To: ...my good and trusted friend, Brandon_son-rae

From: L'lie Konstantin
To: ...my good and trusted friend, Brandon_son-rae
Subject: URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL ASSISTANCE NEEDED
Date: Sat., 03 May, 2214

Dear Brandon_son-rae,

I know you're surprised to receive this intergalactic transmission since you don't know me, but I got your contact information through the Jovian Chamber of Commerce. I am L'lie Konstantin, son of M'wa Konstantin, one of the hydrogen crystal farmers in the Crab Nebula who was recently murdered in the on-going genetic dispute.

The problems began when Planetary Alliance President, General Veelo Vronsky, introduced a Species Reform Act unfairly benefiting the genetically-engineered farmers. This caused a rampage among the unenhanced farmers, many of whom are veterans of the Ion Wars. General Vronksy treated the event as a military uprising and reacted ruthlessly to put down this 'revolt.' As a result, many people were killed, including my father.

That's when my family fled the Crab Nebula for fear of being sent to one of Vronsky's organ-harvesting slave camps. Vronsky's surgeons have a reputation that is renowned in star systems many light years away, so you will understand why we decided to seek political asylum in the Jovian Embassy.

However, before my father's death, he deposited $18.6 trillion dollars in a bank on Earth. According to his last wishes, the money was meant for the purchase of new machines and chemicals for the unenhanced farmers in the Crab Nebula. My father, God rest his soul, was a great philanthropist.

Our problem right now is that Jovian law prohibits anyone who is seeking political asylum from being involved in any financial transactions outside the gravitational pull of their planet. As a result, my family has been forced to find a partner to help us. The Jovian authorities aren't aware that we have these funds and we intend t keep the information top-secret. If the Jovians knew we had access to so much money, the six-legged thieves would surely require many bribes.

My family is prepared to give you 25% of the funds, while the remaining 75% will be invested by you on our behalf, preferably with one of the start-up time-travel companies. The idea is to use the time-travel companies to subsequently invest in companies such as Ironhorse Propulsion Systems before IPS invented faster-than-light travel.

We have never met, but I want to trust you; please do not take advantage of us once you have our money. I know that a pure-bred Earther such as yourself would never do that to a fellow unenhanced being.

This transaction will be risk-free to you as I am in possession of all necessary items, i.e. certificate of deposit, DNA identification code, recent clone of my father's thumb for current fingerprints. If you decide to assist us, please reply to this transmission for more details. Also, please treat this message as highly confidential; it has been shielded from e-telepaths, so if anyone learns about it, I'll now the information could only have come from you.

Thanks in advance for you help.

Sincerely,
L'lie Konstantin

Schedule Update

Below is a letter/email we're sending out today. Mainly it's to let folks know we're pushing back our publication schedule starting with the current issue, but it's a one-time thing and after that it will be business as usual.



To All InterGalactic Medicine Show Fans,

Just to keep you up-to-date, IGMS is making a small change to its publication schedule. We will still produce four issues per year, one every three months, and nothing about the content of the magazine will change. We are simply adjusting the dates the issues will be available. Under the new schedule issues will be published on November 15th, February 15th, May 15th, and August 15th.

Our next issue (Issue #10, due out on Nov. 15th), will feature our cover story “Sweetly The Dragon Dreams” by Dave Farland, as well as “Pi” by Mette Ivie Hrrison, “Robot Sorcerer” by Eric James Stone, “The Fort In Vermont” by David Simons, “The Tile Setters” by Ami Chopine, “A Heretic by Degrees” by Marie Brennan, and part one of the novelette, “The Absence of Stars,” by Greg Siewert.

See you in six weeks.


Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008

Just got a sneak peek at the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, which will be out shortly. I had given five stories to Ellen Datlow and told her that although IGMS wasn't really a horror magazine, those were the five I thought might best fit what she was looking for. To my pleasant surprise she gave Honorable Mentions to four of the five.

They are: Peter Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother;" Mike Strahan's "In The Beginning, Nothing Lasts;" William John Watkins "The Polka Man;" and Magit Schmitt's "Under Janey's Garden."

This is from the Year's Best 2008, covering stories published in 2007. I've sent her more stores from 2008 (of course) and if she doesn't reprint James Maxey's "Silent As Dust" (issue 7, Jan. '08) I'll poke her with a pointy stick. Several others (including Alethea Kontis's 's "Blood & Water" (issue 9, July '08), which has already received a preliminary recommendation for a Stoker Award for Best Short story in 2008, should also get noticed. But that's next year's YB and I'm getting ahead of myself.

Congrats to all of this year's HM's.

Return of the Sunburnt Editor

Just went to Hawaii with my wife for our anniversary, which is why I've been silent for so long. Boy, but it's a long trip getting there from the east coast. On the other hand, all that time sitting in airports and on airplanes gives me time to read some novels, something I get to do too little of under normal circumstances.

Read John Varley's "Mammoth" on the way out. It was described as "H.G. Wells meets Jurassic Park" and despite the terrific reviews pasted all over the back cover of the book, I thought the vast majority of it was slow and predictable. I enjoyed his book "The Ophiuchi Hotline" (the only other of his books that I've read before), but I couldn't recommend "Mammoth" to anyone. I tired to get my wife to read it just to see if she had the same opinion I did, but I think she heard me complain about it too much to take the risk.

