April 24, 2017
Spring Cleaning!
I love change. You know that thing where you get frustrated with your life, so you cut all your hair off and dye it blue? That’s me, only with everything. Starting a new novel, painting a room, quitting a job or adopting a cat: it doesn’t matter how big or small a change is. The prospect of something new and different is my personal catnip, irresistible.
My desire to shake things up has often been at odds with my sense of responsibility, and one of the greatest lessons I have had to learn as an adult is the value of stability. Before I had kids, I often pictured myself as the sort of mother who would raise her children in a camper-trailer, traveling from place to place and training my children to be circus-performing ninja pickpockets. I cultivated an array of diverse skills from juggling and fiddling to sourdough baking and knitting, thinking I would live by my wits one day at a time, doing something different every day to suit the needs of the moment. I hated the idea of stagnation, of repetition.
I have had to learn differently. Change is exciting, but it is precarious. The greater, more lasting victories in life require harder work, slogging, dreaded repetition. You can’t give up on a thing when it becomes hard or boring. Building a legacy, even if it is just a family, requires roots. I learned to sit still and work.
This isn’t always good either. Sometimes, especially if staying put doesn’t come naturally to you, you can fail to see the point at which it is normal, and not compulsive, to give up on a thing. Change isn’t always just for thrillseekers. Sometimes it is the necessary next step.
This winter, I broke with my partner of 14 years, the father of my children. Subsequently, I realized I was not going to be able to make ends meet, going forward, by staying in the same bookstore I have worked in for 15 years. Big changes are coming.
The Short Game
I have been writing short stories for four years now. This spring, I sold the last of my unsold short stories – yep, I emptied the trunk. I am beyond thrilled with my success as a short story writer, but in light of my new work and financial situation, I know I will have less time and energy to dedicate to it, I might have to buy papers online to keep myself in the loops of inspiration.
No, I am not giving up writing. Au contraire, I have my sights on bigger projects than ever. Next month, I will be launching Archipelago, a shared-world, interactive serial swashbuckling novel. May 1st, we will launch both a Kickstarter campaign and a Patreon page through which you will be able to sample and support this endeavor.
It is so good, you guys. I say this is an utterly non-self-promotional voice… we’ve written something fantastic here, and I am so excited to share it with you. Watch this space for more.
My short work will continue to appear over the next year or so. Last month, I spoiled the TOC of Sum of Us from Laksa Media, including my story, “Orang Tua Adventure Home Academy.” I now have this book in my hot little hands and it looks GREAT. That should be coming in September.
In June, “A Fine Balance” will turn up once again in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 ed. Rich Horton. Watch for a selfie of that one too, possibly of me drooling on it, because YEAR’S BEST, GUYS!
I am pleased to tell you about two new sales as well!
My breakup revenge fantasy ecopunk scifi story, “She Falls,” will appear in Upper Rubber Boot’s forthcoming anthology Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good. URB will be facilitating pre-orders via a Kickstarter in May, so release details will come then.
Then, one of my personal favourite stories, “Gog and Magog,” will appear in Kaleidotrope in 2018. “Gog and Magog” takes place in 12th century Georgia under the reign of Queen Tamar, told from the POV of an illiterate prostitute in the style of a medieval (Byzantine?) chronicle. And it is hilarious.
I will also suggest that there might be a sequel to “La Heron” on the horizon. *mysterious whistling*
But then what?
With Archipelago consuming most of my writing time and resume-writing taking up the rest, I am going to leave off short fiction for a while.
But then what?
Well, I don’t know. I have the world ahead of me. I am looking for a new job (writers, publishing people, leads appreciated) and wondering if I can – or should – keep my house. I’m meeting new people and trying new things. I’m thinking about school again. I’m letting myself get excited about potential.
It’s spring, and change is here. It’s hard not to love it.
April 3, 2017
Aurora Nominations are Open!
Happy April, everyone. Apparently it is spring in the warmer places of the world. In Canada, spring doesn’t reliably arrive until May and we don’t have fresh produce until mid-June, so I could say something pithy about rebirth and growth and sunshine here except I’m not really feeling it. April is the month where you die of starvation lying in a sunny, plush, green field because winter took too long finding the door.
