'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 39

Short Stories 366:207 — “Home is a Planet Away,” by Ika Koeck

[image error]One thing that struck me in this shared world collection was how often the protagonists in The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis are of the same alien species as some of the worst villains (or even just minor antagonists from a scene or two). It works, though, precisely because it shows different sides of alien species, and avoids that whole “the warrior aliens,” “the science aliens,” aspect that so often sneaks into science fiction, and instead brings forth some unique characters, often by showing them against the assumptions other races—especially humans—make about them. And sometimes, they even surprise themselves.

That’s the heart of Ika Koeck’s wonderful “Home is a Planet Away,” where we meet Olsi, an alien who communicates through a kind of sign as well as some vocalizations, and comes from an overpopulated planet and struck out to a new place only because it was a chance at something—anything—better. Instead, she ends up in the employ of some horrific people we visit during the main plot of Julie Czerneda’s series, and we witness a major event from the very-much sidelines, where Olsi, and one of the few friends she’s made (and one of the only people she can communicate with), use the uproar of an attack to attempt an escape of their own.

Which is, of course, how they end up on Plexis, the interstellar shopping mall where all the stories collide. Olsi is so very much out of her element—she is large, cannot communicate with anyone other than her friend, and easily startled and overwhelmed by the scents and particular drives of her own species (especially self-preservation and hiding), but has to adapt quickly in the face of some dangerous and immediate challenges. Olsi’s gentle nature and desire to just be allowed to breathe and have a place of her own already had me rooting for her, but seeing her recognize a chosen family, and decide to risk it all? Well, I’ve said it before in this collection, but that kind of story is like catnip to me.

Short Stories 366:206 — “Love, Or Something Like It,” by Michael Bracken

[image error]Oof. Crime Travel, an anthology of short crime fiction linked by the inclusion of time-travel, is another rough one after last week’s “Hard Return,” and I think the darkest story of the collection as a whole. “Love, Or Something Like It” centres on Kevin Thompson, a physics PhD candidate who, in 1975, is delivering a paper when the love of his life is murdered back in her apartment’s kitchen. No prints are found (other than the couple’s, of course) to link to a murderer. Kevin is beyond distraught, and is hired by a group trying to work on Time Travel. He is, after all, uniquely motivated, as are all the hired individuals, all of whom lost someone to accident or chance (though he’s the only one who lost someone to murder).

Time, however, is running out. It’s obvious he’s both driven and obsessed with figuring out who killed his wife and preventing it from happening, but by 2018, the people who hired him are tired of zero success. But a last moment breakthrough gets Kevin over the finish line. And while the group has yet to decide what to do with the device, Kevin has no such compunctions, and goes out to finish his own personal vendetta: to get the person who killed the love of his life.

Bracken’s take on the crime, and the ultimate solution, isn’t so much a surprise as it is an inevitability the reader starts to consider as the story unfolds, which turns the story into a ticking-clock of dread, and then delivers exactly that with the final punches of the story. I needed a few moments to just sit with this one, and took a break to find a romance short (where Happy-Ever-Afters are part of the package) before coming back to the anthology. That’s not a criticism of the story, which has exactly the punch it intended, I believe, but more about me as a reader, and how I prefer my stories to offer even a tiny slice of hope.

Squeezing the Tennis Ball

I Have No Words

Before anything else, I’d like to start this post with a declaration: I’ve barely written anything aimed for publication in months, and that’s okay. Before COVID, and before the dog blew the tendons in my arm and elbow (still not great, but getting better, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can type for longer periods of time now), I was more-or-less ready with “Village Fool,” a novelette I’d intended to launch on April Fool’s Day, which takes place on—wait for it—April Fool’s Day. It’s a wee story about Owen and Toma (who you may have briefly met in “Faux Ho Ho”), and I was in the last stretches and then…

Well. Dog. Arm. COVID.

Over the last couple of weeks, as my arm started to finally get to a decent state, I re-opened files and… white noise. I’d re-read what I wrote, and I liked it, but then I’d get to the parts where I had to fix or polish or finish and… white noise. So I’d pick up my tennis ball again, and try not to worry about it.

