Supernatural Tales acceptance

I’ve had my first acceptance of 2012. My story “The Wife’s Lament” will appear in a future issue of the excellent British magazine Supernatural Tales. Not till next year at the earliest, so I wouldn’t advise holding your breath for it or anything, but in the meantime, you could amble on over to that link and take out a subscription. It’s a quality publication; you won’t be disappointed!

for sche schulde than make al the world to wondyr on hir*

Two terrific stories of contemporary women adventurers/explorers:

Dutch teenager Laura Dekker succeeded in sailing solo around the world. I’ve been following her story since 2009, when the Dutch government denied her permission to set out on this journey at 14, citing child welfare issues. Given what lots of kids endure just by virtue of turning up at school, I find it difficult to sympathize with their position on this. But all’s well that ends well, and Laura’s been able to complete her journey at last. Her website is here.

Also: Felicity Aston has become the first women to cross the Antarctica solo, in fifty-nine days. I have a real fascination for tales of Antarctic exploration, although personally I loathe being cold. A few years ago I had a brief period of fantasizing about working down at McMurdo Station after reading Jerri Nielson’s Icebound (sadly, she’s since succumbed to the cancer that first surfaced while she was working there) before coming to my senses. Antarctica’s on my long list of places to visit someday, but I don’t expect to be particularly adventurous or ground-breaking in the attempt.

There are still too few women travellers and adventurers as role models, although if we scratch below history’s surface they certainly exist. (Try eleventh-century Japanese lady-in-waiting Lady Sarashina’s As I Crossed the Bridge of Dreams for one of the earliest surviving accounts of a woman traveller.) When I was a child, I used to wish I’d been born a boy, because as far as I could see, boys got to do things and girls didn’t. I hope that is less the case for kids today, but I’m not sure it is; Bella Swan came after Buffy, not before, which makes me think that old gender stratification is in many ways as pernicious as ever.

*From The Boke of Margery Kempe, the account of another medieval woman traveller (and mystic). In Modern English: For she should then make all the world to wonder on her.

farewell to the poe toaster

This story made me sad. You see, since at least 1940 and some say for even longer, a mysterious figure has turned up at the grave of Edgar Allen Poe on his birthday (January 19) and poured a bit of cognac, toasted, and left behind the bottle of cognac and three red roses arranged in a very specific configuration. Over the years there’s been a great deal of speculation as to who may be behind this ceremony. It’s said that there was some indication that the tradition was passed on to the next generation some time in the nineties.  But it seems to have come to an end at last, with the toaster failing to turn up for the third year in a row. And so a literary mystery ends with something of a whimper. It was a lovely mystery while it lasted, though.

There’s also a Poe house in Philadelphia, by the way, not just the one in Baltimore. A couple of years ago my friend David Surface wrote a terrific piece on his blog about his visit to that Poe House here.

writers and compensation

Let’s get one thing straight. None of us are in this for the money. There are loads of easier ways to make more money, and I’m not talking day trading or becoming a pro athlete or other careers that would net you millions. I’m talking working as a receptionist, or waiting tables. Yeah, most writers, if they could support themselves and have a little left over at the end of the month from writing alone, would be over the moon.

But I’m not here to whine about how little writers get paid. You can find plenty of that on the Internet. I’m not even here to complain about venues that don’t pay their writers, because I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. I’ve written for fiction markets that don’t pay, in each case labors of love by their editors, with money for producing their magazines coming straight from the editors’ pockets. In the couple of cases where I’ve done so, it’s been because I had a story I believed in and was handing it over to editors I thought would present it well. I’ve also written nonfiction for free, mostly when I wanted to promote something I believed in or ran across a project I was excited about. I do believe writing is a skill that deserves remuneration; on the other hand, plenty of professions do pro bono work, and no one suggests it lessens the perceived professionalism of the person volunteering their time and expertise. Writing for free is something I do on a case-by-case basis, and I imagine I always will. (Hey, I’m writing for free right here, for that matter.)

However. What I do object to is the idea that there is something wrong with writers expecting to be compensated for the work that they do in the same way anyone else who works hard to hone their skills in any other area would be. What prompted this post is the experience someone I know just had: they emailed a budding publication about pay rates for journalistic/critical pieces. Someone at the publication responded that they were currently unable to pay writers, but that “if compensation is all you are after” they had best look elsewhere.

Watch me slow burn for a bit until I burst into full-on conflagration. If compensation is all you’re after? Yes, how unreasonable for someone who writes as a profession and is paid for their words elsewhere to expect to be compensated for the time and effort they spend contributing to making your publication better. How unreasonable for them to balk at taking time away from work they are actually paid for to provide content for you. Do you expect your plumber, your doctor, your children’s teachers, your restaurant servers, your car mechanics, everyone you encounter day to day for various goods and services, to work for free and then snarkily suggest that if they actually want something so crass as (gasp!) a paycheck, that compensation is all they’re after? Why, then, are writers supposed to be any different? Inherent in your response is the truth: you don’t really value the writer at all.

