First Professional Sale! Quitting Day Job! (Not Really!!!)

The term is over! No papers to write, no homework to do, no lectures to attend, huzzah!

Well, that's not entirely accurate. I actually have a bunch of reading to do, NOW, for NEXT term ... ah, that's the way of college, I suppose. Not that I mind it at all, because otherwise, suddenly, I sit down in front of the computer and come up blank. It's been so long since I wrote any fiction that I don't have any stories brewing in my mind, and so, nothing's coming out. Hmm...

I do have a half zillion ideas just sitting in storage, waiting to be pulled out and dusted off and elaborated into stories. Still, I have to get into the right frame of mind for that. Every last one of my submitted stories has, in the meantime, come back to me. So I have to work up a new round of submissions too, before heading back to school in a few weeks. It's not easy to be simultaneously in editing-mode and writing-mode. Oh, and I still need to get around to "finishing up stories that only got halfway completed"-mode. All this and Christmas, work, newspaper recruiting, and preparatory homework assignments! Again I wish that sleep was an option, not a requirement.

At the end of October (I believe it was just a week or a few days after my last blog), I submitted a flash fiction story with a Christmas theme, guiltily thinking that maybe I'd done it too late since most publishers like to have substantial warning to properly publish holiday stories. Not that I'd had the chance to do it sooner. So I just sent it out into the vast ocean of submissions and hoped!

And promptly got back a response ... accepted! Daily Science Fiction, which is a pretty self-explanatory web magazine, opted to buy "The Christmas Zombie" (a pretty self-explanatory story) and, better, to publish it on Christmas Day! If you are subscribed to DSF you can get the story emailed to you on Christmas, because that's what DSF does--emails awesome SF and/or Fantasy stories every weekday, for free! If you'd rather complicate life than have things made easy for you, you can also check out all of their stories at their website (above), although stories are put up on the site a week after they're emailed.

I'm thoroughly excited because this acceptance is my first professional-level sale! Best Christmas present ever! If you don't know what on earth a professional-level sale means, this is distinguished as making at least $0.05/per word for a short story. It's more than a lot of places offer, even if it doesn't sound like it and doesn't add up to a huge amount compared to the work that goes into creating a piece of fiction ... but I'm just happy to be able to make a little money doing something so fun! A lot of people I know don't realize just how hard it is to sell fiction. I don't know if I'll ever make a living doing this, but it's nice to earn a little pocket money ... and share around my stories, to boot! And now I can put a professional market on my resume!

I haven't got the wildly rousing level of excitement from most folks that I would've liked. Most people I annoyingly inform of this don't have a clue what "professional-level" means, much less the significance of being published at all! Which results in the common response of, "Oh, that's nice." I think a lot of them expect that once you've been professionally published, you are now Stephen King and don't need to have a day job. Unfortunately not. Although, the way I see it, it's one step on the stairway to world domination! Bwahaha!  And when I correct people who think by "story" I mean "novel", it's strange how their distant approval turns into, well, what looks like disappointment! For humble little me, who sold my first story only a little more than a year ago, novels are way in the future! (Not least of all because I don't have the time to devote to that sort of writing, agent-hunting, querying and cover letter-ing, submitting, etc. Novels are, indeed, a many-headed beast, while short-stories are quite manageable solo.) There are just so many secret ins and outs to the world of selling fiction, most people don't realize that novelists virtually always start out selling short stories in order to PROVE they are good enough writers to those novel-publishing presses. Which I suppose I still have to work on, so ... on to the next round of submissions!

Somehow, this Blog has been Written

It feels like it's been well nigh 9/10ths of eternity since I last posted a blog, even though it's only been two months.

Two very, very long,

                                distracted,

                                                 hectic,

                                                             sleepless months...

