Here's a little blurb:
A Time To... Volume 3: The Best of The Lorelei Signal 2008 (Paperback):
Despite being the 'fairer' sex, women have long demonstrated that they possess great strength. They instinctively know there is a time for everything and they face it with Strength, Dignity and Determination. Following in the footsteps of our award nominated first volume; this collection will present you with women who: Are willing to risk their souls to avenge a wrong done to another. Are willing to risk their lives to challenge an unjust social system. Are willing to risk their status to save others from walking blindly into danger. Are willing to risk everything to save those who would ridicule them. These are the stories selected as the Best of The Lorelei Signal 2008. Come in and share in their strengths, triumphs and sorrows. Remember there is always - A Time To...

Go check it out.  Order one.  Support strong female characterization and one of the fantastic publications of Carol Hightshoe.

After having a fever for three days, my brain is a little garbled but I've managed to piece together this much.

1) My daughter's teacher and two other school staff went to a conference in Malaysia the second to last week of the term.

2) At the conference they were exposed to a "bad flu".

3) They were given flu prevention medicine and sent happily back to school.

4)Three days later my daughter was sick with a horrible flu. 

5)When I went in the last day of school to drop some things off the secretary told me her son was sick.

6)My son and I got the flu about two days after my daughter- fever, horrible head-ache, respiratory hacking, extreme aches and pains and fatique.

7) Half of my daughter's class did not show up at their end of the term parent/teacher conferences (due to illness?). 

My conclusion?  I think someone brought home a gift from Malaysia. 

You know that guy? The guy who comes up to you at a Con after you've had your short story nominated for an award and asks, "So, have you written a novel?" 

You say, "Um, no. I really like the short story form. I'm still honing my craft." A novel hasn't chosen me yet.

And he says glibly, "Well, I've written twenty novels." 

"Really?" You are impressed. You peer at his name tag, trying to remember if you've seen his face on the back of a book flap. "Would I have read any of them? What house were they published through?"  

"Oh, they aren't published," he says. "They're in drawers. I pump one out every six months and my wife reads them, and my friends. They think they're excellent. But I don't really have time to try and market them."

You know that guy?

I have to ask myself, "how is he different from me?"

I write, and a large part of that process is putting myself forward, daring to expose what I do, pieces of me divvied up into words and phrases, paragraphs and stories for public consumption. He masturbates novels in the privacy of his own home. I'm trying to hook up with the universe, one short story at a time. Is one act nobler than the other?

I get paid. Okay, not much, but still. I can sometimes pay the light bill, whereas his words have earned him nothing but empty praise.   

I have been vetted. I have presented my work to the gate-keepers and sometimes they let me pass. I press myself against the standard over and over again, measuring, growing, flexing. I can see improvement in my craft, my skill. My chances of selling work have increased significantly over time.

What of his twenty novels? Does anyone challenge them, correct them, point out his sloppy habits and flaws of craft? Is the twentieth any better than the first? Is he growing? And what is he afraid of?

What am I afraid of? 

 
Great News for Wily Writers everywhere and our wonderful webstravaganza mother angelmcc.  If you aren't aware, Wily Writers is the international, on-line writers group that Angel and myself started in October 2008. 

While it was a good idea, Angel one-upped it when she decided to create an amazing website to showcase the work of various Wily Writers and their guests.   The website at www.wilywriters.com/blog/ has fabulous artwork, is a treat to navigate and when I began to hear the quality of audio downloads Angel was creating it blew me away. 

Most of the stellar speculative fiction there is free. 

So when Angel recently informed me that Wily Writers Website had recently been nominated for a Parsec award  (www.parsecawards.com/) for  Best Speculative Fiction Magazine or Anthology Podcast, I was thrilled, but not surprised. 

I hope we win, but even if we don't.  I am so proud of what Angel has created.  Thanksangelmcc

And Good Luck! 

Random poll here.  I'm not sure there is a delicate way to ask this, so here it goes.

How many people out there are like me and MUST read when on the toilet? 

I'm not talking about liquid dispersion, but definetely solid waste elimination.  And I'm not talking about a preference, an activity to while away the time, or a way to multi-task.  I'm talking about a compulsion.  I'm talking about a need to read in order to accomplish fully and well the task at hand.  If there isn't a book, you read the shampoo bottle or the back of any packaging within reach. 

I have a theory that this is all somehow connected to the creative process.  That for something to "come out" there is the need for something to be taken in.  Now, logically, it seems like food is what was taken in, but maybe, for us creative types, it has to be something more internal and more immediately present?  

I don't know.  I look forward to hearing other's thoughts (but that might be a mistake:)

So when life sucks I find myself with two basic options. Write to escape, or read to escape. 

