'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 125

Sunday Shorts – Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond

If you remember from the last two Sundays, I’ve been running through New Lit Salon Press‘s wonderful science fiction anthology Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak of it, and I loved it, and I’ve already posted some chats with five of the authors. That link is where you can pre-order the book, by the way, which is something I hope you’ll do if you’re at all a lover of quality short science fiction.

With no further ado, onward to some AI’s learning to face self-determination, a creepy lab, and what could be immortality, if you think you’re still the same person you were a while ago…

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J.P. Lorence

J.P. Lorence is a resident of Vancouver, Canada, who pursues graphite art, spoken word, and occasionally fiction writing. J.P.’s story is called “The Doorway,” and deals with a virtual reality world, and artificial intelligence.

NB: Your story in Startling Sci-Fi was a fresh take on the idea of emergent intelligence, and it made me if you have a background in programming or software design or tech on some level. If you do, did it inform the framework of the story? If you don’t, how did you go for that verisimilitude?

JL: No, I have no background in AI. I’ve researched this matter along with many others via audiobook resources, but I’ve really only gotten the broad concepts by that means. The idea of self emergent intelligence was just one I chose to address for its own sake.

NB: The story deals with an A.I. reaching a tipping point, and there’s a tongue-in-cheek bit near the end that’s cleverly done that draws an interesting parallel – how purposeful was that?

JL: I took one more step at the end, comparing V24 to a yuppie stuck in traffic. Well, that was a political point, one I stretched to make.

NB: I liked it – I think it added a kind of sardonic humour to the piece. Where did the greater story idea come from?

JL: It actually came out of a scene in the Sci-fi series, ‘Caprica.’ Perhaps 3 episodes in, a character is lost inside a simulation looking for his daughter. I just caught a few minutes of it at the time. It spawned the thought, however, and the story was written within a few days. I’ve since watched the entire series and can only speak well of Caprica as pro sci-fi writing.

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M.P. Diederich

M.P. Diederich was born somewhere in New England in 1985. Despite his interest in dangerous subjects, he is not currently under FBI surveillance. He studied English and Creative Writing at Fordham University in New York City while seriously considering joining the French Foreign Legion. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he’s trying to introduce more green vegetables into his diet and maybe go for a run every once in a while. Diederich’s story, “Monkey Business” is a creepy and darkly funny story that had me chuckling and cringing in turn.

NB: “Monkey Business” is a really rich story – where did the idea come from?

MD: This story is actually an excerpt of a much longer work-in-progress, but I felt it stood on its own as a quick glimpse into a very weird little world. The idea for the scene depicted in “Monkey Business” comes from a random conversation I had with a woman at an Irish pub in Philadelphia. There was a troupe of Gaelic musicians playing, which added to the random quality of the evening. Anyway, the woman was a lab assistant at a medical research facility, where she was mostly in charge of gassing lab mice to death. I found this quite disturbing, but she explained that the mice she was gassing were bred for susceptibility to various genetic defects and diseases. Once used in the lab’s experiments, they had essentially no chance of survival, and were summarily put to death in a quick, relatively painless manner. The lab assistant told me she felt like she was doing the mice a favour.

NB: “Monkey Business” is more than a little bit creepy as well as good. The nonchalance of the scientists in the face of some pretty awful procedures was cringeworthy, and yet I chuckled quite a bit, too. Did you set out to write something that walked that line?

MD: I would have to blame my exposure to Monty Python at a young age. But there’s also a bit of gallows humour in all of us, especially when surrounded by the disturbing facets of life. I think Mark Twain once said something along the lines of humour being the child of human suffering. When our backs are against the wall from an ethical or moral standpoint, we have to find some semblance of humour in order to maintain our sanity – and humanity. I think it’s that balance between the horrific and the humorous that I love in most of my favourite authors’ work, like David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis, and William Gaddis. They present dark, miserable situations, but in such a way that you can’t help but laugh.

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Rob Hartzell

Rob Hartzell is a graduate of the University of Alabama MFA program. He is currently at work on a story cycle, titled “Pictures of the Floating-Point World,” from which “The Dead and Eternal” is taken. Other stories from the cycle have appeared at Eunoia Review and Flyover Country Review. His story in this collection, “The Dead and Eternal,” hints at a kind of possible immortality – though, perhaps, not quite.

NB: Your story in Startling Sci-Fi had one of the more unique ideas about AI/transferred consciousnesses I’ve encountered – it really took a different angle, the notion of earlier ‘backups’ and the resultant missing time and what that might mean. Where did that notion come from?

RH: I can’t quite claim to be the originator of that idea — Cory Doctrow deals with human full-body backups quite a bit in “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. That said, it struck me while reading that book that his narrator accepts the concept of being restored from a backup without much struggle, particularly since it essentially results in the death of the current “instance”. (I won’t spoil the book for those who haven’t read it, but Doctrow does address this problem somewhat therein.)

I wondered what it would be like for someone on the other side of the equation to deal with a backup — particularly a backup that was problematic, as backups (including Doctrow’s narrator) can be — and the story was born.

NB: If you could have a “backup” done, would you?

RH: I would — but I have no illusions that, once restored, it would be the same me that is typing these words right now. My digital doppelgänger might get the gift of immortality, but, barring the development of some process I can’t foresee, I probably won’t.

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Next week I’ll be wrapping up my trip through Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond with the last of the authors I’m chatting with, but also the illustrator and the editor himself. Until then, keep it short…

Throwback Thursday – Superhero

I’m a huge X-Men nut. I loved them so much – and the allegory for LGBT folk isn’t exactly obscure. The X-Men are mutants – people born to “normal” humans who are hated and feared by them, who have to find each other and defend each other and try to make the world a better place where people won’t want to destroy them.