Full of homework and work-work and other ostensibly important stuff. Sigh! Needless to say, not a lot of fiction writing has been done in this time, much less even thinking about writing. Darn it! Hard to imagine not even having the time to blog, but I've just ended up exhausted all the time, day and night, and haven't felt like spending my free time doing much else than napping and watching funny cat videos.

Which, by the way, my cat approves of. Both activities, I mean.

And yet--and yet! Somehow* among all this running and scrambling and homeworking, I've had the good fortune to sell another story! Yay! I've fallen way behind on submitting, and keeping track of my submissions, but still, it happened!

*An author like Ursula K Le Guin might warn you that a word like "somehow" is a bad literary choice--a cop out, if you will. If a homework project is "somehow" completed, or the hero "somehow" fights off a host of bloodthirsty man-beasts with only a wooden spoon, or a fleet of aliens intent upon conquering Earth "somehow" goes undetected until it's looming at the edge of the stratosphere, then the reader will have a problem withholding their incredulity at this squirrelly lack of explanation. What do you mean, you "somehow" failed to notice that your boss had been transformed into a giant inter-dimensional leech until just before he attempted to suck your bone marrow out through your nose? Somehow, indeed**! 

**Although I must still stand by my original statement--somehow, this story sold! I honestly don't know how it had the time to do so, but it evidently worked for the editors (whom, I have been assured, also don't have time to be doing much of anything they're so busy). In the world of small press, it may be a matter of months before publication becomes a thing, but here's the basic rundown of who, what, and where:

Crossed Genres Publications has accepted "Two Hearts" for inclusion in the forthcoming Fierce Family Anthology. This anthology is centered around the theme of characters who identify as LGBT and who, with the support of their families, overcome external challenges or problems. I liked the idea of presenting family in this context of supporting and encouraging, and that's why I wrote "Two Hearts"--although this doesn't make me any less surprised that it was accepted! After "The Second Wife," this is my second acceptance by CG Press! Very excited, because having someone like your work enough to buy and print it is always a good feeling, and one I don't suspect will ever get old!

Now, if only I had the time to enjoy it like I should!

Sorting the Books from the Chaff

I just had to return a book to the library when I was only halfway finished with it.

Well, it was over 1000 pages (1111, to be exact). Double-columned pages, with small print, which I suspect means more like 1500 real pages. Or so I felt while reading. It was a great book, but cumbersome for reading on mass transit--or anywhere, really.

I will plug that book because I see no reason not to: The Weird, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. If you like weird fiction you will find a lot of things to like there--I did! Stories by authors as varied as H P Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, M R James (no relation), Fritz Leiber (my favorite!), Leonora Carrington (a Surrealist painter!), Stephen King, Kelly Link, China Mieville, and just about any other author you can think of when the phrase "the Weird" is mentioned. Roughly, the book includes one story per year since 1900.

I got halfway through the book ... by skipping a bit. Yes, I will admit to skipping through some of the best known authors in the history of speculative fiction--I just won't say which ones.

I used to read everything I picked up from one cover to the other. That included acknowledgements and copyright pages (even though they were so boring! Yuck!). I had a sense of obligation to the task of reading--if it was to be undertaken, it must be completed as well. Don't you do a disservice to a book by not reading it all the way through? Even if it bores you to death? Just like a person, you have to give a book the benefit of the doubt and finish before declaring it a huge stinky waste of time and paper!

And then I realized there is way too much stuff in the world to read. Just because a book is a classic, or popular, or awesome, I don't have to finish it if it doesn't strike me. Maybe the first book I ever refused to read all the way was Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables when I was 14. Because I hated it, and his writing. I tried to read him again a few years ago and, no, I knew what I was doing the first time I put him down in disgust. Still don't like him.

Reading, I have come to decide, should be a matter of taste and not a duty or obligation. I wish I could read every classic back to The Aeneid and feel enriched by all of them--but there are just too many and I probably won't like 90% of them! This is why I consciously refused to be an English Major! Because, when enforced, reading is arduous! Majoring in it would probably ruin my enjoyment of reading.