Also (finally) read John Scalzi's "Old Man's War." That I enjoyed very much. Good writing, impressive world-building. I didn't think it got particularly compelling until he introduced the character of Jane Sagan and the Ghost Brigade (which didn't happen until about 2/3 of the way through the book), but it was interesting enough before then that I was happy to go along for the ride. I've bought the sequel, which is entitled "Ghost Brigade," so I guess a few other people thought that was one of the more intruiging parts of "OMW," too. I'm looking forward to it, but now that I'm home again I'm not sure when I'll have time to tackle the thing. I have to admit, one of the things I liked about "Old Man's War" was that it was only about 300 pages long. I grew up a big fan of authors like Clifford Simak and Roger Zelazny, who also wrote at about that length and it's nice to see someone sell a novel that's not 125K to 150K words long.

In between those two books I also managed to do a little sight-seeing, a lot of snorkeling (something I love), and spent a lot of time with someone I love but all too often take for granted. It was a pleasure to be Ed and Terry for a while instead of mom and dad (and God bless grandma and grandpa who stayed with the kids while we were away. The picture here are from my first snorkeling outing, which included swimming with a large pod of dolphins, a giant sea turtle, and me holding an octopus in my hands. The pictures were taken by a professional photographer who happened to be along on the boat (Chuck Harvey: www.chuckharvey.com). The turtle is the actual one I swam with, and though it's hard to tell, the picture of me next to the boat is the one where I'm holding the octopus. He's the little brown lump you can barely make out, but he was making himself small and trying to hide. It's amazing how much they can compress themselves. The other octopus picture is the same creature right after he was released.

I left my favorite pair of cycling sunglasses on a beach on the west side of the island (I also left my favorite pair of cycling gloves in a small chapel on top of a mountain in southern Italy last year, so I either need to stop taking my cycling gear on these trips or I need to accept the fact that some part of my subconscious enjoys leaving my favorite stuff in cool places around the world).

Coming home was a challenge; it was 63 degrees, windy, and rainy, and there was a mountain of work waiting for me. And snorkeling for 2 to 3 hours every day for three straight days left my back really sunburned (despite repeated applications of sunblock (spf 50) to my pasty white flesh), so sleeping is a bit of a challenge right now. But it was worth it. Oh, was it ever worth it...

Good grief, I get further and further behind every day with this blog (and so many other things)(funny how that works; don't do anything and fall behind... duh).

Had a great time at DragonCon over the Labor Day weekend and still to hope to write a more thorough report, but this will have to suffice in the meantime. Let's see... Hung out with Princess Alethea Kontis, Eric James Stone, and Gray Rinehart a lot; had dinner with them and Weird Tales editor and perpetually sharp-dressed man, Stephen Segal, on Sunday. Met Eugie Foster in person for the first time (we've traded a ton of emails, but never been in the same place at the same time before)(she's a sweatheart).

Briefly met John Scalzi, and had a couple of conversations with Kevin Anderson and his lovely bride, Rebecca Moesta. He gave me a couple of packs of the most clever marketing/pr thing I've seen in a long, long. You know how he writes those Dune novels with Brian Herbert? We'll he's got gummi worms made up with packaging so that they look like gummi sand worms, and the printing at the top is the cover of the book, Sandworms of Dune. I thought it was brilliant (as was John Scalzi's reading, BTW; funny man, he is).

Alethea and Eric also did readings (they shared a time slot) and drew a nice crowd. Lotta fun, that was. I'd post some pics but I still haven't figured out how to download the pics from my new camera (the kids dropped the old one into a stream on a camping trip and for some reason it doesn't work anymore).

Got strep throat shortly after getting home (another present from the kidlings) (which is partly why I've been so bad about posting here) -- that and the fact that I'm trying to get a million and one things done before I go away. The wife and I are off to Hawaii for our aniversary (our 18th) and I've got to get all of the articles for Diversity Woman production edited and off to the proof reader so she can do her thing while I'm away. Otherwise we'll never make our production deadlines.

All of the stories for the next issue of IGMS are off to the illustrators, so that's all on track, and my own novel, Dreaming Creek, is (finally, mercifully) 100% done and out of my hands. The editor sent me a pre-press pdf of the book last week (Thurs.? Fri.?) and said that it was my last opportunity to look for typos and such. Unfortunately that was when I got strep throat and I didn't do anything but lay around feeling miserable for a couple of days (I despise strep, yet I seem to keep getting it). Fortunately they also sent the pdf of to a copy editor who the main editor described as having 'freakishly sharp eyes,' so I'll have to hope he got the job done right (cuz I didn't touch it).

The main editor then sent the final files off a few days later to the the publisher for formatting and my understanding is that some time in the middle of September the e-version of the book will be ready. I think I'm supposed to get a half dozen printed review copies by the end of the month, and the official release date is Oct. 28th. The publisher has started putting the book up on their website for pre-orders, but it isn't a fully active link yet. You can take a peek if you like at www.lbfbooks.com Just scroll about half way down and you'll the book cover. As I said, some of the books you can click on to pre-order, but not mine. Not yet, anyway...

That's about all for now. Hopefully that's enough.

Dreaming Creek: TITLE INFORMATION FORM

Working on final edits (the final, final edits (finally)) of my novel, which are due to the publisher this Sunday. They also just sent me a form called the TITLE INFORMATION FORM. As I was filling it out, it occurred to me that a) I haven't posted on my blog in a long time, and b) this would be a really good way to 1)get double duty out of a bit of writing, and 2) tell folks a little bit more about my upcoming novel. So, since any good writer will get as many uses as possible out of a single piece of work, here, for your education and entertainment, is a portion of my TITLE INFORMATION FORM for Dreaming Creek...

