James Dorr's Blog, page 29

3rd Sunday for Aug., Two Weeks and a Day Late

So it’s been a busy month, yes, or at least its beginning (see post just below). Or in any event, to round off the Labor Day weekend, and so, by tradition, the passing of summer, let’s just lay it out. With a quick note first, though, that “Third Sunday Write” (cf. June 26 , et al.) is a monthly activity of the Bloomington Writers Guild, interactive on Facebook at least for the time, with directions for joining on the 3rdsundaywrite site. In any event, each month moderator Shana Ritter offers a choice of prompts which we can can then take inspiration from, in poetry or prose, with other participants commenting via their choices of lines to quote.

And, yes, there was one for July but my offering was slight and didn’t get posted here — sorry. But here’s mine for August, with the prompt I selected appearing first:

2. Ponds, lakes, streams, creeks, rivers ….pick one and describe in detail or tell a story that takes place in that landscape (a little late, sorry. . .)

The pond of the 22nd Century is more exciting than in ages past. The surface with its acid-mist spiraling up in dawn’s first heat, the miasma of noon as it all settles in, turning the sun to a fiery red — the breeze still for an hour then, at least on the surface. But over that, where the dust whirlwinds start forming; the afternoon at surface level still seemingly clear unless you look closely, head tilted to one side to see the fuzziness of your reflection within the water. The water itself deadly quiet and unmoving.

Except — where is the surface? A blending of liquid with thickening air — you check your oxygen mask as well as the seals of both helmet and suit. The “water” itself, that is the mix that passes for H2O, never quite ends with the air’s beginning. Rather, it’s more like “thick” and “unthick,” with the unthick taking on a darkening, brownish hue, the updraft still there but pulling increasing amounts of soil into it as it spirals faster.

Then, pulling the birds in — fat, carrion birds gliding in of their own will, having just fed and far too heavy to gain by themselves the altitude needed to escape the frying-pan heat of the flat, blasted fields. To rise with the wind’s help, with dust and corrosion, mutated feathers repelling the worst of it — this phase mostly passed by about four-thirty in the afternoon.

And then the shift, sudden, as vortexes collapse: dust, acid, feather-tips, whole birds on occasion overly heavy — or just too exhausted to reach enough height even with updrafts’ help. Splashing, down into the mirrorlike surface, itself shrinking now to a semi-hard, half-solid pre-evening stillness.

Ghost Ship, Dark Poems at 2022 Arts Fest Spoken Word Stage

This would be Bloomington’s annual “Fourth Street Festival of the Arts and Crafts,” planned to be back from a several-year COVID 19 hiatus, including a two-day presentation of readings and other written-word features from the Writers Guild (cf. September 1, August 16 2019; September 1 2018; et al.), of which possibly more news will be coming too. But for now at least I emailed back to Tony that I’m game, with a possible Saturday afternoon preference. Thus ended the entry for July 12, about a month and a half below, explaining a possible final venue for a promised reading for June’s THE RYDER MAGAZINE poets (see also June 29, 13, et al.).

The event in general is a vendor rich street fair for local and semi-local artists — two-and-a-half blocks of Fourth Street blocked off for booths, with spurs on Grant and Dunn Streets added for readers and musicians. And this year, the Grant Street location was reserved for us, the Bloomington Writers Guild, with our usual Poetry On Demand Booth (you give a donation, one of our poets writes you a poem on your subject of choice) and Spoken Word Performance Tent.

Also this year, today, Saturday, I was involved in two scheduled performances, one of three “Ryder Showcase” poets as noted above* and a separate half-hour horror prose reading as I have also done in the past. All, so far, good except that my horror gig was the first set, for 11 a.m., on a day that began — Weather Channel forecasts for sun all the past week notwithstanding — with thunder and rain. Which doesn’t help audience turnout at fairs. But, miracle of miracles, with some patches of sunshine including one starting just about the time I left home.

So the story I read, good for foggy mornings, was “Ghost Ship,” originally published in TECHNO GOTH CTHULHU (see April 28, 21 2013, et al) and, more recently, BLACK INFINITY (November 6, 3, October 21 2019, et al.), one of a number of independent stories set in the universe of TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH. This was followed, for me, by a brief trip to the local library and, back to Fourth Street, lunching on take-out jambalaya from the local Cajun restaurant. And then, at 1:30 p.m., with misting and light rain, poetry by Shana Ritter, Hirome Yoshida, and me for the Saturday Ryder Showcase.

