“The Song of Sasquatch,”my poem/story of bigfoot romance in the style of Song of Solomon, is up at Joyland: a hub for short fiction. Joyland is unique as an online fiction magazine. It has editors associated with a certain geographical place and all the stories come from writers associated with that place. Occasionally, editor Kevin Chong says, they like to pull a few writers from outside. Thanks, Kevin, for pulling me in! Enjoy!
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INHUMAN: Absolute Xpress, owned by Edge Books (the makers and owners of the Tesseracts series of science fiction and fantasy anthologies), have announced their fourth flash fiction challenge: 1000 words on what humans are like from a non-earth based, non-human perspective. The title of the anthology is called “Inhuman” and details are here
In their words:
The Theme: InHuman
There are other beings out there. Demons, fae, aliens, robots and more. Creatures that have been watching us for a long time. They know us. For this challenge, write from the point of view of something “Inhuman”; an exterior point of view that is able to see what it really means to be Human.You now have 6 weeks to answer this challenge. Flex your fingers and get typing. This challenge closes on May 15th at Midnight Pacific Standard Time (PST). For more details on how to submit check out the Flash Fiction Challenge page.
So what are we really looking for?
We want you to write from the point of view of a sentient, intelligent life form (no earth-based animals please (pets, birds, fish, etc.)). Perhaps they have been impacted by humanity, or visa versa. Or maybe they’ve been watching us from a distance. The big thing is that who ever these beings are, they have an insight into what it means to be human. This perspective is the key thing to highlight in your stories. It doesn’t have to be profound but these inhuman persons should notice something about what makes humanity human.
1000 words, one week left. You can do it.
I’ll be at Mac’s Fireweed, Friday April 23rd from 4-6pm signing copies of EVOLVE: Vampire stories of the new undead–an anthology edited by Nancy Kilpatrick, where I have a story, “How Magnificent is the Universal Donor.” It’s all-Canadian (or in my case, landed immigrant), all vampire and the theme is the evolution of vampires. As far as I know, this has never been done. Shaking up the old rules. These are new kinds of vampires.Come and find out how vampires have evolved and what they’ve become. Or just come and say hi. I’ll be behind a lonely desk, and will want company.
This is the YUKON launch of the book–and we’re planning a reading in Tagish–sometime soon. It’s been launched now in Brighton, UK at the World Horror Convention in front of other horror writers; it’s been launched in Toronto in front of fantasy, science fiction and horror enthusiasts; and it’s being launched in Winnipeg, Montreal and Vancouver as well.
YUKON launch: Mac’s Fireweed, 4-6pm, Friday, April 23rd.
As a follow up to my last post about Star Trek: Reckoning, the hot, new, nearly top-secret co-produced ST series from Paramount and Fox, none other than Newt Gingrich has come aboard! It’s very rare for working politicians to take time out to create good television for honest folks in the Midwest and the Plains, but it looks like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich will be on board.
From my insider at Paramount, “The producers had actually wanted an actor, at first. Sarah Palin’s the one who pushed the idea of Newt, saying in effect, that he ‘has the chops’.”
I have to say, it’s an inspired choice. Not an actor, but a politician—those are close, so I can see Paramount going for that. But Gingrich is, shall we say, kind of from another era. Most popular from the 90s and the man who brought us the doomed “Contract with America” and subsequently hijacked the presidency of Bill Clinton. Now, I remember that. But I don’t think most people actually remember Newt Gingrich, so it might not be a problem. They won’t confuse his character with any thing of substance he might have done in the past.
Sometimes actors on Star Trek have such long-standing previous sci-fi characters (I’m looking at you Scott Bakula) that viewers can’t see them as something new. I know this hindered my viewing of ST:Enterprise—kept waiting for Al to pop in (although watching Dean Stockwell in BSG, i completely forget he was ever Al on QL). So, it may be that no one actually remembers anything important that Gingrich did, allowing him to kind of slip into this role and establish himself anew. I mean, did anything he did really amount to much? So that might allow him to start over as a character!
Just to recap: Palin will play Capt. Nalia Fergus of the USS Steadfast; she’s part of a group of rogue commanders who believe the dream prediction of the D’mi, that “the Reckoning” will destroy the Federation. Seeing a Federation President they don’t trust, nor believe he can protect everyone, they form an alliance to counter the Reckoning before it happens.
