New Story & Viable Paradise XV

I’ll post about Wiscon in a bit, but first, NEWS.

I have a short story called "With Breath Too Sweet" that’s out in an anthology called "There was a Crooked House", put out by Pill Hill Press.

You can order the print anthology at Pill Hill Press for $14.49 or order the ebook for only $3.99 at Kindle or Nook.

Now, for the second bit of news. I’M GOING TO VIABLE PARADISE!

I’ve been selected along with 23 other SF writers to head over to Martha’s Vineyard in October to be part of the 15th class of Viable Paradise. Our instructors will be Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Steven Gould, James D. Macdonald, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Steven Brust and Sherwood Smith.

As you can tell, I’ve been sort of stalling on Willow, so I’m hoping the workshop will give me a swift kick in the pants to finish it. In fact, even sending in the application helped me out–I had to send in an outline for Willow, which I’ve never actually sat down and did (well, I did something like it Writer’s Café, but not an actual document).

First step to all of this is figuring out logistics. I’ve gone from OH MY GOSH I MADE IT mode into holy crap I’m in how exactly am I going to pay for it mode. I’m tossing around some ideas, talking with some people. I’m thinking about doing a fundraiser, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to do so. And stay tuned to the Café over the next couple of weeks. Big things are afoot.

Last October, I was hanging out with Neil Gaiman. This October, I’ll be in Martha’s Vineyard. This is going to be great, folks. No. This is going to be awesome.

She’s All Light on the Million Writers Notable Stories of 2010 List, and Guest Post at Tor.com. I am not making this up.

Wow.

So, right after the post I made about Future Perfect being on Escape Pod, two other publishing news happened one right after another. May as well combine them in one post.

Okay…so…Sunday night, I said goodbye to the last of the guests who came up to celebrate my 40th birthday. This week, I had planned to ease back into the short story I’m working on and getting ready for the Easter weekend. I took a look at my Twitter feed, and saw some congratulation emails. I thought they were for Future Perfect, but they mentioned other writers too, like Charlie Jane Anders, editor of I09, who I met at Wiscon last year. So I was confused.

Finally, someone sent me a link, which took me to the The storySouth Million Writers Notable Stories of 2010. And guess what? She’s All Light made the list!

So what does this mean? Well, first of all, I get to put the nifty tagline “listed as a storySouth Million Writers Notable Story of 2010” on my published works page. But this also means that if it is listed among the top 10 stories on May 20, then “She’s All Light” is eligible for the storySouth Million Writers Award. To be truly honest, I don’t think it will make it that far, because there are so many awesome stories on the list, the fact that “She’s All Light” made it on the list in the first place makes my head spin.

The cool thing is, some of these stories I have already read and can absolutely vouch for their inclusion. “Memories in Bronze, Feathers, and Blood” by Aliette de Bodard. Nearly all the nominated stories from Clarkesworld, including “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time” by Catherynne M. Valente, which deserves first prize because I loved, loved, loved, the bits about the science fiction writer. “The Notebook of My Favourite Skin-Trees” by Alex Dally MacFarlane, which also appeared in Daybreak Magazine. “Standard Loneliness Package” by Charles Yu. (And speaking of Lightspeed, they won Million Writers Award for best new online magazine! How cool is that?), “The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model” by Charlie Jane Anders, John Scalzi’s “The President’s Brain is Missing”…

But there are other stories on the list that I haven’t read, stories by Amal El-Mohtar and Mishell Baker and An Owomoyela and Sandra McDonald and Mari Ness and Yoon Ha Lee and Rachel Swirsky…so many that I’ve decided to actually go and read all the stories on the list, because they look awesome!

Congratulations to everyone who made the list. I feel awfully humble and proud to be listed among these great stories.

+++

So, that was all I was going to post, but as I was writing this, I got an email with news I’ve been wanting to post forever.

Last year, I put in a bid at the Carl Brandon Society’s Con or Bust Auctionfor a guest post on Tor.com. I was quite surprised, therefore, to learn I won.

Yesterday, my guest blog was put up. It’s a joint post with Kate Nepveu in her reread of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. In addition to the books, she also watched the movies, so my contribution was a review of the last movie, Return of the King. The extended version, of course. That was a lot of fun.

So head on over to Tor.com to check it out and post in the comments section what you think. Some good conversation happening there. And while you’re at it, check out the forums at Escape Pod and check out the conversation happening there on Future Perfect. It’s been really cool to see what things people are seeing in the story, stuff that not even I considered.

And finally, I swear, I don’t think I have anything else in the publishing hopper coming out. The fact this is all happening around my birthday makes me think, yeesh, what would happen when I turn 50…

(Hopefully Willow comes out much more sooner than that…)

"Future Perfect" is now up at Escape Pod!

