Short Story Anthology Title Results!

Many thanks to all who voted and/or commented to help me decide on the name for my short story anthology. Three clear favourites emerged from the process :

A Parliament of Owls
Ladders to the Moon
Perfect Circles

Strictly speaking, Ladders won, but there were several votes only cast as comments or by word of mouth, so I decided it came down to these three. My original favourites were A Parliament of Owls (sounds cool, kinda mysterious) and Near Earth Objects (which I liked the double meaning of). But, as the votes came in, I began to warm towards Perfect Circles. Again, it's intriguing and it has the added advantage of being the title of one of the actual stories I'm going to put in the anthology.

So, Perfect Circles it is to be.

But, wait, that's too easy! As I began to collate the anthology, I decided I would divide it into three sections : fantasy, SF and realism. I know I'm all for mixing up the genres, but I decided it would be easier on the reader if I made it clear which sorts of stories they could expect. And naming the whole thing Perfect Circles has allowed me to give each section a circle-related title. So I have :

Spell Circles : the weird and the wonderful
Eccentric Orbits : of space and time
Life Cycles : of lifes and deaths

Do we like?

Something still nagged away at me, though. Wouldn't someone who only liked SF, say, ignore an anthology full of other stuff? Well, quite possibly, as quite a few people said. Which made me think perhaps I should do three separate anthologies after all ...

Then it occurred to me : this is old-fashioned thinking. It's easy to create and publish ebooks. Editing and formatting the text is hard work, but once you have each story/chapter straight, it's very easy to move things around and duplicate them. So, it wouldn't be very much more work to do four anthologies : one for fantasy, one for SF, one for realism and the original one containing all of them. Plus this will make for rather an interesting experiment, to see which one does best.

So that's the plan. Four anthologies, with the last of the four containing everything in the first three.

Spell Circles
Eccentric Orbits
Life Cycles
Perfect Circles

Obviously I'll need more artwork this way, but this allows me to cover all the bases. I can have an SF anthology that clearly looks like it is SF, for example, as well as having my all-encompassing collection there too. There will obviously be links in each book to the others for people to explore if they wish to.

It'll be very interesting indeed to see which anthology is the most popular ...

Write1Sub1 Week #34 Check-In

Sunday is Write1Sub1 Weekly check-in day. I'm posting updates on my short fiction output here as well as over on the main Write1Sub1 blog.

I'm still away on holiday. Hopefully the clone I've left in charge of things is keeping an eye on things :

Written :

• Waving (Twitter)

Submitted :

• Waving (Twitter)

Accepted/Published :

• Birth Moth(er) by One Forty Fiction

Published :

• The Standing Stones of Erelong by Daily Science Fiction
• A(mong Rel)atives by PicFic

The Standing Stones of Erelong Published by DSF

Delighted to report that my fantasy short story The Standing Stones of Erelong has gone out to Daily Science Fiction subscribers today.

EDIT : The story is now also on their web site for online reading. Enjoy ...

Rachael Harrie's Platform Building Campaign #3

So I've signed up to the writers' platform building campaign over at Rach Writes. I've been very tempted to join in on previous ones, but have never managed to. This time, I'm determined to get involved!

This campaign runs through to the end of October. Really looking forward to diving in ...

Star Trek As We Know It Blogfest

Stardate 2011.724 and I'm in orbit around Ellie Garratt's Star Trek As We Know It Blogfest. Did I mention how much I love Star Trek?

Have you ever had that Star Trek vs Star Wars argument? Give me Star Trek every time. Star Wars is, you know, OK. But Star Trek is this whole fantastic universe full of amazing ideas and weird stuff while Star Wars is just, well, goodies vs. baddies isn't it? No contest ...

So, anyway, top five Star Trek characters. Nothing too controversial here :

• Kirk - Obviously; no need to explain.

• Spock - Ditto.

• Data - Endlessly questioning what it means to be human, what it means to be alive. Plus he jerks his head around slightly while "computing", which is just cool.

