ben burgis

Collaborations can be a lot of fun. My first collaboration came about when Jeff VanderMeer asked if I’d be interested in working together on one and tossed me a 1500 word lump that would end up becoming “The Surgeon’s Tale.” That story remains among one of my favorite pieces of writing, in part because reading back through it evokes the pleasure of batting it back and forth, adding thousand or so word chunks each time, until it ended up in the land of the novelette. I think we managed to make the final result pretty seamless – I have trouble remembering who wrote some bits, although others stand out clearly in my head as Jeff’s or mine, because I remember first reading them or spinning them out.

I haven’t done that many. “Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift” with Ben Burgis resulted from Ben describing what he wanted to write a story about — Miami and were gators and coke dealers — at more than one Wiscon. I wrote the beginning and sent it his way, and the back and forth began. Now we’ve got a similar lump in process.

Gio Clairval and I just finished up a flash piece recently. One of the things I’ve done to encourage collaborations is stick a bunch of word lumps up in a Google doc and just shared the doc so people could take a look and see if anything sparked. She liked a piece I’d done based on an image of a female acrobat.

Right now Bud Sparhawk and I just finished the novella “Haunted,” which started as a short story and kept growing and growing and growing. Bud plots things out a bit more thoroughly than I do, and it’s been interesting so far. Here we worked in Scrivener and laid out a story arc in cards before really setting to writing. I enjoyed it, because I think we’ve got a killer idea, and some clever twists, and some things that will hit nostalgic sweetspots.

So here’s my advice on collaboration based on my experience, which is somewhere past utterly new at it and yet not in the range of people like Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton, Mike Resnick, and countless more.

• Pick a collaborator whose speed (roughly) matches yours. Bud was writing faster on ours, and I know there were several times where I was the holdup. Too much of that can get frustrating, as I’m sure he can attest.
• Pick a collaborator who doesn’t take things too seriously (and don’t do that yourself). If someone has got something (real or imagined) at stake, the pressure may be uncomfortable.
• Pick a collaborator who is flexible, and similarly be prepared yourself to sacrifice cherished ides, because you can always use them elsewhere.

Collaborative benefits include (for me, at least) new energy, someone to discuss a story with as it’s written, new insights into process, fresh ideas, and a kick in the butt to be productive.

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Well, it’s been a very good year.

I had 20 original stories come out. Here’s the list, if you want to look for some of them.

• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, November, 2013. Just the Facts: A Zombie Story.
• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, October, 2013. Flying Matilda (with Gio Clairval).
• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, October, 2013. Superhero Art.
• ABYSS & APEX, October, 2013. The Toad’s Jewel.
• WHAT FATES IMPOSE, edited by Nayad Monroe, September, 2013. To Read the Sea.
• SIGNS OF LIFE, September, 2013. Mystery in Metal.
• GLITTER AND MAYHEM, edited by Lynne Thomas and Michael Damien Thomas, September, 2013. Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane.
• EVERY DAY FICTION, August, 2013. Three Wishes.
• BEYOND THE SUN, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, July, 2013. Elsewhere, Within, Elsewhen.
• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, July, 2013. On the Big-Fisted Circuit.
• THE MAD SCIENTIST JOURNAL, June, 2013. Prophetic Lobster Man.
• CLOCKWORK PHOENIX FOUR, May, 2013. I Come From the Dark Universe.
• THE JOURNAL OF UNLIKELY ENTOMOLOGY, May, 2013. Of Spiders, Centipedes and Holes.
• SQ MAGAZINE, April, 2013. A Man and His Parasite.
• THE OTHER HALF OF THE SKY, edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt, April, 2013. Dagger and Mask.
• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, March, 2013. Soft.
• GIGANOTASAURUS, March, 2013. Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lifts (with Ben Burgis).
• DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, February, 2013. Love’s Footsteps.
• FISH, edited by Carrie Cuinn, 2013. The Fisher Queen.
• EVERY DAY FICTION, January, 2013. The Passing of Grandmother’s Quilt.

Here’s some pieces that I’ve particularly enjoyed over the last week, as well as pointers to some recent publications of my own.

Print:

• Apex Magazine had some terrific pieces in its March 2013 issue. My favorites are Mermaid’s Hook by Liz Argall and If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky. I will confess that I’m particularly fond of the latter because Rachel wrote it during a group flash writing session I was part of.
• Grá Linnaea has kicked off a serial fiction effort that’s a lot of fun. Check out The Curious Investigations of Miranda McGee on his website.
• I love pieces of fiction masquerading as something else. It’s such a fabulous device when used well. Jake Kerr’s produced a great story doing exactly that in Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince for Lightspeed Magazine. (Question: is there no audio version? The “Listen” link doesn’t work for me.)
• A lovely, resonant piece about grief from E. Lily Yu is up at Eclipse Online.
• The Nymph of Limantour by J.J. Roth, up at Every Day Fiction, is a marine love story — or is it?
• My collaboration with Ben Burgis, Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift appeared in Giganotasaurus. It’s a story of a motorcycle mechanic with a graduate degree in paraconsistent logic and a summons from the Powers that Be investigating a mystery involving were-gators, demons, and dreams of Che Guevera, all set in 1980s Miami and Cuba.

Audio:

• Part of the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at Arisia, featuring Roxanne Bland, Kimberly Long-Ewing, and Gail Z. Martin. Broad Universe is a good organization for writers and well worth checking out if you don’t already know about it.
• This piece on YA fiction podcast Cast of Wonders has a simple, almost pastoral world with a sinister overlay: magic that demands the sacrifice of young women and strict societal sexual roles. An almost inevitably tragic love story between Charlotte and Lily plays out against it. Eliza Hirsch, A Song for the Season, read by Kate Baker.
• Sandra M. Odell writes wrenchingly and wonderfully. Check out David Milner Is… narrated by Joe Sammarco for Tales to Terrify.
• The Drabblecast kicked off its Women and Aliens Month with Amid the Words of War, which originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and was reprinted in Near+Far. Eric Marsh does a super job with it.
• Podcastle has the audio version of Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift, read adeptly and wonderfully as always by M.K. Hobson. I always smile when I hear her distinctive voice.

P.S. If you’re in the Seattle area, Deb Taber is reading tonight at the University Bookstore and should be well worth attending.