The Sign in the Moonlight: The Sign in the Moonlight & My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy Aged 7

Finally, the title story!  Though - a small confession - it wasn't always intended to be.  That honour was originally meant to go to The War of the Rats, as the longest and newest work.  But since our artist Duncan Kay, who had by this point produced interior illustrations for every story in the collection, couldn't get the picture for that particular tale to a point he felt was cover-worthy, we all eventually agreed to go instead with one he'd already produced an absolutely stunning image for.  It turned out to be one of those decisions that felt right as soon as it had been made; now it's almost impossible to imagine how anything else could have gone on the front of this book.

In fact, I'll go further: I don't know that there's a tale in the collection that sums up its spirit quite as perfectly as The Sign in the Moonlight - originally published, by the way, a couple of years back in Nightmare Magazine.  It's absolutely a weird tale, one that might even have creeped out Lovecraft himself, what with his notorious phobia of the cold.  It follows a party of mountaineers that is itself hot on the heels of an expedition which included notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley - a real and documented historical event, by the way - and finds more than it bargained for upon the slopes of Mount Kanchenjunga.  I've said this before, but it was almost creepy how this story came together, and how much my research threw up real life details that fit perfectly, not only with the narrative I was constructing but with each other.

By comparison, My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy Aged 7 is a wee slip of a thing, written with little forethought in one mad splurge: a joke, really, though one that's either rather sad or kind of cruel, depending on how you decide to look at it.  I got one of my nicest ever reviews for this story, which acknowledged just how difficult it is for a grown man to write in the style of a seven year old girl.  Yet the truth is, it wasn't that difficult at all.  I don't often talk about characters finding their own voices and all that nonsense, but Daisy certainly did, and she went on to more or less write her own story, which required next to no editing and which I'm still entirely happy with nigh on a decade later.  I guess it's just a shame that she couldn't have come up with a happier ending for herself!

Here's an extract from The Sign in the Moonlight:

You will have heard, no doubt, of the Bergenssen expedition—if only from the manner of its loss. For a short while, that tragedy was deemed significant and remarkable enough to adorn the covers of every major newspaper in the civilised world.

At the time, I was in no position to follow such matters. However, in subsequent months I’ve tracked down many journals from that period. As I write, I can look up at the wall to see a cover of the New York Times I’ve pinned there, dated nineteenth of May 1908, bearing the headline, “Horror in the Himalayas: Bergenssen five reported lost in avalanche.”

In a sense, I suppose, it’s a spirit of morbidity that draws me back to those days upon the mountain and their awful finale, which I failed to witness only by the purest chance. Equally, there’s a macabre humour in the thought that to almost all the world I am dead, my body shattered and frozen in the depths of some crevasse. But what draws me most, I think, is the memory of what I saw after I left Bergenssen and the others—that knowledge which is mine uniquely. It’s without disrespect to the Times that I say they know nothing, nothing whatsoever, of the horror of Mount Kangchenjunga. Likely, there is no one else alive who does.

Whatever You Do, Don't Do the Twist

My story A Twist Too Far is out in Andromeda Spaceways issue 56 ... which just so happens to be their special, extra big 10 year anniversary issue.  10 years!  That's a loooong time for a magazine, especially in these wacky economic climes.  So paper hats off to the ASIM collective, who've pulled off something extraordinary and deserve all the spaceship cake they can eat.

A Twist Too Far is my third story to grace the pages of Australia's finest genre magazine.  It's a little bit Lovecraftian, a little bit Conan Doyle, and maybe there's a drop of The Prestige in there too, come to think of it ... what with it being about competing contortionists and all.  Why aren't there more horror stories about contortionists?  Contortionists are scary.  I mean, not as scary as gnomes, but not so far off.  They bend their bodies into shapes that human bodies aren't supposed to bend into, for fun and profit.  How is that not ideal fodder for a horror story?  And yet I've never come across another one. So, who knows, maybe I've written the definitive contortionist horror story.  Hey, stranger things have happened, and it certainly creeps the hell out of me.

