A good writing week

Or a good week as a writer, more accurately. The week started off with money in the mail, from a couple of different sources. I always like it when I'm paid to write, because the checks come so slowly in this business that the pain of actually haven written anything is long forgotten by the time the money arrives.

Then, there was this: The Lure of a strong first sentance, at Flash Fiction Chronicles. A story of mine used as an example of how to start a story! How cool is that? I am used to being held up as an example, but usually in a more... cautionary form.

This was my first week as a write-a-thon participant for Clarion West, and my word count came fairly easily. If you haven't already pledged, it is only 10 bucks, and you can do it here.

This weekend looks pretty good for finally buttoning up The Tears of Ishtar, and getting it off to the publisher. It will be good to have a little time freed up!

And finally, this: Five New Novelists Every Fantasy Fan Should Know About Nice words indeed!

If you like your fantasy literature with lots of sword fights and godlike beings vying against monsters during an epic age, The Servant of the Manthycoreis for you. The main character is a bold warrior woman. She has grit, spunk and honor, and she could easily hang with the toughest fantasy swordsmen, including Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. This novel even comes with an introduction by Michael Moorcock, the creator of Elric of Melnibone.

Help me out with the Clarion West Write-A-Thon!

Yes, I have agreed to participate. My pledge is to collaborate with Nisi Shawl (yes, that Nisi Shawl, Tiptree Award, Publisher's Weekly Ten Best of 2008!) on a story set in West Africa. We have set for our goal a 6k word story, done during the six weeks of Clarion West.

How can you help? Easy! I have agreed to try to get 10 people to pledge 10 dollars each in support of Clarion West. All you gotta do is go here and sign up, and lay the tenner on them. Ten bucks? You know you can afford that! Only 10 dollars, 20 halfs, 2 fivers, 40 Quarters, the tenth part of a Benjamin Franklin.

Whattaya waitin' for?

Tears of Ishtar almost finished

I'm at 91k words, with about 5-10k left to write. As always that last ten per cent is the hardest.
But the more I write, the more excited I get. This really is going to be the definitive "Servant" book, with all the things that folks have come to expect from Ninshi and her travels.
And then, on to other things. I will miss them, of course, but it will be good to get away from the bronze age for a little while. So many things have backed up while making this work.
Joe denfar has a new adventure to be written, Yardi seems to want to be a novel, and for way too long I have put aside my strings novel. Much to do, and by the time some of it is beaten into submission I will be ready to revisit ancient Mesopotamia.

My pal Cindy Pon's first book...

Silver Phoenix : Beyond the Kingdom of Xia
was named one of the top ten sf/fantasy reads for youth
in 2009! along with Gaiman's graveyard book and
Pratchett's nation by the American Library Association's booklist.

Congratulations Cindy!

All at once...

I seem to be on the school board.

This was filing week for all the local races, and Szahd was keeping an eagle eye on who was stepping up to the plate. Until Friday afternoon she had no opponent for her desired position on the city council. By Wednesday she knew all the gossip, which incumbents weren't going to file, which would only if no one else did, etc.

So she convinced me to file for school board. And no one else did for that position, which I'm told created a minor stir at the auditor's office, where I am well known for working on other people's campaigns and on Szahd's, and for vehemently insisting I would never run for anything.

Received a number of congratulatory emails this evening, so I guess it is real. Now I really have to learn how to behave like a grown-up. Like Mark Twain said, 'In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards." I have also seen that quote with the idiots replaced with jackasses, which seems to add to the melodiousness. Either way, I now am one of them.

Actually, our University Place School District is one of the finest in the state, and it will be a real honor to serve alongside some of the folks who have made it that way.

Writing Short

My article about writing short fiction is up on http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog/

Rules for Time Travellers

Makes sense to me. But then, I'm a doctor, not a physicist.

From Discover...

With the new Star Trek out, it’s long past time (as it were) that we laid out the rules for would-be fictional time-travelers. (Spoiler: Spock travels to the past and gets a sex change and becomes Kirk’s... lover.*) Not that we expect these rules to be obeyed; the dramatic demands of a work of fiction will always trump the desire to get things scientifically accurate, and Star Trek all by itself has foisted half a dozen mutually-inconsistent theories of time travel on us. But time travel isn’t magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don’t know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed. And sometimes it’s more interesting to play by the rules. So if you wanted to create a fictional world involving travel through time, here are 10+1 rules by which you should try to play.

You can read the rest here:

Writing Short

Gay Degani over at Flash Fiction Chronicles has been kind enough to ask me to write a few words about writing flash fiction. Always happy to blather on a bit!

As always, the story is the thing. The best flash carries with it all the things that make any other story work, a beginning, middle and end, a protagonist who changes or makes their surrounding change in a meaningful way, strong dialog, vivid description, and some sort of payoff for the reader. It can be difficult to shoe-horn all of these elements into such a small word-count, but good flash fiction stories generally do.

You'll be able to read the rest in acouple of days here.