Million Writers

The storySouth Million Writers Award is now open for nominations. I had several stories published last year that could qualify. They are:

Himself, Guilty (Fried Chicken and Coffee) - Southern gothic

The Dream of the Artillero (Eclectica) - weird historical

Throwing Stones at the Sun (Silver Blade) - historical fantasy

The End of the War (Fried Chicken and Coffee) - winner of the Barrah Hannah Memorial Short Fiction Competition

Death's Last Daughter (Heroic Fantasy Quarterly) - historical sword and sorcery

Won't you help out an old altar boy and nominate one?

In My Kitchen

Cat Tales 2 is now available, including my Sherlockian tale "The Case of the Unfortunate Mrs. Ripley's Cat." Sherlock Holmes and cats - a match made in hell.

Also, Murky Depths #12 is out with my weird western "Warm August Tequila," wonderfully illustrated by SMUZ. Terry Martin continues to put out a quality magazine, with great art, comics and stories. I highly recommend a subscription.

Strange Dream

Saturday night I dreamed I was watching a Cartoon Network stop-action animation movie made from one of my stories without my permission. I was angry, but also amazed, because it was very well done.

Right after that, they showed another movie made from another of my stories, but this one had never been published. I was frightened, because I kept wondering how they got their hands on my story.

The strangest part of the dream was that I have not written either story. In the dream, they were my stories, I knew them by heart. But when I woke up, I realized I had never written them.

Alas, I can't remember what the first one was about - something with a goldfish.

The second one is a different story.

The Black Knight Always Triumphs!

Though it is April Fools Day, I'd be a fool not to let you know about my new story, just published at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. "Death's Last Daughter" is a short story drawn from my novel, The Sword of the Prophet, which still hasn't been published.

Go on then. Have at you!

Smells Like Victory

Excellent news, Arthur!

"Death's Last Daughter" is going to appear in the April issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Though the story is drawn from my still-unpublished (wtf!?! I know!) historical sword-and-sorcery novel The Sword of the Prophet, it stands on its own as short fiction quite nicely, thanks to the excellent suggestions of the editors. Now if only I can talk David and Adrian into knocking the entire novel into publishable form... that would be keen.

Onward!

"Eaters of Earth" has been accepted for publication in the legendary Space and Time Magazine, which has been around since forever. In this story, there's this thing, and its buried in this hole, and this one guy wants to let it out, but this other guy... well, you really have to read it. It's about the end of the world and stuff.

The Other Slipper

Sein und Werden magazine is folding, so I've decided to post my story from their fairy tale themed issue of several years ago. The Other Slipper is now ready for all beautiful young maidens of the kingdom to try upon their dainty delicious feet.

Justin Thyme

I've just posted two three more installments to my original Dragonlance/Nehwon crossover fan fiction story, Across World Bubbles.

Just in time for Christmas, issue #10 of the fantastic comic/fiction magazine Murky Depths is out. It includes my postmodern fairy tale, Christmas Miracle, penned under the unintentional pseudonym, Jeff Cook. Please buy a copy, or better yet, subscribe, so you won't miss my upcoming Western monster horror story, Warm August Tequila.

hey doorknobs, how about some dragonlance fan fiction?

Before I became a Dragonlance author, I was a Dragonlance fan fiction author. Back then, there weren't any websites for fan fiction and we carved our stories on stone tablets and left them in temples for monks to copy and illuminate.

I've just posted one of my first Dragonlance fan fiction stories, written in the early 90s. It's about one of our most favorite characters - Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I think it captures the pre-Summer Flame innocence of the world of Krynn. If you're a Dragonlance fan, I think you'll like it. Go take a gander. Just make sure you put it back when you're done, or the geese will be sore.

Legally Dead


BTW, I have another bit of fan fiction I will be posting soon. It's a Dragonlance-Nehwon crossover once again involving that incorrigible kender, Tasslehoff.

Speaking of 3:AM

I've just posted a story over at Big Bamboo. 3:35 was originally published at Horror D'ouevres.