Gingrich will play the D’mi (unnamed as of April 8) on-board the Steadfast, who lives in two worlds at the same time. One is the dream and one is reality. He is constantly unsure which reality he is living in.
“Which makes Gingrich perfect,” my writer friend at Paramount said, “He has a bit of experience nowadays with living in both fantasy and reality.” He’s referring, of course, to Gingrich’s latest gaffe, putting words in Obama’s mouth that he never said. Gingrich’s character will try to give advice to Capt Fergus (Palin) about how to avoid the Reckoning. But he rarely ever sleeps—sleeping triggers the shift to the other reality–and so when he sleeps in one reality, he awakens in the other.
A great tension that the writers are building in is that he will begin to give information that proves false—about halfway through Season One. He will claim that something Fergus has done has altered the future so that a “certain” event won’t happen the same, but in effect, there’s an idea that he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t even think that he knows that he lies; he’s a bit overwhelmed by the attention, by the focus, and by his power to direct Fergus, and the ships that follow her.
I’m excited by this new Series. I asked my friend why Paramount is delaying the formal announcement of Star Trek: Reckoning. I’ve already had several people ask me when there will be more confirmed reports–and several people are searching on google for it.
He says, “They’re testing the market right now, seeing what Red State America thinks about the idea. They’ve never done a conservative focused Star Trek like this before. They don’t know if they’ll have the audience. But they’re basing it off of O’Reilly and Beck, Hannity and Coulter, and the current Tea Party constituency. They figure people are tired of the way things have been done–and in that way, might be tired of Star Trek the old way—and want to see an overthrow, a rebellion—at least in science fiction, if they can’t have it in fact.”
I wonder if TV can play on that desire, that hope, of a people to want change so badly that they will accept the fictionalized version.
“Well, you’ve seen The West Wing? That was a George W. Bush era show–don’t tell me that wasn’t fantasy aimed at folks who wanted change!”
He has a point.
What I’m really interested in is this: if the rogue group actually overthrows the Federation, will they make it more vulnerable to everyone else? Will they make alliances with the Romulans? The Borg? Or will they naively think they can do better? Fergus isn’t a seasoned captain; the D’mi doesn’t know what reality looks like; and they’re following a culture that believes in a bad dream…. they are hyping a monster that doesn’t exist.
…will watching ST: Reckoning be akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion?
Wouldn’t you know that 11-18 year olds have plenty of reasonable, thoughtful ideas about the evolution of vampires? Because of the anthology I’m a part of that comes out next week (Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead) I threw out the question —where do you think Vampires are going–or should go?— to my writing students. They are all voluntary writers who stay after school to work on their own writing (which usually has a horror-tinge to it) and they were freakin’ brilliant. I LOVE these guys.
Imagine them sitting around a grouping of four tables shoved together, in the French library of FH Collins.[Just gonna use their first names–they’re cooler that way] I didn’t do any editing to this dialogue. I have some pretty smart high school kids.
Here are their thoughts:
Santana: I’m looking for more variety in vampires. I think vampires have to move away from being either completely evil or sparkly good.
Franz: They used to be the icon of horror. I think people forget that vampires used to turn into bats.
Erin: They’re vampires. They have to eat. They’re not going to drag the carcass of a deer into the forest so they can revive it. They aren’t going to be helpful.
Zeb: They need to go back to the basics. They’ve moved from Dracula to whiny good guys, and I think they need to swing back to Dracula. I’ve seen quite a few vampires in between good and evil: Dresden Files has multiple “courts” of vampires. Some of them bad and some of them really bad.
Franz: Yes, I’m tired of angsty vampires. I read about this one vampire who was all angsty and then he was bloodthirsty and killed people, but he was a lot more interesting when he got older and more complex. He wasn’t as angsty and he wasn’t as bloodthirsty. He was light hearted and pretty hilarious.
Santana: Authors shouldn’t be afraid to expand the genre–to have vampires that are neither good nor evil, but neutral. I want them as complex as real people. I want them in modern day settings dealing with our own vampire crazy culture.
Zeb: Terry Pratchett had some really cheerful vampires called Magpires who wore bright clothing but they were really evil people!
We all started citing some places that vampires still haven’t gone yet….
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And then …. they started to come up with ideas about what THEY would write about these vampires. And they were such fantastic ideas, I can’t write them here… I have to let these kids tell them. But they are brilliant.