Ahem.

I particularly loved Iceman, because he had something unusual even for the X-Men – he had a really rough relationship with his folks. He laughed and joked and made light of things even when you knew that wasn’t how he felt.

And, in the most recent All-New X-Men, he came out. Or, rather, the teen version of himself, time-travelled to the present day, admitted to the teen version of Jean Grey that he was gay, though he’s all the more confused by the fact his adult self doesn’t seem to be.

To me, this is awesome. LGBT youth are just as present in geek circles as anywhere else, and they deserve to see some gay superheroes. And it’s also why I wrote a gay superhero of my own. This Throwback Thursday post is about that time my own gay superhero showed up at my front door, rescued from Livejournal, dated September 4th, 2013.

Despite the physical reality sitting in front of me, I can’t quite believe this just happened.

I came home from a rather miserable walk to and from a drug store with a bag of cold medication – I managed to catch a pretty bad cold these last few days, and I want to make sure I’ve got a way to sleep tonight, and that I’ve got a stockpile for the inevitable moment that my husband catches the same cold and suffers through it, too. There was a box at the door.

It’s a testament to how out of it I am that I didn’t clue in. I brought it inside, wondered what I’d ordered (and had then forgotten I’d ordered) and cut open the box, pulled out the stuffing, and…

“Oh,” I said.

Not the grandest pronouncement. But it took a second to sink in. Then I said some other words that I’m not going to type out here, what with that whole “authors, too, who once knew better words” truism.

I may be feeling sick, and I may be feeling a wee bit dumb, but I am also feeling so damned lucky I cannot even tell you. That I have the life where I can do this? It makes me happy beyond the telling.

Icing on the cake? They arrived on my seventh wedding anniversary to my husband. Those editors at Bold Strokes Books know their stuff, I tell ya.

Writing Wednesday

After coming back from Romancing the Capital, I was creatively and intellectually very recharged. I scribbled so many notes to myself about things to check, polish, or work on in the new novel or some short stories, I figured I’d hit the keyboard and never slow down again for days.

Instead, I got sick.

There was warning. My husband had been knocked flat on his butt by a cold on Thursday, the day before the conference, and so when I started feeling bad Friday night, I wasn’t too surprised. I made it through the Saturday of the event, spent a great deal of Sunday feeling grotty, and then on Monday I was barely capable of being upright for an extended period of time. Yesterday was a bit better, but I was basically a drooling idiot.

This is a long pre-excuse for still being pretty much where I was on my word-count as of last week’s numbers for the novel.

The Novel:

As I said, I didn’t get much further. From a percentage point of view, it’s pretty much the same at 72%, though I’ve got quite a bit of pages hand-written to go through, and I’ve high hopes for the rest of the week now that I’m feeling somewhat human again.

Short Stuff:

I can’t name specifics, but I got notice of an acceptance, which is lovely. Also, the latest issue of Glitterwolf Magazine is out, and I have a piece in the companion ‘Letters to my Sixteen Year-Old Self’ piece, which I hope you’ll take a peek at. If you’d like to get an idea of what’s in store, this beautiful video gives you an idea.

And, of course, I’m still futzing with ideas for various other anthology calls. I’m still worried about making something on time for April, but I cross my fingers.

Open Calls I Know About:

Clockwork Canada Anthology – Steampunk Canadian anthology; deadline April 30th, 2015.
There – Short Gay Fiction, Chelsea Station; deadline May 1st, 2015.

Ink Stained Succubus – quite a few different calls, including M/f, F/m, M/M, and lots of different genre calls; earliest deadline is May 15th, 2015.

The Biggest Lover – Big-Boned Men’s Erotica for Chubs and Chasers; first draft June 1st, 2015; deadline July 1st, 2015.
Bi Guys – Firsthand Fiction for Bisexual Men and their Admirers; synopsis September 1st, 2015; deadline October 1st, 2015.

Other places to always check include the Lambda Literary Calls of Submission page.

Heard of any good calls lately? Pop ’em in the comments.

Romancing the Capital 2015

I have no voice, a raw throat, and sore cheeks (from smiling and talking, pervert, get your mind out of the gutter). I couldn’t be happier.

This past Friday-Saturday was Romancing the Capital, a romance-centred reading convention hosted in part by Eve Langlais. I say hosted “in part” but I mean she organized the vast majority of what went on, and frankly, she was amazing, from her big rack (of antlers from her shifter stories) to her tinfoil hat (not metaphorically, a real tinfoil hat).

I was nervous – I was, it turned out, the only guy author present (and one of maybe four or five guys at all, though the husband contingent was very friendly). It didn’t take long for me to do a mental head-slap, though, and realize being the gay guy in a room full of romantic women isn’t uncharted waters for me. Hello, High School? Yeah.

Seriously, though, everyone was incredible. I started the day with a panel on Historical Romance with Claire Delacroix, Reece Butler, Sharon Page, and Tina Christopher (who has the best goggles ever, by the way), and was immediately put at ease. This was obviously going to be a conference for the readers to ask questions, laugh, and to share information and help out new authors. There was laughter almost from step one, and the sheer volume of enthusiasm was contagious.