And also some other people, hopefully, since A Twist Too Far has made it onto the reading list for the HWA's Stoker awards.  Sure would be nice to get nominated for a Stoker!  In the meantime, I'm taking comfort from the fact that not only have I somehow managed to get longlisted, two anthologies I have stories in - Dark Tales of Lost Civilisations and Slices of Flesh, both from Dark Moon Books - are on there too.

Ten Things the Small Press Can Do As Well (Or Better) Than the Professional Press, Part 9: Personality

Back in the day, before all the madness of a three book novel deal came along, one of my chief pleasures as a writer was getting to muck around, trying odd new things and taking risks, safe in the knowledge that the worst that could happen would be that I'd end up with an unpublishable short story - or that I'd inadvertently sell something that by all rights was too silly to see the light of day.*  There are many sucky aspects to being an amateur writer, but that's not to say it doesn't have its virtues too, and surely one of those is that you can treat storytelling as a playground rather than a workplace.  Want to write a second person romance, or a fairy tale where the prince is a weregoat and the princess is a serial killer?  Hey, why not?  Possibly no one but your mum will ever read it, but at least you might pick up some tricks for the next one, and - if you happen to really take some risks or go all out on the crazy - you might even end up with something special.

My impression is that all of that holds true for the small press too, at least in most cases.  Obviously as a small press editor who hopes one day to be a professional editor, you might not want to make too many embarrassing mistakes or take too many unnecessary risks.  But it seems to me that those editors, the ones who are primarily interested in working their way up to bigger things, are in the minority; the majority of small press editors want to be exactly that, and to enjoy the freedoms that it entails.

Only, what exactly does that freedom entail?

It strikes me that the least interesting thing a small press market can be is a cut price version of a professional market.  Without naming names, I can think of a handful of webzines that are a lot like, say, Strange Horizons, only with lower production standards, less quality control and reliably weaker fiction.  That's not to say those markets are worthless; at the very least they offer a ground for learning writers on their way up.  But without the obligations of needing to reach a large readership, surely there are more exciting things to do than what someone else is always going to do better?

Point being, one of the values the small press is uniquely well placed to deliver is character.  In fact, character is high on the list of things a good small press market can't afford to be without.  I've touched on this in other posts, but what I'm really talking about this time around is stuff like developing a distinctive editorial voice, looking for themes that no one else is touching, trying to keep authors whose work you like coming back and representing all those choices with a distinctive visual tone - trying, in short, to make something that has a bit of your unique identity in it and so is unlike anything else out there.

It's a hard thing to get right, just as figuring out how much of your personality should make it into writing or blogging or any other kind of interaction takes time.  It's easy to slip into creating an ego product; in both writing and editing, it's vital to love what you do, but equally important to keep a small part of your mind concentrated on the question of whether other people will be able to love it too.  Still, like I said, it's completely necessary.  If you need proof, just keep an eye on a site like Duotrope's Digest, see how many cookie-cutter webzines are announced, with similar names, similar designs, asking for similar stories - and see how many of them are still around in six months' time.

A few words of caution, though.  Like anything, you can take this stuff too far.  It's always struck me as unfair, for example, when editors come up with themes so wilfully obscure that writers are obliged to write stories that can't possibly be sold elsewhere.  It might seem like a great idea to put together an anthology of Lovecraftian horror featuring anthropomorphised soft toys, and maybe it is - in fact, now that I think about it, that would be the best anthology ever - but it you receive a hundred submissions and accept only twenty, that's eighty authors who've put time and energy into work that stands no chance of seeing the light of day.  Too many small press editors don't seem to even consider things like that, but routinely wasting people's time is hardly a great way to make friends.  Similarly, there's a fine line between exploring interesting niches and being needlessly obscure, and the latter doesn't exactly tend to drag in readers.

Which, I suppose, is only to make the obvious point that having a distinctive editorial character means having a good - or at least interesting and entertaining - editorial character.  Let's just take rule eleven, "not acting like a jerk," as read, okay?

