My latest short story will soon appear in the second edition of Short & Twisted. I’ll have more news to post here as details become available. I plan to attend http://www.condfw.org/ this year. I’ll try my best to stay the whole weekend.
I have a few short stories out in circulation. Hopefully, that means I’ll have a few more publications soon. We’ll see. I’m in a really good place of balance in my life right now and I do hope this positive trend continues.
Thanks for reading,
Shawn
The new anthology Short & Twisted is now available for purchase from Amazon for just .99. This anthology features my short story “Skin Trade” and includes some fantastic stories by Becky Burkheart , Tricia Ferguson , Emma Aprea , Lorelei Buckley , Autumn Shelley , William Ledbetter, Amy Oakley, Scarlett Sedona with cover illustration by Christian P. Lambright.
There’s a free sample available with this edition, so you can review before you buy.
Light Action in the Caribbean: Stories by Barry Lopez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an excellent collection of short works. Barry Lopez manages to capture the beauty of everyday things and has an eye for bringing out the important details. If the saying, the art is in the details, holds true, then Lopez is quite the artist. I purchased this collection after hearing The Mappist read on NPR’s Selected Shorts, and if you like that story, you’re likely to find others in this collection that will satisfy.
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Hmm, a lot of talk lately about an older Orson Scott Card book. I do believe talk is good. However, some of that talk is about silencing ideas and opinions. I’m against that sort of talk, and here’s why.
I hate suppressing literature, even literature with some really vile and terrible ideas, because in a free and open society you have to be able to read the thoughts and ideas of various voices. The idea of the value of literature, and that certain literature must meet some criteria to be of value to society, raises some issues. What and whose values are we taking into consideration? By what standard are we judging these values? There was a time when a book like Ginsberg’s “Howl” would have never seen the light of day, in fact Howl was almost banned, and I’m sure the gatekeepers of “decency” have suppressed many such works throughout the years. Somewhere, in an alternative universe, there is a library of all the books that were banned that could have had a profound effect on our society.
So I often ask myself if it’s a good idea to chastise a publisher for daring to publish something that’s just outright offensive to my moral values? Would I rather those who don’t share my moral views be silenced? No, because I want their thinking made clear and out in the open. I want to know, as best I am able, how this person with a different viewpoint arrived at their particular place of reasoning or rationalizing.
However, what if this particular book is harming people? Really? What book has ever been the direct cause of harming people? What video game or movie has managed to massively change the minds of many people to the point that they acted out in a way that harmed someone? Well, the Bible, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, The Road to Serfdom, etc., etc., someone might argue. I could probably point to many books and claim that they are the source for a lot of pain and hardship, because people read those books and attempted to live the ideas they presented. However, thousands of people read and live by the Bible, but they don’t bomb abortion clinics. I’ve read the Communist Manifesto and The Road to Serfdom and haven’t made one attempt to change a political or economic system–well, I’ve voted, but I’m not sure how much that actually counts. I’ve read Ender’s Game and haven’t managed to commit Xenocide. All of that to say, writing a monster manual probably isn’t necessary for making monsters–they exists, and the books just tend to align with a worldview that’s already in place, not create it.
Understand, I’m not trying to defend or apologize for Orson Scott Card’s works. I think the place he’s coming from is misguided and irrational. He lives in a closed community that believes reality operates in a way that it doesn’t. He seems to believe, like many Mormons whose works and opinions I’ve read, that homosexuality is not a state of being, but a practiced behavior. In other words, they believe it’s a choice. In their world, God’s will for every person on Earth is to engage in male female only sexual intercourse. That should be [by today's claims, not their history] between one man and one woman. That is the way they believe reality exists today, and those are the values they tend to defend as The Truth.
We as humans are in a constant conversation with reality. It’s far better when we do all the listening, because reality is regularly instructing us. I fall prey to the belief that I am the captain of my own ship and that I steer the wheel to my own destiny constantly, so I do have some sympathy for the misguided souls who try to take an even greater control over reality. They wish to instruct reality, despite reality’s obvious disagreements. There is an impossible goal of many humans to shape and form reality for all humans with the justification that it is for the greater good. It could be argued that if all humans followed a Conservative ideology, despite their own feelings and desires to the contrary, that we would would have a safe little society with very little variation where everyone knows their place. The inverse is also true that if everyone followed a Progressive ideology that we would have a more equal society with very little variation where everyone knows their place. This desire to simplify reality through ideology is such a temptation. We tool using animals almost can’t help ourselves, because we know that the best working tribe is one that gets along, and the more alike we think, the more we’ll get along, and the more we all get along, the more the tribe prospers. We’re very disappointed in the other members of the tribe who think differently. Sometimes that disappointment manifests as strong words, sometimes as violence, and sometimes as war.