(Have I mentioned how much I hate squeezing a tennis ball? Because oh wow does it turn out I hate to squeeze a tennis ball, but that’s one of my exercises to try and fix the tendons around my elbow, so, squeeze-squeeze-squeeze. Even better is when the dog notices I’m squeezing a tennis ball, because then he wants the tennis ball, and I have to play keep-away with a fully grown husky whilst squeezing the bloody tennis ball. But I digress.)

One of the things I try to champion in my public life as a writer is to be clear that sometimes the words don’t work, because I think we far more often see the messages of “you have to write every day!” or “writers write!” and that’s honestly not true for everyone, and even more, I think it can destroy writers who don’t write that way, but think they have to. I don’t write that way, and I’ve more-or-less made peace with it, but this stretch of nothing has been really, really long, and I’m ready for it to be done.

So what do I do about it? What can I do about it?

My answer to that (I want to be clear this is my answer to that, for me, but maybe it’ll also work for someone else) is to aim myself in two different directions at once.

Engage!

Direction the first is to find the fun in writing, and this time, that’s coming from fan-fiction. I’ve been working on a piece of fan-fic, picking it up when I feel like I’ll get some flow, but stopping the moment I hit any sort of wall. I want to remind myself that writing can indeed be fun. No one might ever see it (well, except it’s a Star Trek Voyager fan-fic based on the Year of Hell episodes and my author friend Jeffrey is a huge Voyager fan and I’ll totally let him see it when it’s done), but it’s doing the job I wanted it to do: be fun.

In this year of 2020, fun has been in pretty short supply, no?

So. Yeah. I’m writing a fan-fic and somehow it’s already broken 10k over the last couple of months and who knew? Then again, I’ve got Lyndsay Ballard and Ayala and Gerron and the Delta Quadrant, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised I’m having fun.

Visualize Motivation
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Anders, Curtis, and Luc, looking fantastic, courtesy of Micah. Check him out!

The second direction was something that came out of royalties, and watching convention after convention shutter or transition online because of COVID. This is totally the responsible, correct thing to do and I’m glad they’re doing it, but I also know what this does to artists and sellers and so I looked at my royalties and decided I wanted to buy some art of the fellas from Triad Blood and Triad Soul, which is the next novel-project I need to finish.

I reached out to an artist I’ve been following and enjoying for a while on Twitter, Micah (that’s his Twitter link, but you can also check him out on Patreon) and his commissions were open and we chatted back and forth, and it was so wonderful to get my head back into Anders, Curtis, and Luc. And as the initial sketch and rough draft dropped into my DMs, I found myself re-opening the Triad Magic file and not having white noise greet me.

The final image? Well, you can see it right there and I just freaking love it. Anders and his oddly-white hellfire (and hello V-neck), Curtis doing some air magic (that T-shirt design was 100% Micah, by the way, I just described Curtis’s penchant for graphic T’s that were nerdy and/or queer), and of course Luc, looking all slick but with a button or two undone because he’s loosened up a smidge in the last two novels.

Anyway. Check out Micah. His commissions are currently open, and he’s fantastic to work with, and if—like me—you’re feeling stymied, maybe some artwork is worth a shot. The funny thing is, images and art have always inspired me to write (I mean, half the flash fiction on this blog was inspired by photo prompts), so I shouldn’t have been surprised at the balm effect of Micah’s drawing of the boys, but I was. 2020, man. It’s the worst.

Cover Me

Speaking of art, having cover art often gives me the last push to really polish a piece (I got amazing cover art for “Village Fool” from Inkspiral that it’s killing me not to share, but my arm, etcetera, so the novelette isn’t done). Getting cover art makes a project feel real in a concrete way that never fails to excite me. And in once case, Of Echoes Born, (which was another Inkspiral cover, by the way) it made me go back and change major parts of the text of two stories because the image was just so perfect for the book it inspired a different angle entirely.

That’s right, you heard me: the hows of Ian Simon’s precognitive/psychometic abilities were 100% re-written after getting the cover design.

So, if you’re like me, and feeling stuck and the words aren’t flowing, might I humbly suggest trying three things.

Thing the first: If you can, try some writing for fun. Zero pressure. For the freaking hell of it.

Thing the second: Art motivates me. Maybe it can motivate you. Regardless, it’s awesome having art of characters I’ve written, and hey, kicking some bucks to artists feeling the crunch of zero convention traffic is also a big plus.

