k.c. ball

It’s March, and you can now get IF THIS GOES ON, the anthology of near future political science fiction that I edited. There are some amazing stories in it, and I’m so proud of how the book turned out. Please check it out, and if you enjoy it, spread the word with a review or mention!

The project was initially the idea of publisher Colin Coyle; it was a pleasure working with him along with an awesome team of slush readers. The book was a mix of solicited stories along with ones that came in through the slush pile, so there’s a nice mix of more established and newer voices.

There are so many of us who write, and so many voices that get drowned out. I want to tell you about one of them. I want to tell you about my friend K.C. Ball.

She wrote short stories as well as novels, and I edited her collection, Snapshots from a Black Hole. She was talented and terrific at including emotion, while at the same time she was capable of spinning out a shaggy dog story to groaningly effective length.

K.C. was always conscious of time nipping at her heels, particularly after a heart attack where her wife Rachael (literally) saved her life with CPR. At the same time, she was a private and introverted person, not well-suited to the sort of buy-my-book shilling that’s sometimes necessary to be heard over the crowd. She kept hoping for more support from the networks she saw supporting other people, particularly some of the young white males whose work was appearing at the same time that she first started getting published. I met with her a couple of times to go over stories, but as time passed, she seemed more and more discouraged, feeling as though she was flinging work out into the void and not hearing much back.

She was trans, and older than me by a couple decades, and sometimes seemed bemused by the times we live in. I kept urging her to submit her stuff to places like the Lambda Awards, but she was reluctant. “Those aren’t for me,” she said, and I left it at that, albeit reluctantly. She could be a little cranky, a little morose and pessimistic, and sometimes I’d tease her into a better mood, and sometimes I’d let her be. She’d worked as a prison guard, and sometimes her outlook on the world was as cynically informed by that as you’d expect, but her stories were full of heroes and people living up the idea of being better. She loved superheroes.

I ran into her two years back at the grocery store, on Christmas Day, and she seemed pleased that I ran over to greet her. Now I’m regretting not being better about keeping in touch after she fell away from the writing group we shared, despite the fact that we were living so much closer to each other now that I’ve moved to West Seattle.

And now she’s gone, fallen to another heart attack, and she never really got the chance to “break out” the way many writers do, which is through hard work, and soldiering on through rejection, and most of all playing the long game. If you want to read some of her kick-ass work, here’s the collection I edited, Snapshots from a Black Hole and Other Oddities.

I’m so sorry not to able to hear your voice any more, K.C. I hope your journey continues on, and that it’s as marvelous as you were.

What makes Seattle particularly well suited to writing speculative fiction set in it?
Kat – Marvelously creepy weather, and distinct neighborhoods that preserve their history. What are ghosts but history that won’t go away?
Julie – The weather for sure, as well as the visual landscape it provides. The distinct neighborhoods with life. Any fiction set in a distinct city is better.
John – The diversity of culture and people as well as the landscape
K.C. – The geography and the weather, which can go from fog to crystal clear one day to the next.

What landmarks of Seattle lend themselves to spec-fic writing?
Kat – Pioneer Square. The first year I was here, an unusual fog struck and all I could see were the disembodied feet of pedestrians moving in it, which inspired all sorts of possibilities writing-wise. Seattle has lots of layers, which are great writing points, the places where the skeleton is partially exposed.
Julie – Seattle has lots of distinctive features. The Greenlake district is really distinctive, but there are lots of different settings that are suited to different moods.
John – The greenness of winter as well as the wilderness and the places to get lost that it provides
K.C. – The whimsical details of the city, such as the five foot concrete dragon in the park near me in West Seattle. I wrote my story, I Must to the Barber’s Chair, because of a sign I’d seen: “Psychic” in one window and “Barber” in the adjoining one. After the story was published, the barber who owned that shop wrote to me. He said the psychic had gone out of business (which you think they would have seen coming) and he’d been moved to buy the “Psychic” sign and add it to his own window.