From there, I was up with ‘The Many Shades of Love: LGBT Romance’ alongside Elizabeth Lister and Kayleigh Malcolm. To say we had a blast would be understating. The questions were great, the audience really wanted to know more about LGBT romance, and I spoke about the publishers I’ve worked the most with, Bold Strokes Books and Lethe Press and extolled the virtues of the short story and anthology worlds. It was actually fascinating, too, to get the perspective of women readers reading m/m fiction, and to hear Liz and Kayleigh talk about their styles and books. I also learned a new term for menage fiction subcategories: when the guys play together as well as with the lady, I shall henceforth refer to that as “crossed swords” menage. Ha!

Since I was behind the table, I didn’t get a shot of our talk, but Kayleigh’s husband got this action shot of us laughing – probably at something dirty we’d just said.

Thanks to my blood sugar, I had to nip out for lunch at that point, and Liz and I had a great time decompressing and nibbling. When I went back to the conference, I caught the fantastic duo of Kali Willows and Milly Taiden, who talked Interracial Romance. It was a really solid discussion, and it was fascinating to hear the feedback they got from readers (both positive and negative) on mixing up the various interracial options – as Milly put it at one point to applause, “folks, interracial isn’t just black-and-white.”

Also, Milly has the best shifter-ears.

From there I went to the sci-fi discussion panel, and I didn’t get a shot because I was third-row back and surrounded by readers (this panel was packed!) Here, mostly we laughed out loud at the antics of Eve Langlais, S.E. Smith, Viola Grace, and Tianna Xander. Seriously, so much laughter. Not-as-neutered-as-he-appears aliens with no nipples, fresh panties for potential alien invasion, and tinfoil hats – it all got covered (or uncovered) with glee. The audience Q&A was hysterical, but was still informative. Questions about environment impacting culture, character development when the sky is literally not the limit, and more. Great panel.

Then I had my “Intimate Chat” time for a half-hour, and was pleased to see that despite being opposite Opal Carew every single time I was scheduled somewhere, I drew in a great group who had some wonderful questions for me. I hadn’t planned a specific topic or discussion, and asked them what they’d like me to talk about or what they wanted to come away with, and we didn’t stop for a moment during the half-hour. There was a lot of talk about the need for happy gay stories, which made me smile, and some interesting Q&A on the m/m-vs-gay categorization (where I called ‘BS’ on the whole ‘women can’t write good gay stories’ idiocy.)

Even though there was a party – a dress up Mad Hatter Dinner party, no less – I went home. My poor husband had been riotously sick the day before and was my ride home today, and he certainly wasn’t feeling much better. While I waited for him outside, I had a great chat with some great ladies from the U.S., and I have to say, left grinning.

On Saturday, I woke up feeling like crap. I realized that perhaps bragging that my husband was ill but I’d managed to avoid his bug the day before was perhaps hubris, and so I was a bit slow to start the day. I missed the 9:00a panels, but that let me breathe and relax enough to still be somewhat bright-eyed and energetic for my 10:00a discussion/workshop: “Same Sex, Same Romance?”

The first thing I did was turn the rows of chairs into a circle. I know, I know, I’m a big hippy. Everybody hug.

My goal with the group was to walk through the basic premises of romance, and then take a second walk-through with the notion of what should, could, would, or wouldn’t change if the story involved LGBT characters instead of cis-gendered heterosexual ones. We had a fantastic discussion, especially around the notion of historical romance, and there were some great “lightbulb” moments of brainstorming as people brought their pain points on works-in-progress to the group and we hashed out some potential solutions.

Even better? After the talk ended, I spent another fifteen or twenty minutes talking with people from the discussion group more specifically about LGBT publishing (again, mostly about the publisher’s I’d worked with) and short fiction and the value of editors (I think I said ‘listen to your editor’ so many times during these two days it had become my catch-phrase). This chatting meant I missed the final slot for presentations, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I went to lunch with two lovely women and we had a great time (I’m embarrassed to admit that cold medication brain fog has made their names slip, which is awful, but I hope to see them again next year).

Then there was the book fair and book signing.

Liz and I were stunned at the sheer volume of people that came through that door. I’ve been at book fairs before. Heck, I’ve run them, in my day-job days at the bookstore. It was incredible. And most impressively, when Liz (who writes some pretty darn smexy BDSM gay erotica) and myself explained the books we wrote, if a reader wasn’t into our specific schtick, it was never a big deal. This crowd was happy to let their tastes run, but there was no “ew!” factor for things they didn’t themselves enjoy. It was open and welcoming and fantastic. We had a great time, and sold a tonne of books.

Also, I wanted to do one last shout-out to Kadian Tracey, who was at the table beside Liz and I, and who was at my workshop, and who was – frankly – awesomesauce on a stick. She and her buddy were so much fun, and I totally want to be her GBF.

And on that note – I’m gonna go lie down.

Can’t wait for next year!

Sunday Shorts – Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond

I just spent two days at Romancing the Capital and I have huge smile on my face and no voice left. I was so happy to see the sheer number of romance authors talking about short stories, novellas and other mid-range short fiction. It warmed my short-fiction loving heart, I do tell you. So I expect you’ll be seeing some romantic spin in my Sunday Shorts over the next while.

But not quite yet. If you remember last Sunday, I mentioned I was very lucky to be asked by New Lit Salon Press if I’d be willing to read and maybe offer up a blurb for their science fiction anthology Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond. I read it, and loved it, and last week I started with two of the authors. I’m going to pick up the pace a bit and talk to three people from here on in over the next couple of weeks. That link is where you can pre-order the book, by the way, which is something I hope you’ll do if you’re at all a lover of quality short science fiction.

With no further ado…

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Daniel Gooding

Daniel Gooding was born in 1984, and now works as a library assistant at the University of Bristol. He is the author of a novella and a collection of short stories, both unpublished, and is currently working on more. He lives in Bath with his wife and two children.