It would have been different if the publication had worded it differently: We can’t pay now, and we’ll understand if that doesn’t work for you. Something along those lines. As I stated above, I have no inherent problem with no-pay venues, depending on the circumstances. Instead, it managed to imply that anyone so crass as to ask to be paid for their words is somehow greedy.

I’ll be keeping a watchful eye on that budding publication. With an attitude toward that like its writers, those who provide its content, its very guts–well, is it wrong that I’d be hoping that maybe it doesn’t exactly survive and thrive?

keep those cards and letters coming…

A longtime friend of mine was digging through some old boxes and found some postcards and letters I’d sent him long ago (along with postcards from lots of other people, of course). He posted one of the postcards on Facebook and it led to a conversation about the end of postcard-sending and letter writing.

Most of the people who posted on the thread allowed as how they missed those days and that emails, or digital photos uploaded instantly to everyone online–awesome as that is–lack something that a handwritten card or letter from Elsewhere carries with it. Maybe, in part, it’s the sense of the journey that those cards and letters have taken to get to you. And while I have written and received some thoughtfully and carefully composed emails in my day (and some sloppily-constructed letters), there’s something about the handwritten missive in the mailbox, and finding it years later buried under other mementos, that carries a frisson that emails just can’t conjure. Is there something in the tactile nature of the letter or card, the personal nature of someone’s pen pressed to paper? Is is the idea that in writing a letter, we are actually stopping for a time and focusing on just one thing? (I dislike how I find myself doing this less and less, and I’m trying to find my way back from over-multi-tasking.)

I think it’s some combination of all these things and more, something indefinable. But the conversation made me realize how few postcards I’ve sent (or received for that matter) in recent years and how much I miss letter writing, an activity I used to love. So I’ve added a New Year’s resolution (yes, I have them; yes, I do them every year; yes, I find them helpful; no, I’m not sharing them here): this year, I’m going to send postcards and write letters again.

about Machen

Arthur Machen is receiving a respectable release in a Penguin edition, with a selection of his stories including “The White People.” Well, it’s been out for a few months in the US, actually, but is only coming out in the UK next month. I’m not very good at playing favorites, but I think if I had to choose one favorite supernatural story, it might be “The White People,” a long tale which consists largely of a young girl’s rambling diary entries describing her encounters with something evil yet numinous. I often feel that there is a vein of “The White People” running through a lot of what I write, invisible though it may be to anyone else; I love that sense he evokes–Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft do it as well, but surely nowhere quite so well as Machen does in “The White People”–of otherness, and of awe in the face of that otherness. (It might be interesting someday for someone–not me–to contrast the religious/spiritual leanings of the three writers in light of that evocation of awe, and to consider how they wrote about the experience of encountering that other: Machen, the devout; Lovecraft, the atheist materialist; and Blackwood, the mystic.)

I posted a short excerpt from “The White People” a couple of years ago for Halloween. Here’s another:

One day, I remember, we were in a hazel brake, over-looking the brook, and we were so snug and warm, as though it was April; the sun was quite hot, and the leaves were just coming out. Nurse said she would show me something funny that would make me laugh, and then she showed me, as she said, how one could turn a whole house upside down, without anybody being able to find out, and the pots and pans would jump about, and the china would be broken, and the chairs would tumble over of themselves. I tried it one day in the kitchen, and I found I could do it quite well, and a whole row of plates on the dresser fell off it, and cook’s little work-table tilted up and turned right over “before her eyes,” as she said, but she was so frightened and turned so white that I didn’t do it again, as I liked her. And afterwards, in the hazel copse, when she had shown me how to make things tumble about, she showed me how to make rapping noises, and I learnt how to do that, too.

To me, “The White People” feels like all the fairy tales, all the forbidden books and deep dark woods and doors into other worlds together in one strange story. It also seems to me a story about the amorality of childhood, of “innocence” in the William Blake-ian sense of lacking any sense of right and wrong, good and evil.

This edition is edited by S.T. Joshi, which means the scholarship surrounding it will be meticulous, although I wonder why one of Machen’s most famous and effective stories, “The Great God Pan,” wasn’t chosen for inclusion.

There is a society devoted to Machen, The Friends of Arthur Machen, which has some good resources to learn more about him.

Ash-Tree Press offers eBooks

Good news for those who love quality supernatural and horror fiction, new and old: in the New Year (well, it started at the end of the Old Year, but no point living in the past, right?), Ash-Tree press is slowly releasing much of their catalog as e-books. You can download them at their website or go to Amazon to purchase a Kindle edition. Note that if you don’t have a Kindle (I don’t), you can get a free Kindle app for just about any device, including your PC. Reading on a laptop still isn’t ideal but the Kindle app is far more reader-friendly than trying to read something like, say, .pdfs. And if you aren’t sure whether you’ll like the Kindle or not, there are plenty of free eBooks available (I think a couple even come with the download itself) that you can use to preview the experience before actually purchasing any books.

