Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 27

A New Incentive?

You want these don't you? 

They're all five of the AngeLINK books (Archangel Protocol, Fallen Host, Messiah Node, Apocalypse Array, and Resurrection Code), and I've donated them to my publisher, Dybukk Press, as a new incentive for their kickstarter that they're running to recoop the production costs of the newest anthology King David & The Spiders of Mars, in which my short story "God Box" will appear.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/king-david-the-spiders-from-mars-tales-of-biblical-terror-bible-fiction

How can I entice you? Should I let you know that some of these books are bordering on rare--in particular Fallen Host, which has been out of print the longest.  I ran out of my private supplies about a year ago, and have taken to picking them up wherever I see them.  This one is in mint-condition (not even previously incribed!) All the others are straight out of the box I bought them in, new!

I'd also be willing to personally inscribe them to you and/or just sign them.

SOLD!!  Sorry, but these were gone within the hour they were offered!

So, what do you say?

Writer's Block and Publishing Options

This is mostly from facebook. It begins with a post by Judith Tarr on writer's block.

I thought this was terrific. I refuse to believe in writer's block, because I think believing in it gives it too much power. This does not mean it isn't real. It is a lot easier to write if you are able to sell. Beating against a wall is exhausting. People tire out, and writing becomes a lot less fun. When I lost my last day job and decided to retire and write full time, I discovered it was hard to write. I had lost my drive to write in the years I worked day jobs full time and wrote little. Gradually the energy and enthusiasm has come back -- mostly, I think, because I'm selling.

(For example, my sudden enthusiasm for trolls. Let me tell you about trolls. Maybe I need to write a novel about trolls.)

I never had the kind of physical panic response to trying to write that Judith Tarr describes. I just found it hard to write and not all that interesting. Though I did keep on, largely due -- I think -- to my writing group, the Wyrdsmsiths. And now I am enjoying writing again. The stories inside me are beating on the inside of my skull and trying to chew their way out.

At times one simply needs a vacation from writing. At other times, the stress of life can make writing very difficult. And at times the problem is the one Tarr describes: a failure to sell, a failure of positive feedback...

In another post, Tarr writes about using Book View Cafe (an e-publishing collective) to get her large backlist out in e-books and using Kickstarter to fund two novels. I do feel there are more options these days. At the moment, I am sticking with independent publishers, and I would not say no to a New York publisher. Publishers of all varieties reduce the work I have to do. But I am keeping the other options in mind.

Writing

When I first got laid off four years ago, I felt I had pretty much lost interest in writing. My day job had taken most for my energy for years, and the desire to write seemed to have withered.

But I felt I had to use my new free time, so I tried to get back to writing. It's been a long, slow, difficult process, during which I had to keep pushing myself. I still have four stories that should be done by now, but aren't; and there is still a novel to finish.

But the current troll story is filling my mind and demanding to be written. It's the old pressure and obsession. I can't stop thinking about the darn thing, and I have a feeling it won't let me alone till it's all written.

This isn't true about every story. I have another one about valet parking in space which is coming slowly, but many halts.

And I have the four unfinished stories and the novel.

Still and all, I seem to have become a writer again.

Laki

I spent the day before yesterday bent out of shape by a stupid argument I should never have gotten into.It was a classic Internet argument, with a facebook friend of a facebook friend of mine. He maintained that poetry was an elite art form, and there was no popular readership of poetry and no folk or popular poetry. Nada. None.

I should have left right then. Instead I mentioned poets who have been popular, such as Pablo Neruda, and I pointed to the lyrics of ballads as poetry written by the folk. He had a reason why every example I gave was not a good example. He was also rude. A classic Internet troll. I became furious. I finally had the wits to leave, but I remained angry.

As a result of the argument I started researching Icelandic poetry on the Internet. That led to a really bleak Icelandic lullaby, all about death, darkness, bones, black sand covering green fields and glaciers groaning. It came with a translation, but it was a less than perfect translation, and I decided I wanted to translate it. Then I decided I wanted to put it in a story. What kind of story? An Icelandic story, of course. but what kind? I thought the lullaby might be about the eruption of the Icelandic volcanic rift Laki in the late 18th century. That's a wild guess. I have no reason to believe I'm right. But the obvious thing to do is write a story about the eruption of Laki. Laki carpeted the country with poisonous ash. 80% of the sheep and 25% of the people died from poison and starvation. Imagine a story about an Icelandic farm family, fleeing the eruption. I can see them, the parents carrying their children, who are wrapped in blankets, the parents breathing in toxic ash. Their animals are dead. They have nothing except what they are carrying. The land is black and the sky is black.

Of course, there have to be trolls...