But I’ll tell you what keeps this writer from starving in April’s glory, and that is AWARDS SEASON. The Hugos and the Nebulas are off to the printers, but the Canadian awards are just thawing off. The nomination period for the Prix Aurora Awards opened last Friday, and let me tell you, I am severely interested in earning your nomination.
Here’s how that works:
To nominate people and works for the Aurora Award, you need to be a member of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association. Membership is $10/yr (Canadian play money dollars) and gives you the right to nominate and vote for the awards, as well as other CSFFA business. Additionally, you get the Aurora nominees packet, which traditionally includes a great pile of really amazing work, so that book is more than work the price of admission alone.
Once you are a member, you can nominate! You have until May 7th, 2017 to fill out your ballot.
I am eligible in the short story category, as ever, but if you have a look at the eligibility lists, you’ll see a lot of familiar, excellent names on there. You can nominate things NOT on those lists as well. The list is just a handy reminder! The full eligibility criteria can be found here.
I have three stories on the eligibility list (La Clochemar, More Heat Than Light, and A Fine Balance), but I encourage you to nominate one in particular: “A Fine Balance” from the Nov/Dec 2016 F&SF. Why? First of all, this is my favourite of last year’s stories. Secondly, it can currently be read for free in Event Horizon 2017, the anthology of Campbell-eligible writers, making it the easiest to access of my stories. Lastly, this story has received some of my best reviews of the year, and has been selected for inclusion in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, which I think is a pretty great endorsement.
But wait, there’s more! The Auroras have a “Best Related Work” category that I invite you to look closely at as well. Canada has become a producer of a large number of really stellar short fiction anthologies thanks to the efforts of places like ChiZine, Exile Editions, Laksa Media, and EDGE, and this is the category where those books get their due. My selfish favourite this year is Exile’s Clockwork Canada, ed. Dominik Parisien. I would be proud as anything to see this book on the ballot.
That’s me. What have you read and loved in Canadian SFF this year? Join the CSFFA and let us all know. Writers eat praise and this might just keep us going until the strawberries show up in June.
March 14, 2017
Sum of Us TOC Announcement!
I have been waiting months to tell you about this one, you guys. Yes, I have another short story coming out in, yes, another nifty anthology. But lest you should think these are becoming routine, let me correct you. There’s is nothing routine about a project like this. I have been fired up about it since Lucas Law asked me to contribute.
Sum of Us is an anthology of stories about the complexities of caregiving, explored through the lens of speculative fiction. That sounds specific, I realize, but it is something that is more fundamental than that: care, connections, community, responsibility for the sum of a people, rather than just the self…. these are things that inform all stories – or should – and I was really invested in exploring it.
I came up with my story immediately, inspired by my father’s attitude towards his own end of life (when it should come, which is hopefully not for ages and ages.) The elders in my life have been curmudgeons and grumps to a man, the sort of people who don’t want to be cared for and who stubbornly intend to raise hell until the moment they (presumably) spontaneously combust, leaving nothing to bury. These are people who, in my opinion, have a lot of energy to harness for grand adventures.
“Orang Tua Adventure Home Academy” is the story of one such curmudgeon who turns up on a beach in Penang, intending to vanish into the jungle, and winds up being pressed into some 17th century hydrodynamic engineering. This story wrote itself. I had so munch fun, and love my characters to pieces.
