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Deprivation Ivri Lider Oregon self That Door Is a Mischief The New People The Padişah’s Son and the Fox The Young Professionals work in progress

oh, hi

Three and a half months since my last post. Wow. I never intended it and it doesn’t feel that long. The calendar says so, though: the calendar and the season, which—here in Eugene—is pretty definitely spring although people where I used to live are still digging out from under Snowpocalypse ’15. (Can’t say I’m sorry to have missed that.) The calendar, the season, the randy neighborhood frogs ribbitting all night long, and my beard.

Yeah, laugh if you want, I’m growing a fancy big beard. I never believed I could! One of the tragedies of my genetic heritage—I’ll never go bald up top but never have sufficient hair elsewhere to please me. But maybe I was wrong! (Not about my chest, dammit.) This selfie is actually a month old: there’s more to the thing now. I’m going to stick flowers in it like an Instagram hipster. And there will be flowers.

The crocuses in the wooden planter are nearly over and the dianthus above too heavy but I planted a bunch of flower seeds that ought to poke their tiny green heads out of the soil any day now. Lobelia, love-in-a-mist, sweet alyssum, sweet peas, nasturtiums. Iceland poppies and cosmos to come when I pick up a suitable planter—maybe later today. All suitable candidates. So, you know, I’m generally pretty cheerful right about now despite badly screwed-up sleep patterns and a sinus infection that will not quit.

Reasons to be cheerful:

  • Mr ’Nathan Burgoine was a vocal Liam fan long before I completed That Door Is a Mischief so I’m p.r.e.t.t.y well convinced this complimentary review isn’t all down to my naming a couple of characters after him (and killing ’em both off)…or dedicating the book to him.
  • I’d never even heard of Big Gay Horror Fan before my attention was drawn to this review. It made me smile.
  • Mr Jerry L. Wheeler of Out in Print has been kindly disposed toward my work in the past but I kind of wondered whether he had too many review copies in his queue to squeeze my new one in. I was wrong. And pleased.
  • Oh, and there’s a gentleman who calls himself Constant Reader when he ventures into the swamp of the Amazon. (I know his real name. He’s been writing me kind letters and e-mails about my fiction for, goddamn, nearly twenty years. And I, I fear, am a rotten return correspondent.) Just recently he took it into his head (to cheer me up) to post extremely thoughtful reviews in aforementioned swamp. So far he’s hit three, including the very first review ever of the M-Brane Press Double of which half is my The New People; Deprivation; and The Padişah’s Son and the Fox. Thank you, sir.

 

  • Mr Ivri Lider (him again, you say) released his new studio album, Ha’ahava Ha’zot Shelanu [This Love of Ours], last month. I was briefly too broke to justify purchasing it—a tragedy of epic proportions—but now it’s on endless repeat on my iTunes. It strikes me as his most varied, accessible, and foot-tapping group of tracks since Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim [The New People] but what do I know, I don’t understand a word of Hebrew. Anyway, it makes me happy. Word is his side project, the ¥oung Professionals, will have a new album out soon as well. Those lyrics will be English, I expect.

 

  • The black widow in the corner of my bathroom (I’m convinced it’s a black widow) hasn’t bitten me yet. Nor Curious Jane, who follows me downstairs nearly every time. You can bet I’m keeping that door closed. I had forgotten how much more creepity-crawly indoor fauna there is on the West Coast than in New England.

 

  • It’s not expected to rain today.

 

  • I’m writing again.

Least likely for last, eh? I have a new novel in mind. First chapter-plus and a good bit of background material composed since early February. I’m not prepared to say much about it yet—so the in progress tab up top will continue to default to Bedtime Stories for the Boy Himself, Perhaps, a worthy project returned to the trunk again—except that the working title is The Goblin’s Bride, it starts out in Eugene (right here in a version of this very apartment!), and the lead character is a girl. A young woman, I mean—she’s seventeen in chapter one. For the moment her name is Helen.