I only say all of that to point out the obvious, that this is the animal that we are. We are a mixture of tribes and ideas sharing a single environment. Sometimes the shit from another tribe flows into our village. We all gather around and want desperately for that shit to no longer exists, but there’s a lot that can be learned about an animal by studying its shit.
Who are we as a tribe if we try to oppress ideas, even the oppressive ideas of a rather vocal majority? Who are we as a tribe if we allow those ideas to take root in our village? You see, I think the kind of shit that Orson Scott Card produces should be read and examined. I think this current conversation in the community is a good thing. It gives us a chance to solidify our understanding of where we are as a community of thinkers and creators. I don’t want works like his adding to the pain and suffering of a group of people who are treated as non-citizens, believe me that’s the last thing I want, but I also don’t want us to be ignorant of what these other villagers think and feel–and for those who are not experiencing the pain first hand, it’s also an opportunity to discover how people we align ourselves with think and feel. We often want to so easily label and be done with a thing, that we miss the opportunity to truly analyze the ideas and see where that person stepped off the path that we believe is the correct one–and to reaffirm with each other, what is the state of the path. Ignorance is never a value.
Speculative Literature is a conversation with many voices. The texture and complexity of these voices are reflections and echoes of our experiences and ideas. To silence one of these voices is a crime, but so is failing to address it. Orson Scott Card is a talented writer, a deft story teller, a good teacher of the craft, and a member of the community that makes up Speculative Fiction writers.
Is silencing his voice a good idea? Maybe it is. Maybe there’s a time when it’s best to just shut the mouths of those causing pain. Then again, maybe this is a test of our resolve, our compassion, our desire to expose the truth, and to reflect on our own ignorance. I don’t know. I’m far more into asking questions than arriving at simple answers.
Because I linked directly to Willow’s post on this subject, I want to directly say that I do hope greatly that “we can collectively drown out the poisonous bile spewed by Orson Scott Card with a wildly diverse chorus of love and acceptance, anger and hope and beautiful fantastic visions of queer liberation.” I took that quote directly from Willow’s site and agree with it 100%.
Additionally, some might read this as a strawman argument, because there hasn’t been a lot of talk about silencing OS Card. For one, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be impossible. The man just has too many readers. Additionally, there are a lot of conservative thinkers in the speculative fiction community who might agree with him, if not directly, then as an ally. But I do want to address the danger of silencing voices in the speculative fiction community. I would hope that would be something we don’t need to do. Additionally, I don’t want publishers getting skittish, feeling that they can’t publish something controversial for fear of community wide outrage. There are many forms of censorship, and I believe we should generally avoid those forms when possible.
My short story “Skin Trade” will soon be available as an ebook download from Amazon with a collection of other fabulous writers. As soon as I have a release date and a preview cover, I’ll post it here along with a TOC and links to the other authors.
Okay, you guys know I’ve been pretty quiet lately. I don’t really talk much about writing or the process of writing anymore, because I honestly have pretty much matured to the point that I realize I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’ve learned a lot about writing over the past few years from studying various mediums like film, plays, short stories, novels, graphic novels, and even games. What I’ve learned about writing is that there aren’t really many rules other than they need to work at servicing the story. Even then, how well it succeeds can be so subjective that it’s hard to know when it’s actually working. The criteria for success are more gut feelings than anything else. However, you can feed that gut to the point that you have a greater appreciation for the medium and how to find success in that medium. I guess that’s just a fancy way of saying that when it comes to story, to each their own.
However, I do think that certain mediums of storytelling are better equipped for telling certain types of stories than others. Additionally, though you can use some of the same tools and formats of one medium in another medium and meet with success, chances are your stories are going to work best when told in their appropriate medium. Based on that assumption, I think there are certain things that can only be done effectively in specific mediums. Comics have a unique format. They’re a bit like sonnets. You have limitations and constraints. It also tends to be collaborative, unless you can write, draw, and color. A short story has its limits and constraints. A novel has its strengths and weaknesses.