1. (Internal use to be filled out by staff)

Publication Date:

Genre:

Sub-Genre:

ISBN (E):

ISBN (P):

Editor:

Copy Editor:

Cover Artist:

Rating: (I don't know what this means, but it makes me nervous... (Edmund))

2. (This section is to be filled out by the author and then reviewed by the assigned editor once edits are underway.)

Book Info:

Title: Dreaming Creek

Author: Edmund R. Schubert

Pen Name to appear on cover (if desired):

Spelling preferred (CDN, US, UK): US

Author Info:

Website (if any): www.edmundschubert.com

Author Biography:

Edmund R. Schubert is the award-winning author of over thirty short stories, having been published in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. In addition to writing, Schubert has held a range of editorial positions, including serving as fiction editor of the online magazine, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. An anthology of IGMS stories, co-edited by Schubert and Card, was published by Tor (August, 2008). Dreaming Creek (LBF Books, October 2008) is his first novel.

Dedication/Acknowledgements:

One of the most important things I have learned since I first began writing Dreaming Creek is that a novel is not created by one individual. The author may be the engine that drives the vehicle, but there are a lot of other parts, without whom there is no book.

My unending thanks for material aid and support in the writing of this book to:

Terry Schubert, Katrina and Alexa Schubert, L. McKenna Donovan, Alethea Kontis, James Maxey, Gray Rinehart, Ada Brown, Oliver Dale, Allen Moore, Cindy Hutchins, Dena Harris, Laine Cunningham, Rudy Clark, Tom Barker, Daniel Shirley, Marti & Duane Abbott, Craig Parent, Mike Griffin, Orson Scott Card, Dawn Mitchell, Jacqueline Druga-Marchetti, Carole Spencer & Jodi Lee

Back Cover Blurb:

(This should be a maximum of 150 words.)

High school teacher Danny Wakeman has spent sixteen years believing that his childhood friend, Marcus Gaines, saved his life after an accident. But Danny's perspective on the world gets turned inside-out when he and the woman he wants to marry, Sara McBride, drink from the mystical waters of Dreaming Creek, trade bodies, and get stuck that way...

Trapped in each others' bodies, struggling to fit in to each others' lives, Danny and Sara will have to pull together to overcome a perplexing lawsuit, a plot to defraud Danny out of his recently deceased parent's farm, and an attempted rape—all of which ultimately prove to bear Marcus's sinister fingerprints. And before it's over, Danny will discover that this pattern of treachery and violence goes all the way back to his supposed accident, which Marcus designed to cover up an even blacker secret...

Excerpt to be used for promo:

(This is a sample chapter or if the chapter is too long, then use a sample scene.)

Danny watched Sara wink as she said, “I’ve been wondering all day what this would be like. I was beginning to worry that your bladder had gone missing along with this finger.”

“Oh,” Danny said, finally understanding. “Have fun.”

As Sara walked toward the restroom, Danny watched his old body lumber across the room, wondering if he really moved that ungracefully, or if Sara just wasn’t used to moving around in his body. Normally she seemed to glide everywhere she went — not that normal was a word that could be applied to this situation. But he had always appreciated the effortless elegance of her movements before.

As soon as Sara went into the men’s room, a voice startled Danny from behind. It was their waiter, Karl.

“Miss, is everything all right?” he asked.

Danny noticed Karl used a much more casual tone than he had used earlier. “Yes,” he replied, puzzled. The food wasn’t even out yet. “Why?”

The waiter crouched down so he and Danny would be at the same level, gazing into his eyes and putting his fingertips on the back of Danny’s hand.

“Things seemed a bit tense between you and your…” the waiter glanced at Danny’s hand, looking pointedly where a ring would have been if Danny and Sara had been married, “…boyfriend. I wondered if I could be of assistance somehow. Help a beautiful lady in distress?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Danny yanked his hand out from beneath the waiter’s.

“Please,” Karl said, smiling innocently. “I meant no offense. I was only trying to help.”

“You were trying to help yourself to some free monkey business with someone else’s girlfriend,” said Danny. “What kind of creep are you?”

“I offer my aid and you insult me,” Karl said, snapping upright and resuming his waiter persona again. “If you’ll excuse me, I have other customers to attend to.”

Danny immediately wondered if he had misunderstood. The waiter seemed genuinely wounded, and he and Sara’s earlier game of one-upsmanship could have been misconstrued as having tones of hostility. Was he over-reacting?

After a few minutes he looked back across the room to see if he could spot the waiter, and instead noticed a familiar head — his own — poking cautiously out of the men’s room door. It was Sara, but whatever she was looking out for, she didn’t seem to find. She slipped through the door and walked as quickly as possible back to the table.

* * *

“That wasn’t any fun at all,” Sara said, sitting down heavily. She was starting to have second thoughts about this little body-swapping experiment.

“What does it mean when a guy puts his hand on yours?” Danny asked.

Sara looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “It usually means he’s interested.”

“In…?”

“In touching more than just your hand,” she said.

“Even if he knows you’re with someone else?”

Sara brought her hands together in front of her, making a steeple with her pinkies. “What happened here while I was away?” She already had a pretty good idea, but she wanted to hear it from Danny.

“Our waiter.”

Sara feigned shock. “Really?”

“Yes, really. It’s not funny. He all but offered to take me home with him.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him?” Danny said. “I called him a creep and told him to get lost.”

He was clearly getting annoyed, but Sara wasn’t sure if it was with the event or with her amusement about it. She decided to ease up on him. This was new territory for both of them.

“Did he?”

“What do you mean, did he? Of course he did. What kind of loser hits on a woman and won’t even back off when you tell him no?”

