over there that I said I'd do and it closes on Wednesday the 23rd. And, trust me, there will be much celebrating when it is final.

I have not made much novel progress of late, but must get back to it. Plot is still giving me fits although I am fairly certain of the first two scenes so may just write those and see what further inspiration that leads to.

Posted by debco at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...actually Chance heard it first on IM, but I am writing a novel this year (shut up, yes I am).

I have the two main characters, a vague notion of their problems, a title, and though I'm still working on that thing called plot, I do know that it will include sex, violence, ghosts, and snarkiness, not necessarily in that order.

It currently opens with the MC's father telling her that she's 'the most pissed-off, useless piece of shit ever.'

But in a totally supportive way.

If I actually write this novel, though, I can't stop writing short stories, need to keep sending things out. So, yell at me, okay? I mean it.

In that vein I wrote 927 words on 'What Makes a River' today (I'm pretty sure I'll break 1,000 before the end of the day). I hope it's getting close to finished (I'm at 4,300 words total) though there's a bunch of stuff that still has to happen.

A bit from 'What Makes a River':

Beth closes her eyes and rubs her hand across her face. She pulls herself out of the chair, feeling like she's a hundred and two. Upstairs, she sits at her computer and writes an email to Paul with everything in it, what's happening to Amy, what she's seen, everything she's done, everything she's thought, how she's feeling right this minute--like her bones have turned to jelly, like she's all alone in the world, like she wants to cry. Before she can think any harder, she sends it. You can fix this, she thinks. You have to fix this.

There are not enough swear words in the world.

Posted by debco at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, I've been working on Cowgirls in Space, which I think I will pretty much finish tonight. I've been sort of kind of working on the next story after How to Hide Your Heart and I've been trying to think of ideas for novels. I've got a couple of semi-aborted short stories that might have novel potential.

And somewhere along the line I came up with this tidbit:

"Why?"
"What?"
"Why do good and evil have to be balanced? Why can't it be all good all the time?"
"We could destroy you."
"You wish."

I think this goes with the last story in a sequence of stories I'm sort of, kind of, not really working on which starts with How to Hide Your Heart and ends with a story called Fargo Fucking North Dakota, but you wouldn't know it from the page I wrote it on.

I assume that at the time I write them I am under the impression my notes make sense.

Posted by debco at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am working on two short stories currently--'Cowgirls in Space' (which so far does not involve any space...or explosions, though there are cowgirls) and 'Two is Not a Pattern' (which does not involve vampires).

I have two short stories in the mail.

I've been thinking about novel writing and will (I hope) have some posts on that coming up.

Here's a brief excerpt from 'Cowgirls in Space':

Patti was not the reason that the drill team was called the Junkyard Girls or why they practiced their routines at the junkyard on the old highway south of Harrison, but, damn, did she love junk. She'd gotten her daddy to give her his old 1975 F150 pickup truck that had been rusting out behind the barn for the better part of the last twenty years and she was rebuilding it piece by loving piece. The junkyard was pretty much like heaven for Big Patti and she was always dragging back old bumpers or brake cables or, once, a cylinder from a Duesenberg engine from the 1930s that Patti claimed could top out at 140 miles per hour.

So, no one paid much attention when Patti said she'd found something interesting in the junkyard.

Also, my stories seem to have more swearing. I blame Chance for this....

Posted by debco at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sheila Williams is buying my short story The Whale's Lover for Asimov's. Yay! This marks my first sale of the year so double-Yay!

46 Directions, None of them North has 7 recs for the Nebula, which, yay! and thanks to those who recced it. Its eligibility runs out at the end of this month. If you've been thinking of reccing it and just haven't gotten around to it, now is the time (if you haven't read it and would like a copy, email me at debco at iknowiknow.org and I'll send you one). If you don't care, didn't like it, never read it and don't intend to--hey--that's okay too :-)

I have one story in the mail, one ready to send out, one story about half-written that I will probably make good progress on this weekend (because it's going to be about a hundred and fifty below this weekend) and that's pretty good progress for me.

Some people are encouraging me (for definitions of 'encouraging' that include threats of mocking) to write a novel. Since my last novel idea turned into a short story (see: one story half-written above), I'm currently sort of looking for a novel idea. All suggestions will be given serious consideration :-)

Comments still appear to be hosed up, but I still mostly see them even if I can't find them in the database and you may or may not see them here.

Posted by debco at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I would be golden in a world where conversation consisted solely of anecdotes and everyone was left to figure out their own connections between stories instead of making the person who came up with the anecdote explain themselves....

Anyway...when I was a kid, we didn't have money. We bought our clothes at rummage sales and had a six-party phone line and in the winter sometimes you could see your breath in every room in the house. But--oh baby--we had food.

I remember reading books when I was that same kid where the kid characters were poor. They were embarrassed that they had hamburger for dinner and never had steak. And I never got that. I would read that--and it popped up over and over, as if that was one of the great divisions between poor and middle class--hamburger or steak--and think--hamburger, steak, they're both beef, right?

Because we always had steak--really good steak, too. We probably ate steak once a week. Steak or hamburger--it was a reach-in-the-freezer sort of choice.

There were a whole list of things when I was that age that I had no idea what they cost--we never bought milk or beef or most vegetables. We never bought apples or cherries or peaches. Heck, we only bought gas at gas stations when we went on long trips. Sometimes we didn't buy butter. It wasn't that I didn't get that people lived in town, that they bought their meat instead of raising it. What I didn't get was that steak and hamburger, butter and margarine actually cost different amounts of money.

My point is that despite my persistent belief that everyone has the same cultural referents that I do, this is pretty much untrue. The second part of my point, which involves taking a hard right for a moment before getting back on track, is that SarahP and I and others were having a conversation recently about the rural equivalent of urban fantasy (and for anyone who says that it's all urban fantasy even when it's in rural climes, I say...pbtttb! Because, although there is indeed rural fantasy that's totally imbued with urban sensibilities, it's not what I'm talking about. In fact, I probably write urban fantasy, when I write it, with rural sensibilities, but that's a digression for another time.)

So, the rural equivalent of urban fantasy--Chainsaw on Hand is that kind of story, as is Waking Up Dead in Iowa (unfinished) and Later, There will be Fireworks (finished, but with a totally sucky ending), and Sleeping Beauty in Upstate New York with Cows, Pigs and the Occasional Rooster (which I have only written the first two pages of) and Cowgirls in Space (which only exists in my imagination) are all totally and completely rural fantasy with non-urban sensibilities.

And one of the things that these sorts of stories have to overcome (and by god I am finally bringing it back to the steak and hamburger thing) is that hardly anyone grows up in working rural America anymore. More people than not have no idea about all the meat you could ever want and propane tanks and milk inspections and never ever waking up your parents at the crack of dawn to open Christmas presents because, first of all, they're always up, like, an hour before any kid ever thought of getting up and after that there are cows to milk and calves to feed and barns to clean and if you do that all first then you get five hours in the middle of the day when there's nothing else to do except eat a late breakfast and open presents and maybe take a nap before you have to do it all over again.

Iowa is another country (the federal government says for their purposes all of Iowa is rural, though really that isn't totally true). The High Plains is another country. Working rural America in its several dozen variations is/are another country. And when we write genre about working rural country, we write about it like we write about another planet, like the future, like lots of readers are coming to it for the first time and like it's both deep and familiar and a complete and fascinating new world at the same time. We don't take it for granted and we don't pretend it's just like the city/suburbia with fewer houses and dramatically less concrete. We don't pretend that all the animals are Bambi (and we--oh god, please--don't pretend that cows with udders are teenaged boys--yes, if someone could please shoot that movie, Barnyard, I'd be eternally grateful) and we don't pretend that they aren't occasionally Bambi-cute either (well, okay, the boy cows with udders thing, that needs to go away forever). And we tell people:

What you want, on a dark morning like that, with the wind and the cold and the knowledge that you’ll never be warm again is to pull the blankets way up over your head and never come out until spring. But this is South Dakota on the plains in winter. There are cattle waiting to be fed, counting on you as their single source of, well, everything. And because you have to get up anyway, you do.

and

Tillie has brought a flashlight with her but she doesn't need it. There's a full moon and she can see a dozen feet ahead of her as she sets out across the yard, through the fence and into the Whitby's fields. The corn was harvested weeks ago and there's just dry stubble, which crunches under her feet and occasionally causes her to stumble when she steps on a particularly fat stalk. In fifteen minutes, she has reached the Whitby's. Coming in from the field instead of from the road, she sees the house between the corners of the buildings, like a reverse shadow glowing in the moonlight.

and

It wasn't even her rooster. He belonged to the McCutcheon's down the south orchard. Every spring, just as the grass was starting to green he came over, despite the dogs, who stalked him, despite the bull in the near pasture, despite every possible discouragement, he came and perched on top of the old machine shed and crowed in the morning. After two or three days, she'd call Jed McCutcheon and he'd come and grab the rooster and take it back home.

and

Jennie Low swears to God

--I swear to God, she says--

that the best cowgirls in the world are on the Chadron in Northwest Nebraska.

