Beneath Ceaseless Podcasts

Thanks to some livejournal friends, I've discovered an excellent new podcast, online magazine, and fiction market, all in one neat package labeled Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The magazine specializes in "alternate world fantasy," stories that explicate some fantastic setting alongside character description and plot. So far, I've listened to a story about the mysterious origin of mysterious gems, a revenge-seeking pseudo-European fantasy man in pseudo-Africa, and a neat and scary story about shapeshifters and magic locks. I've liked some of them more than others - the shapeshifters and magic locks were the best and I didn't really like the Afrofantasy - but they have all been worth it. I've enjoyed the podcast and hope to enjoy the magazine when I have some time.

And hopefully so will you.

That's Three and Four

I have just heard via the livejournal of the inimitable Sherwood Smith that publishers and agents are apparently now prone to checking up on a writer's internet presence before choosing to hire, represent, or buy. Ms. Smith warns us that one of the things that annoy publishers and agents is bitching and moaning about rejection letters, so from now on, all quoted rejection letters will be accompanied by this disclaimer:

I am not out to be accepted at this point - I am out to be rejected. I am looking for rejection. I am hungry for it. Rejection proves that I am trying. I'll be happy to be accepted, sure, but I am not complaining. I have no problem with rejection or rejection letters. Failure is only another opportunity to learn.

Disclaimer aside, I have two more rejections to share with you, bringing me to a total of four.

Re: The Weight of His Words
(Please quote our reference #12398 in any correspondence.)

Thank you for submitting to Andromeda Spaceways.

Sadly, we find that we can't use your submission at this stage.

Thank you again, and we hope to hear from you in the future.

Notes from the readers:

[Cut as it's none of your business]

Hope that's of some help, and better luck next time!

Agradar the Doomed

The letter contains many good points about the story, and I'm probably going to use all of them. Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is the second market to offer good advice alongside their rejection (Pseudopod was the first). Good advice makes me happy and responsive magazines make me happy; I'm definitely going to send more stories to ASIM.

I also got a more generic response from Weird Tales.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your manuscript. The volume of mail I receive keeps me from responding personally to each submission. And unfortunately I must often turn down good work due to space limitations and other considerations. I am very sorry that I will not be able to publish your piece at this time. I appreciate your interest in Weird Tales and hope that you will keep me in mind for future submissions.

Yours Weirdly,

Madrador the Strange

I believe that I will soon become an expert on rejection letters. They come in many flavors: some are form, some are personalized, and some are a little of both, some are gentle, some are utilitarian, but all of them are awesome, because all of them mean that I'm one step closer to being published.

Thursday Bonus... Oh Forget It

Don't look a overdue gift post in the mouth. Times are tough, and I'm lucky I'm writing this. I'm not giving up on posting once a day, not exactly. It's a goal I plan on meeting... it just might take a while. Teaching is one of those careers that gets a little easier every day. My kids get more used to me, I get more used to them, I build up a bigger store of good ideas, and I have more time for the other things that make my life go pop.

Let me say, though, that having a life where there's nothing that doesn't make me go pop is awesome. I teach, and when I'm not teaching, I write. When I'm not doing either, I'm with the Abigail.

And also, I have a huge backlog of dishes that need to be done and a staggering amount of paperwork piled up... so perhaps this new system has some kinks to work out.

For all that buildup, this is going to be a pretty lame post. I have in my brain a link to share with you, one I hope you will enjoy. John Wick (author of many, many games that I've referenced in many, many posts, and I'm too tired from wrangling hormonal teenagers to make new references) has taken a comission to create several NPCs for an upcoming RPG project. In his second-most-recent post, he talks about a fascinating potential consequence of magical healing and resurrection. Check it out.

A more substantive post about dreams and stories (and several other posts, too) coming (hopefully) soon.

Robo Insect What?

Merovingian has the right idea about learning to write.

That is all.

* * *

Basically, I've been in pre-school Professional Development and classroom cleaning and classroom setting up and lesson planning, and the fact that my school's wireless refuses to load Blogspot and I haven't gotten home before 8:00 PM since Sunday has made blogging... challenging. Fear not, gentle reader, for things should stabilize once school actually begins.

On Monday.

Burning the Midnight Zeppelin: What Could Have Been

I'm not a very good fanboy.

I'm usually the last person to know about anything, and what I do know, the Abigail tells me. I just don't have the patience to scour celebrity blogs and twitter the way she does - hell, I don't even read the newspaper as often as I want to. Most of the fannish facts I know are truly ancient: tidbits of Star Trek trivia and an exhaustive supply of facts about J.R.R. Tolkien and a few about C.S. Lewis.

