Michael Swanwick's Blog, page 182

.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . ....

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .

(Part 11)

Kenny’s heart hammered.    


(Continued tomorrow.)



And my commentary . . .

Well, of course it hammered!  You can read all of the story to date here.

And because I've been traveling . . .

 I don't have much in the way of new content for my blog.  Next week may be a touch spotty as well, because I'll be "down the Shore," as we say hereabouts, taking my long-deferred summer vacation.  The Halloween story, however, will continue uninterrupted. Above:  Marcel Proust, c. 1892, playing air guitar.  Writers haven't changed much since.


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Ghoulies and Pumpkins . . .

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .

(Part 10)

The mouth, when it opened, was full of pointed teeth. 


(Continued tomorrow.)


And I have to apologize for posting this late in the day because . . .

As always, I've been on the road.  It was only after driving three hundred miles and checking into my hotel room that I realized I hadn't bothered to take along the next sentence of the story.  So back I drove today, and above is the sentence and mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

By now the story's getting creepy, though, innit?  Nice and Halloweenesque.  You can read all of it that's been posted to date here.


Above:  I stopped to buy pumpkins on the way home.  These are two of them.

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From Ghoulies and Dismembrance . . .

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .
(Part 9) 
The face had no eyes, only blank skin over the sockets where eyes should be.  

(Continued tomorrow.)


And now we know . . .


The pale man, as we suspected, is not human.  Funny how these guys pop up most often at this time of year.

You can find all of the story serialized to date here.


And some while back . . .

At Readercon, Kyle Cassidy organized a weekend-long event in which Elizabeth Bear and I wrote a story, audience volunteers became the characters, and he photographed the volunteers to illustrate the plot.  Then Lee Moyer created a wraparound cover (above) for the whole project.

Thus was created Dismembrance . The project was a lot of fun and (need I say this?) determinedly noncommercial.

The story is now online.  You can find it here.

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.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . ....

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .
(Part 8) 
Kenny found himself staring into the ivory face of an impossibly lean man.    

(Continued tomorrow.)


And deeper we go . . .

Now the cast off characters is complete.

You can find all of the story serialized to date here.


And if you're wondering why it took me so long to post today . . .

Last night I attended SFWA's annual publishers and editors event, known informally as the Mill 'n' Swill, in New York City.  The biggest source of benign gossip was Stanley Schmidt's recent retirement as editor of Analog .  All of it was greatly to his credit, but I will only pass along one item:  Stan had been planning to retire for some time and had hoped to quit a month before he matched John W. Campbell's longevity as editor.  He had to wait for his house to sell, however, which took so long that he ended up breaking Campbell's record.  I talked with several long-time Analog writers who, though they had confidence in the new regime, all mourned his loss.

Pictured above is Trevor Quachri (center), the new managing editor for Analog.  Legendary Philadelphia writer Tom Purdom (also pictured, laughing) and I chatted with him briefly.  Tom asked if his appointment had come as a surprise.  "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have hopes," he replied.  "But I really hadn't thought my chances were that good."

"Do you find that people are a lot more friendly to you tonight than they were at the event a year ago?" I asked.

"I'm sure that' s a coincidence," he said.

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Steampunk & Ghoulies

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .
(Part 7) 
 Out of nowhere, a skeletal hand clutched his shoulder and spun him around.  

(Continued tomorrow.)


And so we move into the future . . .

The second paragraph has begun.  The supernatural element has entered our tale.

You can find all of the story serialized to date here.


And speaking of steampunk . . .

Anytime there's a movement or a trend or a whatever-the-heck-you-care-to-call-it, those in the know ask themselves whether this is something the writers want to write or the readers want to read.  I won't cite examples from the past but, believe me, they could be made.

So the question of whether steampunk is a valid popular form or simply something we writers like a lot because it combines Zeppelins, sexy heroines, and steam-driven robots in one easy-to-write research-lite package is one that that's interested me since the git-go.

Mind you, I like steampunk and I've liked it since long before the category existed and I've even written it myself on occasion.  But is it commercial?

Well, the good people at Tor (who are more commercially savvy than most of us) obviously think it is because they've made last year's Steampunk Week and made it an annual event.


