The Tuesday Twitter Tale : GSOH Story

Joan twirled her gold pen, debating whether she should add GSOH to her ad. After all, she’d laughed for days once Tom had finally died.






The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

Story Acceptance from Kaleidotrope

Just heard that Kaleidotrope magazine have accepted an urban fantasy short story of mine for publication. This one is called The One Thousand, One Hundred and Eleven Gates to Faerie - easily the longest story title I've ever used!

You might have to wait a while to read the story though - Fred the editor tells me it will probably appear late next year or early 2012. I'll be sure to let you know nearer the time.

A Brief Musical Interlude

In those brief, fleeting moments of my life that I laughingly refer to as "my spare time" I'm currently learning to play the guitar. It's fair to say progress is slow, but I enjoy it very much. I guess I know, ooh, about 10 chords now and sometimes I can even string them together in roughly the right order to play what you might call, if you were both generous and hard of hearing, a song.

I was going to write a post describing the parallels between guitar-playing and writing. You know the sort of thing. How you have to learn the basics of the craft before you can fly off and make the artistry soar. How the trick is to make all the pain and effort involved seem painless and effortless. How you get sore fingers.

But I'm sure you get all that. So instead, for your delight and entertainment, here's a brief snatch of me playing a few bars of lead guitar. It's pretty ropey. But that's fine; I strive for recognizability rather than virtuosity. Can you tell what it is?




I know, I know. I just have to hope that my writing is better than my guitar playing. The thing is though, what you hear there is a long way from a first take. It's actually several different attempts stitched together. I had to replay the riff numerous times in order to get it even vaguely right. I had to do it again and again and again. Even then, it could obviously do with more polishing.

See where I'm going with this? I've turned it into a point about writing after all. Because writing fiction is just the same, is it not? To make it sound beautiful and flowing I'd have had to put lots more work into it, keep on reworking it and improving it. Because making something seem effortless can sometimes take a lot of effort.

Oh, and in case it was completely unrecognizable, that was a bit of Day Tripper by The Beatles. I know I should have done Paperback Writer really. Thing is, I haven't learned that one yet ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (55/100)

... machinery? ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

His New Body

I posted this little piece on the excellent Six Sentence social network the other day, one of the places I occasionally hang out at :

He scavenged the parts for his new body from all around the alleys and back streets. A discarded umbrella pulled from a bin made for an arm, its crook a hand. A length of rusting drainpipe and a rotting timber almost the same length made a workable pair of legs. A black plastic rubbish sack, its soiled cartons and rotting fruit for internal organs, would be his torso. A crumpled orange traffic-cone would do for his other arm and a punctured football his head. It all made for a poor, broken body but at least, when it was dark, he could walk the streets again and imagine he was still alive.

It was just a little throw-away piece that came to me as I walked through the city myself the other day. It's rather staying with me, though. Who is this person? Why have they ended up like that? What do they want?

Perhaps I'll work on it some more, develop it into a short story proper. What do you think? Worth pursuing?

The Tuesday Twitter Tale : Known to the Defendant

‘Do you know your attacker, love?’ Two policemen crouched beside her on the wet ground. She nodded her throbbing head. ‘Thought I did.’






The Tuesday Twitter Tale is a weekly work of tweet-length fiction. It is posted here and on Twitter (along with the #vss - very short story - hash tag).

Getting Hedge Witch Out There ...

I haven't mentioned Hedge Witch, my first completed novel for a while. It's an urban fantasy/high fantasy that's currently wandering the mean streets in search of an agent or publisher. So far no luck, although it's had two agents request full manuscripts and a fair few of the "good but not right for us" kind of rejections. I don't think I'm ready to give up on it yet. I love it too much.

I've been thinking, instead, about trying to be more creative in the way I get it "out there". I'm clear that I want to stick to the conventional agent/publisher model here, but perhaps there is something I can do to try to build up a bit of a buzz. When I wrote the novel it occurred to me I might want to do this so I left a line in the text I could hook into.

At one point my protag Cait visits Danny, her definitely-not-a-boyfriend-oh-no. She has just experienced some fairly weird and scary events and has uncovered terrible truths about our own world and another. But she's worried Danny will think she's bonkers. Instead he's delighted :

‘You believe me?’ she asked.
‘Well, yeah. You’ve seen all those web sites I’ve shown you, all the crazy theories. I’ve spent long enough trying to persuade you to take them seriously. There’s this blog I read that talks all about this stuff. It fits perfectly. This monster must have come from the other world. And the book. And Jane too, don’t you see?’
‘I still can’t believe it happened,' she replied. ‘It’s like something from a kid’s story. Hey, maybe I’m dreaming, stuck in some nightmare.’
‘You’re saying I’m the man of your dreams?’
‘Ha ha.’