So that's what I think rural fantasy sounds like. If it exists, which I'm not entirely sure that it does. It's a different language, a different culture, though sometimes it sounds so very similar to urban fantasy that you have to look closer to see where the difference lies. It's steak and hamburger, hover (pronounced hoover--don't even ask me), chainsaws on hand, and abandoned dairy barns with lime-covered floors. I've lived in town for--holy crap--a long time, but job and family and history connect me back. There are things I want to show, there are things I want to understand, and there are things I can only explain when I put them into this language and this culture.

So, rural fantasy--it's time has so totally come.

Posted by debco at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I got the February, 2007 Asimov's on Saturday, which says this about 'Chainsaw on Hand':

...new writer Deborah Coates shows us the price of living so that you always have a "Chainsaw on Hand"

I bet you can't wait now.

(Also, there are no chainsaws in this story. None. Don't be disappointed when there aren't any. Because I warned you.)

Posted by debco at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, I asked the guy at work with the most guns how hard he thought it would be to get ahold of hand grenades (if one were a totally illegal, criminal type person, not, you know...me). And he rates it more difficult than getting a hold of shotguns but totally doable. And we both agree that even I could probably make hand grenades if I wanted to--and had access to the internets. And that it would be loads easier than making shotguns.

Also, when I told him about the writing rule that calls for blowing things up when you don't know what to write next, he said that he would read way more short stories if more people followed that rule.

Posted by debco at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I tend to think of myself as an organic writer. Most of my stories start as a title or a first line or paragraph and I very rarely have any idea where the story's going or even usually what it's about in the sense that all stories should be about something. My best writing comes straight from my subsconscious and sometimes I am actually astonished at the things I put down on paper (fortunately in a good way). There's a balance for me between writing it down too soon and losing it forever.

So it surprises me that I love structure stories which, by my definition, means stories where the structure of the story itself resonates and reinforces the story(I figure it's necessary to define structure story after reading on a blog somewhere what a published author thinks a 'character-driven' story is and finding myself boggled). I don't necessarily mean highly experimental structures either, just ways of moving the story that are part of telling the story. I can think of zero examples of this right now (though I'm pretty sure I had one or two this morning when I actually had this thought).

I'm thinking about this because I've been thinking about new stories using the same characters/world introduced in 'How to Hide Your Heart.' If I write any of these (which is not at all a given no matter how much I think about them) the one that would come thematically and chronologically after 'How to Hide Your Heart' would be a structure story (remember it's highly possible no one else would call it this except me) and I think it would be fun to write.

And it seems excessively peculiar to me that I know it will be a structure story, I know what theme/emotional payoff etc the structure would resonate and intertwine with and I have barely any idea what the story is about or where it will go.

The title of this story I may or may not ever write is, 'Two is Not a Pattern' and it currently starts like this:

Beth though Matt Warren looked like a toad.

And not an interesting toad either. The most boring ugly toad ever--and that was saying a lot because toads as a whole were not attractive.

Posted by debco at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Writing bits

I have finished 'How to Hide Your Heart' and sent it out to various people for feedback. It's the story that starts like:

She drives like a dream, like she is dreaming the road into existence as she drives

I also finished the edits on 'The Whale's Lover' and am planning to put it in the mail this weekend. It now begins:

They have come to Pretoria to hunt the leviathan (oh, wait, that's how it always started...)

I have a ton of unfinished stories I could choose to work on (plus 3 brand-new ideas this week) but I'm going to try and finally finish 'Waking Up Dead in Iowa' which begins:

Joe Crowley came back first, which didn’t seem all that strange at the time. He’d only been dead an hour and a half and nobody even knew it yet, except Joe himself.

which would be much easier if I knew what it was ultimately about, but I'm hoping that this time I finally do actually figure that out.

Other bits

For some unfathomable reason I seem to be getting a magazine called Lucky which bills itself as a magazine about shopping. And it's not even really a magazine about shopping. It's really a magazine about how to buy as much girly stuff as humanly possible. I've only flipped through one of them, but it has columns (I swear) on what stuff the editors would buy and wear if they had all the money in the world (or something, I didn't actually read the text). I could see some use in a magazine about how to shop for stuff you might actually want like storm windows or hiking boots or cookware with occasional bits on how to buy, say a winter coat.

But, really, this magazine? I am clearly not the audience. There are no circumstances in my present life when I will be buying three inch wedge-heeled shoes in a veritable rainbow of colors.

I was cold (in 9 degrees plus wind) last Sunday when I taught tracking. I frown upon being cold and the primary reason I was cold (since I'm all about the dressing in layers) was because I don't have a good windbreaking layer. So, I broke down and finally bought the expensive ultimate weather shell that I've been wanting and denying myself for the last ten years (yes, the time to buy these things is of course when you're paying two mortgages). If it's actually as good as it's supposed to be it will be a good investment because it will last me fifteen years, at least, but still--most expensive coat I've ever bought.

It came today in the mail and it is totally the awesome. It has zippers everywhere and it is waterproof and windproof and the inner lining is windproof on its own and if I am not warm in this jacket plus all my lovely layers then I am beyond hope and should just give up now and move to Florida.

Posted by debco at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

When I got home tonight there were two copies of Best New Paranormal Romance waiting for me, which contains not only my story, but SarahP's story and EBear's story and probably other people I should mention but am blanking on at the moment.

So, yay!! I'll have some more good stuff to read over the holidays.

Posted by debco at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Rather than actually finishing a story (because, really, how useful would that be), I have started a new one, which currently begins with this line:

She drives like a dream, like she is dreaming the road into existence as she drives.

Posted by debco at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Really, I don't know what the rules are, but here's one that I would put right up at the top if I were the person in charge of establishing rules:

Don't make your main character stupider than your readers

Unless you've established stupidity as a character trait then, maybe, you can get away with it. And even then your main character should 'get it' once they've been hit over the head with the obvious ten or fifteeen times.

Let's say, for example, that a murderer is kidnapping nannies in your neighborhood. One, you should actually get help for or listen to your crazy neighbor who is actually telling you obviously useful information before he gets himself shot in the head by police and his brains splattered all over you. And, also, at that point, you will sound totally stupid insisting that he's not the murderer (even tho the readers already totally know that he isn't) when he just threatened you with a gun, and you have already shown that you have absolutely no critical judgement ever. And, most important, the reason you don't believe he's the murderer (even though they just found body parts in his apartment)--because you just don't think he's the kind of guy who would do that--is not credible when he JUST THREATENED YOU WITH A GUN. You can have a reason but--I just don't think he would--is not a good reason at that point.

Also, if there are mass kidnapping/murders going on, you don't make your own nanny accept a ride home from a guy who's always just 'there' and who your nanny has already actually told you makes her uncomfortable. Oh yeah, and when the creepy guy next door is lurking in the basement of the psychiatric hospital (where you work so one would think you might have a bit of a clue about these things) and he says he's 'just waiting' for the radio personality psychiatrist because she's an 'old friend'. But he doesn't want her to know he was there or leave a note or go through the receptionist, he is totally stalking her!

There were things I liked about the setting and the writing and the non-stupid parts of the characters (the book, BTW, is The Nanny Murders by Merry someone who I'm too lazy to look up), but it just got to be too much--the main character's understanding basically driven by what the ending of the story demanded rather than what was actually written on the page.

Posted by debco at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've had a fairly craptastic week, though mostly little things or things that I hope will be little things when I look back on them even though they don't feel like it right now.

Anyway, I've been reading the latest issue of Asimov's and something in it made me think of a story I wrote a couple of years ago, which I've always been unsatisfied with--for one thing it isn't SF, which I've always thought it should be and for another it has this horrifying billion pages in the middle where some woman explains everything. But there are also parts of it I really like and I've always wished I could turn it into a good story.

So, tonight I'm reading it again and--bang!--I finally get it. I see what the speculative element is and it not only makes the story work but resonates with the character relationships that are already there and are the main thing I really like about this story (yes, SarahP and Lisa, you will be thrilled to know that it's a relationship story :-) Now I just have to figure out how to get it on the page.

And this, figuring this out, has made me feel better than anything else this week :-)

The beginning:

We found the corpse in the car on Christmas morning. I'd been called out of bed by the patrol officers forty-five minutes earlier.

Five minutes later I was standing on the porch of my old house. Carol, my ex-wife, stood in the doorway wiping her hands on a dish towel. She was wearing blue jeans, old sneakers and a faded red t-shirt. "It's not mine," she said as if this sort of thing happened to her every day. "Why would I leave a body in my car?"

Posted by debco at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a form rejection from Interfictions for the whiny white professor story.

Anyone who's read it (or, hey, even those who haven't) have a suggestion for where to send it next?

Posted by debco at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Because sometimes I get to write sentences like this:

"We need big guns," the twelve-foot woman in the back said. "We need Big. Fucking. Guns."

Posted by debco at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I sent in my Babe Bomb story yesterday. It has glitter in it so I'm pretty sure it will be right up Gordon's alley :-)

In the process of doing something for a deadline, I've gotten back into the swing of writing--always good. I am currently working on Riding the Lead Motorcycle in Satan's Army of Heaven for which I may actually have an ending and I pulled out The Whale's Lover which has been waiting for revisions for ever and which I may now have enough distance on to edit.