Flush Month

Summertime and the livin's easy. Catfish are jumpin', and the good times keep rolling in. So far this month I've put up 5 quarts of peaches, 6 quarts of peas, and 9 quarts of creamed corn. Tonight I'll be canning beans. We also have a counter covered with tomatoes, some of the ugliest and best tomatos I've ever grown, though certainly not the largest. Four of my plants came from here this year, including the purple calabash - an enormous, sprawling plant which produces an insane number of small, hideously deformed tomatoes in Joker purple-and-green.

And as predicted, July is also the month for short fiction. I just sold another story to Murky Depths.

Now, if only an agent will sign on to represent my novel, everything will be swell.

Remember to flush.

Candy's Man

I just wanted to say...

Candy's Man is up at 3:AM. Magazine, that is. Ha ha.

Yay Me Woohoo

As I predicted several months ago, July has arrived and with it two short fiction sales. Hoodyhoo!

First up - Eating Cooks and Magic Rings, to be published in Crow Toes Quarterly. This is a Middle Grade fantasy about a girl, her little brother, their sorcerous father, their duplicitous cook, and the surprising creature who flies through the kitchen window one day. Crow Toes Quarterly is a slick kids magazine with excellent production values and equally excellent tastes in fiction, if I do say so myself. This is my first sale in the Middle Grade market and hopefully bodes well for my future designs upon Young Adult fantasy.

Next - Candy's Man, to be published in 3:AM Magazine. Candy visits the man who murdered her husband and finds he isn't quite what she imagined him to be. 3:AM is another surprising find. High quality with tons of content and a hip style (much hipper than me), this is what an online magazine should be.

For the full list of my published and to-be-published fiction, you know what to do.

Warrior Wisewoman 2

The Warrior Wisewoman 2 anthology is now available. My story, Heart Bowed Down, is included.

Heart Bowed Down is a science-fiction story set in a city during a galactic war. A female android is sent to recover the scientist who invented the shields that protect the city both from bombardment and from the poisonous atmosphere of the planet. Only things go wrong, as they often do, and she must find a new way to complete her mission.

The title is a pun, taken from the last line of the old song, I Ain't Got Nobody.

That Settles It

What do Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, General Douglas McArthur, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, The Vatican, various rocket scientists, a former astronaut, a British Air Marshal, and the director of Project Blue Book all have in common?

The last one should give it away - belief in flying saucers piloted by beings from another world.

Why would the government cover this up? Because of the Book of Revelations.

The Stupid Ones

In my newest novel, Shades of Black, one of the protagonists suggests that our knowledge of serial killers is built on information learned mostly from the stupid and unlucky ones - the ones that got caught. He suggests that the best ones are never caught.

This guy might fit that profile. If the allegations are correct, this guy operated for decades and was only caught when he matched in a DNA database. They weren't even looking for him at the time. It's what they call in the detective novel business a fluke.

In writing Shades of Black, I did a lot of research on serial killers and this is the conclusion I have come to. Most don't seem to be caught using painstaking police work. Many are caught by accident, by flukes, by cops getting lucky. Many who are caught are only caught after operating for years right under the noses of the police.

I don't have any data. I could be wrong. This is just the impression I got. Maybe I should make a database and see if it bears out. But honestly you can't study this stuff for too long at a time. All that business about looking into the abyss - it gets to you.

Shades of Black is a supernatural noir.

Tracking My Success

I track my short fiction submissions using Duotrope.com. Over the last 3+ years, when I seriously began to focus on short fiction again, I have noticed that my short fiction sales tend to come in waves, and that I have good months and bad months. So I created this crude chart to see if my impressions were born out by the data.

Turns out I was right. My best month is January, followed by November, April and July. Although September has more sales than either of the three above-mentioned months, this is largely due to a fluke 3-sale flurry over the course of five days in September '06. That spike has not repeated. Historically, April is a good month for me, but not in the last two years. If the trend is any indication, I will have to wait until July gets here before I see another short fiction sale. Alas.

But July would be right in line with the sale of my novel, should any of the four agents currently rereading it decide to represent it - hint, hint.

My worst months are October and December. December isn't a surprise, considering people in the industry seem to take the entire month off, either literally or figuratively. And January isn't a big surprise either, as editors are coming back from the holidays and catching up on their reading.