The reason this is such terrific news coming from Ash-Tree is that it’s a press which produces lovely, high-quality books in limited editions–which means they are also rather expensive. I’m not opposed to shelling out more money for good-quality books, but it definitely means that those of us on a tight budget are limited in what we can get hold of (and eventually the books sell out). If it’s a book I really care about, I’d always rather have the object itself rather than an electronic edition, but if it’s a choice between an eBook and no book at all I know which I’d choose. Ash-Tree eBooks are priced at $5.99 and $6.99, versus around $50 for their actual physical books (and far more for out of print volumes from collectors).

Right now I’m working my way through Steve Duffy’s short story collection Tragic Life Stories (recommended!) and although there are some other releases I’ve got my eyes on at the moment, what I’ve really got my fingers crossed for is Lisa Tuttle’s Stranger in the House, volume 1 of her short supernatural fiction. I read her collection A Nest of Nightmares when I was I was in college, and it was a real formative influence for me; unfortunately, it’s scarce these days, and as I borrowed my copy from the library back then, I’ve never owned it so I could go back and reread those stories and see what captured me so about them at the time (and, perhaps, if I can see any influence in what I’m writing today). Stranger in the House includes that and some other early short fiction.

I swear I don’t get a kickback from Ash-Tree Press–I just like their books! Also, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to blog a lot more, and what better way to start that off than to send you off in the direction of some excellent fiction?

some things to read

I’ve written a couple of things recently. No, actually, I’ve written tons of stuff recently, but most of it is stuff you can’t read yet. But here are a couple of little pieces you can read.

I wrote briefly about women horror writers in Dark Enough: Women Writing Horror Fiction, and then surveyed some women writers for their recommendations for the online journal Sinescope. There are some wonderful fiction suggestions there by some excellent writers, so be sure to check it out!

I also wrote about my top five favorite horror novels for the mighty mighty issue #300 (with 300 contributors! More than 300, actually!) of the Hugo Award winning fanzine The Drink Tank. (That’s a link to a big .pdf file.)

I hope I’ll be able to point you in the direction of some fiction soon.

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror

I received my contributor’s copies of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror this week, which includes my story “The Moon Will Look Strange,” originally published in Black Static.  There are a lot of wonderful stories and authors in this volume, and I’m so pleased to be published alongside them.

a sale, reprint, and a tangent on tenacity

Sale! My story “The Burned House” has been accepted at the magazine Tales of the Unanticipated. Publication date TBA.

Also, “The Moon Will Look Strange,” which appeared in Black Static #16, is going to be reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror #2, edited by Paula Guran, out this August. I’ve mentioned that elsewhere, but not here.

That’s two sales to American markets in the last month or two! For whatever reason, only UK editors have bought my fiction up to now. I am not certain why this is the case, and while this does allow me to say, “Hey, I am just like Jimi Hendrix!”, which is kind of a good line (despite my being nothing like Jimi Hendrix), I’d rather sell fiction on both sides of the Atlantic.

Wait, here is a story to warm the cockles of aspiring writers’ hearts. I did make an American sale once, sort of, long ago. About 8 1/2 years ago I placed a story with a small US publication which then was orphaned in some kind of Editor Drama, and the person who bought the story was deposed and the new editor didn’t like my story and I was offered an insultingly small kill fee for my troubles. Did I accept the insultingly small kill fee? Of course I did. Hey, we writers don’t make much money as it is–we can be venal lot, and I wasn’t getting paid much for the story in the first place. I actually thought the sentiment was kind of classy and, you know, it was enough to buy myself a decent lunch. EXCEPT THEY NEVER PAID IT. I never heard from them again and the magazine never put out another issue.

The story, however, “The Last Reel,” was eventually picked up by the delightful David Longhorn at the excellent Supernatural Tales, where it appeared in 2006. (Yes, that’s four years after the beginning of this story and a good five years after I wrote it. While that’s not typical, it’s also not terribly unusual. This is why people tell you that building a writing career is a slow process.) And then Steve Jones bought it for inclusion in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #18 in 2007, and people really liked the story, and it was even under option for a while for a film. Did I mention the magazine that reneged on publishing it was never heard from again?

I think the moral of that story is clear, which is that American editors don’t like my fiction   success is the best revenge you shouldn’t give up on a story you believe in, or on your writing in general. Do I follow this rule? Nah, I give up all the time. Well, not so much anymore, but I used to. The trouble is, it can be hard to tell whether you’re deluded and a story just isn’t working or whether you just haven’t encountered the right editor and/or audience yet. (Just because you’re persistent doesn’t actually mean you’re any good.) And it can be hard to keep going in the face of yawning indifference. Maybe that’s why some writers seem to enjoy making enemies! It’s probably easier and more fun to fight a nemesis.