Posted by debco at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got a check from Asimov's today for 'Chainsaw on Hand.'

I'm sure it will soon be spent on house things.

Posted by debco at 09:13 PM | Permalink

I received, reviewed, and returned the page proofs for 'Chainsaw on Hand' which looks like it will be in Asimov's in March, 2007.

I don't know if other people have favorite lines in their own stories, but my favorite line in 'Chainsaw on Hand' is:

You decide that if you're going to be surprised today it's not going to be over chickens.

Posted by debco at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anyone who uses the word meritocracy in any discussion is automatically disqualified from continuing to participate in said discussion

"I've never noticed any discrimination against me so it's obvious discrimination doesn't exist," is not a valid argument.

Anyone who says 'well, women don't like SCIENCE' needs to definitively respond to the following: In the last thirty years veterinary school graduating classes have gone from a handful of women per class to more than 50%. Veterinary medicine is commonly referred to as SCIENCE.

If you have never heard of unconscious bias, you are probably going to feel pretty stupid about some of the things you've said when (if!) you finally do understand it.

Men telling other men what they can and can't say to women (while at the same time telling women what they really ought to do) is pretty damn funny.

Posted by debco at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Paula Guran has posted the table of contents for Best New Paranormal Romance.

It looks like Magic in a Certain Slant of Light will be in most excellent company.

Posted by debco at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

--I got the contracts from Asimov's for 'Chainsaw on Hand.' Sometime soon (I hope) I should be finding out when it will be published.

--'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light' is going to be in Best New Paranormal Romance. Which I think makes me a romance writer.

--I seem to be finishing nothing lately. If I knew what the stories were about I'm sure I could finish them. Chance, you may mock me at will....

Posted by debco at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, I never remember where I find this stuff because by the time I get around to blogging it it's been sitting on my browser for three or four days.

But, anyway, here's a blog that talks about astronomy for science fiction writers:

What's a G-type star, anyhow? So of course you want your stellar navigators and scientists to talk knowledgeably about types of stars. Since I previously blogged on the properties of stars, it might be a good time to talk about what those funny letter-number codes mean. What's a G-type star, and how does it differ from an A-type? What does B4 V mean, and is it very much different from B4 III?

Back in the Old Days (tm), people would study the light from stars, noting how stars would have patterns of light and dark in their spectra. The main differences causing those patters are the surface temperature and the composition of a star. The job of separating out the spectra of stars into classes fell largely to a group of women at Harvard University; they began by putting them in classes A, B, C, et cetera according to the presence or absence of spectral lines that were characteristic of various elements. A lady named Annie Jump Cannon, however, realized that by and large, the composition of stars were very similar, and so the categories that truly mattered were the temperatures. She went back through their categories, and sorted them out from highest to lowest temperature.

Posted by debco at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

--You know that part of the story where you have to figure out what is actually and specifically going on? I'm at that part with about three stories right now. Good news though, when I figure it out, I'll have three more stories finished.

--Got the contracts for Chainsaw on Hand from Asimov's on Friday. I know that it says something deeply disturbing about me that I hadn't realized I hadn't gotten them yet.

--Sent the whiny white professor story to Interfictions. Someone needs to love this story because--have I mentioned this before--this story is awesome! :-)

Posted by debco at 07:52 PM | Permalink

So, I'm reading The Best American Short Stories of 2005 and in the authors' notes, one of the authors says:

What made the fictionalized version of interest to me, in the end, was the turn that comes in the final paragraph--which has nothing to do with my friend's real-life account. Without that final turn, the story might be simply ordinary and predictable. With it, everything that precedes it suddenly shifts into a new conifguration. That turn still surprises me, and I hope it surprises readers too.

But it doesn't. It is totally and amazingly predictable. Because, for one thing, she completely gives away the ending in the title of the story, 'A Taste of Dust.' And even if she'd managed not to spoiler her own story with the title, it's not that surprising an ending. It's like she said, well, it could be either this or that and pickedthat without ever trying to see if there was a third or maybe fourth alternative. The writing's nice and all, but I'm beginning to think that endings are not the strong suit of the lit crowd (okay, if you only read certain SF/F stories, you'd probably conclude that endings are not the strong suit of the SF/F crowd either).

I am very picky about endings (which is very snobby of me considering that I have only recently begun to achieve even half-decent endings to my own stories). A bad ending can ruin a good story for me and even a 'blah' ending can negate most of the great writing, world-building, and characterization that have gone before. But a good ending...wow, it makes everything else worthwhile.

Things that I think make a good ending:

• Completely surprising and totally predictable at the same time
• Resonates with and completes the beginning of the story
• Is fully earned by the characters in the story
• Makes the story make sense in a broader way
• Arises organically out of everything that has gone before
• Completes an emotional arc in some way

A good ending makes me happy to have read the story, whether it's a happy ending or not.

A good ending doesn't have to be happy, but it has to be right.

Of course, none of this says anything about how to write a good ending. Mostly for me, I think it's knowing exactly what the story is about narratively and emotionally.

Thoughts?

Posted by debco at 09:27 AM | Permalink

In January, I revised one story and drove one into the ground without actually finishing it.

In February, I finished nothing.

Today, I finally finished a story--for certain definitions of finished. Hey, it has a beginning, a middle, and most important, an end. Once they have those three things it's only a matter of time...

Also, there is still time to finish another story before the end of the month, she said optimistically.

Posted by debco at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Apparently I keep writing posts but forgetting to post them...hmmm, no wonder it appears as if I am not even here]

No love from Strange Horizons.

I've packaged up the story to send back out again because it's a totally awesome story and someone should buy it. And I'm not just saying that because I wrote it (wait a minute--of course, I am--I'm totally saying that because I wrote it, even though it is, in fact, awesome :-)

Posted by debco at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Year's Best Fantasy #6 table of contents:

Eating Hearts · Yoon Ha Lee
The Denial · Bruce Sterling
The Fraud · Esther Friesner
Sunbird · Neil Gaiman
Shard of Glass · Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Farmer’s Cat · Jeff Vandermeer
Crab Apple · Patrick Samphire
The Comber · Gene Wolfe
Walpurgis Afternoon · Deliah Sherman
Monster · Kelly Link
Robots and Falling Hearts · Tim Pratt & Greg van Eekhout
Still Life with Boobs · Ann Harris
Heads Up, Thumbs Down · Gavin J. Grant
Newbie Wrangler · Timothy J. Anderson
Being Here · Claude Lalumière
Mom and Mother Theresa · Candas Jane Dorsey
The Imago Sequence · Laird Barron
Magic in a Certain Slant of Light · Deborah Coates
Single White Farmhouse · Heather Shaw
Read It in the Headlines! · Garth Nix
Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane · Jonathon Sullivan
Mortegarde · Liz Williams
Inside Job · Connie Willis

Posted by debco at 02:35 PM | Permalink

I actually think I'll finish a story this month (so hold that mocking, ms chance!), but the last couple of days have been full of new story ideas for me.

Some beginnings:

They have come to Pretoria to hunt the leviathan
--The Whale's Lover (this is the one I think I'll actually finish this month)

Liz is not prepared for a hot air balloon landing in her front yard.

She tells the people in the balloon that, because she has always been straightforward about things. "I am not prepared to entertain going with you at this time," she says though they haven't said a thing. In particular, they haven't asked her to go anywhere.
--Hot Air

Jennie Low swears to God

that the best cowgirls in the world are on the Chadron in Northwest Nebraska.
--Cowgirls in Space

"A Rottweiler is not a butterfly."

This is what my mother says to me when I tell her that I have recently acquired a Rottweiler puppy. It doesn't make a sense, as is true of so many of the things my mother says. So, I ignore it. I also do not tell my mother the source of my new puppy...
--The Butterfly Dog

Florida believes the world will end with a whimper. But, as always, he is full of shit. The world's already ended. And it ended with a bang.

I tell Florida that he should go by Florin or Flynn or something, which would be less confusing for people than Florida. "Why are you named Florida?" people ask him. "Because I was born in Georgia," he says.
--untitled so far

Posted by debco at 08:02 PM | Permalink

I just sold 'Chainsaw on Hand' to Sheila Williams at Asimov's

Posted by debco at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

If I could put this in Really!Big!Excited!Letters! I would.

David Hartwell just sent me email asking to include Magic in a Certain Slant of Light in Year's Best Fantasy #6

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I said I thought that would be swell.

Posted by debco at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Which I don't hardly ever do much of....

This is what they're saying about me over at Asimov's:

Deborah Coates makes her Asimov's debut by demonstrating how a young girl's life can go in "Forty-Six Directions, None of Them North"

They mention a few other people too.

Posted by debco at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sent a revised story off to Strange Horizons today. We'll see if they like the changes.

Chance has already told me I'm a cheater if I count this one as my finished story for the month. At this point I'm still figuring on finishing a new story by the end of the month and therefore this one doesn't count. As the month goes on and I become more desperate I may revisit this decision.

if I sell it, though, it counts.

Posted by debco at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...what will I work on next?