Next thing will be to see whether these numbers are affected by the phases of the moon and Dow Jones Industrial Average. That should provide some truly meaningful data for a more thorough understanding of my navel. Besides, I haven't promoted myself here lately, so I thought it was time to climb a tree and beat my chest.

Happy ETA Day

No, not Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the Basque nationalist organization famous for carrying out terrorist attacks in Spain. I'm talking about Extraterrestrial Abduction Day, of course!

In celebration of this future religious holiday, I have posted a story originally published in Nature in 2006. It was later republished in the Futures from Nature anthology, alongside stories by such giants as Arthur C. Clarke, Frederck Pohl, Michael Moorcock, and many more.

I give you: Adam's Hot Dogs at the End of the World.

The Emperor and the Ferryman

The emperor of China had grown weary of his spring palace and his spring concubines. He decided to travel to his summer palace in the north. Though spring was still young, he set out with his slaves and his eunuchs, his ministers and his most trusted guards, and an army of servants to see to his every need upon the road.

Soon he found his way blocked by a raging river. In previous years, the river was low enough to ride across on horseback, but that had been during summer. Now the river was swollen out of its banks, the current swift and powerful, churning and violent with foam, and there were great whirlpools in which dragons cavorted.


As he sat and looked at the raging river, the emperor noticed two men sitting in a ferry boat in a still pool at the water's edge. One was an old ferryman, the other a handsome young nobleman, and they were playing a game of Mah Jongg on the bare boards of the ferry's deck, there at the very edge of the flood.

The emperor rode down to them with his retinue behind him, many thousands strong. Seeing him, the nobleman sank to his knees and pounded his head upon the deck, but the old ferryman only stared at his tiles.

"Old man, take me across the river," the emperor commanded.

The old man looked at the emperor, then he looked at the river. "I will take you across when the flood has passed," he said, and he returned to his game.

"Guards!" the emperor shouted. "Kill this impertinent fool!"

His guards rushed down to the ferry and bending the old man over his knees, they lopped off his head with one stroke of a sword.

Now the emperor turned to the nobleman. He had never seen this man before, but there were many nobles in his empire and he could not be expected to know them all. "Young man," he said. "Do you have servants who can take me across the river?"

"Oh most excellent and wise emperor of heaven," the young man said, "I am forever your servant, for you have rescued me from the vile magician who held me captive. Now that I am free, I may reveal myself to you." And so saying, he became a dragon, huge and majestic. In fact, he was the king of the dragons of that river.

"If it pleases his sublime majesty, I shall take the emperor across the river upon my back," the dragon said as he bowed.

Now, the emperor knew better than to climb upon the back of a strange dragon, for he was familiar with the old stories, though he did not understand many of them. But he had once heard the story of the serpent and the donkey.

The serpent had promised the wary donkey that if he would carry him across the river, he would not bite him. So the donkey agreed, but as they reached the deepest and swiftest part of the river, the serpent bit the donkey on the neck. The donkey said, why did you bite me? I will die and you will drown. To which the serpent replied, I am a serpent. It is my nature.

So the emperor said, "It will be enough to ride the ferry, if you know a ferryman."

The dragon became the handsome young nobleman once more. "If it pleases his benevolent majesty, I shall serve as his ferryman." And he bowed.

So the emperor went on board in the company of his most trusted guards and ministers. The nobleman took up the pole and prepared to push off, but the remaining members of the emperor's retinue cried out in their dismay and terror, "Lord! Do not leave us here on the edge of the flood, for we are afraid!"

"If it pleases his circumspect majesty, I shall summon an army of 10,000 demons to carry his servants safely across the flood," the dragon noble said.

The emperor nodded his head, and the demons appeared, and were it not for their lord's tranquil demeanor, his servants would have cast themselves in the river in their fear. But the demons lifted the slaves and eunuchs, ministers and servants ,and flapping their wings they began to fly across the flood, so they could be there to greet the emperor when he arrived on the other side. Meanwhile, the dragon noble pushed off and soon the ferry was gliding across the raging river as though it were a still pond in the emperor's winter palace garden.

The emperor thought, perhaps it is not such a bad thing to have a dragon king as a servant. He said, "You have proved yourself trusty and true. Let it not be said that the emperor fails to reward those who serve him well. Whatever you ask of me, I shall give it."

