Busy, busy, busy

It’s been two weeks now since the SF Writers’ Workshop ended. Doesn’t seem that long. It’s been a busy and productive time for me. I’m pretty pleased with myself and so I’ll bore you with the details.

As I promised, I sent off Flotsam to Analog and Stuff of the Old Gods to Strange Horizons. I brought both of those stories back from the workshop, critiqued, rewritten and ready. I have also tucked Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams, Canticles and One Last Kiss into the mail.

Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams went to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, the Australian SF magazine that sent the wry rejection on This Little Piggie earlier this year.

I hope they like the story because I do. It’s protagonist is Jolene Rainwater, an Ojibwa woman with an abiding love of the land, a fierce work ethic and a predilection for same-gender relationships. She whispers in my ear, the way some of my best characters have done.  In Pale Moon, Jolene encounters a traveler from a far-away world very like her own.

Canticles went to Jake Freivald at Flash Fiction Online, which ran my flash, At Both Ends, in June. Canticles is crime noir. I sent it to Alfred Hitchcck Mystery Magazine in January but haven’t even had the courtesy of a no thank you, so I figured the story got lost in the cracks somewhere.

Tim Murphy is the protagonist in Canticles. He’s a sad-sack crook who can’t catch a break to save his life.

And finally, I just finished One Last Kiss.  It’s been sitting, almost done, since before I left for Lawrence and Gracie Landis, its protagonist, got on my case to finish her tale the instant I set foot in Seattle again.

It’s one of my rare non-genre stories and it went to Glimmer Train, a non-genre quarterly out of Portland that I have subscribed to, now and again, since it began publication almost twenty years ago.

It’s a class act and I would love to have a story placed here.  Maybe Gracie , who has been told her whole life that Elvis Presley was her father, will help me get there.

A review

A belated thanks to Sam Tomaino at SFRevu for his June 25th review of At Both Ends, which was featured in the June 2009 issue of Flash Fiction Online.

Here’s what Sam had to say:

At Both Ends by K.C. Ball was of a special appeal to me. In line at a theater, a guy starts talking to another guy about what he’d do if he had super powers. Would he be rescuing people all the time? What if he stopped to have a personal life: would he feel guilty for not saving someone? I liked this a lot and loved the ending. One quibble: it’s Spider-Man not Spiderman.

Mea Culpa for the misspelling, Sam, and I’m pleased you like the story.

Thoughts on workshopping and the Campbell Conference

There is a morning session today to wind up the Campbell Conference and everyone will be going off in our own directions early this afternoon. It’s been a busy and fruitful two weeks. Something of a paradox, as well, for it seems as if they lasted forever AND came to an end much too quickly. I meet so many great folks here and made a couple of friendships that I think will become long-term.

The workshop, which ended Friday afternoon, was everything I had hoped it would be. I brought three stories and I’m taking them home as three completely different tales. Better, I believe. The first that was workshopped, A Prayer to Saint Barbara, has become Fat-Bottom Girl.  That name is a misnomer. It is slimmer and tighter than it was two weeks ago and it is ready, I believe, to submit to the professional markets.

Jim Gunn thinks so, too.  Thursday, at the completion of its second critique, he suggested that I send it off to Stan Schmidt at Analog.

So Tuesday, when I have settled into place in Seattle, it is going in the mail. I most likely will change the title before that; I don’t even want to think about a Fair Use lawsuit from the folks that hold the copyright to Queen’s big hit, but whatever I wind up calling it, I have hopes for this story.

I think I’ve made a breakthrough in my writing, thanks to Professor Gunn. He has a comfortable but incisive style of teaching and he is such a gentleman.  When he wants to make a point, he begins his remarks with, “It seems to me ..”  I figured out quickly that when he said that, something worthwhile would follow.

The story-telling style he suggests is deceptively simple. Write in scenes of 800-1000 words. Start the story with the crisis situation from which the protagonist escape. Decide what the story is about and remain true to that theme throughout the narrative.  Of course, it’s not the only way to write a story but it is one successful way to do so and I think I got it.  We shall see.