Daniel Gooding wrote “Crow Magnum Xix” which is an oddly charming – and just as oddly thought-provoking – story about a man who has himself put in a kind of stasis and launched out in a probe to see the universe, though how much he might be aware, and how much he might see is up for debate.

NB: Your story in Startling Sci-Fi was really unique – I loved the slice of humour running throughout, too. I have to ask – where did the idea come from?

DG: The idea for the story itself came on a dull Saturday afternoon, from a very small article in the paper; I forget the point of it exactly, but it involved some sort of unmanned probe being fired off into space. It set me thinking about the implications of someone being put inside one of these things, and what sort of lengths it would take to maintain at least some semblance of life or activity in there for a prolonged period, as opposed to just launching another Laika suicide mission or flotilla of kamikaze space monkeys. Normally I spend ages on a story, making extensive notes and outlines before sitting down to do a proper draft, but this was the quickest I’ve ever gone from conception of an idea to finished product; the name Wallace Rushford-Sale popped into my head, and within a couple of hours it was finished. The phrase ‘Crow Magnum’ I already had from reading another magazine (like Wallace Rushford-Sale), and had just been waiting for the right moment to use it.

NB: What would it take for you to accept a similar deal as the one your character took, and go off “seeing” the galaxy (potentially)?

DG: It’s an interesting question, but overall I think there are too many ambiguities and uncertainties to make me want to commit to the same sort of deal. I am interested in space as one of the final realms of the really unknown, and I would love the opportunity to see what else might be out there, but weighing up the odds I think I would prefer to stay and see how things pan out here. Leaving my family behind would also be a good reason not to want to go, not to mention my healthy sense of reticence/cowardice. All in all I think it’s better just to hang about on Earth, and wait and see if the technology gets any better; if a safe return was guaranteed, and I could be there and back in a week, not five years or something stupid like that, I might reconsider…

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Mike Algera

Mike Algera has authored three poetry collections: Old Gods for New, Outskirts, and Like Indigenous Tiger. He has been published by Arc Poetry Magazine, BareBack Lit, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Nostrovia Poetry, Word Salad and Cyclamens & Swords Publishing. He lives in Hamilton with his high maintenance dog, Grendel. His favourite themes include dysfunctional families, Oriental mysticism, vigilante justice, love and love in all of the wrong places. His home away from home is in digital la-la land, at mikealgera.com.

Mike Algera wrote “New Year’s Eve 65,000,000 B. C.” which is one of the more unique stories I’ve read, where you’ve got a monster of some sort and a dinosaur and a rather introspective discussion between the two as they speak of their limitations, and wonder what might be different.

NB: Your story in startling Sci-Fi balances a kind of fable with science fiction, and is kind of sweet as well as somewhat sad. How’d the idea occur to you?

MA: I have a keen interest in cultural folklore and fairy tales which illustrate concepts of morality as well as glimpses into foreign customs that differentiate from my own. It’s storytelling that is often philosophical and introspective, metaphorical and poetic; straightforward writing that is strikingly nuanced; storytelling that can often be telling, which is discouraged by critics of modern lit, yet somehow remains culturally relevant and ingenious.

I had the Frankenstein monster in mind while in the preliminary stages of New Year’s Eve: 65, 000, 000 BC, and the goal was to write about a sympathetic creature that was borne into a life he didn’t seem to fit by a “creator” and was ultimately abandoned because of physical deformities. The stark contrast to Shelley’s Frankenstein is that the creature was made by man and was made to become an embodiment of sophisticated and civilized “man” – my creature on the other hand was thrown into the wild and uncivilized Jurassic Age, and yet is still feared because of his ghoulish appearance. Another difference is that the monster ends up befriending a T-Rex (and who wouldn’t be shaken up if one knew a carnivorous dinosaur was on the loose?).

In a nutshell, the story is about friendship – the union of two outcasts being brought together by circumstance; it’s a testament to a friendship that is genuine and eternal, even in the face of Armageddon.

Despite popular opinion, I don’t always enjoy killing off my characters – in hindsight, it was the only way to test the bond between the monster and the dinosaur. The two only want to help one another and be in each other’s company. The dinosaur wanted to aid his friend the monster in finding sleep, and if death by a volcano eruption would be the price to pay in order to attain his altruistic goal, then he is willing to do so in order to keep the friendship going… two friends dying together is better than dying and/or living alone.

NS: What was your worst New Year?

MA: The only worst New Year that I can recall was fifteen years back when my grandma was battling Hodgkinson’s lymphoma – ironically, it was good because she was with me during the Holidays, and I could spend time with her; the downside of course was that she was sick, and she died a few weeks after that. But at least she didn’t die alone, so we can all find solace in that.

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Jhon Sanchez

As a Colombian, Mr. Sanchez writes the disgrammatical. Mr. Sanchez hung his three law diplomas above the toilet in his Brooklyn apartment. After surviving his first short story, “Too Funny to Commit Suicide,” he went on to study writing at Long Island University. His work has been featured in Brooklyn Paramount and The Overpass. This September, Mr. Sanchez is going to be a resident at the Edward Albee Foundation in Montauk, NY (No visitors allowed!) He would like to thank Samuel Ferri, Orlando Ferrand, Martha Hughes, Barbara Wallace, Alexander Saenz and Nan Frydland for their editorial comments, as well as Lewis Warsh, Don Scotti, Mom, the Jamaican Lady next door, and the keys left by the Brazilian.

