2015 Publications in Retrospect

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the project so far is the way different people use the same material. I’m working on finishing up the next novella in the series, A Cavern Ripe With Dreams. I think I’ve mentioned it before; it’s heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” William S. Burroughs’ Junky, and Joe Lansdale’s The Drive-in Chronicles. Here’s the teaser from the beginning of it, which went out with Nirvana Gates.

One morning his father woke him from a nightmare. He was still young, perhaps eight. His father squatted on his heels besides Bill’s bedroll and shook his shoulder. When he woke, shuddering and gasping from dreams of strangle-fingered demons, feeling his breath still in jeopardy, his father didn’t say anything, just beckoned to him.

He followed at his father’s heels, towards the world and the great tube that the city clung to. At the end of each tunnel the space widened considerably, leaving places where shelves and ladders and catwalks could be stretched. And beyond them all you could see the abyss itself, stretching downward and upward into darkness.

The air was full of something. What was it?

His father said, as Bill moved to the railing to see what was happening, “Sometimes the world opens and things fall in. Rarely do you see them. This is something you will remember all your life.”

The air was full of tiny, floating things. He stretched out his palm and kept it motionless long enough that one drifted to be trapped in his palm. A seed, a brown seed, and attached to one end a tuft of hairs, fine and feathery, carrying it along. Carefully he raised his hand, examined it more closely. The seed was so small, but ridges and swirls marked its surface and up close, it was no longer brown, but shades and gray and green and red that somehow blended together to create the impression of brown from just a few inches farther away.

He closed his fingers around it, meaning to keep it, but it was so small that it wafted away even as his fingers moved.

He’d only seen things fall into the abyss. But these, so light, sometimes moved upward or downward, sometimes tugged sideways as though snatched by invisible hands. Thousands and thousands of these, swirling through the air.

He and his father gathered a painstaking handful, picking them from crevices. Other people were doing the same. How often did you get something like that without cost, like a gift from the universe?

They picked up seeds, but they also stood for hours, watching it. Almost everyone in the city came to see it, even if their children had to carry them. People did not speak much, simply watched, as though storing it up. He grew bored and watched their faces. None of them looked at him. Even the other children seemed too self-absorbed to return his gaze, to notice that he was watching them. His mother arrived and paid them little attention, instead going to speak to the city council and offer her opinion of the event. Bill and his father stayed where they were and paid her no mind.

At last he saw the cloud beginning to thin and his father stirred. “You may never see another thing like that,” he said, regretfully. “Some people live lifetimes between Openings. Others see dozens, maybe more. You never know.” He took Bill for breakfast from a vendor, bitter tea and roasted bulbs that tasted of smoke. As they ate, fewer and fewer of the seeds fell but there were still some, hanging in the air.

He slept dreamlessly that night.

When he went to the edge again, the seeds were gone and the air was blank. Not a trace of them remained, even the tiniest fragment had been taken. For the next year everyone tried to grow the seeds into plants. They tried different levels of moisture, or heat, or light from the sunstrip, but nothing worked and the seeds remained inert. He wondered what they would have produced. He wondered how they had come here. What decided when the world would open up and take something in? What lay outside the closed opening?

What decided when it would open and close? It implied some sort of conscious force, he thought, but then again there were random things in the world, things that developed without purpose.

What was Bill’s purpose? Did he have one?

It’s that time of year again when I urge my students and mentees not to be shy about spreading word of the great stuff they’ve done over the course of the year. I’ve blogged before about how important it is particularly for marginalized writers, and you can find my usual round-up of such posts here along with A.C. Wise’s here.

What did I publish over the course of the year? The thing I’m proudest of is my novelette, CARPE GLITTER, which just came out from Meerkat Press. It is available in both electronic and print form. If you’re reading for awards and need a copy, please let me know.

Other things I had published include:
A Merchant Has Maxims (novelette) UNFETTERED III, edited by Shawn Speakman

A Merchant had a journal since first learning to write. A Merchant without one felt that lack like a missing limb, something Essa kept reaching for and not finding. She already missed being able to flip through it at night, to figure out the results of different actions and what part each God had played, from small ones like Kepterto, who handled tailors, or Rilriliworhaomu, Trade God of Hypothetical Marital Alliances, to the larger ones like Enba and Anbo, Want and Supply.