I got the first couple of pages of the new story done yesterday. I was going to call it "The Troll Maid." Now I think I will call it "Laki." Laki sounds friendly to me. As mentioned above, name does not refer to a single mountain such as Hekla or Mount Rainier. Rather it is a rift that runs north from the volcano Grimsvotn. During the 18th century eruption, 130 craters opened along the rift, spewing lava, ash and toxic gas.

Now it is time to stop talking about the story and work on it. There's a theory that you shouldn't talk about a story in progress, because you will talk the story out of you. I'm not sure I believe that, but I'm not going to risk using up the creative impulse and the good ideas. Anyway, a person who talks too much about what they are going to write is boring.

I post this here, in case you were wondering where story ideas come from...

Starting with a Kick

I should let people know that an anthology my short story "God Box" is going to appear in is doing one of those kick-starter things.  If you're so inclined, please help them out at: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/king-david-the-spiders-from-mars-tales-of-biblical-terror.

The anthology is a follow up to SHE NAILED A STAKE THROUGH HIS HEAD, which featured Biblical horror stories. This one will be called KING DAVID AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS. My story, alas, takes place on Ganymede, and while it doesn't feature any spiders, does retell the golden hemorrhoids story. Because when God smites you with hemorrhoids and then demands you make a golden representation of them as tribute, you know horror, man.

Life with a Pseudo-Self

I ignore Tate Hallaway a lot.

I think I've always been a little jealous of "her." But, ever since I created her persona, I drag my feet when it comes to things like posting to her Facebook page, Twittering as her, or even opening her gmail account to see what people have written to her.

It's been a couple of months since I checked her gmail account. I'm not proud to have gone that long, but, honestly? Since I've been "between contracts" I get really, REALLY depressed to open fan mail from someone who just discovered Tate and absolutely adores Precinct 13 or one of the Ana books. So, I've been avoiding it kind of subconsciously and kind of super-consciously.

Guess what? Tate apparently had an LJ account. LJ deleted her for inactivity.

Wow, I feel like an idiot. Of course, I didn't even remember getting an LJ account for her until it hit me that I'd used it YEARS ago to contribute to the fairies, fang, and fur group LJ... except I was terrible at that too. I actually kind of failed at being Tate a lot. I loved the books I wrote as her, but I really felt fake when I participated on the Internet ast Tate. I should probably delete her from Twitter, too. Because hell if I even remember my password it's been so long since I've check her Twitter account.

I had thirteen friends waiting at Facebook for her too.

Man, I really suck. I must seriously hate my-pseudo-self.

Probably I'll write more about why I do/have done this, but I'm only starting to process it now.

Writing is Work

This is a comment on a post by the facebook colleague. He spent 40 years working in a bank and writing in his free time. Now, he is free of the bank and able to write full time. People ask him what he's doing. He says writing, and they don't take him seriously. Their response is, "That's nice. Do you think you'd be able to walk my dog, or trim my garden, since you aren't working?"

I don't get that kind of condescension much anymore, because I have not stayed in contract with people who don't understand I'm a writer. But I know this conversation well. I think it comes from several places. People think of work entirely in terms of money, rather than personal satisfaction or social value. If it doesn't pay a living wage, it isn't work. And people have no idea -- none at all -- how writing is done and how publishing works. I tell people I'm a writer and they ask, "Have you published anything?" They think of writing as either (a) Stephen King or (b) a hobby. Since I am obviously not Stephen King, writing must be a hobby for me. No, it is not a hobby. I have organized my entire life around being able to write, even though I've not been able to make a living at it and so have had day jobs -- many day jobs; I get bored and quit. Now I old enough to collect Social Security, and I'm writing full time. It feels good. It's hard work, and it's real work.

A Good Day

Today my Facebook feed exploded over the joyous news that the Minnesota Senate passed the Marriage Equality for All (or whatever the bill was officially called).  There was so much excitement that I nearly missed that a friend of mine posted a link to this:  http://firstronin47.blogspot.com/2013/05/review-four-books-by-lyda-morehouse.html#!/2013/05/review-four-books-by-lyda-morehouse.html A wonderful review of all for of the Penguin published AngeLINK books.

So, yeah, good day for me.

*faints*

Trust Your Instincts, Murphy

(cross-posted from Mental Chaff) 

Tonight was a meeting of the Wyrdsmiths, and after we were done critiquing, celebrating the passage of the Minnesota House bill legalizing marriage equality, and before we'd gotten to naming Sled Dog Squee or going into the finer points of pelvic comb overs, we discussed our upcoming CONvergence schedules.

