So I’m nearly halfway done with a novel revision.  And I find that I’m changing quite a bit from the first draft.  It’s more than polishing.  It’s making the thing flow.  It’s fleshing out characters and making sure they are not caricatures.  I’m adding words, somehow, even though I feel like I’m cutting a lot of stuff.  I’ve added 9K words already, and I’m only halfway through.  It’s up to about 119K and growing.  It’s a fantasy novel.  Based on a Jewish myth, so hopefully non-traditional, even though it’s epic.  And it’s a slow build.  Fast start, then a lot of mystery until act two, when things start ramping up big time.  The denouement is particularly fun.  I get to release the mouse trap and reveal several surprises.  It’s set up for a sequel, not necessarily because I want to do the trilogy thing, but because the story is rich and there’s so much to tell.  The frustrating part is poking at two or three pages per day, the slow crawl toward the finish line.  But slow and steady wins the race.  Plus I’m going away on a writers’ retreat soon, where my goal is to knock out 50 pages.  Probably impossible, but then a decade ago it seemed impossible to sell a story and now I’ve sold a few dozen.  So I’m just putting my sights on the end goal and walking there three pages at a time.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have officially released the cover and table of contents for After, their young-adult dystopian anthology coming out in October of this year.  The anthology contains my story, “The Great Game at the End of the World,” a story which I’m very proud of (and got to read a part of at the last World Fantasy Convention).  I’m also floored by the many talented people I’ll be sharing the table of contents with.  Check it out!

The Segment by Genevieve Valentine
After the Cure by Carrie Ryan
Valedictorian by N.K. Jemisin
Visiting Nelson by Katherine Langrish
All I Know of Freedom by Carol Emshwiller
The Other Elder by Beth Revis
The Great Game at the End of the World by Matthew Kressel
Reunion by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Faint Heart by Sarah Rees Brennan
Blood Drive by Jeffrey Ford
Reality Girl by Richard Bowes
Hw th’Irth Wint Wrong by Hapless Joey @ homeskool.guv by Gregory Maguire
Rust With Wings by Steven Gould
The Easthound by Nalo Hopkinson
Gray by Jane Yolen
Before by Carolyn Dunn
Fake Plastic Trees by Caitlin R. Kiernan
You Won’t Feel a Thing by Garth Nix
The Marker by Cecil Castellucci

2011 was a pretty good year for me.  When I began writing this post I felt as if I hadn’t done all that much in the past twelve months.  But after listing everything I’ve done I see now that I have accomplished quite a bit.  Before time carves these events permanently out of my brain, I thought I’d document them here.

Early in the year, my story “The History Within Us” was reprinted in The People of the Book.  An excellent anthology of Jewish-themed science fiction & fantasy, I was pretty darn happy to share a table of contents with Neil Gaiman, Peter Beagle, and many other talents.

Another Jewish-themed story (do you sense a pattern?), “The Hands that Feed” appeared in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.  About an aging Jewish woman in a steam-punked Lower East Side of 1895, this story was a lot of fun to write.  People seemed to like this one quite a bit too, which made me very happy.

My big publication of the year was “The Bricks of Gelecek,” which appeared in Ellen Datlow’s urban fantasy anthology Naked City. Ellen said this story “blew me away” when she first read it.  And Shelf Awareness called it the “true gem in the collection.”  I’m quite proud of this story, especially since it takes place in the same universe as my novel in progress.  Over on the SFWA.org boards, Ellen has posted a copy of the story for SFWA members.  If you care to check it out, please let me know what you think!

GUD Magazine purchased my small-town tale “One Spring in Cherryville,” a story about a close band of twenty-somethings who discover something buried in an abandoned factory basement that changes their lives forever.  I don’t have a publication date for this one yet.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling purchased “The Great Game at the End of the World” for their YA dystopian anthology, After.  This was the first time that I’d written a story that put children in real harm, and I found some scenes painful to write.  But I think this is one of my best stories, and I’m excited to hear what people think of it when it comes out this fall.

Sean Wallace purchased a reprint of “The Hands that Feed” for The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, which will be out in June of this year.

Sadly, there was no issue of Sybil’s Garage in 2011.  Though I really wanted to do a new issue, a number of other projects have prevented me from finding the time.  This is not the end of the magazine, however.  It will return!

For my work on Sybil’s Garage and Senses Five Press I was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the category of Special Award, Non-Professional.  Though I did not win, it was a great honor to be nominated.  Even better was sharing the ballot with my Altered Fluid mates Mercurio David Rivera and N.K. Jemisin.  Go team!

