Andrew Leon Hudson's Blog, page 3
October 7, 2016
The Hole in the Wall
I’m delighted to say that one of my short stories has just been published in Metaphorosis, an online speculative fiction magazine the looks for “intelligent, beautifully written stories for adults”, and though the implication is flattering I’m far too modest to had said so myself!
The story in question is The Hole in the Wall, which follows the journey of a trader of unique goods who relentlessly pursues the best possible deal for herself, and learns the high cost (but good value) of wisdom as a result.
I mentioned this story at the beginning of the year when it was selected as a runner-up in the fifth annual Friends of the Merril short story contest. That modest prize and this modest fee make this my most lucrative work — worryingly appropriate, given the subject matter…
September 14, 2016
One of those ‘issue’ pieces which stupid writers post on their blogs to ruin their reputation in public
I saw a couple of pieces circulating via The Guardian this week about cultural appropriation in fiction. First writer gives a keynote speech and says, more or less, “Hope that concept dies soon, because it’s offensive to me”. Second writer says, more or less, “Hope that writer dies soon, because she’s as offensive to me as cultural appropriation is” (I exaggerate… slightly).
I found both perspectives unhelpful, though the first writer’s sense of absolutism struck me as closer to useful than the second one’s – but then it would, wouldn’t it? Why would I want to accept being restricted to only writing about over-weight hairy-white middle-aged males from a patriarchal society which thinks it’s better than everyone else’s (I exaggerate… slightly) simply because that’s what I am? And if, for example, I write a story about a self-harming woman (which I’m not) or (which I’m not) of course I don’t want to see myself as a bad person for doing so… but actually I’m in denial, and a horrible cultural appropriator. Damn.
Well, neither writer was convincing to me. Both take provocative stances to make a point, one not valuable, one not well made. The first argument dismisses or plays upon presumed failures of judgement pro and con, but says little about what a writer entering (for them) “alien territory” should do to be effective in their goal. The second argument equates to a call for protective segregation or a demand for reparations while laying the fault with other writers, instead of a culture in publishing that may well disadvantage some people’s voices in favour of others.
Fortunately, this morning I read an article called Representing My Equals by Nisi Shawl. Click.
Note: if you really want to read them, the Guardian articles I mentioned at the beginning are these: A and B. And there’s an overview here: C. But if I were you, I’d ignore them and click on the picture.
August 28, 2016
A little story for you to read
Hello, blog.
Sorry I’ve not been talking to you for so long. Didn’t want to waste your time. How’ve you been? Keeping busy?
Oh, why not?
And that’s my fault how, exactly?
…oh.
Well, as it happens I’m probably going to have a few things to tell you about in the next few months, blog. I’ll not spoil the fun in advance, of course, but to get you in the mood I’d like to share with you a little story which has just now appeared in Issue 18 of Mythaxis, the tastefully unadorned webzine in which I’ve featured on several occasions in the past.
It also has a bunch of other stories, including some by people I know and like. There’s a cute comic strip about Martians. You should check it out, blog, you like that sort of thing.
Mine is called Falling Back, it’s all about how to treat man’s best friend, it’s free to read, and it inspired a longer story that now appears in one of my Dark Matters collections, Aftermaths.
If you want to read the previous stories I’ve had in Mythaxis, you can go digging through the past issues at the magazine itself, or you can find them all side by side in one of my ebooks – Five Steps Forward, Three Steps Back. It costs 99p on Amazon, but you can download it for free if you join my totally inactive mailing list. I’m just saying.
All right, I think that’s it.
Keep safe, blog. I’ll be in touch soon with all that other great news I was talking about.
Bye, blog.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
July 20, 2016
Life Imitating (my) Art
Self-aggrandising, I know, but I was, first, impressed by the scale and, second, struck by the parallel with one of my stories when I saw this article online:
Monumental 1,320-Ton Sculpture of Chinese War God Watches Over the City
From MyModernMet.com
Guan Yu, was a Chinese military general who had tremendous martial prowess during his time, and was deified as a god of war after his death. He is also an epitome of loyalty and righteousness … often depicted holding his “reclining moon blade” named the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, which he wielded against his enemies and was said to weigh an impressive 40 lbs (18.25 kg).
A sight to behold, the entire sculpture stands at just over 190 feet (58 meters) tall, seeming to watch over the city and its residents. Over 4,000 strips of bronze were glued over the sculpture, and Guan Yu is portrayed as a fearless warrior who is ready for battle, proudly posed atop his pedestal which was modeled after a warship.
