New poem: “Witch’s Lens” in Polu Texni

Published on by Sara Norja Category: poetry, publication

My poem “Witch’s Lens” is out in Polu Texni!

Read it here: “My witchery awakens / with the rising season.”

I wrote this poem in April 2014, and edited it around a year later based on feedback from my writing group. (Yes, sometimes my poetry progresses veeery slowly, with edits happening ages after the first draft was written in a frenzy.) Another poem that improved significantly with the help of suggestions from my lovely group. <3

Sadly, unlike in the poem, Finland is still in winter's grip – we've got sun at last (sun! sun! sun!) but it's still close to zero and there's frost at night. I hope true spring comes soon and all things begin to grow. To paraphrase my poem: I want my witchery to awaken, my winter-faded soul to strengthen. I've been winter-tired and mired in a thousand busy things, but perhaps with the turning year I too can turn, awake and begin to live again.

Sunday recs

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, short stories

Three powerful stories this Sunday:

A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers, by Alyssa Wong (on Tor.com). This story about weather-bending sisters and apocalypses is quite personally painful for me. But good, so good! Not an easy story, but very much worth the read.

Makeisha in Time, by Rachael K. Jones (in Crossed Genres). Such a fantastic story! It packs a lot of plot and character into a short space. I’m not the biggest fan of time travel stories, but this one does very interesting things with the notion.

And last, something far happier in tone: This is Not a Wardrobe Door, by A. Merc Rustad (in Fireside). This delightful tale about travelling between worlds, loss, and friendship is a great riff on Narnia-esque world-travel.

An Alphabet of Embers update!

Published on by Sara Norja Category: announcement, flash fiction, short stories

Aaasdgjhsdg I got my pre-release contributor ebook copy of Alphabet of Embers (ed. by Rose Lemberg)! The official print and ebook launch will be on the Nebula awards weekend, 12-15 May. The book has a Goodreads page already!

I just. Incoherence and happiness, right now. I reread my story (it’s in an actual book! along with contributions from some amazing authors who I really look up to! and the art is so amazing!) and felt a bit astonished that I’d written something that beautiful.

An Alphabet of Embers was my first professional fiction sale (and so far, my only; but I certainly hope it won’t remain my last!). And what a first! I feel so awed to be part of something this cool. This book jumped up to the top of my TBR pile – I can’t wait to get to read everyone else’s stories.

I’ll tell you more about my story once the anthology is officially out.

Sunday recs: poetry from the classroom

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, poetry

I’m teaching a literature tutorial this spring, and in our final class on poetry, I made my students read some speculative poetry. I wanted them to see that poetry can involve any genre, and be more than just the classic (and wonderful!) stuff we’ve been reading. So here are the poems from newer writers that I used in class:

Gas Giants by Maria Velazquez, in Issue 6 (“Catalyst”) of Stone Telling. This poem is so powerful, with its space imagery and family issues.

Sarcophagus, by N. E. Taylor, in Issue 3 of inkscrawl. So much story and implied emotion in two lines! Amazing.

The Loss, by Mari Ness, in Strange Horizons, 2013. Bird-girls and the feeling of flight. Wonderful.

April, by Nita Sembrowich, in the Spring 2013 issue of Goblin Fruit. Starting as a delicate evocation of spring, the last two lines really make this poem for me.

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I’m using a story by Ken Liu and one by Amal El-Mohtar in my teaching, too. Because yay for literary SFF. 🙂

Poem sale to Strange Horizons

Published on by Sara Norja Category: announcement, poetry, publication

“Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” she chortled in her joy.

So yeah, I’ve sold a poem to Strange Horizons! Huzzah! “Taboo” will appear this summer. It’s got a fox in it.

I’m intensely happy about this, my first poetry sale of 2016. I love SH so much. This will be my third poem appearing in the magazine (the previous ones being Wolf Daughter and Raw Honey). Funnily enough, although I didn’t initially intend it to, “Taboo” fits in quite well with the Finnish-tinged fantasy/fairytale world of the other two poems.

“Village Woman” in the new Goblin Fruit!

Published on by Sara Norja Category: poetry, publication

Goblin Fruit is back with a new issue after their tithed year.

My poem “Village Woman” opens the Winter 2016 issue.

