For kicks, I went back through my blog and took an inventory of what I’ve been reading this past year. Turns out, it’s quite a lot! Which is terrific, of course. About a year ago, I was fairly immersed in Icelandic Sagas, then hit a bunch of novels recommended by the Clarion crew, and then hit short fiction collections. I’ve been reading short fiction almost exclusively for the last several months, probably because I’m studying it just as much as reading it.

Anyway, I thought I’d post my five favorite stories that I’ve read in the past year. Not all of them were published in the last year, but they’re all within the last couple years. Besides, they were new to me, so there! Seriously, do what you can to check these stories out because they’re all of the highest, highest quality.

Loosely, in order:

#5 - “A Little Learning” by Matthew Hughes - (F&SF, June 2004)
“ALL” was the first Matthew Hughes story I read, but not the last. Like most of Hughes’ work, I found that whatever this story lacked in depth and emotional resonance it made up for it with its sheer entertainment factor. His stories tend be on the longer side, but they never feel like it because of their light tone and hapless protagonists. Hughes has written a bunch of great stories in F&SF over the last few years. I plan on checking out his novels once I get off the short fiction kick I’ve been on. Unlike the other stories on this list, “ALL” didn’t make me stop and think about life for awhile — but when something’s this fun, that’s okay.

#4 - “The New Year’s Party or Dancing on Sleipner’s Bones”
by David Schwartz (Strange Horizons, Dec. 2004)
By far the shortest story on this list at around 1600 words, this story packs an emotional wallop. Norse mythology in general, and Ragnarock specifically, are widely regarded as being suffocatingly depressing but that’s because I think they’re fundamentally misunderstood. For me, both are fundamentally about inevitability tinged with regret. But there’s beauty in this worldview that’s often missed. Regret, inevitability, and even despair can be made instantly inconsequential by a simply seizing a single moment and making it your own. I’m sure a lot of readers don’t get the Norse implications, but that’s what this story says to me. See if that’s what is says to you.

#3 - “People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi (F&SF, Feb. 2004)
Bacigalupi’s story lost out on the 2005 Hugo Award to Kelly Link’s “The Faerie Handbag,” but personally I preferred this one. I’ve read a couple other stories by Bacigalupi and thoroughly enjoyed them all, but this one takes the proverbial cake. “POSAS” seems to be asking a lot of tough questions about what makes us human and whether we’re “advancing” as a species or just changing, yet (like Schwartz’s story) this story doesn’t directly ask these questions at all. I found it absolutely breathtaking. The fact that emotional attachment to a dog figures in heavily to the plot probably has something to do with that.

#2 - “Magic for Beginners” by Kelly Link (F&SF, Sept. 2005)
What’s to say about this story that hasn’t already been said? Stories rarely grab me so tightly that I feel like I have to finish them right now, this very minute, all other obligations be damned. This story defies labels, genres, and anything else you try to stick to it. By the end of the story you realize you have a lump in your throat but you can’t quite figure out why. Like most everybody on the planet, I found adolescence utterly bewildering, and this golden story did a wonderful job making me feel the highs and lows of those years all over again, and, most of all, the terrifying yet oddly reassuring confusion we never fully outgrow.

#1 - “Present from the Past” by Jeff Ford (The Silver Gryphon, 2003)
Jeff posted this to his website a month or so ago but took it down after a few weeks, as he’s doing with some of his other stuff. A blog is an interesting place to post a story because as you start reading, it’s not quite clear whether its just a weird autobiographical vignette or a work of fiction — or both? So it goes with “Present from the Past” which reminded me of Jeff’s award-winning story “Creation” which has the same autobiographical bent, or “The Honeyed Knot” which Jeff professes is 99% true, despite all the unbelievably weird things that happen. What I find most remarkable in all of these top-class stories is that they’re not fantasy — they’re real life. Some folks just can’t handle that sometimes real life is weirder and more mysterious than we give it credit for. It’s the kind of story that makes me want to quit my job, go home, and sit in a corner of the darkened basement for about a week and just think about life. Magic stuff.

