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fiction short stories spec fic work in progress

stocktaking, early spring

Tl;dr.

Winter 2010-2011 was not enormously successful in terms of getting things done. Well, I made a lot of books for other people and one for myself. But not a great deal of consummated writing. Stories I worked on, ought to have finished, but did not:

“Liam and the Changelings”—the fourth Liam story, following “Liam and the Wild Fairy” (published in Icarus #5, Summer 2010); “…and the Ordinary Boy”; “…and His Dads.” There should be seven of them eventually, with “Changelings” to be followed by “…and the Coward,” “…and the Pornographer,” and “Liam Discovers Fairyland.” 200 words of the most recent attempt to figure out what the story means to do.

“The Discovery of Vinhático”—a tale of an American tourist visiting an isolated island in the Atlantic (based on Madeira) and his encounter with its fourteenth-century Scots discoverer. I’ve been trying to get this one to work since September 2009. 5,000 words in the current, seventh attempt.

“A Prince of Antrazza”—novelette or novella of planetary romance in the mode of ER Burroughs’s Barsoom stories. Intended for a market that may not in fact exist. Must check. 5,000 words.

“Handless. Heartless.”—longish urban fantasy of an apprentice wizard, his witch mother, and a lost boy. Loosely based on several variants of the fairy tale “The Girl without Hands” and riffing on motifs from John Masefield’s The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. 8,400 words.

“Seb and Duncan and the Sirens”—what it says on the tin: a story about Homer’s sirens on a contemporary Greek island, involving an American nerd college student and his jock best friend. Meant for a forthcoming anthology of fantasy stories about uncanny inhabitants of the sea … except, of course, classical sirens weren’t aquatic. So that’s one problem, of several. 6,000 words.

“The Lagoon of DEATH” (working title, obvs)—a different stab at a sea story for the above anthology. Polynesian (not really) rite-of-passage story: a youth deliberately stranded on a desert island discovers something in the lagoon. Barely commenced: 700 words.

“Stealth vs The Anger”—response to an invitation to submit to a forthcoming anthology of stories about queer costumed supervillains. Sadly or otherwise, this will probably continue to go nowhere. I was never a superhero/comic-book nerd and suspect it’s too late to become fatally interested in the genre. Stalled at pretty much the same 600 words since this time last year.

“Davio under the Hill”—meant to be a highly erotic, highly stylized story of a spear carrier from the Orlando furioso who wanders into Aubrey Beardsley’s take on the legend of Venus and Tannhäuser. I had a market in mind for this one, too, but the deadline swift approaches and I expect the story would too literary for the audience anyway. Only way to make it more obscure would be to write it in ottava rima. Which I might just do! 500 words.

“The Box of Delights”—meant to be my first stab at steampunk, a genre I fail to understand. Possibly why it refuses to go anywhere? 250 words.

“Black Dog of the East”—another attempt to jump on a popular bandwagon: an urban fantasy about a werebeast. The anthology I planned to submit it to closed in November, I think. Oh well. 200 words.

Story completed, submitted, sold:

“Captain of the World”—forthcoming in Speaking Out, edited by Steve Berman (Bold Strokes Books/Soliloquy, Fall 2011). Contemporary non-fantastical story of a gay Turkish-American soccer goalkeeper. So that was satisfying. Except a few days after selling the 7,000-word story I got this notion of expanding it into a 60,000-word YA novel. And that’s not going so well.

Completed stories out on submission:

“Then We Went There”—5,500 words. Starts out as a high-school-bullying story, turns into something stranger. I love this story (partly because it was the first thing I finished after The New People and the first completed short story in ten years), but sympathetic early readers have been baffled and editorial response—when not boilerplate sorry can’t use it—has crucially misunderstood what I was trying to do: those aren’t bugs, they’re features. Or I’m deluded. Can eleven markets (so far) be wrong? Yes. Yes, dammit, they can.

“Tattooed Love Boys”—10,000 words. Fantastical adventures of two young American siblings in the contemporary hinterland of Charlotte Brontë’s Labassecour. I’m not the only one who loves this one: early reader Steve Berman wants to have written it himself. Unfortunately, the markets that seemed appropriate have been cursed (two of them died, though one was resurrected) and/or VERY SLOW. The third has had it for going on six months and I don’t realistically expect a decision anytime soon. Augh.

