Swords Against Boredom

My ghostly historical flash piece, Tell’s Choice, will appear sometime courtesy of Every Day Fiction.

Every Day Fiction, edited by Jordan Lapp, is a really interesting venture. The idea is to offer a new flash story (1,000 words or less) every day via email or other platforms. It’s free to readers, and I think stories start rolling out Sept. 1.

Flash fiction is tough to write, so I’m glad this story found a home. I look forward to seeing what Every Day Fiction comes up with. A bit of flash fiction is just the thing for a short break at work, and a new story every day is a cool way to check out a lot of other writers.

– Steve

I just saw the retina specialist. He opened up my pupils with eyedrops, flashed a dozen or so multi-colored lights into my eyes and peered into my skull with something I think was a leftover part from the Hubble telescope.

The end result? The thing my optometrist feared was a hole in my retina turns out to be just a spot of missing pigment. My retina is intact and okee-dokee.

Of course, I can’t see a bloody thing at the moment because of my highly dilated, exceedingly light-sensitive eyes. For all I know I’m typing lines from the Kama Sutra. But I’ll check back in later when the drops wear off and fix any typos and whatnot.

– Steve

I just learned my short fantasy The First Casualty will appear in Electric Spec. Yay!

It’s a mix of sword-and-sorcery and fantasy, with much mingling of war and politics and religion. It’s scheduled to appear Sept. 30.

– Steve

I spent the wee hours applying spit and polish to Rain of Stones, a new tale of Calthus, my down-and-dirty sword-and-sorcery guy, It’s about 6,000 words of blood-soaked goodness, and so far I’m rather pleased with it. It fits well with the Calthus saga, reveals a bit more of his past and pushes the bloody fellow into new emotional territory to boot. The next step is to have my trusty first readers look it over and share their thoughts, then whip it into final shape.

Then comes the difficult part. Finding a place to sell it.

Black Gate? Perhaps. I think it’s good enough to try there. But I have two stories in slush at Black Gate already, and I’m reluctant to tie up a third one. The editors have been hacking away at the slush to improve those legendary, lengthy response times — but they haven’t improved yet and aren’t taking new submissions anyway.

Adventures of sword and Sorcery? Perhaps. But I have a story in slush there, too. And the guidelines they provide hedge their bets a bit, leaving some room for doubt as to whether the magazine really will spring from the ashes. I’m reluctant to tie up another story with them just yet.

All Possible Worlds? It’s an eclectic magazine and it’s open to sword-and-sorcery. I’ve already sold a couple of stories there. And, yes, I have yet another under consideration with APW already, too.

Flashing Swords? Rain of Stones definitely is a Flashing Swords kind of story, and Calthus already has a following there, too. But I’m one of the associate editors at FS, in a slush-reading capacity, and I’m reluctant to submit a fresh story to editors I work with. I don’t want to unduly pressure them, and I don’t want Flashing Swords to come off as a self-publishing gig for yours truly. Besides, I probably will have a reprint story in the debut issue (for no pay), so FS doesn’t need another Goble piece at the moment anyway.

Where, then?

Electric Spec? I have a story being held there. Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine? The last handful of rejections I got from that quarter left the impression that sword-and-sorcery maybe isn’t their thing.

Staffs & Starships? They bought one of mine for the well-received debut issue, and another is under consideration for issue two. The one they’re weighing is a Calthus story, by the way. Hmmm … if S&S likes that Calthus story, maybe they’d like another. That’s a distinct possibility …

But I won’t rush it off to S&S just yet. Sometimes, it’s best to let a story simmer and see what markets arise. Who knows? Rain of Stones might be a perfect fit for some sword-and-sorcery anthology that hasn’t been announced yet. One thing I’ve learned is that it pays to have a bank of good stories ready to go when those new opportunities arise.

So … Rain of Stones goes into the “Good Stuff” file. I have a couple of Spider John tales and a couple of Otrossius stories in the same category. When the next big thing comes along, or when my current submissions work their way through the editorial process, I’ll be ready to pounce.

Just like Calthus.

– Steve

I excerpted the following from an Associated Press report:

WASHINGTON (AP) — One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

The numbers are reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled “Reading at Risk” found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.
Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn’t read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

Some observations:

• Maybe someone should write a book on the importance of reading, so these people would realize … oh. Damn. That won’t work.
• If you’re reading only four or five books a year, can you possibly justify making one of them a book by Ann Coulter? (No. Of course you can’t.)
• Do you suppose maybe some people have given up on reading just so they can avoid being so devastated when a long-treasured book, say, oh, “The Wizard of Earthsea,” gets turned into a god-awful, dreck-drenched, muck-infested piece of putrid petrified donkey pus by the Science Fiction Channel?
• Does reading comic books count? I don’t read them anymore because of the cost, but I think comic books should count.
• Can I just point out that, in a nation and world facing such challenges as this one, the news that a quarter of adult Americans didn’t crack a single frickin’ book all year is sort of mind numbing. Books are such a great way to learn; fiction is such a splendid way to relax.
• As for journalism, some of the best in recent years has been in book form. A book can provide depth that documentaries, even good ones, can’t match and that newspapers and magazines are unable to parallel because of space limitations.
• How will children get the idea that reading is good for them if they never see their adult role models doing it? Or if adults never read with them?
• That makes me wonder how much the poll is skewed by people who read books because they have to read books — reviewers, librarians, teachers, etc. If we correct the poll to weed that factor out, are the results even more bleak?
• How many books do you suppose President Bush reads in a year?
• By my own count, I’ve read 31 books so far this year — and that doesn’t count short stories or magazine articles, both of which I tend to ingest at a high rate. What am I, a freak?

OK, enough of my whining. Go read something, damn it!

– Steve

Circumstances have forced Paul Jessup to put his fantasy magazine, GrendelSong, on hiatus.

I was lucky enough to have one of my Calthus tales appear there, and Paul had accepted another for future publication. The hiatus costs me a publication, then, but that’s of little consequence. I’ll find another home for the piece. But I will miss GrendelSong.

I’ve never met Paul face to face, although he and I have talked and jousted via emails, blogs and forums several times. We have differing views, sometimes, but I’ve come to respect Paul as someone who is passionate about fiction in general and short fiction in particular. Paul seems to be always bristling with ideas, and almost all of those ideas seem to focus on bettering the lot for lovers of fantasy. It takes a certain bravado to attempt a small-market print fantasy magazine, and even more to attempt one as eclectic as GrendelSong. Kudos to Paul for trying.

Paul says he hopes to bring GrendelSong back, and I hope he does. I also suspect that Paul will take what he’s learned from GrendelSong’s first incarnation, and bring it back even better than before.

– Steve

Still wondering if you want to try “Staffs & Starships,” the new fantasy & science fiction magazine? Here’s a link to Rob Santa’s Firebrand Fiction review of “Staffs & Starships,” Issue 1.

It’s a very positive review. It ought to give you a good idea what to expect.

I have a story in this issue, called The Fourth Knight’s Quest. Several other regulars at Swords Against Boredom are in there, too.

– Steve