“There are all kinds of creeps out there,” Sara said matter-of-factly.

Clearly understanding what she meant, Danny said softly, “This has happened to you?”

Sara shrugged. “Not often. More than I’d prefer.”

“What do you do?”

Marcus immediately came to Sara’s mind. “I guess it depends on the situation.”

Danny said, “Well if it ever happens while I’m around, you let me know.” He made his tiny new hand into a fist. “I’ll take care of it.”

Sara paused, pondering the wisdom of stating her next thought aloud. She made it anyway.

“I did, once. You didn’t believe me.”

“When was that?” Danny’s eyes drifted up and to the right as he searched his memory. After a few seconds he said, “I don’t remember anything.”

Sara nodded. “Marcus’s cousin’s wedding.”

Danny perked up. “That? Oh, come on, Sara, I told you, it was a joke. He was kidding.”

“He groped me when I made the mistake of dancing with him. It was bad enough when he kept spinning me and brushing his hands across my breasts, but at the end he didn’t even try to be subtle, he just grabbed me.”

“Marcus is my best friend,” Danny said. “He wouldn’t do that except maybe, maybe, as a gag. Come on, he’s my oldest friend. He saved my life —”

“You know what,” Sara interrupted. “I talked with your dad about that right before he died. He said that everyone else’s memories are based on what Marcus said, and he sounded like he wasn’t so sure he believed it. I mean, come on. In the end, all we have is Marcus’s word for what happened.”

Danny’s little hands curled up into rock-hard fists around his silverware. “Marcus has looked out for me for as long as I’ve known him. Yeah, he teases me sometimes. He teases everybody, that’s just his way. But when the shit gets deep, he’s always been there for me.”

Sara leaned across the table. “And how many times was Marcus the one who pushed you into the shit in the first place?"

“You don’t know him like I do. What he’s been through,” Danny said.

“Actually, I think I know him better than you do. At least I’m not blinded by an event I can’t even remember.”

Danny stared with disbelief. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes,” said Sara, crossing her arms. “It was.”

After that neither of them said another word, staring right through each other’s eyes when they bothered looking at each other at all.

When dinner arrived, they ate in silence, a silence that was made even more awkward by the invasive and inescapable din of forty other conversations taking place around them. The food the waiter served them could have been excellent or atrocious, they couldn’t tell, and the champagne sat open and untouched, going as flat as the evening.

* * *

When Karl finally brought the check, Sara gave him a credit card, and when he returned for the signature she discovered another thing that was a tremendous challenge to do when missing a finger: writing. The stub wasn’t big enough to hold the pen, but it was big enough to get in the way. She figured there had to be a way, Danny managed it all the time, but she had never really paid attention to him when he wrote. Why would she?

However, as much as she struggled forging Danny’s name, she also made a flamboyant show of writing a large zero in the space designated for their waiter’s tip.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said when she handed him the credit card slip. “I… I think you may have made an error here.” He pointed out the lack of gratuity.

“No,” said Sara, standing up. She straightened the collar of her shirt and said loudly enough for everyone around them to hear, “The error is yours if you think you’re going to hit on my girlfriend and get paid for it. Here’s your tip: keep your paws to yourself.”

Editor Loses Mind, Film at Eleven

The IGMS anthology came out last Tuesday and I've done a bunch of interviews with various folks to help promote the book. After you've done enough interviews you tend to get a little punchy. But just a little...

Penguin Man, Penguin Man...


___

Dragonforge by James Maxey

One of the first stories I ever bought for InterGalactic Medicine Show was James Maxey’s “To Know All Things That Are In The Earth.” I liked it so much that I also included it in the IGMS anthology that just came out this week from Tor. James didn’t even submit that story to the magazine; I saw it while it was being workshopped and I knew right away that I wanted it. And his story “Silent As Dust” in issue seven is probably tied (in my mind) with Peter Beagle’s “We Never Talk About My Brother” as the best story we’ve ever published in IGMS. So to say that I’m a big fan of James Maxey’s writing is something of an understatement.

His first novel from Solaris (and second overall), Bitterwood, was a tightly written story about dragons and the man who hated and hunted them, and it turned out to be a highly intelligent science fiction premise wrapped up in a fantasy disguise. James has proven to me time and time again how intelligent he is and he applies all of his insights into his writing with with subtle consistency. It's not an in-your-face-look-at-me kind of intelligence; it's one of those things that just creeps up on you until you finally just have no choice but to be impressed. If I had any complaints with Bitterwood it was only that I thought the ending was a bit too abrupt after a long and methodical build up. But it’s a small complaint; overall the novel was one of the better ones I had read in quite a while.

Now the second novel of the Dragon Age, as James calls it, it set to be released. I was fortunate enough to get an advance copy when he and I were guests at ConCarolinas this year. I’ve been reading Dragonforge a bit slower than I would prefer, not because the book isn’t engaging, but because my wife recently had major reconstructive surgery on her shoulder and can’t use that arm for anything. So the maintenance of the entire household falls to me and I don’t have the luxury of losing myself in a book the way that I would prefer to. But twice a week she has physical therapy sessions and twice a week I get an hour to myself, sitting in the waiting room while the therapist tortures my wife. How I do look forward to those hours.

Dragonforge is, if anything, a better written, more thoroughly developed story that the first novel of the series. It has just enough references to the previous story that people who have not read it will have no trouble following along (in fact, I know that Orson Scott Card read them out of order and still enjoyed them very much), but the details are layered in in such a way that if you have read the first one, you don't feel like you're just seeing more of the same; there is so much that is new and creative and surprising, and I am enjoying it immensely.