Honorable Mentions:

• Cold Fires by M. Rickert (F&SF, Oct/Nov 2004)
• The Five Cigars of Abu Ali by Eric Schaller (SciFi.com, Jan 2005)
• Man of Light by Jeff Ford (Sci-Fi.com, Jan 2005)
• “The Hortlak” by Kelly Link (The Dark, 2003, and Magic for Beginners, 2005)

Current Mood - Not Bad for a Monday |
Currently Listening To - Sun Volt - “Trace”

Gimme some sugar baby.

Which B-Movie Badass Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I should be working on GRE vocabulary today but I’ve been distracted. Can I do two things at once?

flat·ter - to portray too favorably
Wisconsin wipes out Illinois to go to 8-1 this season. I still can’t believe the team has done that well because the defense varies from woeful to stellar with long periods of adequacy. But I should probably cut them some slack. They’re 8-1.

scin·til·lat·ing - brilliantly lively, stimulating, or witty
mes·mer·iz·ing- having hypnotic appeal
Both of these words describe the first half of the Spurs vs. Ars*nal match. Anyone on this side of the Atlantic who finds soccer to be boring, wimpy, and generally worth ignoring would do well to watch the first half of this game. Spurs dominated, absolutely dominated the first half — and without Edgar Davids. He would have helped boatloads in the second half, but he was suspended due to yellow card accumulation.

What struck me the most about the match is how average Arsenal become when you subtract Thierry Henry. I do my best to avoid watching them and I’ve loved how they’ve stumbled this season, but now I see why. Without Viera, they’re entirely lightweight. No one bosses the middle of the park for them. Spurs should have taken more of their chances in the first half because in the second, they were poor. Still, the match ended 1-1 so it wasn’t a complete loss, but still disappointing. The fact I can be disappointed with a 1-1 draw with the Arse shows just how far Spurs have come

eclipse - the total or partial obscuring of one celestial body by another
Exactly what Ledley King has done to Sol Campbell — literally on the first goal. On today’s evidence, I would much rather have King than the traitorous Campbell marshalling my defense. Campbell, booed with every touch, rarely put a foot right in the whole game.

my·o·pia - a lack of foresight or discernment : a narrow view of something
Referee Steve Bennet bought absolutely everything Arsenal was selling, much to my disgust.

Bath day for Athena. Not looking forward to it.

Current Mood - Unsettled |

Ugh.

So I queried F&SF on my story that’s been out for ninety days . . . and Gordon has no recollection of having seen it and no record of having received it. Absolutely, positively gutted.

Current Mood - Gutted, I Told You |

Mere minutes after finding out John had sold a story to Strange Horizons, I found out I’d just sold a story to Animal Magnetism Charity Anthology. All proceeds go directly to Noah’s Wish, an agency that helps rescue animals in the event of catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

So this isn’t a huge sale (is it even a sale if all the cash goes to charity?) but it’s nice nonetheless. It’s going to be published electronically — PDF format — and in a print-on-demand paperback format. In fact, since I’ll probably want a hard copy, this “sale” is going to end up costing me money. Not that I’m complaining. :wink:

Oh, the story is called “Of Silver Bullets and Golden Teeth” and it’s about a werewolf of sorts. Werewolf stories are hard to sell but this anthology specifically said they’d accept them. This story didn’t get submitted very many places but I figured it wasn’t right for any of the Big Markets I normally send stuff to, so I figured what the heck. Now I’m glad I did!

Current Mood - Satisfied |
Currently Listening To - Son Volt - “Trace”

Clarion buddy John Schoffstall sold his week 3 story from Clarion to Strange Horizons. It’s called “Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery” and the sale comes as absolutely no surprise to me. In fact, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long to sell. One of my favorite workshop stories from last summer.

Looking forward to seeing it March-ish, or so John’s been told.

In case you’re not keeping track at home, John’s now won the annual Writers of the Future contest and sold stories to Lady Churchill’s, Fortean Bureau, and two to Strange Horizons. He’s pulling away from the rest of the class, folks…

Current Mood - Woo Hoo for John! |
Currently Listening To - Son Volt = “Trace”

I came home tonight and wrote a 3K-word story, in its entirety, in one sitting, stopping only to take a fifteen-minute break to eat dinner.

