Home again, home again

Ignore the ransom demands. I’m home from Orycon and what a great time I had. Lots to process, but here’s a few high points:

• chatting with Michael Ehart, one of my favorite flash fiction writers and author of The Servant of the Manthycore and the upcoming The Tears of Ishtar.
• watching author and anthology editor Lou Anders and Mary-Robinette Kowal, author of the heart-rending 2009 Hugo nominee Evil Robot Monkey (which is flash fiction BTW), pace the center lane at the Building a Balanced Mythos panel.
• Saturday dinner with Tom Crosshill and Alex Black, the other two 1st Quarter 2009 Writers of the Future winners.
• seeing Kevin Shamel again. Kevin was at Orycon selling his new book, Rotten Little Animals from Eraserhead Press. (The Mohawk is cool beans, Kev.)
• Saturday drinks with author and teacher Mary Rosenblum (who has been enormously supportive of 10Flash. Thanks again, Mary. I can’t say that too often.), Dale Smith and Shawna Reppert, whose flash fiction (respectively) Dead Wife Waiting and A Knight’s Vow will appear in the January 2010 and April 2010 issues of 10Flash. (Wait ’til you read them. Great stuff.)
• the late Sunday afternoon chat with Camille Alexa, author of Push the Sky, a short fiction collection from Hadley Rille Books, and flash fiction editor for Abyss & Apex magazine.  Smart and funny lady.

I hope to talk more about Orycon later. Right now (it’s a bit after midnight), I’m going to bed. I am usually a night writer but at this moment, I’m exhausted.

At Every Day Fiction

I’ve always been a sucker for a uniform, particularly dress uniforms. I had a whole closet full of them at one time. One of my favorites is that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Red Serge is front and center in my flash fiction, The Maple Leaf Manuever, at Every Day Fiction today.

The story pokes a bit of fun at American and Canadian stereotypes. Check it out, if you get a chance.

Let me know what you think, eh?

A milestone at 10Flash

10Flash had its 10,000th visitor this afternoon.  That’s a bit over 2,000 hits per month since the publication debuted on July 1st.

It’s not record-breaking, by any definition, by it’s not bad for a new e-zine, particularly when you consider that I haven’t done any paid promotion.  We’re listed now on Duotrope, for which I am pleased, and I am hoping to have a dedicated domain site — 10flashmagazine.com — up and running for the January issue.

And speaking of the January issue, I’ve purchased all ten stories and they’re all super.  Some returning authors, lots of new folks and even a couple of excellent tales that are first-time publications for their writers.  That’s one of the reasons that I started 10Flash.

If you like genre fiction and enjoy flash fiction, stop by 1oFlash and check it out.  I think you’ll have fun.

26 Monkeys

This is a tad late, but then I’ve never claimed to be the sort who is up to the minute on every event and happening.

Kij Johnson, who also lives and writes somewhere here in Seattle, won the World Fantasy Award November 1st at the World Fantasy Convention for her short story, 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss. The story appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine July 2008.

I met Kij last July in Kansas, where she was teaching the novel-writing half of Jim Gunn’s SF Writers Workshop. At the time, she was waiting for the World Science Fiction Convention to roll around because 26 Monkeys was also nominated this year for a Hugo.

There was stiff competition for the Hugo, including another monkey story, Evil Robot Monkey, by Mary Robinette Kowal, which, BTW, is a dynamite piece of flash fiction. Ted Chiang won for Exhalation, a great piece of hard science fiction.

Yeah; 26 Monkeys is that good. It was also up for the Nebula and won Asimov’s Readers’ Award for 2008.

Any way, Kij is a funny lady, a great writer and a swell improvisational performer. Read her story; you’ll be a better person for it.

Congratulations on the win, Kij. You should have won all three this year.

I love the smell of a sale in the morning

I know I keep hammering away at the importance of persistence, but damn it, it’s important. Here’s one more example.

The Maple Leaf Maneuver is a snarky bit of fun that uses Canada’s recent changes it its Citizenship Law as a jumping off point. It’s one of those stories that if you asked how much of it is true, I would have to say all of it — except for the parts that I made up.

Anyway, I sent it off awhile back to a flash fiction contest. The results were announced early last week and my name wasn’t on the list. ::sigh::

But I knew it was a good story, so instead of sitting around, trying to figure out why I had failed and feeling sorry for myself, I sent it off right away to Every Day Fiction.

Managing Editor Camille Gooderham Campbell e-mailed me early today — a five-day turnaround — to say she thought the story was great fun and that she wanted to buy it.

God, this business is so much about finding the right writer-story- editor match. It’s like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together or recognizing the proper sudoku pattern. I’m starting to think of it as fusion.

Anyway, thank you, Camille.

A 10/31/09 Update: I just got the word.  The Maple Leaf Maneuver will appear on November 23, 2009.  I’ll post a reminder.