Jerome Stueart

Fantasy Magazine Accepts My Story

jstueart4 Comments

Solar Ikon's Cheers on Flickr, creative commons license“Moon Over Tokyo Through Leaves in the Fall” found a home at Fantasy magazine, an online fantasy webzine. It’s a great webzine and I know it will be a good home for the story. They really treat their contributors well. They spotlight authors with interviews, and the website layout is very professional. It’s a solid venue for all types of fantasy and magic realism stories.

The story I submitted had to do with wine-making, hence the picture. This is from Solar Ikon’s Flickr collection. The story won’t be on the website for awhile, but it’s nice to have the acceptance. May the new year bring us all ….Acceptance. Cheers!

_____________

For guidelines to Fantasy magazine

Writing Classes at Yukon College–Get Your Novels Out

jstueart1 Comment

Hey, Novelists!

For some of you Nanowrimo was a great experience–but what next??  Or some of you have an old novel kicking around in your closet.  Dust it off, get it ready.

I’m teaching two courses at Yukon College in the Winter, both of them are Fiction Writing Workshops.  You can read more about them if you click on Writing Classes up on the Menu Bar.

In brief:  Monday night is for novels that are more realistic–they don’t have magic, or time travel, or science fiction, or monsters in them.  They are set in this world, working with people as we know them.  They can be set in the past.

If you have at least 3/4 of a novel manuscript through a first draft, you are welcome to join the course.  If you don’t have that much done, that’s okay to join too, as long as you know that a majority of people will be working on novels, and that class time discussion will be focussed on longer story arcs.  People with novels are required to workshop 3 chapters over the course of the semester, comment on other people’s chapters, and with a group, present one novel to the class, one of the ones that we will be reading (we have three on the schedule), and  turning in to the class a synopsis of your novel.

The practical side is that in April you will need one synopsis and the first three chapters of your novel ready to show editors who are coming to the Yukon!!  Don’t pass up this opportunity. BIG name people are coming to look for manuscripts and help people move towards publication.  They will take our class to the next level, much farther than most could take you.  They will also take you to that next level if you AREN’T a part of the class–the Editor’s Weekend is a Yukon Wide event… (oh, it won’t be named Editor’s Weekend…I just made that up….).

Tuesday nights are for those novelists with a speculative element in their novel.  There are different considerations when you are working with speculative elements and you will want people who are familiar with those elements.  The rest of the class will be VERY similar to the Monday night group–all that’s different is that we will be working with texts that are outside of realism, even just slightly.

The courses are 16 weeks long, are the cheapest prices in any college in North America (dare anyone to beat $150 per course), and I think you will get more bang for your buck.  Workshops are good to use to get a good opinion of what to look at more closely.  Only come if you are ready to receive the opinions of 15 other readers, and to consider their thoughts on your work.

Come and Join us for a good workshop experience!  CRWR 241: Fiction Writing Workshop (Mondays–realism; Tuesdays–Speculative) Starts Jan 5 at Yukon College!

Muslim Punk Rock, or What Fiction Can Do

jstueart3 Comments

23moth_muslimThis just in from the New York Times. Michael Muhammad Knight wrote a book about Muslim-Americans forming a punk band in Buffalo New York. From the article by Christopher Maag, “Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book“:

Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called “The Taqwacores,” about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo.

“This book helped me create my identity,” said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Conn.

A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. “When I finally read the book for myself,” she said, “it was an amazing experience.”

The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture.

As a writer, the article is fascinating to me. Fiction has the power to give method and ideas to real people, helping to create reality. Now Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight isn’t gonna make vampires out of anyone–but it might make teenage girls want a chaste boyfriend. But Taqwacores imagined a reality for alienated Muslim teens in the States, a way to cope, a way to establish a new identity, a counter culture. The book empowers people. Through fiction.

Countless movies have played on the idea that a writer could create reality through writing about it–they are mostly comedies. But the concept, I think, is a powerful one. What if –instead of reflecting culture–we created it? What if we consciously created something that was not there before–something that could happen–so that it inspires others to create it?

Science Fiction often does this in reverse. Create something that we DON’T want around and then destroy it. And thank God we got rid of “it.” I think the Shine Anthology is seeking to help us imagine some creative solutions–and I still encourage you to submit. But I want to keep harping on the idea that you, as writers, can change the world. Michael M. Knight did. (I love that his name is the same as the hero from Knight Rider, the 80s TV show (with recent makeover)).

Go create something you want to see that doesn’t exist right now. Like Knight, create a subculture for disenfranchised teens. Or create the ultimate youth center in your town and inspire someone to imagine the real one. Or show oppressed people in power, how a family operates using green technology in their house, believable, doable, possible things. And then I hope your novel is photocopied and passed around and around and around. The world.

Hearing me read my story in On Spec [online]

jstueartLeave a comment

os_spr07Hey, you can hear me reading from my science fiction story, “Why the Poets were Banned from the City” online at On Spec: Follow this link here.

It originally appeared in the Spring 2007 issue that you see on the left. What I loved about the cover art by Robert Pasternak is that it is a wave of white horses, exactly how Whitehorse was named (for the rapids and their uncanny resemblance to white horses). It was a nice piece of synchronicity for me as a writer.

The piece is only 5 minutes long, but you can read the rest in the Spring 2007 back issue.

Much gratitude to Diane Walton and Colin Lynch of On Spec for asking me to do it. And for a great friend who helped me record it. Thanks!

On Spec is dedicated to publishing Canadian Speculative Fiction and is always looking for more. Hop around on their website this holiday and see what they’ve got.