Exhausted But Elated

I've been writing my butt off for the last five days straight and now I'm finally done.

You see, June 30th (tonight) was my deadline for completing my final draft of Dreaming Creek. I won't bore you with the innumerable trials and tribulations, but it's done. I'm exhausted but elated. What was an 81,700 word draft two weeks ago had (best guess) about 1000 extraneous words cut, yet the final draft that I'll turn in to my editor is approx. 88,500 words long. So I've written nearly 8,000 new words, mostly since last Thursday.

I finished final edits/rewrites on Part Five today (all 160 pages of it), although like Part Four, it wasn't as onerous as some of the earlier parts. I think this is partly because I had done some work on them previously (when I should have been working on Parts 1 - 3 but couldn't bring myself to look at them because they were such a mess), and partly because by time I had gotten to the end (when I was doing my first draft) I was simply a better writer with a better handle on the novel form. (I started out writing short stories. You should have seen my very first draft; the early parts read like so many short stories strung together. And my handling of POV was atrocious. I got my first serious lesson on POV from OSC's Boot Camp and had a lot more work to do to fix the POV problems in the early parts.)

The story's plot is the same as what I started with, but I think the storytelling is much better. I have learned so much in the past few years, and with all the work I do as an editor these days, it was a pleasure to finally apply it to my own work.

Anyway, that's about all for now. Frankly, it's all I have the energy for. But I had to share. I'm done, I'm thrilled, I'm turning it in tonight.

Did I mention that I'm exhausted but elated?

BTW, before I go, I have to give a huge shout-out of thanks to Gray Rinehart, a friend and assistant editor over at Baen Books. Although Dreaming Creek is not a Baen kind of book at all, he has taken his free time to help me proof the MS. He caught more typos that I thought could possibly exist in a single manuscript and made some suggestions that really added to the overall story. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Expectations

Keeping it in perspective - that's what kids are good for.

I got my advance review copy (ARC) of the IGMS anthology the other day and I'm showing it off to my family when my oldest daughter (she's 12 going on 29) says to me, "When is your book coming out?"

I hold up the ARC and said, "This one? It comes out on August 5th."

"No," she says. "YOUR novel. I've told my friends at school about it and there are people with expectations." She says 'expectations' like they are on her, and no one else in the world could possibly understand the implications of such a thing.

I reply, "My novel won't come out for about three more months, late September." Then I hold up the ARC again and say, "But this one will be out in about a month."

Her reply?

"Sorry, dad. That one doesn't count. You didn't write that one."

That one doesn't count.

That's what she tells me.

Keepin' it real in the Schubert house...

Mama’s Boy

A little plug for a friend of mine to celebrate the recent release of her collection:

A Mother’s Love can be Devastating

Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel!

Nothing good comes of the closest ties in Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales, the new collection from Fran Friel and Apex Publications. Things can go especially awry when the tie in question is the one binding mother and son.

The Bram Stoker Award-nominated novella “Mama’s Boy” is the cornerstone of this 14-story collection from author Fran Friel and Apex Publications. A man whose mother’s demented love for him has turned him from an innocent boy to a serial killer to a near-comatose mental patient opens his world to a psychologist determined to reach him as a way of dealing with her own mother’s battle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But is she helping, or is there more damage to be done?

In “Mashed,” a son’s simple request for potatoes with his birthday dinner opens up a world of past fears and childhood torments for his mother, while the flash fiction story “Close Shave” presents a horrifically funny solution to an everyday women’s issue.

From mother and son to broader family ties, Friel explores the bonds of human connection into every dark turn. The humorous yet wickedly creepy “Under the Dryer” begins as a tale told by the family dog and ends in a bloodbath; “Special Prayers,” perhaps the most disturbing offering in the collection, exposes a family secret of abuse and power; and the tragically soft and beautiful “Orange and Golden” explores the purest form of the human-animal bond as the sun sets on a natural disaster.

Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales is now available. Released on June 14, 2008.

FRAN FRIEL is a Bram Stoker-nominated author residing in rural New England with her husband and their band of animal masters. She writes weekly columns for “The Horror Library Blog-O-Rama” and “Yada, Too,” and she is a fiction editor for Dark Recesses Press. As a full member of The Horror Library, her short fiction appears regularly in the Fresh Meat department.

Friel’s work has been featured in the 2006 anthology release Horror Library, Volume 1, as well as publications online and in print at The Horror Library, Insidious Reflections, Wicked Karnival, The Lightning Journal, Lamoille Lamentations, The Eldritch Gazette, and Dark Recesses Press.

APEX PUBLICATIONS is a small press dedicated to publishing exemplary works of dark science fiction and horror. Owned and operated by Jason B. Sizemore, Apex publishes the critically acclaimed Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. In 2006, Apex Publishing branched into producing novellas, collections, and anthologies, earning a Bram Stoker Award nomination for the Aegri Somnia anthology in 2007.

###

Apex is only doing 100 copies of the hardcover. All copies will be signed by Fran Friel and Billy Tackett (cover and interior artist).

A standard trade paperback will also be available.

Ender In Flight - new Orson Scott Card story on IGMS

The Ender's Game story for issue eight of IGMS has been posted today. Titled "Ender's Flight," it is available to anyone who purchases or has already purchased issue 8. It begins thus:

To: qmorgan%rearadmiral@ifcom.gov/fleetcom
From: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom
{self-shred protocol}
Re: In or out?