My second story, As A Wind Among the Reeds, has morphed into Stuff of the Old Gods, using the same techniques.  It has become a better, stronger story, too. It needs just a bit more polishing, but I expect to have it in the mail to Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine within the week.

The third story, which I’m now calling Fractal Jack, is going to need more work. Only 5,000 of it’s 9,000+ words survived critique, but I believe I see the path that it must follow, too. It will be in the mail, too, before the end of the month, along with Being Abednego, which I was able to plot from its new beginning to the end, using Gunn’s suggestions.  It’s earmarked for Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

The Campbell Conference, so named to honor John Campbell, long-time editor of Analog, was a worthwhile experience, too.  There were some great round-table discussions (and casual evening chats, I met a ton of people who are involved in the business of writing and publishing science fiction and I had a chance to talk with published authors James Alan Gardner, who won the Sturgeon Award for his short fiction, Raygun: A Love Story, as well as Ian MacLeod and Cory Doctorow, who shared this year’s Campbell award for best novel. MacLeod for Song of Time and Doctorow for Little Brother. Great fun.

Tomorrow morning it is back to real life but I’m taking so much back to Seattle with me.

Workshopping – day 6

It has been an amazing eight days here.  I haven’t posted since last Wednesday because I’ve spent the last five days rewriting all three of my stories following intense critiquing sessions. A Prayer for Saint Barbara is now Fat-Bottomed Girl and For the Plucking has morphed into Fractal Jack.  As a Wind Among the Reeds has kept its title but like the other two, it has lost almost 2,500 words and has been radically restructured.

It’s almost 9:00 p.m. here in Lawrence and I just finished Fractal Jack. There will be more critiquing and the Campbell and Sturgeon Awards winners are going to join us for class on Friday. But my stories are complete, so there will be much less pressure on me for the next four days. I’m not going to do a long entry tonight; I am so tired. But I promise more tomorrow. Honest.

BTW, I’ve been talking to Rachael every night, via cell phone, and she told me I got my comp copy of the Brit horror magazine Morpheus Tales in the mail today.  My flash, To Each His Niche and Task, is in it and my name is third on the cover, below Joe Lansdale. I am, as Jon and Sarah say, so chuffed.

Workshopping – day 3

We finished the first four of the second round of stories today — including my own As a Wind Among the Reeds.  The responses were generally favorable.  Everyone hated the title, so that will have to go, but the concensus was that it was solid urban fantasy that just needed a bit of re-structuring to be publishable.

I love the process, being able to get feedback about elements of the story that worked or didn’t work, along with forty or fifty minutes of blue-sky discussion about what could be done to make it better.  Someone here called it story bashing, but from the POV of pounding it into better shape, not demolishing it.

There’s a real mix of personalities here, but everyone is every bit as committed to writing speculative fiction as I am and we’ve critiqued som dynamite stories so far. IMO, the stand-out today was Deacon & the Devil by Lane Robins, author of the fantasy novels, Maledicte and Kings & Assassins. Her short story is a tale of a woman with magical talents and an abidding belief in God, who battles the very Devil.

Watch for it because I’m certain it will show up in print at one of the major science fiction/fantasy magazines before long.

Last night, eight of us (including Chris McKitterick, assistant program director, and Kij Johnson, author of the Hugo and Nebula-nominated short story,  26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss) sat up until 1:00 a.m. to talk of all manner of strange things.  I haven’t giggled so much sober in a long time.

After that, I stayed awake until 2:00 a.m. (midnight in Seattle) to make certain the premiere issue of my genre flash fiction quarterly, 10Flash, posted properly.  It did and it looks great.  It’s 4:45 p.m. here in Kansas right now and almost 500 people have visited the site since midnight.  I have been told, by some of the folks here, that that is a respectable number.

Check out the issue’s eleven stories, if you have an opportunity. Let me know what you think.