The dragon nobleman thought for a moment, then said, "Three hundredth's part of the revenues of the empire."

The ministers gasped and the guards drew their swords, but the emperor stayed their hands. The dragon's impertinence amazed him, but he was curious to see how far down the path of destruction his draconic greed and his pride would tempt him. "For how many years would you demand this tribute?" the emperor asked.

"Only for as long as it takes to cross the river," the dragon king said with a bow. And the ministers smiled and the guards put away their swords, and the emperor laughed long and loud.

"You shall have it!" he commanded.

At these words, the ferry began to sink, and the waves of the river tossed it about so violently that all the guards and all the ministers were thrown into the water. The guards, in their armor, sank with a gurgle, and the ministers with their pockets full of gold and jewels sank with a gulp. High above, the demons released the emperor's slaves and eunuchs, lesser ministers and servants, and they fell screaming into the river, like a torrent of silken rain. The dragon lord leaped into the water, and he became a dragon and swam away, crying to his dragons to go and feast upon the dead. And the waves washed over the ferry and slowly it sank as it spun upon the flood.

The emperor looked up and behold! he saw the old ferryman walking toward him across the water. The old man was carrying his head in the crook of his arm. The emperor cried out, "Master! Save me!"

The old man set his head on his neck, then reclined upon the water next to the sinking ferry as though he were resting upon a couch after a day of weary labor. "Every spring during the floods, hundreds of your subjects drown trying to cross this river. Yet not far from here, there is a place where a man of skill and determination could build a bridge, and so spare them the terror of the spring floods."

"Master, save me and I will build the bridge!" the emperor cried as the ferry sank.

"Half your army and your engineers you sent to conquer the western desert. The other half you sent north to build a wall a hundred feet high and a thousand miles long to protect your summer palace from a few tribes of nomads. Who will build the bridge?"

"Master, save me and I will recall the army and the engineers!" the emperor cried as the ferry sank.

"You have squandered the empire's treasure on wine, concubines and palaces, and your ministers are corrupt. They take for themselves nine-tenths of what is collected to maintain the empire and live upon the fat of the land like gods, while the people starve or are murdered by highwaymen. Yet like a child to his father, they do as their lord teaches and allows, even to their own destruction and the destruction of the empire your fathers built."

"Master, you are wise. Save me and I will make you emperor of all China," the emperor cried. And he sank beneath the waves, dragged to his destruction by the rings on his fingers and the weight of his sodden robes.

Now alone upon the river, the old ferryman stood up, and at a wave of his hand the ferry rose beneath his feet. The emperor lay upon the deck, half-drowned and vomiting, with snakes in his sleeves and weeds in his beard. The old man poled the ferry back to the shore, and when he had moored his craft safely to a rock, he sat down and laid out his Mah Jongg tiles.

When the emperor had recovered, he sat up and looked at the ferryman with great wonder and awe. He bowed his head to the deck and said, "Master, you are now emperor. Command me."

The generals of the army were recalled from the western provinces and the northern wall to search for the emperor. Many months later, they found him sitting on the ferry playing Mah Jongg with the old ferryman. His fine robes hung in tatters from his shoulders and his hair clung to his face, but he smiled as he played, smiled as he had never smiled at his riches or his concubines. At the generals' command, both armies fell to their knees with a shout of joy so great it shook the hills. Slowly, the emperor looked up from his game.

"My lord, command me!" the western general cried.

The emperor said, "Not far from here, there is a place where a bridge may be built across the river. Please build it, so I may cross."

Oxymoron Alert

I just received one of the most positive rejections (there it is) I've ever received from a major magazine.

From the Missouri Review, re: Still Life with Eyepatch and Hook

This story is interesting, to say the least. Kenneth is a great character who you develop very well, and as for the story, you certainly know how to make a plot twist that goes in a very unexpected direction. I hope you will send us any future work and wish you the best of luck with this piece.

It was not meant to be, cheri. But we can still be friends.

It's a Miracle!

A "Christmas Miracle" that is, which has just been accepted for publication in Murky Depths.

What's it about? Well, if I told you, it would ruin the surprise!

But the real surprise is two stories in two days. I'm liking the start of this year.