Flash Fiction Frenzy

It’s been a week of flash fiction frenzy. Not only have I been writing it like crazy, but I just got word that in addition to the two pieces that sold last week (Annie’s Book and Nikki Comes Home) to Every Day Fiction, I’ve sold a third to Weird Year. It’s a little piece called During The Eclipse that deals with myth, religion and the nature of belief, all in about 650 words.

Yes, that’s why I love flash fiction. You can seemingly pack so much into such a little space, it can really pack a punch. And it is often what you don’t say, but only hint at, that often leaves the most impact.

I think writing flash is a great exercise for a writer; one learns a lot about brevity and being succinct, and using one’s words to their greatest effect. I’m also glad the form has grown as popular as it has, because I enjoy reading it. It is almost the perfect format for the fast-paced, please-me-now world of the internet.

Quick Update

In the past few weeks I hit a couple of milestones in my writing goals for the year:   I reached both 300,000 words and 1000 pages.   The word count goal is the most important, as I’ve tried to keep myself to a thousand words a day all year.  This really keeps me motivated, even on days that I don’t feel like writing.  It’s good to see the totals add up in the little Excel spread sheet that I use to track my writing.  At this pace, it looks like I could go over 400,000 words for the year. 

I consider this quite an accomplishment.  I’ve never maintained that pace at any time in the past, but I’ve found it very doable this year, particularly with the extra time afforded since retiring from my full time job.  The 400K words is all short stories or novellas, but I think it’s a good number, as I am eventually planning to move more fully into novels, and this represents the number of words necessary for perhaps three novels of good length, or perhaps four even if we go with a more standard length.  

Now no, I don’t plan to work toward writing four novels a year.  I think that’s asking for too much, and probably stretching the creativity too thin.  I think I will be happy with writing one to two first draft novels a year, interspersed with some short stories and novellas.  The rest of the time will be spent on revision, which is something I haven’t done enough of this year. 

Revise, revise, revise, or so they tell me. 

Also on the good news front, I just had another couple of sales to Every Day Fiction.  They're flash pieces; one is called “Annie’s Book,” and the other "Nikki Comes Home."  They should be coming out in October or November. 

Old Titles List Discovered

So I was shuffling through some ancient files this morning. (Read:  College.  Twenty-four years ago.  Stuff I originally wrote on my IBM PC jr and saved to floppy disks that were actually floppy)  While doing so I came across this list of short story and novel titles that I compiled sometime during college.  These were stories that I either had written or planned to write, with the majority of them still being in the planning stages. 

Full disclosure:  I loved titles then, and I love them now.  Give me three odd words and I’ll gladly arrange them into a title, and then my mind immediately starts creating a story to go under them.  It was how I liked to work back then, and how I still like to be inventive now. 

Just for fun, I’ve attached the list of titles for your perusal below.  If memory serves me right, the ones in italics are all the ones that I can remember having completed back during college.  Most of the rest were just ideas that I had that I had given a title to, or just some words or a phrase that I thought sounded cool. 

 Short Stories Titles
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1.   Far Pavilions
2.   Father Figure
3.   Way Down South
4.   Free Enterprise
5.   Boomtown
6.   Bellum Bellum
7.   Blue Song
8.   Michaelangelo's Going Out of Business Sale
9.   Sound and Steam
10.  Creativity is Neuron 151 Firing Twice
11.  Spin, Infinity!
12.  Worlds Apart
13.  Mars Needs Women
14.  Shades
15.  Socrates, Please!
16.  The Church of Christ Bar and Grill
17.  In the Rain18.  Northern Girl19.  Soar!
20.  Bend Sinister
21.  South Seas Sun Co.
22.  Jihad #83q
23.  Insensation
24.  The Having Been Loved Man
25.  To Raise, Again, the Dead
26.  Lettuce, Thank You...
27.  Boobs
28.  Breezeway
29.  Fish
30.  Greenway
31.  Heart of Stone
32.  Storm Warnings
33.  A Clockwork Banana
34.  Designs
35.  Taylor's Place
36.  Stones
37.  A
38.  In Black Mourn I
39.  Carols
40.  Refrigerator Repairman
41.  Stream of Consciousness
42.  White Stuff (Snow)
43.  King
44.  Kid
45.  Victoria
46.  Third Person
47.  Inferno Lost
48.  The Mephistopholes Gambit
49.  A Penny Earned
50.  Raindance
51.  Windy
52.  Cassanova Jones
53.  Ice on Pearls, French Say (Ici est Parle Francais)
54.  The Supreme Conversation
55.  Banner of a Thousand Lands
56.  Weeds are Would-be Flowers, Man
57.  The Antarcticans
58.  Faraway's Star
59.  Leap Year
60.  A Vision Once I saw
61.  Our Grandfather's Plan
62.  Carrabeing
63.  The Belt of Orion
64.  Arc to Arcturus
65.  The Heart of Antares
66.  Olympus Mons
67.  Red Train
68.  The Melancholy Man
69.  Madonna and Child