Current Mood - Told You I Was In the Writing Mood |

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9819140/site/newsweek/

I saw an article on MSN’s portal site via the link “Q&A: Why self-help books aren’t so helpful.” I read it and found it totally confounded me.

Newsweek reporter Dan Brillman’s opening paragraph says, “The number of self-help books (including diet and fitness titles) in print has more than doubled since 1972 and the genre has expanded into TV with a boom in reality shows that promise body, mind or family makeovers.” The image to the right shows a Jenny Jones-esque before and after shot of a woman who goes from shabby to glamorous.

I’m thinking, “Right on. This is going to be about the marketing value of make-overs and how we never see the folks who were made over six months later, when there’s no camera crew on site showing how a trailer park mom can no longer afford the clothes, make-up, and hair products required for the remarkable transformation. In short, the immediate make-over is unsustainable and done for tv ratings. Bring it on.”

It doesn’t go there at all. Instead, author Micki McGee focuses on self-help for careers, saying, “You have to constantly be inventing and re-inventing yourself, trying to remain marketable in a rapidly changing economy and an increasingly competitive context.” Most of the article has to deal with career anxiety, ageism, and how people are made to feel that purchasing cutting edge technology makes them cutting edge in the job marketplace.

I can’t tell whether I’m annoyed with Brillman or McGee. When I think of self-help, I think of Deepak Chopra and Dr. Phil McGraw (not that Dr. Phil), not Harvey “Swim With the Sharks” Mackay. It’s hard to tell whether the bait-and-switch is on Brillman and Newsweek for making you think McGee is going to criticize daytime talk-shows, or if this excerpt only shows McGee’s view on the workplace, or whether McGee is missing the boat on the whole topic.

The real problem? America’s rampant careerism. Our culture defines who you are by your career. Your social worth is largely based on how prestigious your job may be, and in turn how much money you make. We’re made to feel that a career must come first. So the problem starts much earlier than McGee lets on. McGee’s solution (in the context of this excerpted interview anyway) isn’t very specific:

NW: So what is the solution?
MM:The solution is the kinds of political organizing and political activism that have been emerging over the past five years. The answers lie in people coming together, and addressing the fact that American families and American working people need some kind of social safety net to be rewoven. We have to work on that collectively. It’s not something that we can do by organizing a more hectic schedule or getting the most recent device, so that we can do more things at the same time.

Please Ms. McGee, be more vague. Ironically, McGee says two questions later:

And people so want help and are so looking for ways to improve their lives to create a better world for their families, and their children, for their grandchildren, that it saddens me, and sometimes it makes me angry to see that the answers that are offered are so flimsy.

And one more quote from Ms. McGee before I go off:

NW:How are TV makeover shows emblematic of the self-help industry?
MM:People are feeling the necessity to put their best foot forward visually with a makeover phenomenon because they need to look young and fresh in the labor market.

Does everything have to do with the labor market? To summarize, Ms. McGee seems to be suggesting that Americans feed the neurotic self-help industry because of an unstable job market that makes us think we need to be the best, brightest and most attractive in order to have a good, stable career. I don’t think I’m going too far when I suggest that “good career” translates into income. We buy books on how to get ahead because we don’t want to be ugly and poor in other words.

Where to begin? First, it’s seeded so much deeper than this. We’re taught from kindergarten on that we’re all unique and have special talents no one else has. Later, the American Dream gets drummed into our heads that if we work hard enough and persevere, we can get anything we want. We see how materialism — the house you live in, the car you drive, the clothes you wear — has a direct bearing on how you’re viewed in society. Finally, we’re shown how you either need to go to college to get a good, solid job or you can become a sort of second-class citizen and go into the labor force. From there on out, you’re on your own — to the victors, the spoils!

Through all of this, we have the illusion that we — each of us, our own unique individual — have complete control of our destinies. In fairness, McGee hits this head on (”Assuming that everything is in the individual’s control is one of the great fallacies of self-help literature,” she says) but this should be thesis of the whole article, shouldn’t it? I mean, does the housewife watching make-overs on Jenny Jones really give a damn about her place in the labor market?