It has been an incredibly eventful week at the Café. Wednesday marked my 40th year of walking on this earth. Today, I got a belated birthday surprise: “Future Perfect“, my first science fiction short story, is now up at Escape Pod! And boy oh boy, is it ever yummy listening goodness! So what are you waiting for? Go listen! Go now! Enjoy!

LaShawn’s MetaPost for 2011 (So Far)

So, here it is, March, and I’m finally getting around to posting what I’ve been up to on the writing field. If you are friends with me on Facebook and/or Twitter, you already know what I’ve been doing and what’s been published. But I thought I do a metapost to clue things in for regulars at the Cafe, as well as give you the scoop on some upcoming projects I haven’t mentioned on the social networks yet.

January was a weird non-fiction month. About the second weekend of January, I got an email from the new non-fiction editor Fantasy Magazine, which I slush for, asking if I could write an article on short notice.  Like, in two days. And I would get paid. I’ve published non-fiction before, but this was the first time I’ve worked directly with an editor, in this case, Esther Inglis-Arkell. I had to crank out 1500 words of a first draft and relinquish it to Esther immediately instead of sitting on it for a couple of weeks while I thought out the revisions. Then I had to work with Esther in feeling our way through the edits until we were both satisfied with the end result. From the time I was first emailed to where I got the thumbs up on the finished draft, the whole process took less than a week. I don’t think I’ve ever finished anything so fast.

But I am pleased and honored to say that the article, “From Story to Screen”, a look at how stories are translated from book to screen, will be up at the newly revamped Fantasy Magazine site on March 28.

That crash course gained me achievements in working with an editor, so when the Christian organization I work for, InterVarsity, approached me on doing a Valentine Day’s article a week later, I was well prepared to crank that out. If you were ever curious on how my husband Jon and I met, you can check out “From Chapter to Chapel” which posted on Valentine’s Day weekend.

On top of those to articles, I also worked on a write-up of the panel I moderated at Wiscon last year: Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting in the Cafeteria which will appear in the Wiscon Chronicles #5 which will come out at this year’s Wiscon 35(which I’ll be at). And I did another movie review that came from winning last year’s Con or Bust Auction. When that one is completed, I’ll announce it here.

With all the non-fiction news, the same fiction side of things have been extremely slow, but ironically has me the most excited. The smaller side of the news is that I got another poem published. Marie Antoinette Ponders the Moon went live on February 20 and can be found at Every Day Poets. I’ve always been fascinated by Marie Antoinette; I’ve read her biographies, as well as that wonderful book Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund (which I reviewed) and watching the anime Rose of Versailles. I wrote the poem after watching Marie Antoinette, a most awesome movie.

I’ve saved the best news, the SUPER AWESOME HAPPY HAPPY YEAH news for last. I’ve sold Future Perfect, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of Ideomancer, to the science fiction audio magazine Escape Pod to be read in a future podcast! How awesome is that? More details will be forthcoming once I get them, but as you can see, I am super, super excited. I’ve been an Escape Pod listener for as long as I can remember, as well as their sister podcast for fantasy Podcastle (I’m still working up the nerve to listen to their horror cast, Pseudopod). What this means is that you’ll get to download Future Perfect to your iPod, or whatever you listen to music, and hear it read by a professional voice actor.

So stay tuned to the Café! We’ll have more goodies coming up as they appear. And if you’re a reader of science fiction, if you are voting in the Nebulas or Hugos or even the Locus Awards, keep in mind that “She’s All Light“ at Daybreak Magazine is eligible for nomination for 2010. Happy voting!

First Ever Video Post at the Cafe

Trying a little something new—a video post by Yours Truly. Too busy to watch? Post notes are below!

0:00 Hi there!
0:53 Why am I doing this anyway?
1:15 Showing off the new office digs
2:09 Real reason why I’m doing a video: blogging burnout
5:15 Con info: Madcon, A Low Key Gathering with Neil Gaiman (I’m gonna be on a panel there!), Wiscon Book Festival
7:50 NEW STORY! "Out of Such Desperation Are We Born" is up at Expanded Horizons. Go check it out!
8:40 Other writing project updates, including Willow
10:50 Wrapup. Do you like this format? How often should I do it? Once a month? Every few months? Is it a horrible disaster and I should hang my head in shame? Let me know! (well, not the last one. Please be courteous and nice.)

New Short Story: "Future Perfect" up at March 2010 issue of Ideomancer

Fresh on the heels of ““She’s All Light“, my short story “Future Perfect“, has been published by Ideomancer, making it the second story I’ve published with them. While “She’s All Light” was my first professional sale, “Future Perfect” has the privilege of being the first science fiction story I ever wrote.