Jhon Sanchez wrote “The Japanese Rice Cooker” in this collection – a story done in a modern epistolary format, about a Rice Cooker that seems to leave “messages” in the resultant cooked rice.

NB: Your story in Startling Sci-Fi walked a great line between funny and creepy (in fact, it reminded me of the whole ‘Machine of Death’ concept, which I loved). Is there a story behind where this rice cooker idea came from?

JS: When I wrote the Japanese Rice Cooker, I was reading Stephen King’s, “The Jaunt” and “Jerusalem’s Lot.” I read “Jerusalem’s Lot” for an Orlando Ferrand workshop, who challenged us to write a short story in an epistolary form. From that point of view, my mind was busy thinking about the form rather than the content and the plot, so as professor Warsh said once, “In jail sometimes you find freedom.” I like to tell the story of what specifically happened with that story. At the time, I was living with someone who also writes but he liked to take my computer, and he always messed up the sound system. He was also looking for a place to move to, and I was planning to give him a rice cooker. I sat at the computer thinking about the assignment for Orlando Ferrand as well as my gift, the rice cooker when I could not play the music. My friend always denied doing anything to my computer. “Who did it? A ghost did it.” I was mad, and I thought of the time I had to spend sending e-mails to Apple. When I thought about the complaints that people made about different products at that point I remember as well Haruki Murakami’s story, “Kangaroo Communique,” narrated in the voice of a person who receives customer complaint letters. I started to write different emails complaining about a rice cooker. I made the story of rice cookers instead of a story about a character and his rice cooker. That was the twist I wanted in the story.

NS: What was your writing process for this story?

JS: In this particular story, I wrote the climax and then I wrote the rest of the story to move towards that moment. When I write, I like to give importance to things or moments that are irrelevant in our lives; a rice cooker is an example of it. If I had written the story with something more sophisticated like a computer or a robot I think the story would have lost its humorous touch. The most ordinary situation or the object calls my attention. This is something that is also a presence in my daily life. I remember a person or make a friend for some small things and not for the most dramatic moment in my life. In school, I used to remember all unimportant data and information. I even have a friend who used to call me to ask me things like, ‘Do you remember what dress I was wearing last year?’ or ‘A month ago, I was leaving my office when someone called me. Did you remember whom?” In other words my memory is full of detritus. I wrote an essay about that. Nothing is a formula in my life, but I have a taste for things that are irrelevant, small and comic. In that sense, I just expand this world to an alternative one.

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I’ll be back next week with more from this wonderful collection, and I hope you’ll pop by and say hello. Until then, keep it short!

Throwback Thursday – It’s Funny At First

This post is a bit more involved than usual for my Throwback Thursday, and was inspired by a wonderful book. Ken O’Neill’s The Marrying Kind is an awesome book I just last week finished listening to (I had the audiobook) and it’s brilliant and funny and you should buy it. That link is to a bigger review of said book. In said book, there is a scene where a gay fellow sees his brother and his brother’s girlfriend in a public place. They’re holding hands and she’s resting her head on his shoulder. O’Neill describes perfectly what it’s like to see that sort of casual, thoughtless, wonderful declaration of love when you yourself can’t have that same moment in his book, and it reminded me of this moment in my own life. Ken’s book is damned funny, and – again – you should read it. And this moment, when it happened to me, was funny, too.

At first.

This post rescued from Livejournal, dated March 28th, 2012:

Earlier this week, I had a customer shut me down at work when I suggested a Diana Gabaldon book because – her words – of “the inclusion of a sodomite.” Ever since the death of Jamie Hubley, I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t side-step, so I asked her if she’d like me to find a clerk who wasn’t gay to finish the conversation. The interaction ended and she left. These random homophobic moments are always so unexpected that they jar me, and it took me a little bit to get back on track. I moved on with my day, chalking it up to one more moment where someone assumes I’m a part of their bigot club.

Jokingly, the next day on Twitter I mentioned how I hoped I’d bump into someone randomly being supportive or queer positive, to balance things out. Y’know, randomly seeing two dads with their little kid playing catch or something. Anything, really. I walked to the grocery store and picked up ingredients for a casserole (this, for the record, was number two on the Smith Gay Agenda for the day, just above destroying the sanctity of marriage and just below playing WallaBee on my iPad). When I came home, I noted that nothing gay positive had indeed leapt out for me, but I had high hopes for something to happen in the comfort of my own home later.

What I meant, tongue in cheek, was that my husband would come home and I’d kiss him, or something as simple as that, and it did indeed happen.

Then the doorbell rang.

I answered it, and two women smiled and introduced themselves. I smiled back, and said hello. The first woman invited me to join a street celebration with them “on the actual day of Jesus’s death.”

“No thank you. My husband and I aren’t generally welcome at that brand of religious event,” I said. I was calm. I didn’t raise my voice.

Both women looked like they’d just accidentally swallowed liquid dog excrement. Twice. They left, I closed my door, and for a little while, I was upbeat about it. I asked my husband in the office if he’d seen their faces, but he hadn’t. I was proud of myself for being upfront, but not overly adversarial. I even laughed about it.

And then it started to sink in.

This is our home. I haven’t had a real sense of home before this one – I used to smile and try to be polite when people talked about how much they loved their homes. I moved too much to “get it” but this house I share with my husband is our home. We get to be ourselves here. We get to kiss. We get to hold hands. We get to lean on each other, and tickle each other, and be silly and be loving and be and do any damn thing we want.

You know what we shouldn’t have to be? Interrupted by someone going door to door with a reminder that we’re pretty much dog shit to be swallowed.

