My short story “When the Gentlemen Go By” is up at Clarkesworld Magazine!  An audio version, read by Cat Rambo, is also available as well.  

I apologize for the short notice on this.  I’d been so immersed in revisions that this kind of caught me off guard.  Still, I hope you enjoy it!

Wow.  It’s after Midsummer.  How did that happen?

I’ve been very lax in blogging over the last few weeks.  To be fair, I’ve been lax in everything, including sleep and social interaction.  (What is this “having a life” of which you speak?)  The first round of revisions usually does this to me, whether it’s for a short story or a novel.  Everything else recedes into the background as I try to wrangle the plot into something resembling a story.  

I’m hoping to post more after this week — on Wiscon, which was fantastic, on what I’ve been reading, and on pinging one’s id.  However, I do want to mention that I’ll be discontinuing the Friday Teapot Blogging, mainly because it’s unusual for me to be on this blog more than once a week in the first place.  And, for that matter, when one’s faced with the apotheosis of teapot blogging, it seems a little redundant to continue.

I’ll be attending the science fiction convention WisCon this coming weekend.  On Friday, I’ll be part of a group reading with authors Tom La Farge and Alex Bledsoe, from 2:30-3:45 at Michelangelo’s (a cafe near the hotel).  Our theme is “The Hunt Is On,” and I’ll be reading a little from Spiral Hunt.  Come, listen, throw pastry if you don’t like my story.  Actually, that’d be a waste of good pastry; throw something else.  

Saturday and Sunday I’ll be wandering around going “oo!” a lot, and Monday I’ll be leaving at stupid o’clock in the morning to get home.  I fully expect to say something brain-freezingly stupid at least once each day and, if last year is any indication, by Sunday I should have reached the point where caffeine will have no effect on me.  That’s a dreadful state to be in.  But I’ve been told that it’s amusing from the outside, so come and say hi.  Chances are I’ll be pleasantly dazed and happy to talk.  

Oo, and going to Madison means I’ll get to have cheese curds again.  So tasty, so wrong, so…squeaky.

It’s strange what gets left out of a story.

I’m thinking about this now because I just finished the first draft of the sequel to Spiral Hunt. It’s in typical (for me) first-draft stage: central plot concept just fine, ways of getting there all over the place, characters stepping in and dropping out like bit-part players in a crowd scene, and a whole lot of bits at the end marked with XXX RETCON THIS SO IT DOESN’T COME OUT OF NOWHERE. I need these things when I’m writing a first draft, regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel; if I go back and fix a chapter so it leads up to the current point in the plot, I’ll lose the momentum and end up fixing the back while the front’s still unfinished.  (This results in, among other things, a first draft that’s pretty much unreadable; the second draft pulls it together a lot more.)

But one of the things I’ve noticed when I revise is how many elements of the first draft don’t make it past that draft.  A lot of this is probably due to how I write that first draft, adjusting the outline as I go, staring at the screen and writing down whatever it takes to get the characters from point A to explosion B. I end up throwing a lot of things in there just to make it go.

And then they get cut.  Usually it’s for a good reason — the scene isn’t helping the plot, the character won’t appear anywhere else and so doesn’t need all five pages of backstory, the explanation for a minor plot point takes up more space than the plot point itself and so deforms the entire chapter, and so on.  I’ve had one scene that I’d originally written for Spiral Hunt, taken out of that draft, and added to the sequel — and it’s going to have to be cut here as well.  It’s a good scene, but at the moment it’s sitting there like a beautiful quilt square surrounded by the ingredients for a chocolate cake: an essential component of something, but not of this particular work.

It’s hard to put them away entirely, though (which may be why some of these linger on into later drafts until someone else points out the problem).  They’re so sparkly, and helped so much when I was slogging through that chapter, and now they’re unnecessary.

It helps to know that whatever got taken out made room for something even better.  So while you won’t find the iron purification scene in Spiral Hunt, or the three drunk magicians and their designated driver, or the gilded gentleman in the North End, you will find thorned spirals chiseled into a door, a car that looks like the result of a demolition derby organized by the Rosicrucians, the first rule of bargaining with nice little old ladies, and an explanation for the chant of “Yankees Suck!” that goes up at pretty much every Red Sox game regardless of who’s playing.