I will continue working on the rewrite of The Plight of Random Sinners. But that's going to take awhile.

I'm thinking of also working on either In the Aftermath of Rain or The Power Laws of Super Heroes.

You may all now wait with bated breath while I decide....

Posted by debco at 07:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am declaring Later, There Will Be Fireworks finished.

Technically, it is not finished because it doesn't have an ending (some people probably will be thinking cheater, but I am not counting this as one of my finished works for the story-a-month challenge. So, there).

This story needs a second draft more desperately than many of my stories. There are things that need to be set earlier in order to lead inevitably (but, one hopes, unexpectedly) to the ending. And there's no sense writing the last page or so when it will be so much easier to write the last page or so after I fix the beginning (to write the last page or so would require big heaping whacks of exposition since I have not set up the things I need to set--if I can manage to do that, then the ending will more or less write itself).

It's been awhile since I've managed to hose up a story as much as I've managed to hose up this one and I'm not sure why this one is in such a mess. There are parts of it that I really like, but it doesn't resonate yet--all the disparate parts--the minor characters, the setting and the events--don't yet do their jobs. They hold places. They connect one bit to another. But they're not yet serving the overall whole in the way they need to.

Posted by debco at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's an awesome quote in Roger Ebert's review of Brokeback Mountain which gets at the heart of some really good discussion that's been going on at places like this about whether Brokeback Mountain is just a 'big gay cowboy' movie or whether it's something else. It also says something wonderful about what writers do or hope to do:

"Brokeback Mountain" could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a "gay cowboy movie." But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman. Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker

This is what writers mean when they talk about making a story specific. Beginning writers say, well, I don't want to describe the character or the setting or the world in too much detail. I want people to be able to fill in their own details, to identify with it through their own experience. But, as most of us know but can't always articulate, lack of details doesn't make something more 'ours' or more 'real.' Lack of details makes a story less immediate and less dramatic and less personal. Strong vivid details of individual characters, of specific settings, of place and time, give us a way to immerse ourselves in a world and also give us a way to both distance ourselves from the actions and reactions of the characters and identify with their conflicts and struggles. We don't always want to see ourselves as weak or stupid or mean, but when we see our actions in someone else, we can, finally, see ourselves as well.

Posted by debco at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

--The fireworks story is finally making progress. I may actually finish it this week, at which point I will discover that I have not foreshadowed the aliens sufficiently. This will be an easy fix. Whether any other part of the story works is another matter entirely.

--I also dragged out and started the re-write on, The Plight of Random Sinners, which is a story I've been working on, on and off, for ages. It's a very plotty story, which is probably why I've never quite managed to finish it. And it's long or at least it threatens to be long. But I have a much better handle on emotion and other bits and pieces of writing now if not on plotting itself so I'm hoping it goes well because it's always been a story I like (it has intelligent dogs, yo*)

--Last week (was it last week?), EBear was talking about Shark by Edward Bryant, which is an awesome story, which I'd either never read before or forgotten about. Anyway, one of the interesting things about it is the structure and it's reminded me that 1) I sometimes actually do better writing non-linear stories and 2) a couple of the stories that I'm really stuck on might benefit from non-linear plot lines. Also, 3) I should finish In the Aftermath of Rain.

*(Yeah, I know. I'll never do it again.)

Posted by debco at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I would be embarassed to post my actual writing stats, if I kept track of them, which I don't.

However, I sold two stories this year

--Magic in a Certain Slant of Light, which was published in Strange Horizons in March, and

--46 Directions, None of them North, which will be in the March, 2006 issue of Asimovs

This is double my sales for previous years, and I am very pleased about both of them but, really, not much activity for a whole year.

Toward the end of the year I had a couple of 'close but no cigar...yet' responses and I've spent the last three months or so not finishing a single damned thing.

But, of course, I'm going to finish a story a month in 2006.

Posted by debco at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After cutting 2,100 words out of the fireworks story, I've gotten it back up to 4,000 words and I think it is finally going in a reasonable direction (this may, of course, be false optimism on my part--time, as they say, will tell).

Posted by debco at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Muse,

I have cut 2,100 words out of this story in one fell swoop and it is 150% better already.

So there.

Write when you get work.

Sincerely,

Me

Posted by debco at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kelly Link and I published our first stories the same year. Despite this auspicious beginning, her career has been a tad more successful than mine.

After carefully analyzing a statistically significant bunch o' Kelly's stories, I have come to the conclusion that this is mainly because her stories have more sex in them than mine.

So this coming year my stories will be containing more sex.

Except the fireworks story, which you'd think would have sex in it, but doesn't.

Posted by debco at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chance has already mentioned this so my hopes of keeping it a secret and pretending I never said anything are limited.

Anyway, I'm going to finish a story a month (at least) this year. This isn't that lofty a goal--I mean, not like Bear who finishes, like, a story a minute (okay, not a story a minute because she just pubbed her writing stats for the year, but damned impressive)--but it is my single writing goal for the year--finishing things--so it's good to know what success might look like.

(and if I write a lot of sentences like that last one, my success should be pretty much guaranteed)

Posted by debco at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm reading The Samurai's Daughter, a mystery by Sujata Massey. I've always enjoyed her mysteries, but I haven't read any for a few years and so have missed the last three or four. She writes a good story, but I'd forgotten in the interim that one of the reasons I hadn't gone out of my way to search them out is because her dialogue is really reek-a-riffic:

[the main character, Rei, talking to her father at lunch]

"...Now, Dad, where were we? The ten grave precepts of Buddhism. The ones your grandfather felt were so important to live by. I thought it was interesting that he had them on display."

"It was so long ago, Dad. Just tell me. This is an oral history project, not a go-to-the-library project. I remember the first one..."

The dialogue is all about the information and not even a little bit about the characters or their current emotional state. And the interesting thing is that it's not likely to bother a lot of readers because if you don't have a particular ear for dialogue then you won't mind that all the chracters sound alike and that they convey information to each other that they already know, as long as it doesn't actively interfere with the story. This doesn't. It does, in its clumsy way, move the story forward at least.

But because the dialogue generates no interest on its own, the story has to be good enough to carry on narrative alone--there isn't anything else there for the reader to latch onto.

Writers don't have to be good at every tool: dialogue, setting, plot, pretty words, etc. But the fewer tools you have available, the stronger each one of them has to be.

Posted by debco at 09:05 PM | Permalink

--The fireworks story (which, as per usual, has no fireworks in it) is currently the most totally stupid story I have ever written. And this includes the singing Rottweiler story.

--All I ever really wanted to do was write plotty adventure stories (all right, maybe not all, but one thing). Inevitably, this is the sort of story that I'm not particularly good at.

--Waking Up Dead in Iowa,Tanny and the Bruiser, In Lieu of Flying Monkeys,The Impact of Light have all reached the stage of being remarkably stupid stories, though not as stupid as the fireworks story. In the Aftermath of Rain and Mountains Too Close to the Sun remain just this side of stupid. Other stories are currently lurking in neutral territory.

--My single writing goal for the year is to finish things.

Posted by debco at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Anyone who says 'if you don't defend every instance of copyright violation, you lose your copyright' is not allowed to participate in any discussion of copyright. Even if you do agree with the 'every copy is theft' crowd. I mean it. Stop talking right now.

2. Just because I do not agree that every time you make a copy you are stealing food from the mouths of artists or, more explicitly, that every copy is a theft, does not mean that a) I have not done any research on the subject of copyright or b) that I am not entitled to an opinion.

3. Individual instances of copying are not theft no matter how much you wish that they were or really, really want to send your readers, watchers and listeners to jail. It is infringement and is handled in civil court. This does not mean you can't be concerned about infringement or that there is no such thing as criminal infringement, but for crap's sake stop calling every teenager who ever downloaded music a pirate.

4. Being condescending is not the same as being right.

That is all.

Posted by debco at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, not really random, but more than one.

--I seem to have reached a new writing plateau where I receive rejection letters in which the editors really like the story, so much that they aren't sure I should change it, but if I did happen to want to change it, they might want to look at it again.

--My single writing goal for the coming year is to finish things. My stash of unfinished stories is pathetic and somewhat horrifying. At this stage, my (non) career can almost totally be attributed to avoidance and not finishing things.

--Also, and this isn't strictly writing related, the next week and a half includes Christmas, my birthday and New Year's and though I have nothing particularly against Christmas it is otherwise not my favorite time of year.

Posted by debco at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like you didn't know this already:

"Research suggests that when people write about emotional upheavals in their lives, improvements in physical and psychological health can result," said James W. Pennebaker, chair of the department of Psychology.

By enabling clearer thinking, expressive writing helps individuals get past trauma. It also helps them improve their social relationships as they get better at talking, laughing and being more at ease with others, Pennebaker said.

Although I'd like to hear a lot less from people who say writing is the hardest job they've ever done. You're not working in cubicle hell sixty hours a week, you're not milking cows at 4:30 in the morning when it's ten below zero, you're not fixing power lines in the middle of a snowstorm, you're not getting shot at...hmmm, maybe the hardest job you've ever done, but not that hard.