When I got the final TOC this week, my heart nearly exploded. I am in fantastic company. I genuinely can’t wait to see how this batch of geniuses engage our empathy. Check it out:
Foreword, Lucas K. Law
Introduction, Dominik Parisien
The Dunschemin Retirement Home for Repentant Supervillains, Ian Creasey
Bottleneck, A.M. Dellamonica
Mother Azalea’s Sad Home for Forgotten Adults, James Van Pelt
Things that Creep and Bind, Christie Yant
The Gift, Bev Geddes
The Gatekeeper, Juliet Marillier
The Healer’s Touch, Colleen Anderson
The Crystal Harvester, Brenda Cooper
The Burdens We Bear, Hayden Trenholm
A Mother’s Milk, Heather Osborne
The Mother’s Keepers, Edward Willett
The Oracle and the Warlord, Karina Sumner-Smith
The Beautiful Gears of Dying, Sandra Kasturi
The Gardener, Amanda Sun
Number One Draft Pick, Claire Humphrey
Orang Tua Adventure Home Academy, Charlotte Ashley
Sunshine of Your Love,- Nisi Shawl
Good-bye is that Time between Now and Forever, Matt Moore
Ambassador to the Meek, Alex Shvartsman
Gone Flying, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm
Am I Not a Proud Outlier?, Kate Story
Blinders, Tyler Keevil
Dreams as Fragile as Glass, Caroline M. Yoachim
Afterword, Susan Forest
Anyway, Sum of Us is due out on September 8th, 2017. You can pre-order the book directly from the publisher, Laksa Media. The official launch will be at When Worlds Collide in Calgary, AB in August. I won’t be there (unless someone wants to fly me out there, ha ha ha) but I’ll be at various Ontario launch parties. Watch for it!
March 13, 2017
Event Horizon 2017 – A Free Campbellian Anthology
I blogged earlier this month about the Campbell Award, offering a suggestion or two for who you might want to nominate for it (including me). My list was short n’ sweet, being mostly stellar and very high-profile writers who have shot out into the field like a bundle of fireworks, but it was far from comprehensive. There are dozens of writers who have done some absolutely heartbreaking work in the last two years. Choosing a ballot of 5 is tough work.
But Jake Kerr and Shirtsleeve Press managed to pull of a miracle. Over the course of about a week, they have pulled together Event Horizon 2017: An Anthology of Authors Eligible for the John W. Campbell Award. This free anthology includes the work of over 75 authors eligible for the Campbell award – some 400,000 words of fiction, some of which is being offered for free for the first time.
This includes my short story “A Fine Balance,” which can otherwise only be read on the paper pages of the Nov/Dec 2016 F&SF and the forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017.
Event Horizon will only be available for a limited time. This link will disappear on July 15, 2017. But that is plenty of time to give it a skim and pick your Campbell nominees! You can nominate for the Campbell Award (and the other Hugo Awards) up until March 17th, 2017.
You have nothing to lose! Download the book for a tonne of great reading and an introduction to your next favourite authors. Enjoy!
March 2, 2017
In Which I Am Eligible for the Campbell Award
It’s awards season!
I have been keeping an eye on the award eligibility posts of others in my field, and I think I have the hang of what is expected. Modesty is the name of the game, fellow Earthlings, and I am nothing if not modest. Everyone tells me how modest I am. I’m also the most humble. Ask anyone.
I don’t deserve any awards, I’m pretty sure. Personally, I hate my work. Everyone does. The cool people, anyway. Everyone else’s writing is better than mine, probably; if there is even such a thing as quality in art, which there isn’t. Awards are just excuses for fancy parties and circle jerks. Nobody likes those. If I was nominated for any awards, I would refuse them; at first anyway, until you FORCED me to accept them.
On my honour, I have stood impassively in my bubble of authenticity, merely breathing art for its own sake. If any of it happened to make it out into the wider world, I promise that was only an accident, or maybe the unavoidable march of its genius. They published it, not me. I donated my fee to puppies. I never even read it, myself. Oh, you read it? Well, there’s no accounting for taste.
*record scratch*
*struggles not to laugh*
Okay, okay. OKAY.
There is exactly one reason I started writing: because I love my writing. I wanted to read particular stories told in a particular way, so I wrote them myself. I knew just how to craft each character and just how to turn each scene because I needed them to be like that for my own satisfaction, for my own enjoyment. It has been the greatest joy of the last two years to discover that the stories I write resonate not just with me, but with other people – a lot of other people.
My first story to appear in a major publication was “La Héron” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in early 2015. This story went on to be nominated for both the Aurora Award and the Sunburst Award, and was picked up for podcasting by PodCastle last summer. This was a pretty great start, but 2016 beat that start by a mile.
First, I had my second F&SF appearance with my Quebec Revolution novelette, “More Heat Than Light,” in May 2016.
In June, “La Clochemar” appeared in Clockwork Canada ed. Dominik Parisien, garnering some fantastic reviews.