Next week: Part 10!  No one ever believed it would happen!  Or much cared!  But it will ... oh yes, it will...



* Which, in fairness, did happen at least once.  I'm thinking here of the weasel-filled barrel of crazy that was My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy Aged 7, as published by those adorable loons at Andromeda Spaceways.

This is Getting Ridiculous (in a Good Way, Obviously) ...

...but then, it isn't all that long since things were ridiculous in a bad way.

According to the absurdly overcomplicated spreadsheet I've been using for six years or so now to track my submissions, the longest I've gone between short fiction sales is 202 days, or a little under seven months.  However, since one of those publishers subsequently gave up the goat before putting out my story, that's a deceptive figure.  Does an acceptance that doesn't actually lead to a published story count for an awful lot?  Discounting that statistical anomaly then, the longest I've gone without a short fiction sale is a whopping 292 days.

To put that in some context, I submitted 103 stories during that period - a comparatively low number for me, but still a fair few.  For a bit more context, I should mention that this lengthy and alarming drought happened fairly recently, between July of last summer and April of this one.  My track record up until that point had been erratic, but I had a fair few sales behind me, many of them to professional and well-established semi-pro markets.  The stories I was sending out were a blend of old and new, which is usually the case with me.  I was submitting to a wide-ranging mix of recently established and long standing markets,  including a few who'd taken my work before; again, nothing particularly unusual about that.  All told, it was a fairly typical period - asides from the fact that the editors of the world seemed to have collectively decided to avoid my work like it was infected with rat cooties.

Then again, according to that selfsame spreadsheet, I've just now sold four stories in eight days.  I've already raved about the ones to Andromeda Spaceways, Nil Desperandum and Dark Tales of Lost Civilisations, and I was happy and willing to accept that I'd met my good news quota for August by the point that new (and already-best-selling-on-Amazon) pro market Digital Science Fiction got back to me to say they'd like to take my Across the Terminator.

Which is, of course, fabulous news - and all the more so for coming on the back of so much other fabulous news.  I seriously enjoyed the first issue of DSF, (which contained my Black Sun and can be purchased here should you have the urge), and I'm completely in awe of how they've comes out of nowhere to become one of the more impressive professional markets in little more than the blink of an eye.

But it does leave me wondering more than ever about the vicissitudes of this zany industry.

Average it all out, of course, and I definitely can't complain.  And even during that phenomenal dry patch, it's not as if there weren't plenty of other good things going on - like, oh say, the run-up to the three book deal with Angry Robot.  I realise there are bad times and good times in everything, and writing is no exception - to say the absolute least.  I mean, comparing the highs and lows of my day job to the highs and lows of my writing career would be to put a line of gently rolling hills and valleys up against a crazy mountain range.  No, I guess my point here is partly just "whee!  I sold another story to Digital Science Fiction!" and partly, "man, there really isn't any way to make sense of this stuff."

So come on, fellow writer types ... is it just me?  Or are these improbably compressed highs and months-long lows just par for the course?  Can anyone beat that better-part-of-a-year-long run of rejections?  Can any publishers offer wise words to explain all this apparent randomness? Is there a secret cabal involved?  Are names pulled from hats? Is any of this to do with that time I sacrificed a raccoon to Stephen King? 

A Twist Too Far for Andromeda Spaceways

The last few days has seen such an almighty splurge of news that I'm almost at a loss where to start.  Even convincing my brain to divide up the okay-to-discuss from the not-quite-there-but-potentially-awesome stuff is proving a struggle.

I have a vague memory of this happening at almost exactly the same time the year before last, which is probably an excellent argument for the validity of astronomy.  The only rational explanation here is that every couple of years Mars knocks Jupiter out of Pisces, side-spinning Saturn off Venus and shunting Scorpio into the ascendant, and tons of exciting writing stuff happens for a period of roughly a week.

I mean, really.  That's the only rational explanation.  Any other explanation you can think of is just crazy.