Reading through this list brought a smile to my face, as it reminded me of some good writing times back in college.  College was an intensively creative time for me and my writing, and I got a lot done then, in spite of (or perhaps because of) all my classroom workload.  Why didn’t I finish more of these stories?  Well, that would have to do with me getting hired by the FAA as an Air Traffic Controller during my senior year of college.  I suddenly was so beleaguered with ATC training that I had to leave college temporarily (I finished up a few years later) and I suddenly had no time or energy to write.  It was great to have a good job, but getting it probably set my writing career back twenty years, because I didn’t write for a long time, and when I did I just didn’t have the energy or drive to stick with it.  Thankfully, now that I’m retired that is not a problem, and I am trucking along great this year with the writing.

Since I love titles so much, I think I will go back and see if I can mine this list for some titles that appeal to me now, and perhaps create some new stories to go under them.  I particularly like Michelangelo’s Going Out of Business Sale.  I remember where I got the title...it was an art store commercial on the radio, but I had no idea what sort of story I had in mind for it back then.  Guess we’ll have to come up with something now.   I’m also inspired to go back and read some of these old college short stories, which thankfully I archived from floppies to hard disk a long time ago, and see if there are any that could potentially be updated and/or brought back to life. 

Oh, the list also contained some titles for novels I had planned back then.  Here they are:

Novels Titles
----------------------------------------------------------------
1. Winter's End
2. Samson Sound
3. Padre South
4. Fiji Archipelago
5. Raindance
6. Baron Red
7. Bend Sinister
8. Obsidian
9. Lancelot
10. Shillelagh
11. A Boy and His God
12. Autumn
13. First Person
14. The Antarcticans

Reading through this brings back memories as well.  Shillelagh I actually got about two thirds through when I was nineteen.  It was a Tolkienesque standard fantasy knockoff about a dwarf who wanted to become a wizard.  Samson Sound was about a deaf kid who discovers he is an amazing baseball player, only to lose the talent when he gains his hearing back.  Padre South was about a band of outrageous college kids and their adventures during a summer on Padre Island, written in the style of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.  Raindance was about a planet of perpetual rain.  Bend Sinister was the story of a bastard son of a king and his rise to power on a medieval world reminiscent of feudal Britain.   A Boy and his God was about a child–the sole survivor of a plane crash in a South American Jungle–who invents his own religion to explain his surroundings.  Winter’s End was a fantasy about a world locked in an unending winter which I’m actually gently trying to nurse back to health as a current novel project.  Most of the others I can’t remember exactly what I had in mind–may have just been a title.

So, I had some ambitious goals way back then.  Perhaps some of these works will make their way back into future projects.  For now, I’m hopelessly caught up in nostalgia, so I will have to tear myself away from these old files so I can actually get some new writing done today.

Thoughts on NPR's 100 Best SF/Fantasy Books

Well, NPR just released their list of the 100 greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy books.  Since I’m a fan of both NPR and Science Fiction/Fantasy, I thought I’d make a few comments on the list.  Like anyone who encounters this list, there are some things I’m happy about, and some that I’m not.  Overall, I think it captured most of the classics, but snubbed a few, and it left something to be desired in its exclusion of some deserving contemporary authors. 