Here's a list of what's going up at Tor.com:

Kevin J. Anderson about working with the band Rush on their steampunk book Clockwork Angels

Award-winning producer Yomi Ayeni on transmedia storytelling in the non-colonialist world of Clockwork Watch

Julie Brannon, marketing wizard behind Steampunk Holmes, on creating a successful Kickstarter for your steampunk project

Professor Calamity of Combustion Books reveals Victorians’ Secrets (the steamiest post for the Week, hands down)

Executive producer Trevor Crafts and head writer Matt James Daley give the lowdown on Bruce Boxleitner’s Lantern City

Chaphop artist and tea connoisseur Professor Elemental delivers the funniest one-liner about steampunk, ever

Cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks draws a tribute to Fullmetal Alchemist

Dr. Lisa Hager, on why this genre-bender is also a genderbender

Margaret “Magpie” Killjoy of Steampunk Magazine throws a political one-two punch about how steampunks can help save the world

Vaporiste Arthur Morgan introduces the Anglophone world to French steampunk

Tee Morris, author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, names the three things every steampunk filmmaker needs to know

James Ng’s artistic take on alchemy (and Chinese steampunk zombies)

Balogun Ojetade, author of Moses: The Chronicles of Harriet Tubman, writes about amazing black folks you didn’t know about (but should) from the 19th century

Cat Rambo gives us the scoop on Nisi Shawl’s highly anticipated book set in the Belgian Congo

Composer Paul Shapera on penning a thrilling steampunk musical

Editor Ann Vandermeer offers an exclusive excerpt from the upcoming Steampunk Revolution anthology

Diana Vick, con chair of SteamCon, dishes about Victorian monsters.

All of it taken from their press release.

You can find it all here.

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From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long Leggitie Beasties . . . (Part 6)

.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .(Part 6)@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } For the first time Halloween felt near.(Continued tomorrow.)

And . . .That concludes the first paragraph.  The scene has been set.  Tomorrow, the action begins.You can find all of the story serialized to date here. *

.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . ....

.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .(Part 5)
Looking up, he saw a bat struggle across a sky that storm and sunset working together had turned an eerie green.  
(Continued tomorrow.)

And I should mention that . . .
Normally, I don't blog on weekends.  But this story is unstoppable, one sentence per day now through Halloween.
This sentence, incidentally, is autobiographical.  I was eleven years old and standing in the sand lot, not  far from one of the three haunted houses in Winooski, when I saw that bat.  All three houses are gone now, alas, including the one with the secret room in the top floor.
You can find all of the story serialized to date here.
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Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Slings and Arrows

 .From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .
(Part 4)
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When the rain ended, Kenny ran out the back door of his house and through the dying woods at the edge of town, into a meadow that crunched underfoot.

(Continued tomorrow.)

And for those who came in late . . .

The mood-setting is complete and the story has a protagonist!  We're really moving now.

You can find all of the story serialized to date here.



And speaking of Canadian television shows . . .


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Did I ever tell you that I used to be in theater? Oh, yes.  Back in college, I was a stagehand, and the pinnacle of my career was being backstage when Glenn Close played Sally Bowles in Cabaret . 

Since that time, I have heeded Tallulah Bankhead's dictum, applied to a society lady who said that she loved theater so much she wanted to be an actor, in order to give something back:  "Darling, if you want to help the theater, don't be an actor.  Be an audience."  But from the pleasant vantage point of someone who was of no importance yet of some use, I got to see what the process of putting on theater was like, how the egos clashed and meshed.  So when I say that I love  Slings & Arrows , the Canadian television series about a troubled Shakespeare festival and the even more troubled director who is its very heart and soul, mine is an informed if far from expert opinion.

So why haven't you heard of it?  Well, it's a Canadian television series.  The good news for everyone involved in such a beast is that the Canadian government subsidizes creative television to the hilt.  The bad news is that nobody south of the border is willing to take a look at it.

As a fantasy writer, I spend a certain amount of my time wondering exactly what magic is.  Like all primary abstracts, its definition recedes from you more the more seriously you consider it.  But whatever it is, theater has got it, both onstage and backstage.  You have only to go the party at the end of a play's run and see people who hate each other's guts getting genuinely tearful about being separated to realize that.

I won't go into details about the show -- you can google the show if you're curious -- but I will recommend it highly.

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Ghoulies and Krakens

 . From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .(Part 3)
 @font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; It was only in late October that a storm front finally swept through Winooski and brought in cooler weather.  

(Continued tomorrow.)

And for those who came in late . . .

I'm serializing this story, one sentence a day, concluding on Halloween.  After which, the framed typescript will be auctioned off on eBay to benefit the Clarion West Writers Workshop.  You can find the story to date (three sentences so far) here.


And, meanwhile, over at Tor.com . . .


I have a new story available online, the third (after The Mongolian Wizard and The Fire Gown) in the adventures of Franz-Karl Ritter and Sir Toby.  

Day of the Kraken  has yet another beautiful illo by Gregory Manchess.  And you can find it here.

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.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . ....

.From Ghoulies and Ghosties, Long-Leggitie Beasties . . .(Part 2)
The dog days of August stretched into September and beyond.  


(Continued tomorrow.)

And just so you don't have to memorize the story . . .
You can find the story to date (two sentences so far) here.

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