Quite an odd thing happened this year. From being someone who actually read very little fantasy or scifi, and preferred weird non-specfic stuff like Donna Tartt's books (which are a lot of awesome, and are the best non-specfic books I've read this year), I went to someone devouring fantasy and scifi - and some of it weird, new, non-mainstream stuff. It happened with my summer holiday, where I finally decided I would read China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Frank Herbert's Dune, as well as a random book called The Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. They were all fantastic. And I haven't looked back.
Some of the books I've read haven't been fantastic. They've been mindblowingly awesome in more ways than I can count. They are:
4th Place: The Carpet Makers, by Andreas Eschbach
On a low-tech world, the main industry is the manufacture of carpets of human hair. Each takes so long to make that it is a lifetime's job for the group of men, who weave the carpet from their wives' hair and provide money from the sale for each's one son to survive while weaving his own carpet. But the ships that take the carpets offworld have stopped arriving. In a weave of plot threads with no main character, the reason for the carpet-making tradition and the fall of the vast interstellar empire are superbly told. One of the more imaginative scifi books I've read.
3rd Place: The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop
In the city of Ashamoil, gunslinger Gwynn - currently in the employ of the Horn Fan slave-trading cartel - finds himself drawn to a woman called Beth who made an etching of him. While the cartel's fortunes are shattered by a man's desire for vengeance, Gwynn realises that Beth is not quite what she seems. And wow, that summary does not do the book justice; it forgets Raule, a doctor who collects deformed dead babies; it doesn't quite express the dark, chimeric nature of the book. This is real "dark fantasy".
2nd Place: The Scar, by China Miéville
Linguist Bellis Coldwine is fleeing New Crobuzon aboard a ship headed for an island colony, when the ship is attacked by pirates. Along with all the other passengers, she is taken to Armada: a vast floating city of ships of all sizes slung together, grown over with houses and offices and gardens and more. There, with a fellow passenger, she realises that the city's leaders, the Lovers, have a dangerous plan in mind for the city, and she becomes determined to stop it. This book is vast, filled to overflowing with Miéville's imagination, and everything about it works - setting, characters, plot, narrative. An absolutely stunning book.
And the best book I've read in 2006...
1st Place: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M Valente
A girl has been cast out into the palace's gardens for a strange marking: the skin around her eyes is stained black, with stories written in tiny handwriting. She tells these stories to a daring boy, and the fairy-tale stories weave in and out of each other with beautifully imaginative lyricism. An absolutely amazing book, brimming with ideas and beauty.
Read the prelude, and then the beginning of the stories.
Also, read her short stories:
The Maiden-Tree
Bones like Black Sugar
Urchins, While Swimming
And, quick life update:
- My gran died on Friday. Looks like it was in her sleep. I'm okay (she was 90, and very frail, so this isn't exactly unexpected) but then I'm not quite okay, you know? I'm not depressed or anything, and I cried once and probably won't again until the funeral, so don't worry about me. Still, I miss my gran a little, and I think it will hit more when I go up to Scotland for the funeral (whenever the hell that is - because she died unattended, the doctor won't simply sign off on her death certificate, so there has to be an autopsy. She was 90, WTF? Heart gave out, or a stroke, or some other kind of system failure. Stupid people.)
- Working tonight. Closing, out at 10pm-ish. What a rocking New
Year's Eve I shall be having. Ohhh riiight, sexy time! Though, I will
be home before midnight, and will try to finish off Catherynne M
Valente's book The Labyrinth - so the moment of 2007's beginning will actually be quite good, despite the McDonald's smell clinging to my hair.
- Sent off TANSU to Sybil's Garage a few days ago.
- Finished a first draft of A TRIPTYCH, for the Iris Print "fairy tale and fantasy" boy's love anthology. It's currently 6,500 words, which is about twice as long as I expected. I think I like it, quite a lot actually, but I need to re-read, see what it looks like in dawn-light, and some tweaking will probably be in order before I send it to Rhi for beta-ing.