But wait, I only talked about two things, didn’t I? How come now I’m saying three?

Well, here’s thing the third: If this advice—or any advice—doesn’t work for you? That’s fine. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’re a writer even when you’re not typing words onto a screen or scribbling them into a journal. In my experience, a great deal of the mind-work of writing has nothing to do with the keyboard. Sometimes, the thinking-about stuff is where it’s at.

It’s like squeezing a tennis ball when the husky wants it. You’ll figure it out.

Short Stories 366:202 — “Medium Méchanique,” by Catherine Lundoff

[image error]So one of the awesome things about knowing so many short fiction authors is sometimes I get to read their stuff and then pester them to tell me where the story came from. In today’s case, from Catherine Lundoff’s wonderful Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories, we get a disturbing—but ultimately truly satisfying—turn of a tale in “Medium Méchanique,” where a woman with both the desire to have one more conversation with a deceased loved one (and also a darker, ulterior motive) goes to see a medium during the height of the spiritualist movement.

So, where did this story come from? Well, Lundoff was kind enough to answer me when I asked.

The editors of the Gay City series fundraiser for Seattle’s Gay City Health Project asked for some steampunk horror (okay, that’s what I heard them ask for) at a time when I was reflecting upon the lack of suffragist characters in steampunk.

So, given that we’re talking Steampunk horror and suffragist characters, I want to underline two awesome things about this story: one, both the main character and the villain are so freaking well done. Both exist in a time and place where rights are few and far between, and in the case of the narrator seeking one last chance with her former lover, her queerness adds yet another layer of struggle to her reality. But it’s the steampunk that adds the flavour of horror to this story, in it is the method in which the woman realizes her loved one can be reached—but at a terrible price.

I often mention that horror isn’t usually my cup of tea, but “Medium Méchanique” is one of those wonderful exceptions by virtue of the ending. It’s the hopeless sort of horror that I find the most frustrating (in movies this is most often done with the last few frames showing us the evil wasn’t defeated after all, so all the heroic sacrifices and battle was pointless, just like the battles in the sequels will be), but here Lundoff, by virtue of the time and place she places this woman, has instead seeded a kind of awful power into her conclusion, and thus you get the idea that this woman has come out of this ahead. In a terrifying way, yes, but ahead nonetheless.

Short Stories 366:201 — “Real Women Have Bodies,” by Carmen Maria Machado

[image error]I almost saved this one for October, because it’s so freaking disturbing, but at the same time it was just so amazing I didn’t want to wait to talk about it, so, “Real Women Have Bodies,” by Carmen Maria Machado, from Her Body and Other Parties: A.K.A. “I Will Never Look at a Dress Shop the Same Way Again.” To begin with, the immediate premise of this story plays out against such a mundane setting: retail. We meet a woman getting by working at a dress store. She’s not loving it by any means, but of all the bad options open to her, it sure is one of them. Then, over a casual conversation with some other mall workers, we casually start to discuss the way some women are just fading away, and no one has figured out the cause, whether or not it’s contagious or whatever, it’s just that some women become translucent and insubstantial and eventually turn into nothing. Okay, back to work.

I mean, what? The story that follows centres around this woman and another, one who brings dresses to be sold at the shop. They’re the fastest-moving dresses, and they’re lovely, but it’s the woman delivering them that attracts the worker’s attention more, and their spark of something turns into a fling/start-of-a-relationship/something… and then two more twists of the tale from Machado hit: the worker finds out what’s happening to at least some of the women who fade, and the worker realizes her lover has begun to fade.

The story goes from mundane-with-a-slice-of-fabulism to holy-crap-that’s-dark-and-I’m-so-unsettled with this twisting, winding narrative that’s so gently paced in some places, and then almost breakneck overwhelming in others. The way things circle back around, and the barest scant whispers of world-building around the fading out of women had me shuddering. It’s so damn creepy, and it’s all handled with such a vibe of “well, if some women started to fade away, do you really think this wouldn’t be how it goes?” And that’s the part that’s the most disturbing of all, because the allegory isn’t even particularly difficult to grasp here. I’m still thinking about it, days and days later.