Lately, I've been doing a whole lot of reading. I snag a stack of books from the library's Fantasy/Sci-fi section, read the first chapters and toss them in two piles- books I wish hadn't been written, and books I wish I'd written. The ones I wish I'd written get read. The other pile doesn't. 

Sometimes, I just grab random books- because the cover looks good, or the blurb on the back intrigues. Sometime I grab books from authors I know well- books I haven't read by them, but which hold the promise of becoming as beloved as the works of theirs I already know and love. So it was that I stumbled upon a newer series by Lois McMaster Bujold that has me head-over-heals in love with her- Again.    

I first "met" Lois through her Miles Vorkosigan science fiction series and I loved what she brought to the genre. What she brought was a physically handicapped, interstellar spy and mercenary from a thousand years in our future. What she brought was a male sci-fi character who was not tall, chiseled, handsome, and physically perfect in everyway. Miles, instead, is challenged, sensitive, determined and well, real. How's that for a change? Many of the Vorkosigan novels are almost mystery-like in their plot and construction. I am not a big mystery fan, but a spaceman mystery is something altogether different. I believe the Vorkosigan Saga now has 19 books and I've read most of them.  

If you are not familiar with Bujold, well, you should be. She is an American spec fic writer with four Hugos for best novel under her belt, which ties Heinlein's record, so there. She also has a novella, The Mountains of Mourning, which won both a Hugo and a Nebula. And she won a Nebula for Palladin of Souls. Can you believe some people say that women aren't producing quality work in the spec fic genre? Those people must be blind, deaf and dumb.

After doing so well in the arena of sci-fi, Bujold faced a challenge trying to cross over and break into fantasy. Her first fantasy book The Spirit Ring was finally bought, but only with the promise that she would produce a Vorkosigan novel for that publisher. Almost a decade later, she tried again with her novel The Curse of Chalion, which met a much better reception.   

But none of these are what has me all excited. What I recently read- No, devoured- is her Sharing Knife fantasy series which begins with Beguilement (2006), followed by Legacy (2007), Passage (2008), and Horizon (2008). It has been a very long time since I read something that resonated with me so much and that I wished so desperately I had written. There were times when I felt like I was reading a fantasy version of my own life journey. I don't know many spec fic authors who have dared to feature an accurately described miscarriage in their fiction, despite the fact that this is an experience that hundreds of thousands of women have experienced. Once again, Bujold gives us a strong but sensitive man with a handicap, in this case a missing hand and a whole lot of special prosthetic attachments. She gives us real, not sappy, romance and original magic. She doesn't pussy foot around issues of family and identity. And she raises a whole lot of quality mythic questions. Probably my favorite being "Is it better to be loved and not valued, or valued and not loved?" 

If you're hankering for something good to read, I can't recommend this series highly enough. And if you happen to read it (or already have), be sure to let me know what you think.

The house did not sell at Auction.

However, there were several bids and three interested parties.

The bids were painfully low.

However, now that the house is up for conventional sale, two of the parties are still keen.

The interested parties are talking in a price range that doesn't even cover what we owe on the house.

I can see borrowing money to buy a house, but to sell it?

I need to go write.
 

Interesting Stats over atclarkesworld  this morning. No surprise that woman only account for about a third of their submissions. Women have been hearing for years that the reason we don't get published as much as men is that we don't submit as much. 

However, at Clarkesworld and at PodCastle (as indicated by the comments to the post) the stats also indicate something very interesting. Women send in fewer subs, but those female authored subs are much more likely to get accepted. They are of a better, more professional quality than the men's submissions. At Clarkesworld, 52% of what gets passed on to editors from slush is written by women. At PodCastle, women account for 30% of the raw slush, but 50% of what they consider professional quality. 

Some other interesting little gems; at Clarkesworld, men are 10% more likely to get a rejection for not following the guidelines. Women are 2% more likely to submit another story after a rejection. 

At risk of getting blasted for pulling some conclusions out of my hat, I have some thoughts. I think it is no secret that men tend to be more confident than women in a society that encourages men to overestimate their abilities, and woman to downplay theirs. I think it is refreshing to inspect the quality of submissions, instead of the usual stats of quantity that get thrown around. 

As for the guidelines issue, traditionally, girls are raised to "follow the rules" or get in trouble (i.e. pregnant). A male is more likely to be humored for risk-taking behavior with sentiments such as "boys will be boys." No one ever seems to notice that often the risk is actually less severe for the male than the female.  Or It could simply be a gender difference associated with attention to detail. Women tend to be more meticulous than men. The overconfidence may come into play here as well. Men may think, "This story is so good, it won't matter that I didn't follow the guidelines to the letter."  