I hate to have to admit it, but I say ‘enjoying’ in the present tense because I am not quite through with it; I still have a little over 100 pages to go. But I wanted to post this tonight, even though reviewing books before you’ve actually completed them can occasionally come back to haunt you. However, I wanted to post ASAP because a) I’ve read enough of James’ stories (long and short) to have complete faith in him as a writer, and because b) I just got an email from him letting me know that the book is officially being released this week and he’s having a signing/reading/party tomorrow night. In his own words:

“I'm doing my first official signing for Dragonforge this Thursday (August 7^th) at 7pm at the Southpoint Mall Barnes and Noble in Durham, NC. I've been told there will be cake. I'll also have free Dragonforge buttons. I'll do a brief reading as well, but don't let that discourage you.”

So I thought I’d pass the word along, because anyone who is in the area should drop by. Miss this event and you’ll look back someday like someone who missed an early signing by George R.R. Martin and say, “If only I had know…”

Except now you do know, because you’ve read it here. Don’t make me come back in five years and say “I told you so.”

WHAT IF THE VOICES WERE REAL? By Ken Scholes

__________

Edmund asked me to write a little something about this story and how it came about. For me, stories come from a wacky and powerful collision of thought, emotion, experience and curiosity. And nearly always, they end up meaning something to me, revealing something about whatever I was processing at the time, and expressing that outward. There's an uncomfortable vulnerability in it that I liken to running around with my underwear on my head for all to see.

I wrote "The God-Voices of Settler's Rest" in January of 2007. It was the first short story I'd written after completing my first novel. In some ways, there was trepidation after so many words spent in the long-form. In other ways, it was like sliding into a comfortable pair of shoes.

Only something had changed. Maybe it was me. But the story unfolded differently, flowing out of the character of Mother Abigail Holton in scenes from both the beginning and end of a life spent in service in the Firsthome Temple. This one just felt different. So different that I didn't quite love it as one of my paper children right away. But now that I've spent some time with it, it's grown on me.

Because I understand voices.

While I was writing LAMENTATION, that first novel of mine, I had invented a new name for those internal voices that chew at us. I called them the Chattering Head Monkeys, or the CHM for short. Which of course, were differentiated from the so-called voice of my muse, Leroy. Of course, these voices are just me. I know that. No need for alarm. But it got me to thinking about the other voices we hear and listen for.

And then I wondered: What if the voices were real?

I saw a world -- a colony world in some far off future -- where somehow the ghost voices of a long vanished civilization called out to the settlers, initially with promises of home and love but later, through no fault of the hapless colonists, turned angry and raging. And what if only the women could hear these voices? And what if those voices -- like telepathic recordings that played in cycles over long stretches of time -- revealed lost secrets of that previous civilization to the eager Settler's Daughters, bent on learning about humanity's new home. Only the voices were so powerful that they felt divine in nature.

Wait a minute. That sounds familiar.

Rummaging around, I find an uncomfortable dose of memory from those long-ago days when I first experienced what I felt was a divine call to service as a minister and everything that it entailed. I flinch now when I remember burning my Dungeons and Dragons materials in the yard, selling off my science fiction and fantasy collection and tossing my love of writing aside at the age of seventeen based on the power of that perceived sense of calling.

I think these memories help keep me humble.

All told, I spent at least a decade pursuing those god-voices of my own and this story is really just a part of processing what that ten year island meant in the broader context of my life. A decade of voices. And then there's that question again, in the back of my mind, bending memory towards Story: What if those voices were real?

Because really, they were real at least to me, though like Mother Holton's voices, they were easily misunderstood and were not necessarily what they claimed to be on the surface.

One more ingredient for Story Soup.

And last, what about those other voices we're listening for with our radio telescopes? The ones from elsewhere in this great big universe we spin through?

Sometimes I think we're just sitting by the phone, waiting and hoping for it to ring. And not especially caring whose voice is on the other end of that line, be it divine or extraterrestrial, as long as someone, anyone, calls.

Why do we want it so bad? Are we curious or are we lonely...or both? Or neither? Maybe, like Mother Holton says, it's because we cannot bear to be alone in the universe. And maybe the answer is the same one she found at the end of her days, when she looked back over her life and what she'd learned along the way from how she'd lived it.

We're never alone if we have one another.

And when we learn that answer for ourselves, we'll treat each other better, I suspect.

But I digress. We're really talking about where stories come from. Particularly where this story came from.

Bring yourself unto your keyboard or your pen. Take all of these thoughts and blend them together. Shake them well. Stir them up. Sprinkle in lies enough to masquerade the truth and truth enough to make the lies seem honest. Pour through the fingers and let Story emerge.

And that's how "The God-Voices of Settler's Rest" was written.

I hope my underwear wasn't too frightening.

_______

"The God-Voices of Settler's rest" by Ken Scholes is now available in issue 9 of IGMS.

Countdown to Dreaming Creek

___
On the one hand I'm excited that the publication date of my novel is drawing near. On the other hand, I'm a bit sad to report that that the official release date has been moved back, from Sept. 28 to Oct. 28. On the other other hand (for those of you with three), I'm thrilled that it's going to be Oct. 28th instead of Dec. 28th, which is the date the publisher was talking about for a while. THAT would have sucked.

So the thing I'm waiting for at this point is the editor-in-chief's line edits and general notes so that I can see what she has to say and what work she still thinks the book needs. She said she would get that to me by the end of the coming weekend, so I'm checking my email every half hour in case it comes in any sooner. I'm sure by time Sunday arrives I'll be checking it every five minutes.