Either McGee (or the article) fails to address the key questions that should be making people think: why do we feel we need to buy self-help books at all? What is it about our culture that makes us feel that we’re too fat, too dumb, or we’ve somehow been less successful than we want?

As a culture, we send and reflect mixed messages: you’re a unique individual, you can succeed if you try hard enough, and you shouldn’t be satisfied with who you are or what you have. I mean, how many super models have confessed to being terribly depressed despite having money, looks, and fame? Something’s broken here.

How much of this is driven by sheer commercialism? It benefits me to make you feel ugly if I’m selling something that promises to make you look pretty. There aren’t many products out there made to make you less successful, less sexy, less smart. So then we get clever marketing schemes that are tailored to specific groups — are you a hard working corporate exec that has a lot of money but you’re so busy raking it in that you don’t have time to sufficiently manage your portfolio? Or maybe you’re the 1% of the 1% who actually need a pick-up truck this tough? (that ad’s my favorite — you’d think direct marketing would work better for such a select group, rather than taking out a 30-second spot to broadcast to millions during Sunday football) It’s all based on making you feel lousy or inadequate — after all, you don’t sell many trucks if the voiceover tells you what you already have is probably okay for your daily routine.

So back to the article, it seems curious for McGee to emphasize the workplace so heavily. Life is not work. Work is not life. The issue is one of identity — both national and individual. You can spend a lot of money trying to figure out who you are and who you want to be — plenty of folks are willing to help you find out, for a fee of course.

I don’t really know where I’m going with all of this, but I find I’m still annoyed. Maybe it’s because a few years ago I figured out that working sixty hours a week was bullshit, and I was looking down the barrel of another forty years of bullshit. I had always loved reading and writing, yet my schedule didn’t allow time for me to read. Write? Are you kidding? I realized I was a far way away from what I had envisioned myself doing with my life.

So I jettisoned that career and went back to the basics. Reading. Lots. Writing. Lots. Money? Not so much. It’s hard. It might not work out down the road. Some people think I’m nuts for abandoning what wasn’t a half-bad career. Other people think following my heart is inspiring. In truth, it’s neither. It is what it is. I want to go to back to school so I can get a career that is related to reading, writing, and teaching. It’s highly competitive. Again, it may not work out. But I know that I’m not going to stop reading and writing. Ever. I won’t let a job take those things away — my friends and loved ones would never dream of making those kind of demands. And that’s all that really matters.

I’ll leave you with some Clash lyrics that cheer me up, and I gently implore you to resist something, somehow, in some small way you can call your own.

All the power’s in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it
– lyrics from “White Riot

Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?
– lyrics from “White Riot

What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m not who I want to be
– lyrics from “What’s My Name”

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I’d better take anything they’d got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?
– lyrics from “Career Opportunities”

Face front you got the future shining
Like a piece of gold
But I swear as we get closer
It look more like a lump of coal
But it’s better than some factory
Now that’s no place to waste your youth
I worked there for a week once
I luckily got the boot
– lyrics from “All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)”

The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there’s nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get runnin’
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal

You grow up and you calm down
You’re working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now
–lyrics from “Clampdown”

Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world,
Ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl.
Love ‘n hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands,
Hands that slap his kids around, ’cause they don’t understand how,
Death or glory, becomes just another story.
– lyrics from “Death or Glory”

That’s a long post, now innit?

Current Mood - Rebellious |
Currently Listening To - Bob Dylan - “Biograph, Disc Two”

I’m feeling particularly scatterbrained lately. I’ve got the attention span of a three-year-old both at home and at work. I should be studying GRE vocabulary right now but I can’t bring myself to do it. I had a seven-week plan all charted about but after about ten days I figured that was way too much, so now I’ve cut it down to a four-week plan. Of course, week one of the four week plan is what I’ve already done in those ten days. So instead of being behind in the seven-week plan, I’m ahead in the four-week plan. Works out well.

