'Skyball' now online in Bewildering Stories Issue 324

Why waste your time reading blogs when you could rush over to Bewildering Stories Issue 324 and read my newly-published short story 'Skyball'?

Yes, I'm in print again! And this particular achievement is always going to hold a special place in my heart. It was the first of my sci-fi stories ever to be accepted for publication. It will also be fondly remembered for the process I went through with the editor Don Webb.

Don is a very exacting editor and I had a tough time working the story into a state where he would accept it. He's also an intelligent editor and easy to get along with. I had never been through such an exercise before (although I've been through similar with other editors since) so it was a hugely important and valuable lesson for me which, I hope, will have lasting benefits for my writing.

But the experience didn't stop there. Bewildering Stories includes a set of 'challenge' questions that Don asks as a way of exploring the stories he publishes. These reflect deep and thoughtful insights, and show how intently Don considers the work he publishes. In the case of 'Skyball' the questions reference one of Don's own essays “Space Aliens as Metaphor” which sparked me to draw an analogy between alien invasions in fiction and the Iraq war, which in turn prompted Don to write a commentary on my analogy.

It really doesn't get any better than that.

Writers wishing to have their own 'Don Web experience' are urged to submit their work to Bewildering Stories. This is not a paying market but the value I got from it went way beyond getting a few extra bucks in my PayPal account. Readers looking for good fiction should just go along and read the magazine. Here is an editor working hard to make a serious contribution to the genre.

P.S. Don't mention this to any of my Australian compatriots, but I was telling someone about Don's challenge questions and his other comments and I could see they were impressed. "Is this an Australian magazine?" they asked, sounding confused. "No," I replied. "It's Canadian." "Oh well," they said. "That explains it!"

Tales of Long Ago

A post today at Emma Newman's blog got me remembering stuff. (Since she says her post was inspired by a post of my own, this is becoming strange and incestuous. Either that or it's what people used to call a 'conversation'.)

Emma recounts the amazing tale of the two times she nearly stopped writing. My own tale is rather different. I have never nearly stopped writing. (I've completely given up all hope of publication a couple of times.) I can't imagine a life where I don't write. It would be torture.

Since I was as young as I can remember, I have written stories. By the time I was ten, I'd focused down on sci-fi. Apart from reading, writing stories was all I did with my spare time as a child - and all I do with it now.

So when, at the age of 11 or 12, climbing my way up the slippery pole in my local scout troop... (All right, for those who know me, this might seem an unlikely thing for me to have done. In fact, I was in the scouts for a couple of years and became a troop leader. It was great and I really enjoyed it.) Where was I? Ah yes. Getting on in the scouts meant earning badges. Badges were great and I had an armful of them. For one such badge, I had to provide evidence of a hobby I had pursued diligently for at least a year. The only thing I did that fit the bill was writing. So I brought in a (very) thick sheaf of sci-fi stories I had written and handed them to 'Skip'. He looked at them in dismay and said he'd have to think about it.

Next time I saw him, he was very concerned. He wanted to know if I had really written the stories and not some grown up I knew. I was hurt and flattered at the same time. I discussed the stories with him at length until he was completely convinced they were my own work. It didn't seem to cheer him up though. Writing stories, I eventually concluded from his tactful reticence to accept them, wasn't really a scout-like thing to do. It wasn't really in the spirit of it. In the end, when I had promised I had no other hobby and it was this or nothing, he decided he must send the stories up the chain of command to get a ruling from his superiors.

It took weeks but, finally, the word came back down the line that I could have my badge. As far as Skip knew, I was the only scout ever to get the badge on the basis of this particular hobby (although it seems unlikely to me). If so, I may be the only sci-fi writer who has won a scouting badge for his work. (Who needs a Nebula or a Hugo with an achievement like that?)

At the time, I was merely relieved I'd got through ordeal and earned the badge. Now I tend to think how well this reflects on the scouting movement. Yes, they tend to emphasise a lot of healthy, outdoorsy, quasi-military activities but, when it came to it, they were flexible enough to allow the definition of a scout also to include more intellectual pursuits.

Maybe someone else will be inspired by this recollection to add their own childhood writing story. We could get a chain going.

Happy New Year!

Well, it was nice that the year went out on a high (see below).

As I sit here eating assorted rice crackers and drinking sump oil port, it's hard to credit that at the beginning of 2008 I was finishing off my previous novel (Time and Tyde) and wondering if I could be bothered to waste my time sending it out to publishers. Then I heard about the Orbit/QWC manuscript development retreat and thought, What the hell? I'll give it a go.