My dear Quince, I'm quite aware of the difference between combat command and flying a colony ship for a few dozen lightyears. If you feel your usefulness in space is over, then by all means, retire with full benefits. But if you stay in, and remain in near space, I can't promise you promotion within the I.F.

We suddenly find ourselves afflicted with peace, you see. Always a disaster for those whose careers have not reached their natural apex.

The colony ship I have offered you is not, contrary to your too-often-stated opinion (try discretion now and then, Quince, and see if it might not work better), a way to send you to oblivion. Retirement is oblivion, my friend. A forty- or fifty-year voyage means that you will outlive all of us who remain behind. All your friends will be dead. But you'll be alive to make new friends. And you'll be in command of a ship. A nice, big, fast one.

This is what the whole fleet faces. We have heroes out there who fought this war that The Boy is credited with winning. Have we forgotten them? ALL our most significant missions will involve decades of flight. Yet we must send our best officers to command them. So at any given moment, most of our best officers will be strangers to everyone at CentCom because they've been in flight for half a lifetime.

Eventually, ALL the central staff will be star voyagers. They will look down their noses at anyone who has NOT taken decades-long flights between stars. They will have cut themselves loose from Earth's timeline. They will know each other by their logs, transmitted by ansible.

What I'm offering you is the only possible source of career-making voyages: Colony ships.

And not only "a" colony ship, but one whose governor is a thirteen-year-old boy. Are you seriously going to tell me that you don't understand that you are not his "nanny," you are being entrusted with the highly responsible position of making sure that The Boy stays as far from Earth as possible, while also making sure that he is a complete success in his new assignment so that later generations cannot judge that he was not treated well?

Naturally, I did not send you this letter, and you did not read it. Nothing in this is to be construed as a secret order. It is merely my personal observation about the opportunity that you have been offered by a polemarch who believes in your potential to be one of the great admirals of the I.F.

Are you in? Or out? I need to draw up the papers one way or the other within the week.

Your friend, Cham

Peter Beagle's IGMS Story In Top 10 for 2007

Just a quick tidbit: Peter Beagle's story, "We Never Talk About My Brother," from issue 5 has been named one of the Top 10 stories of 2007 on storySouth's Million Writer's Award. As of tomorrow "We Never Talk About My Brother" will be available for free on the IGMS website for the duration of the voting, so that people can read it and decide if they want to vote for it as the top story of the year. This same story is also up for a Locus Award for Best Novelette of 2007, and it makes the second straight year an IGMS story has landed on storySouth's Top 10 list. I'm really pleased for both Peter Beagle, who's a great guy who's written an exceptional story (the day Scott Card read it his first comment was that the story ought to win some awards and it looks like a lot of folks agree with him on that), and for IGMS, which is slowly but surely catching on and getting noticed within the SF community as well as outside of it.

In a happy coincidence, the upcoming issue of IGMS (issue 9, due out at the end of the month) will feature another new Peter Beagle story, a Japanese fable titled, "The Tale of Junko and Sayuri."

Publisher's Weekly reviews IGMS antho

I should be writing a review of ConCarolinas, which I attended last weekend and thoroughly enjoyed - and hopefully I will do so sooner rather than later - but in the mean time here's the review from Publisher's Weekly about the forthcoming IGMS antho.

Yeah, I'm grinnin'.

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show
Edited by Edmund R. Schubert and Orson Scott Card. Tor, $15.95 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2000-1

The first collection of short stories from online magazine Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (www.oscims.com), launched in 2005, features noteworthy SF and fantasy stories from a bumper crop of talented new authors. Four new Enderverse stories from Card will initially draw genre fans, but the stories from lesser-known writers are the compilation's real driving force. James Maxey's provocative “To Know All Things That Are in the Earth” takes a decidedly skeptical look at the Rapture; David Farland's “The Mooncalfe” puts an interesting—and unique—spin on oft-trod Arthurian legend; and Tom Barlow's brilliantly sardonic “Call Me Mr. Positive” explores isolation on a deep space mission gone tragically awry. If the quality of these stories is any indication, IGMS has as much promise as the newcomers it showcases. (Aug.)

ConCarolinas May 30 - June 1, 2008

Hi Edmund, Carol, our Programming Director, should be emailing out individual schedules this week, I think. Until then, I have a preliminary schedule and will be happy to tell you what you are scheduled for on there. Just know that there could be a few minor changes in that schedule. Here’s what I see you listed for so far… Friday, 7:00pm – A Rose by Any Other Name - The importance of naming your characters, worlds and books. Saturday, 10:00am – Not This $#!* Again! – Overused plot devices and how to avoid them (or if you should). (MODERATOR) Saturday, 12:00pm – You Had Me At Hello – How to hook your readers with your opening chapter. (MODERATOR) Saturday, 2:00pm – Putting Words to Paper (or Computer Screen) – How to increase your writing productivity and power through writer’s block. (MODERATOR) Saturday, 3:00pm – Effective Tools for that First Sale – Steps to take to make that first writing sale. Saturday, 5:00pm – Putting the Science in your Science Fiction – Do you need to be a scientist to write good sci-fi? Saturday, 9:00pm – We Welcome our Evil Overlords – The best villains, the worst and the ones we secretly root for. Sunday, 9:00am – Writer’s Workshop – Join our authors as they guide your through the process of creating genre fiction. Bring paper, pencil and your imagination! (2 hours) (MODERATOR) Sunday, 11:00am – Books for Brunch – What are you reading, what do you want to read and what books do you find yourself re-reading over and over? (MODERATOR) Sunday 1:00pm – Finding an Agent – Dogwood (MODERATOR) Sunday, 3:00pm – Cover Letters – How to get an editor’s attention before they even read your work. (MODERATOR) Sincerely, Stephanie McClung Asst. Guest Services Director ConCarolinas 2008 www.concarolinas.org