As a writer, you are taught certain techniques for catching the attention of readers. Which means I am on the lookout for a catchy first sentence, a quick plunge into action, an obvious and interesting protagonist, when I start reading. If I don't find what I'm looking for, I skip. Well, I give it a couple pages first. Maybe 30 or so, if it's a novel.

So I should know better than to let others entice me to read something I don't care about and yet ... and yet in The Weird, I did. The editors promised a certain story to be groundbreaking, fascinating, and a complete renewal of the weird tale. Or something like that. So I read the whole 40-some pages (more like 50 real pages!!) even though I didn't understand or like it from page 1. Needless to say, I was irritated and frustrated by the ending. What can I say, that story just wasn't made for me, so I shouldn't have read it. It's not a matter of not giving someone a chance, but of simply being incompatible. That story and me were not a good fit.

And so I've come full circle, from reading it all no matter how drivelly, to reading for proper mechanics like an editor. Which isn't so bad, I suppose. Since there's so much out there to read, you really do have to sift and sort to find what you like. And there's no reason to read what you don't want to!

(Unless you're an English Major.)

Review for Daughters of Icarus

Well here we are, at the very beginning of the month, and already it's shaping up to be a good one! First thing after waking up at a grouch-inducing hour the other day, I opened my email to find a link to a review of Daughters of Icarus, my first publication. And I was more than a little thrilled to find this summary of my tale:

"More folktale than fantasy, ‘Ancestors Enthroned’ by Marissa James is the story of a young woman who revives the long-lost tradition of embalming the dead in order to mount them high on an inaccessible cliff overlooking her village. Kherlaji becomes renowned after embalming her father, and steadily becomes a world-famous and undying tender of the dead. A piece that is sweet rather than punchy, an ending more inevitable than twisted, but moving, memorable, convincing and potent. Lovely stuff."

If you would like to read the full review by Djibrl al-Ayad, you can find it at Future Fire Reviews. For me, it was nice to have someone read my story and appreciate it the way I'd intended. As a writer, you never know that you've done the whole story-telling thing properly until someone tells you so, be it an editor, reader, or reviewer. So I guess I did something right this time! Warm fuzzies going on here!

I would say a lot of other things as well but I don't know what else to talk about that's as cool as that, actually. It is perhaps the hottest week of the year and our refrigerator has decided to give up the ghost--how about that? Not as exciting at all, though it forced me to eat a bunch of ice cream at once. Our back yard garden has been overrun by gourd plants that I can't imagine why anyone in this house planted--I mean, what are we going to do with them? I have a lot of writing to do, not only on the fiction side but also on the side of proposals and thesis papers, and I'm not even officially in school right now! Well! With all that happening, a humble little fiction writer needs a nice review or two for encouragement!

I had an Adventure and Someone Else was the Protagonist

I've been wanting to blog for a while about POV choices in writing, and actually that IS what I'm going to discuss today. But before that --




Yes, there's an anthology call out right now for speculative stories about coffee! Find a little more info about it here, but it sounds fun. Now I just need to come up with a story by the deadline at the end of August, right? I'm thinking a few cups of caffeinated fluids derived from pulverized roasted tree-beans should provide ample inspiration.

For someone who drinks an almost worrisome amount of coffee every day, this is totally something I should send a submission to! If not because I always write speculative fiction about coffee (I haven't yet, ever), then because, on principle, I should write such fiction. It's like loving cats and never writing a story about cats! Oh, wait, I haven't done that either, never mind ...

Don't tell my cat or she'll be furious.

But I wanted to write about Point of View choices in fiction! If you've read any how-to-write books, you know that POV can be split infinitely--some authors say there are 2 options when writing fiction, while others list over 30. If you can distinguish 30 different sorts of POV, why bother? Just lump them back together, because I can't keep track of all that!