In August, “La Héron” went up at PodCastle.
In September, Haralambi Markov featured me in his Tor.com column, “Innumerable Voices.”
In October, I undertook a musical collaboration, writing and performing “Distant Skies” with the Junction Trio.
Then, in November, the publication of “A Fine Balance” marked my 3rd appearance in F&SF. Soon after, I placed the story in Rich Horton’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2017.
In between I sold reprints, did readings, talked at conventions, gave workshops, and joined writer’s groups. I wrote more, sold more, and took on more challenges than ever before. I kicked ass and took names. Not bad for my second year as a professional writer.
My stories are eligible for a variety of awards this year, but what has made me most proud over the last couple of years is not any one story, but the trajectory of my career in general. I decided I wanted to be a writer, and I am doing it. Not only that, I’m doing it well. I could not be happier with my progress so far, nor could I be more excited about what the future has in store for me.
That’s why the award I am shilling for today is the John W. Campbell Award.
The Campbell Award is a companion of the Hugo Awards, awarded to the ” best new professional science fiction or fantasy writer of the two previous years.” I am in my 2nd and last year of eligibility for the Campbell. I would appreciate your nomination.
To nominate for the Campbell (as well as the other Hugos!) you must be a member of the 2016, 2017, or 2018 WorldCon. If you were a supporting member of any of these conventions, you will have received your nomination link! If you join WorldCon 2017 (to be held in Helsinki, Finland) now, you will be eligible to vote for the awards, but not nominate. They will close to nominations on March 18th, 2017.
I hope you will consider me.
And me? Well, okay, *I* am pretty great, but I get to nominate 5 people! Here’s your bonus today – my Campbell ballot. Aside from myself, I will be nominating:
Cheers, everyone!
December 29, 2016
Packing 2016 Away, Remembering
I had a good 2016.
*ducks, waits for fruit to stop flying*
I did, though. I can’t be cagey about it. I’ve been collegially glum when appropriate this year, but I have to agree with Chris Kutarna, who, when speaking on CBC’s The Current this month, pointed out that periods of great disruption are going to have jolts and shakes in all directions, but we have to retain some perspective or we are at risk of becoming fatalistic. “This is a deeply contested moment,” he said, and that rang true with me. Nobody has won anything. This is not the end of history.
Picture of M used entirely without her permission.
For my little family, this is barely the beginning. My kids, Maggie & Oonagh, are now 8 and 5 years old, respectively. We are into real people territory, complete with opinions, tastes, hobbies, activities, and drama. Maggie reads non-stop, spending all her pocket money on books (benefit #1 of having a bookseller mother: any book you can find an ISBN for, at a discount.) She has become, additionally, a constant library-user. When she started finding typos in her books, she enthusiastically wondered whether perhaps this was a career path: she could read books for a living and find any errors before they go to print! Yes, Maggie discovered editing. I’ve tried to interest her in doing some guest-posts for me, or some YouTube reviews, but alas, she is – well, not shy, I should say, because she is in no way afraid to approach people in real life. But she is private. She doesn’t want her photo online, let alone her words or video. “It’s creepy,” she tells me. Well!
Oonagh learned to read this year as well, though she prefers graphic novels. More energetic by far than her sister, she prefers active games with elaborate props and settings. The stories she tells are delightful, if a little – shall we say, misleading? Her teachers are under several misconceptions about Oonagh’s home life due to her storytelling. We lucked into a teacher this year who is absolutely understanding, however; open-minded when corrected and very keen to encourage her storytelling. “Maybe she will be a writer!” she enthused at parent-teacher interview time. My partner and I both groaned. “Can’t you make her be a doctor?” I was joking, sort of.
The very best thing about kids growing older is that they loosen their grip on you. I went out more this year than I have in the previous ten years, and I’ve been able to take on projects I never could have before. In addition to publishing three new short stories (and two reprints), this year I wrote and performed a story accompanied by the incredible Junction Trio – “Distant Skies.” I learned about lighting and microphones, about the technical limitations of theremin(s?) and the rehearsal habits of professional musicians. I learned I really enjoy stage work, and I plan to do more in the future.