- Still excited about THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION being accepted. Can I call myself a writer yet? I don't know. But I'm not a not-writer either. And yeah, I know, anyone who writes is a writer, but am I a writer? I think there is a difference, be it just the flimsy barrier of published/not-published. But I changed my LJ profile from "a hopeful writer" to "a writer" and it feels a little odd, still.
That faint, high-pitched squeeing sound you can hear drifting across the Atlantic to America or round the world eastwards to Australia? Wonder what it is?
It's me.
Email Subject: Submission Accepted: The Beautiful Collection
Dear Alex,
We loved your story and we would like to include it in our February
2007 issue!
It's with Crimson Highway webzine, who like "dark fiction, horror, or dark fantasy that has a romantic element", and have a very attractive layout compared to a lot of webzines. Romantic isn't normally my thing, but this story is a slight exception. It's about obsession with a flavour of magic, and as the email says it will be available to read from February 1st on their website.
I am rather supertastically happy about this, especially when coupled with STATUES being a quarterfinalist in the Writers of the Future contest. After the rejections I've had since starting this whole short story malarkey back in October - and yeah, 11 rejections really isn't all that many, I know, but they still bite - it's super cool to finally get some positive responses. And when I think that while THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION is a good story, some of my other ones are (in my opinion) even better - well, hopefully I'll be getting more acceptance emails in the near future. *is hopeful*
Yay me!
And sadly that's not the real meaning of the word 'knackered', just the Brit slang of being bloody tired.
Cumulative tiredness of longish shifts during week + 9hr shift yesterday + party last night with alcohol and 4hrs sleep + early 6hr shift today = tired Alex
But, but, there is news!!
STATUES, which I subbed to the Writers of the Future contest back in September, placed in the quarter-finals. This is what their website has to say about my ranking:
I'm too tired to bounce of the walls, but I can appreciate that this is very, very awesome. I mean, obviously I didn't win or anything, but still, it's amazing to see real recognition that I'm not such a bad writer after all. Yay me! Now when I submit stories I can say, "Look what my story did! Love me!"There are 4 levels of placement in the Writing Contest: Winner, Finalist, Semifinalist and Quarterfinalist. Quarterfinalist entries are stories that are of exceptional quality which are in the top 10-15% of all entries for the quarter. It is meant to give special recognition as such.
I turn 20 in 2 days' time! Yay me again!
Now I have to stay awake for the small family thing (just my aunt and her husband and maybe both of her kids) in half an hour's time.
MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all for tomorrow!! Wishing sparkle and shiny presents and yummy food for everyone!
Amusing story from work: The cute young Shift Running Manager was telling me that Dave, one of the other crew members at work who will at some point in the near future be taking his Floor Manager exam, was considering cheating on his mock. Aside from the obvious pointlessness of cheating, the cute young Shift Running Manager wanted to know how he intended to do this. Dave replied that he would type 'AMC exam' into google and see what came up. Well, cute young Shift Running Manager did this and guess what he found at the top of the hits? My blog. Apparently he had an amusing time reading it, and particularly loved my posts about Verity back in the summer.
Tee hee. I have no idea if he still reads it, or if that's a one-off, but now I have to call him the cute young Shift Running Manager and mention him as much as realistically possible.
The less amusing part of my shift on Tuesday was scraping ice off my car at midnight while wearing a short skirt and a thin fleece over my shirt and vest. Knowing my luck, I'll be doing the same thing tonight and tomorrow night too. Oh joy.
Writerly Update
Rejection from Shimmer for TANSU. They said:
I'm not entirely sure what's convenient about it. The only thing I can think of is that they assumed Bunia was the only person with that ability, thus it's convenient she was chosen to evaluate the furniture because she was the only one who could find out the secret. Which means I'll be slipping in a mention that she's not the only person with this ability. Other than that, I can't think of anything. Once I've gone back through the story, I think I'll send it to Sybil's Garage.I thought the strongest part of the story was the woman's ability to enter the furniture; that's a neat idea, and those passages held my attention very well. But I'm afraid the rest of the story did not live up to the potential of those parts. It all felt rather too convenient.