That's about all for now. More as further progress warrants.

"Red Road" by David Barr Kirtley

As we were departing Lunacon, my friend John Joseph Adams recommended a book to me, but cautioned me that the book contained talking animals, as if that might put me off. I replied automatically, “No, that’s cool. I like talking animals.” Later I thought back on that and realized that, hey, yeah, I /do/ like talking animals, and yet I’d never published a story that contained any talking animals. I started thinking it might be fun to write a story about some talking animals, but only if I could come up with some new angle — something sufficiently skewed and offbeat.

A few days later I remembered a conversation I’d had years ago with some of the other students at James Gunn’s writing workshop at the University of Kansas. In that conversation I’d made a joke along the lines of, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if someone wrote an animal quest fantasy in
which … ?” Remembering that, I suddenly thought, “Hey, that’s not bad.” I had just come off a white-hot streak of writing successes, and I was in the mood for a challenge, such as taking a joke situation and trying to develop it into a narrative that contained as much emotional depth
and thematic significance as I could manage.

One other inspirational moment I remember: I had read a news article about a left-wing intellectual type who had recently been knighted in the UK. All this guy’s left-wing intellectual friends had chided him for accepting the honor and had pointed out that monarchy and titles and all that were basically against everything that this guy stood for, and the guy was kind of like, “Yeah, I know, I know. But come on, I’m a /knight/ now. How cool is that? How could I say no?” I kept thinking about that, and kept wondering what I might do in that situation, since I could easily sympathize with both sides.

I had a blast writing this story. It was enormous fun to be able to go back and write my own old-school fantasy complete with heroes and monsters and talking animals and a quest, just like the kind I read so many of when I was a kid, and I felt inspired to sneak in an unusually
high number of sly allusions and little in-jokes. My interest in politics and culture tends to show through no matter what I write, so I think the story also contains a lot of hidden depth. I also think I managed to bump my sentence-level writing up a notch with this piece.

I wrote the story during a summer in which I was living in a small apartment in South Central L.A. It was too hot for me to go out much during the day and too dangerous for me to venture out much at night, so I spent day after day alone in that apartment and got completely absorbed (probably too much so) in the fictional reality of the story. The moment at which I became really excited about the piece and knew for sure that I was going to go ahead and write it all down was when I dreamt up the sequence in which Francis battles the owl. But when it came time to write that scene, I just didn’t know how Francis could possibly stand a chance. I paced around and around, swinging an imaginary sword. In the corner of the room, looming over me, I pictured
a gigantic and sinister owl (the sweltering heat probably contributed to the near-hallucinatory intensity of this vision), and I would stare up at that monstrous owl and think, “Crap, how the hell am I going to kill this bleeping thing?”

I was really happy with how that part turned out. In fact, after I wrote that scene I couldn’t restrain myself from sending out a bulletin to all my Facebook friends announcing, “I just wrote the best sword-wielding mouse versus owl fight scene you’ll read all year!” Writing isn’t all
fun and games though, of course. For whatever reason I had a hell of a time describing the throne room. I worked for an entire day — eight hours or so — on that one stupid little paragraph, though that time included many hours spent online perusing photos of various real-world
throne rooms. I also found it challenging to work out exactly how the climactic scene was going to go down (even though that scene was something I’d planned from the beginning and was in fact the genesis of the whole piece). I spent several days wrestling with the logistics of
the thing until I finally hit upon the image of a spooky, mist-shrouded landscape, which instantly felt right and which immediately solved a lot of my problems.

I had a great deal of fun writing this story, and I really felt as though I were living through the events as I was writing them. I hope that some of that same experience comes through for people when they read it.

--

Read "Red Road" in issue 9 of Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, available now

To learn more about Dave, visit his website at:
www.davidbarrkirtley.com

"No Viviremos Como Presos" by Brad Beaulieu

While I was attending Viable Paradise, a one-week writing workshop held on Martha's Vineyard, Patrick Nielsen Hayden had the students write a scene in which we argued a position we would normally argue against. I had a particularly tough time with this, and it became clear why after Patrick said something that was rather obvious once he'd said it: that you're on to something if you find the writing of a particular position difficult. I don't even recall the exact nature of the scene (something to do with corporate greed, as I recall, though I was arguing for the greedy corporation) but the exercise has always stuck with me, because the point of it was to show you that you can really make an argument exciting if both sides have compelling arguments. And it's not just arguments; this goes to the heart of conflict. It's easy (not to mention uninteresting) to set up a conflict where one side is clearly in the right. Its much more gripping if the author can set up the conflicts so that there are no easy answers. To make the antagonist sympathetic in his own right can turn him from a cardboard cutout of evil into a complex character that the reader actually sympathizes with while they do dastardly things.

When I started writing "No Viviremos Como Presos," I had a clear position in mind: that a border wall was a Bad Thing, and from this position Sandro's character began to form. But, bearing the previous exercise in mind, I certainly didn't want it to become didactic. In the words of Tim Powers: I didn't want to "say" anything. I just wanted it to be, for it to exist, and for the reader to take away what they would. This is the place from which Miguel's character sprang. I note now, though it was not conscious at the time, that there is no antagonist in the conventional sense. Clearly the U.S. Government is the bad guy, but it acts the landscape of this painting, not the subject. Miguel turned into a lens, so to speak, something through which the reader could view these things with a fairly unbiased viewpoint. That is his job, after all, to take pictures and to present them and allow the viewer to make up their minds about them. Sure, he can flavor them if he chooses to, but his professional integrity steers him away from such urges.