"End Time" by Scott Emerson Bull

As with most of my stories, there was no great dramatic event or lightbulb moment that triggered the idea for "End Time." It was simply the urgent need to fill the maddening blank page with words and sentences. The only inspiration was perhaps the heat. I was on vacation in Orlando with my family, and I had been making a habit of waking up before everyone else so I could steal a bit of writing time down by the pool. Even though it was March, it was hot as blazes. As I began to click-clack away on my laptop, I realized I was sitting in a natural setting for a story. Throw in some thoughts from an article I'd read about global warming, the spectre of 9/11 (it was 2002 and I was still looking up whenever I heard the scream of a jetliner), and that old staple "good vs. evil," and I soon had a story, although it was almost a year before the original draft was finished.

I sent it out with high hopes, and after some early encouragement (a personal rejection from Gardner Dozois, who was at that time editor for Asimov's, and some kind words from Ellen Datlow) the story went nowhere.

Fast-forward to August 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. I was preparing to submit again after another rejection when I realized that my story had now been eclipsed by current events. In the original draft, New Orleans was only just being threatened by the rising ocean levels brought on by global warming. It had never actually found itself under water. Katrina changed all that. Now a serious calamity had hit the city, one that every potential reader of the story would know everything about and wonder why I was so clueless. Dreading a rewrite, I tossed the story into the metaphorical drawer and instead wrote a check to Clinton and Bush's relief fund.

But like most restless children, it refused to be ignored. Eventually I opened the drawer and saw that the story needed more than just a Katrina inspired rewrite. The result now appears in IGMS (after a suggested tweak by Mr. Schubert - thank you very much), thankfully before any more natural catastrophes render it obsolete....

(artwork for this story (in the current issue of IGMS) by Dean Spencer: http://deanportfolio.50webs.com.) (Scott's website: www.scottemersonbull.com.)

Beware of Angry Fred

One of my best friends in the world, Alethea Kontis (see her "Day In The Life of an Ingram Buyer" guest blog from earlier this month), introduced me to Fred Grimm at a party at ChattaCon last year. Fred was in Chattanooga TN doing a little partying and a little leg work for Hypericon, which he runs in Nashville every summer (June 27 - 29 in 2008 -- this year's Guest of Honor is Joe Lansdale (whose stories I'm a huge fan of)).

Fred was kind enough to invite me to also be a guest at Hypericon last year, which I happily agreed to do. Unfortunately, for a variety if reasons, I had to cancel that trip. And this year the baby sitting arrangements for my kids fell through, my publisher moved my date for turning in my novel, Dreaming Creek, from the end of July to the end of June (which is actually good news -- more on that in a future blog entry), and with the price of gas going through the roof and Nashville being an 8+ hour drive, I had to say 'no' to the trip. Again.

Now, understand, Fred is a big man, a man of Santa Claus-like proportions. But when I got the following email, I was afraid. This was no jolly, no happy, no jovial Santa Claus-type fellow. He was angry Fred. Below, with his permission, is that email he sent (I would never do anything, ever, without his permission. I like angry Fred; he's scary):

Edmund,

I told Alethea to tell you there was no hard feelings

about your canceling last year, and to come back this

year. 

I lied. 

Not about the coming back part. About the angry part. 

We're all very angry. And hurt. Hurt and angry. And

disappointed. Disappointed, hurt and angry. Mostly

angry. Hurt would probably be a distant second. Ohhh,

we're still so very angry. And mad. Angry and mad. And

disappointed, but that's way back in last place, so

overshadowed by Angry that it's hardly worth

mentioning. 

In fact, I cannot fully describe the level of seething

anger we at Hypericon are feeling. It needs to be done

in person. So, when you arrive June 27 (or Thursday

the 26th if you'd like), pick up your badge then come

see me so I can scream at you. 

Also, security will be watching you, so watch your

step. 

Angrily, 

Fred

www.hypericon.info



So if you're in Nashville in late June this year, 
I would recommend dropping by Hypericon. What I
wouldn't recommend, however, is telling Fred that I
sent you. Might be hazardous to your health.

The View From (Under) the Baen Slush Pile

My good friend and former Boot Camp Mate, Gray Rinehart, is also an assistant editor for Baen books. He and I were recently discussing some numbers, so I asked him to write something up that I could share with the rest of the world. Here's what he had to say:


Some of my writing friends asked me about what I look for when I read slush for Baen Books; especially, what makes a book a good potential fit for the Baen line.

Before I answer, let me point out that if a manuscript is at all close to being publishable, I pass it to the publisher, Toni Weisskopf, and let her make the call. She instructed me early on that she only expected me to send her the top 1% of submissions, but I've actually sent her more than that. Some I've only marginally recommended, if I thought they were good books but might not be quite right for Baen.

That being said, I don't know if this characterizes any kind of Baen "profile," but I look for:

1. Stories that are adventurous and fun at their core. Think "golden age of SF."

2. Stories that are exciting, if not actually action-packed. (Lots of people believe a Baen book must have a battle, brawl, barfight, gunfight, knifefight, or fistfight on every other page. That's not entirely true, but it's not entirely false either. Baen fans appreciate action; and what's more, they know well what makes for realistic action and are ruthless about inconsistencies.)