This year I did several readings of my work.  In February I read along side Rick Bowes at the Wold Newton reading series.  In a crowded bookstore in Cambridge, MA I read with other contributors of Naked City, and I participated in three more readings at Readercon.  At the San Diego World Fantasy Convention, Jeff Ford and I both read our stories from After.  Jeff was awesome by offering to merge our separate readings into one large one.  Overall I believe I did about eight different readings this year, which seems like a lot now that I think about it.

At Readercon I hosted a popular panel called “Dybbuks, Golems, Demons, Oy Vey!: Jewish Mythology and Folklore in Speculative Fiction.”  I had a lot of fun talking about the many great stories of Jewish fantasy and science fiction with the panelists, and the overcrowded room was testament to the panel’s success.

So, you may be wondering, what’s with all this Jewish-themed stuff?  Well, I’ve been working on a novel based on the Jewish myth of the Lamed Vav, the Thirty Six just men who sustain the world.  I finished a draft in August, the same day (no actually the same minute) that the northeastern U.S. was struck with a minor earthquake.  I had been writing about minor earthquakes in the final scene, so when the world actually shook, I was like, whoops!  Next time I’ll write about rainbows and universal harmony.  Anyway, I have recently begun revisions on the novel and I am about 25% of the way through.  I hope to have a final draft by the end of February.

The Fantastic Fiction reading series at KGB has been going strong all throughout 2011, with many excellent guests and regular large crowds.  The fundraiser from 2010 has allowed Ellen and I to continue to run the series throughout most of 2012.  I noticed a lot of new faces in the audience, which suggests that the series is expanding in popularity as well.  2012 is already shaping up to be amazing with January’s guests, James Patrick Kelly and Kelly Link.  In March, we will also have Terry Bisson, the series’ founder.  It’s going to be a good year.

Overall 2011 was a very good year for me, and I’m working hard to make sure 2012 continues that trend.  On that note, here’s hoping your New Year’s was a happy one and that 2012 brings you all the success you deserve.  Bye, for now.

I’m a writer, so I indulge in fantasy.  One of these fantasies is one day owning a bar-slash-coffee shop, a place where people would come in and hang.  And I’ve gone so far as to craft a playlist for it.  The bar would be themed “retro-future,” that is it would be themed in the way the 80s envisioned our collective (and sometimes dystopian) future.  You know what I’m talking about.  In the 80s, when it was becoming apparent that the computer age would soon be rushing upon us, we got glam synth groups like Visage, and far-out oddities like Gary Numan and Tubeway Army writing about the robot revolution.  OMD wrote their avant-garde Dazzle Ships album and Sigue Sigue Sputnik brought us “Love Missile F1-11.”  The future was colorful and strange, ad-saturated, Asian-influenced, defined in sound and in fashion.  Since I can’t sew, I’ve decided to create a Pandora radio station.  It’s a work in progress.  Pandora is slowly learning what sound I’m looking for.  My criteria is thus: if you walked into a bar in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, would this song be playing?  There was a sound in the 80s (and I’m not talking about New Wave, though there is an overlap), a sound that I think we lost.  For example, can you point to anything today which sounds even remotely like this song from Gary Numan?

Or this song from Sigue Sigue Sputnik, “21st Century Boy”:

Anyway I’m not so much trying to relive an earlier period of my life, but to discover artists who are exploring similar areas of sound today.  This “retro-future” soundscape hasn’t been explored as much as it could have been, I believe, and as an amateur musician I hope to one day be able to write something that I wouldn’t be ashamed to play in my bar.

I know I’m back in New York by the sounds.  This morning I heard in no particular order a garbage truck, jack hammer, saw, helicopter, airplane, car horn and siren.  In San Diego, home of the World Fantasy Convention, my mornings were filled with the sounds of trickling fountains, buzzing hummingbirds, and a delicate wind.  The Town and Country resort was set up like a maze.  You literally had to walk through various gardens and gates, around pools and through courtyards to get anywhere.  It was beautiful and bewildering, and Kit Reed suggested the place was meant to keep us happy and compliant, like the town in the Prisoner.  As a garbage truck idles outside my window and the men haul bags of clanking bottles into it I’m starting to think that wouldn’t be half bad.

Too much happens at a con to summarize easily.  So I’ll try to summarize my thoughts before they all fade into a blur.

I met Charles Tan in person, who was flown to the U.S. all the way from the Philippines based on a fund that Lavie Tidhar set up. We were all strangely enough nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the same category (Special Award, Non-Professional), but the award went to Alisa Krasnostein for her work with Twelfth Planet Press.  Yeah, I’m not going to lie, it would have been cool to win, but I really wasn’t expecting too, and I was happy to see Alisa go home with the Lovecraft bust.  Charles is also twice as nice in person as he is online.