It’s also the first story that is dedicated to someone: my husband Jon, who helped me nail down the technical terms. “Future Perfect” is a love letter to him of sorts. It may not look like it–in fact, you’re probably thinking, “Um….how does this qualify as a love letter and not, oh, I don’t know, stalking?“

Well, you just have to read the story to see.

Enjoy the story! And Jon, you are my best friend and my partner in crime. Thank you for accepting me for who I am, what I am, and what I can be. Thank you for loving all the parts of me: the confused oreo, the giddy Japanese school girl, and the Black Queen. Most of all, thank you for asking me to always be by your side. Twelve years later, I am still saying, “Yes.”

Oh, and by the way, you rock so much harder than that other dude who shall remain nameless.

Edit: And now you can hear it too! Hop on over to Escape Pod to hear Future Perfect narrated by Dani Cutler. It’s futuriffic!

LaShawn’s Writing Project Status Update for February 2010

I missed the boat on creating my new year resolutions at the start of 2010. That’s because I was busy writing. Can’t come up with a better excuse than that.

So, Willow-wise, what have I been up to? I feel like I’m finally starting to pick up speed on the revision. Currently, I’m on Chapter 12. At first glance, it looks disheartening. Seeing that I started rewriting Willow in March, it almost looks like I did only a chapter a month–and with about 60 chapters planned, if I keep at that pace, it will be a long time before Willow is finished. The thing is, I don’t feel so bad.

I’ve said before in my Willow updates that I knew the first opening chapters were going to be hard. I would be basically establishing everything that would be coming after, and this included fine-tuning the world to be consistent and in some cases, starting a new chapter over from scratch. I believe I’m getting past that stage…the last chapter I worked on went much faster since the story was now established and things were finally moving.

I’m also perfecting my revision method. At the beginning, I just rewrote and rewrote the passage I was working on until I felt like I got it right. Now, I’ve been utelizing the comment feature in Word 2007 and highlighting areas that I feel needs more work to come back to later. I’m finding that instead of wracking my brain to come up with something right away, highlighting it give me a chance to continue working on the passage without losing my flow. And chances are, the right words will come to me later and I can easily plug them in. Now it’s just figuring out when’s the best time to do that.

So basically, I’m 20% into the second revision of my book. If I finish my short story for WOTF on time, then I plan to make April an "all-Willow" month, meaning that the only project I’ll work on will be Willow. I don’t have a set end date planned, but if I can finish by the end of the year, I’ll be happy. We’ll see.

And with that, I’ll lead into my short story status update. Back in September, I ran out of short stories out there on the markets. At the time, I decided to quick edit 5 stories and get them out on the market by October 9; I was only about to get four out: two poems and two short stories (I also promised to put up a progress meter; that didn’t happen.) At least I do have stuff out there now. I’m also hard at work with my next WOTF entry, which I have dubbed "Cotton Picker". I’m hoping to get it done by the March 31st deadline—and that’s coming up pretty fast.

The good news is that "She’s All Light" had been published and received rave comments and a good review. And I have another story coming up in the March issue of Ideomancer called "Future Perfect", which is actually the first science fiction story I ever wrote. This will be my second story published with Ideomancer, and I’m quite pleased this one made it in.

One final thought: I’ve been feeling a little burnt out on the creative side of things. So when Mur Lafferty announced on her I Should Be Writing podcast that she was starting a Facebook group on The Artist’s Way, I immediately jumped on board. I’ve always wanted to do The Artist’s Way, specifically the morning pages. I tried to to do a version of them on my own, but that didn’t last long. I’m hoping with the actual book and a community, I’d be able to get back into it. Feel free to join if you’re a writer or any kind of artist. Or even if you’re not an artist. From what I read so far, The Artist’s Waycan be used for anyone wanting to bring more creativity into their life.

While I’ll participate in the Facebook group, I’ll also post most of my thoughts on Twitter (my handle is @TboneJenkins). Feel free to follow along and let me know what you think.

Story Sale: "She’s All Light" to be published by Daybreak Magazine

I’ve been waiting to do this announcement for a long, long time.

I am thrilled and elated to announce that “She’s All Light”, the short story I’ve worked on for three years, has been sold to Daybreak Magazine and will be up  for reading on January 8, 2010. “She’s All Light” has been chosen along with several other stories to promote Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF, which will be out in paperback in April 2010.  It is the first science fiction story I’ve ever got published, and—even better—it is my first professional sale ever!

