Swords Against Boredom

As we move forward with our Carnivah House anthology project, The Infinity Swords, I hope we do not encounter Unreason similar to the likes of another editor’s ghastly experience.

As a writer, I’ve been lucky. Most of the people I’ve encountered have seemed utterly reasonable, utterly friendly. Editors — even those who don’t buy my stuff — have for the most part been professional. Those readers I’ve heard from via email or forums or whatever have been very nice and generally enthusiastic. The other writers I’ve met online or worked with are a great bunch, even when disagreements arise over proper sonnet form or the merits of Tolkien’s work.

But now, I’m editing an anthology along with a couple of other people. Pretty soon, we’ll be reading submissions from gods-know how many people. Some of what we receive will be awesome, but some of it will be utter crap. As editors, we will have to crush some dreams.

We’ll do it as gently and professionally as we can, of course, but the dreams still get stomped upon. Those who have been in the short fiction trenches a while will read our rejections, react in whatever way works best for them, and then get on with their writerly lives.

Some will try sending us something else, just to prove they can sell to us. That’s cool. Some will send their story to another publisher, just to prove we were wrong. That’s cool, too. Some will read our advice and heed it, others will decide we’re full of crap and keep doing things their way. That, too, is cool.

But what about the new writers, the ones who haven’t been through the submissions furnace? Will they react like the crazed woman noted in the link above? Will they go off the deep end? Will the mental unbalance that prompts them to attempt writing fiction in the first place finally teeter over into Total Unholy Madness? Will they send us nasty email, burn voodoo dolls in our images, set baying werewolves on our trail?

I guess we’ll find out.

Just one note: Any writer who calls us on the phone, unbidden, to ask about their submission or to complain about a rejection or to tell us how gee-whiz wonderful their story is so could we please read it Right This Instant, will get an automatic lifetime-and-beyond ban from all Carnivah House productions. And we’ll burn voodoo dolls and sic our baying werewolves on you.

– Steve

This being the Halloween season, I picked up a volume of Poe the other night. Instead of the more horrific stuff, though, I found myself drawn to a little piece called “The One-Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade,” a riff on the wonders of science versus the wonders made up by talespinners. It’s a very clever idea, that story; but the execution leaves me bamboozled.

The bamboozling element, I must say, with all due respect to an author I admire and one who established himself as a giant in the field of weird fiction, especially American weird fiction, a variant or two of which I happen to write myself, is Poe’s use of clauses, those sentence portions often set off by commas, a worthy punctuation mark, which has done great service to many authors whilst being horribly abused by others; this usage of subordinate clauses, a hallmark of most of Poe’s short fiction, attains a high-water mark in this particular story, in that Poe completely outpaces any previous personal best mark set in his earlier fictive efforts, of which there are no few that stand as exemplary displays of subordinate clause pyrotechnics, or at least did so stand until the writing of “Scheherezade,” in which Poe seldom pauses for a breath, let alone a period, but instead layers clause upon clause and clause within clause and all set apart, as I have mentioned, with a peppering of commas as has not been seen since the comma first appeared, when, through the quite natural enthusiasm engendered by such a useful punctuational innovation, commas no doubt invaded fiction in veritable hordes of tiny-tailed not-quite periods, although I would be remiss if I failed to mention Poe’s sensible yielding to the occasional need for a semi-colon or even a full colon when the demand, as it always does, arises.

– Steve

Here’s a review of “Freehold: The Protector,” the second in a series of shared-world fantasy anthlogies from Carnifex Press.

In the interests of disclosure: The reviewer is my longtime friend and former college roommate over at Blogtide Rising.

– Steve

Turns out issue 2 of “All Possible Worlds” will be the last.

The editors announced on the web site today they’ve decided to cease publication. They still are selling the first two issues, but there won’t be any more.

That’s a sad thing. APW put together a pretty good debut issue, I thought, and they took care to make the cover art pop. I liked the mix of science fiction, fantasy and just plain weird. I’ve seen a lot of small press publications, and I thought this mag would be one to break out of the doldrums.

I hope Team APW tries to do something somewhere down the road, and wish them the best of luck in whatever they’ve got going on.

– Steve

The image above, the work of artist Jim Ordolis, represents the very first time a magazine has illustrated one of my stories with a scene created specifically from that story.

How cool is that?

Thanks to Ordolis for permitting me to showcase his work here. You can see more of his stuff at his Web site.

Each panel above goes with a story in “All Possible Worlds,” issue 2. The lower panel depicts a scene from my story Two Kings in Zalzalla, a tale of politics, war and wisdom. In this scene, Perrin (the man in the nifty dress armor, which I really, really like) is confronting his father Ulbin, the aging king.

Ordolis says the editors at APW select the scenes they want depicted, then let artists decide which ones they want to illustrate. He thought my story went well with his style, and so came up with the art above. The panel depicts the Zalzallan quarters in far more detail than my story does (I tend not to dwell overmuch on such things), but there is nothing in the art that seems out of place or alien to me. I think Ordolis captured the mood of things.

And I want a suit of armor like Perrin’s.

Two Kings in Zalzalla shares some things in common with The First Casualty, a short fantasy of mine in the newest edition of Electric Spec. Both stories feature protagonists who are quite set in their beliefs, instilled from youth with words of patriotism and martial glory. Both learn the world is far more complicated than they were brought up to believe. Come to think of it, that theme plays out a lot in my Faceless Sons stories, too.

Hmmmm. Maybe I’m on to something.

You can buy “All Possible Worlds” here. LATE EDITOR’S NOTE: You won’t be able to subscribe, though; APW has announced on its web site that it is shutting down. Damn.

You can read The First Casualty right here.

– Steve

P.S. And while I’m shamelessly plugging my fiction here, let me provide links to Tell’s Choice, my historical ghost story over at “Every Day Fiction,” and to The Bloofer Lady, a horror story of mine over at “Down in the Cellar.” Both of those are decidedly different from the stories mentioned above.

Calthus, my resurrected sword-and-sorcery hero, storms back into the fray in Bloodshrikes, coming up in Issue 2 of “Staffs & Starships” magazine from Sheer Speculation Press.

That issue also will contain a fantasy story called “Heartwrit” from my buddy TW Williams.

Bloodshrikes is a hard-core, action-packed adventure in which Calthus finds himself pitted against foes who couldn’t care less about his keen, swift sword and martial prowess. This one is pretty much down-and-dirty sword-and-sorcery at its down-and-dirtiest.

I’ll provide a publication date and other details when I get them.

– Steve

My flash fantasy, Tell’s Choice, went live today at “Every Day Fiction.” This one is a ghostly take on the William Tell legend, and a bit of a departure from other stuff of mine you may have read. Feel free to come back here and let me know what you think of it.

If you don’t get to reading it today (Oct. 14), no worry; stories are archived at the EDF site.

For those who haven’t yet checked it out, EDF is a wonderful venture. A new flash story — 1,000 words or less — every day, on the web site and available as emails. EDF publishes just about any genre. Readers are able to comment on the stories. And EDF maintains an online forum so people can discuss other topics. All in all, it’s a fun place to hang out on the web.

In other news, I heard today that “All Possible Worlds” Issue No. 2 is back from the printer and shipping to subscribers. That issue contains another fantasy story of mine, called Two Kings in Zalzalla. The APW story is a little closer to what readers of my fiction might expect than the EDF story, as it contains magic and swordplay and battles.

– Steve

P.S. I also still have stories live online at “Electric Spec” and “Down in the Cellar.”

Overexposure? Nah.