online – Aphotic Ink: Words by Frances Rowat

April 27, 2016admin No Comments

Magical alphabet noir

I have a short story that’ll be appearing in the No Shit, There I Was… anthology from Alliteration Ink! The anthology theme is pretty straightforward; you could submit any specfic story, as long as it started with those five magic words. It’s currently being funded on Kickstarter; an ecopy of the anthology is $5, although nearly as many people are going for the trade[1].

Alex Acks is doing a daily discussion of the stories over on his blog while the Kickstarter is running, and today he wrote about mine; you can read what he had to say here, and I am sharing this because I am… well, gleeful and flattered and so pleased that apparently my story did what I wanted it to do!

(The discussions are compiled under the no shit anthology tag, and make for excellent reading, joint and severally.)
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[1] Omigod more of my words are going to be in print.

The proof is this: they are here, the Goster County dogs.

This is one of those moments where you really need to read the story in order to appreciate the line, which on the one hand I kind of tend to avoid–but on the other hand after four years of wanting a copy of Bob Leman’s collection Feesters in the Lake, I am looking like I will actually get a copy of Feesters in the Lake, and I am celebrating.

I’ve spoken about Bob Leman before. His writing, from what I’ve seen, is elegant and restrained. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it understated, but his horror whispers, it does not shout.

You can read “Loob” in full at Weird Fiction Review. ∞

February 8, 2016admin No Comments

Possibly useful information

Most people I know know the things I’m about to say, but I don’t know most people. And since I’ve mentioned a few of these things to people over the last week and they seemed to find it useful, I figured this was not a bad time to mention it.

The Hugos

The Hugo Awards are awards for excellence in fantasy and science fiction. They’re awarded every year, and they’re not a juried award. Everyone who has a Worldcon membership for last year, the current year, or the year to come can nominate works for the ballot. Everyone who has a Worldcon membership for the current year can vote on the final ballet.

I’m not saying voting is trivial; the cheapest membership is $50 this year, and it’ll go up at the end of the month, and that’s in American dollars. (In recent years, the Hugos have provided a content pack that contains samples or full copies of the nominated works, which helps take some of the sting out of the outlay.)

Submission Grinder

So I was talking to someone at a party and she mentioned that she wrote very short fiction, about a hundred words, but “no-one would publish that”. After I was done blinking, I told her about the Submission Grinder.

The Submission Grinder is an online tool where you can keep a record of your writing and the places you have submitted it to. It lets you search for markets by genre, rate of pay, simsum or reprint policy, award nomination… you get the idea. It’s free.

There is also Duotrope. My understanding is that it provides a substantially similar service, but is not free.

Writer Beware

When you sell something, you will get a contract. If you are uneasy about that contract, if you don’t understand something, if you’re not 100% clear on copyright, if (as I did) you completely misread a phrase and are trying to figure out what the hell it means, you can go look at Writer Beware.

(You can even email them to ask questions. I did.)

Adjectives

I hear that every writing advice blog post has to have something about adjectives in it, and this is heavily about writing, so I thought I would mention them. That’s all.

January 3, 2016admin No Comments

Pixel renovation

I’ve reorganized this site a bit. New year, new look, general tidying, and all that.

It kind of looks like a Thomas Kincaide art collection threw up all over the top of the page, but given how little sunlight I’ve seen lately and how much time I’m about to be spending indoors at work, I am actually perfectly okay with this. I may prune down the number of images over the next couple of months, or change the layout, but for now I’m good.

The first weekend of 2016’s been okay. It looks like January will be a lot colder than December, but since I actually now own my first winter coat in about a decade, this is filling me with considerably less trepidation than I might have expected.

Work starts up again tomorrow, and writing has been going well, and I suppose things are generally being fairly unremarkable and pleasant. Going to call it a night, now, I think.

September 7, 2015admin 1 Comment

The proof is this…

The complete collected works of Bob Leman.

I have only ever read three Bob Leman stories.