It was interesting, then, to see what happened to Miguel as he stood by and documented this tragedy. He never did take as much of a stand as Sandro wanted him to, and perhaps in the end Miguel regrets that. By the end of the story he certainly feels punished by the paths that fate led him down, though whether that changes him in the end, I don't know. I'll leave that up to you to decide...

"Blood and Water" by Alethea Kontis

Vampire Mermaid

*

"You're a writer? Okay, tell me a story."

Yeah -- my eyes just rolled too. I've gotten this my whole life. I've heard it from friends and teachers. I got it from relatives who expected me to entertain their bored children. I even got it once from a computer tech support guy when I was waiting for the server at my Waldenbooks to reboot.

What the heck? Come on. I've never said, "You're an accountant? Okay, do my taxes" or "You're a dancer? Go on, let's see a jig."

Eventually, I learned to keep some pat stories on hand, shoved in a special mental folder I saved for just those occasions. There's a love story about my Thea Maritza who ran from the Turks as they ethnically cleansed Smyrna…or the one about how my grandfather turned pirate during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Quality stuff at the drop of a hat.

'Cause it's just not that easy for me.

I was born a genius and an actress. I grew up on stage. I've done my share of improv (and your share, and his share, and a bit of that lady's over there). I was surrounded by seriously hyperintelligent geeks in all my classes and was expected to hold my own with a biting wit and a wealth of trivial knowledge. You want a perfect comeback, a great conversationalist, or a frustrating debate partner? I'm your girl.

But I just can't tell stories at the drop of a hat. I can tell you about my sister's latest catastrophe or the funny thing that happened to me on the way to work…but if it's fiction you want I need something. I need a seed from which to grow the flax -- otherwise it's like trying to weave a tapestry out of dandelion fluff on a windy day.

It doesn't have to be big, either. Heck, sometimes it only takes two words.

"Blood and Water" started from such a seed: I was in Charleston one Memorial Day weekend, staying at my friend Brandi's house. I had brought in the little chunky notebook I keep in my car for when inspiration strikes and I don't have a junkmail envelope or Starbucks receipt or roofing flyer handy.

Brandi was flipping through it when she suddenly got a strange look on her face.
What's a 'vampire mermaid'?" she asked.

I took the book from her curiously. Sure enough there they were, just two words, two random thoughts at two completely different times that I just happened to scribble on the same page in close proximity. But it was a good question. What was a vampire mermaid? How would that work?

This is where "what you know" comes in. As writers, once inspired, we proceed to ask ourselves this barrage of myriad questions. We then answer those questions based on what we know. If you happen to know a lot of trivial junk, you can come up with some pretty interesting scenarios.

My brain clicked into overdrive, following the logic. A mermaid lives in the ocean: check. Vampires need blood: check. Why would a mermaid need blood? What's under the ocean that needs blood? I mentally went back to college, my short-lived days of being a marine chemist with dreams of open waters and deep-sea submersibles.

I had been obsessed with the hydrothermal vents, in the deepest ocean where the tectonic plates meet and form fissures. Nobody ever thought there would be anything living that far down…and oh, how wrong they were. In 1979 the infamous ALVIN scoped it out and discovered entire colonies of organisms living off the toxic chemicals spewing out from the vents. There were snails, shrimp, crabs, octopuses…even giant oysters and seven-foot-tall red-plumed white tube worms with complete vascular systems.

Oh, yes…these folks don't need sunlight, but they do need blood.

Check.

With that problem solved, I went back to the mermaid part. Now, I'm not claiming to be the Fairy Tale Queen of the Universe, but I know my way around a bit of Grimm and Andersen (and Zipes and Bettelheim). When I was ten, my grandmother gifted me with a humongous volume of unexpurgated fairy tales -- thank goodness my mother never got her hands on it. Sleeping Beauty's name was "Briar Rose," Rapunzel got knocked up, and Cinderella's sisters cut off pieces of their feet to squeeze into that glass slipper. I read "The Little Match Girl" and "The Little Mermaid" and cried like my heart was breaking.

And then I'd read them again.

If the only version of "The Little Mermaid" you know is Disney, then you are seriously missing out. It's a beautiful tale. But I'll warn you right now: the sea witch cuts out the mermaid's tongue. The prince marries the wrong woman. The mermaid eventually drowns herself in her desolation, becoming foam on the waves. And every girl remembers how excruciatingly painful the mermaid's transformation, so darkly was it painted.

Pain, darkness, love story: check.

The rest of the questions were just details. How does a being who has lived beneath the waves her whole life describe a candle when she has never seen fire? What does splitting her tail feel like if she's never been cut by a knife? What is walking to a woman who has never experience land? How would she be able to spot a predator? How would she learn all these things…quickly?

And -- most importantly -- who would rescue her from the middle of nowhere post-transformation?

Well, that part was easy. Write what I know.

Pirates: check.

"Blood and Water" is now available in issue 9 of IGMS.

Franken-Facts by Matt Rotundo

Readers of this blog have already seen my "story behind the story" essay about "The Frankenstein Diaries." Edmund told me that since part two is coming out in issue nine of IGMS, I could blather on a bit longer, if I wanted.

I'm a writer, folks. I'm not one to turn down an opportunity to blather. So without further ado, allow me to present a few tidbits--some amusing, some interesting--that I like to call Fun "Frankenstein" Facts.

(Warning: Some spoilers follow.)

