Oddities behind the scenes
WHM reveals (at least) one thing about every story in his recently published collection Oddities: Fantasies & Science Fictions.
Hello.
Welcome to a special edition of my newsletter.
Thank you to everyone who has purchased Oddities: Fantasies & Science Fictions so far. If you haven't?
Direct order links: Trade Paperback | Ebooks: Kobo (DRM free) | Kindle | Apple Books | Nook (Barnes & Noble)
Now that I have the promo out of the way, I want to tell you (at least)...
...one thing about every story
So here we go (and you may or may not know that I gave titles to each part of the collection, and I riffed on post-punk albums for those titles because why not take advantage of the fact I'm self-publishing?):
Some Fantasies Wander By Mistake
Trudes Lies Dreaming
I love the early industrialization secondary world setting for this story, and while I'm not a huge fan of hard magic system, I really like the notion of magiclimes that I came up with, and I may write more work that features (likely, deconstructs) this world and the magic system.
Also: I kind of want to actually write one of the books mentioned in the story (no not, The Aesthetics of Order—Life/Circus/Sea)
The Castle Builders
I didn't add the bird-centric metaphors to this story until the seventh revision, and I, predictably, overdid it in that revision, and so I required one more revision to make it all work. I have no idea if this works for other readers, but I like the idea of adding another layer of weirdness or secondary world-ness or whatever onto stories.
A Conversation with The Distinguished Finder Gjonill
Some of you know that I work in higher ed marketing. I also used to be more involved in PR, and I used to read the issues of Vanity Fair my mother-in-law received, so writing this one came very naturally. I love that you have to read the between the lines to find all the anger.
The Preceptor & the Court Magician
The story told in this set of letters exists as one of the first works of secondary world fantasy I ever wrote. That novelette isn't horrible, but it's also not good enough to publish, and I have no interest in revising it further. So I told it this way instead because, actually, even from the beginning part of the goal was to tell an entire epic fantasy series in short-ish form (novelettes, novellas, short stories).
The Art Dealer
I understand that this one may be a little opaque. It's urban fantasy and alternate history but also secret history that's no longer secret. This actually started at as completely different idea: "Smuggler's last take. There comes a point a smuggler's life where a decision must be made: make a play for legitimacy or continue smuggling and face the inevitable hangman's noose."
Then I decided I wanted to set in an urban fantasy world I was developing. And then I decided I wanted to tell it stream of consciousness. And, for better and worse, this is how it often goes with my short fiction: it accretes layers of genre, style, imagery, setting depth, etc.
The Softball Player
This story is set in the same world and around the same time as The Art Dealer. There is a story that predates both of these, and it's not good. I suppose it's inevitable that a SF&F writer who moves to the Twin Cities attempts urban fantasy. Yes, this is a response to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, this is a response to War for the Oaks. Or at least it started out that way. But the further I got in, the more it became its' own thing and also the more I struggled with exactly how I should tell it. At one point, the story was going to be the actual alt-weekly story about the main character (Kristee).
Parallel to this, I've always wanted to use the narrative conceit of the novel Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi. That novel begins: "Pereira declares he met him one summer's day." I never imagined fulfilling that ambition with a response to Buffy, but it wasn't until I stole that idea from Tabucchi and wrote “Kristee says you shouldn't believe anything in the Twin Cities Voice story, but one detail is true: Kristee was out dancing the night Andrea was murdered.” that the story actually began to work even though I already had the entire plot and all the scenes already in place.
Feather & Stone
You're not supposed to have favorites, but I really love this story. I love how not much happens, but everything happens. I love the stories within the story. I love the high desert setting. I love the way Dowse (the main characters) talks. I love the jokes. And I love that it feels like the kind of story only me with my personal history and specific interests would write.
Two notes from my early thinking about the story:
a slot canyon should figure into the story
weird west (sort of)
That pretty much sums it up.
Power, Corruption, & Science Fictions
SafeForge
I originally published this story on my WHM blog back before I pulled the blog down because I just didn't want to blog anymore. I wrote it mainly because I wanted to have a story where you could use dropdowns that would hide each section of the story so you'd have to open it up to read it. A report seemed like the perfect form for the format. I don't know how William Squirrell found the story, but he sent me an email asking if he could republish it in Big Echo. I agreed and you can still read it there in the same way it was originally published.
All the Swarming Lights
Another story that comes out of my time working in PR/communications. This story started out with the words Wizard PR and bluster, co-option, then deceit. So, uh, yeah. Seems kind of heavy for how silly it is. But silly mixed with melancholy is one of the things I love.