Posted by debco at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm working on this story where each of the characters is living the story from a different direction--one is moving through it linearly, one backwards, and one randomly:

He'd asked the guy in charge of 'expedition' planning about her. "If you're building a time machine, Megan Whiterose is the one person you absolutely want on your team," Jack Parrish had said.

"We're not building a time machine," Dylan said with a snap.

Jack rolled his eyes. Dylan didn't particularly care for him, had pulled some strings to get him assigned to the expedition planning task force and off Dylan's project team--he hadn't planned on Jack being put in charge. "Whatever you want to call it, Whiterose is someone you better have on your team. She gets the philosophical parts."

"There are no philosophical parts," Dylan said.

"Oh yeah," Jack told him. "There are."
...In the Aftermath of Rain

Posted by debco at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just pathetic...

The following are all the stories I have written at least 500 words on but have not yet finished:

• All the Rage this Year: 750
• In Lieu of Flying Monkeys: 820
• In the Aftermath of Rain: 2300
• Later, There Will be Fireworks: 2700
• Mountains Too Close to the Sun: 1400
• Riding the Lead Motorcycle in Satan's Army of Heaven: 570
• Skin & Bone: 600
• Tanny & the Bruiser: 1800
• The Impact of Light: 6800
• The Plight of Random Sinners; 10,000 (some of these words probably need to be removed, but in any case it's still not finished)
• The Whale's Lover: 760
• Twelve: 3000
• Waking Up Dead in Iowa: 3660

This doesn't count another thirteen or so that I've written between 200 and 500 words on, idea snippets, or stuff too old to be counted.

I need a 12-step program.

Posted by debco at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks for the ride.

scifi.com is discontinuing SCIFICTION at the end of 2005.

Great stories. Freely accessible. Excellent pay for writers. Of course, it had to go.

I am honored to have published a story there.

Posted by debco at 11:46 PM | Permalink

the Scarlet Letters has notes on making art:

• "Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can." I don't think that we should be shooting for a place where we no longer make crappy art. A good artist is one who's in motion making lots of art -- you only think they're so much better because they produce so much quantity that their pile of "good art" has also been able to accumulate. For every piece of crap you create, you're one step closer to getting something you really like.
• Work fast. Creativity is exciting. If you're not judging while you're making, then you can just throw things together as fast as your mind can move. You're smart; if you don't like what you've made, you'll know immediately. You might not know what to do about the problem you perceive... Don't "think", standing there cogitating -- try things. If your hands are in motion, you can be generating new permutations. The one that you want to pick will come out on its own time.
• Let your level show. Let the world know that despite having years of investment in your art form, you're still a beginner who doesn't know it all. Rather than hide your thought process, let your questions be present in your work. You are a fundamentally more interesting artist if people get to see what it is that you're struggling with, rather than just your final answers. Show your work. Talk about what you still can't understand (unapologetically).

...via 43 Folders

Posted by debco at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

First lines from the five things I've worked on most recently:

In the Aftermath of Rain:
For years afterward, they called it the 'Explosion,' though nothing had actually exploded.

The untitled Spicy Slipstream Story I won't finish in time to sub to the anthology:
On Thursday, Rosemary woke to find a ghost in bed with her.

In Lieu of Flying Monkeys
"What are you doing? What the bloody hell are you doing?"

"I'm fixing lunch," Zen replied imperturbably. Everyone said Zen was imperturbable--well, they didn't use that word usually. They said things like 'so calm' or 'quiet' or 'who?'

Later, There will be Fireworks
Every Friday morning, Tillie has a seizure.

Revolution
I once slept with an Irish revolutionary.

I was twenty-one and I don't know how old he was. For ten years afterward, on the anniversary of the day he left, I'd get an unsigned St. Patrick's day card in the mail

Posted by debco at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I haven't had much in the way of writing quotes lately becasue I finished up the whiny professor story and I've been putzing around trying to figure out which story is ready to be worked on next--writing a little bit there, a little bit here to see if anything takes off and runs with itself.

So here's a quote from the story I have no market for (or it might not be a marketable story, who's to know):

When I walked back into the kitchen, she was sitting at the kitchen table with Benning, the two of them drinking coffee, like they drank coffee together at that table all the time. Benning smiled at her and reached a hand across the table. I cleared my throat and they both looked across the room at me. Benning grinned.

Posted by debco at 05:54 PM | Permalink

I finished (for some definition of 'finished') the whiny white professor story. Now I need to figure out if it 1) works and 2) if it works the way I want it to work.

Quote for today:

She grins at you. No one over forty should be allowed to grin. No woman over a hundred and ten pounds should be allowed to wear what she's wearing. Although...and for half a second you think maybe it looks good on her--she seems to wear it with assurance.

Posted by debco at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I haven't had one in a couple days...

He was young, younger than she'd thought when she'd first seen him. He wasn't even twenty yet, she figured. He had a half-finished face as if it hadn't yet made up its mind to be handsome--a little round yet, a bit undefined. He had dark blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair nearly hidden under a battered hat. His wrists stuck out from the cuffs of his shirt and they gave him the look of someone who was all bone and sinew with some kind of hunger that ate away at him no matter where he was or what he did or how many meals came his way in a day.

Posted by debco at 09:29 PM | Permalink

My current goal for the next month or so is to finish more stories than I start.

Today's writing quote:
You find yourself half-listening to the people next door. "Gear up," you hear. And "...cooked over open flames, you just have to--" And even, "It is so not about the weapons," followed by, "No, look, if--"

Elizabeth Bear has won the Campbell Award for best new writer. She's been incredibly successful and obviously hard-working over the last year or so. It's well-deserved and makes me happy :-)

The main story I'm working on currently is the first one I've written where what the narrator 'gets' about any given scene is not what the reader gets, or what I hope the reader gets. He's not an unreliable narrator so much as in a different story. It's interesting to write--I have no idea if it's working.

I wish I wrote plottier stories. My stories are much more 'literary' than I ever aspired to or wanted to write. I put 'literary' in quotes because academics make fun of me because I like plot, don't use the same cultural references they do, and I want people to care about my characters (this is true--actual academics have actually made fun of me--I live in a university town and they try to pass it off as witty but, you know, it's not). Even on the SF side I don't think I really use the same cultural references that other people do--I don't think this is a bad thing, I just find it interesting and I'd love to figure out what to do with it and how/if I can use it to be a better writer.

Plottier stories and finishing things. I could probably build, like, a career out of that.

Posted by debco at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Articles of a Personal Nature got an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction. It doesn't really mean much except to other writers flipping through the list to see if their stories got mentioned, but pleases me because I like this story, it was the first story I sold after five years of not selling (or even writing much for two of those years) and it's nice to know someone noticed it, at least.

Posted by debco at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is actually the writing quote of yesterday:

"If you die in fire," my father said, "It won't matter if the world freezes later on."

"It will matter to the world," my mother told him.

Posted by debco at 06:34 AM | Permalink

I have decided that my only post for the day can't just be a quote from my writing (there may be a once a week exception to this rule--refs are conferring). So, that's why there wasn't a quote yesterday. Blogging for me, as you can see, is like a never-ending game of Calvin ball...

Anyway, here's today's quote:

The closest you got to Italy was cheap wine from the state liquor store at the strip mall.

Posted by debco at 04:41 PM | Permalink

Yes, I have now become so incredibly boring I can think of nothing else to post all day long except today's writing quote (become some of you are saying...man, you were always boring). And, in fact, I am apparently reduced to holding imaginary conversations with myself.

All that notwithstanding, here's today's writing quote...

You arrive at your office an hour later than you'd planned to find that the door knob has fallen off your door again.

And in case no one has noticed, I am now writing my second story with a second person POV. Once upon a time I swore I would never write any.

Posted by debco at 11:24 PM | Permalink

Jenny Jenkman could climb mountains like nobody’s business.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's kind of short. I've been meeting my writing goal every day (yay me!) but my writing goals are pretty modest so if I'm not careful my quotes may outrun my writing.

Posted by debco at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I need to start putting up shorter quotes or write faster....

You wake up to the pathetic bleating of your dying alarm clock. Bre-e-whine... Bre-e-whine... Eventually it trails off in disgust as if it, too, has already tired of the day. For a long minute, you lie on your back and look at the ceiling. There's a water stain from last September's all day downpour; the day the roofer was supposed to come but didn't. He showed up three days late with no explanation and no apology and when you tried to tell him about the water stain, the stain you wouldn't have if he'd showed up on time he just shrugged and set his ladder on your foot.

Posted by debco at 10:28 PM | Permalink

I had to go back a bit for this one, though I did get today's writing done too.

Everyone wants Superman.

Not to be Superman--at least they might, but that's not what I mean. They want to be rescued by Superman. Being rescued by Superman puts you on the front page of the paper. People walk up to you--'Rescued by Superman! Hey! All right! Dude, you are so lucky.'

Posted by debco at 08:21 PM | Permalink

I did, just barely, manage to get my writing in today. So now, here's today's quote (I know you've all been waiting):

"Remind me what we're doing here," Tic said to Jack for what must have been the seventeenth time. She ducked under low pipes, her nose wrinkling unconsciously from the intertwining smells of old rocket fuel and dry rot and human sweat.