Since then I've had four stories accepted for publication, been shortlisted in one short story competition and was the winner in another. I've also finished and polished up a whole new novel (TimeSplash! - many thanks to Terry Hornby, Rod Rivers and Wifie for help with the polishing) and have it out with three agents already.

It may not sound like much, but after a lifetime of failing to get anywhere with my fiction, I'm suddenly having some real success. I blame it to a large extent on Orbit and the Queensland Writers Centre. That retreat last May really opened my eyes and got me focused on what I needed to do. Specifically, Marianne de Pierres, Kate Eltham and Bernadette Foley, put together a package of concentrated enlightenment that changed my whole approach to getting published - with incredibly good results.

I should also mention the other writers who were at the retreat with me. We refer to ourselves collectively as the Orbiteers. These guys have been a constant source of support and encouragement. It is so good to be teamed with such a group of talented writers - who just happen to be terrific human beings too. The whole experience of that retreat and the subsequent months (which also included joining the Vision Writers Group - another amazing collection of talent and wit) has changed the equation for me. I am no longer the lonely, isolated outsider I used to be. I have made inroads, I'm networking, I actually have friends who are also writers. The publishing world doesn't seem so cold and hostile as it did at the beginning of the year. I have found islands of warmth and fuzziness in that great ocean. I even have hope again that I might succeed as a writer!

Of course that might just be the sump oil port talking (or the rice crackers - hard to tell). Being an anal, scientific type, I did my accounts for the year, to see just what my success amounted to. On the one hand, I got paid for a couple of things. On the other I forked out money for retreats, conferences, memberships, books, etc.. The balance was a loss of nearly $600 for the year. Not as bad as it could be but definitely a reminder (as if one were needed!) that I still have a very long way to go.

Well, come on 2009! I've got a lot to do and I'm counting on you for support.

Happy New Year everybody!

Hey, I Won a Contest!

It's not exactly Aurealis, and the prize money would barely cover a decent bottle of champagne to celebrate with, but I'm very pleased to announce that I was the winner in Abra Wiebe's Spec The Halls 2008 Christmas short story competition.

You can read the winning story (Last Christmas) by following the link above, or by going here.

Hope you all had a great Christmas.

The Earth Ship Docks at Absent Willow Review

My head is reeling! Not a week since I got my acceptance from CSfG for the Masques anthology (see below) I have had another story accepted - this time by The Absent Willow Review, a relatively new online SF/F/H magazine from the American publisher Absent Willow Books. And I am so pleased to say that the story they took was a personal favourite of mine The Earth Ship. I wrote the story some years ago and have always loved it. I gave it a big makeover recently (and cut a thousand words out of it!) and that seems to have paid off.

Anyone interested in reading it won't have long to wait, it will be in the 16th January issue of the mag. and I will post a link on this blog.

The Orbit/QWC retreat (see way down the bottom somewhere) may not have done much for getting my novel Time and Tyde published, but my goodness it seems to have worked wonders for my short stories! My thanks again to Marianne de Pierres for kicking me in the butt and to my fellow Orbiteers for their more gentle encouragements.

Masques

'Masques' - isn't it a lovely word? Doesn't it conjour up so many images of intrigue, revelation, and dark sensuality?

When I heard that the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (CSfG) was publishing an anthology with that name and was looking for stories, I was immediately inspired to write one for them: Murathera's Orgy. One of the book's editors, Scott Hopkins, took a shine to it and has been working with me over an intensive couple of weeks to polish it - a fascinating and educational process in itself (thanks, Scott).

I heard the other day that it has been accepted for for the collection and will be published in Masques - which is extremely good news. CSfG has published several excellent SF anthologies over the years, featuring some great Aussie SF&F writers, and I'm immensely proud to be part of this. I recently heard that my friend Joanne Anderton has also had a story accepted for the anthology - so it's even better news!

I don't have details of the publication date yet but I'll keep you informed. Meanwhile, CSfG has a page on its website for Masques where, no doubt, you'll be able to track its progress.


(The image above is Chelepteryx collesi, 2007, from the series 'Moth masks,' synthetic polymer paint on canvas by Deborah Klein.)

'Too Late' in Concept Sci-fi Magazine

Rush over to Concept Sci-fi magazine and download issue #3. Not only is this a great up-and-coming sci-fi magazine, but issue #3 carries my short story 'Too Late'.