On Friday night I had dinner with Kit and Joe Reed and Jeff Ford and a few of Jeff’s former Clarion classmates.  (One was Rebecca Rowe and forgive me but I can’t recall the other’s name.)  Kit was her usual charming self and Jeff was awesome as usual.  When I told Jeff he and I had a reading at the same time and I was sad to miss his, he graciously offered to merge our readings into one.  Jeff is one of my favorite writers, so this was pretty damn awesome. Turns out we both are in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s After anthology, so we both read our stories from that.  Jeff’s piece was about a high school where all the kids pack guns and wear them as accessories.  It was amazing as usual.

The parties are kind of a blur, but highlights for me include hanging out with the Canadian ChiZine Press crew, Brett Savory and Helen Marshall, and Robert Shearman of the UK who wrote the Doctor Who episode “Dalek.”  I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years.  Had a lovely chat with Leanne Renee Hieber, spoke politics and future WFCs with Jetse de Vries, awards with Gordon Van Gelder, and economics with Rani Graff from Israel.  Also lots of fun hanging out with the Australian crew, who may perhaps be the snarkiest people on the planet (I like snark.)  Friday night we were on the lawn chairs at 3 a.m. talking Australian football with DoSelle when the security guard shut us down.

Saturday, N.K. Jemisin threw her pajama party, where there was Twister, sippy-cups, the game Operation.  I got to see Ellen Datlow playing Hungry Hungry Hippo like it was nobody’s business.  I wore my PJs, but just for a little while.  World Fantasy has never been keen on costumes.

(Pillow fights on the other hand are encouraged.)

I also did a reading for JoSelle Vanderhooft’s Steam-Powered series.  A little more intimate than a conference room, we staged the reading in one of the suites, and I got to hear a lot of young, talented writers, like C.S.E. Cooney read excerpts of their stories.  I read the beginning of my piece “The Hands That Feed.”  Also got to spend some time talking novels with JoSelle and Eric Vogt, who both are working on novels where the gender disparity is much greater than our 51/49.  The ideas were so cool, I smelled a James Tiptree award on the breeze.

What else?  As you can tell, I haven’t been talking too much about the panels.  I didn’t go to many.  Devin Poore sat on a panel with Harry Turtledove about ships and sailing in speculative fiction, and it was cool (and frightening) to hear stories of some of the panelists describing the sensation of being lost in fog, or watching bioluminescent creatures approaching.  Devin’s Navy experience, as well as the other panelist’s varied and knowledgeable backgrounds made the panel a highlight.

I also got to see Genevieve Valentine, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Mercurio D. Rivera and Rajan Khanna read.

At the awards banquet I got to sit next to the fabulous and fabulously dressed Kate Baker, where we talked Sybil’s Garage and novel writing as her glittery dress dropped sparkly powder over everything she touched.  We said the dust were tiny dead fairies.

Connie Willis gave a hilarious toast, and Neil Gaiman was his usual charming and audience-flattering self.

And, no, as I said, I didn’t win.  I was rooting for Mercurio and Nora too, but alas they didn’t win either.  Still, I was happy just to see my friends nominated, to see their hard work recognized, and I’m really happy for the winners too.  There’s always next year, and the most important thing to take home from any con is the desire to keep doing what we love: reading and writing.  And that, despite the New York noise, I did.

(You can see a few photos I took of the con here.)

Off to the World Fantasy Convention tomorrow. I have a reading at 1:30pm on Saturday. A pajama/sleepover party to celebrate Nora Jemisin’s new book, and the Awards Banquet on Sunday where I’m up for a World Fantasy Award in the category of Special Award, Non-Professional. It should be a fun weekend, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again real soon!

(Also be on the lookout for a huge Sybil’s Garage announcement this weekend.)

Shut up before your god!

In the Book of Job, the titular Job suffers all sorts of maladies, boils, burning, utter agony, the loss of loved ones.  He cries out to God, “Why?  I have been a good man all my life.”  For the next several hundred lines or so in beautiful, timeless prose, Job’s friends try to convince him of the superiority of God’s ways, and though God’s ways are hidden from humanity, Job should just accept his fate.  It’s all part of God’ plan.

But Job is not one to roll over easily.  It takes the presence of God himself to cow him down into submission.  Many people take this to mean that Job finally accepts God as the ultimate power, and that Job ultimately rediscovers his fate.  But Carl Jung in his book Answer to Job, believes differently.  Jung posits that God is just a schoolyard bully, who says to Job, “Obey me, otherwise I’ll cause you more suffering! After all, I created the mountains and the sky!”  Job finds his faith only for fear of God’s terrible wrath, which Jung says isn’t faith at all because it’s not based on a choice.