My thinking at the time was that I could write that blog I mention. It would be completely fictional but presented as fact : someone struggling to uncover the same arcane and terrible truths that Cait has stumbled across. It would be a completely separate blog to this and untraceable back to me, so as not to spoil the illusion.

I don't know, though. I wonder if it would work. Partly it would obviously depend on how good the blog was. I guess I'm in two minds about the plan and I'd be grateful for any comments. Great idea? Waste of time? Intriguing? Been done before? I'd love to know ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (54/100)

... the ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Awards and a Spot of Housekeeping ...

Many thanks to Milo over at the fine and wonderful in medias res blog for giving me the Going Places award. Cool! And thanks, belatedly, to Kate from the many-splendoured Scribbling SeaSerpent blog for giving me the One Lovely Blog award too (and congrats on the news again, Kate!)

I'm determined to keep my new blog as uncluttered and minimalist as possible, so I've added a new menu item and static page to hold these awards. The new virtual trophy cabinet is here. I reckon there should be plenty of room for the Nebula and/or the Booker when they come along ...

Meanwhile, I've decided to change around my regular Flash Fiction Friday slot. It occurred to me it was slightly misnamed because it was always specifically Twitter fiction I was posting. So, starting next week, these very short stories will be posted as The Tuesday Twitter Tale. Yes, I spent ages working on the alliteration! The stories will appear here and simultaneously on my Twitter account, along with the #vss (very short story) hash tag. Hope you enjoy them.

How I Nearly Lost Everything ...

The importance of taking backups.

So I switched on my computer the other day to work on the great unfinished novel and the darn thing wouldn't boot up. Muttering (unfairly) about Microsoft I tried again. And again. And again. Slowly it became clear that it wasn't going to work. The computer with all my novels, short stories, poetry, web sites etc. etc. on it was dead.

I then spent several grim hours wielding repair disks and utility programs trying to bring it back to life. No luck. In the end I had to wipe the machine. Delete everything. Reformat the disk and start again.

It was at about this point that I plugged my back-up drive into another computer and discovered that it hadn't been updated correctly for a couple of months. This drive had silently developed a fault too (possibly the source of all the problems). Everything I'd written for two months was missing and, what was more, I couldn't be sure that anything was left uncorrupted.

Dear reader, I may have sworn at this point.

But this little story is not a tragedy. I didn't actually lose anything apart from a few hundred words (since rewritten, and better too!) and several hours of my life - because, fortunately, I'd taken my own advice and made sure everything was safely, reliably and doubly backed up. And I'm telling you all this just as a gentle reminder. Computers can and do fail. If you write on one and all your work is stored there, please, please make sure you have a good backup. Preferably two. Preferably automated. The possibility of losing everything you've slaved over is unthinkable.

A while back I wrote a blog post about this. It's here. If you're not covered, do please go and have a read now. Or do it a different way. Just don't assume you won't have a problem. Because then you really could lose everything ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (53/100)

... damaged ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Flash Fiction Friday : One Man Band

In the loft, Dan found his guitar, untouched in 30 years. He strummed its remaining strings, smiling. He had time to play it again now.






Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly post of a work of fiction small enough to appear on Twitter etc.

Hmm, Quite Good Review of 22nd Century Genie ...

I just came across this review of my Beatles-related SF thriller, 22nd Century Genie, published a few months back in Jupiter SF. It says :

"Simms is a "Genie" or Genehunter, one who specializes in finding genetic material from famous people long dead. James and Maya Cross hire him to collect the genetic material of the Beatles. This sets Simms on a quest that involves him with and [sic] old enemy, an old lover and someone he did not know existed. He finds out that the Crosses have something else in mind. This one was quite imaginative and compelling."

I don't know, is that a good or a lukewarm review? Is it "quite" as in "perfectly" or "quite" as in "fairly"? I guess it's really the latter but perhaps I'll assume the former. Or perhaps I'm just overanalyzing ...

Summer's End

Here in the UK, the leaves are turning brown and thinking about jumping. Brambles are thick with blackberries and swallows are gathering on the telephone wires like musical notes on a stave. Soon they'll be off to Africa leaving us to shiver through the winter.