So anyway, in the interests of similtaneously hammering home the fact that there are suddenly lots of interesting things going on and not having to write a really long post when it's rapidly approaching my bedtime, I'll just blat* on about these multifarious developments as and when I can, in whatever spurious order my rapidly fading memory tells me they happened in.  And hey, maybe by the time I get to the last thing, another thing will have happened and this blog will finally become a self-sustaining entity.  Maybe it'll even start writing itself.  That would be neat.

Right.  As far as I can remember, and side-stepping the profoundly exciting things I can't talk about, it all began when I picked up my third acceptance from Australia's premier genre publication, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.  This was particularly cheering because Andromeda Spaceways is one of my favourite magazines around; I'm always impressed by what the ASIM collective are doing, and every time I check in I'm impressed that little bit more.  And it was made that bit better by discovering that it's going to be my second time with writer / editor David Kernot in the ASIM captain's chair, since David also happens to be one of my favourite editors, not least because twice now he's accepted weird and screwed-up stories for a 'zine that tends towards fare of a lighter nature.

My last ASIM sale, The Painted City, way back in issue #43, has a scene - one mostly implied and off-page, admittedly - where one of the main characters basically drowns in their own melting, disease-infested face.  And that wasn't even a horror story.  Whereas acceptance number three, A Twist Too Far, is definitely a horror story, and has a scene that I fervently hope is just as nasty as that face-melting stuff.  I mean, it's a Lovecraftian (or maybe Doyleian) tale of competing turn-of-the-century contortionists ... how well is that going to end?

Next post: whatever thing happened after this thing!  Unless some other more urgent thing happens in the meantime!




* This is actually really a word.

Funland: Week Eight

Last week was another no-news week in many ways, I lost three full days in travelling to an interview at the other end of the country (which thankfully the interviewer turned up for this time) and was so knackered from the unaccustomed driving that the last couple of days were hardly productive either.  I did at least reach the crucial three fifths (60'000 words) mark that's been eluding me for so long, finally finishing part three around Saturday lunchtime.

This week, though, things should be seriously looking up again.  I've no more interviews on the horizon, which is potentially awful news from a not-ending-up-sleeping-on-the-streets perspective but really good news for Funland.  Today was the first day in a while that I achieved the magic two thousand words, and you know what?  It felt good.  I see no reason I shouldn't hit 70'000 by the end of this week.  Of course, the devil makes work for rolling stones and all that, so maybe I shouldn't be tempting fate, but it would be nice to return to the kind of productivity I set out with, if only for a little while.

I'd thought about trying to actually write something about the whole novel-writing process this time around, but I suspect I'm too much in the thick of it right now to make any sensible observations.  I still wonder if I've been overambitious trying so many new things and stretching myself in so many directions all at once.  Writing with a big cast is new to me, and writing from multiple third-person perspectives is something I've only tried before on a much smaller scale, (in fact the only time I can think of off the top of my head is in The Painted City, recently published in Andromeda Spaceways).  I've never written anything with such a strong crime element before.  I've written my first proper sex scene - the only other one had a golem as one of the protagonists and probably doesn't count.  I've eschewed chapters in favour of this weird parts system, which may or may not have been a terrible idea.

Perhaps trying to jump just one or two of these hurdles might have been the wiser plan, instead of going for the lot in one go?  Time will tell, I guess.  To anyone facing a similar quandry, I would say that at least I'm learning more and faster than I ever have before, and I have a feeling the risks taken this time around will pay off if and when I get round to a third novel.  Either way, part of the intention for Funland was always to take the chance of being over-ambitious - and at three fifths and counting, it's too late to worry about it now.

Reasons to be Afraid of Superheroes

I mentioned this when I first posted about the sale of my story Wunderkind to Bards and Sages Quarterly, but it bears repeating: if superheroes actually existed then they would be really scary.  I don't just mean the ones that are supposed to be scary either.  Superman?  Scary.  Sure, he means well, but he happens to get his x-ray vision and his heat vision mixed up when he's trying to read your T-shirt size and you're going to end up a twiglet.