A half-century after Jung’s thesis came the film Blade Runner, with its band of replicant humans seeking more life.  And it occurred to me this morning that Roy Batty, the leader of the replicants, can be thought of as Job.  He has been created by a force he doesn’t understand (he is essentially a cloned soldier).  He has to suffer unfairly (replicants die after only four years) and watches his loved ones die, one by one.  But instead of waiting for God to come to him in a whirlwind, Roy goes to his God, the CEO of the Tyrell corporation, Dr. Eldon Tyrell.

“It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker,” Roy says to Tryell in his gigantic bedroom.

And Tyrell, with all the arrogance of the Hebrew God says, “And what can he do for you?”

Roy complains to his maker.  I am half-made.  You did not give me a chance to flourish.

And Tyrell says, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.”

The platitude is not enough for Roy, who finally understands that he has transcended his God.  He has become “more than human.”  He kisses Tyrell, then kills him by crushing his head.

And what is this, but Job’s story with a twist?  Instead of falling to his knees, Roy confronts his God and wins.  I think that’s why the story of the replicants in Blade Runner is so powerful.  Without consciously realizing it (or perhaps scriptwriters Hampton Francher and David Peoples did know) they were retelling a biblical tale.

It has come to my attention that a man named David Boyer (which may be one pseudonym of many) has plagiarized Livia Llewellyn’s “Jetsam,” her story which appeared in Sybil’s Garage No. 4, and passed it off as his own.  There is a blog post describing the offense here, and more posts describing the investigation of this David Boyer (with many other instances of plagiarism, including none other than Dean Koontz) here.

Authors put their blood, sweat and tears into their work (I know, I’m one of them), and it can be horribly frightening and demeaning to see someone take that hard work and pass it off as their own, without permission, without credit.  The act is despicable, especially since it seems this offender — I dare not call him an “author” for he is nothing of the kind — has done this multiple times.

So I propose we celebrate original fiction.  I kindly ask that you please support Livia by reading her story “Jetsam” here and writing a comment in support of her and in support of original fiction. Please help spread the word that originality matters.

In a college course on Western Philosophy and Culture, the instructor, a man of forty plus years proceeded to tell the class, when it was time to study Judaism, that the Hebrew peoples of history “offered no great works of art or literature,” except, of course, the Old Testament.  He then went on to explain this was because the prohibition against “graven images” (art can be considered a type of graven image).  At the time I was too shy and too naive of my own culture to respond , but I knew how stupid a thing to say that was.  In his mind, were all Jews wrapped in their teffilin and wailing in synagogue?  I said as much in my final paper, pointing out his fallacious assumptions, unable to hold back my anger, and even though I was in danger of failing the class, he gave me a B.  I like to think it’s because of what I wrote.  But it has always bothered me that I was unable to think of any great Jewish artist(s) or art at the time, so I could have called him out on his foolishness.

Today, I came across more ammunition for this ancient argument.  This morning as I was reading Pakn Treger, a Yiddish culture magazine my father subscribes to, I saw this micrograph:

It’s hard to see here in this reduced-size image, but this is a penned image of Karl Marx assembled from the text of the Yiddish translation of the Communist Manifesto.  Tiny Yiddish words in alternating light and dark strokes creates the likeness of Marx.  It reminded me a bit of ASCII art.

The article goes on to say, “This exquisite form of calligraphy is centuries old. From the Middle Ages onward, Jewish scribes turned Hebrew texts into virtuoso religious artworks, decorating amulets and wedding certificates with elaborate scenes and portraits.”

Here’s the article, if you’re curious.  And another web source on the art of the micrograph (with another image.)

I’m not sure I’d want the likeness of Marx hanging on my wall (I much prefer nature scenes!), but I think this type of art is wonderful!

I wish I could remember that professor’s name so I could email this to him. 

Ellen Datlow has released the table of contents for her Young Adult anthology of dystopian stories, After, and I’m proud to be part of it.  Here’s the full list (Ellen tells me the “gorgeous” cover photo is coming soon):

• The Segment by Genevieve Valentine
• After the Cure by Carrie Ryan
• Valedictorian by N.K. Jemisin
• Visiting Nelson by Katherine Langrish
• All I Know of Freedom by Carol Emshwiller
• The Other Elder by Beth Revis
• The Great Game at the End of the World by Matthew Kressel
• Reunion by Susan Beth Pfeffer
• Faint Heart by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Blood Drive by Jeffrey Ford
• Reality Girl by Richard Bowes
• Hw th’Irth Wint Wrong by Hapless Joey @ homeskool.guv by Gregory Maguire
• Rust With Wings by Steven Gould
• The Easthound by Nalo Hopkinson
• Gray by Jane Yolen
• Before by Carolyn Dunn
• Fake Plastic Trees by Caitlin R. Kiernan
• You Won’t Feel a Thing by Garth Nix
• The Marker by Cecil Castellucci

The anthology is set to come out in 2012.