Just thought I'd mention it...

:-)

Where do you get your ideas?

As a budding writer, I feel I must prepare for this one. Imagine. An audience of three thousand in a gigantic auditorium. It is the plenary panel session at Schmoozecon, the world's premiere writing convention, and I am up there in an uncomfortable plastic seat along with all that week's great names. A weedy-looking guy in round spectacles near the back of the room stands up and a girl in a Schmoozecon T-shirt rushes over to hand him a microphone.

'Ahem,' he booms, his thin voice amplified almost beyond my pain threshold. 'Could the panel please tell us, where they get their ideas from?'

I cringe at the question. I cringe at the grammar. I cringe at the guy on my left who has already launched into a brief history of tropes in science fiction. I have just ten or fifteen minutes before the chairperson turns her smile my way with a raise of the eyebrows. What do I say?

The truth is, while it may seem odd to people who don't write, there's nothing special about 'ideas' in the sense of 'those things that writers have'. Mostly, they're the same kind of ideas that everybody has but, instead of dismissing them as crazy nonsense, the way a normal person would, the writer hoards them and makes things out of them. Where I might read a news item about how designers are looking at cities holistically, taking an ecological persective on energy use and sustainability, and think, wouldn't it be cool if a designed city led to unforeseen ecological niches within which entirely new life-forms evolved - the way anybody would - the man in the street would simply slap himself across the face and tell himself to grow up, but I would rush to my computer and write an eighty-five-thousand-word masterpiece called 'In All The Dark Places' (or somesuch) in which brick-eating metropoloids drag sleeping humans into their foetid lairs, strip the flesh from their bodies and use their bones to build altars to the concrete-and-glass towers they worship as gods.

It's like collecting bottle tops, or spent matches. The stuff sensible people would throw away. And then building ten-metre long killer millipedes out of them. That's all.

And, as the chairperson's gimlet eye swivels my way, I take a big swallow, force a smile between my frozen cheeks and say, 'Er, um, I dunno. They just... you know... like, come.' Panicking, I remember a joke. It involves a gorilla at an arms convention. I open my mouth to tell it but the woman on my right has begun a short discourse on the distinction between 'ideas' and 'ideation'.

There, you see, I need something like that for next time.

(This little idea was inspired by The Writer's Technology Companion.)

What I'm Listening to as I Write My New Novel

One of the strangest things I've heard of late is that fans of writers like to know what the author was listening to as he or she wrote particular books. Some authors, I hear, even produce lists of musical pieces that should accompany their novels - the sound track of the book, no less!

Anyhoo, I think I have the whole thing automated now and would like to pass on this info to any author planning their own sound track.

As a secret songwriter (secret as in nobody knows I exist) I belong to a number of 'band sites' where I can post my music and listen to other people's postings. These sites have many interesting features - they manage track sales, they provide social networking facilities, they run charts by genre, etc., etc.. One of them, Last.fm, provides a piece of software that will monitor what a subscriber is playing at home on their computer and compile their own personal chart by day, week, or overall. I have this software installed (it's called Scrobbler for some reason) and you can all go to my Last.fm member page to see what I typically listen to.

Since this data can be put into a widget and embedded in my blog page, I could easily let you know what I'm listening to right now (it's Blondie's '11:59' -- I love Parallel Lines.) Of course, I won't because this whole blogging thing is narcissistic enough already. Believing anyone wants to know what music you listen to in the privacy of your own office takes vanity to whole new heights. But, for those whose fans are clamouring for it, I suggest you do it the easy way and get Scrobbler.

Three Observations On Successful Writers

Marianne de Pierres (She Who Must Be Obeyed) suggested I write and chat to Peter Cawdron about getting published. She seems to have forgotten that I know almost nothing about it and have certainly not had any success until recently when I got one story into print.

However, in wondering just what I could tell somebody about being a successful writer, I realised that I have formed some opinions based on what I've seen of the species. So, rather than bore only Peter with my neophyte observations, I thought I'd share them with everyone and give everyone the opportunity to comment. Here then are the three things I have noticed about being a successful writer.

Observation 1. You have to be a good writer. Not a great writer. Just a good one. Pick up a book or two at random from a bookshop shelf, or browse the e-zines in your genre and you'll see what I mean. Most writers in print are competent and capable - very, very few of them are brilliant. Not by a long way. I suppose if publishers had to wait for an L.P. Hartley or a William Golding to come along, there just wouldn't be enough books printed to make a living from it.