Yes, it's always sad to see the end of summer. But on the plus side I can now get back to some serious writing. It all goes a bit awry in the summer, what with holidays and the children being home from school. Peace and solitude - what's that?!

But now there'll be more writing done. Bliss. I have lots of plans. Previously, for example, I set myself a target of 500 words per day, minimum. I think I'm going to aim for 1000 per day now. There are so many stories to write.

Can't wait ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (52/100)

... What ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Greetings Partygoers!

If you've dropped by from Karen's Labor Day BBQ Party or from Donna's Fantastical Fantasy Blog Party, hi! If you haven't, hi anyway! Do go on over and mingle on those fine blogs.

It's been quite an exciting week here at Spellmaking Towers, with three of my stories being published in the space of two days - one at Spilling Ink Review, one at Electric Spec and one at Every Day Fiction. So I'm definitely in the mood for partying. Mind you, the EDF one was fairly scary with its stream of reader comments. I don't know, who'd be a writer?

Anyway, while you're here, do have something to drink ...

Flash Story Lucky Numbers published at Every Day Fiction

Every Day Fiction has published a fantasy flash fiction piece of mine today : Lucky Numbers. This is my first acceptance from them after two previous stories were rejected. As ever, perseverance is the key!

They had some nice things to say about the story :

The dialogue flows very well in this piece. It is simple and condensed with an interesting plot and satisfying...though sad...ending. Nicely done.

An original take on the old devil-and-soul business. Very well done.

Which is cool. I've said before this is a tremendousbly impressive market. As a paying flash fiction magazine they must receive shedloads of submissions, yet they still provide editorial feedback, from more than one reviewer, even on a rejection. That's a pretty rare and precious thing. They clearly have good taste too :-)

For the record, Lucky Numbers was one of the pieces I wrote for Story a Day in May. I see from my records it was May 10th's story in fact (although obviously polished and prettified after the fact). So that just goes to show you. Not sure what it goes to show you, mind, but it does go to show you.

Oh and Ann - you were right about these things coming in threes!

Two Stories Published Today!

I don't know, you wait ages to get something published and then two successes come along at once*.



My short story Seek Alternative Route is published over in Issue 2 of lit. mag. Spilling Ink Review today. It's the tale of two men from different worlds who meet in a traffic jam and find they have more in common than they imagined. No aliens, zombies or wizards are involved. Weird, I know. Here's a brief excerpt :

Up ahead, a suit had got out of a silver Mercedes and was gesturing at the traffic as if the whole thing had been staged to inconvenience him. He would have been powerfully built once, a rugby-player type, but now the curve of his belly protruded farther than his chest. Heart-attack shape. Pig grinned. The Merc had a personalized number plate, NE1L 3, the 1 written so that it looked like the letter I. Wanker. Did it rankle with him that he couldn’t afford NE1L 2 or NE1L 1? He had cruised by a mile or two back. Now they were almost together. It felt like a victory of sorts.

You can read the full shebang here, along with all the other damn fine fiction, poetry and nonfiction in the issue.


Meanwhile, over in Electric Spec, my SF short story Remembrance Day also sees the light of day today. They describe the piece as an "emotional military" tale, which I guess sums it up although I wasn't aware it was particularly military - nor even particularly emotional - when I wrote it. I think it's a story about identity, but who am I to say? Aliens definitely are involved in this one. Here's a taster :

He returned the gun to its place behind the bar. He kept an assortment of weaponry there but usually the zapper was enough. When he looked up she was standing at the bar in front of him.
‘Hi, Mag.’
Up close, she looked good. In fact she looked fantastic. Time had been hard on him, he knew. Time and war. She stood tall and unblemished. Her eyes, her lips, the cut of her hair all finely-featured, all perfect. By contrast, he felt like he was lashed together from slabs of rough metal. Her smile cut right into him, effortlessly deeper and sharper than the Martian’s knife.
‘Drink?’ he asked.

There are five other stories in the edition, ranging from fantasy to SF, along with an interview with Urban Fantasy author Jeanne Stein. You can read it in all its glory here.



Days like this make all the rejection, all the banging your head against the walls of indifference, all the crap involved in being a writer worthwhile. A good day here at Spellmaking Towers.



* This is a joke about buses that readers in the UK will understand. Apologies if it doesn't translate to your locale.