• Worf - No-one frowns like a Klingon and Worf is the frowniest of them all. Spends his time bristling at the indignities of being on board a Federation starship. Glad he's on our side.

• Picard - Utterly compelling as a starship captain.

All men, I know. Janeway came close, as did B'Elanna, Kira Nerys and Seven of Nine. And the Borg Queen ...

Oh, and while we're on the subject, here are my five least favourite Star Trek characters :

• Q - The horror! The heart-sink when you learn it's another Q episode!
  

• Wesley Crusher - Oh, you have a boy on board the starship. Oh, and now you're letting him drive. Well that's not a misguided attempt to appeal to a perceived target audience, is it?

• Guinan - Enigmatic, elliptical, irritating. Just tell us what you know!

• Neelix - Worthy, cheerful, considerate. Someone give him a red uniform and beam him down to a planet!

• Q again - Just because he's that irritating.

Live long and prosper!

Write1Sub1 Week #33 Check-In

Sunday is Write1Sub1 Weekly check-in day. I'm posting updates on my short fiction output here as well as over on the main Write1Sub1 blog.

I am currently away on holiday. I've left a clone in charge of things. Hopefully he has been correctly imprinted with the correct brain patterns ...

Written :

• The Heart Of A Much Younger Man (Twitter)
• Warning (Twitter)
• Horoscope (Twitter)

Submitted :

• The Heart Of A Much Younger Man (Twitter)
• Warning (Twitter)
• Horoscope (Twitter) 

Accepted :

• KeyQuest by Spaceports and Spidersilk

Published :

• None

Spaceports & Spidersilk Buy KeyQuest

Just heard that Spaceports and Spidersilk Magazine have bought light-hearted fantasy flash story KeyQuest. w00t.

This story came to me as I was playing DragonQuest IX on my Nintendo DS the other week, when I swear I heard the disembodied voices of parents the world over berating their offsprings for wasting their time playing computer games.

See, mum and dad, it wasn't a waste of time after all! Playing computer games is good for you, just like I said!

Must dash - I have to try and get my children off the XBox now. Ah, the irony ...

Write1Sub1 Week #32 Check-In

Sunday is Write1Sub1 Weekly check-in day. I'm posting updates on my short fiction output here as well as over on the main Write1Sub1 blog.

Summer holidays continue to happen. Twitter fiction is saving me ...

Written :

• North Wind (Twitter)
• Imaginary Fiend (Twitter)

Submitted :

• North Wind (Twitter)
• Imaginary Fiend (Twitter)

Accepted :

• Nada

Published :

• Written in the Stars by Trapeze
• Skydiving by  Seedpod

Kindle: It's A Jailbreak!

As I mentioned the other week, I'm a confirmed Kindler now. Although the machine does have its drawbacks, one of which is that it's hard to change the built in "screensaver" images that get displayed when the machine is switched off. As I've said before it's just bizarre there isn't even an option to automatically display the cover of the book you're currently reading ...

Anyway, pretty good as the built-in images are, they had to go. There are various great posts on the internet on how to "jailbreak" your Kindle so you can tamper with things like this. Did mine today and it worked beautifully. I won't bore you with the technical details, but if you're interested I basically followed the advice in this post and used the jailbreak from this post. It's easy to do, if slightly scary. There are a couple of moments when you wonder if your Kindle is going to come back to life. And it probably invalidates the Kindle warranty. But, hey, life is short.

So, here's my Kindle now showing a map of Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age :

And showing some Hitchhiker's wisdom :

And a picture of Isaac :

Much better. Creating your own images is easy, too, so there's plenty of scope for fun ...

Write1Sub1 Week #31 Check-In

Sunday is Write1Sub1 Weekly check-in day. I'm posting updates on my short fiction output here as well as over on the main Write1Sub1 blog.

Still managing to keep my head above water despite ongoing summery fun ...