“Like Spinning Stars, Like Flowers”—7,000 words. A finalist, but not winner or runner up, in the 2011 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Short Fiction Contest. It remains unclear whether my story will be included in the May 2011 anthology from the Queer Mojo imprint of Rebel Satori Press. The festival’s dogged failure to communicate frustrates me a good deal. All my info comes from press releases.

“Liam and the Ordinary Boy” and “Liam and His Dads”—4,500 and 6,000 words, respectively. Not a lot of hope for these, frankly. Instalments in an on-going series, don’t really stand up individually. Lethe Press wants to follow up The Abode of Bliss with a collection of fantastical stories, in 2012 maybe; my intention is to include the entire Liam saga. If I ever finish it.

“The Conjuror of Irem”—7,000 words. Bronze-age Crete. Cthulhu Mythos. S&M. Not a horror story and the Lovecraftian motifs possibly too subtly deployed. I’m always making things difficult for myself. Seventh rejection should arrive any day now. Bar “Captain of the World,” the last thing I finished: in August.

Overall (sing it together): Disappointing. But … but … BUT:

An unexpected thing about The Unexpected Thing, my enormous work in progress, turned out to be that I was incapable of working on it during autumn and winter. It happened in 2009, four months after I started: stalled out sometime in October. And again in 2010: nothing after September. It’s a summer-vacation story, maybe that’s why. I am morbidly affected by climate.

Although the first two weeks of spring in Rhode Island have not been especially springlike—wretchedly chilly with intervals of rain, sleet, and snow (snowing right now!)—it appears just crossing the vernal equinox may have been sufficient to convince my hindbrain. Three chapters drafted in seven days. Seven to go, if I manage to stick to the plan. A reread of the first fifty chapters made me cry four times. No, not from disgust or despair.

Then the miserable prospect of hacking out 30,000 or more words to get it down to reasonable size, running it past early readers, and the still more miserable prospect of putting together a pitch package and, you know, finding a publisher.

The writer’s life, it is blissful.

Categories
The Abode of Bliss

look at that

Categories
fiction Lethe Press SF short stories The Abode of Bliss Turkey

divers notes

Multiple Lambda Award-winning writer Michael Thomas Ford—most notorious, perhaps, for the essay collection Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and its sequels and the multi-volume Jane Austen-as-vampire spectacular commencing with Jane Bites Back, but treasured as well for many other books of fiction and non-fiction for adults and young people—has this to say about The Abode of Bliss:

Waiting fifteen years to read something new from Alex Jeffers was well worth it. This collection is a treasure chest of perfectly-polished gems, each one radiating an inner beauty brought out by evocative prose, rich characterizations, and a strong sense of place. A rare treat indeed, it is over all too soon and leaves you longing for more.

Can anybody see how hard I’m blushing?

Advance Reader’s Copies (ARCs) of Abode are beginning to be distributed. Maybe I’ll hold a competition to give one away to an adoring fan? Don’t all comment at once!


M-Brane SF Quarterly #2, the print compendium of issues 22 (November 2010), 23 (December), and 24 (January 2011) of the e-zine M-Brane SF, is now available, featuring some additional material not seen in the monthly e-issues. Now you can own your very own hard copy of my short science-fiction story “The Arab’s Prayer” from 24.


Elisa Rolle, a major opinion setter in the fascinating and occasionally terrifying (to gay male writers) world of M/M fiction, has posted a flattering (if slightly bewildered) review of Do You Remember Tulum?, for which I am grateful.


Those blushes may actually be fever. I have a miserable cold and must go back to bed with a posset or something. Whiskey, maybe.

Categories
design fiction The Abode of Bliss

site housekeeping update

I have added an entry for The Abode of Bliss on the books page as well as giving it its own page. My efficient WordPress guru added a thumbnail ikon in the visual-navigation column on the left of the front page.