 

Categories
BrazenHead fiction novelette SF short stories spec fic The Abode of Bliss The New People The Unexpected Thing

the year that was

Well, it’s a tradition, I suppose, the year-end sum up, hardly subverted by being posted on the first day of the new year instead of the last of the old. So.

In 2011, I published two books, a marvel of unprecedented proportion.

The New People (and its companion-between-the-covers, Brandon Bell’s Elegant Threat) made little impression on the world that Google can discover. Sad but not surprising for a book from a micro press whose publisher’s real life (read: more-than-full-time job) seems to have swallowed him whole in the last six months and at least one of whose authors is pathologically averse to self promotion. But it’s out there.

The Abode of Bliss: Ten Stories for Adam did somewhat better. The first month’s excellent reviews are catalogued here. Since, the estimable Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews published George Seaton’s appreciation. Hilicia of Impressions…of a Reader, who reviewed Abode very thoughtfully back in August, named it as her favorite LGBT read of the year and among her three favorites in any genre, and I am immensely gratified. [edited to add: Novelist and critic Alan Chin calls Abode one of his five favorites of 2011.] The book’s publisher, in his own year-end sum up, lists it among the titles he’s most proud to have released in 2011.

I published four stories, a personal best as far as my inadequate records reveal.

“The Arab’s Prayer” appeared in January in the second-anniversary issue of Chris Fletcher’s ’zine M-Brane SF (#24) and the print M-Brane SF Quarterly (#2) in March, some months before his job swallowed him up and the ’zine went on hiatus. Chris has plans to revive M-Brane SF in different, probably less frequent than monthly, form in the near future. Its return will be welcomed. Meanwhile, “The Arab’s Prayer” has been selected as the lead story in Wilde Stories 2012: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction.

“Captain of the World,” a story I was hounded into writing, appeared in the anthology of inspirational stories for GLBT teens Speaking Out, edited by Steve Berman and released by Bold Strokes Books in September. There is some thought of expanding the story into a novel. We’ll see if anything comes of that.

“Liam and the Ordinary Boy,” second in an on-going series, appeared soon after in the fall issue (#10) of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction. First in the series, “Liam and the Wild Fairy,” previously appeared in Icarus #5 (Summer 2010). Whether Icarus will take the third, “Liam and His Dads,” or the contemplated but as yet unwritten fourth through seventh remains in question.

“Turning,” finally, a long magical-realist story, appeared in the first issue of Chelsea Station. Under an earlier title, “Like Spinning Stars, Like Flowers,” it was one of fourteen finalists selected by John Berendt for the annual short-fiction competition of the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival. Not one of the ten selected for the annual anthology, though. Just as well, perhaps: Chelsea Station’s editor, Jameson Currier, suggested several very productive changes.

I sold two long stories to appear before the midpoint of 2012. Both, coincidentally (they were written two years apart), tales of American teenagers on vacation in Europe. “Tattooed Love Boys,” written first, sold second, will appear on line at GigaNotoSaurus.org, probably in March. “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy” is scheduled for May, in Boys of Summer, Steve Berman and Bold Strokes Books’ follow up to Speaking Out.

I wrote three stories—not a record, but not bad. All, oddly or not, for projects edited by Steve Berman. The aforementioned “Captain of the World” in late winter and “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel…” in late summer/early fall. Between them, “Ban’s Dream of the Sea,” which may or may not appear in The Touch of the Sea, an anthology of marine fantasy scheduled for July publication.

I sold a collection of fantastical stories, tentatively titled You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home, which Lethe Press has scheduled for July release, just in time for my mumblety-fifth birthday. The table of contents keeps changing but needs to be fixed soon, as production of Advance Reader Copies can’t be delayed much past February. But I have to write one more story….