3. Stories that make sense -- e.g., with science, economics, etc., that ring true -- and are internally consistent. (This requirement is quite clear in the Baen guidelines.)

4. Stories in which characters' actions and the consequences of those actions make sense and seem plausible.

5. Stories that, under all the events and characterization, are essentially hopeful. Basically, in a Baen book you should know pretty well who the good guys and bad guys are, and the good guys need to win. Dark and difficult things may happen in a Baen book, but the whole story can't be dismal.

Note that manuscript mechanics -- spelling, grammar, and punctuation -- aren't on the list. That's because, as Toni puts it, "Story trumps all." So a good story (i.e., a good SF or F story) has a chance even if the manuscript isn't pristine. But you still need to proofread well and correct all the typos you can, because you don't want us to get distracted from the story you're trying to tell.

When I ran this list by Toni, she wrote,

Quote:

You can also add that I want to be charmed by the author. Slush is like a blind date -- heck, it's like speed dating -- first impressions count. And there won't be a second date if we don't see something that could sustain a longer relationship.

Respectfully submitted,
the GrayMan

visit Gray's blog at: http://www.graymanwrites.com/forums/blog.php?b=70

New Orson Scott Card Ender's Game Story Up

The Ender's Game story for issue seven of IGMS has been posted today. Titled "Ender's Homecoming," it is available to anyone who purchases or has already purchased issue seven. It begins thus:

To: jpwiggin@gso.nc.pub, twiggin@uncg.edu
From: hgraff%educadmin@ifcom.gov
Re: When Andrew Returns Home

Dear John Paul and Theresa Wiggin,

You understand that during the recent attempt by the Warsaw Pact to take over the International Fleet, our sole concern at EducAdmin was the safety of the children. Now we are finally able to begin working out the logistics of sending the children home.

We assure you that Andrew will be provided with continuous surveillance and an active bodyguard throughout his transfer from the IF to American government control. We are still negotiating the degree to which the IF will continue to provide protection after the transfer.

Every effort is being made by EducAdmin to assure that Andrew will be able to return to the most normal childhood possible. However, I wish your advice about whether he should be retained here in isolation until the conclusion of the inquiries into EducAdmin actions during the late campaign. It is quite likely that testimony will be offered that depicts Andrew and his actions in damaging ways, in order to attack EducAdmin through him (and the other children). Here at IFCOM we can keep him from hearing the worst of it; on Earth, no such protection will be possible and it is likelier that he will be called to "testify."

Hyrum Graff

Guest Blog - Alethea Kontis of Ingram Books

This was originally posted on an excellent blog called Magical Words (http://magicalwords.net/), run by a group of writers that includes friends of mine, David Coe and Catie Murphy. In fact, in the intro below, Catie mentions people throwing themselves through hedges at her. She’s been telling that story for over two years now, and I want to set the record straight that it was not a hedge; it was a dense row of potted ficus trees in a hotel lobby and I didn’t throw myself anywhere, I just poked my head through and startled her a little. I mean, really, there’s a big difference, people.

Guest Blog: Alethea Kontis

Originally posted on April 25th, 2008 by cemurphy (Catie)

Catie's note: I met Alethea a couple of years ago at World Fantasy Con in Austin when we were both on a shuttlebus together, and she and her friends very kindly enveloped me into their group and invited me to lunch. We (all) hit it off splendidly, embarking on a weekend that involved people throwing themselves through hedges to greet one another and other such silliness, and it is my utter delight to have invited her to post about a day in the life of an Ingram Buyer.

Ingram Books, for the uninitiated, is the world’s largest wholesale distributor of books. As such, it is very, very important, and not a little mysterious, to those of us who write, and so we thought a back-door look at what the people who help bring our books from publisher to bookshelf actually do day-in and day-out might be interesting…and it is.

-Catie

–

A day in the life of Alethea Kontis, Incredible Whirlwind of Beauty and Dynamite — Ingram Buyer by day, New York Times best-selling author by night.

April 14, 2008

3-something a.m. — The rumble of thunder wakes me up. I stumble out of the bedroom in the dark, unplug the laptop, shut down the desktop, and stumble back to bed.

6:15 a.m. — Wake up before the alarm goes off. Check my email. Solaris got my copyedits yesterday, but they can’t open the attachments. Can I please resave them as .rtf and send them again? Sure. Walk down to the office to power the desktop back up.

6:22 a.m. — Walk back through the kitchen. Put bread in the toaster. Look out the window. Laugh hysterically. What woke me up at 3 a.m. wasn’t thunder.

6:25 a.m. — Grab my digital camera and walk barefoot through the cold grass (there’s a freeze warning tonight) to take pictures of the dead tree that has fallen from my next-door neighbor’s yard onto my back fence. I know to take pictures of the evidence before anyone has a chance to tamper with it. I watch CSI.

7:23 a.m. — Arrive at work. Turn on computer and multicoloured rope lights. Stop by International Department for chai tea. Stop by fellow buyer’s office and check out the thumb she broke while swordfighting. Assemble audio bestseller report for NY Times. Review orders that have come up for release. Check out what my weekly returns cycle looks like. Not too bad.