I have to say that I was very much surprised to see that women are more likely to resubmit. In other discussions on gender and writing, I have been told that women give up too easily, that they don't persevere like men do, which I assumed might stem back to the confidence issue. I know for myself personally, this is not true, but I had thought perhaps I was an anomaly. I am thrilled to have some actual numbers to dispute that. Women may not be as confident at the get go, but they do tend to persevere and improve their craft in that persistence. 

Now, of course these stats are for Clarkesworld only. The fact that they are even tracking, publishing, and inviting discussion of these stats makes me, as a female author, more likely to submit to them.

So, I better get writing. I think I have just the idea. See you at Clarkesworld.       

My mind works in funny ways. I'm not complaining. It is obviously part of what makes me a writer of speculative fiction. 

I don't like rules. No, I do like rules. I like to think about breaking them, challenging them. I like to think about what would happen if the rules were changed, flipped, generated by aliens, redefined, replaced, defied. 

I spend my weekdays writing from a public library. They have rules here. You aren't allowed to sleep in the library. I found this out the hard way, and it was a rude awakening. 

After my crime had been exposed, the library security guard, whose gender will forever be a mystery, kept a close eye on me. He/she kept checking back to make sure I was "alright." Very kind of him/her. 

It seems this rule has some sort of age discrimination clause, however. An hour later I saw the security guard walk right past a baby asleep in its stroller, and the bugger got off scot free. There is an old homeless guy who comes in daily and watches movies on the library computer with his eyes closed. So apparently only middle-aged writers aren't allowed to sleep in the library. I don't know why. 

There is a "no skateboard" rule in the library. I think that might include scooters, snowboards and horse-drawn carriages as well. So imagine my surprise when a guy went whizzing past the information desk on a skateboard yesterday and no one tackled him. In fact, no one even said a word. Again, blatant discrimination. True, the guy had no legs. I mean none. He was just a handsome torso with strong arms and a backpack. He skateboarded recklessly into the Sci-Fi/Fantasy aisle and crashed right into a double stroller, waking peacefully sleeping twins. 

As they began wailing and the mother stood stunned, the torso man in her arms, I turned back to my keyboard and smiled.

Yes, I like rules. And I warned you, my mind works in strange ways.  

I've also been reading way too much of the comic strip Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum.

Check out and consider submitting your best to  Heroic Fantasy Quarterly www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/ 

It encourages me to see new markets sticking their necks out in the current climate, especially when they have a love for one of my favorite sub-genres. 

They are looking for heroic or sword and scorcery short stories and poetry, pay a goodly rate, and only have one of the three slots for fiction filled for their first issue slated to come out in July 2009..  I believe both slots for poetry are still open.  Deadline is the end of May, so get in there quick. 

I love this blurb from them-

"Our favorite storytellers, a few ancient and a few not, deliver action, reaction, and repercussion – and rarely divulge the thought processes that guide a character. These storytellers know that sometimes an audience just wants to see what happens next, that sometimes it’s more interesting to watch a person open a box than to hear about why he or she decided to open it in the first place."

I've sent off something I hope they'll like.  Now go forth and join me.

YIp.  Rah! Yahoo!  Good news the last few days. 

First, my flash magical realism piece, The Moth Collector's Daughter, has been picked up by Sharon Dodge of Reflection's Edge and will be coming out in June or July (not sure which yet).  I so appreciate RE's unique character and Sharon's taste for the unusual.  Reflection's Edge is fast becoming one of my favorite markets.

Second, I got a wonderful e-mail from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine asking after my fantasy novella, Over the Rim. 

I love Over the Rim- have always been convinced it was a special story, but at just over 10k it has been a hard sell.  Most short story markets have a 6 or 7k cap on wordcount, but many places don't consider 10k long enough to be a novella.  Over the Rim was stuck in the no-man's-land somewhere in the middle.  Two or three editors of various markets have held onto it, commented positively on it, but utlimately passed it over for publication.  That was hard to take. The message was, "This is really good, but we're not going to buy it for reasons other than quality."   

I had begun to despair.  Briefly, I considered self-publishing it, putting it up in serial installments on my LJ.  And that gave me an idea.  The story is very well paced (If I do say so myself), with nice cliff-hanger scene breaks about every 2k.  Maybe, I could market it as a serialized piece. 

I began to look around for markets seeking serialized works.  And that is when I stumbled on an old market blurb for ASIM that said they were seeking short stories that could be serialized.  I don't even know why I hadn't thought of them as a market in the first place.  I love ASIM.  If you don't know, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is a writers co-operative publication out of Australia.  They produce a quality, popular spec fic publication, pay semi-pro rates, and have a sense of humor- something not many markets can truly boast, I'm afraid.  They also have a very open, writer-friendly editorial process.  ASIM is definetly a publication by writers, for writers.  I dream of making something like they have in New Zealand someday. 