It's really not that complicated to me. Either you write a story in first-person (I/me) or in third-person (she/her). I wrote a story in second-person once (you/your), but this is a morbidly limited POV. Whenever you read second-person, it sounds like a letter someone wrote telling you what to do, and for me comes off contrived virtually always.

I've never sold that second-person story, in case you're wondering, and I always roll my eyes when I have to read this in someone else's fiction. Stop telling me what to do! I'm not in your story, I'm just a reader--just passing through!

But here's what's been bothering me: I read the guidelines to a magazine somewhere the other day that explicitly stated they prefer third-person stories to first-person. Why? I thought. Then: Everything I'm writing these days is in first-person! Is this true of other publications and they just don't tell people? Is this a pan-cultural subconscious reality that people feel, but don't always articulate, and which now means I'm not going to sell anything ever ever ever again?

Then I thought: Hey, how many stories do I read on average that are first vs. third-person? What are the percentages? And honestly, this isn't the sort of thing that I notice when I read. I just read a story and if I like it, I like it. It's funny to think that I only really notice that a story is third-person when it uses the male main character's last name in place of his first name (see my blog from Monday, August 27, 2012 for an honest-to-dog rant on that topic), and I only notice first-person-ness when you never declare whether your character is male or female.

So come on, what's the big difference? Is there one, even? You could argue that a first-person perspective is more immediate, direct, and intimate. Just as you could argue it's less interesting in the sense that, well, if this character is narrating this story, obviously they lived through their adventure and, presumably, turned out all right. Unless it's an HP Lovecraft tale--in which case, it's first person but the narrator is now a gibbering blob of jell-o. And yes, he used first person because of its directness and intimacy in capturing the descent into madness which virtually all of his characters partook in.

But first person has its limits. For example, you can only follow one character, get inside of one mind (yes, I've seen this rule broken, but generally speaking ... ). What if you need the reader to know things that the main character doesn't? Then you can't use first person. What if the main character is the sort whose mind you don't want to get inside? Well, then I'd argue that this isn't a very good main character you've got, but that's just me.

The advantages to third person don't seem all that great or significant--so why would someone prefer it? I guess first person can start to sound narcissistic (I led the charge, I declared my love, I wrote a blog), but only if you don't know how to approach your topic properly. And it can be one-sided (although the point of a story is generally to follow ONE character through something that happens, and hopefully out the other end). And it can start to sound like wish-fulfillment, as though the author is putting herself into fantastical and self-serving situations. But third person can be abused in just the same way, so that a character becomes a cipher for the author's ideal self, solving crimes single-handedly while saving the day all in time for dinner!

But if you write realistic characters, what's the difference between the POV you use? Either way your characters can't be one-sided perfect heroes who are only weakened by kryptonite and witty banter with girls. They need to think and fail and question and struggle and not refer to themselves by their own last names in internal monologue. They need to exist in a world aware that it's there around them and they are not the center--or they need to have this belief come crashing down on their heads. They need to do more than be worshipped and loved and agreed with. In short, they need to be people who are not only convincing but interesting and, above all, worth rooting for.

What's the big difference between making the story about "me" or "her" if the same adventure is had? I still don't know, but maybe someday I'll write a story both ways and see what I find out.

Women Continued ...

So in my last blog I complained about the two ways female main characters are presented in fantasy fiction that irritate me the most--in short, the big reasons I never used to like writing ladies as leads. Because, well, if I have to write women the same way these authors do, I honestly don't want to ...

The moment I hit the Publish button on that blog, I came up with a whole other host of "female attributes" I don't like. Some of these things are really subtle, or at least so deeply ingrained by our culture that it was hard for me to put my finger on just what I didn't like about this character or that one. But I guess the difference between what I wrote last week, and what came to me after publishing was that those things I discussed last week concern the ways female characters solve problems, while most of the problems I have with ladies in fantasy fiction is that they DON'T. Solve problems, that is.

