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Cat Rambo Award Eligibility for 2019

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

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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Treating Myself

Things keep moving along well and I thought I’d check in. My reward for winning a Nebula is that I’m using part of teaching plus Storybundle money to upgrade my workspace. I just put in the order for a fancy standing desk and stool, and am going to retire my faithful IKEA hack deck that I’ve been using the last six years or so.

This will be a much wider workspace, so it also means I can pick up a second monitor and have a lot more real estate when teaching/writing. I had that with my former set-up and it really made a difference when working. I’ve been holding off on this while waiting to move and finally figured I might as well go ahead, since it seems likely we’re here for the duration.

As to why I feel justified in rewarding myself, it’s productivity and nose to the grindstone! Here’s some testimony to 2020’s work in the form of my current writing/editing projects and where they stand:

The space opera series: The copy-edits for You Sexy Thing are in and the editor didn’t mind that I shifted around a couple of scenes in doing them. The listing is up! Still waiting to see what the cover looks like. The second book is currently at incoherent first draft status. Need to start pulling notes together for book three.

The Tabat quartet: Finishing up Exiles of Tabat ASAP is the current big project on deck. I also have some notes for the final book that I need to start putting in one place.

Baby Driver: Need to catch up on writing this. I have someone interested in publishing the final product, and I would also like to do it as a comic book, so I’ve got 3-4 pages of that script written.

Books hovering in the wings: a rewrite of the MG book, a literary horror stand-alone, a Tank Girl/Harley Quinn/Doctor Strange mash-up set in post-apocalyptic Seattle (stand-alone?); fleshing out an existing project that will be a literary SF novella.

Upcoming publications: Because It is Bitter (novella) in AND THE LAST TRUMP SHALL SOUND; Every Breath a Question, Every Heartbeat an Answer (novelette) in BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES; Crazy Beautiful (story) in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION; Snowflakes (story) in LAST CITIES OF EARTH; Stand and Deliver (story, with Wayne Travis Rambo ) in DARK MATTER MAGAZINE ; I Decline (flash) in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION).

Current story projects: a space western short story in collaboration for an anthology request; a space opera short story for an anthology request; a near future caper novella; a near future SF story, the usual smattering of flash.

I also have an upcoming anthology project that I just finished looking over the contract for; look for slush reader calls and guidelines soon but don’t mail me until they’re posted!

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Recent Stuff: Book! More Book! I Like 2015 So Far!

Cat Rambo and Connie Willis
Here I am with one of my personal heroes, Connie Willis. In Chez Rambo, we have a frequent saying: What would Connie do?
I’ve announced it on social media, But I haven’t blogged about it yet, so I wanted to pass along some terrific news.

As some of you know, I have a novel that is the first volume of a fantasy quartet that I’ve been shopping around for a while. It’s a great pleasure to be able to announce that BEASTS OF TABAT will appear this year from Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta’s stellar Wordfire Press. Now that I have some confidence that the books will appear, I’m finding that words on the second book, HEARTS OF TABAT, are flowing much much MUCH more easily, and that’s been my primary focus this week.

But! I have additional great news, which is that Hydra House will be publishing a second two-sided collection from me, this time full of fantasy stories. NEITHER HERE NOR THERE will also be appearing in 2015, which makes this a great year so far and we’re only halfway through month one.

Because I am insane and always taking on too many things, here’s a new one I’m involved with, a Seattle area event calendar/blog for speculative fiction, Supernatural Seattle. If you’re interested in helping out with that project, drop me a line.

I’ve also updated my About page with the appearances that I know of so far in 2015. I think I will be in Oklahoma in early May, but am still nailing that appearance down. In any case, it looks like it will be a fun year, and one thing that I’m particularly looking forward to are the Nebula Awards, which take place in early June in Chicago.

Reminder: this weekend I’ve got an online class coming up, Editing 101, that focuses on revision and rewriting. Sign up and learn how to make your sentences sing. If you can’t make it but want to make sure you get news of upcoming classes, sign up for my mailing list.

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