This gave us ten minutes each with me batting third, each of us first reading the poems we had in THE RYDER, then filling the remaining time as we wished. In my case that meant two, “Don’t Always Believe Everything You Read” and “The Vampiress’ Soliloquy” (cf. June 13, including a link to the RYDER issue), which I followed with a six short poem “mini-chapbook” of poems from a dark, dangerous city, “Bon Appétit,” “Annchuck by Daylight,” “Nocturnal,” “Dig We Must,” “Rat Girl,” and “The Sisters,” and — with a tip of the hat for the Labor Day weekend as the traditional end of summer — “Summer Cancellations,” all seven poems (by convenient coincidence) reprinted in my second DARKER LOVES collection (cf. center column). And by contrast to “Ghost Ship,” aided perhaps by the strength of the preceding poets — or maybe as well with the rain starting to come down a little harder — we ended in a tent nearly full.

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*With three more Ryder poets set for tomorrow, at 2:30 Sunday. There were more than just six poets in all in the issue as readers at the time may note, but, summer over, that’s all that could be found.

Two-Figure Royalty Starts Off September

Well, this isn’t bad as such things go. One remembers that, for the short story writer, the royalty for an anthology sale must be divided among all the authors — one twentieth, say, of what’s already not much over a pittance (and thus my custom of mentioning neither titles nor exact amounts to avoid embarrassment on both sides). But today, September 1, brought a report that wasn’t half bad, especially for a publication that’s been around for a couple of years, and is still delivering!

In this case the payoff, discovered on PayPal on my monthly check while closing the book on August’s sales, and a two-figure (that’s two places to left of the decimal) amount to boot. Not much more than the minimum to be two figures, to be sure, but still quite enough to buy a nice lunch, and dessert as well!

And that’s pretty sweet.

The Writing Life: LOLCraft Edits Arrive, Returned

It’s been a fairly fallow summer, these last few months. Still, though, the Writing Life continues, as in today’s email from Editor/Publisher Michael Cieslak:

Greetings from the Maryland Pop and Horror Con!

Enclosed please find a copy of your story with the suggested edits. There may also be comments noted. Please review them and accept or decline using the Track Changes function, stating a reason why for any declines.

Once we receive the corrected copy we will make a final word count for the story and send you the contract.

The story in question is “The Reading” and the publication LOLCRAFT: A COMPENDIUM OF ELDRITCH HUMOR (cf. July 21, April 27) by Dragon’s Roost Press with, any changes being slight, my okay going back this afternoon. A tale of poetry, performance, and fear, “The Reading” originally appeared in UNIVERSE HORRIBILIS in 2013 from Third Flatiron Publishing, while LOLCRAFT (to quote its original call) is intended to evoke visceral, physical reactions. Horror generates fear and dread. Our hearts race. The stress rises and we feel the need for a release, to scream. Humor generates similar physical reactions, but the release comes in the form of laughter.

More to come here as it becomes known.

Release Date for “Dope” Anthology Set for Oct. 2

For today’s entry let us hark ourselves back to just over two months ago, and the headline “And Speak of the Devil. . . .” (cf. June 8), for the tale of a mystery acceptance only a few days before but the word to be held until the contents were finalized. The anthology, now revealed, to be titled STRANGE WEEDS with the story in question, originally published in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION on August 9 2011, “Killer Pot.”

The subject, not surprisingly, was to be marijuana: We’re looking for weed-centered horror stories of any sub-genre [this from the initial call]. How you interpret that, is honestly up to you. Any idea is welcomed as long as it is not demonizing the substance or its users. And the proceeds, moreover, would be for charity, The Last Prisoner Project, which meant that payment would be only token, but that would be okay. And so I submitted the story in question, a tale of ex-lovers but still on good terms, and a bonding achieved, along with other things, with assistance by the substance in question.

So today came the e-word from Editor Donnie Goodman: 1) We’ve spent the summer working on edits and the layout — we’ve moved through 12 of the 20 stories and hope to have a full .pdf ready to share by the end of the month to clear everything with you all. It’s going to have a Mass Market size to really give off a “Paperbacks from Hell” feel. In general, the changes to the stories we have placed in the layout so far are very, very minor, as the stories were all incredibly dope.