7:45 a.m. — Send an email to my supervisor reminding her that I’ll be working lunches and staying late this week, because I’m leaving work early Friday to catch the plane to NY Comic Con. I still have no idea what to pack.

(Poster’s note: All this before 8am. I don’t think I do that much in a *day*. And yet there’s more!)

8:03 a.m. — Receive an email from facility services that they will be shutting off the water from 3:30 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. for maintenance. Make a mental note to drink less water today.

8:55 a.m. — Receive call from Publisher A. Apparently, the street date for an important title is not showing up on iPage. Immediately start the emergency email-tree and proceed to remedy the situation and notify all parties involved.

9:02 a.m. — Place call to insurance company. They recommend a local fence company and suggest I call them for a request. The number they give me turns out to be a fax number. After some Googling and trial and error, I finally speak to someone who promises me an estimate this week.

9:45 a.m. — Finish daily orders and start work on returns.

9:58 a.m. — Receive .pdf from Accounts Payable of a check from Publisher B, with no description attached. Three people instantly need to know what this is for. I email our rep for the publisher. She is at Sales Conference this week.

10:16 a.m. — Receive email from Distributor C about a title from a publisher they recently acquired that has been postponed so many times our purchase orders don’t match up any more. Send a file to the rep so he can manually make their systems match ours. Still working on returns.

10:30 a.m. — Receive a quick call from St. Martin’s Press — they would like me to add a column of info to the Dark-Hunter trivia questions I’m doing to promote the Sherrilyn Kenyon series. There’s a chance it could be a Facebook application. How cool is that?!?

10:53 a.m. — Receive a list of active publishers from Distributor C, for use in reconciling our systems. Forward that list to the three departments who will need it.

10:55 a.m. — Receive email from branch of the emergency email-tree requesting clarification on street date issue. Still more returns.

11:09 a.m. — PW Daily arrives. A quick skim reveals that the London Book Fair is really expensive, and it’s the 50th anniversary of the Crayola 64-pack. Shoot…THAT should have been my angle for the storytime books intro I recorded last week for the Ingram Podcast.

11:31 a.m. — Receive an email from C.E. Murphy asking me to guest blog “A Day in the Life of Me.” I laugh and tell her that today would make a very good example. I start taking notes.

11:59 a.m. — Lunchtime already? Put lunch in microwave and pop in an audiobook to listen to while I work on even more returns — Cecelia Ahern’s If You Could See Me Now. It’s pretty fabulous, and very well-performed. A busy woman loves her audiobooks.

12:02 a.m. — Rep from Publisher B sends details for that no-longer-mysterious check. Microwave beeps.

12:06 p.m. — Customer Service gets in touch to verify street date title.

12:23 p.m. — Publisher C sends an email to say that they discovered one of the titles they sent is defective. They are sending replacements, but they are not interested in getting the defective stock back — we should just throw it away. Makes sense, but I still have to check with several people, because the system doesn’t have a “throw it away” key. (Probably a good thing.)

12:40 p.m. — “…the tone of his voice was like a favorite song she wanted to blare and put on repeat.” Brilliant, Cecelia. Her heroine sleeps about as much as I do, and I’m suddenly craving coffee.

1:01 p.m. — Finish the week’s returns. Start reviewing monthly title forecast exceptions.

1:30 p.m. — Weekly Staff Meeting. We decide it should be spelled “e-books.”

2:04 p.m. — Come back from staff meeting to an email from Publisher D regarding a new title buy that got skipped. After ten minutes of searching through sell sheets, I determine that Vol. 1 was bought, but Vol 2 was never presented. I place a buy for Vol. 2.

2:30 p.m. — Ask my supervisor who would need to okay my “Day in the Life” blog for public consumption. Realize I am having the famed “case of the Mondays.”

2:45 p.m. — Break down and make a quick trip to Starbucks, since caffeine and whipped cream are the key to happiness. Drive slowly due to abundance of trucks and ticket-happy cops in the industrial park. I smile at a baby in red socks and listen to Chris Martin from Coldplay tell me how beautiful I am. I know he doesn’t mean it, but it’s still nice to hear.

3:00 p.m. — Enter August new title buys for Publisher C.

3:37 p.m. — Set up new drop-in titles (titles outside a catalog) so I can place those buys tomorrow.

3:45 p.m. — Check set up of Fall titles for Distributor E while chatting on the phone to Dan Gamber from Meadowhawk Press. He requests a blurb and convention advice, among other pleasantries. It’s all about multitasking.

4:15 p.m. — Send around an email asking for help on a project I’ve been asked to do for Children’s Book Week in May.

4:19 p.m. — Clean up and add a quick intro to my Sarah Addison Allen “Genre Chicks” interview for the May Library Services e-newsletter. Her new book The Sugar Queen is one of my absolute favorite books this year.

4:50 p.m. — Pack up to leave and…and don’t use the restroom. The water is apparently still not back on. Good time to be getting gone.

5:20 p.m. — While driving home, realize 1.) it is already starting to rain and 2.) I forgot to thaw the chicken this morning. Arrive home / cover flowers in the back yard with sheets / use facilities / thaw chicken / check email. In that order. Check in with my writers group. Set my Facebook pet dragon to attack “Doombringer.”

5:38 p.m. — Indulge in a walk on the treadmill and an episode of CSI:NY. The writers on this show are the best of all three CSI incarnations, and the cast has great chemistry. This time, the killer was the publisher. Figures. Have some dinner.