This had been a long time in the works. I had originally submitted the story for the anthology. It didn’t make it, but the editor liked it so much, he asked to publish it on his website. The stories on the site so far have been quite impressive—David Levine, K.D. Wentworth, Amanda Clark, to name a few. I’ve also been extremely impressed by the diversity of cultures, and I’m humbled that my little story will be among them.

I’ll say more once “She’s All Light” is published. In the meantime, why not head over to Daybreak Magazine and check out the stories that are there so far (my favorite is “The Branding of Shu Mei Fen” by Amanda Clark). They are fun reads, and hopefully, they’ll be spots of brightness in a dark, dark world.

Edit: And it’s now up! Read it at http://daybreakmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/daybreak-fiction-shes-all-light/ or if you want a widescreen format: http://daybreakmagazine2.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/daybreak-fiction-shes-all-light-v2/.

New Short Story: "Lavender and Chamomile" up at Big Pulp

Took a little while, but I finally got this short story sold. It’s up and running at Big Pulp Magazine.

The foundation to this story came back when Daniel was still a baby. One of the many toys he got was the quintessential teddy bear, complete with glassy eyes and button nose. One day, I was picking up toys in his room, and the teddy bear was lying face-down on the floor. I picked it up to put it back on a shelf and –boom– instant storyline.

I think this was the second story I ever wrote, so I’m not surprised that it took me this long to find a market for it. I submitted it to several fantasy markets, and most of them came back with “interesting story, but not sure it fits us”.  I really didn’t want to shelve it or rewrite it, so when I found Big Pulp, I figured “Lavender and Chamomile” would be a good fit, and started to send it to them under their “Fantasy” genre.

Then I thought, wait a second. I’m not having much looking submitting it as a fantasy story. What if I submitted it as ‘horror’?

What constitutes a horror story? For a long time, I thought it was monsters. Demons. Things that go bump in the night. When I was a kid, I read a lot Stephen King and Dean Koontz. When I grew older and started writing seriously, I shied away from horror, mainly because I felt it too dark. But really, what constitutes a horror story? It’s the strong emotion of fear, yes, but where does that fear come from? Can it come from monsters, or can it come other things? Fear of aliens? Fear of life?

Or the fear of a mother trying to protect her child?

So there you have it. I submitted it under horror and it got accepted—in their fantasy section. So aha! It is a fantasy story! Just as I thought! I shall thumb my nose at all those other markets who thought otherwise. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Actually, in all honesty, I’m just glad it’s published now. Maybe one day, I’ll write a horror story for real. But if I’m going to do that, I’ll have to start reading more horror stories. Looks like I’ll have to take a trip to Pseudopod…

So have fun reading “Lavender and Chamomile“. It’s rated PG—though if little kids love their teddy bears, you might not want to let them read this.

By the way, for his preschool graduation present this year, Daniel got a Build-A-Bear from the Build-A-Bear workshop. Its fur is soft, its eyes are glassy. I know it’s just a stuffed bear.

But I still make the boy pick it up off the floor just the same.

Weeping of the Willows update (actually, it’s more of a non-update…)

So this week is the last week of the boy’s summer school. Can’t believe six weeks went by so quickly. It’s a good thing I used all that time to focus exclusively on Willow…

…oh, wait. No I didn’t. Truth is, I did not work on Willow at all.

You see, back in June, I was working hard to make the June 30th deadline for Writers of the Future contest. Then I learned that another deadline for a rewrite request I’m doing got pushed down to August, which gave me the whole of July to focus on reworking my story. I’m glad it got pushed, because if it hadn’t, I would’ve just done a slap-and-dash rewrite and hope for the best. This gave me time to really contemplate on how to change the story. But yeah, because I was working so hard on these two short stories, Willow fell to the wayside because I didn’t have time to work on it.

Which don’t make sense at first–with the boy at school, I had oodles of time to write, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Except with all that time, I did other things too, like clean and nap and uh…read email…play Bejeweled…

But the other thing was that I was totally wrapped up in these short stories. I couldn’t put them down. I had to finish them to see how they turned out. There were the deadlines, too, but still–I was having fun working on these stories. And I felt that if I switched to Willow, I would lose my momentum in getting them sent out.

Both stories have gone out now. And I got a week left of freedom…of sorts. Except really, it’s only two more days, because I have in-laws visiting on Thursday. Which means we have to get the apartment clean. And I have an essay to wrap up that needs to get done by Saturday, which means I need to finish it tomorrow…

But I miss Willow. I miss working on it. I want to work on it again.

Okay, here’s a promise to myself. Make August Willow month. Sure, the boy will be back to being at home in the afternoons, but to be honest, I miss the structured time I had with him. Actually, there’s a lot more I miss from him not being around, but that will have to be a separate post. Trust me, come next week, I’ll probably be thinking, man, I so wish he was back in summer school…