Additionally, a few new books have been added to the designs pages since the last time I had anything to say about them: Blame It on the Raging Hormones by Nathan Goh; The March by Walter Holland; Prodigal: Variations by Ed Madden; and Mere Mortals by Erastes. Coming soon: When the de la Cruz Family Danced by Donna Miscolta (awaiting a high-res version of the cover design); Slant by Timothy Wang (awaiting author approval and final design adjustments); Promises, Promises (a scandalous and delicious romp of a lesbian fairy tale) by L-J Baker (awaiting cover illustration); Coast to Coast by François L’Érotique (awaiting interior illustrations); a new edition of Wakefield Poole’s Dirty Poole, updated to tie in with the forthcoming movie about the legendary director of Boys in the Sand (awaiting interior photos and cover image).

Categories
design Lethe Press short stories

design news & reading recco

Jesse Bullington, author of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death, has written a perceptive and complimentary review of Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire for on-line ’zine Innsmouth Free Press. I’m particularly chuffed that Jesse begins his review with a shout-out to the fantastic imagery of cover photographer Katharina Fösel and to my interior design. Engines is about my favorite of the books I’ve produced in the last six months—vicious, haunting, erotic,  beautifully written—even though I’m not ordinarily a fan of horror stories. I urge you to buy it yourself or petition your local public library to add it to the collection.


Categories
fiction Lethe Press short stories The Abode of Bliss Turkey

march writing update 2

It has been confirmed. This coming August, Lethe Press will issue The Abode of Bliss: ten stories for Adam, a book I wrote a very long time ago. The back-cover précis:

Explaining himself to himself and to the man he loves, Ziya tells Adam the stories of his life:

A bilingual childhood and youth in cosmopolitan İstanbul, city of the world’s desire, and the Aegean resort of Bodrum. A bewildering trip by ship and train and jet across Europe and the Atlantic to college in America, that strange and terrifying country. Friendships, passionate affairs, one-night stands, rape—a richly dissatisfying erotic education. A wedding, a death, an act of inexplicable violence—a meeting.

Intricate as Ottoman miniatures, Ziya’s stories reveal a world unsuspected: the world we live in.

Four of the ten stories have been published previously: “The World of Men”  in 1996; “The Strait” in 1998; “Kindness” in 1999; “Ramazan in the Gardens of Paradise” in 2002. PDF copies are available for download on the stories page. Cover and interior samples to be posted when finalized.

At some point, I will get back to work on The Gate of Felicity: ten stories for Ziya, the companion volume.

Categories
fiction football (soccer) short stories YA

march writing update

This time with real writing!

Last fall my friend Steve Berman sold an anthology idea to the good people at Bold Strokes Books. Speaking Out would collect new stories of YA GLBTQ pride. He asked me to write one of them. Specifically, he said, “Write me a story about a gay Muslim at an American high school.”

So I did! In less than a week! 5400 words about a deeply closeted Turkish-American soccer goalkeeper and the circumstances that lead him to come out to his straight best friend. Some of my writing buddies (who know nothing about soccer and care less) really liked “A Shot on Goal.”

When I sent it to Steve, unfortunately, it turned out that the “deeply closeted” part was deeply problematic for the book he had in mind. My character was too conflicted to be proud of himself. Steve and I went ’round and ’round a bit until I got irritated by his utopian leanings and said, rather dogmatically, that the kinds of characters he was looking for were kids I could admire and sympathize with, sure, but not empathize or identify with, so I expected I couldn’t write a story to fit his brief and didn’t wish to try.

Come 23 February. Steve’s deadline to turn in the manuscript of Speaking Out is barrelling down—book needs to be finished by 28 February and he still has holes. Still irritated—I thought “A Shot on Goal” was a great story and I wasn’t likely to sell it anywhere else—I told him again, no go. Not from me.

Then I tried to take a nap. Hadn’t slept for thirty hours. Now, I’m an heroic insomniac if it’s dark outside but put me in bed during daylight and bang! Last Wednesday excepted. Steve’s problem and my intransigence are rattling around. What if…? What if…? What if the catalytic event during the soccer match in “A Shot on Goal” went slightly differently?

New story—in two and half days! “Captain of the World.” 6700 words. Shares eight or ten paragraphs, some stray other sentences, and the basic set up with “A Shot on Goal” and the characters have the same names. But it’s a different story (more soccer! yay!) with different aims, and after a few tiny changes this one met with Steve’s approval.

Bold Strokes Books’ Soliloquy imprint will issue Speaking Out in November.