Short Stories 366:200 — “Memory,” by Sally McLennan

[image error]Of the many planets, ships, aliens and other fantastical pieces of Julie E. Czerneda’s Clan Chronicles universe, Auord and the residents thereof, the Auordians, is a place that we only see through awful events, and with some horrific villains at the forefront. In “Memory,” tucked in The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis, we find out about the original inhabitants of that world, the Moradhi, and a quirk of their species: the males don’t have a continuance of new memory, but with the aid of females, can maintain precise and perfect long-term memory recollection.

If that sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry, in McLennan’s hands, and in the voice of one such male, Ir, it’s laid out clearly and quickly becomes apparent what it entails. Ir has skills and knowledge built throughout his life, solidified by the work of his mothers and sisters with him at the end of a day, codified into his ongoing sense of himself (as well as some help from technology), and one of the things Ir loves the most is botany, which sends him on a particular adventure in this particular story. Ir is invited to spend time on a planet with unique plant-life and so off he goes with his sister to visit the sole human living there, and then proceeds to have a near-lethal brush with far more than he bargained for.

Cleverly weaving in some of the darkest characters from Czerneda’s saga, but told through the eyes of Ir, what unfolds is a story of a being who might not remember yesterday clearly, but is clever and quick-witted, and aware of how the infallible long-term memory of his kind is one of the only things he’s got to get him out of a terrible situation. “Memory” shows us a character with limitations working within his limitations with help from both companion accommodations and technological accessories, and I found myself liking it just as much as an allegory as a science fiction story with alien biology. The final few moments of the tale, when Ir’s immediate memories of the events of the tale have since passed, are especially effective.

Short Stories 366:199 — “Hard Return,” by Art Taylor

[image error]One of the reasons I sometimes shy away from the darker genres—horror, especially, but also some thrillers and mysteries—is my low threshold for hopelessness and the grim. Thus far, the stories in Crime Travel had all ended on a more-or-less hopeful note, which gave “Hard Return” by Art Taylor all the harder an edge when it delivered the final few moments of what definitely feels like a case of grim hopelessness.

That isn’t to say the story isn’t well written or well done. It is. It’s a tale about a man and a woman, both unnamed, and the man realizing he doesn’t know as much about her as he’d like, and pressing to learn more about her and her past. They’ve been dating, and things are progressing, after all, and he’d like to get to know her all the more. When she finally acquiesces, it’s almost done with sadness, which is his first inkling that something isn’t right.

What follows is her retelling him about the worst night of her life, and the worst former relationship and how it ended terribly… Or at least, she starts to, and as she spins the story, he finds himself quite literally caught up in it, until he finds himself in the role of a man she once dated after breaking up with a particularly violent ex, on the night the ex threatened to come over and kill her. The two are almost immediately on the run, and the man tries to get her to tell him what happens next, tries to figure out a way out of this memory before something terrible happens to her, all the while she fatalistically points out it always ends the same way. It’s not a pick-me-up kind of story, and as I said, it’s grim and hopeless, so if that sort of tale leaves you cold, be forewarned. It’s a very unique kind of time-travel, sort of “looping into someone else’s relived trauma,” but it’s very much exactly that: trauma.

Short Stories 366:198 — “The Natural Order of Things,” by Jess Faraday

[image error]In Shadow of Justice, we’ve watched Constable Simon Pearce entertain the chance of something more than a quick dalliance, despite the realities facing him in late 1800’s London, and we’ve seen him find murder—and deliver justice—in London, Edinburgh, and then smaller villages of England, and that’s where we catch up with him in “The Natural Order of Things.” Simon has begun to settle, smoothly fitting in the life of a small village copper, and though that comes with bumps and bruises, he also has a lover in the next town over, and it seems like Simon is really, finally, starting to find a core happiness.

Then Jess Faraday throws another series of crimes Simon’s way, and tosses a spanner in the mix via a letter from Simon’s first real love. The story that follows—Simon trying to figure out who is behind a series of vandalisms against local wise women alongside typically narrow understandings of bible quotes—unfolds alongside his own emotional struggle as he tries to figure out how he feels about what he has now versus what he could, perhaps, possibly still have with the first person he loved. The mystery of the crime is well written, but I have to admit I cared more about Simon’s choice over whether or not he’d return to speak with his first, lost love.

