Categories
fantasy fiction Lethe Press short stories spec fic You Will Meet a Stranger…

voices in my head

I will confess—nay, glory in—the fact that I nearly always read my own work aloud at some point. It’s the surest method I know to discover clumsy sentences and faulty rhythms, especially after one has stared at the black marks on the screen so long they’ve begun to make sense.

However, I am entirely unable to deal with audiobooks. Soon as I hear a professional orator begin narrating a story, my brain makes a frantic scrabbling rush in search of distraction. (This is not something that often happens when I read print.)

However however, I am well aware freak-mutants exist who adore the things. I expect they aren’t even the strangest monsters inhabiting this globe of ours.

For those mutant freaks, then, this note: Lethe Press and Audible.com have released an audiobook of my collection of wonder stories You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home narrated by one Simon Ralph. Happened about a week and a half ago. I’m told, indeed, it’s Lethe’s audio bestseller for March.

51xVcfAANPL._SL300_

(I listened to about thirty seconds before I was driven screaming into a hell dimension of horror and remembered I could turn it off.)

But for you, monster, audiobook aficionado, here are links: Amazon or Audible. There’s even a teaser for my next novel, That Door Is a Mischief, in the form of the original short-story version of chapter one. Perhaps Simon Ralph’s melodious vocal stylings can stall your anticipation of that release. (September, probably.)

Categories
fantasy fiction Liam in the World spec fic That Door Is a Mischief work in progress

Liam end note

Well, I didn’t want to write it. I feel Liam might be better pleased if I hadn’t written it, if I’d left him all hopeful and happy at the end of chapter seven. But it nagged and nagged and demanded to be written so it was: an eighth and definitively final chapter of the novel now titled That Door Is a Mischief. Which is pretty much novel sized: 66,000 words. Of which roughly 50,000 were written since the turn of the year.

And I am wrung out.

So. Commission cover art. Schedule. Perform final-final polish. Typeset. Send out for review. Publish. Summer 2014, maybe?

Categories
fantasy fiction Liam in the World work in progress

Liam progress note

Gentle Publisher has forbidden the title I chose for the Compleat Liam, oh, four years ago. It’s boring and unevocative, he says, won’t attract readers. At the moment he issued the ultimatum I told him this had never happened to me before, in the nearly forty years since I sold my first story: but on reflection I realize it isn’t so. My second pro sale was retitled for similar cause and the third for reasons having to do with long forgotten sci-fi politics of the day. So be it. Ave atque vale, Liam in the World.

Because he is not entirely heartless (or maybe he is), Gentle Publisher came up with a list of five alternate titles. Following a strategy I’ve only recently noticed other writers using, they’re all direct quotes from the text itself.

  1. Fairy Teeth
  2. A Literal Fairy
  3. That Door Is a Mischief and My Heart Is Sorrowful
  4. All the Feral Promises
  5. In the Grotty Mirror

As you see, I’ve dismissed three out of hand. Doubtless he expected me to. Number 4 is perhaps too…Sweet Savage Love? Or maybe I’m thinking of a movie from the 1950s.

Number 3 I love. I loved it in context when I wrote the line of dialogue, love it again divorced from context. But does it work as a title? First of all, the last time I used a book title similarly lengthy, You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home, the title proved a mischief—misremembered, misquoted, mangled, once ignored entirely in favor of the subtitle Wonder Stories. Nor will I soon forget the snarls of irritation that greeted the novelette title “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy.”

Second, I wouldn’t wish people to assume Liam’s book is some lugubrious recitation of sorrows or any variety of tragical Faerie Ballad: it is quite other than either.

Third, the mischievous door, although present in the first chapter, doesn’t assume its true importance till quite near book’s end.

So I will ponder and fret a while longer. There’s time. I await responses (thoughts, critiques, rippings of new assholes) from a couple of people I sent the current draft to who have more pressing demands on their time. As do we all. I have two (at least) books to design and lay out and a couple of novel-length MSs to proofread prior to layout.

Categories
awards Deprivation erotica fantasy Lethe Press magical realism The Padişah’s Son and the Fox

multiple finalist

Weallll. This is a startle. Just got off the phone (how I hate the phone!) with Gentle Publisher, who informs me I am a double finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, longlists shortlists (oh god I’m tired) announced this morning.

1. In the category of LGBT Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror: Deprivation; or, Benedetto Furioso: an oneiromancy.

Deprivation

2. In the category of Gay Erotica: The Padişah’s Son and the Fox.

padishah_testcov02

So. I’m in more than a bit of a fog just now for other reasons entirely and will confess that, although Gentle Publisher listed off my competition in both categories, I don’t quite recall. And am far too bleary to go look at the list. Except that Deprivation’s up against two books I am very fond of, Death by Silver by Melissa Scott & Amy Griswold (Lethe Press) and Light by ’Nathan Burgoine (Bold Strokes Books), so when I lose to one or the other I won’t be all that upset. If I lose to one of the other seven (! I believe GP said) finalists, possibly a different story.

Winners announced sometime in May, I think 2 June 2014, at some kind of folderol ceremony in Manhattan. Possibly by then I will be awake and competent again. Probably not in Manhattan. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

[Edited 8 March to add a few links.]