I’m very happy and proud to be in this wonderful magazine along with so many fantastic poets. Some favourites from the issue include Shawna Lenore Kastin’s The Ice Maiden, Toby MacNutt’s Amber and Ash, and Andrew Crabtree’s Norns’ Feast (Charcuterie and Pairings).

Go forth and feast on poetry!

Sunday recs: Rose Lemberg’s Birdverse

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, novelette, short stories

Rose Lemberg is a wonderful writer (and editor! but I’m concentrating on her writing here). I’ve recced many things by her in the past too: she writes beautiful poetry full of word-magic, for instance.

But today, I want to highlight two stories from Rose that I’ve recently read and loved. These are both set in the same world, Birdverse: a world where magic is based on language and geometry in fascinating ways.

First, Geometries of Belonging, in the October 2015 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I read this story yesterday, and was blown away by it. It’s a long novelette – so, there’s plenty of time to get immersed. And oh my heart, how immersed I was. The narrator, Parét, is struggling with his own issues within the broader context of the story, and he felt so delicate and fully realised. I ached for him. So many complex characters in this novelette, and complex cultural and political situations that act as a background to the events. It was great to read about an autistic character who is portrayed with such sensitivity and nuance, too. The story also features polyamory, a complex dom/sub relationship, trans and nonbinary characters… wonderful to see such a variety of sexual expressions and gender in a story! This wasn’t the lightest of tales to read – the various societal oppressions and people’s own locks and problems do not make for a happy-go-lucky atmosphere. But Geometries of Belonging is a hopeful story, definitely. And an important one.

Then for something different, to show how varied Rose Lemberg’s Birdverse tales are: The Desert Glassmaker and the Jeweler of Berevyar, published in the newest issue of Uncanny Magazine. This is a happy story – ah, marvellously joyful and hopeful, though not without conflict. It’s written in an epistolary format, which is something that I really enjoy. Two artists meet and share their art, and more. Rose always writes exquisitely, but the language here is really something special. The words in these particular arrangements sparkle like jewels, like shimmering shards of coloured glass.

2015 award eligibility post

Published on by Sara Norja Category: Uncategorized

My impostor syndrome is telling me not to post this but nyaaahh, brain, I’m posting it anyway, so there. Even though my face is all aflame with embarrassment (or that might just be the cold I’m currently nursing).

So! To the best of my knowledge, the following works are eligible for awards:

Poetry: short poem

Short story

Novelette

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I’d especially like to recommend “Moss”. It’s a story I’m very proud of.

(Incidentally, “The Ruin” and “Moss” are both set in the same world.)

2015 in review

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, DV, personal babble, year in review

Last day of the year; I’m still going to do some writing (on an ooold tale that I just can’t bear to abandon yet); then off to a New Year’s thing if I have the energy.

Anyway, time for my now-traditional writing-related year in review thing.

My writing goals for 2015 (from this post):

  1. Get more stories published.
  2. Get more poems published.
  3. Revise the ms and submit poetry collection for publication.
  4. Start gathering poems together for a speculative poetry collection.
  5. Increase writing output – get back into the groove of writing, preferably every day, even if it’s just a short poem or writing exercise.
  6. Continue to write more in Finnish. It’s been so great to tap into that part of my writing brain this year, so I want to continue experimenting in my other native language too.
  7. Rewrite Dim Vanities entirely. Do this with the help of a proper outline.
  8. Improve my plotting skills.
  9. Finish more stuff and edit previous work to a submittable point.
  10. Submit more stuff, both prose and poetry! Try to submit something at least once a month.

Uh, that’s quite a lot of goals. No wonder I didn’t complete all of them. 😀 Well, that was mostly because of PhD/work-related stress and lack of energy/time. Especially the past autumn has been, quite frankly, rather horrendous because I’ve been juggling so many things and only just managed to keep from bursting apart with stress. But so, how did I do with these goals?

1) I totally got more stories published! Yay! Not in pro magazines, perhaps, but nonetheless I got four stories published. I’m especially proud of “Moss”.

2) I got more poems published too, although less than I’d have wanted, alas. But I’m especially happy with my sales to inkscrawl. And with the cute origami chapbook Watching the City.

3) Wellll I failed at revising my poetry collection and submitting it. Sigh. I’ve been putting it off because of busyness for ages – and I was going to work on it now in December, at latest – but nope. Too much stress –> it’s really hard to revise such a thing.