I think the balances of these conflicting emotions are dealt with so well in Simon precisely because of the ride we’ve had so far in his head throughout all the stories. He’s matured enough to realize so much of his own disasters were of his own making, and he’s shy to pass on what is really a good thing, especially since running away and burning bridges was what led him down the wrong path to begin with. This time, he takes his time, considers things, and doesn’t react immediately and emotionally—and then makes his choice. I did wish for happier outcomes for everyone involved (which was more or less impossible) but Faraday writes characters with complex emotional baggage, and I believed the choices made.

Short Stories 366:197 — “Transitions,” by Gwen Benaway

[image error]Found in the wonderful Love Beyond Body, Space, & Time, Gwen Benaway’s story about a woman signing up for a new series of transition medications has this perfect tone of non-monolithic queerness throughout that I’m having a hard time trying to put into words. I’m not a poet, but Benaway is, and there are turns of phrases, moments described in “Transitions” that are just so, in this fundamental way that had me nodding to myself, barely realizing I was reacting physically to the story. It’s the… ownership, I think? It’s a repeating pattern in the story: this woman is transitioning and she is going to do so, she is going to find the path, and it is going to be her path.

The narrative around this (the aforementioned trial with new drug options) coincides with a visit from an elder, and the woman—herself of mixed heritage—begins to see and hear things inspired by her culture. They could be due to the treatments, though hallucinations aren’t a part of the likely side-effects. The elder also offers her insight into transition (versus her own culture’s take on what it means to be a woman), and it was at this intersection of moments where I found myself so completely enthralled by the inner voice of the character, who is saying so very clearly that she is going to do this her way, and all the well-meaning advice from every source is neither required nor requested. I wanted to cheer.

Ultimately, the story doesn’t wrap up with a tidy ending, absolutely refuses to give the reader a simple answer, and leaves the character looking at her future and considering options and—most centrally, most importantly—what she wants to do. It’s safe to say I loved this tale, and I hope that’s obvious, and it isn’t just the ownership of the individual character’s path. But honestly, the sheer sense of “I am me, your advice is irrelevant” burning on the page was exactly what I needed when I read this. I’m so glad I found this story.

A note: I found this story in Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time: An LGBT and Two-Spirit Sci-Fi Anthology, but I need to point out this is one of those anthologies I’ve had in my collection for, well, years. It’s been sitting on my iPad, and it was only when someone asked me if I’d read it that I went to look and found out the publisher is defunct due to the publisher, Bedside Press, being shuttered when the editor confessed to sexual misconduct and sexual assault. After I went looking online and hit that roadblock, I was looking through my digital library to see what other anthologies I had and found my copy. Accordingly, I’m going to suggest you check out anything by Gwen Benaway directly, as I can find no information about where support for this anthology goes.

Short Stories 366:196 —”Lyes,” by Craig Laurance Gidney

[image error]So, this story appeared in Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction from Craig Laurance Gidney back in 2014, and I was reading it at roughly the time the Aunt Jemima discourse hit my timelines during quarantine, and honestly it felt like a sort of kismet moment. The idea behind this story breathes in a kind of fabulism that starts out a trace amusing and almost silly, then takes a sharp turn to somewhere harsher and threatening, and then finally lands an ending that had me smiling and thoughtful. It is this: Sheri, a Black woman finishing her thesis centred around the representation of Black women in marketing, is sleep-deprived, and has one big worry: she doesn’t think she’s going to get her advisor’s approval. Then the women in the ads she’s got posted up around her room drop by, which is both unexpected and a much bigger problem.

Syrup icons, hair straighteners, lightening creams… the women evoked from their posters all have an idea of what would be best for Sheri, and this is where that tone shift I mentioned comes in, because it stars with Sheri convinced she’s hallucinating and talking things through with her friends, but then it becomes very clear that she’s not, and these women are as much a product of their time as they are of their design, and Sheri finds herself facing off not with women, but with marketing forces designed to manipulate and repress.

That said, for the disturbing turns the tale takes, Gidney’s story here is ultimately a positive one, and I loved the wrap-up of the story, where we see how Shari’s thesis has turned out, as well as the fallout of the three icons in her life. Gidney’s weaving of these different tones of triumph, the disturbing, amusements, and seriousness within the concept of “Lyes” is so freaking cleverly done. Indeed, the shifting of scope from story to story in this collection is one of the strengths—the unifying fabulism is there, but the range of these stories really soar.