Now, if you'll remember, last week I posted my panels for CONvergence, and made this note about the panels:

"Every time I go check their programming portal, I find out I'm on another panel. It was one, then a few days later, two, then three. Now? I'm actually afraid to go back and check again, because as this point I'm on four panels, which is fine...."

It was in this vein, and referencing this piece I'd written above, that I suggested perhaps we could look up everyone else's schedule, but leave mine alone. After all, while I'm not particularly superstitious, I do recognize the difference between seeing a bull in a paddock and climbing into the Minotaur's Labyrinth.

But the Wyrdsmiths insisted that they wanted to see what panels I was on, and I capitulated.

BAD. MOVE.

Because now I have looked up my CONvergence schedule on five separate occasions, and so far, the data describing the correlation of the total number of panels on my schedule to the number of separate times that schedule has been looked up in advance remains inextricably linked. One to one.

I am now on five panels.*

I think I may contact programming to decline one of the panels, now that I'm well and safely above three. One of the panels I'm on, I don't know or care that much about. That's really neither here nor anywhere, though. The point is this: if you suspect something may be the case, despite the stirring efforts of your logical brain to suggest that it's mere superstition on your part, don't be so fast to discount it.

Quantum mechanics suggests that the mere act of observation changes the system being observed.

I must never look at the CONvergence programming portal again.

___

*Accordingly, my schedule listing on the previous post has been updated with my new panel.

Writers' Nightmares

I think writers probably have different nightmares than some other professions.  I know that when I used to act on the stage, I had the classic one in which I'd been an understudy to a major role and all of a sudden I have to perform and I know NONE OF THE LINES.

That dream has mostly faded.  Now-a-days, I have a reoccurring dream/nightmare where I'm arriving at a science fiction convention bright and early on a Saturday morning, I make my leisurely way to registration and... discover I've missed half of the panels I was supposed to be on.

After last night, I suspect I'm going to have a brand new writing-related nightmare: missing a reading.

So, yeah, I was sitting on my comfy chair doing a whole lot of nothing when the phone rings. Shawn answers it. I hear, "This is she. ... Oh my god!" I sit up, because I think, "Oh, crap, who died?!" Shawn's eyes are wide and she looks at me, "Lyda! You were supposed to be at a reading at Dreamhaven!" I run to the phone, and, sure enough, it's Eric Heideman who coordinates the Speculations Reading series wondering where the heck I am. I look at the time: it's 6:35 pm (the reading started at 6:30) and, after a thousand apologies and several "how the hell did I forget?"s,  I say, "On my way!" At least he tells me, I'm not the only one who forgot--at the present time the only people in the store were Greg (Dreamhaven's owner) and himself.

Knowing there wasn't even a small crowd waiting meant to didn't kill anyone as I sped across town.

  Luckily, Dreamhaven, though it's in another city (Minneapolis), is no more than fifteen minutes away. I made it in 20, because (of course) not only did I hit every single traffic light, but the light rail train crossed at 38th and I had to wait.

On my panicked drive I called fellow Wyrdsmith, Naomi Kritzer because I really needed to share my horror with someone who would understand. Luckily, Naomi thought it was hilarious (just what I needed, honestly,) and I was able to tell her that what I wished was for that moment in "Practical Magic" where Sandra Bullock's character is able to "activate the phone tree!" People seem to be able to organize flash mobs on a moment's notice, but could I get anyone to show up at Dreamhaven for me?

Nope.

In the end it was me, Eric, and one actual audience member. I really tried to wheedle my way out of reading anything, but Eric insisted I read SOMETHING. He'd found a copy of a Tales of the UnAnticipated that I had a short story in, so I ended up reading the entire "Van Buylen Effect" (my time-travel couch story.) Since I was mostly reading for myself, I spent the time thinking, "Huh, that was a pretty good story." I don't write a lot of short stories because I tend to find them difficult--condensing a whole beginning, middle and end and all the other things you need like an emotional arc and all that into 10,000 words or less is a very daunting prospect for me. So, I was surprised I'd managed to pull it off pretty well. This story was recently rejected for a time-travel anthology (the editors were specifically looking for reprints). I'd been feeling like maybe it wasn't as strong a story as I remembered, but now I think, well, actually it was all right.

Anyway, afterwards, the three of us went out for drinks at Merlin's Rest. It was quiz night at the pub, so we entertained ourselves by trying to answer the questions, even though we weren't playing along. I hadn't been in Merlin's Rest before really, and I tasted a bit of the fish and chips Eric ordered. I have to say, I'll be back there. Shawn and I have been looking for a decent fish and chips place since Molly Quinn's closed.

The night ended up being salvaged but OH MY GOD WHAT A NIGHTMARE.

At least I didn't show up naked.