6:43 p.m. — Clean up Jay Lake Q&A for Subterranean Press Online. The hard part will be coming up with an intro worthy of someone like Jay.

7:00 p.m. — Continue work on Dark-Hunter trivia questions. (Facebook, here I come!)

8:30 p.m. — Receive a call from my friend Priscilla in NY. Talk while typing. It’s all about multitasking.

9:05 p.m. — Receive short story email rejection from Clarkesworld Magazine. I have to wait seven days before submitting again. I know which story to pick next; I’ll mark my calendar.

9:10 p.m. — Start typing up this blog from notes on several scattered scraps of paper I’m sure I’ll lose.

10:08 p.m. — It’s ten o’clock already?!? I have GOT to jump in the shower and get to bed. After all, tomorrow is another day, and I want to squeeze in a few more chapters of Ken Scholes’s Lamentation manuscript — my favorite book of next year…so far. Nighty-night!

"Limbo" by Stephanie Dray

My dead great grandmother talks to me.

She was an immigrant to this country and she feels perfectly entitled to lurk in the back of my mind demanding that I make an accounting for my life, since I have opportunities she only dreamed of. This constant nagging, this sense of inter-generational obligation, has always informed both my politics and my writing.

Of course, my great grandmother was illiterate and probably considered writing to be my most useless skill. But I still think she’d have been tickled to find out that she’d inspired a story like “Limbo”--a quirky tale about a young Italian-American woman whose dead grandmother possesses her body and meddles in her romances. At its core, though, “Limbo” is about the inherited baggage we carry through life. And I consider this story my own little tribute to the colorful women of my family, whose flaws and virtues I really could not exaggerate with my prose if I tried.

But “Limbo” was also inspired by some of the other great ladies I've learned from, including my three female instructors at Clarion East. Nalo Hopkinson encouraged me to enrich my own writing with the details of my cultural heritage. Maureen McHugh challenged me to test out different authorial voices and to give myself permission to engage in wacky thought experiments. And Kelly Link prodded me to break with convention and try my hand at something just a little bit weird. (I like to think that Kelly will appreciate that I finally found a way to work a metaphorically disembodied head into my writing.)

The night before I wrote “Limbo,” I was at a writer’s convention and someone dared me to emulate the voice of a writer I admired. I have problems resisting dares, and at the time, I was immersed in Maureen McHugh's "Mothers and Other Monsters.” I’d never written anything in the present tense before and I wasn’t sure I could do it. On the long car ride home from the convention, I felt overwhelmed by the challenge and filled with self-doubt about my chosen career path. Right on cue, great grandma started yammering about how I really ought to learn some marketable skills like goat-herding. (To be fair, she doesn’t just nag me when I’m feeling insecure. She also has an opinion on my home décor, since a lot of the furniture in my house once belonged to her.)

Anyway, the point is that great grandma’s yammering, a writer’s conference, and the collective influence of some of my favorite female writers converged on one long car ride, and “Limbo” was born.

I knew the story was a success when my writing group asked me for the recipe for pasta fagioli and started sharing tales of their own zany relatives. In those stories, more narratives about how we’re shaped by the influence of people long departed began to emerge.

You see, deep down, I think everybody’s dead relatives talk to them. I just hope that “Limbo” will help people listen to what their ancestors really have to say.

(artwork for this story (in the current issue of IGMS) by Anselmo Alliegro) (Stephanie's website: http://www.stephaniedray.com)

"Accounting For Dragons" by Eric James Stone

In the summer of 2007, I attended the six-week-long Odyssey
Writing Workshop.  One of the events of the workshop was
the "Odyssey Slam" at the Barnes & Noble in Nashua, New
Hampshire.  Each workshop participant had to read a flash fiction piece in
five minutes or less.

My original plan was to read a revised version
of the 1000-word story I had written earlier in
the workshop,but in the last few days before the
Slam I started leaning against that. The night
before the Slam I began working on a more
humorous piece, as I've noticed that humor tends
to go over very well at readings.

In the morning I got up and decided that piece
wouldn't work, because it was too cliched.
It was a punchline-type story, and I Googled the
punchline and saw a couple of similar stories.)  
Also, the story itself would be too serious
before the punchline.

So I looked at revising some of my unpublished
flash pieces, and none of them appealed to me.
Then I looked at the possibility of chopping down
my humorous fairy tale "Bird-Dropping and Sunday,"
which always gets a great reception at readings
even though editors keep deciding it's not quite
right for their magazines, but decided there was
no way I could cut half the story.

Finally, before deciding to just go with the
original plan, I went over my lists of titles and
story seeds, and came across "dragon accountant,"
which was a seed I had jotted down sometime in the
previous couple of weeks, based on a comment by
someone (I think it was a guest lecturer, author
Michael Arnzen) about dragon accountants.

It occurred to me that dragons might need some
basic information about accounting, sort of an
Accounting for Dummies--except for dragons, not
dummies.  That gave me my title and basic premise.

Not until I had written over half the story did I
realize there was an actual character reading the
information aloud to a dragon.

"Accounting for Dragons" is the first story I wrote
almost entirely using voice dictation software.  
By sheer coincidence, the name of the software
is Dragon Naturally Speaking.

Anyway, I finished the story in a couple of hours
and read it at the Slam.  It went over pretty well,
with people laughing in the right places, which is
always a plus.