This is good news for the likes of me, since I ain't no Michael Frayn!

Observation 2. Successful writers seem to be very much into the writing 'scene'. They go to the conferences, they belong to the discussion groups, they track the industry news. They all know one another and they all know who's publishing what, who's on the judging panels for the various competitions, and what other writers are doing. As an example of how important this is, let me tell you a little story.

I've been a writer since I first learned to hold a crayon. From time to time over many years, I have tried to get a piece published. The way I did it was to package up a manuscript, write a covering letter and send it to a publisher - or agent. This has always been a waste of time. In the end, I decided I would simply write for my own amusement and sod the publishers - and agents. I did this for about ten years - and got a lot of very pleasurable writing done.

Out of curiosity, a couple of years ago, I joined a writers' group (Crime Writers Queensland). I eventually left them - mainly because it was a very long drive to the meetings. However, at one meeting, someone had passed on the news that a new literary agent had opened up shop in Brisbane. I filed the address away and forgot about it. Then, a few months ago, I finished yet another novel - one that I thought really ought to be publishable - and remembered the new agent. My book is set in Brisbane and I thought a Brisbane-based agent might just be interested. So I dropped him an email.

He told me he'd given up agenting (already!) to focus on writing his own books but he did mention the Orbit/QWC manuscript development program that had recently been announced and suggested I try for it. I, of course, hadn't heard of it and I've always hated the idea of entering competitions - but, since he went to some pains to stress what a rare opportunity this was to ensure that a publisher would actually look at your work, I thought I'd have a go. And I did. And I won one of the places, got my book read by Orbit, had a one-on-one session with the publisher about my book, and got the opportunity to revise and resubmit the manuscript.

Now this is as close to being published as I have come in all those years of trying and it only came about through 'networking'. If I hadn't been at that writers' group meeting, if I hadn't written to that (erstwhile) agent, I would never have known there was an opportunity, let alone profited from it.

This, however, is bad news for the likes of me as I am an antisocial troglodyte who lives up a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

Observation 3. Successful writers tend to be prolific, dedicated and, above all, persistent. Even if you're a good writer and totally plugged-in to the world of writing, there is still a very big element of luck involved in becoming successful. Publishers only do so many books a year, magazines only do so many stories. They are looking for good writers, of course, but they're also looking for other things; things that excite them personally, things that will excite their colleagues in marketing and production (who also need to be convinced) things that will sell well in particular markets, things that will sit right with the other material in their list, and so on. All of these factors change all the time, even for the same publisher, so your piece better be exactly what is needed at precisely that moment in time or it doesn't stand a chance, however good it is.

This means that, if you aren't writing, if you aren't sending your stuff out all the time, all over the place, your story will not be there in the slush pile for the editor to find it when they're looking for exactly that kind of thing. You simply have to be in the game. The odds are not in your favour but if you're not in the game, you will never get the prize.

This is one of the areas where I have been letting myself down. I do the writing alright but I haven't taken seriously enough the process of getting it out there and keeping it out there. As it happens, as soon as I did start making a concerted effort, it payed off.

Not the deepest of insights, I'm afraid but they're all I have. If it seems a bit gloomy, I have only one small word of consolation for Peter and all the rest like me waiting to leap into print. When you do start networking with writers, editors, agents and publishers, you will probably discover, as I did, that they are a pretty good bunch and incredibly helpful and supportive. Talking to these guys makes being a writer a much more pleasant experience than one in which you merely swap mauscripts with publishers for rejection slips.

One Small Step For Me. One Giant Leap, Also For Me

Am I excited or what? It's barely a month since I resolved (after a bit of brow-beating) to start putting my short stories out there, looking for publishers and I've just heard that one of them has been accepted! The story is a new one, called 'Skyball', and it will appear in a spec fic e-zine called Bewildering Stories - early in the New Year, I hope.

This is the first time I have ever had a story of mine accepted for publication, so you can imagine what a monumental event this is for me.

I've published a lot of stuff in my time - science books, technical papers, even comedy (in New Scientist of all places!) but never fiction. (Actually I had a short crime story read out by Nick Eales a few years ago on his national radio show - but I can't decide if that counts.) So getting 'Skyball' accepted is a huge milestone in what I hope will be my writing career.

So thank you Marrianne for pushing me, thank you Orbit and QWC for getting me excited again, and thank you Don Webb (the editor at Bewildering Stories who didn't exactly open the gate - he made me jump it!)