I was happy to see that Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings came in first on the list.  I feel it is the seminal work of speculative fiction of the twentieth century and thus deserves this lofty station.  Yes, I’m a bit biased in my love of this book, but I think most would agree that Tolkien had a powerful impact on the genre that fantasy was to become.   I also cannot think of a single other work of fantasy (or science fiction) that has had as great an impact, so I couldn’t really see anyone else on top of the list. 

This leads me to another thing I like about the list.  I’m glad they excluded young adult and horror from the list.  While there are certainly some worthy titles in both of those categories, I think first that SF and Fantasy deserve to be represented alone (both could have probably had their own 100 greatest list) and second, since this list is voted on by readers, and thus basically a popularity contest, they could have ended up with something like the Harry Potter books, or worse yet, something like Eregon topping the list.   Not to slight J. K. Rowling, her HP books are highly entertaining, but despite their great sales numbers, they are not the best of the best when it comes to the classics of speculative fiction. 

This brings to mind the fact that Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy came in second.  While I like the book, I find it an odd second place in the entire canon of SF/Fantasy.  It would seem more appropriate to me for something by Heinlein or Clarke to hold this place on the list.  But at least those two are represented somewhere further down the list.  I was saddened to find that Alfred Bester didn’t appear on the list.  His two novels, The Demolished Man, and The Stars My Destination are integral SF works that should be on anyone’s speculative fiction reading list. 

As to what was included, I was not thrilled to see graphic novels included in the mix.  While I love Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and the Sandman series, I don’t think of them in the same mix with straight up novels and story collections.  They are a different art form, no pun intended.  Leaving them out could have opened up space for writers like John Crowley, whose novel Little, Big practically redefined Fantasy in the early eighties.  Or Tim Powers, whose exclusion from the list is practically a travesty. 

I was also disappointed to see a commercial movie tie-in like Tim Zahn’s  Star Wars inspired Thrawn Trilogy on the list.  Nothing against movie tie-ins, they are often entertaining and well written, and they generate some well–deserved revenue for SF authors, but I just don’t think derivative works like this belong on a 100 best list.  Especially when so many well known authors of original fiction, like Lucius Shepard, Michael Swanwick, Frederick Pohl, Tad Williams and others didn’t make the list. 

I also found it interesting that authors with series books had the whole series listed, rather than just one book.  The main reason that I prefer this is the fact that it opened up more space on the list for other authors, even though in some series, the later books might not hold up as well as the first ones—Frank Herbert’s Dune books being a good example.

I also found that I disliked the fact that Neal Stephenson had four books on the list.  Not to slight his books—he is a brilliant author, but to have a list with four of his books and not one by Samuel R. Delany, or Octavia Butler, or worse yet, Fritz Leiber, is to me unthinkable.  Leiber, perhaps almost as much as Tolkien, helped define modern day genre fantasy with his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser works.  It is inexcusable that the list excludes Leiber. 

So that’s my two cents on the list, which all in all isn’t too bad.  I like when entities like NPR or other places do these sort of things, as it helps promote authors’ books, and gets people talking about books, just like I’m doing right now.  I’m sure I’ll take some flak for some of my opinions, but hey, that’s the way it goes. 

In reviewing the list, I find that out of the hundred, I’ve read forty-nine books on the list, including seven out of the top ten.  There are several more on there that I’d like to read, so thanks, NPR, for bringing them to my attention. 

Seventh Sale of the Year!

Just got word I've made another sale, my seventh of the year.  This time it's a short story called Rainbow Girl, to Golden Visions Magazine.  This was one that the editor had requested a minor rewrite on a while back, which I was happy to do, and I believe it made the story stronger.  It's estimated to come out in their winter issue, so there's a little wait, but not too bad. 

Rainbow Girl was the first story I wrote after my mother died back in January, so it is perhaps noticeably dark and grim.  It is a short piece about addiction, desperation and death.  But don’t you agree that sometimes it is the dark pieces that feel right at those difficult times of our lives.  Writing such is a way of dealing with the grief. 