After receiving a slew of kindly rejection letters (form and not), I picked up on a theme; my characters weren't proactive enough. Most were male characters, and that may be relevant to the discussion, actually. But the thrust of the non-form letters was that, sure, stuff was happening, but the main character was not the one moving the plot. Or, not nearly as much as he should be. I've worked to change that and at the same time paid especial care to the activeness of main characters in other people's stories. So that I can point and say "You're doing it wrong, ha!"

Or not. More like I'm seeking for some unwritten definition of what is proactive enough. Just recently I read (most of) a fantasy novel in which the main character was a young woman who unconvincingly became an assassin; tropes ensued, none of which are worth remembering. The issue for me was the author's huge struggle with making this character two irreconcilable things; she was naïve, awkward and uncouth, and yet had been hired to be a cold-blooded assassin. If you can buy that maybe you can read the whole book; I got halfway through and never managed to swallow that huge pill of unconvincingness. How did this utterly clueless and incapable character prove herself worthy of being an assassin? That was never discussed. Or, maybe it was in the second half?

More irritating in the case of this story, and many others I have read, the main character, being an ingénue, becomes the un-glorified sidekick of some cool hunky warrior guy who knows what he's doing. Women=naïve, clueless, foolish, emotional beings. Men=cool, suave, controlled, capable members of society. Only by learning from him and sleeping with him does she begin to grasp the world, or people, or herself.

Gag reflexes: engage!

So let's get back to the topic at hand: proactive-ness and problem solving. How did this girl solve her problems and push the story forward? Why, just as any girl would in real life--she bumbled around stupidly, demanded things awkwardly, and, once she'd got the hang of human interaction, did her best to emotionally manipulate her hunky lead whenever they couldn't agree. She didn't have a real purpose behind this emotional tide, most of the time. 

Although, she didn't get everything she wanted, either. I mean, guys are bigger, cooler, and can get shoutier. And when they're hunky super-warriors, they know better than you and can boss you around and leave you behind while they go out to save the day. Because even though he'll teach you martial arts and sleep with you, and maybe sometimes let you emotionally manipulate him, when it comes to saving the day he'll do that. You wait in the cave.

To the author's credit, I must say she didn't seem very convinced by her own female lead. She was writing a trope character and seemed painfully aware of it, which made the character even more unconvincing. Really, this character is a trope that has existed for so long that it's a wonder it's still around!

This book is just one example, and I'm sure you could come up with your own without much thinking. Really, such asinine romances are everywhere, in which a girl discovers herself and the meaning of her existence, etc., in a hunky guy; throughout she's generally powerless except for her ability to cry and guilt the guy into doing what she wants while he protects her, blah, blah. I find such pathetic characters to be a bigger and more pervasive "fantasy" than the idea that magic or dragons might exist. People don't really believe in dragons, but they do believe women are largely emotional beings, and men naturally more capable in all ways that count. Whatever those are.

So perhaps you can see why I'm thinking a lot about an epic fantasy with a female lead, and why this would be just as difficult as it would be important? Because men in the real world can be whiny and manipulative and clueless, and women can be capable and cool and strong. OUTSIDE of any issues of sexuality, I mean.

Let me return to the heart of the issue, then. My characters who weren't proactive enough were all male. If they'd been women, would this have been an issue? Maybe subliminally, but I doubt to such a degree. In fiction we expect male characters to be the ones who get in fights and kill bad guys and save the day. And while proactive female characters are cherished too, their way of "progressing the story", I've noticed, is often subtler, smaller. More realistic, maybe? Well, that all depends on what you think women are capable of, I guess.

I don't want to beat a dead horse here so let me close with one last observation--something I've observed in my own fiction as well as in others'. The general rule seems to be (subconsciously) that stories hinging more on emotion--especially if it's despondency, misery, depression, loss of everything you loved--use women as leads more often, while action-based stories use male leads. Again, because women are more emotional and men more active? It gets tiresome to read so many depressing stories where women are victimized, sad stuff happens, sadder stuff ensues, and maybe if you're lucky there's a bittersweet ending.