Not a bad trade-off, to my mind.

“Goosegirl” is now online as a podcast, read beautifully by Mary Robinette Kowal and with an introduction by Rachel Swirsky. (I’m listening to it now, but have to run off to work as soon as it’s done, so I’ll add more on this later.) Enjoy!

Update 4/24: Okay, that was just awesome.  It’s strange, but hearing someone else read it is a little like seeing an illustration, or some other interpretation — the characters sound entirely different from how I’d imagined, but they sound so right.  All of a sudden, I’m hearing different nuances, aspects of the characters that I’d never seen but that were there.  Or perhaps they weren’t there at all, until the reader brought them out into life.

I suspect I’m starting to tip over into either philosophy or literary theory, and I’ve promised myself I wouldn’t do that without at least two drinks in me.  So I’ll just wrap up by restating my opinion: that was awesome.

I’ve got a number of excuses for not posting, none of which are very convincing. I promise I’ll have more up later this week, after my day job stops eating my brain. (Mmm…brains…)

“Knight of Coins,” a short story featuring Genevieve Scelan, is now online in the April 2008 issue of Jim Baen’s Universe, with an absolutely gorgeous illustration by Jared Blando. This is the second short story from Evie’s point of view, the first being “Christmas Apples” in Realms of Fantasy. Evie’s also the protagonist of Spiral Hunt, though “Knight of Coins” was written much earlier.

I haven’t had a chance to read the other fiction (see above re: brains), but judging by a cursory glance they look fantastic. Enjoy!

This is on short notice, but I’ll be at Boskone this weekend, mostly quietly geeking out in the background.  I will, however, be part of the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading at 9:00 on Friday night.  (That’s tonight.  Yes, really short notice.) I’ll also be helping out with the Viable Paradise brunch Saturday morning.

And, by popular if inexplicable demand, your Friday teapot blogging:

On the one hand, these teapots are so bizarrely cool that I want to get one right now.  On the other, I know that if I did have one, I’d wind up jamming bread in the spout and pouring water into the slots.  Mornings are not good times to be confused about technology.

My story “Goosegirl” from the Fantasy Magazine anthology is now up at their site!  Go take a look, and then enjoy the other excellent fiction on the site.  “The Yeti Behind You” and “Zombie Lenin”, both from the same anthology, are also up.

Heck, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday morning.  I mean, come on.  Yetis and Zombie Lenins!

Well, I have the counter-signed contract in hand, so I think I can probably announce this without fear that it’ll all turn out to be a dream.

My agent Shana Cohen has sold SPIRAL HUNT to Kate Nintzel at Eos as part of a three-book deal. SPIRAL HUNT is an urban fantasy set in the undercurrents of Boston, tracing the intersections of myth and power and everyday life from Southie to Fenway Park and back again.  The two books to follow will continue in that vein.

To say I’m thrilled would be understating matters by several orders of magnitude. (Jumping up and down on Commonwealth Pier yelling and startling the seagulls was only a small part of my initial reaction.) I’m working on the second book now, readying myself for the edits to the first, and occasionally making little “woo!” noises.

The first book is tentatively scheduled to come out next spring. I’ll have more posts as I learn more details.

Woo!

Astonishing Adventures #2 is up, including my story “Racing Against the Rose.”  It’s a pulp revival magazine, with all the glee that entails, currently available as a PDF for download.  It will also be
available in hardcopy from Amazon at some point in the future — I’ll link when it’s up.

My story “Goosegirl”, from the Fantasy Magazine anthology, has been accepted as an audio podcast in PodCastle.  I’m not sure when it’ll be out, but I’ll post a link once it’s up.  (Side note: If
the idea of audio podcasts of fantastic short stories appeals to you, try PodCastle’s sister sites, Escape Pod and Pseudopod.)

Also, there’s currently a poll for the favorite stories in the 2007 run of Fantasy Magazine.  Go here and take a look.  (If you’re not familiar with Fantasy Magazine, you’re missing out.  Go read, then take the poll.)

Happy New Year to all!