Medicine shows (especially intergalactic medicine shows) have a lot of freaks. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, this blog will introduce you to a few of them.
Well, maybe more than a few...
"Somewhere My Love" was one of those stories that started out as one thing and, in the process, became something else altogether. I needed to write a witch story for a specific anthology. I had a firm idea for its foundation: back in my elementary school days, there was one lady in town who all the kids said was a wicked witch. Just so happened she was our music teacher. She really did live in an old house that always appeared deserted. She usually wore black and had a very austere demeanor. I also thought that she was very sweet. Scary, but sweet.
For this story, I just knew that she had to be the witch.
I intended it to be a scary story. I mean, it was an anthology about wicked witches. But as I started writing, somehow the story stayed sweet. I kept waiting for something horrible to happen, but it just wouldn't. In the end, "Somewhere My Love" became an autobiographical account of events that never happened. Nothing like these things ever occurred in my life. However, the emotions I attempt to convey are very, very authentic. In fact, when I look at this tale now, it brings back the most vivid memories of being ten years old, even if the plot is fabricated. In some ways, it's probably the most honest story I've ever told. Whether it works for anyone else, I can't say, but evidently, when I wrote "Somewhere My Love," it was the tale I was truly meant to write.
It was during the 2004 election season, I think, that I first became familiar with political blogs--and very quickly discovered the quiet war that raged among them. I was amazed at the depth and breadth of the silent bloodbath. Reading the entries and comments, one could easily be convinced that the fate of all civilization hung in the balance of these ideological battles.
I remember reading through a particular comment thread, wherein one obnoxious commenter was accused of being a twelve-year-old kid, trolling from his parents' computer. That accusation totally changed how I thought of the obnoxious person. It was probably pretty close to the truth, but what amazed me was how quickly the Internet enabled the alteration of my perception. What a weapon that could be, I thought.
The history of politics is replete with smears and distortions, of course. It's nothing new, and it's not limited to any particular party. Perception is reality; politicians ignore this fact at their peril. The most successful of them exploit it to their advantage. But just how malleable is reality? How much can you manipulate it before the manipulation becomes apparent?
It seems to me that the Internet has drastically moved the goalposts. Given its ability to rapidly disseminate disinformation, its ephemeral nature (websites vanish without a trace, individual articles/blog entries are quickly buried in an avalanche of fresh data and forgotten), and its facility for anonymous attacks, it has taken the political game to a strange and disturbing level.
Compounding the problem, the "mainstream media" seem unable to compete--although I think this is more a function of incompetence and cowardice on the part of those media, rather than any inherent superiority of political blogging.
So what does that leave us with? When will it end? How far can it go?
These are classic science fiction questions. "The Multiplicity Has Arrived" is one attempt at an answer.
Each story presents its own unique challenges, and "The Multiplicity" was no exception.The opening paragraph and subsequent interludes were tricky for me.I needed some way to familiarize readers with the workings of the Multiplicity without resorting to great chunks of tedious infodump.Then I got the idea to cast the interludes in the voice of a tent revival preacher.The idea delighted and terrified me at the same time; I don't usually play with voice.It was a stretch for me, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.
I struggled with excessive length on this one, too.Earlier drafts of the story were over 9,000 words.It was just too long.After much scrutiny--accompanied by wailing and gnashing of teeth--I found a scene that could be cut in its entirety. It did little more than reiterate information already established.And removing it required very little revision to other scenes--a sure sign that I didn't need it in the first place.Eureka!
Most troublesome, though, was the crisis of confidence that hit me while working on this story.At some point, I found myself struggling to believe what I was writing.And if I couldn't believe it, I would never be able to make readers buy it, either.
How did I get over that hump?Well, I have a confession to make: I'm not sure "The Multiplicity Has Arrived" is science fiction. It certainly walks and talks like SF, and dresses in SF clothing, but after much consideration, I think it has a bit of magic at its heart.It might actually be fantasy.This realization is what enabled me to regain my belief in the story, finish the rewrite, and send it into the world.