And there was more! I went to Ad Astra, launched Clockwork Canada twice, and read to a crowded room at SFContario. I hosted a really lovely music + writing workshop as part of the House Culture Festival. I went out to a book launch or drinks with writers at least once a month. I felt nourished, supported, and part of something that’s moving in a good direction.
It was also a year for professional firsts. I was nominated for both the Sunburst and Aurora Awards. The same story was listed on both the Nebula recommended reading and Locus recommended reading lists. I sold a story to my very-first Best Of anthology. I had my very first magazine cover. I had my very first Podcast story. I became eligible for full SFWA membership.
By the numbers? I submitted 17 stories (!) 32 times. 14 of these submissions were reprint submissions, which was my biggest push this year. I sold 2 reprints and another 9 are still under consideration. That only means 3 reprint rejections, but who is counting?
Of the 8 unpublished stories that I submitted the remaining 18 times, 2 were sold – both on their first submission. The remaining 6 poor stories are mostly ones I have had in circulation for three years now. You’d think I’d take the hint, but no. What would I submit, if not these poor, neglected babies?
New writing, maybe? This year, I wrote approximately 54,000 words of new fiction, half of which went into a novel that is now on hold. I did finish 3 new stories, though; two novelettes and a short. I wrote mountains of non-fiction, worldbuilding, and plans. I didn’t track the latter this year, but I can say with certainty that I wrote something almost every day this year, even if it wasn’t publishable word count.
2017 is already prepped to be exciting. I have two publications on the horizon – one in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Science Fiction 2017 and another soon-to-be-announced work that I am particularly fond of.
We are looking for new venues for more revised, polished performances of “Distant Skies.” And we enjoyed the process so much that violinist Ivana Popovic and I have plans to do more music/science fiction collaborations in the future under the name Theiamania.
I am half way through a novella-length alt-history murder mystery, set in the same world as “La Héron.” The main character is a banker with a preference for flings with ogres, and I love her.
And, last but not least, I have a serial in progress. The details will have to be terrible secret at the moment, but suffice to say this project is going to be big, fun, exciting, amazing, and so, so good.
You guys. 2017. It’s gonna be great.
December 18, 2016
On Focus and Reading
My brain feels like swiss cheese, only instead of holes, I have portals. Tunnels, sucking me out of my brain and into some other place, some other thought, and then sideways, down again, and – and I’m already off topic, because I barely know what the topic was. So, I will go back to the middle, and then digress a few times to points earlier than that, and maybe, if I’m lucky, I might find a beginning that hints at a source, or a cause, of my problems.
I have always had a hard time focusing on one thing, but it has become worse. So much worse. Infinitely worse.
Initially, I pegged the point where my lack of focus was actually hindering me – as opposed to just causing a kind of multitasking superself that could accomplish multiple things at once – as the decision to start taking anti-anxiety medication. The drugs helped me in so many ways that I didn’t mind much that I was having trouble with my memory, short term especially. My brain was overactive before, being merely active should have been fine.
But things slip from me now like I’m carrying water in a net. It’s not just funny things, like putting the sugar pot into the freezer or calling a bus a train. I read ten pages of a book and find I have no idea what I’m reading about. I’ve been thinking about something else, something unrelated. Or I schedule a lunch date and a doctor’s appointment into the same slot, and despite knowing I have both upcoming, I fail to notice they conflict. They’re on parallel, separate, timelines in my head. I don’t put them together until I’m in trouble.
I blamed the drugs, but in all honesty, the stress of the events leading up to the decision to take drugs had caused my brain to fragment long before drugs got involved, and the extra work I took on in its wake didn’t help either. I’m assured that this kind of dysfunction is common in overworked people. “Pregnancy brain”, “mommy brain”, and, probably, “freelancer brain” are all real things that turn high-functioning adults into badly-trained puppies. I’m told I should relax, maybe take less on. I had an ex who told me his over-worked sister had a stroke in her 30s, and I should be mindful of that. I dismissed that, at the time, as not how strokes work. Now I wonder.