It took me a while to realize why I was at first amused and proud, and then unsettled, and then outright angry, and that was it: they came to my house and dropped some bigotry at my door. I don’t get to be like most husbands in my day to day life – by “most” here, I mean straight. I don’t get to hold my spouse’s hand wherever we go. I don’t get to kiss him wherever I want. I don’t get to be who I am without thinking about it. We have to stop and think about it. Every. Single. Time. We have to scan our surroundings. Will that peck on the cheek start someone ranting at us? Is someone going to beat us for a simple gesture of love? Every time, every day, every touch: are we safe?

Our home is where we are always supposed to feel safe and not have to think about it. And those women strolled up, knocked, and reminded me that it isn’t.

Most of the time, I shrug this shit off. But there are times it’s exhausting. This week was like that. I know – I absolutely know – that I’m surrounded by wonderful, open-minded, accepting and tolerant people.

The other kind can get the fuck off my lawn.

Writing Wednesday – Romancing the Capital

In two days, I’ll be speaking at Romancing the Capital, a new romance conference put together by Eve Langlais. I’m a wee bit nervous on a few different fronts, but most centrally in being (I think) the only gay guy – I say think because there are enough pen-names involved that I might be completely wrong. It’s probably an unfounded sense of nerves, but going to the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival may have spoiled me a wee bit. Also, there are a few m/m authors going to be present, so I need to just get over it.

This moment brought to you by Imposter Syndrome.

At RTC, I’ll be doing three things:

The Many Shades of Love: LGBT Romance Panel on the Friday, April 17th at 10:00a.

Author Intimate Chat on the Friday, April 17th, at 3:00p.

Same Sex, Same Romance? A discussion of what (if anything) should be different in LGBT romances as opposed to mainstream romances, on the Saturday, April 18th, at 10:00a.

Regsitration for those events is, unfortunately, now closed – but there’s also an open-to-the-public book fair happening, which is 2:00p – 4:00p on the Saturday, April 18th. If you want one of those nifty Light magnets, I’ll have them there. Free with a smile.

Okay, that’s the appearance writerly stuff that’s inbound. Onward to my usual Writing Wednesday stuff.

Writing Wednesday – where I hold myself to some public accountability on the whole writing thing (and also to share some Open Calls for Submission love).

The Novel:

Monday and Tuesday this week were awesome for writing, and I got another 2k+ done on the draft. I’m sitting now at about 72% of my total estimated word-count (I think my estimate might be a bit off, to be honest, and I might be coming in a bit shy of my original intent, but I think coming in a bit under will be a welcome and refreshing change for me.) I still have to work on the smutty bits and including them, came up with a few new key scenes that strengthen the whole, and am still finding myself naturally wanting to make this book the all-Anders, all-the-time show, which means if the next book is from his point of view, I’m going to love writing it.

If I keep up at the pace I’m going, I should be “done” a draft pretty early in May. This is fantastic. It gives me three solid months to hack a draft to pieces before I need to mail it in to Bold Strokes. Also, I got to fill in my cover information and blurb stuff, so that was exciting.

Short Stuff:

All the happy exuberance I just had about the novel? None of that love here. I’ve barely scratched short fiction this month, and I’m not sure I’ve got something that’ll launch before the end of the month. Fingers crossed. Partly it’s RTC and losing some time to prepping for that, but mostly it’s just me staring at a screen and not quite having a story gel. There’s still time.

Open Calls I Know About:

Clockwork Canada Anthology – Steampunk Canadian anthology; deadline April 30th, 2015.
There – Short Gay Fiction, Chelsea Station; deadline May 1st, 2015.

Ink Stained Succubus – quite a few different calls, including M/f, F/m, M/M, and lots of different genre calls; earliest deadline is May 15th, 2015.

The Biggest Lover – Big-Boned Men’s Erotica for Chubs and Chasers; first draft June 1st, 2015; deadline July 1st, 2015.
Bi Guys – Firsthand Fiction for Bisexual Men and their Admirers; synopsis September 1st, 2015; deadline October 1st, 2015.

Other places to always check include the Lambda Literary Calls of Submission page.

Heard of any good calls lately? Pop ’em in the comments.

Sunday Shorts – Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond

One of the best things about being a writer is sometimes, by virtue of who you meet and the supportive nature of the writing community, you get a chance to glimpse a book early. I was very lucky to be asked by New Lit Salon Press if I’d be willing to read and maybe offer up a blurb for their science fiction anthology Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond.

I really enjoyed this collection, and so I happily sent in my blurb and review, and then thought it would be fun to chat with some of the authors, the editor, and the illustrator of the collection for a few weeks here for Sunday Shorts.

First up? My official review:

The best science fiction can take you to other worlds without leaving behind the basic human condition; the stories of Startling Sci-Fi do this with an effortlessness that charms.

Prepare to encounter cyborg assisted-living centres, virtual reality drag queens, and love rebooted from stored back-ups of transferred consciousnesses. Explore our world alongside benevolent alien symbiotes – or join the humans who resist them.

No matter what dimension, time, or world you’re visiting, virtual or physical, bloody or calm, character remains king in this collection. Each tale reflects that universal human character in a different way, creating a whole that leaves the reader fully immersed and hard pressed not to read “just one more” before returning to reality.

Startling Sci-Fi manages to be both grounded in the genre and refreshingly unique. Casey Ellis should be very proud – this is a great collection of voices adding worthy stories to the science fiction world. I’ll be hunting for more from these authors, and I hope Ellis gathers more great talent in collections to come.