As editor/designer/entrepreneur, I published the first BrazenHead novella, Dayna Ingram’s ferocious and delightsome Eat Your Heart Out, which garnered BrazenHead’s parent Lethe Press its first starred review in Publishers Weekly and, I’m told, is selling briskly. (More briskly than my books.) Any day now, I hope to see the revised MS of the novella I expect to release as BrazenHead #2. Submissions are always open to works of queer spec fic between thirty and sixty thousand words.

As designer, I laid out a bunch of handsome books, the last several months’ worth of which have not yet made an appearance in the gallery. Because I have been busy with other things. Later in the day, perhaps.

As novelist, I completed a draft of The Unexpected Thing, an immense novel that I love unreservedly. Whether anybody else will love it I have no notion: potential early readers have mostly begged off—“144,000 words? I don’t have time!” they cry. Reasonably enough, I suppose. (No, I don’t.) Anyway, one of these days soon I’ll pester my agent, who’s had a copy of the MS since May. One of these days soon I’ll come up with an all-consuming project to take its place in my head.

And that’s it. What, you expected a recount of my personal, everyday life and interactions with the real world? Not bloody likely. (Charlotte and Jane are both well.)

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BrazenHead design fiction short stories The Abode of Bliss The New People

sundries

A few things going on.

Seem to be in the process of making BrazenHead’s first acquisition, a little book the choice of which may surprise some people who know me. It surprises me. More dirt when the contract is issued/signed.

Trying to complete a short story for an anthology whose editor has graciously extended the deadline for me. But I don’t know, possibly I’ve forgotten how to write short stories. Ergh.

Possible sale of a different, older story, but only have verbal commitment at this point so don’t like to post details.

Latest design project, a reissue by Bear Bones Books of Jeff Mann’s 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning (for Gay Erotica) A History of Barbed Wire, went from determining page margins to production in an unprecedented three days. One of those days involved a fourteen-hour stint with Adobe InDesign that I should, for my health, have broken up over two or three days. I’m too exhausted to prepare screenshots for the designs page. Print edition should be available via the usual on-line booksellers within the week, e-books when the e-bookmeister can get to it.

The New People / Elegant Threat, an M-Brane SF Double by Jeffers & Bell, is out there, waiting for you to buy it. If you already have, Thanks! I’d love to know what you think.

The Abode of Bliss: ten stories for Adam by Jeffers will go to press in two weeks or so. Official publication date 1 August 2011. You should pre-order it.

Jane and Charlotte will celebrate a (courtesy) birthday this coming Thursday, along with the French Republic. They will be ten. Also my birthday. I will be mumblety-four.

 

Misses Jane Austen (front) & Charlotte Brontë (rear)
Categories
novella Rahab SF The New People

freshly hatched

All new and…well, not shiny, new and matte!

 

AX has a novella to read. Aside, that is, from the BrazenHead slushpile.


A minor note: Through some eminently forgiveable oversight, the acknowledgments I meant to append to The New People were left out. So here they are:

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Betty Harrington for a sensitive, insightful, tactful reading of the first draft.

Thanks to Christopher Fletcher for publishing this later draft, to Jeff Lund for the artwork, and to Brandon Bell for sharing the covers.

Thanks to the late Terry Carr and to Robert Silverberg who, eons ago, rightfully declined to publish the first attempt at wrestling some of these themes into submission.

Thanks especially to Ivri Lider for the music that inspired and soundtracked the work, notably the exhilarating CD Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim and the blistering singles “Rak Tevakesh” and “Hasadot Ha’adumim.”

 

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fiction novella Rahab SF The New People

glimpsed in the wild

In its native environment, on the virtual shelves at barnesandnoble.com, the rare and elusive M-Brane Double:

Evidence of its passage has also been discovered in the Amazon basin:

And the Double has been sighted in pampered captivity, on the St Louis, MO, deck of M-Brane publisher Chris Fletcher and cover artist Jeff Lund (Jeff, let it be noted, is more elusive than the Double and is not seen here):

 

Intrepid naturalists may read Chris’s introductions to my and Brandon Bell’s novellas here (as well as order the Double direct—Chris has indicated he will keep the Special Bonus Lots of Extra M-Brane Goodies Offer open indefinitely). Brandon has a number of posts about his Elegant Threat on his own blog. I have the first chapter of The New People posted here and a page on the work’s inspirations and composition here.

