Kings of the Realm Unleashed

To end the weekend on a more positive note than yesterday's post, Kings of the Realm : A Dragon Anthology - which includes my The Other Ten Thousand - is now available to buy from CreateSpace and Amazon US.

I've seen an electronic copy of this one, and I'm glad to say that it's a very professionally put-together tome, impressively so given how new Lame Goat Press is to the publishing scene. I've only had time to skim a few of the stories and poems therein, but what struck me pretty quickly was the variety - thankfully, there's a lot more here than just Anne McCaffrey-esque high fantasy. Congrats and thanks to Christopher Jacobsmeyer for his work in bringing it together and of course for taking The Other Ten Thousand. I'll likely post again once my dead tree copy arrives from Amazon, but in the meantime, it's a safe bet that if you like stories about dragons then you'll get plenty out of Kings of the Realm.

First Sale of 2010

Before we start, a belated happy new year to anyone who stumbles over this post. And is it a new decade? Well, what the hell, a happy new decade to you as well.

First sale of 2010 goes to editor Seth Crossman at OG's Speculative Fiction, and my story Today the War Ended, Tonight the Sky Burned. What can I say? I was going through a phase of long titles. Today the War Ended is the closest I've come, (and probably the closest I ever will come), to writing a seasonal story. It's about war, of course, and what it does to lives, about sacrifice, and more than anything about love and its limitations. It's a small, sad story that I'm immensely fond of, and I'm glad to see it end up with Seth, who quietly goes about producing one of the most consistent small press magazines around.

This, by the way, will be my third appearance in OG's Speculative Fiction, after The Other Ten Thousand in issue #9 and The Ascension of DeepRED in issue #15. Here's hoping it won't be the last.

Easier to Pretend in Escape Velocity

Was there ever a time when I resented editors suggesting rewrites? Yeah, I guess there was, and it probably wasn't even that long ago. Still, it's hard to remember the mindset, though I know it's pretty common amongst learning writers. "Who's this editor to tell me what my story should be like," and "what's the point of making changes when I got it right the first time?", and "yeah, that paragraph's a bit weirdly phrased but it's exactly how I meant it to be."

All of which, if we're honest, adds up to "It was enough work writing the bloody thing, you can't seriously expect me to rewrite it?"

A little older, possibly a touch wiser, and I can see that that's not how the world - let alone the publishing industry - works. I want my stories to be as good as possible, right? And editors, unless they're basically psychotic, want my story to work as well as it can before they're going to consider publishing it. It all seems pretty much like common sense.

But I think the reason for that is that the more I've written, the more my perception of what a story is has changed. Once upon a time, I believed that once I wrote THE END that was basically the thing done. These days, I would be hesitant to use the word 'finished' to describe anything I write. As long as I can make it a little bit better, it's still a work in progress. For that reason, both of the reprints I recently had picked up for anthologies (Fear of a Blue Goo Planet in Zombonauts, The Other Ten Thousand in Kings of the Realm) are subtly different from the originals. I saw that there was room for tweakage, and so I tweaked. If they ever get reprinted again, I'll probably tweak some more.

Explanation for ramble? My It's Easier to Pretend in the Dark has been picked up by science-fiction magazine Escape Velocity. I sent it in to co-editor Geoff Nelder knowing in my heart of hearts that it wasn't quite as good as it could be but not knowing how to fix it, and Geoff, bless him, asked for some changes and in so doing pointed me towards some other things that needed sorting out. As such, the version that's been accepted is a hell of a lot better than the one I first sent out. That's got to be a good thing, right?

The Other, Other Ten Thousand

Next bit of early October news (we're up to the start of the week now!):

The Other Ten Thousand, a flash fantasy piece originally published in issue 9 of OG's Speculative Fiction, has been picked up by Christopher Jacobsmeyer for his next Lame Goat Press anthology, to be known as Kings of the Realm: A Dragon Anthology.

The title says about as much about it as I could hope to, so I'll just add that it won't be out any time soon - in fact, it hasn't even closed to submissions yet, so if you have any tales of giant reptiles doing interesting things then you might want to consider sending Mr Jacobsmeyer's way. The projected publication date is the first half of next year, and as ever I'll post further news as it comes in.