I haven’t done a lot of dark writing yet in my career, but it is definitely an area that I would like to explore more in the future—just without the real life inspiration!

Musings on Odyssey

Well, now that Odyssey has been over for a week, I figure I am well-rested enough to finally make a blog entry about the experience.

All I can say is that it was amazing, intense and overwhelming. And even these words don’t do it justice. I knew it was going to be these things. I’d heard countless testimonials claiming the same. But to finally actually experience it was both surreal and profound. I am moved by the experience.

First, I’ll just say that Odyssey made me very happy...happier than I’ve been in a long time. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and dreaming of being a writer for just as long, but other than perhaps majoring in English in college, I’ve never done anything quite as profound and dedicated toward furthering my writing ability. I’ve never been immersed in writing–fiction writing–in such an all-encompassing way before, never been surrounded by so many other talented students of writing before, and never have I met a teacher like Jeanne Cavelos before.

I’ve read books on writing and so many of them are nebulous and oblique when it comes to craft. Ditto for some of the short seminars and panels on writing that I’ve experienced–some even taught by well known and best selling authors. There was nothing vague about the teaching at Odyssey. It was a thorough and broad program that really got into the nuts and bolts of writing, from a brief treatise on grammar to the mechanics of plot, voice, character, and several other aspects of the art and craft of fiction writing. I knew I’d learn a lot at Odyssey, but I didn’t realize how much, and how much of a jump start it would give to my abilities. Even in the first week, I could already look back on older work and see flaws that I hadn’t noticed before. From here on out, I have a new paradigm on how I write, and how I rewrite.

There were many great things about Odyssey. But I’d have to say the greatest of them is the main instructor herself, Jeanne Cavelos. Jeanne is the heart and soul of Odyssey. She is Odyssey. She has to be one of the most talented writers and editors that I’ve ever met. Getting a three or four page critique of a story from her is humbling, but also eye opening (or perhaps mind opening is a better way to put it). She is the best asset and resource at Odyssey.

But also important and worthwhile is the interaction with the fifteen other students at Odyssey. This is all part of the process of immersing one’s self in six weeks of writing intensity. In this case, it takes the form of reading and critiquing each others’ work. I knew this was a valuable skill that I wanted to learn, because I’ve long wanted to begin to interact with other writers out there, and critiquing through various writers groups is a great way to do that. But I also found that critiquing others work is a great way to hone my own skills. Seeing other writers’ various strengths and weaknesses and identifying them in a critique can help me identify the same in my own. This was perhaps one of the most unexpected benefits of the Odyssey format.
I’ve also made some great new writing friends that I look forward to interacting with in the years to come–not only my classmates, but other Odyssey graduates (Odfellows) from years past. There’s a great network setup to interact with graduates from previous years.

So, all in all, I would have to say that the Odyssey experience for me has been priceless and invaluable, and has accelerated my growth as a writer by a factor of several years. I’m proud and humbled that I got the chance to attend.

Another (Novelette) Sale!

Just got word that I’ve made another sale. This time it is for my novelette, The Night Bigfoot Attacked Marshall, Texas, June Fifteenth, 1977. Despite its somewhat cumbersome, monstrous title, this isn’t actually a work of speculative fiction, but it is my first piece of mainstream fiction to sell in quite a while. I’m very excited, as this story is very dear to my mine and my wife’s hearts. Set in 1977, it’s the story of two boys who search for Bigfoot in the east Texas woods. While not exactly autobiographical, I have definitely mined a lot of my own childhood in East and North Texas for this tale. It is sort of my own personal ‘Stand By Me," I guess.

Here is the blurb that I wrote for the publisher:

Jack Horn and Scotty McKay are two young boys brought together by their fascination for mythic monsters, particularly Bigfoot. Scotty believes he has sighted the beast, and the two boys take to the woods behind their houses in a quest to find the creature. But what they discover is something eminently more terrifying—and real.

I’ll keep you posted when it comes out.

In the mean time, I’m still here at Odyssey, so back to work for me!