What off earth are you waiting for?

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fiction first look novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

M-Brane SF Double #1

Today was meant to be the release date for M-Brane SF Double #1, partly in honor of the birthday of Jeff Lund, who created the nifty cover art and who puts up with M-Brane publisher Chris Fletcher on a daily basis. Alas, the coincidence of a tiny glitch in the cover layout (not Jeff’s responsibility) and the long Memorial Day weekend has caused a delay. A week perhaps. Which may mean the pre-publication special is still open: the print Double plus a passel of electronic-form M-Brane merch, all for the low low price of $14.95. Why not head over to M-Brane Press and try?

Meanwhile, in my quixotic fashion, I will continue to claim 31 May 2011 as official pub date. And so, to welcome you into my half of the book, herewith the 1,300-word first chapter of my ~30,000-word novella.


The New People

 

1: Haven-city, Haven-archipelago: EJ 313 Zizdy 03

Running blind, he collided with somebody or something, stumbled, nearly fell, but kept running. The endless clamor in his ears was like surf magnified, roaring. Surely people were screaming, sirens wailing. The phone was out—even if he could have heard anything under the roar—a dead, cold weight on the bone of his jaw. The second time, he couldn’t keep his balance. Unseen paving rushed up to strike palms and knees, hard and hot. He rolled onto his shoulder. Something punched his side and he continued rolling until the low seawall stopped him. He kept blinking, trying to see, but there was only light. He felt the inarticulate grunts and moans in his throat but couldn’t hear them, couldn’t stop them. Pavement shuddered under his cheek as the tower continued to collapse. Shuddering himself, he lay there for what seemed like a very long time, arms crooked around his head, knees pulled up to protect his belly, panting, sobbing.

Eventually the throbs of light in his eyes began to slow and dim, though the dull roar continued in the bones of his skull. When he could distinguish the movements of his fingers, he sat up, leaning against the wall. The fog of brightness made everything hazy and flat. Nobody was running now but he saw people in the eye-burning yellow of Emergency Response moving against the backdrop of indistinct buildings. The façades glowed with a white clamor pierced by prisms of hot glass that made his eyes tear. Unless it was shock, fear, horror that made him cry.

They weren’t supposed to have, to use weapons. The new people, if that was what they called themselves. The manifesto spoke of reform, of change—not killing. He had wanted to join them, further their aims. They had bombed the nursery.

Pulling himself to his feet, he turned his back on the corniche and its buildings, placed his hands flat on the top of the seawall. Morning sun threatened to blind him again if he looked up. Below, the beach lay deserted, abandoned belongings forlorn on disturbed sands. Waves lapped unconcerned onto the sand, surf burst on the reef. Far across the water, the silvery ribbon of the elevator climbed from the horizon to pierce the zenith, longer than anything, taller than anything—immeasurably taller than the nursery spire before it fell. If he looked right, down the beach, only a little way, there would be débris where the tower had collapsed, broken on the sand. Débris. Bodies. Babies.

Madmen. Only madmen could deliberately kill babies.

Something touched his shoulder. He tried to shrug it off, but it was a hand that grasped hard and forced him to turn. The man in ER yellow was talking to him. “I can’t hear you,” he said, unsure whether he could be heard himself. “I don’t think I’m hurt badly but I can’t hear anything except—” The man seemed to be shaking his head. “I can’t see very well either.”