So as a small step towards redressing all the pro-superhero propaganda out there, Wunderkind appears in the April issue of Bards and Sages, available in print from Amazon.com and CreateSpace, and electronically from DriveThruFantasy.  For once, I've actually seen a copy, and it's an extremely nicely put together 'zine.  One thing that really struck me is that the decision to offer plenty of very short stories is a good idea, a few times I've bought a magazine only to find that half the issue was taken up with a single tale that I didn't get on with.  Also, it's another truly beautiful cover, amongst my favourites of the magazines I've had work in.

While I'm plugging, the latest issue of Andromeda Spaceways, with my bizarre sci-fi mini-epic The Painted City within, is now available from their website, although oddly with an entirely black cover.  How much more black can you get than that?  Why, none more black, of course.

Andromeda Spaceways #43 Sort of Mostly Out

I know that Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issue 43 is out because I physically possess two copies of it, and it's real and I can prod it and everything.  Since my copies arrived all the way from Australia, I believe it's probably been out for a couple of weeks.  But since ASIM's website still has #42 listed as the current issue, I'm not sure if it's actually possible to buy it.


I was going to wait until it was purchasable before posting, but as anyone who knows me will testify, I have all the patience of a toddler with a sugar rush.  So ... ASIM #43, including my story The Painted City, is almost entirely out.  Frankly, even if I had a bit more willpower I'd still have folded when my copies arrived because it's really kind of fantastic.  The cover, as you can see, is lovely - who doesn't dig demonic walrusses?  There's also plenty of nice art inside by the same guy, Greg Hughes.  My one small complaint regarding the last issue I was in, number thirty, was the flimsy paper cover that suffered in crosscontinental transit, but that's been thoroughly addressed by the shift to perfect-bound format.  And this being ASIM, the quality of the fiction is pretty much a cert.

I know I've said this before recently, and I don't doubt I'll say it again, but The Painted City is one of my personal favourites from amongst the stuff I've had out.  In this case, I guess it's more because I can switch off my author brain and actually enjoy the story.  It's a grand, galaxy-and-decades-spanning tale told from multiple perspectives, and somehow it all fits neatly into under 6000 words.  I doubt I could pull it off again, but I think I got it right this one time.

Sneak Peak of Survivor Guilt

Well, that should be sneak listen I guess, but that doesn't rhyme so well.  I announced back in one of those months last year that I can't be bothered to check that the marvellous people at Variant Frequencies would be podcasting my post-apocalyptic tale Survivor Guilt.  I've just now been lucky enough to hear a draft edit, which seemed to be pretty much complete except for the lack of an intro and outro.  And lo and behold, it's very, very neat.  It has sound effects!  It has background music!  It's has the coolest, creapiest crazed supercomputer voice of all time!

Okay, except maybe for HAL. 

Point is, the Variant Frequencies team have done a fine job, and I for one am giggling like a schoolgirl at the thought of hearing the final edit - which, by the by, should be available sometime next month.  With that and Andromeda Spaceways #43 coming out, not to mention some major but as-yet-undisclosed news that I'll hopefully find time to post over the weekend, March is already looking to be a good month on the writing front.

Flight Booked With Andromeda Spaceways for The Painted Planet

Man, I'm worn out with coming up with crap names for these blog posts! I think we're up to about Wednesday, by the way, but the news keeps coming in and I can only post so fast.

Note to universe: that wasn't me complaining.

The gloriously titled Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, who published my almost as gloriously titled My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy Age 7 back in August 2007 - and indeed, provided me with both my first print and semi-pro sales - have clasped another one of my stories to their bosom. This one's called The Painted City, and if it's not quite as demented as My Friend Fishfinger was, it's a close thing. It's another one of my longer tales, that I've been struggling to find a good home for, and I'm immensely glad to see it headed ASIM's way. Also, unlike a few of my recent sales, it should actually be out pretty soon, which means December this year. Unless we all plunge into a black hole or something...