We need to stop using woman as a byword for "victim" in fiction!

I mean, come on, who doesn't want to break that rule?

Inventing Real Women

Recently, I've been reflecting on a post I wrote awhile back about my tendency to write main characters who are male. Through no intent of my own, my three publications so far have had female main characters; two for anthologies that were specifically looking for this. Does this mean that I write female characters better, or that having a blatantly girly name like Marissa immediately discredits my male characters in editors' subconscious, or is it random? Maybe it has to do with the different sorts of subject matter covered with male vs. female main characters--and yet, those three publications don't have a lot in common in this sense ...

But looking at my latest round of submissions has evidenced a changing trend, it seems. Without thinking about it, I managed to split the stories evenly, half male and half female main characters. So, I tallied up all my marketable stories and found that the shorter ones (say, 0-5000 words) divide evenly, while most of the longer (and older) ones (5000 all the way up to 20,000) have mostly male leads. The difference? Longer stories are, for me at least, more often epic and action-oriented in tone. Which is sort of obvious, as you can't get too epic in under 5000 words.

So this means two things. 1) I have been writing a lot more stories under 5000 words lately, and a lot more with female leads, and 2) I have concurrently moved away from epic action tales. The first is good, while the second is maybe not so good. Something in my subconscious is telling me that female main characters don't belong in epic action tales. They can lead stories, just not big adventurous ones. The rest of me, now aware, disputes this.

I mean, it hardly sounds fair!

Theoretically there could be all sorts of issues with having a female main character who is, say, a swordswoman or assassin or something. Foremost being the believability factor. Is it logical to put a woman into the role of sword wielding super-barbarian? Or whatever? If the answer is yes, which it certainly should be, can you accept the fact that a cast-iron bikini is not logical battle armor? Nope, this epic women thing isn't as simple as it so often sounds.

The biggest problems I've had with female leads in fantasy fiction fall in two categories (looks like today is the day of twos!). Firstly, if you accept the widely held belief that a main character must be proactive to move the plot, then these females do so by being amazingly annoying, noisy, pushy, whiny, demanding, rude, and snotty, and these are accepted as typical female traits. Often these are younger main characters who propel the story by either being obnoxious or pretending they are, or by opening doors they shouldn't, touching things they shouldn't, breaking things they shouldn't, crying/fainting/etc. to get their way and move the plot ... in general being or pretending to be immature as though this is how young women should/do behave and solve problems. Or even save the day.

*Oh, and don't ask how many such stories I've read--it probably hasn't been all that many, really. You just have to read one or two like this to be pretty irritated and repulsed. But I promise you it's been more than one or two. If I didn't like snotty little girls when I was in grade school and having to coexist with them, why oh why would I want to read about them as though these are virtues? I guess because little boys get all the good qualities?

The second way in which female fantasy characters are presented is, obviously, as over-sexualized iron-bikini-wearing super-chicks. Which is no more complimentary than the snotty-baby image. This image lets us know that a woman can do anything, including slaying gods and banishing demons, as long as she is amazingly sexy and mostly naked. The greatest threat to super-babe in these instances doesn't come from the possibility of death/pain/maiming which she might suffer at the hands of enemies, but rather that her oh-so-sexy self may be subjected to abuses of a different sort. As though I really want to read about this, either, and have random authors informing me that even in made-up worlds women (even strong and capable ones) are concurrently viewed as sexual and inferior objects. Why can't this just NOT happen once in a while?

Honestly, why not? This question has bugged me since going through my own stories. Why can't there be female characters who solve problems and lead epic stories like REAL women? And, moreover, what would this look like? I'm still thinking about it and certainly I don't have all the answers, but I can tell you that, at least, when I write this theoretical epic story, there will be no whining or breaking of things, and also full suits of armor.