This time last year I was finishing up a long study on film. I had it in my head that it might be fun to experiment with screenwriting. I did. I wrote a few short screenplays, involved myself in a few online screenwriting groups, and critiqued quite a few screenplays. This was my attempt to really understand the process of writing a screenplay and get a better understanding of traditional screenplay structures. Overall, I think I have a fair understanding of what makes a screenplay work. Much of this study I did was in an effort to better understand how to plot my own short stories and novels. However, I came to a much different conclusion. Not much of what I learned applied. It could. I could write my novel with the same structure as a screenplay, and I imagine that the novel would both read and sell relatively well. Taking that into consideration, you might wonder why I’m now completely avoiding that type of plotting with my current work in progress and why I’ll probably always avoid that method of plotting for any of my work.
I’m avoiding this process, because a novel is not a film. A novel is a completely different animal and I’ve come to the point in my life where I love the freedom a novel gives you to explore and create. I’m afraid that so many novels have been written to mimic film structure and have even tried to use cinema descriptive techniques, that a lot of the unique things a novel can do are lost on today’s reader. I just finished reading Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. It’s a wonderful pseudo-biographic about a man who turns into a woman and then continues to persist throughout history. There’s a real mingling of voices in this novel. Sometimes you’re deep in the point of view of the pseudo-biographer and at other times you’re firmly in Orlando’s view—delving into his/her thoughts and feelings. There’s really no great Inciting Incident, there are no specific reversals, you can’t turn to the middle of the novel and find a very specific point of no return, you can’t go three fourths of the way in and find a ‘darkest hour’. Now, I could probably dig through the novel and find these various parts, re-arrange them so they fit this very rigid structure, and I’m sure there are some readers who might find that to be an improvement, but that would defeat the flow and feel of this wonderful novel. Orlando was made into a film by the very talented Sally Potter. I haven’t seen it in many years, so I can’t really comment on its structure, but I do remember enough to know the film and novel are similar, but still quite different. I prefer the novel. No offense, Sally.
This brings me to what I really wanted to comment on for this post. My post is a reaction to another post. The post I’m reacting to is one made by Rachelle Gardner, an Agent with Wordserve Literary Group based in Denver. Now I just want to say up front that I’m not trying to demonize Ms. Gardner. I know that her opinion is not only valid, but based on the books bought and sold today is pretty much spot on. If you want to improve your chances of getting published, following her advice is probably a sensible thing to do. So why am I going to argue with her post on a point-by-point basis? Because I think this type of thinking is limiting. I think this way of approaching how things “should” be done, doesn’t take into account the fact that the novel is more than just a medium for delivering a Hollywood blockbuster in word form. I also want to see better novels. I want to have better experiences while reading novels. I don’t want every novel I read to be written for the lowest common denominator.
Here’s the post, if you want to follow along at home: http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/08/10339/
In closing, I have nothing against commercial fiction. I think there is a place on shelves for many types of books, especially now that we’re not hampered by the traditional publishing model. However, if you want to go the traditional route, it’s probably not a bad idea to listen to the advice Ms. Gardner has to offer. But if you want to write a great novel, one that will withstand the test of time, I suggest you forget about following some plot skeleton that mimics the latest best seller and write from the heart.
No news on a release date yet, but my short story [almost a flash piece @ 1300 words] is appearing in a new anthology titled Short & twisted. This is an e-book only anthology, and I imagine there will be more of these types of anthologies in the future.
Here’s the story’s logline:
Louis and Susan trade faces on the first date, and as their relationship develops, Louis seems to lose more and more of his identity with each skin trade.
Obviously, when it’s available I’ll have a link to where it can be purchased.
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Liam is a man trapped between two worlds and two wars. His world is one occupied by the British Army, controlled by two battling religions, and filled with anger and contempt. But it’s also a world filled with the battling powers of the old immortals and the new religion. Liam lives in one world, but is the half-child of another.
Leicht has created a crucible of a setting to build a boy into a monster and then back into a man. Set during the early to mid-seventies, she uses the complexities of the Northern Ireland conflicts to introduce a cast of characters who seem very real, like people plucked from the pages of history, to build a believable world. Even the subtlety she uses with the paranormal aspects of the story have a kind of ‘trueness’ to them that makes the willing suspension of disbelief quite easy.
It’s obvious a lot of work went into this debut novel and I don’t think I’m giving any spoilers away when I say that the book stands well on its own, but has left a wide door open for a sequel. Hopefully, we see many, many more books from Stina in the near future.
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