But could I ever focus? Really? I recall being a teenager, sitting in my favourite spot on a baseboard heater, trying to read – something – but being so distracted by my own reactions to the text that I just couldn’t make any headway. I had my journal at my elbow, and I’d have to put the book down and write instead; get my own thoughts out of the way. I say “out of the way” like I could dump them, then go back to the text unimpeded; but no. Once my brain was headed in another direction, there was nothing to do but follow it. I’d start a novel instead, or a web venture, or rope three friends into mounting some kind of expedition. There was nothing for it, really. I never finished anything.
My generation is remarked upon as being one with no focus, no ability to read or learn deeply. We, society, blame media. That might be it. I’m on the edge, GenX by some calculations and Millennial by others, but the internet came early into my life in the form of BBSes and the Carleton University Freenet in the early ’90s. I was always dividing my brain space between what I was supposed to be doing, and this secondary track wondering, how was I going to mine what I was doing for a good narrative to share? Could I post about this to alt.gothic, or send an email about it to the-boy-I-liked?
If media – social media – is to blame, can I pull back? Is the solution to my lack of focus, to my declining memory, to flip a switch, go offline? The world is full of pundits who certainly think so. But they tell stories of existence that mean nothing to me. They have always been good, focused students who chose to avoid the distraction of the internet, or introverts who were just as happy without external stimulus. I read a study about alcoholics recently that found the people with the easiest time avoiding alcohol were – get ready for it – people who didn’t really like alcohol anyway. Alcoholics had a taste for it.
Extroverts, too, are energized by social interaction, and what is the internet if not a constant, 24/7 source of stimulation? Introverts find this tiring, but I’m not an introvert, and never have been. I’m not going to become one by quitting Twitter. Even as a child, before media, I invented friends in my head and spoke to them for hours. I started journaling at a very early age, more interaction with an imaginary companion. I wrote letters to all my friends and talked to them on the phone whenever possible. It’s not media. It’s me.
When I realized I was having greater-than-usual problems with my focus, I thought it might be my nearly-drugged brain needing time to form new connections. The net needed to be woven a little tighter. I could still take on everything, I just needed to practice. Like mythical monks or vikings, my version of training involved beating my head against the stone wall in order to make it stronger. I’m not sure if it’s working, or if I’m giving myself a concussion. Is it both? Maybe I need more training.
Last night I found myself playing video games – one of the few things I can focus on, because of whatever it is that makes hyperfocus work – and I realized I was too tense, too stimulated to get to sleep. So I shut my device off and picked up my book instead. My brain physically hurt. I’d been having headaches for days. Christmas does this too me – too much to remember and keep track of. Even I can see a limit when it is that obvious. So I climbed into bed, picked up my book and resolved to relax and focus.
Within moments, I could feel the hole. A portal, with a tunnel. I wanted to channel what I was reading – and the fifty thousand ideas it had spawned already – out. I was composing Tweets and a blog post and wondering how I could use this idea for a story and wondering if I should Google stroke symptoms. It was the same feeling you get when you get “sucked into” a book, only it was sucking me out; or perhaps sucking me into something else, something more fragmented. I tried not thinking, but that just made me sleepy, and the whole point of reading this book (interviews with authors) was to make me think. I wanted to be sucked into the book, not out. Why can’t I just focus?
How does anyone? I could have read a stupider book, I suppose; something that would only amuse me and not give me any cause to think about anything. Or I could have kept a notebook at hand, like I used to – a bedside book to make notes as I read. I could try to “just listen,” reserving reaction until I had absorbed the whole, but I can’t even do this in a conversation. If I wait for someone to finish their soliloquy, I can’t remember by the end what I’d been desperate to say at the beginning. I am a terrible interrupter. Apologies to literally everyone I have ever met in real life.
I try to imagine the habits of great, deep readers of pre-media pasts. What did they do? Could they somehow channel their own ideas and thoughts into a holding area of their brain, to be written out and expanded upon at the end? Is this a brain-building skill, like a memory palace? Will it help me hold all of this *gestures at all of space and time* a little better?
How is it done, and can it be done by me?
I don’t really know.
November 24, 2016
November, Continued.
I didn’t mean for this to be The Month With Everything. But sometimes, when it rains, it pours, and all I can do is try to keep up with the deluge. So here we go…
“A Fine Balance” in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017!
