Aliens Favourably Received

Lazily scooting around the blogs before I sit down for my first session of serious 2014 writing, I discovered over at Alex Dally MacFarlane's blog that Aliens: Recent Encounters, the anthology she edited (which includes my short story Nullipara) is on io9's list of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2013.  

io9 writes:

There were a lot of anthologies this year, including several with ambitious themes — but this one blew us away more than any other.

Mostly because of the sheer volume of greatness contained in these 32 stories, ranging from Ken Liu's "Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" to Ursula K. Le Guin's "Seasons of the Ansarac." These are classic stories of alien encounters, from some of the best science fiction writers working today.

 Nice. Very nice. I'm loving 2014 already.

After an Officey Day...

 

 

...full of weariful intrigues and much uphill struggling, it was lovely to come home to a package from Prime Books, rip it open, pull out books that include one's own name in the TOC, and fondle said books.

Yes, I've received my contributor copies of Aliens: Recent Encounters. Guess what I'll be dipping into this weekend?

Nice.

Alien Thrills (or This Never Ever Ever Gets Old)

Killing a little time between finishing off my Saturday of going to the movies, washing clothes etc and getting ready to make yummy klatkager for a night of slovenly TV watching (last two episodes of The Walking Dead Season 3 here I come) I did a spot of writerly ego-Googling to see how the anthology Aliens: Recent Encounters is faring out in the wide world, and found that reviews are starting to trickle in.

You know where this is going, of course :)

And here it is. This Goodreads reader sums up her review with   :

Personal favourites in the collection include:

"The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" by Ken Lui
"The Tetrahedon" by Vandana Singh
"Knapsack Poems" by Eleanor Arnason
"Nullipara" by Gitte Christensen
"Jagannath" by Karin Tidbeck
"A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel" by Yoon Ha Lee

Can you believe it? Me, one of the and others in this collection, making it as a favourite along with illustrious names like that in an antho choc bloc with BIG writers, at the very least with this one reader? Because that's what it's all about - connecting with readers. Writing is great, and you love your own stories because otherwise why would you bother to wrangle them into existence? but it never ceases to amaze me when something I've produced actually resonates with another person enough for them to kindly comment on it.

That is just so cool. Anyway, I'm grinning, and hoping others out there in the world enjoy Nullipara too.

Now for some zombie violence.

End of the Month Report: June 2013

Submissions: 8
Rejections: 5
Acceptances: 0 (but there's a very nice maybe...)
Published: 1 (Nullipara in 'Aliens: Recent Encounters')
Stories out in the wild: 10
New stories completed: 1 (I just sent it off.)
Mood: I'm writing much and feeling good about it. Also, I'm in anthology sharing a TOC with names that make my head spin. What's not to grin about?

Note From Editor: Aliens Spotted in Dallas

Even though the official release day for Aliens: Recent Encounters is 17 June 2013,  editor Alex Dally MacFarlane reports here on her blog that she saw, and actually fondled, copies of the anthology  in a Barnes & Nobles in Dallas. She even provides a cool shelf photo.
  
Sooooo, things are hotting up. It's sooooo exciting. I sooooo still can't believe I somehow squeezed into that amazing TOC!

There's also an interview with Alex about the anthology and her own writing over at SF Signal.

Now to get some writing done in between loads of washing. Here in Australia, this is the Queen's Birthday long weekend, so I'm eager to get the domestic stuff out of the way so I can catch up with my muses, a few movies, some rest, and hopefully a day of socialising with the good folk down at Continuum tomorrow.

Bad Idea

I just clicked the link provided by a certain anthology to check the status of one's submission and discovered my story is number 973 in the queue. Given that the deadline has passed and they've already been reading for a while, and that most places will be going to commissioned writers, well, wow, I'm not sure even my dreamiest optimism can sustain the hope of a sale there. I should have let it be and simply wandered about in blissful ignorance thinking that maybe, just maybe I'd come home one night to an email...

No matter. It's June! That means that the Aliens:Recent Encounters anthology will be out in 2 weeks (hurrah!), and that the Bram Stoker Awards will soon be announced (go, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations, go!). Who knows what other good things might happen? Well, not another ASIM sale, not this month anyway - I just got a bounceback there.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

973. Wow.

I'd Like To Thank My Cats, My Chook, My Computer.

I'd like to send very big, individual thank yous to everyone who, by one means of communication or another, sent lovely congratses about my getting into Aliens:Recent Encounters. They're much appreciated. I feel like a rock/pop/movie star :) Well, almost.

And a HUGE thank you to Steve Cameron for posting about my good fortune on his blog.

I have to say that personally it's been an inspiring thing. I've been typing away for many hours this weekend - confidence tends to oil the writing machinery - and I almost feel brave enough to send my shiny new SF story off to one of the Big Three. Well, maybe after another edit or two.

