Lessons Learned

I had a really interesting weekend, with a trip to Boyertown, PA for a job interview. In the process, I learned a few things...

1. If you are traveling somewhere unfamiliar and you will have to drive, try to arrange a daylight arrival. Driving unfamiliar roads at night is... interesting.
2. Mapquest is your friend.
3. Reading Mapquest directions while you are driving at night is not easy.
4. Mapquest does not help much when you are diverted off the highway because of an incident you later learn was a fatal accident that closed the entire highway.
5. PA near Philadelphia does not appear to have discovered the concept of "service roads".
6. PA near Philadelphia does not appear to have discovered the concept of "detour signs".
7. Following the line of traffic that has also been diverted only works when the bulk of that traffic is trying to get back on the highway.
8. The kindly stranger who notices your out-of-state plates and "lost driver" behavior and offers directions back to the highway is indeed a gift from Heaven.
9. There is no relief greater than arriving at your accommodation after lessons 1 through 8.
10. After lessons 1 through 8, a mere job interview is a breeze.
11. The roads that were so unnerving last night are in fact very pretty by daylight.
12. The drive that was so unnerving last night was in fact very pleasant by daylight.
13. Philadelphia International Airport was not designed for ease of access. It is very worrying being directed away from the airport by the airport access road.
14. Every vehicle that uses Philadelphia International Airport roads must drive in loops. This appears to have been designed as an iron-clad Rule.
15. Do not, under any circumstances, wear a silver hairclip when going through airport security.
16. The current scanning wands can and do pick up bra underwire. And watches. And...
17. After all the above, being delayed by 1/2 hour at Houston is nothing.
18. Cats sulk. They won't let you out of their sight, but they refuse all attempts at snuggles.

The interview itself went fairly well. I'm now waiting to hear the result.

Kate

Good News

I've made my first professional sale :-D

Naturally, I'm completely over the moon about it. The story, "A Change of Heart", will be in the Valdemar anthology coming out from DAW sometime in the future. It's a collaboration between me and my friend and mentor Sarah Hoyt

We were talking about short story ideas for the anthology, and I mentioned this one. She was so taken with the idea and the characters (both of whom have decided to harass us both in the hope of getting their very own novel. Honestly! Ungrateful beggars) that she invited me to collaborate with her. Permission was granted from On High, and the story went in on Tuesday. Today, we heard it was accepted.

I'm still floating :)

Kate

Perfect Record Continues Unbroken

Another form reject from F&SF, coupled with Analog's insulting form reject for a different story. I'm not going to bitch about the situation with the magazines, since I've already said plenty about that in the last post ;)

It's about time for an update on my current projects, so here goes.

Novels.

• New Camelot - 100500 word novel, being vetted by readers to see what it still needs after the last heavy edit/revision cycle. Set in a near future alternate world where King Arthur & co. were returned in 1940 after the bombing of Buckingham Palace killed the English royal family.
• Spellweaver 1 - Darwin and I are working together with this one. Our aim is to have it ready for submission by October. Urban fantasy meets quantum physics and havoc ensues.
• Spellweaver 2 - I'm three chapters into the first draft, making good progress. Darwin's commenting as it goes, and when I'm through the draft, he'll take his pass at it to flesh out my normally rather spare style and add the technical doo-hickery he does so well. In this one, hundreds of years of more or less stable obscurity for mages are about to get blown to pieces.
• Technomage Unleashed - sucky title for an interesting novel that is promising to turn into an epic. I may even commit a trilogy here. The champion of a dark Goddess and a technomage newly come into her gifts may be all that stand to prevent the destruction of their society.
• Daughter of the Dream - outlined novel, again with the strong possibility of committing trilogy. Australian style Dreamtime magic meets murder, mayhem and politics in a fantasy ancient Australian setting.
• Plague of Roaches - outlined novel, also with the possibility of committing trilogy. Science Fiction with a weird mix of space opera and mil SF. A distant human world gets used by cockroach-like aliens, and finds itself in the middle of a war against the Roaches' sworn enemies.

Short Stories

• So far, 13 in submission. Anything that gets rejected gets sent to someone else as soon as I have time to do it (usually the weekends)
• I'm in a short story a week challenge. So far, I haven't missed once. I've done a variety of styles, from fantasy/sf blends, humor, SF, fantasy, fairy-tales... It's a learning experience, and a lot of fun.
• I'm also trying to average 1 new submission a week, which is starting to get interesting as I run out of major markets. I'm well into the second string markets (the ones that pay less than pro rate, but not an absolute pittance), and doing my best to make myself ineligible for the Writers of the Future competition.
• I have a few series of shorts that are proving difficult to place: the orcs (no-one seems to want crass, belching, flatulent orcs who save the world with their malodorous gaseous emissions), the spacefaring vamps (SF/Fantasy blend. Not easy to place). I may end up with a third series about AIs who think with music and their engineers who need to be musicians as well as technicians. We'll see.

That about sums it up. Not overcommitted, am I?

Kate

Progress

Well, as of this week I have a perfect record with Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. Three submissions for three form rejections. We'll see if the next one maintains the record ;)

I find myself taking a warped amusement in the growing collection of form rejections. They say nothing about the quality of my writing, and everything about what is wrong with SFF short fiction publishing today.

Take a look in your local Barnes & Noble, or Borders, or... Where do the SFF readers go? Straight to their little ghetto of the bookstore.

Now look for the SFF magazines. You won't find them anywhere near the genre ghettos. They live over in the magazine stands, buried somewhere in the hobbies or literature section - if they're there at all.

Now have a look at them. One shining example of all that is wrong with genre magazines is Realms of Fantasy. I've never seen an issue that didn't have a cover absolutely screaming "Dungeons and Dragons gamer heaven in these pages". Take a look inside and what do you see? More space given to ads than to the stories. And the stories are, for want of a better word, "literary" in the worst sense.

And they wonder why sales are falling.

I cannot remember the last time I saw a short story in any of the major SFF magazines that I actually enjoyed. There seems to be this idea that a well told, fast moving plot with characters people can identify with is somehow sub-standard.

Well, sorry, but that's what most people want to read. I've never met anyone who reads SFF for the literary value. Heck, I've never met anyone who reads for the literary value. People read because they want to be entertained. They want a few hours outside their regular routine where interesting things happen and the choices and individual makes can matter to the world at large. Or they want something that makes them laugh.

I'm a reader. I have a relatively small collection, for a genre reader - about 1000 books. I'm one of the thousands paying for editorial salaries.

And I say to the editors of the SFF major magazines, get a clue, people. I am not going to buy your magazines if you publish maybe one story a year that doesn't make me want to barf. I want stories. I want people I can care about, in worlds that I'd like to visit. I want to see your offerings when I go to the bookstore, not have to find them hiding in the depths like the unwanted relative at a wedding. And I am not alone. There are thousands of people like me.

Until you get it right, we won't be buying your magazines. If you never get it right, no-one will buy your magazines except people wanting to be published in them. And that, dear editors, is nothing more than an entirely too public form of mutual masturbation.

Kate