Big Rural (short story), THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT, edited by Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller

She gulped down the last of the water and stuck the bottle in her purse. The tomato red sun rolled on the horizon, sending long black shadows walking across the land, towards the enormous black square that was Phase One of the Sol Dominion power plant, glittering in the last of the sunlight. You could barely see the storage structures scattered among them like enormous alien flowers, many petalled and made of dark carbonized plastic with an oily undersheen of cobalt and purple.

Arms folded, she looked towards the town bordering that square to the east, where lights were flickering alive. She could name most of them. The gas station. The diner. The tiny grocery/hardware/drugstore locals just called “the store.” The two block strip that was Main Street, the grade school on one end, the high school on the other, but meeting in shared sports fields: baseball, soccer. Still no football stadium. The coal plant, unlit now.

When you came home again, even “the big rural” as the song called it, things were supposed to have changed. Here the only change was that black square. Between the town lights and the scattered but symmetrical lights surrounding the plant, a dark strip, perhaps a mile wide, stretched, unlit. As though town and plant had turned their backs on each other.

A Hand Extended, (short story), CITIES OF DUST, PLANES OF LIGHT, edited by Todd Sanders

The person closest to the mage was an Ettilite, all four arms folded. Despite stiffly formal body language, he was dressed simply for his race: plain brown tunic drawn over his humanoid torso’s purple skin, and matching trews and”¦were those boots? On shipboard you never needed such a thing, and coming down to Tarn had been a revelation to Niko in her flimsy ship-sandals. Imagine having to dress for a totally random circumstance called “weather”? It was absurd. She hated this place.

Niko gnawed at a cuticle, then caught herself and dropped her hand back into her lap. Stay calm and don’t expend energy. Save it for the Threefold Gauntlet.

How I Come to Be the Queen of Treacle, (short story), WONDERLAND, edited by Marie Keegan and Paul Kane

When we grimbled, how we grambled, children, down in those treacle mines, with a slow syrup slurry that clung to your boots, your hands, and every bit of skin, so you’d lick your lips, vicious-like, and taste gritty sugar and wonder what was happening up in the blue-sky world. And then we grimbled and we grambled more, and when we were weary walking, sleep stepping, we came up to the wasty world and tumbled into our blankets, and then in the morning before the sun came into the sky, we went back down and did it all again.

Broken all My Boughs and Brittle My Heart (short story), UNLOCKING THE MAGIC, edited by Vivian Caethe

It was a lizard dropping on her face from the ceiling that woke Ambra in a panic. They ran back and forth all night, feasting on spiders and midges and the slower moths, but they were sticky-footed and rarely lost their grip. This one scampered away while she smacked herself in the face, much harder than she’d intended, so that she saw stars and bit her tongue, all at once.

Dawn, seeping gray, outlined the window, showing the shutter slats as faint lines of light. She nursed her tongue, which felt awkward and painful in her mouth, and swallowed blood as she swung herself up and out of bed, abandoning thought of sleep. Once she’d had a soldier’s knack of being able to sleep anywhere, anytime, but nowadays that skill was long gone and she was lucky to pluck a few uneasy hours from a night.

Cold stone struck her feet as she stood, and she fished around under the bed for the knitted socks that served her as slippers, disreputable and threadbare but warmer than being barefoot. The narrow chamber had only the single window; she moved to it and swung the shutters open, then leaned out on the wide stone sill.

The Chosen One (flash story) Patreon
Neighbors Poem poem, Patreon
April Rain (poem), Patreon
Quick Gulch Poem (poem), Patreon
Poem for Sarah, this blog

Nonfiction and other sundry things

Patreon content varied but included things like this story wrangling session, special convention ribbons, and so many pictures of my cat Taco
Video tutorial on researching and evaluating story markets
Video on submitting to story markets
An on-demand flash fiction class
Nonfiction essay for Clarkesworld, Stories That Change the World
Edited political science fiction anthology IF THIS GOES ON