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Tor.com is closing to short fiction

Posted on by Patrick

As of Jan­u­ary 7th, 2016, Tor.com will no longer accept unso­licit­ed short fic­tion.

On Jan­u­ary 7th Tor.com will close its short fic­tion sub­mis­sions sys­tem. Our ded­i­cat­ed edi­tors and read­ers will read through and respond to every­thing that is sub­mit­ted up to that point, but we do not plan to reopen in the fore­see­able future.

So if you’ve got some­thing that you’re plan­ning to send them, do it now.

If you miss the win­dow, well, there are plen­ty of oth­er fish in the sea. Or mar­kets in the æther, as the case may be.

(If you need me, I’ll be rum­mag­ing through my unpub­lished cor­pus, look­ing to see if I’ve got any­thing even close to ready.)

 

Library haul

Posted on by Patrick

Went down to the pub­lic library tonight, since my copies of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and John Scalz­i’s  The End of All Things were due back.

(Reviews: The Ocean at the End of the Lane was a spooky com­ing-of-age/mem­oir tale from a mas­ter of eerie fan­ta­sy; The End of All Things fur­ther solid­i­fied my view of John Scalzi as my gen­er­a­tion’s Joe Halde­man (though it might have been smart of me to read The Human Divi­sion first).)

So I went in with­out any plans as to what I want­ed to check out. I did check the cat­a­logue for the sta­tus of Emi­ly St. John Man­del’s Sta­tion Eleven, which has been checked out every time I’ve gone look­ing for it. Tonight was no excep­tion. One day (shakes fist at the sky).

But by and large I had no agen­da. I checked the New Releas­es sec­tion, and snagged Chuck Wendig’s After­math. Then I wan­dered over to the SF/F sec­tion, which is where I usu­al­ly end up. Grabbed anoth­er vol­ume there — a four-nov­el omnibus of Philip K. Dick nov­els, which either a) has fan­tas­ti­cal­ly small print or b) serves as a reminder of how short nov­els could be back in the 60s. And then I took a gan­der at the graph­ic nov­els, where I grabbed my third and final vol­ume: Scott McCloud’s Sculp­tor.

I’m look­ing for­ward to all of these. I just can’t decide which should be first.

Help?

Access Copyright

Posted on by Patrick

Are you a Cana­di­an writer?

Are you signed up with Access Copy­right?

If not, why not?

#

I found out about Access Copy­right via a cir­cuitous path. One day a few years ago, my aunt — an Eng­lish teacher, cur­rent­ly work­ing in Chi­na — sent me an email con­grat­u­lat­ing me for my poem (my first pub­li­ca­tion, a poem named “The Two Sea­sons”) appear­ing in the provin­cial Eng­lish exam.

My response: “Huh?”

After an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with my aunt and a cou­ple bureau­crats in the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, I got a look at the exam, an expla­na­tion (which boiled down to “We thought we were in the clear, copy­right-wise, because of Access Copy­right”) and an an apol­o­gy for their unac­knowl­edged use of my copy­right­ed content.

And I signed up with Access Copy­right as a Cre­ator Affil­i­ate, and now every year I get mon­ey in the mail, just for hav­ing pub­lished con­tent on paper in Canada.

So, like I said: if you’re a Cana­di­an writer, and not an Access Copy­right affil­i­ate: why not?

Une épopée des plus brillants exploits

Posted on by Patrick

I grew up in Ste. Rose du Lac, a vil­lage with a strong French pop­u­la­tion. From grade 1 to grade 9, I rode the bus 20 min­utes every morn­ing and every evening1 in order to attend school at École Lau­ri­er, a French immer­sion school in the near­by vil­lage of Lau­ri­er. There I learned to par­lez en français, and all my class­es (with the obvi­ous excep­tion of Eng­lish) were taught in French. I learned my frac­tions in French, I learned about weath­er­ing and ter­mi­nal moraines and drum­lins en français, I learned about Louis Riel2 and the Métis and the plains of Abra­ham in French. Even at recess we were sup­posed to con­verse in French. We did­n’t, but the teach­ers super­vis­ing would pre­tend not to under­stand if we tried to speak to them in Eng­lish.3

I learned the Lord’s prayer in French. I learned my nation­al anthem en français, too; in fact, it was years before I learned it in Eng­lish. (Lat­er I learned that the French ver­sion is the orig­i­nal, and the Eng­lish words cur­rent­ly in use — not a trans­la­tion of the orig­i­nal, but a dif­fer­ent anthem — were writ­ten over a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after the ver­sion that I learned, and still treasure.)

On Remem­brance Day, which is, of course, today, there’s a stan­za in the French anthem that res­onates with great power:

Car ton bras sait porter l’épée
Il sait porter la croix

En anglais, rough­ly, it means:

Because you under­stand the sword,
You also under­stands the cross

You can’t have war with­out casu­al­ties. You can’t have con­flict with­out cost. You can’t have the sword and not expect fields of cross­es, shot through with poppies.

Sou­venons.

 

  1. My dad worked out the mileage once. I’ve been around the world twice on a school bus. ↩
  2. When you go to a French immer­sion school run by a Catholic ex-nun, the pan­theon goes Dieu, Jésus, l’e­sprit saint, Louis Riel, pape Jean-Paul II, et tout le reste. ↩
  3. Unless you had, say, a scalp wound or an obvi­ous­ly bro­ken arm. ↩

Write, edit, submit, repeat

Posted on by Patrick

I just sub­mit­ted a new/old short sto­ry — “The Ravens” — to Corey Redekop’s Can­lit Com­e­dy anthol­o­gy. Fin­gers crossed.

I actu­al­ly wrote the sto­ry a few years ago, and sub­mit­ted it to a cou­ple mar­kets, who reject­ed it. It seemed like the right idea for a humour piece, so I tried to res­ur­rect it…

…but I could­n’t find the orig­i­nal file any­where.

And so I re-wrote it from the ground up. I think it turned out all right. I read it today at Write Club, and there was quite a lot of laugh­ter. I’m going to call that a good sign.

Wish me luck!

Update: Well, I’ve made it into the 2nd round. Fin­gers still crossed. (Crampin’ a lit­tle bit…)