Part-time prevaricator
It has finally arrived.
I’m not ready yet to slit that seal, though.
Word-o-Mat is an art project that aims to sell packages of short stories from a repurposed Wurlitzer cigarette vending machine in Malmö, Sweden. I have six very short stories included in issue #1.
Some scrawled notes from tonight’s Art of Managing Your Career Master Class.
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So I’m participating in the NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Contest, and I’ve just received the judges’ feedback on my first piece, “The Overnight Shift”.
What the judges liked about your story
Exceptionally clever blend of modern urban elements with fantasy. Robert is such a likable character that by the end I don’t even mind his deceptive treachery. The twist is funny, unexpected, and thoroughly enjoyable.…
Humorous dialogue, especially with the demon and the human. The imagery of the coffee was visceral and imaginative.…
I liked how you incorporated dialogue in your story. Your characters’ personalities shone through with the dialogue.…
What the judges feel needs work
The centaur’s speech is somewhat out of place. He seems like a bit of an archetype, more archaic than the other creatures, especially against the rest of the fantasy races who seem well-integrated. His use of “art thou” is an example of when his speech seems particularly out of place. If this character is meant to be different from the others in terms of his integration, the reader may need more cues to read him this way.…
There’s a lot of introduction of characters that don’t feel like they are necessary to the story. Also because of the anachronistic elements (mentioning Wikipedia and Pokemon Go), I’m having trouble getting a sense of place and how rules work in this fantasy world. Also…why are they letting faun children play in a garbage dump? If that’s okay, why are there 3 of them on duty? If you’re going to have relaxed workers, you must have a contrasting militant one, so we understand the rules. Also, more showing, less telling. We should see the rainbow, not hear about it.…
Make sure that each interaction between your characters is meaningful. With short stories, every word counts. Each scene has to connect to each other somehow, or at least move the story forward.…
I’m glad they enjoyed it. I’ll certainly take their critiques into consideration as I polish it up for submission…
For the last week of July, I left my home and invaded our friends’ cabin at Minnedosa. My goals were to get 10,000 new words written in Translations, along with a weekend’s worth of a flash fiction story for a contest, and try my hand at photographing the Milky Way.
Great success.
I managed to get the flash story done in the time allotted, and reviews in the forum are very positive. One day I plan to try to sell it.
I also managed to a average about 2,000 words a day from Monday to Friday, usually in two shifts of 1,000 words each. I wrote pretty much entirely on the deck. It was glorious.
I didn’t get the Milky Way. But I got this…
…so let’s call it even.
Also, I indulged in some lake kayaking, swimming, and read The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, which I expect I’ll review later, once I’ve digested it a bit more.
Good times. Same time next year, I hope.
The Sunburst Awards shortlist has been announced. My story “Person to Person” didn’t make the cut.
I’m disappointed, of course, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I was up against some very good writers.
Congratulations to all the nominees, and good luck!
Here is a list of men’s names that apparently “need saving from extinction”. Have at it!
I may have found my prompt for Geist’s Can’t Lit contest:
A possibly-unintentional stand-in for the author visits a dilapidated farmhouse on the Prairies in a one room cabin but is also a robot.
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kelly Link writes stories like no other. Every one is different, but they’re all linked by a curious magic and a sense that you have no idea where you’re going, but it’s going to be worth the ride.
OK, that’s the short version. I’ve had time to digest, and so here’s a bit more.
I suspect that Ms. Link is a pantser, like, say, Stephen King. (Edit: She evidently is not.) She invents fully-formed characters, then sets them loose in settings as varied as the hollers of the southern US, a sleeper ship on its way to Proxima Centauri, a hotel hosting two conventions, and an island wedding. Then she sits back—in a manner of speaking—to see what happens.
The opening story, “The Summer People”, was a beautiful thing. I’ve been working my way through the last season of Justified, and I kept imagining actors from the show in the roles of the two girls in the story.
“Secret Identity” is a long email written by a young woman (almost sixteen!) who almost got involved with a man nearly twenty years her senior. It takes place at a hotel hosting two conventions, one for dentists, the others for superheroes.
“The Lesson” felt tragic and beautiful and creepy.
“Two Houses”, a collection of ghost stories on board a spaceship, was every bit as spooky and spacesuit‑y as you think, and it had echoes, as you’d expect, of Ray Bradbury.
Every story in this collection is worth your time. Every story dumps you into a situation that you don’t understand, that you can’t yet understand, and then feeds you the information you need to make sense of what’s happening. (It took me quite some time, for example, to decide if the superhero convention was a cosplay convention, or a gathering of honest-to-God superbeings. I’ll let you read it so you can decide for yourself.) Every story is a layered treasure, unfolding slowly or quickly, till the gem at its heart is revealed.