2) We currently have a release date set for 10/2/2022

And thus does the Writing Life continue on a pleasant, lazy summer afternoon.

Night Child “Dance-On” at August Writers Guild First Sunday Prose

August marks the return of the Bloomington Writers Guild’s “First Sunday Prose,” with this afternoon’s featured readers led by short fiction writer and novelist Carolyn Geduld (cf. December 1, 2019) with three excerpts from her just-published third book, THE STRUGGLE, about a young man’s coming of age and a local cult. She was followed by English-born poet and playwright Tonia Matthew (cf. January 30 2022, August 1 2021, et al.; also August 13, 10 2019, et al.) with a portion of a longer prose work in progress about a Londoner’s, Edith’s, afternoon spent with an older widow.

This was followed after the break by just three walk-on readers, with me in the middle with “Night Child,” an unpublished story about a young woman with dubious origins who loved to dance in a mid-1950s off-the-main-circuit jazz club. With clientele including Eastern European immigrants, a question arises of where, exactly, she might be from.

Then a final note, having just ended its June-July summer hiatus, First Sunday Prose will now skip another month in September, this to give way to Bloomington’s annual Fourth Street Arts Fair with its “Spoken Word Stage” over Labor Day Weekend (returning itself from a Covid forced two-year hiatus), with the next official First Sunday reading on October 2nd. And then, I might add, for November 6 one of the featured readers is tentatively scheduled to be . . . me.

Another Reprint: The Calm Accepted for Nightmare Abbey 2

In the midst of preparations for getting the next BLACK INFINITY out, the call came from Editor Tom English that it was time to be thinking of submissions for a second issue of NIGHTMARE ABBEY (cf. May 21, et al.). So the first one I sent this time didn’t go, perhaps being too fantasy-like as opposed to quiet horror (a problem that may come up again now and then, my horror tending sometimes to be a bit noisy), so what to try again with? My choice this time was another reprint from the late 1990s, “The Calm,” a tale of the Taconic Mountains during the French and Indian War originally published in NEW MYTHOS LEGENDS (Marietta Publishing, 1999).

The thing is, there’s this village . . . but let’s not dwell too much on that yet. The important thing is that the word came back from Editor English yesterday afternoon: I really enjoyed this story. It’s creepy and has a great idea. I would like to include it in the second issue of NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

So it happens. A contract will be coming in the near future and, as things progress, they will be revealed here. While as for the village, if really, really curious about it, “The Calm” also appears in my first collection from back in 2001 from Dark Regions Press, STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE, albeit unfortunately out of print (though occasional copies can still be found on Amazon*, et al.). Or, as noted, soon in the upcoming NIGHTMARE ABBEY 2.

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*As can, it turns out, a few copies of NEW MYTHOS LEGENDS, though as “collectibles” and a bit pricey. The listing also includes two reviews with this from the first, by Matthew T. Carpenter: The Calm – James Dorr – This is unusual for a mythos story in that it is set in colonial America. I think there are a few such stories in FRONTIER CTHULHU but otherwise is an unexplored era. Some British soldiers and colonial militiamen have an unpleasant encounter at the time of the French and Indian War (elsewhere known as the Seven Years War). I think this may actually have been my favorite story in the whole book. Mr. Dorr [also] wrote The Candle Room in HORRORS BEYOND. (In the spirit of full disclosure, however, Mr. Carpenter later discovers another tale to name as his true favorite — also that his opinion of the book as a whole is not that high).

Worldsmyths Contract Signed; LOLcraft Editing Schedule Announced

Two “writing life” reports, the first really a quick continuation of yesterday’s entry. As promised I got to the library this early afternoon and, after dealing with the first flurry of email, I got to Worldsmyths Publishing’s somewhat elaborate questionnaire and contract, the latter seemingly already filled in by another writer. Say what? But not to worry — perhaps that was just meant to be an example — I dutifully edited out the other guy’s stuff, substituting my own name and title, etc. Then, not being able to get the electronic signature feature to work, I printed it out, signed it “live,” then scanned the sucker into an email to me in attachable form to send on to Worldsmyths.