I’m hoping that they read Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead and give us a review of the book–to see if authors were able to “expand the genre” as Santana mentioned. I’d like to see how this meets their expectations of where Vampires should be going…
Coming up, Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead will be launched in Toronto at Ad Astra, the science fiction convention there. It happens April 9-10 in two separate events: one is a the Canadian Launch on Friday night, 7pm at the World’s Biggest Bookstore. And the other is a reading on Saturday at Toronto Don Valley Hotel and Suites which is hosting Ad Astra. 
My article on Ufology in the Yukon appears now in Yukon, North of Ordinary. The magazine is the inflight mag of Air North, one of the finest airlines. I love Air North for its service, the fact that I know all the flight attendants, and for the Midnight Sun coffee and the cheesecake. I’m proud that Air North ran the article. They were both skeptical and worried that an article about UFOs in a magazine you read on an airplane might get people to thinking they were pushing the idea that UFOs exist. But they ran the article, and I’m very happy to see it there. The article focusses on the people who see UFOs, that they are normal everyday people. Ronald Reagan saw a UFO, and the Pope just okayed the existence of extraterrestrials, so things are changing for aliens—we’re getting okay with them. This article just lets you know that folks do see them, that they are normal people, and that in any other condition 32 eyewitness accounts that matched would be enough to prove something of this magnitude. But, as of yet, no spaceship has dropped enough hard evidence to make us all believe. That doesn’t stop these brave men and women who sometimes speak out, sometimes against ridicule. Many keep it to themselves. It’s good to listen to their stories and make up your mind later….
The article doesn’t itself endorse UFOs, but, like every issue, it does seek to promote the good folks of the Yukon, those who have seen UFOs and those who want to believe. God bless Yukon, North of Ordinary.
For the article follow this link to What’s Going On Up There? (there is a place there to download the whole issue as a PDF)
If you have seen something unidentified in the day or night sky and want to report it, there is a website for that as well. Martin Jasek and friends keep the UFO*BC website open for sharing experiences and for reporting sightings. If you’ve seen something, fill out this online form.
Some stunning work by Morgan Whibley, a Whitehorse based photographer. The Alley Series. (Yes, it was stunning and fun even before I was a subject.) His rules are simple:
One alley from sidewalk to sidewalk.
Ambient light only.
A different person everyday.
Seven days a week.
He’d been doing this for 43 days in a row when he ran into me. Follow the link, get stunned by his work. All Yukoners, all beautiful pictures, wonderful, fun people. They are our stories.
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But my story got me to thinking about being a writer of genre.
Morgan tells me to come into his shop, Photovision, and when I get there he cuts a piece of cardboard from a box, slaps down two markers and says, Draw. What do I draw? He’s made a speech bubble. “Whatever you want to.” I have NO idea what to put there. He wants the first things I think of. I hem and haw a bit. Suddenly, I just sketch out a design and draw Mr. Spock with a latte from Baked Cafe there. We shoot the photo in the alley.
And then, it’s over, so I think. And I’m halfway back to my truck and I think–“You fool! You could have said something important about the value of words. That words can be healing, or words can be explosive and destructive. And what did you do? You did something frivolous. And stupid–and highly derivative. Are you just a Trekkie? Is that all you are?” These were the voices in my head.
So I ran back to Morgan, grabbed him by the shirt collar. “We have to do it again!” I said. Okay, maybe I didn’t grab his shirt collar, but I was insistent that we do it again because I’ve thought of something more important to “say.” So he patiently carves out another speech bubble for me, and I draw out the symbol for Medicine (you know, the two snakes wrapped around the staff with wings–started by Moses, so long ago)–cause I’m going for “Healing Words”….
Yeah.
So, we go out into the alley so I can get shot again. And we’re both thinking the same thing, and we’re talking…maybe we’re overanalyzing, we both say.
And we take the shots. And they are highly thought out… and they say the “right thing.” But they seem orchestrated, forced.
I think, later, that THIS is the argument that every writer has with him/herself. Especially writers of any genre: humor, science fiction, romance, fantasy, western, children’s, young adult, gay, hairy monster, etc.
We think that we must say something IMPORTANT with what we write. That we have to use our considerable talent, and all writers have “considerable talent” with words, and say something like “WORLD PEACE, IDIOTS!” or “Stop oppressing us!!” or “Global Warming is REAL!” or “Whales don’t deserve to be SHOT!” And who can argue with these messages? Certainly they are important. We all know that. And certainly other people will consider you a much weightier writer, a writer with HEFT, if you can tackle Global Warming, or Teen Pregnancy, or something important, in your writing. They often give awards in that direction (and they do it in film too….).