But don’t just listen to me. Listen to Eve and Adam (I swear I didn’t plan that on purpose, though I did decide to put them in order of their appearance in the collection because otherwise… Well. Yeah.)

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Eve Fisher

Eve Fisher was adopted from an orphanage in Athens, Greece as a child, and hasn’t quit traveling since. She’s lived in almost every state in America, worked almost every kind of job, and managed to visit every national park, monument, state park, giant ball of string and iguana farm west of the Mississippi. In between and during travels, she writes. Eve has been published numerous times in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, as well as other publications, including “Space & Time.” Her website is evefishermysteries.wikispaces.com.

Eve Fisher wrote “Embraced,” which is the aforementioned ‘symbiote’ story in my praise above. If you’ve never heard of the ‘Fátima Prophecy’ don’t feel bad, I’d never heard of either, so if you have no idea what it is, here’s a link to wikipedia.

NB: You said your story – which was fantastic, by the way – in Startling Sci-Fi came from the idea of the ‘Fátima Prophecy’ – I’d never heard of that before. Where did you encounter it?

EF: Well, I’d heard about Fátima years ago, reading a book about Marian apparitions which tried to sort out the true from the false. Anyway, what interested me was how “Russia will also turn to God and there will be peace” would happen, because prophecy – in any religion – never happens the way literalists tell you it will. So that was nudging in my brain. And I decided that an invasion would be an invasion – only it would be seen as aliens…

NB: In your story, even though the aliens seem to offer complete emotional peace and happiness to those they ’embrace’, there’s a resistance effort. Would you be on the resistance, or would you be embraced?

EF: I’d be in the resistance at first, because I always start from a basis of skepticism and cynicism, but I’d end up being embraced because I can’t understand how anyone can be so possessive as to give up that much pleasure. (Although I can certainly write about it.)

*

Adam Sass

Adam Sass is a writer of gay-themed, suspenseful sci-fi. In addition to self-publishing a collection of comedic essays, A Look at the Great Gay Tipping Point, he blogs monthly LGBT pop culture op-eds at StayOnFountain.com. He lives in West Hollywood with his nurse husband and dachshund. Keep up with what he’s drinking on his (over)active Twitter @TheAdamSass.

Adam Sass wrote the brilliantly witty “98% Graves,” which had me grinning ear-to-ear and thinking back to all the best drag shows I’d ever seen. It approaches the idea of “wearing a costume and a whole new character” through a unique lens.

NB: Your story in Startling Sci-Fi was freaking fabulous and had the same engrossing tones you get from the best of drag divas – where did the idea come from?

AS: The idea for “98% Graves”—a drag queen reality simulator plugged into the back of a gay bar—came from Twitter. The gays of Twitter will sometimes change their profile pic to some faboo celebrity in lieu of their own face. After awhile, you can forget the real guy you’re actually tweeting with.

I use my own picture but even then, I’m known to reply to people with a GIF, usually of a vampy famous woman. I became obsessed with the idea that Gillian Anderson or Shirley Bassey’s face could express my thoughts to someone online better than my own face could. I think I’m not alone, certainly among gay men, in that respect. That felt like a dimension of gay life that had gone unexplored—the mundane man behind the drags.

NB: If you could use the same technology, who would you “wear”?

AS: Who would I “wear”? First, amazing question. Second, well, the rules of UberDrag are that the diva must be dead in real life, so my answer for that is always Vivien Leigh. But I may be too chicken to carry out her astronomic level of confidence. I’m too peculiar, so I’d probably be a better fit for Little Edie Beale, making loud pronouncements and then shrinking away to the corner.

*

I’ll be back again to talk about Startling Sci-Fi: New Tales of the Beyond over the next four weeks or so. The book itself launches May 1st, so hopefully I’m teasing and whetting your appetite for some solid sci-fi stories.

Until next week, keep it short!

Throwback Thursday – When Dentists say “Oops.”

A recent visit from my nephew, who has braces, made me think back on the super-long (and incredibly expensive) process of fixing my own jaw. Braces, pins, brackets, jaw-spreaders – not the fun kind – and more stitches, needles, and metal in my mouth than I ever thought I’d need. I looked back in my journal, and found this entry, rescued from June 29th, 2005, about one of the last steps. I’d had the wires removed, the brackets done, the pins were holding, I still had to have a couple of veneers built over where the teeth had been broken, and – to add insult to injury – I’d gotten a cavity behind where the jaw-spreader was anchored (basically, beneath the metal where it was attached to one of my molars).

So, this morning, while he’s working, the dentist says, “Oops.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I know what I mean when I say “Oops.” “Oops,” roughly translated into common parlance, is “Oh fucking hell!” with a dash of “Hrm, I’m surrounded by customers and/or company in front of which I dare not utter foul language.”

There was, thereafter, a cracking sound, and a sort of pressure feeling. Happily, I was needled up with a double dose, but perhaps my eyes made a bit of a frowny-face, as the dental assistant then said, “Oh no.” She patted my shoulder.

“What the hell is going on?” I said. Given how many fingers, tubes, and bits of metal were in my numb mouth, though, it came out sort of like, “Wha na ha ih ho-nh ha?”

“We’re going to need a little longer,” said my dentist, mysteriously. “One of your teeth just broke.”

I pondered this from my numbed, prone, sheet-of-plastic-over-most-of-my-face position, and shrugged and gave a thumb’s up. Ride on, buddy.

“I’ll need to give you some more freezing, I think,” he said.

The thumb’s up went down, and was replaced by one finger. He laughed, but he did it anyway.

I wonder how the poor people waiting for my dentist after me felt when they were told he’d be another hour.