"Yeah, that's helpful.

Posted by debco at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got the page proofs for 46 Directions, None of them North which will be in Asimov's some time soon.

I'm guessing this is one of the few times in my writing career where I get to write story that manages to contain a sentence with seven exclamation points at the end of it (there's a sentence with five exclamation points at the end of it too. It's an exciting story.)

Posted by debco at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The flying monkey story has no good quotes yet so instead you get talking John Henry:

"I am in favor of hiding," Jent says. It�s what he says every single time we sit down to discuss this. "There are very few of us and Posteria�s a big country. It might work."

"Bury the rodent," John Henry says happily from the back of the room. He rarely speaks up at these meetings so everyone turns and looks at him. He is sitting straight with his chest out, looking at the assembled company. "Bury the rodent," he says, then he pounces on a flickering ray of light and chases light and shadow across the room.

Posted by debco at 08:54 PM | Permalink

I have decided that this is part of the flying monkey story that doesn't have any flying monkeys in it. I've further decided that the flying monkey sans monkey story is about creeping credentialism, Edgar Allan Poe (okay, only peripherally), cosmology, and magic.

It may also incorporate a story that I started a good number of years ago and never got anywhere with called, "Telekinesis is Not Scientific." On the other hand, it might not.

Posted by debco at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "Look, was he shot or what? I mean, there was a lot of blood. It wasn't just a heart attack or something simple." In the other corner of the small break room, Phyllis Cole, Tom Pollard's secretary sat with a woman who Sarah assumed was another police detective. Phyllis wasn’t crying--or even talking as far as Sarah could tell--she was just looking at the table and shredding a tissue in her tightly clenched hands.

"Life must be a constant series of disappointments to you."

In the interests of full disclosure, I have not necessarily written the quote I put up on the day I put it up. But I have written today. No writing, no quote.

Posted by debco at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And today's quote is:

Chet says that it is no longer mandatory to stop at stop signs.

"I'm just saying," he tells her.

Posted by debco at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's today's quote:

With a wave of her hand, she removes the wall of her apartment. It's a structural wall and the floor above starts to collapse down onto them until Pammy makes another gesture, half-panicked though she tries to disguise it from her mother, and puts the wall back as if it's never been gone.

"No," Pammy says, annoyed. "The stairs are a statement. Plus, I can fly. What do I need stairs for?" Her mother gives her that flat, even stare that means she has something to say, but she isn't going to say it. "You don't know anything about glitter," Pammy finally says when the silence has stretched into what seems to her like endlessness.

I should add that I've met my writing goal two days in a row now. For me that's, like, a habit.

Posted by debco at 05:27 PM | Permalink

Browsing Clarion blogs, I came across this:

Leslie pointed out that I often have these big, deep subjects, but sort of pussyfoot around them or draw away.

I have always referred to this as being willing to take my characters up to the edge of a cliff, but being unwilling to push them off. For years, it was one of my biggest problems, I think, in making the leap from almost published to published (well, that and not finishing stuff). This particular weakness has resulted in lots of stories that I've either never finished or that had endings that left readers feeling flat and probably sort of cheated.

The solution, for me, has been to love my characters less. And to love the story more. If it's all about the story and less about the characters--on the writing side, not necessarily in how the reader sees it--then I am suddenly much more willing to try stuff on my characters to see if it flies:

What if I take their family away from them?
What if I kill their dog?
What if he really doesn't love her?
What if it does kill half the human race?

They have to be interesting, my characters, but I can't love them. Because sooner or later they're going to have to go over the cliff.

Posted by debco at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have not been writing much lately, which you may say is perfectly understandable, but is a lot the reason I have no actual writing career to speak of (also because I write things like '...is a lot the reason...') I'm currently trying to get my writing back up to speed and am working on six short stories and a mystery novel (yeah, I know, it's embarrassing, and I wonder why I'm so much better at beginnings than endings).

I'm looking for ways to mark my progress and I'd also like to start posting here every day, so I'm going to experiment with posting a short bit of writing from something I'm working on every day. Today's bit:

The detective grinned at her, a sharp white smile that seemed to lighten his eyes and Sarah almost found herself smiling back at him. Then she remembered where she was and what this was and she scowled at him instead.

"You’re doing it very well."

Posted by debco at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've started a new story. If I can pull it off, which I'm not entirely certain of yet, it should be a lot of fun. Current title: 'Another Story About A Whiny, White, Middle-Aged Professor'

I've also sort of started two other stories (have I mentioned that I'm much better at beginning than finishing). One's called 'The Whale's Lover' and the other is called 'All the Rage this Year' which starts thusly:

"Glitter is key," Pammy tells her mother just before she ascends to the Moon. "You can�t be taken seriously without glitter."

"I've been full of glitter my whole life," Pammy's mother tells her, as she climbs through Pammy's second floor apartment window, Pammy having removed the stairs in a fit of pique three days earlier. "You're just not looking."

Posted by debco at 10:49 PM | Permalink

I get story ideas and write them down and I believe at the time that I'm being really, really careful and writing down enough of the idea so that I'll remember exactly what I meant to do with it. But when I come back to it later, it always looks something like this:

You can't see Saturn with the naked eye.

Then why did you say--

I'm sure I will use this sometime, but it can't really be said that it's a story idea....

Posted by debco at 04:15 PM | Permalink

I got the contracts for '46 Directions, None of them North' this week from Asimov's. They have been signed and sent back and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it in print.

Boy, the tree world sure does work on a different time scale than the electric world, is all I've got to say....

Posted by debco at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...to find this image vastly amusing:

...Let's translate that metaphorically [something someone else said that I'm not quoting], shall we? Book publishing is a sinking ship. The former passengers on the ship have given in to their feral instincts and are dismantling the ship board by board. The remaining crew are being wedged further and further back into what little of the ship remains above the waterline. Eventually the whole ship will disappear beneath the waves and all the crew will drown. The thought of possibly jumping off the ship apparently doesn't occur to the crew; rather, their ambition is simply to be the last person to drown.

Screw 'em. Let them drown. Because here's the thing about that "sinking ship:" Even if we grant it is sinking (which we should not), and that the passengers are scurvy pirates (which we ought not), this ship is sinking in about five feet of water and the shore is fifty yards away. And if you haven't the wit to make it to shore, then by God, you deserve to die.

Posted by debco at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, fine, I don't hate him. I don't even know him. But, hey, it doesn't seem to stop anyone else.

I haven't read all of what Cory's written or spoken about (but I've read more than one paragraph from one interview, you betcha), but I am excited and interested in some of the things he's doing, including the ways in which he's distributed his science fiction writings. Here, though, is some of what I've been hearing whenever online fiction and filesharing and copyright and Cory come up (liberally paraphrased, I'm sure sometimes unfairly, by me):

--He can't change copyright because I don't want him to--

Well, you know, hurray. I'm not going to interpret Cory for the masses because--see above--I don't know him and besides he's a writer so he ought to be able to interpret himself. But it would be a big surprise to me if Cory or Lawrence Lessig or the EFF want to get rid of copyright. And if they do then ha, ha, ha, the joke's on them because copyright's not going anywhere.

Cory's thinking is out there--all over the place in fact. If I wanted to know what Cory was thinking and/or advocating about copyright and its future I'd read what he's saying--and more of it than just one scare quote from an interview that someone's brought up to prove that Cory is a great big stupid and I hate him.

And, by the way, if someone can show me where Cory says I hates me some copyright and I want to kill it dead, dead, dead, please point me to it.

--Don't take copyright away from me--

Well, then don't take it away from me either. In case no one's noticed, copyright is being extended and extended. Works that would have gone into the public domain are not. In fact no new works will go into the public domain for the next several years. The RIAA is suing 12 year old girls and elderly women who've never owned computers. Assaults are being made on our rights of first sale, on fair use, on our ability to use things we've legally purchased.

Do I want writers to be paid for their work? Yes, absolutely. I'm a writer. I like getting paid. Do I want to live in a world where ideas are only available to those who can pay for them. No, no, no. Democracy and civil society do not survive without a free exchange of ideas. I want copyright to live up to its promise--to promote innovation and serve society. Protection of intellectual property promotes innovation. Limited time serves society.

--I like how I'm making a living now (writing stuff). I don't want to self-promote or teach classes or give talks to people.--

First of all, lucky you, to make a living writing. Second, the world changes, you know. New people find new ways to make it work. I want to have a job tomorrow morning when I wake up, but it might not happen. I want my dogs to live forever. I want lots of things to stay the same and they never do.

When I hear writers saying--I made it in the world as it existed twenty years ago or I had a spouse working a regular job with benefits or I already have a built-in audience so don't you mess with my status quo. I want to say at least three things:

--The RIAA and the MPAA are messing with the status quo in ways that hurt everyone (and will ultimately hurt even them)
--You don't want Cory (or whoever) to mess with your ability to make a living? Well, who died and made you the only writers who count?
--You know, I probably want your life too--so just dismiss me as jealous--but what was so twenty years ago is not so today and pretending that it is (or hating Cory for it) doesn't change anything or put us back to the way things were.