I read “Instructions” long long ago; looking at ISFDB, it would either have been in the September ’84 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction or the ’85 Year’s Best Science Fiction, years after it was published.

I read “Window” in The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction collection. That was years after it was published, too. It stuck with me; I didn’t remember the author’s name at the time, though.

I read “Loob” in January of 2012. It was online at Weird Fiction Review, and I was sitting in an emergency room with a friend. It was very late and we were both zoney and tired, and I was reading the story on my phone. The language seemed like it could have felt stilted, but somehow it wasn’t, and the story pulled me along, and then I hit one of the lines and it chimed.

Weird Fiction Review had an article about Bob Leman, and I looked at that too. The description of “Window” pinged a memory, and I went to look at the Best Horror Stories collection and that was when I connected “Window” to Bob Leman.

I don’t remember when I connected “Instructions” to the story I’d read. I know it was before 2014, because when I was at the Tachyon Publications table at LonCon, I interrupted myself with “You have ‘Instructions‘ by Bob Leman? Wait, the Bob Leman?” and the gentleman manning the table very kindly told me that I was well-read, and then introduced me to The Boss in the Wall by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis, who I hadn’t heard of at that point.

(LonCon was a bit rough on my bookshelf space.)

Anyway! I have been sadly poking around the Internet to see if there’s a copy of Feesters in the Lake that by some minor miracle is going for less than $250, and it turns out that while there isn’t, his daughter is hoping to put his complete fanzine online. So that will be something to look at and read through, as it goes.

In the meantime, I will sleep well, and dream of Goster County dogs.

July 1, 2015admin No Comments

Coffee and ‘shine.

My short story “Five Drinks in Siltown” has been published! It’s in issue 8 of Betwixt Magazine, which means it is free to be read online, and may also be purchased in electronic (Amazon and not-Amazon options!) or physical format.

Joy Crelin was great to deal with, and the magazine is lovely, and I am very pleased to be in it.

“Five Drinks in Siltown” is a post-apocalyptic short-short setting piece; again, it’s work-safe. It’s the second publication of any of my accepted stories, which is both very exciting and a bit stunning, since it’s coming within eight days of my first publication.

(I am given to understand this rate of acceptance is not typical. I am prepared for statistical norms to reassert themselves.)

I feel a bit odd saying this again so soon, but it’s true: I hope you like it.

(ETA: updated to link to story, as the current issue link has moved on. 🙂 Do highly recommend reading the magazine!)

June 23, 2015admin No Comments

The Yellow Play

Today, my short story “Palimpsest” is being published. Has been published, in fact. It’s up in the Summer 2015 issue of The Sockdolager, so it is both free to be read online, and may also be purchased for the exceedingly reasonable price of one dollar American. The editors have been great to deal with, and the magazine strikes me as quite beautiful, although I freely acknowledge I’m a bit light-headed about seeing my name on the cover.

(You can get it from Amazon! Also not from Amazon, if that’s your preference.)

“Palimpsest” is somewhere between pure secondary-world fantasy and straight-up horror. It’s work-safe, if a bit weird. It’s the first publication of any of my accepted stories.

I hope you like it.

January 19, 2015admin No Comments

Strong Female Protagonist

I gave this one five stars, which is what I give to books so good I believe you should read them even if they are not your genre at all. It’s also all free online, at Strong Female Protagonist.

I started reading it expecting… a kind of comedy of manners, I guess. Superhero dealing with university life! How wacky, yeah?

Twenty pages in, it hooked me. It got… well, it wasn’t ever un-smart, but it got pointed. Then there was the TV interview scene in issue 2, and issue 3 has a beautiful story arc with Feral. I really cannot summarize it, but you can read it! It’s free online! And it’s just…

I am not doing it justice, but it’s so damn thoughtful. The comic basically takes the statement “There are superheroes!” and answers it with “So what?” Not a dismissive so what, not a trite so what, a genuinely thoughtful and considerate examination of the question. And it’s beautiful.

(And my copy of the book has Feral and Menace hand-drawn on the signed frontispiece. You cannot imagine the squee.)