Thus, the ball in their court, on to an email from late yesterday from Michael Cieslak of Dragon’s Roost Press: LOLcraft has a defined place in our publishing queue. While there are a few books ahead of it, that does not mean that we are not still actively working on it. The other titles are in much later stages of production, final edits, awaiting artwork, etc. We do not see any of them causing any delays in the work on this title as the labor intensives phase has been completed for those.

We are currently working on the initial edits for each of the 34 stories which will appear in this collection. In order to not have anything lost in the shuffle, we plan on sending all of the edits out to the authors on the same day, rather than some here and some there. Look for this to happen within the next few weeks.

The book in question is LOLCRAFT: A COMPENDIUM OF ELDRITCH HUMOR , conceived in the spirit of such movies as BEETLEJUICE and CABIN IN THE WOODS, but in an H.P. Lovecraftian vein. We want the laughter but we also want that sense of helplessness and dread that comes with a good Lovecraftian tale. And my plum in the pastry, a tale called “The Reading” (cf. April 27, et al.) originally published in UNIVERSE HORRIBILIS (Third Flatiron Publishing, Spring 2013), of a poet who writes horror, a fear of public performance, and . . . Cthulhu.

A Slightly Late Posting, or Is It Early: The Master of Time Accepted by Worldsmyths

The original call was for [f]antasy/science fiction stories, following the theme of “seasons.” (Seasons, weather, cyclical nature, ending, returning, regularity interrupted, growing things, dying things, planet sized impact, local microsystems . . . ) Well you get the idea. But what about a story then — a reprint, originally published in FANTASTIC for Summer 2002, reprinted in DARKER LOVES, etc. — about a great clock on the running of which time itself depends? And then, what if it stopped?

The book is to be called SEASONS UNCEASING, by Worldsmyths Publishing, and the story that came to mind, “The Master of Time,” about the apprentice to the Master Clockkeeper whose job is to make sure that never happens (cf., e.g., September 22 2016, et al., concerning another reprint of the story). But who has some other interests as well.

So yesterday, and not all that late really, Worldsmyths emailed its answer: Congratulations! Your story submission “The Master of Time” has been accepted into SEASONS UNCEASING: A WORLDSMYTHS ANTHOLOGY . . . Please follow the below link to access the contract and author information questionnaire. This followed in turn by instructions, some of which will be better completed at the library tomorrow (hence the “or is it early” of the headline above), plus information on the editing process to come, etc.

More of which will be here as — as does time itself — it comes to pass.

Country Doc Contract Recovered; Cats, Cats, Cats

It came July 10, and even then late in a sense, as Editor Tom English explains: Hope you’re doing well. Here’s the contract for “The Country Doctor” for BLACK INFINITY: FIRST CONTACT. (You submitted the story way back in September 2021, but I got rather involved with the first issue of NIGHTMARE ABBEY.) Yes, the story of a New Mexico doctor and a strange patient, an accident victim, brought to him and his nurse by members of the military (see September 8 2021, et al.). And, oh yes, they are not to tell anyone about what happened or what they saw.

But truth will sometimes out.

In any event the story, originally published in BOOK OF DARK WISDOM in Summer 2005, had been accepted for the upcoming BLACK INFINITY: FIRST CONTACT issue and, notwithstanding other items intervening, the contract had finally been sent! Except — one more twist — my email decided this one was spam and hid it away, not to be discovered by me until yesterday afternoon, five days later. And then I had to go to the library to handle some details, but as of now it has been signed and sent back, and a new BLACK INFINITY is that much closer to being on its way.

Then one more unrelated item, but nonetheless missed and far too late returning — for which we go back to a pre-Covid early 2020. Yes, CatVideoFest is at last back, the annual compendium of short feline clips from all over the world (see February 2 2020; June 8 2019, et al.), with in this case ten percent of the show’s receipts to be donated to the Monroe County Humane Association. What more can one say? Some were funny, some action packed, some sad — a favorite judging by the applause, of cats in a city in Ukraine, some feral, some ex-pets, who’ve moved with people into a bomb shelter, determined to survive — others just cute — another international offering of cats “getting away with a lot” in Turkey, where cats are apparently much treasured. And all for a good cause, this year being shown in the downtown’s Buskirk Chumley Theater to a semi-packed (notwithstanding COVID, but some of us wearing our masks as well), and very appreciative house.

But also for me a reminder of the most important cat, the one at home, that I’d be returning to as promised about two hours later (that is to say, in time for supper): the Goth Cat Triana.