Wielding some medical implement, the man inspected his ears, then changed the setting to irradiate his eyes. That made him blink, but afterward his vision came clear. Ears remained blocked to any sound but the constant rumbling in his skull of the bomb’s aftershocks. The man held up a hand and he understood he was meant to count the fingers: “Three.… Two.… Four.… My name is Jafet. I arrived from Away last night—I’m on vacation. Do you need my ID?”

The man nodded.

Jafet reached for the lozenge on its chain around his neck, suddenly aware he hadn’t picked up his satchel when he fled the café. But it was ID the man wanted and he carried that on his person. Tugging it free, he handed it over, scarcely noticed the man slipping it into his journal’s aperture. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to sit down.”

Faltering, he reached behind to be sure of the wall and sat. Below the frayed hem of his sarong, ash and dust crusted his legs. There were scratches and streaks of muddy blood—the worst of it from his fall but some might be shrapnel. He lifted his hands: more scratches, more blood, more dirt, on palms and forearms.

Another hand appeared, returning his ID. Jafet took it and looked up. The man’s blinding coverall wasn’t dirty but creased and crumpled as if he’d pulled it on only a moment ago. His name was stitched across the breast in red, NISIM, above the municipal emblem. His face was blank with concern as he searched his pockets. Finding what he needed, he leaned over Jafet with a different tool, pressed it to the muscle and tendon of Jafet’s jaw where the phone was bonded to the bone. A thin, angry whine sliced through the roar in Jafet’s ears. He winced.

The man, Nisim, inspected his implement, made an adjustment, pressed it against Jafet’s jaw again. The whine modulated down to an easy, not unpleasant tone, then cut out. Nisim made another adjustment.

“Can you hear me now?”

Muffled and distorted by the continuing roar, the voice from the aether was nevertheless distinct. “Yes,” Jafet said.

“How close were you?”

“In the café.”

Nisim’s black eyes opened wide. “Judgment! And you got out before the rest of the building fell on you?”

Jafet shook his head. “I told you—I’m from Away. I’ve been running out of buildings since I could run. It’s like an instinct. I hope—”

In turn, Nisim grimaced. “Probably not. We know about typhoons in Haven, but typhoons give you warning, and you run inside. The nursery was typhoon proofed.”

“How…how many?”

“Too soon to tell.” Biting his lip, Nisim looked away. “Staff, expectant fathers, other visitors: a few hundred, probably. Most of the babies should survive if we can dig the bottles out fast enough. I should—”

Jafet took a breath. “Yes, you should. Now. I’ll be fine.” He took another breath. “Thank you for telling me about the babies.”

“The bottles are tough.” Nisim almost smiled. “Here.” He handed Jafet a foil sachet. “Put this on your scratches after you wash. If the tinnitus hasn’t faded by morning, or if anything else feels weird, get yourself to a clinic. My phone knows you now, so I’ll check in tomorrow.” He nodded, turned away, then looked back, a crooked grin ready to turn to tears. With a start, Jafet comprehended the young man’s astonishing beauty. “On behalf of the municipality,” Nisim said, “I apologize for your vacation being spoiled.” Then, trotting, he was away down the corniche.

What’s that supposed to mean, Jafet wanted to say. He was breathing hard again, nearly hyperventilating. He didn’t want to watch Nisim reach the ruins—the café where the waiter who’d served him, the cook who’d prepared his breakfast, the other customers must all have been crushed when the nursery behind and above collapsed and fell on them. He hadn’t authorized payment for his meal before fleeing. It was the second explosion that blinded him: he had paused for an instant, stupid, not twenty meters from the café doors, looked back, looked up. The slender spire of the nursery—first and largest nursery in the world—was moving, jerkily swaying. He knew it was designed to move, but not like that. At the top of the spire, the titanic sculpture gleamed and flashed as sunlight caught on its facets and curves: stylized father nurturing stylized son.

But then as he watched, the babe in his daddy’s arms flared blue-white like a little star, brighter than the sun, searing Jafet’s eyes before he could turn and run, before the concussive blast deafened him.

The first explosion had done the job—the second was merely symbol.