After the Odyssey workshop was over, I revised the
story with some help from my brother Michael, an
actual accountant who works for something far scarier
than a dragon: the Internal Revenue Service.  My
writing groups were also helpful in bringing the
story up to snuff, particularly by letting me know
what to cut out because it wasn't working.

(artwork for this story (in the current issue of IGMS) by Nick Greenwood: http://www.nick-greenwood.com) (Eric's website: www.ericjamesstone.com)

“The Frankenstein Diaries” - by Matt Rotundo

Inspiration can strike you anywhere, at any time. With "The Frankenstein Diaries," the idea sprang at me as I read the newspaper. I chanced upon an article about a father exploring the possibility of cloning his deceased son from the DNA in a lock of the boy's hair--a memento from a first haircut, as I recall.

And I got angry.

Seriously. I wanted to smack the guy. His child was gone. Cloning, even if someday perfected, would not bring him back. Didn't he get that?

Maybe part of the problem, I thought, was the way cloning is depicted in popular culture. Clones are almost uniformly shown as exact duplicates of the "original"--in every way, not just in appearance--and more often than not emerging from some laboratory fully grown, to boot. Now, I'm not knocking such stories; they can be entertaining on their own terms. But someone cloned from my cells would not be another Matt Rotundo. He would just be someone who looks a lot like me. And he would start out, like we all do, as a baby.

I began to wonder what it would really be like to raise a child cloned from another's cells. What sorts of unique difficulties would the family face? And perhaps more important, why would parents choose to clone a child in the first place? Even if natural conception were impossible, why wouldn't the parents consider adoption? Would you opt for cloning even if you were fully informed of the realities? I thought again about that grieving father from the newspaper article, and I began to pity him, a little.

It was then that I knew I had a story.

I wrote the first draft of "The Frankenstein Diaries" in an epistolary format--as a series of journal entries, naturally. I rather enjoyed the challenge of telling the story this way, but a wise reader advised me to recast it in third person. I really didn't want to do that, fearing the story might lose a bit of what made it special. I also suspected such a rewrite would involve a lot of work.

Or was that just laziness talking? I couldn't tell.

So I grudgingly made a deal with myself: I would write a third person version of the story, as a sort of test drive, but I would keep the original in a separate file. When I was finished, I would compare the two drafts, and decide which one I liked best.

I was right; it was a lot of work. It involved much more than simply changing a bunch of pronouns. I had to do some major restructuring. Entire scenes disappeared; others had to be shuffled around. For instance, the opening, with John Griffin picking up his son after an incident at daycare, originally appeared some twenty pages into the story. If the epistolary format had been a challenge, the more conventional third person proved even more so. Ah, the irony.

In the end, of course, my wise reader was vindicated, and I remain grateful for the input (thanks, Rita!). I kept some of the journal entries, though. You can't really call a story "The Frankenstein Diaries" without showing a bit of the diary, right?

Some readers have found this a pretty bleak piece. That feedback surprised me at first, but upon reflection, I suppose I can understand why people would feel that way. A whole string of terrible events occurs, even in just the first half of the story. Still, for what it's worth, I maintain that I've never seen "The Frankenstein Diaries" as downbeat. I don't want to give away too much, but I'd like to think the ending rewards the reader, at least a little, for sticking it out through the hard times.

(artwork for this story (in the current issue of IGMS) by Kevin Wasden: www.kevinwasden.com) (Matt's blog: matthewsrotundo.livejournal.com.)

Letter From The Editor - April 2008, Issue 8

It's like when you (or your wife) are pregnant: suddenly there are pregnant women everywhere. At the mall waddling from storefront to storefront; in the DMV standing in that line that never moves and never ends; in the supermarket buying ice cream and cookies. The truth, however, is that there really aren't any more pregnant women than there were before; it only seems that way because your awareness of them has been heightened.

It was that way for me when I put the current issue of IGMS together. I didn't set out for it to be a themed issue, and I'm still not completely convinced that it is. On the other hand, once the idea reared its head, it seemed quite inescapable.

I blame Dennis Danvers. His story "The Angel's Touch" opens with a man getting on the elevator in his apartment building, only to find an angel there, waiting for him and wanting to chat. Not the nicest angel you ever met, either. Although "The Angel's Touch" wasn't the first story I bought for this issue, without it there probably wouldn't have been any of this 'theme' business.

You see, I had already bought Matt Rotundo's "Frankenstein Diaries" and planned for it to begin in issue eight (it's our current novelette, and will be concluded in issue nine), and at the time it was simply a great story about a man and his son's clone, nothing more. And even when I found Dennis's story after that, still the word 'theme' never entered the conversation.

Next came Stephanie Dray's "Limbo," and I thought to myself, Now there's an interesting and amusing twist on the afterlife . . ."

And then John Brown's "From The Clay of His Heart." It's your typical girl-meets-golem, girl-can't-rid-of-golem, girl-almost-loses-golem-to-evil-volhov story. You know how those go.

But then "End Time" arrived. Maybe I should point the finger at Scott Bull instead of poor Dennis. But as soon as I read it, I thought, Hey, I've already got the angel story . . . I should put this story, about a guy who's tired of doing the devil's bidding, in the same issue. Kind of a yin and yang thing. They would be great together . . .

And then suddenly all of the stories were pregnant with thematic possibilities. The golem, the distant and not-so-distant relatives displaced from the afterlife, the angel, the devil, even the novelette, which so nicely captures the original Frankenstein's theme of man playing God and paying a price for it. They all seemed to have religious implications.

