I’ve started to post daily writing prompts on Tumblr, primarily for my students but also for anyone who needs a little nudge to get back on the wagon. Or to fall off the wagon? Possibly to caulk the wagon and get across the river.
Anyway, here it is, and I hope it helps.
This summer, I’ve been invited to teach a workshop on short fiction at The Brainery. The Brainery Workshop is an online creative writing class focused exclusively on speculative fiction as an artistic discipline worthy of theory and practice. The writing participants are expected to produce includes, but is in no way limited to: magical realism, science fiction, horror, weird tales, slipstream, steampunk, and the like. As long as there’s a speculative fiction-y element, we’ll call it good.
This course is an intense practicum in speculative fiction writing and students can expect a traditional graduate-level fiction workshop, concentrating on understanding and implementing the various aspects of speculative fiction. These aspects include craft issues such as characterization, point of view, narrative structure, style, and voice. Although this class is designed with a flexible schedule in mind, students are expected to commit to the same standards as expected of graduate-level creative writing courses, including: deadlines, feedback, and accountability.
There will be master class roundtable sessions with John Chu, who won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and Michi Trota, managing editor for Uncanny Magazine.
For more information or to sign up, visit: http://www.transmography.net/brainery/shortfictionsummer2015withvalerie/
I am again excited to be ensconced among awesome people on SF Signal for their Mind Meld feature. This time the topic was “Writing in Another Author’s Universe,” and the operative question was: “What fallow universe do you think deserves additional exploration, and who would you ask to write in that world?”
I gushed in as non-spoilery a fashion as I could about the Magid series by Diana Wynne Jones. Deep Secret remains one of my favorite books of all time, despite that I haven’t been able to read it in years due to lending it to some mystery person. If you are that person, please give it back. Or if you love it as much as I do, I guess you can keep it and I will continue loving it from afar.
Of the other responses, I think my favorite was the Majipoor series. The only book I read from that was Lord Valentine’s Castle, which is apparently the first book Silverberg wrote in that world. I had no idea, and when I read it I assumed I’d missed some other novels that gave the work more context. Not that such context was necessary; it was just such a vibrant setting whose characters felt intensely mythical in a way that suggested it was rooted in already-explored history. Looking back I’m sort of surprised I didn’t pursue the series further. My library probably wasn’t up to the task, and teenage Valerie wasn’t exactly rolling in dinero.
But I digress. Check out the responses and see what you think. What “fallow worlds” do YOU want to run around in?
I didn’t keep up with my writing as much as I’d hoped in February. I stopped tracking word count because it became a slippery eel with all the edits I was making, but I did submit two stories before the month skittered off to hide under a sofa. I won’t tell you which sofa. It will be a surprise for later.
I also sold a story, “Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses,” to Innsmouth Free Press for their upcoming anthology, She Walks in Shadows. The cover is amazing. The other writers are amazing. My excitement has caused me to fumble all other available adjectives than “amazing.” They are probably under the sofa with February.
Stories I read this month:
The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill by Kelly Robson
And You Shall Know Her By the Trail of Dead by Brooke Bolander*
The Girl Who Ate Butterflies by Mary Rickert
Nine-Lived Wonders by Rachael K. Jones
B. by Nicola Belte
The Language of Knives by Haralambi Markov*
Traveling Mercies by Rachael K. Jones
The Joy of Sects by Joseph Tomaras
And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea by Maria Dahvana Headley*
At Night, By the Creek by Ashley Hutson
A Shadow on the Sky by Sunny Moraine
The Weight of the World by Jose Pablo Iriarte
Map by Susannah Felts
The Ticket Taker of Cenote Zací by Benjamin Parzybok*
My favorites are marked with an asterisk.
I also read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, which has won so many awards that it’s starting to pull readers in through sheer gravity. If you like mystery revenge stories with sentient spaceships and gender ambiguity, consider yourself directly targeted with this one. The way the plot unfolds through a dual-narrative in the past and present of the novel’s galaxy… It’s like rhythmic gymnastics, or wuxia pian: beautiful and perfectly timed. I was hooked immediately and then dragged in a nautilus pattern that tightened as new information was revealed about the characters and plot, and then I was left at the center of it all to watch how it unraveled. So well-structured. The characters were also fascinating, flawed but noble in their own ways, and I’m excited to see what happens in the sequel.
Next month: more links! More asterisks! Maybe I will read another book! It will be amazing.
I had the privilege of submitting an essay to SF Signal for their Mind Meld feature, which collects thoughts on a topic from a variety of brilliant people. This one was “The Intersection of SF/F Games and Genre Fiction,” and the operative questions were: “What Fantasy and SF games are you currently playing or involved in? How do you think they reflect or refract the genre? What can genre fiction learn from games, and where can games learn from genre fiction?”
I wrote about Dragon Age: Inquisition, a subject that is dear to my heart and, unfortunately for my friends, near to my tongue. Specifically, I discussed the use of romance in the game, as well as player choice and (the horror!) fanfic.
You can also read essays by Elizabeth Bear, Myke Cole, Beth Cato, Seanan McGuire, and other amazing authors, covering topics from Pathfinder to Pokemon. My personal favorite was SL Huang’s, which discussed a bunch of stuff I wanted to mention but had avoided in the interest of brevity.
Go. Read. Enjoy. Then come back here and talk to me about Dragon Age.