On the other hand, I have a very white new (mostly fake) tooth where the wrap-around cuff of the jaw-spreader used to be. It’s very hard to brush (and thereby prevent cavities) on a surface that is covered in metal for twenty months, oddly enough. And if you drill it, it might crumble.

That should be the title of a porn movie.

Writing Wednesday – Locked Out

Well, that wasn’t the morning I had planned.

My schedule sticks pretty much to the same routine every week day. Part of that is due to my blood sugar, and most of the rest of the reason is the dog. Every morning, at about 7:20a, I take the dog for his first of three walks. It’s just a loop – around a large block that takes about twenty minutes or so.

I just got back into my house at 9:30a.

See, somehow, between locking the door and going on the loop and coming back, I lost the key. It’s a single key. It’s bright blue. It’s on a silver keychain. You’d think it would be easy to spot said key wherever it was I lost it on my walked loop, but after three extra loops, I could not find it. No problem, right? I have a cell phone, a husband with a key and car, and – failing that – a wallet with which to pay a locksmith, right?

Yeah. I’d gone walking the dog without wallet or cell phone. Luckily, a neighbour offered to let me use her cell (she was walking with her daughter) and…

My cell phone is smart. I am not. I didn’t actually know my husband’s work number. Also, his company isn’t listed in 411.

Happily, another neighbour was running by with her dog and she let me borrow her computer and sit in her house and wait while my husband came back. Because e-mailing my husband was the method that actually worked.

Good lord, I feel dumb.

Now, normally, on Wednesdays I talk about writing progress and stuff, and I’ll still do that, but I thought this might also be a good time to chat about genre a wee bit, because I see a metaphor here, and why not make fun of myself a bit more?

With Light, I locked myself out of a genre. Or a sub-genre. Or both? When I pitched the book, and wrote the book, and when Bold Strokes Books did all the amazing things publishers do, I talked about the telepathy and the telekinesis and the kinda-sorta mystery of what was happening, and knew I’d written a science fiction book (albeit a light, contemporary, more spec-fic than sci-fi kind of science fiction).

And at no point did I think to mention the romantic B-plot of my main character and the hunky leather man other than in the blurb as one of the many things the hero is trying to juggle while he’s saving the day.

It wasn’t until the awesome Ruth Sternglantz called me out on it that I realized what I’d done. I’d completely missed the opportunity to talk to romance readers who like their romance to have a big dash of science fiction mixed in, because in my head it was a science fiction book I’d written, that just happened to have a smaller sub-plot involving a romance.

Keep in mind, I worked in a bookstore for decades and I knew full well how important it is to walk people from one part of the store (say, Mystery) to another part of the store (say, Romance) and point out that the lines blur in a lot of books (say, Romantic Suspense) and that there’s likely books in sections they didn’t peruse that would be pretty fun for them to read.

So, yeah. Duh. When you write, take a second to really think about all the various categories your story touches. If there’s a romantic sub-plot, mention it. There are a lot of readers out there who love romance (it’s the best selling genre for a reason) and even if what you’ve written isn’t solely a romance, if there is indeed a romantic narrative included (a meet, a clash/breaking point, a coming-together/declaration, a resolution) then it might very well be you’ve got an audience among the romance readers.

In fact, quite a few reviews of Light said as much. I even had one review saying it was one of the more unique romance novels they’d read in a long time – which is awesome! I thought I was writing a science fiction book (and I was) but I was also writing a romance, and it turned out the chocolate and peanut butter effect is a good thing.

Anyway. Lesson learned.

Now back to my regularly scheduled update.

Writing Wednesday – where I hold myself to some public accountability on the whole writing thing (and also to share some Open Calls for Submission love).

The Novel:

Triad Blood continues to move along – I didn’t increase the word count a great deal since I’ve come back from Saints and Sinners, but that’s because I came back with a few dozen ideas about polishing some of the bits I’d already written. I don’t have a new word-count to post, but I’m going to guess I ended up somewhere stable as things came and went from what I’d already done and am still sitting around the 70%-draft mark. That said, I’m feel much better about the remaining 30% now.

Also, speaking of the whole genre thing, I’m trying to figure out exactly what genre this book will be. Because it’s not just urban fantasy, and I need to be conscious of that. The three guys are definitely in a relationship together, it’s definitely more smutty than Light was, so I’m going to have to really ponder whether or not I can call this erotica, too.

Short Stuff:

Awesome news! My Letter-to-my-16-year-old-self was accepted to go alongside the Glitterwolf Magazine issue on Identity. I’m very, very chuffed. Given that I also squeaked that in under the March deadline, it’s even better news. As for a short piece to submit for April, I’m aware I’m already one week into the month, and I’ve not done one yet.

Open Calls I Know About:

Fireside Magazine – Flash Fiction; deadline April 11th, 2015
Clockwork Canada Anthology – Steampunk Canadian anthology; deadline April 30th, 2015.
There – Short Gay Fiction, Chelsea Station; deadline May 1st, 2015.

Ink Stained Succubus – quite a few different calls, including M/f, F/m, M/M, and lots of different genre calls; earliest deadline is May 15th, 2015.

The Biggest Lover – Big-Boned Men’s Erotica for Chubs and Chasers; first draft June 1st, 2015; deadline July 1st, 2015.
Bi Guys – Firsthand Fiction for Bisexual Men and their Admirers; synopsis September 1st, 2015; deadline October 1st, 2015.

Other places to always check include the Lambda Literary Calls of Submission page.

Heard of any good calls lately? Pop ’em in the comments.