I have a feeling that an entry for the Shimmer pirate issue isn't going to happen, but as the deadline is end of January there's time yet, I suppose. Just that so far I've had the faintest of faint inklings of a plot, and I need somewhat more before I can write it.
However, I have been working on an entry for the Iris Print 'fairy tales and fantasy' anthology, which has a deadline of 15th January. Originally I was going to write something that followed on from SNOWDROPS, and some time I might still write the piece, but yesterday I changed my mind. After having so much fun with the 'Juniper-Tree' fairy tale, I decided I would play around with pre-existing fairy tales / mythologies, and as I've recently stumbled across a literary form called a Triptych (where the story consists of three short stories that have some kind of connection, thematic or character or whatever - similar idea to the art form) I decided I'll tell the story in that way. So there'll be three stories about relevant parts of the life of Isouso, my main character, and that includes the development of a relationship with another guy. So far I've drawn on 3 Brothers Grimm tales, and there's a selkie and Baba Yaga too - and it's being wicked fun to write. Tentative title is A TRIPTYCH.
PA is decidedly on a break. I don't want to call it hiatus, but it's on a break. I think I need more time before I go back to it.
Sex, Money and... what else was it?
The cute young Shift Running Manager also thought my blog needs more sex, money and something else. Well, can't deliver on the thing I can't remember, and nothing exciting is happening in my bank account (it's positive, hooray!), but I can deliver on the sex side of things.
- Skip the rest of this if you don't care about / don't want to know about my sex life -
So there's this guy I went to Sixth Form with (last 2 years of high school), and from pretty much the first week there's been a bit of sexual tension between us. It's waxed and waned over the years since, but it's been there, and we made out back in 2004 but didn't do much. When he came down to Karim's 21st we were flirting, and he offered sex, but I declined (wanted to enjoy the party with all my friends, not with just him), and he kissed another girl (he's a manwhore). Then, at Andy's party last Friday night, we went back to my flat together and had sex.
And considering the years of sexual tension, and his bragging that he's amazing, it was.... pretty fucking anticlimatic really. Sure, it wasn't awful, but I suspect that's more to do with me having gone 3 months without before that, so it was like "OMG penis wooooowwww.... that's it?". I somehow doubt I'll be sleeping with him again.
Oh, I also kissed a Chinese guy called Kenneth at the same party. Just a little chaste kiss on the lips, but we'd been sort of flirting earlier, and we exchanged mobile numbers. I have no idea if I actually want to go anywhere with him, but heh, we'll see.
That's all!
I just got given this birthday card from my flatmate, Karim:
He knows me too well! *is still laughing*
My birthday's not til the 26th, but term's ended and we're all drifting
homewards so I got the card and two gifts now. Those two gifts
being chocolate. For the win!
Reviews of hilarity for the Eragon movie.
Oh, shitty movie, you were doomed from the start by the nature of the
book you film-ised. And oh, poor John Malkovich, why did you let
your name be sullied? On a slightly positive note, the guy
playing Murtagh is the same guy who played Patroclus in Troy (but...
Agamemnon survives to be killed by Clytemnestra... Menelaus returns
home to Sparta with Helen... Ajax kills himself after failing to win
Achilles' armour... WWHHHYYYY??????) and that guy isn't bad on
the eyes. Sadly, one hot boy is not nearly reason enough to see
this dire excuse for a fantasy movie. I would rather spear myself.
I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing that I check my junk email folder occasionally. Good, I suppose, even though this evening's quick check found a rejection for FLIGHT sitting among the invitations to enlarge my penis and improve my bed-skills. The rejection doesn't particularly surprise me - I know the story will be a hard sell, because not much really happens, but I'm determined to at least try to find it at home. Not sure yet where I'll send it next.
