Sue Burke's Blog, page 45

Clarkesworld reader’s poll finalist

My novelette “Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?” has been chosen as one of the five finalists in the reader’s poll at Clarkesworld Magazine. There’s stiff competition from some outstanding writers, and it’s an honor to be among them. Voting is open through February 24.

You can learn more and get links to read all the stories online here:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/clarke_02_18/

— Sue Burke

Book signing at Anderson’s on February 8, followed by a party with the “Human Survival” cocktail

I’ll be signing Semiosis at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 8, at Anderson’s Bookshop La Grange, 26 S. La Grange Road in Chicago’s western suburbs.

More information about the event and bookshop is here.

If that were not enough, the restaurant around the corner, forteensixteen, has offered to host an after-signing party. It will feature a cocktail inspired by the book called “Human Survival,” and draft wines and beer for $5 all night — in addition to their regular food and drink menu.

If you’re in western Chicagoland, I hope you can come! I’m already thirsty.

— Sue Burke

Goodreads review: "All Systems Red" by Martha Wells

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Poor Murderbot. The android is clinically depressed, and for good reason. It’s essentially a slave, it works for a corporation it despises, and its work assignments are usually boring or awful. Worse than that, if humans develop any respect for it, which they rarely do, they start to ask it about its feelings, and it feels horrible and doesn’t want to talk about them.

It just wants to be left alone to watch video series in peace.

That doesn’t happen. Murderbot is accompanying a team of humans on a mission of planetary exploration. Things go wrong, then the situation gets even worse. Murderbot’s job is to keep its humans alive and safe. Somehow.

While this may sound glum, it’s actually funny and exciting. I’m looking forward to reading Murderbot Diary #2, “Artificial Condition,” coming in May.

View all my reviews

“Semiosis” Book launch February 6

Volumes Bookcafé will host a book launch party for my novel Semiosis at 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 6. Volumes is at 1474 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago.

While you’re there, you can browse their carefully curated books: great new books, classics, and local authors. And you can enjoy a tasty menu of baked goods, quality espresso drinks, and an array of local beer and wine. Try their special mixed drinks! I speak from experience. Or come early and check out their Sip and Stitch craft group.

You can get more information about the book launch and RSVP here.

By the way, you can pre-order a signed copy of Semiosis from Volumes’ website — and they ship anywhere.

— Sue Burke

Goodreads review: "After the Apocalpse" by Maureen F. McHugh

After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Full disclosure: Maureen F. McHugh was one of my teachers at the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 1996. I still use the method she taught to critique stories. She showed us, among other things, how to use significant details to make settings feel realistic.

Beyond that, I heard her read aloud one of the stories in this collection, “The Kingdom of the Blind,” at a Wiscon science fiction convention, and I loved it. I enjoyed the chance to read that story again in this anthology. It tells how a program in a large computer system begins to play with the lights in the hospitals it controls, and how the programers working with it slowly understand that the program has become sentient. Their interaction skirts comedy, but they also feel terrified by what they witness.

Other stories:

“The Naturalist” is a truly creepy zombie story that suggests the zombies aren’t the biggest evil.
“Special Economics” has little speculative fiction to it; instead the story looks at how manufacturing practices in China affect factory workers, and how they fight back. The story creates a believable portrait of people we rarely think about.
“Useless Things” shows how the gig economy leads to poverty.
“The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large” examines the aftermath of dirty nuclear bomb attacks, and while most of the story is strong, I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion, which peters out more than it sums up.
“Going to France” is about people flying, and again I felt dissatisfied by its conclusion. The narrator abandons the problem rather than solves it.
“Honeymoon” is really about poverty and its horrible choices, although I thought its ending didn’t reflect the strength of its theme.
“The Effect of Centrifugal Forces” looks at how horrible illness breaks up a family, and it ends with a believable, logical disaster.
“After the Apocalypse” is just that: a woman and her child trying to survive after an apocalypse and to stay ahead of nihilism. It’s a good, gritty story, and we can see that they’re doomed.

Despite my quibbles, all the stories are worth reading. Each one focuses on individuals and makes them and their problems real and relevant. I was glad to spend some time with Maureen again, and I observed a few more ways to write well, too.

View all my reviews

Tropes to be tired of

Bookish has just published a column called “Tired of Tropes: Authors Dish on the Tropes They’re Sick Of.” The tropes include justifiable homicide, damsels in distress, brooding writers as main characters, and detectives carrying purses (apparently they don’t do that on duty).

Here’s what I’d say if I were asked:

What’s your magical superpower?
• Have your immortal gifts allowed you to breathe elemental forces into a hero’s sword and rescue the thrice-cursed island from the burgeoning darkness of the Sorcerers of Chaos?
• Did your mysterious visions and prophesies give you the wisdom to combat the deception of the shadowy spirits inhabiting the ancient forest before they brought death and destruction to the spirit-plane realm of the dragons?
• Has your secret faerie (note spelling) destiny led you on a quest as a silent, solitary warrior against the demons whose blood could restore the shapeshifter king to his honor?
• Did the inscrutable lords of the night hire you for your alchemist-fueled telepathy to wreak revenge against the mythical incubus bandit and her soulless minions, only to betray you?
If so, perhaps you could forgo writing your autobiography as a fictionalized epic trilogy during 2018.

What tropes are you tired of?