But I needed one more piece. I had enough fantasy stories for this issue; I needed one more SF piece to balance things out. So when I found Aliette de Bodard's "Rise of Horus" about an AI (artificial intelligence) and his murdered father -- who were both named after Egyptian gods -- I knew I had to include it in this issue. It just fit . . .

But, hey, there's still Eric James Stone's ultra-fun flash fiction story, "Accounting For Dragons." It features dragons and virgins and treasure and accountants (oh my). No God or gods or even anybody named after one. So you see, it's not a themed issue. Not on purpose, anyway. Really.

Happy reading.

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

P.S. Yes, here comes issue eight, and no, we still haven't posted the Ender universe story for issue seven. It is coming. We promised an Ender universe story in every issue and we'll keep that promise as soon as humanly possible.

P.P.S. New Story behind The Story essay tomorrow. I promise.

Con? What Con?

More like con-medy of errors. Here's the most concise version I can deliver:

My wife, Terry, called me in Richmond and asked me to come home early from RavenCon (which, in three years of cons she has never done before). She had taken my daughter, Katrina, back to the doctor for a follow up visit Friday afternoon (she had broken her arm on Wednesday) and the doc said the xray had been misread the first time and they needed to cut her out of her original cast and put her in one with a different alignment.

Within a few hours, though, Katrina was in so much pain that she went off on her own and somehow got herself out of this second cast (which I never saw, but Terry described as 3/4 cast and 1/4 straight-arm splint). So Terry wakes up the next morning to find Katrina has put her old cast back on (it had been neatly cut in two pieces and she saved it because her friends had written all over it), using an ace wrap to hold together.

So now Terry finds an orthopedic specialist who had office hours on Saturday (how's that for a minor miracle?), who re-xrays the arm and tell her BOTH of the first two diagnosis were wrong and they need to put her in a third cast. (This is the point where Terry called and asked me to please come home.)

In the mean time I'm at RavenCon, losing things left and right because of the pain medication I'm on after the root canal the dentist did on Thursday. Those meds just took my brain and threw it out the nearest window, then ran out into the street where the brain landed and jumped up and down on it. Thank God I carpooled with James Maxey, who did the driving; I really didn't belong behind the wheel of an automobile. Unfortunately I had to ask him to cancel his book signing so we could leave early. I didn't mind too much about canceling my own stuff, but I hated having to ask him to do so. He was extraordinarily gracious about it.

Somewhere in there I did manage to do a few panels and see a few friends. Went out to dinner Friday evening with authors David Coe, Dennis Danvers, and Gail Martin (when we were done I made them wait while I hunted all over the restaurant for my sunglasses, which it turned out I had never taken into the restaurant in the first place). Went back to the con hotel and lost a few more things. Then I did two or three panels Friday night, and a workshop and a panel on Saturday before I left. At least I think I did. Could just be the drugs talking...

At least I was home for Katrina's birthday party, which we held despite everything else that happened. Bad enough to break your arm, but lose a birthday party too would have just been wrong.

So how was your weekend?

Locus Award Nominations

Just a quick note before I run to RavenCon to congratulate Peter S. Beagle for being one of the finalists for the Locus Award for Best Novelette. Peter's "We Never Talk About My Brother" appeared in the summer 2007 issue of InterGalactic Medicine Show and everyone at IGMS knew right away that it was a special story. Congratulations, Peter. Glad to see the story getting the recognition it deserves.

For a full listing of this year's finalists, visit:

http://www.locusmag.com/2008/LocusAwardsFinalists.html

Broken Arms and Little Drummer Girls

I've gotten a couple of emails in the past 24 hours from folks who were more interested in my daughter's broken arm than my con schedule (and who can blame them).

So here are the details: Katrina broke her left elbow at school yesterday. Got knocked down in gym class and fell right on the point of the elbow. She said she heard it crack when she hit the ground. Feel free to wince; every one else has when they hear that.

Coincidentally, she broke the same arm in the same place almost exactly 8 years ago. She'll be in a cast for 6 weeks. It comes off on June 4th, two days after her middle school spring band concert (she's a drummer). She was quite distressed about that because she really enjoys playing the music. "Why couldn't it be two days before the concert," she's asked more than once. I told her not to dwell on it too much, because even if it came off two days before the concert, she still wouldn't be able to play (between not being able to practice and the arm being weak). The really fun part will end of grade tests, because she's a lefty and won't be able to mark those little fill-in dots with her number two pencil.

Not one to let the kid have all the attention, today I went to the dentist and got a root canal...

So, how was your day?

RavenCon 2008

I'm getting ready to head up to Richmond VA for RavenCon. Had a great time there last year; it's one of the most well-organized cons I've ever been to. Road trippin' up with James Maxey, who's always good for several hours of interesting conversation, and looking forward to seeing many other friends while I'm there.

Current schedule as follows:

Friday - 5 pm - Koffee Klatch
8pm - Opening Ceremonies
9pm - Writing The Perfect Blurb
10pm - Quick Write

Saturday - 9am - Allen Wold's Story Workshop (runs until noon)
12pm - The Business of Editing

And that's all. I'll probably hang around until 7 or 8pm to see friends and talk with folks, but since I don't have any panels Sunday, I'm going home early for my daughter's 12th birthday party Sunday afternoon (she just broke her arm today!).

I'll post another Story Behind The Story essay before I leave, so you have something to read over the weekend.