4) I actually forgot I even had this goal of gathering poems for a spec collection, probably because I wasn’t making headway with my other collection either. Anyway, um, this is totally a good goal and I should pursue it next year.

5) I don’t think I’ve actually increased my writing output – 2014 was pretty good for writing lots. This year has been so busyyyy that I haven’t written as much as I’d have wanted. However, I have finished more short stories than in 2014, so that’s something. (Haven’t sold too many of them, but still.) Definitely didn’t manage to write every day except during Nanowrimo. This is defo something to work on – the routines of writing.

6) I wrote more in Finnish! Yaassss! Poetry as well as some prose. This is a big deal for me and I’m very pleased that one of my Finnish stories (first draft written in late 2014, though) got published.

7) I REWROTE DIM VANITIES (now with a different working title: The Beast of Briarwood Hall). This is one of my biggest writing achievements of 2015. During Camp Nanowrimo and then Nanowrimo proper, I rewrote the novel that keeps haunting me – and the version I have now feels like it could actually work. Like I only have to revise instead of majorly rewrite. And I did it with more outlining than I’ve ever used before. I feel so happy about this. I’m planning on starting the revision in January and am really looking forward to it!

8) Improving plotting skills – hmmmm such a vague goal. I have written more short stories, and thought extensively about plot wrt the novel rewrite, though, so I suppose I have improved a bit?

9) I finished some short stories – and finished the zero draft of the novel. So yeahhh. And I’ve been working on finishing some previous stories that I’ve left to languish on my harddrive.

10) I submitted stuff, yes, but not nearly as often as once a month, alas. The silliest was submitting so little poetry – I have oodles of the stuff lying around, but didn’t submit much. Work-busyness can mostly be blamed for this. It’s hard to muster energy for submitting stuff when you’re tired. However! I have submitted more short stories than ever this year. Lots of rejections, naturally. But I have compared to previous years, I’ve submitted so many short stories. Yay for that.

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To remind myself that I did indeed publish stuff, here’s all my publications in 2015:

POEMS (7 + the 6 in the origami chapbook):
03/2015 “Palimpsest” in Issue 216 of Snakeskin.
04/2015 “Pomeranian”, “Lauttasaari Bridge”, and “Human Nature” in Issue 217 (April Short Poems) of Snakeskin.
04/2015 “The World in Springtime” in The Stare’s Nest.
06/2015 “Betweening” in Issue 8 of inkscrawl.
07/2015 Watching the City, a micro-collection of six poems from the Origami Poetry Project. Print it out and fold it into a tiny book!
12/2015 “Storm-yarn” in Issue 9 of inkscrawl.

PROSE (4 stories):
03/2015 “The Ruin” in Issue 21 of Luna Station Quarterly. Short story.
06/2015 “Moss” in Issue 26 of Silver Blade Magazine. Novelette. (TW: implied incest)
09/2015 “Memory” in The Flash Fiction Press. Flash fiction.
12/2015 “Vierain silmin” (‘With Strange Eyes’) in the Finnish speculative ezine Usva. Short story. I recommend downloading the PDF, it’s got pretty pictures and nice formatting. (in Finnish)

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Also, I joined Twitter. 😀 It’s been a wonderful way to keep up with the writing community and I’ve met some great people! Procrastination galore, of course, but Twitter has really helped me connect with other writers.

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Soooo what about the new year? Here are (some of) my writing goals for 2016:

  • Submit more stuff, both prose and poetry! Try to submit something at least once a month.
  • Get more stories + poems published (in pro markets if possible).
  • Revise the ms and submit poetry collection for publication.
  • Start gathering poems together for a speculative poetry collection.
  • Increase writing output – get back into the groove of writing, preferably every day, even if it’s just a short poem or writing exercise.
  • Revise The Beast of Briarwood Hall and (possibly! maybe! yikes!) submit the ms to agents.
  • Have fun with writing and remember the joy of it even amidst PhD stress.

There. Tried to make those somewhat more concrete than last year’s. You will notice a lot of stuff got carried over, too. PhD and other workstress has been making it harder to concentrate on the bigger goals. But I need to write – writing makes me happy in a way nothing else does – so I need to work on finding the mental space and energy and time to write even as I’m working on my PhD. Here’s hoping I manage, and that 2016 is less stressful than 2015!

I wish you a wonderful new year, dear readers. May the writing force be with you!