Jafet swallowed dry. Madmen. If it were the new people, he wanted nothing to do with them—he wanted them punished, however noble their aims. His hotel was half a kilometer up the corniche, an easy stroll. He started walking.


Intrigued? You might also want to look into issue #10 of M-Brane SF (November 2009), led off by “Jannicke’s Cat,” a novelette from two hundred fifty years earlier in the history of The New People’s planet; and M-Brane SF Quarterly #1 (October 2010), containing “Annie,” a short story roughly contemporaneous with “Jannicke’s Cat.”

Both those stories, along with The New People and much else, are meant one day to be folded into a volume of conventional-novel length. A Boy’s History of the World (working title) will be a sweeping sci-fi panorama of the extra-solar planet Rahab, from the foundational trauma of Eve’s judgment, when all the women began to die, to the first tentative recontact with a human universe containing two sexes.

That’s the plan, anyway. Logistics are complex. Watch this space for progress reports.

Categories
fiction novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

tomorrow week

The M-Brane SF Double, comprising (as has been said before) my short novel The New People bound tête-bêche with Brandon Bell’s Elegant Threat, is very nearly a real thing—an object to be held in one’s hands, caressed, fondled…read. M-Brane mastermind Chris Fletcher just released an image of the almost final wraparound cover:

You still have a week to take advantage of the pre-order special and receive not just the physical Double but a veritable waterfall of other M-Brane fictions in electronic formats, all for the low, low price of $14.95. What are you waiting for?

 

Categories
fiction novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

pub date approacheth

Over at the M-Brane SF blog, Chris Fletcher has announced a firm publication date for the M-Brane SF Double: 31 May 2011. To entice you into being among the early readers of this startling little book, Chris offers a massive trove of free electronic-form M-Brane bling to the first hundred pre-orderers, including a lifetime subscription to the flagship monthly ’zine M-Brane SF itself. What are you waiting for? It’s only $14.95!

 

While you’re there, be sure to read Chris’s prefaces to Brandon Bell’s Elegant Threat and my The New People—but hit that PayPal button first.

To send you on your way: A live performance of the song that inspired and titled my novella, Ivri Lider’s “Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim,” in an odd, countrified arrangement.

 

Categories
Ivri Lider music The New People

sunday musical interlude

Ravishing new English-language song from ravishing Israeli singer Ivri Lider, whose discography has had a profound effect on my work and life for the last several years. “Back Home,” from the soundtrack to Tomer Heymann’s film The Queen Has No Crown, was posted on YouTube just today.


Somewhat older, a teaser for Ivri’s eagerly anticipated English-language album Fly/Forget, the heartbreaking single “Mike.” Release it already, Ivri!


Older still and in Hebrew, a fan-made video for one of my favorite tracks from the brilliant 2008 album Beketzev A’hid Batnu’ot Shel Haguf (The Steady Rhythm of Body Movements)—“Tzel Shahor” (“Dark Shadow”).


If you haven’t seen/played/listened to them yet, two further Ivri songs are embedded on the page dedicated to the science-fiction novella that would not exist without his work: the title track to 2001’s Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim (The New People), and the first single, “Rak Tevakesh” (“Just Ask”) from Beketzev A’hid Batnu’ot Shel Haguf.

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fiction novella Rahab SF spec fic The New People

blurb

The inimitable and astonishing Sandra McDonald, author of the luscious collection Diana Comet and Other Improbable Tales, the science-fiction trilogy commencing with The Outback Stars, and a couple of other wonderful books I shouldn’t talk about because they’re issued under false names, has provided a lovely blurb for The New People.

The New People is a lyrical, intricate story of passion and regret that hooks your heart and never stops tugging. Alex Jeffers creates a tragic but beautiful future full of dazzling details and imagination. Excellent and memorable.

Coming in March or early April from M-Brane Press, bound back-to-back with Elegant Threat by Brandon Bell.