But who’s to say that the person who laughs at my first photograph won’t be healed? Who’s to say that you can’t heal someone with words without broadcasting that you are HEALING them? Who wants to be hit over the head with a message? And why can’t REALLY good genre do everything that you need it to do–be a damn good story, with a subtle message and a lot of entertainment?
I think, as writers, we all balance between these two photos: the need to say something important, and the need to say something fun and frivolous. And we see them as two different categories. That we can’t be fun and important. We see this in many other areas too (religion, politics, leadership), but for me it resonates as the battle I fight every day: What value, I think, is Fantasy writing? How does it help the world? Shouldn’t I turn my skills to Environmental Literature?
No. You should only do that if you are called to do that. If you try to write Environmental Literature and you were born to write Children’s Books about Rockets and Squid–then you will be a very frustrated Environmental Literary Writer. Where is your passion? If you find your passion, I think you get the package deal. You will affect people in important ways by being yourself.
There is no real dichotomy between writings—there is only being true and not being true to yourself. The truth is–we need comedy, romance, westerns, mysteries, radio dramas, children’s picture books with gorillas in them–we need to laugh to fight the absurdity, we need to feel hope in the face of injustice, and we need to fantasize about escape. We need it All.
Write your part of the All.
My story, “One Nation Under Gods,” was selected to be part of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology, Tesseracts 14, edited by Brett Savory and John Robert Colombo, due out in September 2010. The Tesseracts series is devoted to Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror, and has had, as you might have guessed, 14 other volumes (a Tesseracts Q was for Quebec, and the requisite 1-13 which came before).
You might have caught me reading a portion of this at the Yukon Writers Festival a couple of years back. It involves two kids and a history test, and a complete restructuring of the United States based on values Americans, like me, hold sacred: patriotism, freedom, the just war, independence, religion. I just personified them a bit. I’m very pleased it found a home. I’m now going to start work on the novel version of this story.
The picture on the left is the construction of the Statue of Liberty, a figure which looms large on the landscape at the beginning of my story. And as I was now an immigrant to Canada, the Statue of Liberty loomed large on my new immigrant’s mind…what a dramatic beginning to a new life for those coming to America. For me, I saw her on my way out. On my drive from Texas to the Yukon, I parked my red truck in Calgary for one month, flew to Vermont to be part of a writer’s colony, and in that time, snuck down to see her. Like some mistress I was breaking up with.
How do you explain to her that you are leaving?
I put her in my story, though, and so in this way, she haunts me.
If you want to write science fiction and fantasy there is no better crucible and proving ground, classroom and community, than Clarion San Diego. I have already written a whole page on it, and updated the writers for 2010. It looks to be awesome. You have about six weeks to turn in applications to go. If you want a career in writing science fiction and fantasy, this is the right investment. After this, you don’t have to invest in another writer’s workshop for more… this is all you need. The writers are some you know and some you might not yet: Samuel R. Delany, George R.R. Martin, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Delia Sherman and Dale Bailey. The opportunities you get to move your work around and let people see it are great.
That’s us in the picture, on the bluffs outside La Jolla, near San Diego. That’s me pointing to the future. I say, “Hey, look, I can see a whole group of published writers!” And then someone says, “Out to sea, huh?” Okay, we didn’t say that. But these people became some of my closest friends.
I seem to be doing more pointing. I do that a lot. People just stare at me like I’m one of those people.
Clarion solidified my “calling”–not only because everyone sacrificed to get there, but because we were taken seriously. I wrote a lot and wrote intensely. I was challenged. Wow, was I challenged. And I experienced some great moments of my life. I would love to relive this again–and really relish it this time. You get so busy writing you sometimes forget.
If you think it’s too much, it will be. But I took a third of everything I had and put into this workshop financially, and I wasn’t the only one. I love where it brought me, and where it let me stay for six weeks, and where it’s carrying me in the future. I think you will too.
There are a lot of workshops–Odyssey, Clarion West, etc—but I think this one is the best. And if you respect the 18 other students there, you will get the most out of the workshop. If you feel defensive about your work before you go, you might not get as much out of the workshop. Because certainly the work will be up for critique–but not you. You are up for amazing moments and good, solid career information.
Go. You’ll be glad you did.
Bear Witness 