(But don't tell Edmund, OK?I think he thinks it's SF.)
I would be interested in knowing how readers would classify this one.Stop by my blog, or hunt me down at a con (I'll be at ConQuesT, OSFest, and WorldCon this year) and tell me what you think.
Every year, the writer’s group, Codex (www.codexwriters.com), holds a Halloween short-story writing contest. "The End-of-the-World Pool" was my entry from 2008. I was given a story seed by the incomparable Laurel Amberdine (amberdine.com/) to start me off: “A place which remains in perpetual darkness, no matter what kind of illumination is attempted.”
When I was a kid, we lived for a couple months in a gated community called Hilltop Lakes in Texas. Every day, we’d go to the titular lake there, and go swimming. This wasn’t a tame beach; I don’t remember there being sand at all. There were gnarled tree roots dipping into the water all along the side; and periodically long water-weeds would bloom in the warmer sections of the water. I was just learning to swim, and after she was sure I was relatively buoyant, Mom let me splash around on my own while she sat on shore. The water in the lake was murky; when you put your toes down on the lake-bed, they squished through clay rather than sand. There was only one section of the lake we were allowed to play in—the one away from the tree roots. Mom told us that she was afraid that we’d get our feet caught in the roots and drown.
That idea stuck with me. I’d swim to the bottom, and open my eyes to see nothing at all. The darkness was vast. I could feel the slimy water weeds brushing against me, and I imagined the tree roots sneaking their way through them toward my legs, like some knobby, wicked fingers that would latch on and drag me down into the clay.
The translation from that memory to The End of the World Pool is obvious, and I can now forgive Mom for traumatizing me. See? Writing Horror can be therapeutic…
My older brother, John, was the one to take dares. He willingly jumped into ponds, swimming pools, and drainage ditches at which even a rat would turn up its nose. There always seemed to be some yahoo willing to say those three magical words that turn boys into heroes or emergency room cases: “I dare you…” As far as I know, John never met a pervy swimming pool mermaid there beneath the water. He did manage to impress a number of girls, though, which I suspect might have been the point of the whole exercise.
His willingness to take dares was the source for Grant and Evan’s birthday dare tradition.
I stumbled across Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, Annabel Lee, quite by accident. I was bored with writing, and went scratching around the internet for something to ignite my brain. I’m not a big fan of Poe, but I was writing a spooky story after all. There’s a certain gothic element to the man’s work. Maybe you’ve noticed… Anyway, I didn’t feel like committing to re-reading his short fiction, so I Googled Poe’s poetry, and spent an enjoyable afternoon grazing on what I found. When I read Annabel Lee—well.
Off to RavenCon tomorrow. Leaving early because I have a 3 1/2 hr. drive. Got a signing at 11am and a panel about blogging at 1pm. Editing Workshop Sunday afternoon from 1 to 3pm. All sorts of things going on, I'll give you details when I'm back next week.
In the mean time, here's a writing quote to keep you thinking positive thoughts:
If my doctor told me I had only six months to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Turns out that IGMS will be available on Kindle. We've had numerous requests for it to be available there, and at first it looked like it wasn't going to work out. But where there's a will, there's a way, and our web designer has begun converting each issue for Kindle, starting with issue one (which should be available shortly). Between his (the designer's) wide variety of other projects, he will work through the back issues as time permits until each issue is ready and done. We'll then add the new issues as they are published. The main differences between the online version of the magazine and the Kindle version is that the cover art will be in black and white instead of color, and the audio stories will not be available (Kindle doesn't support that yet). Certain other bonuses will not be there (like the serialization of "Hotsleep" that we did in issue one, or the comic versions we've done of a few of OSC's stories), but all of the short stories, any interviews, etc. will be in the Kindle version for the same $2.50 we charge for the online version.