I tried playing soccer with Athena tonight but I found out the hard way that our fortunes reverse with the change of seasons. Under the hot summer sun, Athena eventually wilts and I’m pretty ready to go home myself by the end of the exercise (I basically try and play keep away from her, but it’s hard to do by myself. She’s blindingly fast and strong and I get tired much quicker.) Anyway, it’s cold now — in the mid-40’s or so — and it doesn’t take a lot of sucking that cold air for the lungs to start burning. Athena’s in seventh heaven though with the sun being low. She barks at me in frustration because I can’t keep up. She barks barks barks and then nudges the ball like, “C’mon. Kick it. You’re pathetic.”

I came home and immediately didn’t feel well, probably because I’m coming off a bad cold and anaerobic exercise tends to knock me out anyway. So I laid out on the couch and grabbed the remote. I saw “Aliens vs. Predator” was on HBO HD and decided what the hell.

Oh. My. God. I expected it to be crappy and what do you know? It was! “Alien” is terrific because you’re terrified about what the alien might be. “Aliens” is one of the best action sci-fi movies of all-time. The rest are forgettable. “Predator” has been ruined for me by Showtime, who showed it twice a night, every night for the entire year in 1988 and I watched it every time. So I suspect it probably holds up over time, but I don’t need to see it anytime soon.

The problem with “A vs. P” is that it’s staggeringly unoriginal. The slime the aliens give off stops being creepy and gross after the millionth time someone sticks his/her hand in it. And it was cool to see what the Predator saw through his helmet, but it was only cool once and that was in 1988. I can’t count how many times someone gets pinned against a wall and the little alien snapping mouth comes out and bites mere inches away from the person’s face. Scary! But not the fourth, fifth, sixth, and thirteenth time. The ending (I’m not even going to bother with a spoiler warning here) is identical to “Aliens.” The big mamma alien comes a’ huntin’ and the plucky female protagonist comes out on top, only instead of ejecting the big alien into the cold, dark depths of space, this time we see the alien sent hurtling into the cold, dark, depths of the Antarctic Ocean.

Could this movie have been cool? Maybe, but I doubt it. It’s too over the top and it’s bound to not have a good story. Seriously, there’s nothing here you couldn’t get by just watching “Alien,” “Aliens” and “Predator” a few times each. In fact, that’s a much better idea.

The 101ers, Joe Strummer’s band before the Clash, is pretty good. Rough around the edges but good. Definitely worth paying attention to, and there are some downright catchy tunes.

I’ve got the writing jones, bad. I need to work harder to make time for writing, at work if possible. I had a productive weekend but I need to keep that up. Eight stories currently out, low hopes for most of them and only two at Big SF Markets.

Still haven’t got a reply on the story I sent to F&SF. 88 days today. I expected an answer after 12 days. Then I expected an answer after 60 days. This one’s been a rollercoaster for me. I try really, really hard not to get my hopes up about any story. I thought this one might have an outside chance and after it got past F&SF’s usual first-round reject (about two weeks) I thought, “All right!” Then I found out that Gordon was buried and was getting back much slower than usual and thought, “Damn it.” But his long responses were only sixty days. Now I’m almost a month over that but not at all confident. I’m wondering whether there wasn’t a problem with the SASE. Seriously. That’ll kill me but the waiting is dRIvinG mE CRazY.

And I hate querying. Hate it hate it hate it hate it. Even when they say “it’s okay to query after xxx time” I still hate it. It feels amateurish to me. Editors have enough to do without answering queries, but on the other hand I hate wondering what’s taking so #@$%* long. I have had exactly one submission lost by an Unnamed Publication, and I found that out by querying.

I still hate it.

/
And as long as I’m hating, allow me to curse the fates: Lenox Avenue. R.I.P. 2004-2005. Only eight issues out but the fact that this zine closed is somewhat disheartening. They published good stuff, a lot better than some places. I only submitted there once and got a very positive rejection after waiting an unusually long time. I’d like to think they really liked it, but even had they bought it then it would have never seen the light of day.

Still, it reminds of the part in “Lord of the Rings” where Gandalf and Frodo are chatting it up back in Bilbo’s pad (the movie puts it elsewhere.) Gandalf says, “Many zines that live deserve death. And some zines that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?” Or something like that.

And the answer to his question is ‘no,’ in case you’re wondering.

Current Mood - Tired |
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer - “Global A Go-Go”