Written :

• Vapour Trails (Twitter)

Submitted :

• Vapour Trails (Twitter)

Accepted :

• A Good Drying Day (flash) by Every Day Fction
• Vampyre Slayer (Twitter) by Trapeze
• A(mong Rel)atives by PicFic
• Skydiving by Seedpod

Published :

• The Flamingo Dancer by 7x20
• A Good Drying Day (flash) by Every Day Fction

By the way - the Every Day Fiction site has been temporarily pulled for using too much bandwidth, so links there won't work just now. It's complete coincidence this happened on the day my story was published there, I'm sure ...

Flash Fiction: Light Years (100/100)

... together.




The end has been reached!

Just to recap, Light Years is a work of flash fiction, relayed one word per week over the previous two years. It is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever recounted (as far as I know); in real-time its one hundred words would have taken exactly 10,000 years to appear. The first word of the specially-accelerated transmission was published on September 13th, 2009. Our unfortunate space-traveller reached the half-way point of his or her journey on the 22nd of August 2010. The final word was sent today, 7th August 2011.


The traveller's words have now been pieced together into one continuous story. Here it is :
 

One thousand light-years from home. Six centuries of time. The cold of vacuum. No hope. Earth? No word. The starship malfunctioning. I’m alone with the universe. New suns blink by, there, gone. I leave behind countless unknown novae, nebulae, neutron stars.

One week’s consciousness every year. Check the ship, correct navigation. What damaged the machinery? Instead it’s one second a hundred years. One frame glimpsed per century. One word into the abyss before the oblivion of stasis. The welcome oblivion.

Eighty seconds of life, eight thousand years. My life-span is that of stars. Immortality. The galaxy and I age together.

Message ends ...

Help Me Name My Short Story Anthology!

So, I need a name for my planned short story anthology. Ten possibilities are listed below. I'd love to know which you like the most. This will be a varied collection of fantasy, SF and mainstream short stories, all previously published in one magazine or another.

Of course, if you don't like any of them, I'd love to know that too ...

A Good Drying Day bought by Every Day Fiction

Flash story A Good Drying Day has been bought by Every Day Fiction and should be appearing some time in August or September.

Sometimes writing is easy. I was hanging out the washing the other week - as you do - and it was sunny and windy at the same time and thought to myself, well, this is a good drying day. And then this story popped into my head. So I wrote it down and sent it off.

The lesson : even mundane domestic chores can be a source of inspiration! "Writing" is something that goes on all the time, not just when you're sitting down at the keyboard.

As I've said before EDF are an impressive market. They provide a whole bunch of editorial feedback in response to submissions. I reproduce mine here as it's very illuminating, although, beware, it also CONTAINS SPOILERS. But it's fascinating to see how different people react differently to stories, and also to see how little things can make the difference between acceptance and rejection :

By the time the woman is pulling clean clothes out of drawers, I could feel something was going on. The build-up is sublime, the simple sounds of an industrious house belying the loss this woman feels. While stories like this (doing things like serving food and doing laundry for a lost family) can often seem creepy when we find out the truth, I didn't get that feeling here. That's because the woman knows what she is doing. She is dealing. She isn't completely in la-la land nor is she letting this shut her down. She is existing in that hard-to-describe limbo of trying to get on with her life amidst horrible, unimaginable tragedy. My main issue here is that the story only has the one turn, the one main reveal. The prose is understatedly masterful, the theme is strong, and the mother's loss is well portrayed. But some readers may see it as a bit of a one-note song, that's why I am somewhat on the fence about this piece.

Wow. This brought tears to my eyes. My favourite line was the ticking iron tutting at her inactivity- a perfect symbol for the silent admonishment to herself because she knew it was actually the pointless activity of doing the laundering which was worthy of her matronly self-scolding. I clearly visualised her need and felt her pain as she tried to hang on and let go at the same time.

I think this will be a real winner for readers who have suffered a deep loss. Perfect title too. Excellent.

I lean toward "yes" on this one. My reservations stem from our having seen--and published--similar stories of coping, including a plot that leaves the reader in the dark about what is going on until the situation is revealed at the end.

The concept of denying death by continuing to act as though the loved one(s) still lived is not a new one, but the prose is well enough crafted here that I'm willing to give this a chance.