Speaking of serialization, we are going to serialize Orson's "Folk of the Fringe" over the next five issues. Frankly, it is my personal favorite of his books, and though it is still in print and available from Tor, they gave us permission to serialize it anyway. If you're not familiar with "Folk," it is a series of interconnected short stories and novellas set in a post-apocalyptic America. Minor characters from one story become major characters in the next, etc. "Folk" includes a novella titled "The Pageant Wagon," which, in my opinion, is one of the best novellas I've ever read. We'll run one story/novella per issue for the next five issues as an added bonus to the regular content.
Also, we're closer than ever now to having an annual membership or subscription option. There's a lot going on right now as far as implementing all of the changes/upgrades we're making, so I don't think that will come into effect until issue 13, but I'll keep you posted as we go along. This is something else that people have been asking for for a long time and I'm glad to announce that it is (almost) finally happening.
It might be hard to believe, but "Tekkai Exhales His Avatar" started with a polar bear.
The Writers of the Future workshop in Pasadena, August 2007 put us through a dreaded but exhilarating challenge: the 24-hour story. We'd each receive a random object, go interview a random stranger, and pull random books at the local library.Once we had those seeds, we had to write a complete short story within twenty-four hours. Three people's stories would be critiqued the next day by our peers as well as Tim Powers and Kathy Wentworth. Talk about pressure!
Kathy gave me my random object, a tiny polar bear on a red pole, likely from a toy carousel. The bear made me think I'd be writing an Inuit tale, so when I got to the library, I tracked down books on Inuit and Greenlandic mythology. I learned fascinating things on those topics, but I had also pulled a few volumes on Japanese myth by chance, and jotted down whatever nuggets of information that caught my eye.
That left the interview with a total stranger. We weren't supposed to tell anyone that we were writers, and simply talk to someone and pry their life stories out of them. Not so easy! I failed miserably trying to engage people in conversation, and only managed to ask a scruffy-looking guy what he did with the empty water bottles he was collecting.
When it came time to sit down and write, I had absolutely no idea how my different pieces of research would fit together, if at all!
But Tim's advice was to think at the keyboard, so that's what I did.
I mashed my ideas together, hard, and decided the fallout looked like a multiverse fantasy that would take an immortal hero from Greenlandic legend to feudal Japan. (Plot? No clue, yet.) But then it occurred to me that the universes in the story only seemed like fantasy, but were actually interconnected virtual worlds. They would be mimicstreams, artificial realities built from the world's collective sensory experiences, each with a basis on a world mythology.
I had my worlds, but who would be the main character, and what would he want? Well, suppose the man I met lived on the fringes of society. Maybe he had run-ins with the law, even spent time in jail. What if my hero was stuck in prison? (Correction: anti-hero.) Why would the government need his help, and what could they tempt him with?
Answer: they needed a hacker to help them catch someone. Not just any hacker, but one of the best. And they offered him freedom to see his son.
I ran with it. I cut out my intended prelude in the land of ice, since I had no time to show how he got caught. Instead, I focused on the Japanese angle.
Then came the frantic typing, rushing my characters blindly into the unknown. I remember a couple of caffeine runs, slapdash chicken sandwiches, and about five hours sleep somewhere in there. But I had no ending until two hours before the deadline, when something Tim said in class suddenly clicked into place. I managed a last surge of key-pounding and finished the story, with fifteen minutes to deadline.
As luck would have it, my story was among the ones selected for critique. It was nerve-wracking sitting in the hot seat, having my classmates and instructors pick apart the barely-edited piece -- but in the end, they all gave great insights that helped me revise the story. All that remains of that first polar bear story seed are the snow motif and the creatures of Japanese myth.
Overall, the 24-hour writing challenge was odd and exhausting, but also an invaluable teaching tool. The rapid-fire method creates quite a different work than if I took my time with the ideas. My experience writing this story has made it quite close to my heart.
One last thing: many thanks to the editors at Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show for allowing my cousin to illustrate "Tekkai Exhales His Avatar". I-Wei's art appeared in IGMS #1, and he also designs working steampunk robots. It was a blast collaborating with him on the artwork, leaving us nostalgic for the days when we were kids, inventing incredible stories and gluing magazine cuttings together to make them real.
