R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 47

Introducing paper_birch

 I want to take a moment to introduce my friend  paper_birch  , who just opened her first-ever livejournal account today. Jen is a doula and a mother of two, and she writes wonderful, emotionally resonant soft science fiction. She started writing short fiction very recently, and already has a story out at Daily Science Fiction ('Snowfall'), and  more great work under consideration.

If you are so moved, please stop by her journal, and welcome Jen to LJ!

ETA: Jen's comments didn't work, but it's all fixed now!

Celebrating rejectomancy

 If you're submitting short fiction to markets, here's a little poll:

View Poll: Celebrating Rejectomancy

Highlights

I can't wait to get back to my book. However, the semester ends in less than 2 weeks, and then I will be deluged by piles of grading. Without a doubt, inspiration will strike at that point. Right now, it's All Whiny Students All the Time time here.

I am battling the school district to get my son the support to which he probably is legally entitled (the school district has been withholding resources, apparently).

I watched Jade Warrior last night per  sovay  's recommendation; it was wonderful. Today I watched Der Dybbuk for the hundredth time. I will never, ever tire of this film (actually, could only watch about half so far - the other half awaits). Anticipating the exorcism scene, I wish yet again that the wonder-rebbe would sing.

shweta_narayan  's Tough Guide to Fantasyland's Exotic Locales is insightful, and funny in a painful way.
 

goodies

1. Abyss and Apex is hiring a poetry editor and assistant poetry editors. I hope some of you apply, so I can send you poems.

2. Stone Telling 1 has been shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards.

3. Winter Goblin Fruit (in which I have two poems) has been shortlisted for same.

4.  alexa_seidel   interviewed me for the second issue of Fantastique Unfettered (coming out on Friday). In related wonderful news,  alexa_seidel   is now the poetry editor at FU.

alive

Have been feeling unwell & spoonless, plus dealing with family health issues and the the end-of-semester neuroses of my students. If I owe you an email, please nudge me. Thanks.

Call it Zorya

 This piece was originally published in Star*line Dec. 2008 (the prose poetry issue), and for some reason I feel like reposting it here today. It is probably because the being in this piece wanted a name change (I've known her for almost twenty years), and because I am thinking about that world again. I'm changing the title as well, to the one this piece had originally (it was published as "A Living City"). I hope you like it.


Call it Zorya

In the beginning, we say, the land of Lar wasn't listless; sapling stones bloomed with heather. And yet no living cities had sprung on the graygreen plain, even when Zoran walked out of the north with his people. And into the land Zoran carried an ancient wand of petrified ice, and his people brought letters of birch bark, and fashioned young numbers from petulant stars.

Zoran's wise people grew wiser in Lar, traversing the plain on spiderweb wheels. They poured molten glass into music, and captured winds newborn between the crags. Towers they had and homesteads and tents, but no living city was yet born to them. "Be there but one, only one, I would be content," Zoran sang, "I would call it Zorya before I die."

Long after he died his people still hammered their hearts into hope, and yet of a living city there was no breath. "The land is barren," they said, but had not the heart for great changes. "A new being will do it, a being of our own design, a being of change will do it." And honoring Zoran they fashioned it out of clouds and white clay: shapeless, shameless, nameless. "Only one thing, a living city," they sighed, "and then disappear, and then dissolve."

They joined their patterns. It rose among them, taking them into her, changing them with her. "I know you now", she said, "Wilted and wise, like the winds unbottled you go forth from here." Shadow-skinned she looked into the land, and a subtle reshaping shivered in Lar; her people all whispered their tools into dust and drew forth the wagons.

And who knows what was there before? Perhaps as a land of colors shone Lar, perhaps a land of great wonder it was, where firebirds nestled, but now, yet now, forever changed back and forth it remains veined gray like the stone.

As the people all left, she looked to the south and breathed, into the future, a living city. They called it the Half-time Fortress, for though it can change all that passed, it waits yet for some unlivable time. A few of the wise ones called it Zorya over heather and stone, but the city raised all its bridges away and veiled its face with whispering glass.

Content with those births, Kesteh strode out of Lar; her bare feet sang the roads out of soot, and her hair was billowing silk and a cloud of sprouting stars.

Poem up at Apex

 My Jewish magic realist poem, "Thirteen Principles of Faith," is up at Apex Magazine.

Here's a taste:

This world was a mistake. When the divine
made space for us, he poured Himself
into ten vessels. When the vessels broke,

the shards of light made stained-glass in the windows of our bodies 
If you get to read it, please let me know what you think?

Tonight I know

As some of you may know, I tend to remember exceptional poems I read. Today was a very unpleasant, politics-heavy day at work; later I went to the local whole foods co-op with my family to stock up on past-Passover foods. And guess what I was humming to myself while browsing the isles:

You know I've stolen butter...

my fickle tongue
remembers only whey
Truly, the worst days are made better by application of poetry and narrative. That's why we're here, right?
  

Misc. thoughts

Saw Inception on DVD last night, which probably was a mistake in terms of my anxiety management (also, it doesn't exactly pass the Bechdel test).

Working on the novel again, and thinking how, at the end of the day, I'm old-fashioned when it comes to storytelling. Sure enough, I experiment with form; this one has six first-person PoVs. And I've written some wonky short stories and experimental poems in my life. But at the end of the day I want to write and read about people. The people I'm writing about are real to me. They have problems, adventures, relationships, they have emotional arcs. They are people and not allegories. In some strange ways they exist, and I'm here to be faithful to them and compassionate to them.  Which is why I like Bujold's work, and  papersky  's.

I probably will never write a high-concept novel. It may make me old-fashioned (and possibly low-brow?), even though I quite like experimental fiction and even sometimes commit it.

For the record, I am a woman and I love epic fantasy, though Martin is not my cuppa.

Come buy, come buy!

 The new Goblin Fruit is up, and it is the fifth anniversary issue! The art might just be my favorite yet, because I am a sucker for birds. In fact, everything about this layout is perfect. It makes me want to pick up drawing again and redesign my website. I want to steal this art and carry it away and hoard it in a glittering cavern.

The poetry is great, of course: I especially love Crowfunded by J.C. Runolfson (don't forget to listen to the recording), Grey-Eyed by Emily Jiang, and Icarus by Shawna Lenore Kastin, which has lines like these:The air is a palace free of locks
where the bold and desperate launch themselves
into the fickle hearth of the gods.
 There is also the first installment of Cat Valente's Persephone poem, which I am hoping to be able to read at some point.

But wait! There is more! A prize giveaway , and mischief, and tithe, two brilliant interviews with  sovay   and  hooks_and_books  .

Happy fifth anniversary!