What I am much more concerned about than the far-fetched idea that Cory Doctorow will kill us all by doing away with copyright forever, are the following:

--as a reader, I want to read things. I want to be treated as if I am an honest, responsible person, which I am and I don't want to have to waste excessive time getting access to stuff I purchased or have to prove that I'm an honest human being who pays for things.
--as a writer, I want to be published and I want to be read. I want my works to have the best opportunity to find an audience in a world that's overflowing with information
--as a creator, I want to be able to do what William Shakespeare and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Georgia O'Keeffe and every other great artist and creator--build off the creative zeitgeist and add to the collective understanding of the world.

Do I want to be paid for what I write--you betch 'um, Red Ryder!

Do I want copyright to protect my work from exploitive bastards trying to make money off my work? Absolutely.

Do I want people I don't know, fifty years after I'm dead, to be making money off work that I did? Not so much.

Do I want my work lost fifty years after I'm dead because--see above--people I don't know and who never did anything for me have control over my stuff? No

Do I have the answer to filesharing and broadband access and digitization and income streams and how writers will make a living next week or next year or fifty years from now? No, I don't. I wish I did because I would so be a lot richer than I am now. But I do think ways that work now ought to be encouraged and investigated and Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi and a bunch of other people are busily exploring ways that work now and we ought to be paying close attention and learning everything we can.

Maybe I can't have everything I want. Maybe I live in a little rose-colored world of idealism and misinformation. But I think very strongly that any time writers set up readers as the adversary that writers lose.

And, BTW, 'Search Inside' at Amazon has absolutely led me to buy books and, equally important, not buy books that wouldn't let me look before buying.

Posted by debco at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I have 35 kick-ass story titles for which I have no stories yet.

I should just auction them on eBay....

Posted by debco at 10:41 AM | Permalink

My theory is that when you write a cat story, you're saying to the world, "I'm now a middle aged author who likes to drink tea, read Agatha Christie, and have my children send my postcards about the world."

...from Ben Peek

Posted by debco at 09:02 PM | Permalink

At writers' group this morning [ok, this was, like back in 2000] we were talking about best sellers. At one time I spent my time despising best sellers, thinking--I can write better than that. But lately, I've realized that it's not productive. There is something in these books that people want, something that makes them appealing to a wide range of readers even though the writing in many of them (in my opinion) is not very good.

Many readers, given a good story, don't care all that much about the writing. I like to think they enjoy good writing when they get it, that good writing broadens the appeal even more. I also believe--or like to believe--that it isn't necessary or even wise to 'pander' to the audience. But analyzing the basic appeal is more than worthwhile because it helps me to look at my own writing and to see, for example, that while maybe it's beautifully crafted with complex and interesting characters, the story is just flat-out boring. And then you have to figure out why.

John Grisham writes about ordinary people (more or less) who get caught up in things much larger than they are and who manage to triumph. In 'The Client' there's a smart-mouth kid from a trailer park and a lawyer who's had to move back in with her mother and lost custody of her children to her ex-husband. They're people who don't have much power in every day life. But they know right from wrong and when push comes to shove they push back. They are 'small' people who speak truth to power and manage to be heard--something the tiny, repressed idealist in many of us long to do ourselves, though we're not always sure we really would.

Danielle Steele writes about perfect people to whom bad things happen. Mostly undeserved things perpetrated on them by jealous others, but also by the hand of fate. Their perfection, though, shines through and finally lifts them up to the place they've always deserved. People either recognize their goodness and stand aside or try to tear them down because they (the people who try to tear them down) are petty, mean, jealous people. In Danielle Steele novels rewards are material.. Good people get wealth and beauty and love--though they must pass through many trials to get there.

Flawed people who do good.

Good people who rise to their destiny.

Both of these are powerful 'stories.' Many of us want to read them again and again. The appeal is not universal. I can no longer read 'good people are beautiful and deserving' stories myself any more. In some ways they're telling us the same 'story'--that doing the right thing and trying are important.

And even though I no longer really believe that merit rises, I do still figure that doing the right thing and working hard are worth it in their own right.

Posted by debco at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm cleaning and I've found some old notebooks....

One thing I think a lot about lately is our need for story. We get caught up in the foibles of our leaders, but we seem so concerned with people seeing us and watching us and judging us that we seem to have forgotten much of the story of who we are, the principles this country was founded on, and who we want to be. Some of the greatest good in this country has been done by people who want to be better than they are and by people who believe it's possible to make things better.

I hear this stuff all the time--'well, that's the way it is' or 'we'll have to learn to do business in this new global economy,' or 'well, he's making all that money, so he must be good and it must be okay for him to have made that money in whatever way he did.' And it seems clear ot me that we've forgotten that we are it. We are the people. It's our culture, our country, our way of life.

We need stories. We need stories not just of wish-fulfillment and not just of small things, not just of despair and not just of goodness triumphing because it's good. We need complex stories of society and flawed people and changing things. We need ways to shift paradigms. And ways to reinvent democracy--or at least to recognize what it is and what it means again. We need both fiction and 'real' stories. And we need stories in the sense that Neil Postman spoke of them--stories that help us to communicate to one another and to understand what we want and what we have and what we hold.

Posted by debco at 01:56 PM | Permalink

I used to think I was pretty much an organic writer, but then I discovered the beauty of structure (about which I may write more some time). When I'm working on novels, I really like outlines (which in my case resembles a really rough, really tight first draft--as in, say, two paragraphs per scene).

I used to think I was a character-driven writer (which I sort of am) but in short stories I rarely know a lot of physical details about my character (I don't know what Nora looks like in 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light;' I just realized today that the main character in '46 Directions...' doesn't have a name). I often don't know much at all about them except what's in the story--though there's usually a fair lot of informtion about them in the story.

In some ways in short stories at least, I'd say I am theme and emotion-driven in the sense that there's some 'feel' that the story has for me that I want to maintain all the way to the end. Sometimes the feel isn't quite right though and I have to discover how to adjust it in order to find the ending.

I almost never know the ending until I get there. Though at some point, usually well before the half-way mark, I have to know what the story is about. And I know what it's about long, long before I know how it will end.

But the thing I can say fairly definitely that I am is a backbrain/backburner writer. I was reading someone's old journal entry today about really crappy first drafts and second and third drafts and I realized that I don't really think in terms of drafts anymore. It often takes me a good long time to finish a story, but most of that time is spent thinking about the story in the way that astronomers look at faint stars--not directly, but out of the corner of the eye I write seventy-five percent of my stories in my head. I've had editors or critiquers who suggest changes and I walk around for three weeks thinking--damn I have to get working on this. And I am. It just doesn't look like it--even to me. I write things that I don't even understand until someone says--hey, I really like how you linked this and this and this. I write things I don't even remember thinking up.

There's a balance between thinking things out in my head and trusting that it's there somewhere and will become clear as I type. The better I get at that balance and at trusting that it will work, the better I get as a write (especially at endings, which I mostly suck at).

Posted by debco at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Magic in a Certain Slant of Light is up at Strange Horizons

"If you could wish for something magical, what would you wish for?" Jeff asks Nora as he enters the kitchen.

Jeff has been gone all day, helping a friend fix the plumbing in his basement. There's no "Hello," or "How was your day?" Just Jeff, in the doorway, asking about magic. "It can't be about yourself," he continues. "I mean, like making yourself immortal. Or about world peace. It has to be—"

"Talking dogs," Nora says.

Posted by debco at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Awhile back I watched the movie 'Unconditional Love' with Rupert Everett and Kathy Bates and occasionally Dan Akroyd. As far as I know this movie went directly to DVD/Video which is a shame because I liked it quite a bit. What follows is not so much about this movie, but about why I think this movie didn't get studio promotion or reviewed as favorably as it might have. It's not a great movie. But it's a good movie and it's too bad more people haven't seen it.

Reading reviews for 'Unconditional Love' reminds me of the phrase--'you see, but you do not understand.' It's also an interesting study in genre expectations because everyone (including, one presumes, the studio which released it direct-to-dvd) puts it into a category and then criticizes it for not living up to their expectations of the genre they insisted on shoving it into.

Reviews have called 'Unconditional Love' dark comedy, romantic comedy, murder mystery, and thriller. Not dark enough, not funny enough, not mysterious enough, not thrilling enough, they say--and what was up with that funny/dark/scary part that didn't fit what I wanted? But the problem with these criticisms is that 'Unconditional Love' isn't any of those things. It's not dark comedy or romantic comedy or murder mystery or thriller. It may be unclassifiable, but really, it's a coming of age story for adults.

At one point, Rupert Everett's character tells Kathy Bates, 'You're intending to matter. You just had a glimpse of what you probably could have become if you'd only had a little more courage.' And that's what this movie is about--intending to matter. It's not even--really--about mattering. It's about meaning to, about doing things that are worth doing because they're worth doing, not because the world at large will approve or disapprove or care.

It's not even, in the end, about character change because who the characters become is who they always probably were.

Toward the end of the movie, Grace (Kathy Bates) tells her husband (Dan Akroyd), who has left her and then returned to her--telling her he wants things similar, but different--that she wants things different. He tells her he's not sure he can be different. 'Find a way," she says. She doesn't say try or I'm sure you'll do fine. She says, 'Find a way.'