— Sue Burke

How to find the perfect title for your story or novel

This is a handout I made a few years ago for the Madrid Writers Club. Maybe it will help you.

***

A title should not merely identify a story or novel, it should make readers eager to find out more about your story. Sometimes writers have the title before they start — in fact, a perfect title can be the prompt for the story, like The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein. A few writers depend on agents, publishers, or critiquers to supply the title. But most writers do it themselves, so here are some ways to create a good title.

1. Steal it

Take it from public-domain poetry, quotations, lullabies, songs, famous prose, clichés, jargon related to your story’s milieu, catch phrases, or slang (new or old). You may want to reverse or play with these phrases.

Examples: All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Cradle will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark, or “A Dog and His Boy” by Harlan Ellison.

But beware of “pushbutton” words that are too cliché. For example, “The Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” by John Scalzi.

2. Take it from inside the story itself

A phrase or concept used in the story might be catchy enough for a title.

For example: “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, “But the One on the Right” by Dorothy Parker.

3. Use significant words from the story

Make a list of the important words from your work: names, settings, theme, times, action, characters, or information. Then start to play with them in different patterns.

• Noun and Noun: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Noun for Noun: “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
• Noun of Noun: “The Iliad of Sandy Bar” by Bret Harte
• The Noun Who: The Man Who Came to Dinner by Kaufman and Hart
• Possessive Noun: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
• Prepositional Phrase: In the Heat of the Night by John Ball
• Adjective(s) Noun: “Too Early Spring” by Stephen Vincent Benét
• Noun + Prepositional Phrase: “A Novel in Nine Letters” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Adverbial Phrase: “After the Procession” by Jorge Edwards
• Prominent Verbs: “May Angels Lead You Home” by Sharon Sheehee Stark
• Significant Word(s): “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka

Beware of confusing titles, though, such as a name that might be mistaken for the author’s name, or an ambiguous title like Scorpion Kisses by Leon Arsenal, which is science fiction but has been repeatedly shelved in romance.

Exercises

• We all know Hamlet, The Handmaid’s Tale, Game of Thrones, etc. Think of five possible alternative titles for a well-known work, and make one of them the worst possible title.

• Think about a work of your own that needs a title, and write five possibilities. Share them with friends or fellow writers. What invokes the best reaction?

— Sue Burke

Clarkesworld interview: “Clever Plants, Generations, and Translations”

Chris Urie of Clarkesworld Magazine asked me about what inspired the novel Semiosis, the biology of some of the aliens in the story, and my favorite Spanish saying.

You can read it here, at Clarkesworld.

— Sue Burke

A sneak peek at “Semiosis”

Will you like my novel Semiosis? Here’s one way to decide.

Tor has posted Chapter 1 as a sneak peek. You can read it here:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2018/01/02/sneak-peek-semiosis-by-sue-burke/

— Sue Burke

2017 publications

Here is my fiction published last year, in case you want to read or nominate anything. They’re both online:

“Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?”
Novelette. Robots fight it out on Mars.
Clarkesworld Magazine, November 2017.

“With Wings of Intent”
Flash fiction. A steer rebels against his fate as beef.
Every Day Fiction, June 16, 2017.

I also translated these stories, available for purchase and nomination.

“The Story of Your Heart,” by Josué Ramos
People can get transplants to fix or to improve themselves, or they can be donors, by force or by choice.
Steampunk Writers Around the World, Volume I
Luna Press Publishing, August 2017. This story has already been nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Awards.

“Francine (draft for the September lecture),” by Maria Antónia Marti Escayol
Renée Descartes’s daughter dies, and he and his fellow scientists try to bring her back to life, in accordance with 17th-century science.
“Wake Up and Dream, by Josué Ramos
An old man, revived from cryosleep, tries to grow accustomed to a now-distopic Madrid, although something has gone strangely wrong.
“Tis a Pity She Was a Whore,” by Juan Manuel Santiago
The music of David Bowie during cancer chemotherapy results in a divergent reality.
All three are in Supersonic Magazine, Issue 9, December 2017. Buy it at Amazon for only $2.99, and at Lektu.

In addition, I translated this poem, available online:

“Duffel” by Fernando Cuartas
The street that tells the story of a city.
Surreal Poetics, August 2017.

With a partner, Christian Law, I translated these poems. The issue is available for purchase and contains a delightful variety of works:

“Twilight in Poley,” “Books,” “Hymn I,” and “Hymn III, by Vicente Núñez
Núñez was one of the most daring and important poets of Andalusia, Spain, in the second half of the 20th century.
The Northwest Review of Books Issue 1: Literature in Translation, July 2017.

I’ve been working on the translation of Amadis of Gaul for years as a blog, and I finally finished in May. The texts are being compiled for purchase in paperback and ebook:

Amadis of Gaul, by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo
This novel, a masterpiece of medieval fantasy, drove Don Quixote mad. What will it do to you?
Online here.

Finally, here are a couple of articles that offer what I hope is helpful advice, gleaned from experience:

Minimalist plotting
Are you a plotter or pantser? An architect or gardener? Do you plan and outline your writing projects, or do you just start writing and see what grows? Perhaps you can do both.
Red Sofa Literary Agency blog 2017 NaNoWriMo series.

Crowdfunding for literary translations
Crowdfunding isn’t easy money, but a successful campaign brings you more than funds.
Intralingo blog, January 31, 2017.

— Sue Burke