The Astonishing Case of the Zombie Sub

I���ve got some amazing news, but first: a quick heads-up on a super short #IndieApril Sale April 1-3 at Narratess!

And, in other news, I���m excited to have just been accepted into The Writers��� Union of Canada! Check out my new speaker���s profile here. I���ll be eligible for funding going forward under the Ontario Writers-In-The-Schools and the National Public Readings programs, so schools and organizations interested in booking an author visit, presentation, or workshop, please get in touch!

And finally, the contract isn���t actually signed yet, but I���ve just had an offer on a short story I never thought would actually find a home, so buckle up for . . .

The Astonishing Case of the Zombie Sub

If you���ve ever tried to create something, you���ve probably realized in pretty short order that a gap (ahem: yawning chasm, void, black hole, unscalable cliff of doom) exists between what you envision and what you���re able to create.

This is true regardless of the form your creation takes and, to some extent, regardless of skill level, experience, talent, etc.

That���s not to say that you can���t get better at narrowing the gap. A baby artist takes time to gain mastery over her tools. But even a master has that final thread of uncrossable, unscalable, ineffable something more to keep her awake at night.

Every story is, at some level, a battle to translate as clearly and completely that perfect, unattainable vision into imperfect words on a page.

Case in point: in 2019 I set out to capture an idea about a girl who chose to silence herself in order to win her heart���s desire.

It was loosely inspired by Scottish folklore���Thomas the Rhymer, cursed to speak only the truth, The Fiddlers of Tomnahurich, lost from their own time and stranded in a future they didn���t choose or understand, Tam Lin, stolen away by the queen of fairies, or maybe the stealer of virtue himself, destined for sacrifice���and set in a remote corner of modern Scotland where slow decline and struggle for survival roils beneath an idyllic tourism-oriented veneer.

My first attempt was the lyrical, folkloric ���A Song of Dark Things,��� a longish short story that sold immediately to Unknown Realms: A Fiction-Atlas Press Anthology.

But it didn���t fully capture the depth of what I wanted, the underlying motivation and tension. So I tried again. And again.

The third attempt was something new, something vital and alive and completely different from anything I���d written before. It switches perspectives, introducing an outsider���s view and voice, along with a whole new set of problems and possibilities. And it ended up being the start of something far bigger than I could finish back in 2019. You���ll get a look at it one of these days���it���s now the first chapter in the series I���ve been referring to as Songstress WIP.

But let���s circle back to that second attempt. The weirdest one in the Songstress triptych of tales about fae and rockstars and tricksters breaking barbed promises.

���Calloused��� was the shortest, strangest, most difficult story of the three by far.

It jitters between past and present from one scene to the next. It���s entirely narrated, the ���action��� hinging on quiet, fierce interiority of purpose. While it racked up its share of wonderfully encouraging comments (and took a Silver Honourable Mention in the Writers of the Future Awards last year), it was rejected so many times (59!) that I���d put it through over a dozen revisions and finally resigned myself to releasing it as a subscriber exclusive, or maybe as a launch bonus, when a submission I���d thought was dead came back to life.

This is not an Easter metaphor in disguise, in case you were worried. Short fiction submissions usually have a projected response time. When you don���t hear back by that point, you can contact them for an update or assume (as I generally do) that they���ve either run out of time/money/interest, lost your work, folded, hated what you wrote, and/or all of the above. In this case, the zombie sub popped back up with a vengeance.

The contract isn���t actually signed and there���s always the possibility of things falling apart in negotiations, so I���m not going to share the market yet, but I���m excited���at this point, astonished���to announce that a Canadian small press has accepted ���Calloused��� for a pro-rate themed anthology this fall.

So this is a tale about persistence, and not self-rejecting, and putting weird stuff out into the world, and keeping at it whittling away at that gap between the thing you want to create and what you���re able to create. You never know what will happen. ^_^;