So, I sent my serialized Over the Rim to ASIM and immediatley got back an e-mail something like this:

"We don't do serialized stories.  Where did you get that idea?  However, would you like us to consider your story as a stand alone work?"

I explained where I had gotten that idea, and they were appropriately shagrined.  Apparently, the blurb I had found was years old and outdated.  They ran off to update it, and yes, I asked them to consider Over the Rim as a stand alone. 

The story made it quickly through the first two rounds of slush readers and into the pile editors choose from.  I thought that was encouraging.  Then it sat, and sat, and sat, and then I got the dreaded e-mail from ASIM saying "Sorry, no editor had picked this up and we don't hold work longer than three month, so you can submit it elsewhere."  The e-mail did include glowing comments from their first readers.  Again, Over the Rim was well-loved but unsold.  That was at the end of April.

Then yesterday, I got an e-mail from Edwina Harvey.  Edwina is one of the editors of ASIM (they do a rotation of editors) and she bought my story, The Derby, for issue #33- the same story now in the running for the Sir Julius Vogel award. 

Edwina wanted to know if Over the Rim was still availble for issue #42 of ASIM.  Apparently, it had gotten such good reviews by their first readers that it had been a topic amongst the editors.  They had decided to pick it up, and the e-mail releasing it had been sent by mistake.  

So, at last, Over the Rim is going to see real paper.  

Just to whet your appetite here's a little blurb:

Young Mike Abbott's dad is weird with grief.  He seems to have forgotten his son is seventeen, that new puppies and special trips will not remedy the loss of Mike's mother.  When they end up at Crater Lake National Park and Lodge, Mike must take the puppy out in the middle of the night to do its business.  A strange, prophetic sign rises up out of the fog at the trail's edge.  It reads: Warning; Keep animals leashed at all times.  Pets have been known to vanish over the rim.  

And when Mike's puppy dissapears over the rim into the fog, he never intends to go after it.  But it seems that the universe and the strange world nestled outside of time on Wizard Island have other intentions that trump Mike's own. 

The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. That is to say, I'm mostly alive, though life as I've known it may soon be coming to an end. Sort of a mini-Armageddon, if you will. The status quo is to be broken, the familiar and comfortable stripped away once again. There may be zombies or aliens or fairies. I'm not sure which yet. 

The status quo is that my husband works at a difficult, well-paying career. We own a quiet house in a valley, and I grow kids and write. But in the next six months it is very likely my husband will be fired by his boss (who might be a zombie), or he may quit, or I may insist he quits. In this new reality he has already applied to every local job in his field without success. The reason for this is a mystery. It could be that his boss has blacklisted him, or it could be that my husband doesn't really want those jobs and sabotages himself. Or it may be that the universe has something different for him, and this is the only way he's going to let go of the old, and grasp onto the new. He must have no other choice in order to make the hard, scary choice. 

In his wildest dreams he works part time in a coffee shop and spends the rest of his life learning about and playing on sailboats. In my wildest dreams I make enough income writing so that he can do this. 

In an Armageddon in which one writes short stories and one's spouse works at a coffee shop, it is difficult to pay a mortgage. So we may or may not be selling our house. That is to say, we are going to try and sell our house, but we have been "trying" to do that for a year. But we'll be trying much harder now. We're going to go with a big name realtor, and possibly auction the house to the highest bidder, who I hope is an alien with no idea what his global currency is worth in the current earth market. We may or may not break even on the house. We may make enough to buy a sailboat to live on. If we cannot sell the house, we may have to hand it back to the fairies, who have always owned it in the fairy realm anyway. 

We have found a boat we love and think we could live on with two kids, four cats, and a lot of patience. We may or may not be completely out of our minds, and foolishly romantic. We may or may not be able to afford this boat, depending on the house thing. It may or may not still be for sale, depending on the business ventures of the man who owns it now, and a certain project in Perth, which might go under, or may be sold for a high price at any moment. 

My marriage of eighteen and a half years may survive all this change, as it has survived in the past, or it may not. Our children may hate us, or they may love and thank us for an adventurous life. They will probably do both. The cats may drown or poop in the clean laundry basket in the boat we may or may not live on. There may be aliens, or fairies or zombies. I'm not sure which yet. 

The only thing I'm sure of, no matter what happens, is that I will write. I will write until I'm good and truly dead. That is what I cling to, what reminds me that I'm mostly alive, even at the end of the world. 

For that I need no house or boat, no career or job, no spouse or child, no marriage or cat. To write I need nothing and no one but myself. 

And so the end of the world can never truly come.