Deborah's Journal

New from Book View Cafe:

Eleven original stories by recipients of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship (2007 through 2012), plus a reprint of "Speech Sounds" by the scholarship's namesake, Octavia E. Butler. This anthology also includes a brief memoir of Butler by her Clarion classmate Vonda N. McIntyre and an introduction by Nalo Hopkinson. Edited by Nisi Shawl and published by the Carl Brandon Society, the administrator of the Butler Scholarship Fund.

Nisi Shawl is reviews editor for The Cascadia Subduction Zone, a member of the Clarion West board of directors, and a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society, which administers the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. Her collection Filter House won the 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

I grew up with a love-hate relationship with short fiction. Having to read short stories in school almost ruined them for me. Actually, the reading was fine; it was the having to answer the brain-dead, pointless, intellectually insulting questions about those stories that made me want to throw the books across the classroom. I had no idea what criteria the textbook authors were using, but if this was what short fiction was about, I could not understand why anyone would voluntarily read it.

And yet, as soon as I got a library card, I checked out volume after volume of Groff Conklin's anthologies. I read the few digest magazines in my possession so many times, I wore them out. I could almost recite some of those stories word for word. I decided that the field of short fiction was divided into two parts: the dry, tedious stuff that no one in her right mind would have anything to do with; and the cool stuff - the stories that grabbed me right away and swept me into worlds filled with surprises, nifty ideas, and no-holds-barred excitement. I could indulge myself for an entire afternoon, or sneak in one of my favorites and still have time to finish my homework. Although the prose was not of the elevated literary sort (a good thing, in my opinion) and the characters might be cardboard supporting actors for the above-mentioned Incredibly Nifty Ideas And Situations (I didn't care), these stories got the most important things right. They didn't muck around with showing off the author's vocabulary; the "point" wasn't dreary and obscure. They were complete stories, single-minded of purpose, with well-defined beginnings, middles, and ends, and the characters had actual goals and perils. These were stories I wanted to read, and hence they were what I attempted to write.

Two academic degrees and a kid later, I embarked upon a serious writing career. The conventional wisdom of that time, still held by many, was that you began by writing short fiction and then "graduated" to novels. This was supposed to teach you the fundamentals of writing. Short fiction, you understand, contains all the necessary elements, only in condensed form, like literary Campbell's Soup. Why anyone thinks it's easier to make every sentence accomplish three things when in a novel-length work it has to do only one, I don't know. In this case, short does not equal simplified. In addition, at that time there were quite a few markets for short fiction, and new ones popping up all the time (and disappearing, so it behooved the beginning writer to keep track of current listings, an art in itself).
It turned out, however, that short stories were no more difficult for me than those of any other length. It was easier to send off a short story for critique than an entire novel, not to mention the savings in copying and postage. Having to create a new world for each story gave me lots of practice. The clincher came when Marion Zimmer Bradley, with whom I'd been corresponding, told me she was going to edit an anthology of women's sword and sorcery and would I like to send her a story, no promises. My fate as a short fiction writer was sealed.

Print markets for short fiction have come and gone, editors have come and gone, and yet people persist in reading the darned things. Clearly, I'm not alone in loving good short fiction. But one of the enduring challenges has been the ephemeral nature of most magazine publications. The issue comes out one month and all is rapture and celebration. A few short weeks later, that issue has been replaced by the next, and the availability of back issues shrivels rapidly. Unless a story is reprinted in an anthology, it may be impossible to find (or to find at a price one can afford for a collector's copy) a decade or two hence. Those anthologies I loved contained reprints, "The Best Of...", but these have largely given way largely to originals. (Not that I'm complaining. I've had the pleasure of editing a number of original anthologies.)

I think that electronic publishing may be the best thing to happen to short fiction in a long while. Most of your favorite authors have backlists of those ephemeral stories. (I say most because some writers are natural novelists, and they are no less wonderful, they just don't have long bibliographies of shorter work.) Epublishing is a great way to make these available again. Shorts are usually priced so a reader can pick up one or four to explore an author's work without having to invest a great deal of money.
And shorts still offer the advantage that you can read a whole story in one sitting. In the airport or doctor's office, on your lunch break, at bedtime. Just load up a couple of dozen on your ereader and you're set. Sometimes you want the length and complexity of a novel, to spend hundreds of pages exploring a world and hanging out with characters who have become your friends. But other times, you want to jump into a story and jump out again with the full satisfaction and sense of completeness that a short story can bring.

At Book View Café, I'm embarking on an experiment in short fiction publication. Today, I offer you not one but four for your delectation. Three are fantasy, and one is science fiction. I had a wonderful time writing each of them, and I hope you'll enjoy reading them, too.