• "The Frankenstein Diaries" marks my third qualifying sale for SFWA, and is also the story that would have officially disqualified me from the Writers of the Future contest. At Dragon*Con last year, Edmund told me that he delights in ruining people's WotF eligibility. Unfortunately for him, I became a WotF winner in March of this year, right before the story was published. Got it in just under the wire. (And I'm thrilled about the WotF win, by the way.)

• "Frankenstein" is the second story of mine with a connection to Orson Scott Card. The first was "Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown," which won a Phobos Award in 2002. Scott was one of the judges in that contest, and one of the editors of the subsequent anthology in which the story appeared, also called Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown. If you see Scott, please tell him I said thanks, and I'm not stalking him. Honest.

• Paul Griffin's birthday in the story is the same as mine--June 2nd.

• Paul is the name of my oldest nephew. He does not have snake tattoo on his face.

• Although I was of course familiar with the novel Frankenstein, I hadn't read it until I got into the research phase of this story. A friend gave me an annotated version of the book as a Christmas present, which I found quite fascinating. Did you know the novel was originally published anonymously? Some of the early reviews were quite amusing, speculating about what kind of disturbed mind could come up with such a concept. I suppose some people still wonder that today.

• Digital picture frames--which we see in the scene where Paul rips the portrait of Steven off the wall--were not on the market, so far as I know, when I wrote "The Frankenstein Diaries." I just made them up as a bit of futuristic tech. By the time the story came out, they were no longer futuristic; they already existed. Nonetheless, I think somebody owes me a royalty.

• For the scene in which Marie tells John she wants a divorce, I visualized my own kitchen as the setting.

• My research into dyslexia almost derailed the story. I had it in the back of my mind that the disorder was genetic. But my research told me otherwise, that although dyslexia tends to run in families, there is no proof yet of a genetic component. On the other hand, a genetic component hasn't been ruled out yet, either--so I went ahead with it. Science may one day close that loophole, at which point, "The Frankenstein Diaries" will become hopelessly dated. Such is the nature of science fiction.

• Incidentally, everything Dr. Aiken says about the ability of children to hide the symptoms of dyslexia came from my research.

• IGMS has a "PG-13" editorial policy. I knew this when I submitted "Frankenstein." The original draft contained some rough language that I suspected wouldn't meet the PG-13 standard, and I was right. I was asked to make a few changes. Most of them were easy, but one proved troublesome. It occurred during Paul's final confrontation with John. In the scene as originally written, an angry Paul deliberately provokes his father with what I figured was a pretty typical teenage ploy--dropping the f-bomb. I needed to change it, but I had a hard time figuring out what else he could say that would push John over the edge. Finally, I hit upon it: Paul says of his dead brother, "He was stupid. He deserved to die." It occurred to me that this was an order of magnitude more awful, more unforgiveable, than the vilest profanity he could have uttered. There's a writing lesson in that, somewhere.

• My wife didn't care for an earlier draft of this story. She found the character of John Griffin unlikeable. She was right, of course. I worked on that in the rewrite--which was difficult, because John is profoundly messed up, even if he doesn't realize it. I confess that I wonder what readers will think of him in this version. I'll be at the Omaha Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival, July 11-13th, and at WorldCon in Denver, August 6th-10th. If you find yourself at either event, maybe you could look me up and let me know your opinion. And if you absolutely loved the story, make sure you say it loudly enough for my wife to hear.

With that, I think I've blathered long enough. Hope you enjoyed these Fun "Frankenstein" Facts. Feel free to use them to impress your friends at parties.

"Cassie's Story" by David B. Coe

Different authors tend to write to different lengths. Some specialize in short fiction; others feel more comfortable writing novels. Throughout my career, I've fallen into that latter category. At the same time, I’ve always admired -- even envied -- those writers who could create a seamless and complete narrative in the span of 8,000 words rather than 80,000 words.

Back in October, while in upstate New York for World Fantasy Convention, I met with my editor at Tor Books, who encouraged me to write more short fiction. He thought it would help me further hone my craft, and he believed that publishing more short stories would help me reach a broader audience. I appreciated the advice, but I wasn’t at all certain that I could simply will myself to start finding short story ideas. After all, I was a novelist -- that was my preferred length of work.

I had driven up to New York from my home in Tennessee and so, of course, I needed to drive back home. And during the first part of that drive, right there on the New York State Thruway, I suddenly found myself writing “Cassie’s Story” in my head.

The character of Cassie came to me first. And actually my first image of her was as a prisoner in jail garb, sitting in an interrogation room smoking a cigarette. I knew that at one point she had it all: brains, looks, a great career, a husband she loved. I knew as well that she had lost everything, and that she had been driven to this state by a power she possessed but couldn’t control. (You'll have to read the story if you want to know more.)

But the more the story developed in my head, the more I came to realize that while Cassie was the focus of the narrative, this was Eric’s story. He was the one who had to grapple with implications of what she had done and in doing so he also had to acknowledge his own indirect complicity in her crimes. His emotional process in the story parallels that of the reader, and in many ways, he’s the more dynamic character.

By the time I pulled into my driveway in Tennessee, the story was basically complete. I just had to transpose it from my head to the computer screen. Or so I thought.

The editorial process on “Cassie’s Story” was more involved than I had anticipated, perhaps in part because I had written so much of it in my head. There were elements of the story that needed to be moved forward in the narrative, others that needed to be tightened, and still others that needed further explanation. Fortunately, I was able to draw upon the wisdom and insight of Edmund as I reworked the story. With Ed’s help I was able to realize the full potential of that idea I first encountered on the thruway. I hope you enjoy the final product.