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!
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.
The smallest of recs but an utterly gorgeous one — a tiny story that I just read on Strange Horizons:
Telling the Bees by T. Kingfisher. Poetic, strange and utterly wonderful. Such a short read that you’ve no excuse not to feast on its juicy word-goodness right away!
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.)
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):
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:
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!
The newest issue of inkscrawl is up – and with it, my poem “Storm-yarn”. I’m really looking forward to reading the other poems in this issue – guest editor Bogi Takács has got together some really exciting poets! And a nice big issue. Yesss.
I wrote “Storm-yarn” in August specifically for the submission call for this issue, but the original inspiration comes from a story I started in 2007 (!). I never did finish the story – it wasn’t really very good – but the notion of knitting up a storm came from there. I wrote a short poem-draft based around the idea in December 2012, but it went no further till Bogi announced the topic for issue 9 (Atypical Weather), and my brain started ferreting around for ideas. “Storm-yarn” bears no similarity to the poem from 2012, but the same idea of yarn and storms is there – and now it’s finally out in a form that I’m very happy with.
Sunday recs! Featuring three delightful short stories, and two excellent novels.
Tomorrow When We See the Sun by A. Merc Rustad (in Lightspeed) – a weird and cool space opera. A dark atmosphere but so beautiful. Merc’s worldbuilding is great, and I especially love how they use language. Poetic writing in prose <3
And the Balance in Blood by Elizabeth Bear (in Uncanny Magazine) – such a delightful novelette!! In contrast to Merc’s story, this one is hopeful and has lots of funny bits. This story reminds me that I should get round to reading Bear’s novels.
Wing by Amal El-Mohtar (in Strange Horizons) – a lovely short piece from 2012, lyrical and strange. Mystical books, yay.
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Then for the novels: I’ve got longer reviews/squee for these on Goodreads, but I just really want to recommend two novels from this autumn that I read recently:
Black Wolves, Kate Elliott’s newest novel – set in the same world as her Crossroads trilogy, but you needn’t have read the trilogy to enjoy this one. (I greatly enjoyed the references to the trilogy, though!) In fact, I didn’t even like the Crossroads trilogy as much as Elliott’s other stuff, but omgggg I adored Black Wolves. So, so good. A must-read if you’re into epic fantasy. It does some pretty bold things with structure, but I think it works very well. And there were so many great characters. Lots of women being awesome, and a very interesting portrayal of a fantasy society in the process of great societal changes. So great. I wish I could re-read this book again with new eyes, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy rereading it in any case.
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho – which I just read over Christmas. A riot of a book, vastly different from Black Wolves, but that was probably a good thing since I’d just finished BW before starting SttC. Zen Cho’s got a really good Regency thing going on: I’m so happy there’s more stuff in the general vein of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell! This was a light read on the surface, but Cho also deals really well with issues of e.g. racism and colonialism.
I’m really looking forward to the next parts of the trilogies for both BW and SttC!
I just noticed that the Finnish ezine Usva has published its folklore issue, which includes my story “Vierain silmin” (‘With Strange Eyes’). You can read the whole issue here – well, if you can read Finnish, that is. (I recommend downloading the PDF – it’s got pretty pictures and the text is formatted more nicely.) I can’t wait to read the rest of the stories, they look great!
“Vierain silmin” is set in the Finnish city of Turku, and is a weird urban fantasy thing about the otherworldly perils that may befall a person wandering into a park at night.
Anyway yaaay! I’m just so pleased to have another story out in Finnish. I feel more confident with my Finnish-language creative writing these days; I still write more in English, but I feel that I can write in Finnish too (even poetry!), which makes all the difference.
Some story notes in Finnish, because well, you have to know Finnish to read this story:
Eli suomeksi (en tiedä olenko ennen kirjoittanut suomeksi tässä blogissa, oudon tuntuista!): kirjoitin novellin alun perin kilpailua varten, jossa etsittiin Turkuun sijoittuvia spefinovelleja. Olin hurjan iloinen, että uskalsin myöhemmin lähettää sen Usvaan. Sain Usvan toimittajalta Anne Leinoselta todella hyviä kommentteja, joiden perusteella muokkasin novellin sen lopulliseen muotoon. Käyn Turussa säännöllisesti jatko-opintojeni takia, mutta kaupunki on kuitenkin aina jollain tapaa vieras, ei koti – eli oli mielenkiintoista kirjoittaa sinne sijoittuva novelli. Siinä näkyy jonkin verran “minun Turkuani”. Tosin itse en ole (vielä?) törmännyt kummallisiin rituaaleihin Kupittaan puistossa. 😉
I’ve sold a poem to Polu Texni – “Witch’s Lens”, due to appear around the Spring Equinox next year. Yay!
I’ve been lax with posting lately, alas, for the busyness has continued. I haven’t been writing as much after Nanowrimo, which is sad, but I have been tinkering a bit with my poetry collection. I really need to get that revised by the end of the year.
I should also probably make an awards post, but doing that is pretty daunting because my impostor syndrome keeps telling me it’s preposterous for me to do such a thing. Silly brain.
No Sunday recs today – I’m too wiped out by a) finishing up a (not great) draft of an academic article in the morning, and b) writing around 5,000 words of my novel and thus WINNING NANOWRIMO YAAAY. This counts as an epic win because not only did I get over 50k, I wrapped up the whole story, too.
113 pages, 17 chapters. LibreOffice says I’ve got 51,565 words, the Nanowrimo website says 51,871. But whatever the precise wordcount – it means Nanowrimo success, and I actually finished this novel draft too, typed “the end” and all. Feeling dazed but very pleased. This is the most coherent Nanowrimo draft I’ve ever managed! A lot of that is thanks to the fact that I was using a lot of elements from the old version of the novel – but in the end, this novel is very distinctly its own thing.
I think I’m getting a bit better at plotting too, which is encouraging. I tried many different tactics for plotting before Nano, but in the end something like the “tent pole” method worked best (see this excellent post by Chuck Wendig). I figured out the most essential plot points – both external and internal – before Nano and especially after the first week, when I stopped to plan things out properly. Then, as I wrote, I figured out the stuff that needed to come in between those plot points, and by the end was outlining chapters in even more detail. This method worked for this draft, at least!
Oh yeah, how weird was it to actually divide the novel into chapters during Nano? REALLY WEIRD. But it seemed to work for this draft, surprisingly enough.
I think that with some editing (well, plenty) this might become Something. And that makes me very happy. I’m so glad I didn’t abandon this old idea – which was what I was on the verge of doing at the end of October. I’m so glad I managed to have enough energy to write every day (or very nearly every day) during a month that has mostly been horrendously busy, and dark, and stressful.
Nanowrimo saved my November.