This is a movie about finding a way, about ordinary, forgotten people, about 'losers' who transcend their lives--to care about each other, to make a difference, to change the world. It is romantic, mysterious, and occasionally thrilling. For extra bonus points it has dwarves in red raincoats, serial killers, fireworks, crossbows and Julie Andrews.

Posted by debco at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received, reviewed, and returned the edits for 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light' which is going to be published by Strange Horizons.

It looks like things are still on track for it to go live this month.

Posted by debco at 07:49 PM | Permalink

Elizabeth Bear has a really great entry on 'Show vs Tell':

What it means was that you actually can narrate or exposit anything, as long as you do it engagingly. Anything, that is, except one thing. Character development and motivation; these are things that have to be demonstrated, grounded. The reader has to be made to feel them. They have to be in the reader's gut; the reader has to be in the character, he has to comprehend the character. You discover the magic of the thing tanaise�called "inpositioning," of making the character's motivations explicit in his actions. Of showing the disconnect between what he does, and what he says (the single best teaching example of this I can think of is a scene in Roger Zelazny's The Guns of Avalon between Benedict and Corwin�which includes what I consider to be one of the best paragraphs of oblique characterization in fantasy:�"I glanced away and so did Ganelon. When I looked back, his face had returned to normal, and he had lowered his arm." It's a paragraph, two sentences, twenty-three words, that completely define two characters for me. Taken out of context, not so much, but in the place where the two men have been shown, and their relationships demonstrated, it's breathtaking.) and making the reader understand the three-dimensionality of the character by showing him in parallax view. If he jumps when you close one eye, you can see him against the background of stars.

I've been going to post this, like, forever, but I also wanted to add some pithy and enlightening commentary of my own--about show vs tell, about the unpacking process of becoming a writer, about rules and their places. But, heck with it, that'll take, like, forever. Just go read what she wrote.

Posted by debco at 12:18 PM | Permalink

Asimov's has just offered to buy my story, '46 Directions, None of them North.'

Posted by debco at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just sold a short story, 'Magic in a Certain Slant of Light' to Strange Horizons.

It's tentatively scheduled for mid-March.

Posted by debco at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There's a discussion on a list I'm on about opening lines/paragraphs of stories.

I have to admit that I think I'm pretty good at openings because, since I don't actually know how the story goes until I get to the end, I need an opening that I'm really interested in to get me to do the work required to get to the end.

Here are openings for stories I'm currently working on.

Twelve:

John Henry thinks the wind is coming to get him.

The King thinks this is ridiculous. “You can’t listen to dogs,” he says. “They’re hardly ever right.”

The King is hardly ever right either, but it only makes him angry when I point this out to him. To be fair, he never expected to be King, being the second son of the third cousin of the old King’s half-brother, and perfectly content--the way he tells it now--to be a captain of the Guard in Posteria-that-was. Now, he’s the only King we have.

Tanny and the Bruiser:

Tanny caught the Bruiser his first night instation.

We were playing cards with three rousters from the Bomano when she slid up behind him and put her gun against his temple.

"Unusual," he said, "you don't see Kenett-Spring loaders around much any more. How do you power it?"

"Women's orgasms and men's screams," she told him, her breath like the whisper of a summer's breeze against his skin.

"You must run out of fuel a lot."

"You'd be surprised."

Waking Up Dead In Iowa:

Joe Crowley came back first, which didn’t seem all that strange at the time. He’d only been dead an hour and a half and nobody even knew it yet, except Joe himself.

“I blew my head off with a shotgun,” he said to me, as I was finishing my morning coffee on the front porch of my double-wide residence/office/medical clinic. “How come I ain’t dead?”

Posted by debco at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My short story, Articles of a Personal Nature, is now up at SCIFICTION.

Check it out!!!!!!!!!

I am So. Incredibly. Cool!!!

Posted by debco at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Joel on Software has a good entry on getting your resume read, which reads a lot like advice on getting your story read by an editor:

A résumé is a way to get to the next stage: the interview. Companies often get dozens of résumés for every opening ... we get between 100 and 200 per opening. There is no possible way we can interview that many people. The only hope is if we can screen people out using résumés. Don't think of a résumé as a way to get a job: think of it as a way to give some hiring manager an excuse to hit DELETE. At least technically, your résumé has to be perfect to survive.

...

# Proofread everything a hundred times and have one other person proofread it. Someone who got really good grades in English.

# Write a personal cover letter that is customized for the job you are applying for. Try to sound like a human in the cover letter. You want people to think of you as a human being.

# Study the directions that are given for how to apply. They are there for a reason. For example our website instructs you to send a résumé to jobs@fogcreek.com. This goes into an email folder which we go through to find good candidates. If you think for some reason that your résumé will get more attention if you print it out and send it through the mail, that you'll "stand out" somehow, disabuse yourself of that notion. Paper résumés can't get into the email folder we're using to keep track of applicants unless we scan them in, and, you know what? The scanner is right next to the shredder in my office and the shredder is easier to use.

Posted by debco at 04:05 PM | Permalink

For a number of years I've gotten together with a group of friends who are also writers. Sometimes our relationship is social, sometimes we're a critique group, sometimes we're a place to come and bitch, but in the end we're all writers and that, as much as anything, defines the ways we relate to each other. Early on, we decided that we needed a name for our group and we spent several get-togethers discussing what that name should be, how it would reflect our personality, what others would think of it. Some liked one name, some liked another, but finally after much careful discussion we decided on a name.

Which all of us immediately forgot.

After several years, however, we have a new name. We came up with it in a single evening, more or less out of nowhere, when we weren't looking for a name at all. We have managed to remember it for an entire week. And, much better than that other name (I'm sure), although also much more frightening, it is so the right name for us--

The Rottweiler and Tea Society.

Posted by debco at 08:30 PM | Permalink

Yes, I know you are all waiting with bated breath :-)

I sold a short story (with dogs! and tracking! and flying saucers! Oops, no wait, just the dogs and the tracking) to SCIFICTION.

I haven't sold anything in a very, very long time and this is a very, very good market, so I am very, very pleased :-)

Posted by debco at 02:06 PM | Permalink

I am a good writer.

I have been a good writer of well-written, thoughtful, ought-to-be-publishable stuff for at least ten years (Yes, this is my opinion. Yes, I'm sure you think my opinion is deluded--so do I most of the time, but you know what, we're wrong). But I am not much published. Friends and critiquers will tell you that I have several problems varying from story to story and culminating in a number of things that are good but not quite. But those are just problems of a particular story or essay. Really, I have only one problem--I think most of what I write could be a thousand times better and I never finish more than a tiny fraction of anything I start. Now, I realize when you look at that that it seems like two problems, but it's not. In the end it's only one problem. I don't write things down because I don’t think it’ll be good enough yet. I don't finish things because I don't think it will be good enough. But good enough or not doesn't matter. What matters is that I have all this good stuff and I never ever finish it.

Here’s something I wrote six and a half years ago that I just found underneath the couch in my spare bedroom:

The Bitch at Middle Age

Riley, the seven and a half year old Rottweiler, stands in the middle of the living room and stares at me. She wants to go out. Or she wants a drink of water. Or she just wants me to acknowledge that she's there. If I continue to ignore her and she's not really desperate for whatever it is that she wants, she'll eventually lie down with a sigh that tells me that she’s not happy, but she'll settle for waiting a little longer.

For some people, the word Rottweiler conjures up an emotional image. Rottweilers eat children, attack for no reason, will latch onto your arm and never let go. But what I want you to see when you read Riley's name is how massive she is, how solid. I want you to picture her moving across the lawn at a ground-eating trot with an ease that belies her bulk. Or see her when she's tracking and she finds the scent and leans into the harness with confidence and determination. I want you to imagine her leaping from the car to greet a friend of mine who she hasn't see in a year. She recognizes him the minute he gets out of his car. She stands in the back of my station wagon and whines and the stump of her tail wags so fast that her rear end shivers. And when I open the back door and she jumps out and runs to him, she bends herself into a U-shape and leans against his leg so that if he wants to he can pet her head and her rear end at the same time.

When I decided to buy a dog I was thirty-four years old. I'd lived along nearly my entire adult life, no people, no pets.

...and that’s it. That’s all I wrote. Could have been good. Might have been bad. But who the hell knows since I never finished it.

It'd be a simple thing to say, 'I vow to change my ways and finish everything I start. Boy, don't I feel better now.' But if it were simple, I could have done it a long time ago. The work I do, the life I have, the way my mind and emotions conspire with one another make this a very very hard thing for me. Well, obviously, since 'finish things and send them out' is nearly the one critical thing to a successful writing career and if it were easy, it would have been the first thing I ever changed about my writing.

A good friend of mine tells me that I spend too much time looking for information and not enough time doing anything with the knowledge that information brings. I love finding out new things and I do believe that if I just knew enough, everything else would fall into place. That's not going to happen. I will never know enough. So this is what I'm shooting for right now. To write more. To finish...something. And to analyze the process here rather than simply sitting in a corner wishing I were someone else.

Posted by debco at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)