The headline pretty much says it all! My latest F&SF story, “A Fine Balance,” has been picked up for a Year’s Best! I got this news a mere two weeks ago when I was in dire need of a pick-me up, and I’m still flying.
For the full Table of Contents, check out Black Gate. The book should be published in June 2017 and available in bookstores everywhere. You can even pre-order it soon!
“Eleusinian Mysteries” in You Are Here: Tales of Cartographic Wonders!
You Are Here is the latest anthology put together by the amazing folks of SFFWorld, and I’m pleased to be able to say that it includes my story “Eleusinian Mysteries.” This is the tale of a 17th century engraver who finds a map of the moon.
You Are Here is available as an ebook now! You can get it from:
This Weekend in Toronto! A Workshop, Some Music, the Distant Skies
The Festival of House Culture wraps up this weekend, but my two events are yet to come. If you find yourself in Toronto this weekend, you can join me at 7:30pm on Friday, November the 25th for Words and Music 1, an evening of writing and music. Bring your work in progress for some workshopping, and enjoy some jazz while you are at it! Entry is PWYC. Check out the Facebook event for more details.
Then, on Saturday at 5pm, the Junction Trio & guests will be mounting our second performance of Distant Skies! This showing will be at CrossFit Lugal on St. Clair (right at Landsdowne) and will be more intimate than the first concert. Bring folding chairs or cushions, if you like, though there will be plenty of gym-equipment seating. You can RSVP for this show also on Facebook.
Hope to see you!
November 17, 2016
SFContario This Weekend!
Never one to let a fresh haircut go to waste, I will be reading at SFContario this weekend! This is traditionally Toronto’s “downtown convention,” but this year the organizers decided to take a bit of a breather and scale the event down. “Fannish Stone Soup” is this year’s theme, meaning it’ll be whatever it is, given the ingredients. Think of it as an extended BarCon!
The ingredients are looking pretty great, though. The Con Suite will open at 5pm Friday night for socializing, with most “special guests” booked for Saturday. Saturday’s line up is as follows:
2:00 PM — Tonya Liburd
3:00 PM — Charlotte Ashley (that’s me)
4:00 PM — Herb Kauderer
5:00 PM — Caitlin Sweet and Peter Watts
6:00 PM — Kari Maaren
7:00 PM — Peggi Warner-Lalonde
Earlier in the day, expect a variety of silly and fun activities, including sugary cereal breakfast in the Con Suite, electrifying pickles, and the David Hartwell Memorial Fancy Tie Contest.
For my part, I will be reading some or all of my latest F&SF story, “A Fine Balance,” and talking about ACTION SCENES! I’ll have copies of my stories on hand for sale, and flyers for the next Distant Skies show. For all SFContario-related info, visit http://www.sfcontario.ca/ or follow them @SFContario on Twitter!
November 15, 2016
Distant Skies – Tomorrow @ 7:30pm!
Well, what do you think? Do I look like I’m from the 25th century? My partner says I look like I’m from the ’70s, which by today’s very low standards, is pretty much the future. I am from the retro-future. The future that should have been.
Tomorrow is the big show. At 7:30pm, I will take to the stage with the Junction Trio and we will mount the first-ever performance of Distant Skies.
Okay, Charlotte. We’ve heard you talk about this show, like, constantly for the last two months. What on Earth is Distant Skies?
Distant Skies is my latest short story. It is also a chamber music concert, a collaborative dramatic performance, and a spectacle.
Through music and words, we will tell the story of Aerobelle, a community on the brink of change. Though Aerobelle’s citizens are bound to her ancient towers by body promises – genetic, heritable contracts – they are about to discover older, even stronger promises their bodies have made. This is a story of love and loyalty, the familiar and the unknown, trust and resistance.
As I tell the story, the Junction Trio and two guest theremin players will present complimentary music, including works by Vivaldi, Mozart, Hayden, and a new work by Ivana Popovic. One part reading and two parts performance, Distant Skies is something else.
I’m nervous excited as hell about this! I hope you’ll come see one of our performances. You can get more details at the Facebook event here, or just come out on a whim. Wish us luck!