Still, one must always bear in mind that like any of the arts, writing is an wilful and unpredictable business. Who knows when the next sale will occur, if at all, and whether one will be able to keep up with the market's zeitgeist, or even defy it and turn the world in a new direction! One that it didn't even know it wanted to go in before! Or not :) Underscoring the uncertainty of an artistic life, we went to see the movie Hitchcock yesterday, and I couldn't help but be amazed that a such an iconic director with so many hits under his belt still had such a hard time raising funds for a movie just because he wanted to do something different. Where is the trust, people? Conformity, alas, is the default setting of most money-people, be they filmmakers, gallery owners or publishers. That Psycho eventually became a classic is neither here nor there - it only hit the big screen because Hitch believed in it so much he financed it himself. Self publishing anyone?

And by the by, I read this morning that Sense and Sensibility was published at the author's own expense, so the late, great Jane Austen actually forked out all of her savings to get her first book published. I didn't know that. Or I'd forgotten. Anyway, it was only after sales of S&S went well (read by royalty etc) that a publisher finally, after many years (from 1797 until 1811 as far as I can ascertain from the article) of the manuscript sitting in the bottom drawer of an elegant escritoire, purchased the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for a scandalously small amount and, thanks entirely to her own belief in her own work, Jane Austen was well on her way to literary immortality.

So, the more things change...

Alien Encounters of the Thrilling Kind

I'll admit it - I've been popping over to Prime Books about twice a day ever since my story Nullipara was accepted for one of their upcoming anthologies just to see if they'd announced the TOC for Aliens: Recent Encounters yet. I was, naturally enough, curious about the company I would be keeping. Tonight I came home to an email from Thoraiya Dyer kindly pointing me towards editor Alex Dally MacFarlane's announcement of said TOC and cover reveal.

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable! Just feast your eyes upon the following very cool cover :

 And the TOC, just look at it!!!!:

An Owomoyela - Frozen Voice
Ken Liu - The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
Catherynne M. Valente - Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy
Zen Cho - The Four Generations of Chang E
Vandana Singh - The Tetrahedon
Paul McAuley - The Man
Ursula K. Le Guin - Seasons of the Ansarac
Molly Gloss - Lambing Season
Desirina Boskovich - Celadon
Genevieve Valentine - Carthago Delenda Est
Caitlín R. Kiernan - I Am the Abyss and I Am the Light
Jamie Barras - The Beekeeper
Robert Reed - Noumenon
Elizabeth Bear - The Death of Terrestial Radio
Sofia Samatar - Honey Bear
Karin Lowachee - The Forgotten Ones
Jeremiah Tolbert - The Godfall's Chemsong
Alastair Reynolds - For the Ages
Brooke Bolander - Sun Dogs
Nisi Shawl - Honorary Earthling
Samantha Henderson - Shallot
Sonya Taaffe - The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder
Eleanor Arnason - Knacksack Poems
Gitte Christensen - Nullipara
Indrapramit Das - muo-ka's Child
Jeffrey Ford - The Dismantled Invention of Fate
Karin Tidbeck - Jagannath
Pervin Saket - Test of Fire
Nancy Kress - My Mother, Dancing
Greg van Eekhout - Native Aliens
Lavie Tidhar - Covenant
Yoon Ha Lee - A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel

Now I have to go sit down and fan myself. I mean, I'm going to be in an anthology with Ursula K. Le Guin! And all those other fantastic and prominent and clever writers I've read and admired for years. This is heady stuff for me. Looking at this list, I'm wondering how the heck I snuck in. Not that Nullipara isn't a good story, mind you... :)

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable!

A Prime Piece of Pre-Christmas News

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting around trying to come up with an idea that I could turn into a zombie story for an upcoming antho, because, well, it would be so cool to get into a Prime Books anthology, when in comes an email...

It was another one of those situations where I was pretty much expecting a rejection, so it took a few seconds to absorb the fact that this email was actually one of those happiness inducing 'yay' responses rather that one of the more common 'nays'. I'd sent off, as per the guidelines, the maximum of three alien encounter stories, and wouldn't you know it, the one I wasn't sure about, the one I almost second-guessed myself out of sending, made it!

So yes, here comes the news I've been dying to share - my science fiction story Nullipara, which was first published in 2010 in The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, and Evolution edited by Chris Lynch, will appear in the reprint anthology Aliens: Recent Encounters edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane. It's scheduled for publication in June 2013.

The final lineup will be announced later this week, I've been told, or the following week, but I've been given permission to make my own private announcement now.

Inclusion in a Prime Books anthology is certainly a fantastic early Xmas present, and knowing I'll soon have an SF story in a book with the word 'alien' in the title is as geekily festive as it gets.