It Is a Rare Thing the Emperor Required
I know this is tricky to read. I hope the difficulty is worth it. This story was born out of many things, but one of them is that I wanted to steer between alien contact leading to (fairly) easy cross-species understanding and the aliens are so alien they are impossible to understand. It's that space in the middle that I find interesting. This story is also about storytelling as so many of my stories are.
Storytime at The White Hart
William Squirrell solicited this story for the Big Echo special edition he put together as a tribute to and critique of Arthur C. Clarke. Those of us who participated were asked to take a story of his and respond to it in some way. I chose to riff on The Ultimate Melody. So, me being me, of course, it became a cyberpunk story telling various stories about the ultimate melody. I almost didn't include it in the collection because it is a riff, but I re-read it while building the table of contents, and, well, it's taken on greater resonance (pun not intended, but I'm leaving it in) since I wrote it, and also when I considered it in relation to the collection as a whole, it just seemed to fit.
Entering the Refuge
The seed of this story was an idea I came up with way back in 2011: "A future space society where computers are organic and programmed by being fed specially designed sheets of organic matter."
I then turned that into this idea of lizard people under a large glass dome surrounded by copses of trees which served as their world's version of the UN, because why not? Why not write science fiction that feature sentient, humanoid beings without any traces of (earth) humans?
But I tried writing a story that took place inside the dome, and it just didn't quite come together, so instead I decided to write a story about someone preparing to enter that space.
The seed of that idea was:
"They draped her in robes. Glued a trail of small garnets along the eye ridge. Glass (or whatever) corridor -- parade -- cheering citizens of the speckled states. Hatchmates wouldn't have been allowed to attend (beause?) Walks alone through the gate into the Dome. Greeted by aides. Copse.
Waiting for the taste of the sap."
I really like the worldbuilding I did with this one.
Six Dreams of the Future
This is probably the quintessential WHM story (or maybe its' the following one) where I mash up my interest in literary realism with my interest in genre, especially SF&F, and play them against each other.
Also: three or four of the six dreams are based on dreams I actually had. I know for sure II. and III. are. I can't remember the other one (or two). This story originally had more dreams included, and I took out ones that just didn't work. Most of what I took out had been actual dreams.
After the Post-Apocalypse
This was the last story I wrote for the collection.
It didn't begin with a specific image or idea or with a transmutation of a previous story idea like a lot of my stories have.
Instead it began with the title popping into my head and then, right way, in a sudden rush, me writing the beginning of the story:
"What does it mean to write in the time after the post-Apocalypse? Now, in this time, where more than a semblance of order, and, indeed, a general thriving, an explosion of human activity is occurring.
"What am I to write towards?
"What am I to write about what has already occurred?
"It's early spring and most of the works that have survived, that our parents preserved, seem to be autumn and winter tomes, rich with decay, plump as early October or lean as early February.
"The snow melt has begun to slow.
And I don't know what metaphors to use."
You'll note that some of the wording changed as I revised the story. But it was this burst of prose, of worldbuilding that is also literary criticism, that led to the story. I had such a blast writing it, but there's also anger and sadness behind it. It is a condemnation, even of myself and my own writing. It's also a joke. It's also a science fiction story. I don't know who else this story is for, but if it's also for you, then please do email me. We should strike up a correspondence.
The Novelette on the Door
Death, Full Clamor
This story is set in the same world as and several centuries after The Preceptor & the Court Magician. It's also a bridge story to two unpublished, but fully drafted novels that are set in this world a century later than this story (what can I say? I really enjoy writing [and reading] work with a [sort of] late 19th/early 20th century secondary world fantasy setting). Some of you have heard me (briefly) describe the first of those two unpublished novels. It's about a talking bear with a mechanical hand who responds to magical mishaps, and it's likely going to be the next thing I publish. And if that sounds a little too gimmicky for me, well, never fear, it's also about food, fashion, literature, identity, a city state, art, and cheese.
I'm not sure when I will publish it. It's fairly well-polished, but there are a couple of things about it that are bugging me, and I need to fix those before I can start the production process. And then it has a semi-sequel that's about religion and empire and magic. That one needs a major revision.
But back to the novelette: I really like that this is technically a steampunk story, but it's a haunting, humorous one rather than a whizbang one.
So that's it. At least one thing about every story in the collection. If you've read this far and don't yet own it, then, you know, get yourself a copy. There's some good stuff in there.
Next month: back to regularly scheduled programming, including a thought on fantasy series and Sinykin's Big Fiction and some musing on gaps in your reading.