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?

Feeler Headlines Final Ballista

Some bittersweet release news, as November sees my story Feeler kicking off the seventh and final issue of British small press magazine Ballista. Ballista has garnered respect in its brief lifespan, and its a hell of a shame to see the - let's face it, not exactly bloated - UK small press get smaller by one.

Still, looking on the bright side, it's a nice issue to say 'goodbye' to. For a start, there's that gorgeous cover by Paul Neads, and an editorial from Andrew Myers that turns into a clever little horror story in its own right. After that comes my contribution, Feeler, a short tale of an empathic grief counsellor and the one thing that keeps her sane.

As a brief diversion from my usual fence-sitting, here are my three personal favourite stories, in no particular order (except, come to think of it, the order they appear in the magazine):

Crunch by Neil Beynon
Flood by Terence Kuch
Will by Mario Milosevic

Hmm, I can't help noticing that all of those - like Feeler - had one-word titles. Sorry, everyone else, your titles were just too damn long for this fruit fly-like attention span!

October Wrap Up

Just a quick post to report a few belated odds and sods of October news:

Well, the month was a bit of a triumph, all told, with a couple of very strong sales and three acceptances for non-paying but fun venues. Of the latter, and not to denigrate the other two, I'm currently most excited about the picking up of my comic strip for Mangaquake, since I've just finished the new edit. It's now called Endangered Weapon B, after its grizzly-bear-in-robot-armour hero Banjo, and it comes in at ten pages, twice as long as Fleshworld (as printed in Futurequake #10) or my forthcoming strip in Something Wicked. It's been fun to decompress the story, and I think that this is the definite high point of (my admittedly limited!) comics work so far. In short, I'm chuffed with it, and can't wait to see what an artist makes of those ten pages of utter dementedness.

I'd hoped to have a couple of things out this month, but neither has materialised; on the plus side, the anthology from Comet Press that's to feature my Rindelstein's Monsters now has a fantastic cover, a neat webpage all of its own, a release date at the back end of November, and perhaps most importantly, a name - The Death Panel. I've seen a copy of the galley, and I can say with only a hint of bias that this one is going to be awesome.

Last up, I found yet another review of The Living Dead, which is both staggeringly thorough and singles out Stockholm Syndrome for credit - in the shape of a 4 out of 5 rating. At least, I hope it's out of five, and not say, seventy-three. Either way, cheers to reviewer Gregory Tidwell.

Mangaquake Do Their Bit For Endangered Species

Just when I was thinking that the good news had dried up for the month, Richmond Clements - editor of Futurequake Press's Mangaquake - got in touch to say that, yes, he'd like to use my script Endangered Weapon P. It's the touching tale of a an insane professor, his kidnapped prospective wife, Nazi dolphins and the titular endangered weapon, who will have to remain a suprise for the moment because I've inadvertently found myself stepping on the black-and-white fuzzy toes of an established property. Richmond has suggested a quick species change for my protagonist, lest we both get sued, and I'm happy to consent. He's also asked that I decompress it a bit and give the story more room to breath. More pages of demented, Nazi-dolphin bashing madness? Yeah, I think I can stretch to that.

While I'm here, a link that I meant to post over the weekend: Mr Howell's title, Why science fiction authors just can't win, says it all - and it needs saying. Genre literature has never been more significiant or influential, sci-fi has never been more prevalent in film and television, and yet a writer like Margaret Atwood can still raise her nose at the very notion of her work being science-fiction and ninety-nine percent of the mainstream literary establish will rush to clap her on the back. Come on, people! To the barricades!

Dancing in the Winter Rooms with Electric Velocipede

As demented as it sounds, that title is a completely fair and accurate summary of my most recent bit of news, which hails from Saturday morning: my story Dancing in the Winter Rooms has been picked up by Hugo award-winning and World Fantasy Award-nominated magazine Electric Velocipede.

On a slight side note, I remember reading one of those 'how to write good' books - I think it was Lisa Tuttle's Writing Fantasy and Science-Fiction - and being utterly horrified by the author's comment that their usual approach was to write a story, and then scrap it entirely and write it all over again. What an unbelievable amount of work! And what would be the point, anyway? Just get it right the first time!

Perhaps needless to say, I haven't adopted the technique. But I did eventually realise that sometimes it really is the only way forward, and it's a method I've since used twice. The recently-accepted-by-Andromeda Spaceways The Painted City was one occasion, and Dancing in the Winter Rooms the other. It began as a weird, almost documentary-like non-story, which broke just about every rule worth breaking - it had no protagonist (or indeed characters of any sort), no real plot, no definite beginning, middle or end.

It took me a while to realise that, of course, but once I did it came down to a choice between binning it and starting again from scratch. In the end I kept almost nothing beyond the core concept: of a millennium ship divided into four regions, each corresponding to an Earth season, and of the nomadic human tribe that wanders endlessly through its corridors.

I'm very pleased with the final result, which does have a story, a protagonist, characters, a beginning, a middle and an end. And I'm even more pleased that it's going to be appearing within the winner of the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine.

Stockholm Syndrome Pays its Way and Then Some

On Wednesday I received my first royalty payment for The Living Dead anthology, published last year by Night Shade Books - which coincidentally was my first royalty payment full stop. I can't go into exact details, for a number of reasons, but suffice to say it was rather more than I was expecting. I've since had a brief e-chat with editor John Joseph Adams, who let me in on the exact sales figures. Again, I should probably keep them under my hat, and will say simply that The Living Dead has sold amazingly well, and continues to do so.

I'd like to lay all the credit for this at the door of my entry, Stockholm Syndrome - which if you're too cheap to buy the book you can read here or listen to in podcast here - but I guess that some of it has to go to that Stephen King bloke, and all the other great authors assembled therein. But mainly I think the blame for its absurd success lies with Mr Adams, for putting together such an inspired collection and then backing it to the hilt. Congratulations to him, to all the other authors, and to Night Shade, who I suspect will be rather pleased with its performance. Here's hoping it continues to find, entertain and gross out new readers well into the next decade.

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...