In general, I'm content with this state of affairs. I have better things to do than hunt down facts - especially when I have the Abigail to do it for me (I love you!). However, there is one fannish thing that always turns my crank: I love to know what could have been, the processes that lead the creators of the things I love to create.

For example, I bet you didn't know that in Exalted, the Dragon-Blooded were originally going to be the heroes of the piece and all their beliefs about how the Solar and Lunar Anathema are soulless villains was going to be true. The game was meant to focus on the crumbling, decadent empire of the Chosen and its death throes, until the developers decided that the idea was too much like some of White Wolf's other games and that it might be more fun to take Exalted in a different direction. Actually, you probably did know that. It's not a big secret.

In any case, it was therefore with great joy that I sat down last night with the Abigail to watch Echo, Dollhouse's original, unaired pilot.

Echo laid a lot of the plot out there; some threads that weren't fully resolved until the end of Season 1 were finished in one episode! It was obvious to me that Whedon intended Echo to catch the studio's attention, and I'm glad it did.

That said, I'm glad of many of the changes. I like that the real series drew out the process of breaking Adele DeWitt down from the untouchable and all powerful matriarch of the dollhouse (actually, in some ways, an example of the rare, well-done ambiguously powerful matriarch) to a conflicted middle-manager with intimacy problems. I also enjoyed real-series-DeWitt's less vulnerable, more self-consciously wicked style. I like that the real series softened Topher a little by making him the origin of the "humanitarian" pro-bono assignments on which the Dolls are sometimes, rather than Doctor Saunders.

On the other hand, some things seem to have been lost. In particular, the Topher/Boyd friendship was much stronger and more compelling in the pilot. Similarly, Topher's mercenary bent and anti-humanist ideals - all morality is programming, all humanity is meat and nerve, undeserving of respect or compassion - are downplayed in the series. It may seem contradictory for me to say that I liked Topher's image being softened on the one hand and wish it were harder on the other, but I don't see it that way. I like Topher conflicted. Epitaph One - the second unaired episode - did this brilliantly... but I'll let you find out how for yourself.

From whense comes my strange fascinating with what might have been? Why does it penetrate into my otherwise current-events-impermiable skull?

I believe that it is an example of my own writerly nature emerging. I have always enjoyed glimpsing the "maker's hand" inside a finished work. I like those moments when the world is pulled over my eyes, I am caught by some invisible trap in the fiction. The words (or images, or whatever) pull on my hearstrings, and while I succumb, some part of me goes "aha! Well played, sir!"

It's kind of like that, but retroactively, when I see what a story could have been and get to compare it to what was.

* * *

• What "maker's hand" moments have you enjoyed? Does the concept make any sense to you, or am I on my own?
• Do you know of any interesting "what might have been" stories? Care to share?

Bonus Burn II

Lots of Bonus Burns this week. School starts on Monday the 31st, so enjoy it while you can!

All I have to contribute at this particular moment is an RPGnet post asking people to contribute their gaming and roleplaying blogs. I noted the Burning Zeppelin Experience, even though it's only partly a gaming and roleplaying blog. If you have a blog and you want to sell it, or if you're looking for more neat gaming and roleplaying blogs to add to your feedcatcher, check it out.

Web Redirect Protocal Alpha

I hope you'll forgive the link post, but it's time. It's less a matter of laziness and more a matter of the internet (especially Twitter) turning up a huge wealth of nifty stuff over the last week, nifty stuff that I want to share with you, my devoted readers, before it all becomes obsolete:

• The World's first Muslim Superheroes to come to British television - a team of super-powered Muslims, with abilities tied to the 99 Attributes of God. Most importantly, these are superheroes tied to traits like Mercy. The show is intentionally aimed to counter the influence of violent radicals, spreading a message that while it's neat to be Muslim, it's also important to be accepting , peaceful, and cooperative. If it works, it'll be a testament to the power of fantasy.
• This was just cool and you should read it.
• And finally, a blog post about why it's often important to not explain everything about magic. For magic to be magical it needs to be, well, magical. Good article. Enjoy

And finally, for your viewing pleasure:

A list of fantasy covers, sorting the prevalence of diferent cover elements. The list (I'm not sure why the image insists on being so small!) includes dragons, swords, citadels, and meaningless blackness, among others.

I'm surprised that the chart does not include gratuitous leg, breast, and panty shots.

I'm also increasingly terrified that the process of getting A Knight of the Land published may lead me to kill all humans, which would be depressing.

* * *

Remember that in addition to tweeting cool links and images in my presence, you can also get a picture or link tossed up on the Burning Zeppelin Experience by posting it in a comment, hoping it catches my eye, and waiting until I'm lazy/busy enough to do a lame internet post rather than a real post.

Till next time, have fun.