And the connection to me? Well, the last mini-ebook I put out, Dark Matters: Memories, features a story that could have been set in this monument’s past – The Foundation, in which a team of engineers begin to lay the groundwork for a monumental project…
…a strident figure, noble in form, classic in style: an archetypal warrior, naked but for crested helmet, pleated skirts and sandaled feet, one hand resting on the pommel of the sword sheathed on its hip. With the other arm raised to the sky, it is posed in mid-step upon a plinth. Constructing the foundation for that must be my first charge.
It is only then I realise, and am unable to credit, the intended scale. “It must be—”
“Hundreds of feet, let us say only that.” He unrolls the second sheet, revealing the profile view: a mighty forward pace, the upraised hand with palm to the heavens, as though Atlas now carried them without effort. “The Colossus of Rhodes was as nothing beside this. Beneath, rather.”
Okay, yes, my story is set in an alternative Europe rather than present-day China, and this statue’s pose and outfit is a little different, and there’s no supernatural horror on the way in reality — or so I presume — but those minor issues aside…
If I’ve convinced you of my startling prescience, you can get the story here – and if you need more persuading, with some spoilers, you can read a pleasingly positive review/analysis here.
From MyModernMet.com
July 18, 2016
You Are Here
This year’s SFFWorld.com anthology project is opening its doors to the wider world of the world wide web again – details are as follows..:
Working cover for You Are Here – SFFWorld.com’s 5th Annual Anthology of Short Stories
Some of you are aware that I do this annual thing where I beg people for stories and then I put them together in an anthology. This year is no different!
However, I’m veering from my normal path by opening up our submissions to everyone. Yes, that means you.
Rather than restrict submissions from SFFWorld.com forum members only, we are accepting submissions from anyone. Last year, Andrew Leon Hudson was at the helm and he opened up submissions in this manner and it was a good thing. So, I’m following suit.
Here are the particulars:
You Are Here
Tales of Cartographic Wonders
Maps, or graphical representations of spatial information, have shaped our world ever since people have put pen to paper, or stylus to a clay tablet, or chisel to stone. The focus of pirates searching…
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June 20, 2016
Spoilers in the footnotes
(although let’s be frank: if I ever had a readership it’s long since sunk)
I’ve been self-pubbing my little ebooks for a few years now, and I can count the number of copies I’ve sold on a multiple of the fingers on one hand (a nicely ambiguous claim, I think, since depending on the multiple it could easily mean a figure in the millions*).
So, depending on the reality I want to claim is dominant, I’ve either earned so much money from my fiction that I’ll never need to work again**, or I’ve earned so little from my efforts that I might as well call it quits and do something else with my time***. Yet, if we’ve learned nothing else from western politics of the last twenty-odd years, we have at least this: there can also be a Third Way.
Back at the beginning, I decided to price my ebooks based on Amazon’s lure of profit sharing: by keeping my prices within a certain margin, I’d get 70% of every purchase! That sounds great, but over time I’ve come to realise (again, depending on which reality is in force) that either “money isn’t everything” or “70% of nothing is nothing”.
Therefore, I’ve decided to abandon that strategy and started dropping my ebook prices. As of now, the first three Dark Matters collections (Dark Matters, Absences and Aftermaths) are available for $0.99 each (and the most recent, Memories, will drop later this year).
My first weird western ebook, End Trails, is also priced at $0.99, while the second, the novella Given Names, is priced at $1.99 – because I’m proud of it, okay? My collection of short-short fiction, Five Steps Forward, Three Steps Back was already available for $1, but if you sign up for my extremely infrequent mailing list you’ll get a copy of that for free, so I’ll link to that instead.
However, not everyone is a Kindle user, so you can get hold of these titles through other retailers including KOBO, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks and Smashwords at the same prices.
…this has rather lost the letter-writing tone, hasn’t it?
Anyway, the reason I started self-publishing in the first place was to share more of my work with as many people as I could, so [ now I’ve achieved that goal / in the desperate hope of making that happen ]**** it seems that dropping my prices is the logical thing to do. And here we are.
If you decide to pick up one of my books, I hope you like it! And if you like it (or even if you don’t, I guess) you could always post a short review wherever you bought it, or here. That would be really helpful, much more than all (or none) of the money in the world.
Yours rationally, give or take,
Andrew LH
FOOTNOTES:
* It doesn’t
** I haven’t
*** I have… but I have also embraced denial
**** Delete as reality demands
April 8, 2016
MEMORIES – Dark Matters: Volume 4
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, and only the dead have seen the end of war. The last book in the series, Dark Matters: MEMORIES presents two stories in which the shadow of the First World War lies heavy upon those who endured it — and those who did not…
In The Palimpsest, a soldier-turned-artist has tried to put the horrors of the trenches behind him, only to discover that a horror still stalks him. But in The Foundation, a future persists in which not only was the Great War’s outcome very different, but the conflict itself has been… forgotten.