I polished off A FAY OF STEAM and sent it to Cabinet des Fées, for the print version. I also penned a flash piece based on the Brothers Grimm tale 'The Juniper Tree'
for the online version of Cabinet des Fées, and sent that too - the
little story has been lurking around my head for a few days now, and it
was fun to put it on screen. 'tis called JUNIPER GRAVE.
I really hope one of these nets a sale (of course, both would be
lovely, but far less likely) because I really like the magazine.
Crossable appendages have all been crossed, as usual.
I passed my Floor Manager's test with an average of 95% (the pass-mark was 80%). Hooray! It's particularly hooray because was I convinced I'd failed. To pass I needed above 80% in two sections, and I thought I'd not managed 80% in one of them - the multiple choice paper. There were a whole load of questions I didn't know the answer to, and had to make educated guesses. Fortunately, seems enough of my educated guesses turned out correct. And now I can forget all that useless info. Hooray!
While I've finally recovered from my vicious cold, I think I'm still suffering residual fatigue. I said I've have my essay done by the extended deadline of today but I've only written 1,000 words out of 2,500, and they're not particularly great words either. I just can't seem to focus for more than ten seconds at a time. I'm going to have to work my arse off this week to get both this essay done, and done well because it's assessed, and also attempt my other essay, which matters less because it doesn't count towards my final grade. Yuck.
I've been submitting short stories in the past few days. TANSU was rejected by Fantasy Magazine, so I sent it on to Shimmer. I subbed A SHADE OF YELLOW to Ideomancer webzine and EMPIRES AND GLASS to the Sails and Sorcery anthology. I rewrote my one non-genre short story, FLIGHT, and subbed it to Edifice Wrecked webzine. Over the weekend, I finished rewriting an old fanfiction into a short story called LET ME FALL (with different characters and setting to the fanfic, of course), but I'm not entirely sure yet where I'll send it, considering it's a bit slashy and quite angsty and the specfic-ness is very much in the background. And finally, I've been working on A FAY OF STEAM and hope to have it sent off to Cabinet des Fées in the next few days.
Future short story projects are:
- Something for Shimmer's pirate issue. I've decided to take a character from A FAY OF STEAM,
Roseilda, and tell part of her story for this. The deadline is
31st January, but I aim to get this done in the next fortnight or
so.
- Iris Print, a publisher of boys' love, is open for submissions to a fairytale/fantasy anthology of boys' love short stories, and I've written just over a page of a story for this. Deadline is 15th January.
- I still intend to give the On the Premises thing a go. I've written part of that story, and will finish it sometime. Deadline is 31st January.
But at least my birthday is coming up - I'll stop being a teenager in,
oooh, 15 days, woooo!!!! Sadly there are no Wiis left, but my
brother is buying me the Legend of Zelda game anyway and I'm going to
save my Christmas and birthday money to buy a Wii when more are
made. I'm also getting money from my parents to go to Venice with
the uni history society. I don't know anyone on the trip, but who
the hell cares? Venice!!!
All you need to do is enter a bunch of random words, and it generates a poem. Pretty fun ^.^
Alankria: Fractural Winter Touch
everything under a different sky
too bright dawn autumn
russet-furred foxes incest-touch hop-flight on leaf-tips
cloud-home lattice trails puddle of drips
snoozing ex-lover dart whip-like through litter-forest,
swinging lanterns cat...fields of pollen
slip between watery folds deep dark pond
sirens screaming holiday's kiss toes in the sea - smooth death rushing lush sleep and sing
drowsy satisfied firework-struck girl
One of my favourite authors, Catherynne M Valente, has a new short story out: Urchins, While Swimming (fantasy). It's a wonderful story and definitely worth taking a few minutes to read.
And if you like it, buy her book! I highly recommend it.