"Take two, they're small." And only $0.99 each.

mirrored from my blog.

First of all, a Happy Editor dance... [dance, dance, dance]

This is the first anthology I've edited (actually, co-edited with Phyllis Irene Radford) for Book View Cafe. It began, lo these many many months ago, with an in-house discussion along the lines of "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to..." Book View Cafe has already published several anthologies (Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls, Dragon Lords and Warrior Women -- which has a story of mine! -- The Shadow Conspiracy I and II), so there was some precedent. We knew to ask things like, Will this be reprint, original stories, or both? Will it be a benefit for BVC or will the authors receive shares of the proceeds? How will we define the theme? At a certain point, we'd reached a sufficient level of enthusiasm and clarity so that someone had to put on an organizational (aka editor's) hat.

Thinking this would be marvelous fun, I volunteered, and the way it worked out, Phyl co-edited it with me. I supplied time and my own editorial experience, and she had the expertise of working with the BVC anthology publication procedures. Because there were two of us, we could submit our own stories to one another, thereby avoiding the editing-your-own-work scenario.

One of the things I love about editing anthologies is watching the process, the landscape of that adventure, unfold, discovering moments of truth and hilarity and heart-wrenching sadness and sheer beauty and poetry in prose. Beyond Grimm was no exception. Although we started with "let's retell classic fairy tales," our imaginations took us in other directions as well - the sun-drenched islands of Greek mythology, legends from the frozen north, Arthurian tales, nursery rhymes, even my own riff on the plots of classical ballets. Fairy-tale lands, contemporary urban settings, magical and not-so-magical steeds, spells and epistles of the people's revolution, mysterious locked chambers and shape-shifters...moonlight and storms.

Here's the blurb:

Not your grandmother's fairy tales...
From the far-ranging imaginations of Book View Café authors comes this delirious collection of classic tales newly twisted into dark, dangerous, and occasionally hilarious re-tellings. From the golden isles of Greece to the frozen north, from fairytale castles to urban slums, join us on an unforgettable journey!

And....drum roll....

The Table of Contents...

Through Forests Dark and Grimm...
Hair Raising, by Pati Nagle
No Newt Taxes, by Patricia Rice
Rum Pelt Stilt’s Skin, by Alma Alexander
Of Rats and Cats and Teenagers, by Irene Radford
Tinderbox, by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Any Brave Boy, by Laura Anne Gilman

Across Golden Seas...
Elfleda, by Vonda N. McIntyre
Harpies Discover Sex, by Deborah J. Ross
To Serve A Prince, by Brenda Clough
The Rapture of Ancient Danger, by Sherwood Smith

In Another Part of the Forest...
Mending Souls, by Judith Tarr
Sister Anne, by Sylvia Kelso
Princess Dancer, by Sue Lange
Nimuë's Tale, by Madeleine E. Robins
Ricky Cowlicky, by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Little Red in the Hood, by Irene Radford

Around A Campfire...
Hero/Monster, by Amy Sterling Casil
To Ride Beyond the Wide World's End, by Judith Tarr
Turnabout, by Deborah J. Ross

Secrets Unveiled... [this last part is author bios, every bit as delightful and fanciful as the stories they contributed!]
Here's where to buy it, for only $4.99.

The cover photo was taken by my husband, Dave Trowbridge, and is the maze in our back yard.

Mirrored from my blog.

Spent far too much time determining that the mail-order prescription for our senior cat (perched on my shoulder in the icon) has been delivered but heck if I can figure out where I put it. A helpful person at Pet Meds is sending out one of the refills. The original will almost certainly turn up when the refill arrives.

Drove into Santa Cruz to leave off the June newsletters at the Quaker Meetinghouse, since I will be walking with the meeting's contingent in the Pride Parade on Sunday. Went by health food store and regular market. We are now supplied with milk, cottage cheese, eggs, frozen calcium-enriched orange juice, 5 lbs of organic carrots, canola oil, some interesting-looking local goat cheese, and a few other necessities.

Did innernet stuff to calm down. Put up this month's free short story on my blog.

Proofed "A Borrowed Heart" for F & SF and am feeling immensely pleased with it. Wrote a page or two on The Children of Kings.

It's such a cold, gray, drippy day that I'm amazed I got anything accomplished.

I don't write a lot of short fiction these days, but when I do, I remember how much fun they are. I've had a story in the almost-ready stage for awhile now, and have been wrestling with a few details, mostly names of places that feel right for the culture and aren't alphabet-soup made-up words.

One name came to me in the shower last night. Normally I take really short showers and don't stand there cogitating. This was lightning-strike time. Once I had that name, everything else fell into place. Now all I have to do is nestle the names into their proper places, one more go-through and it should be done!

I'm immensely pleased.