One is a ghost story in the classic vein, inspired by the writing of M. R. James; the other a piece of alternate history — or maybe alternate future. They stand against George Santayana’s wisdom, because here the end of war is seen, and the past returns to repeat itself, upon another victim…
These are stories that step out from the light, where only the dark matters…
Amazon: US | CA | MX | BR | AUS | IN | JP
Amazon Europe: UK | FR | DE | ES | IT | NL
Apple | Barnes&Noble | Smashwords | Goodreads
The cover art was created using Creative Commons-licensed images. My grateful thanks go to the State Library of South Australia for Men in the trenches, and to Tony Hisgett for Poppies Again 6.
January 26, 2016
The Winners of the 5th Annual Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest!
Well how about that: not a winner, but first runner up!
I’m delighted to not quite have won. The story I entered, The Hole in the Wall, was written for a fantasy project I was hoping to be a part of but it didn’t make the cut (damn them!), so I wasn’t really sure what I’d do with it. Knowing it pleased enough impartial readers to take joint second gives me hope that I can find a new home for it. Time to start submitting it again!
The Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest
Happy 2016! by TornTethers
The results have been tallied, and we are proud to announce the winners of the 5th Annual Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest!
1st Place:”The God Beast of Duolunduo” by Michael Reid (Burlington, ON)
Runner-Up: “The Hole in the Wall” by Andrew Leon Hudson (Madrid, Spain)
Runner-Up: “Changed” by Stacy Sinclair (Waterloo, ON)
Congratulations to the winners as well as the other finalists! We had a wonderful crop of stories this year and final competition was fierce. We hope to see more from all of you in the future!
Thanks to our judges, Hiromi Goto, Tanya Huff, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia as well as our SWAMPED first readers, Claire Humphrey, Kelsi Morris, and Adam Shaftoe! Thanks also to our sponsors, Innsmouth Free Press and Laksa Media, the board of the Friends of the Merril Collection, and of course Lorna Toolis and the staff of the Collection.
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January 9, 2016
The 5th Annual Contest Longlist!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!And it might be for me, because my story is one of the twelve on the longlist for the Friends of the Merril short story contest. All entries are currently anonymous, so you’ll just have to believe me – at least until a decision is made, probably at the end of January…
The Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest
“Trophy” by snaku6763
Thanks everybody for your patience! The semifinal results are now in and the reading team has settled on the finalists in the 5th Annual Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest!
The 12 longlisted stories are*:
A Hole in the Wall
Changed
Remembrance of Worlds Past
The Jungle Between
In Her Footsteps
The God Beast of Duolunduo
Listen and You Will See
The Promise of Iron
Pests and Perfection
Old Crow
Two from the Field, Two from the Mill
Memories of Clover
Responses have gone out to all entrants. If you have not heard from us about your submission, please query! The judging panel will now go over the finalists and decide between them who will take home the top three prizes. Good luck to everyone!
* Author names have been omitted to maintain anonymity. Titles provided for entrants to confirm their submission’s status.
December 17, 2015
Ecotones
ECOTONES is a pro-am anthology of speculative fiction featuring fourteen tales from best-sellers, award-winners and nominees, established talents and up-coming authors, the fourth annual anthology from SFFWorld.com.
Ecotones exist wherever different ecosystems make contact. Where forest meets field… where the land meets the sea… where swamp gives way to jungle… where the surface descends beneath the ground… these are borders across which different ways of life come into conflict, and sometimes cooperation.
But in speculative fiction we might envision other borders: where the mundane meets the fantastical. Where countries clash and cultures mix. Where technology is joined to flesh. Where the known meets the unknown. These are ecotones of the imagination — where anything could happen.
Featuring the work of Ken Liu, Lauren Beukes and Tobias S. Buckell, as well as eleven stories from members of SFFWorld.com’s writing community, ECOTONES is a collection like no other — a point of contact between fantasy and science fiction with a timely environmental theme.
Amazon: US | CA | MX | BR | AUS | IN | JP
Amazon Europe: UK | FR | DE | ES | IT | NL
Apple | Smashwords | Kobo | Goodreads
Ps: Just in case you’re wondering how it’s going — just two days after release, Ecotones is ranked 66,635 on Amazon’s Kindle Store (that’s out of over four million ebooks!) and is already knocking on the top 100s for Scifi and Fantasy anthologies..:
