Aoife's Kiss # 31 is now out with my fantasy story "Jimmy French-Fries." And I'm pleased to report that I'm sharing ToC with Jaime Lee Moyer (stillnotbored) where her poem "Heroes" appears. You can check out the issue and order HERE

Lately I've been struck with how many titles of fantasy novels have the word God in them: Gods of War, Servant of a Dark God, etc. I've even catalogued a few of them HERE. If there's any word in the title of a book that would give me pause and not pick it up, this portentous G-word is it. However, many readers seem to like this, so here's my next fantasy novel project to make a fast buck…written under a pseudonym of course.

Coming soon…

So tired of not being allowed to sit at the Big Kids' table, Dudley skipped lunch and plotted his dark revenge on his PC. A plan to rule the world and do unto others as they had done unto him!

There are many people out there who are under the false assumption that our cowboys here in Texas like to fornicate with sheep. This notion annoys us greatly. Not only is it politically incorrect, it's inaccurate.

As residents of the second largest state in the union, Texans think big and live large. Lonely cowboys are no exception. It's not sheep, it's cattle! Please people, get your facts straight.

My last post seems to have garnered a bit of interest so I thought I might put up a few more by artist Rozi Demant.

The work of New Zealander Rozi Demant depicts feathered friends, but her birds don't always stand for things like freedom, peace, and beauty. Demant's utterly unique paintings are characterized by glamorous callipygian nudes, captive avian flocks, bloody images of sexual dominance, and the emotionally fraught — yet whimsical — lighting and landscapes associated with fairy tales. Her most mannerist anatomical tell, at least in this series, is the spindly, balletic elongation of her sirens' legs; an unsettling, haunting gesture that underscores the mythological quality of her scenes. – Shana Nys Dambrot

My idea of a Thanksgiving Day post. I awoke this morning wanting to put this up. Don't ask me why…

John Kessel has been publishing short fiction since 1978 and since then has gone on to make his mark in the field of SF/F. He won a Nebula Award in 1982 for his novella "Another Orphan," and more recently (2009) for his novelette "Pride and Prometheus," a story melding the tales of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. With friend and writer James Patrick Kelly he has edited three anthologies, included the just released The Secret History of Science Fiction. Since 1982 he has taught American literature, science fiction, fantasy and fiction writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I'm a pleased to offer this interview with one of the finest writers in the field of spec. fiction today.


The idea for "Pride and Prometheus," the melding of these two works by Austen and Shelley, seems one destined to be discovered and written--but you did it first. Did it come to you recently and beg to be written, or is it one you'd been tossing around for a while?

The idea came to me during a Sycamore Hill critique session in 2005 of Benjamin Rosenbaum’s story “Sense and Sensibility’ (since published in his collection The Ant King and Other Stories). Ben’s story is a bizarre take on Austen, and in speaking of it I realized that Austen and Shelley were more or less contemporaries, that Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice would have been in bookstores at the same time in 1818. But the writers, and stories, are very different, coming out of different sensibilities. It seemed a story that demanded to be written. I set out on it in March of 2006. In figuring out what the story was I discovered a lot of things that helped, such as the fact that the town of Matlock is mentioned in both Frankenstein as a place that Victor and Henry visit, and in Pride and Prejudice as being near Mr. Darcy’s estate of Pemberly.

What were the particular themes and ideas you were trying to bring forth with this story?

Marriage and finding a suitable mate. I realized that Frankenstein’s creature turns savage because he is completely alone, without anyone who loves him. And in Austen of course all the plots turn on the difficulty and dangers of finding a suitable mate. The ironies and cross-fertilizations were irresistible to me.

A second idea I pursued was the difference between the novel of manners and morals, of which Austen is an originator, and the science fiction novel, of which Shelley is an originator. The two traditions have in some sense been at odds since the beginning. Bring an sf author who teaches and loves classic literature, the differences between and potential merging of the two was also of great interest to me.

When crafting "Pride and Prometheus," how did you incorporate the styles of these two authors to make the story your own?

It was hard, since the tone of the two writers is so different. Mary is a Romantic, and Austen is not. Frankenstein is a gothic novel, and Austen mocked the gothic novel in Northanger Abbey (though she could not have mocked it without having read a lot of them). In the end I thought of my story as “Frankenstein takes over Pride and Prejudice,” beginning in Austen’s mode and shifting into the gothic as it goes along, then pulling back in the end. The climax of the story is a discussion about marriage, which ends in a brief scene of physical violence you would never find in Austen.

Any idea what Miss Austen would make of "Pride and Prometheus"? Of the two inches of ivory you brushed beyond?

Well, I have my own small territories I habitually explore, the way she worked over her very small social milieu. But I hope, like her, I can get at some larger things through that. I would hope that Austen would at least see that I meant no disrespect to her great novel and its characters.

Your work often features political themes. In regard to science fiction, why do political themes matter to you?

I think almost all fiction has political implications, even if unintentional. If you have values, you have politics, it seems to me. So it’s natural that my stories reflect the things I care deeply about. In some, such as “The Last American,” my politics are more overt. I’m not sure that’s my strongest work. I suggested a long time ago that all sf writers want to change the world. I’m no exception.

You've taught at Clarion many times. Do you see one reoccurring problem that new writers face that seems the most difficult to overcome?

Learning what makes a story different from a collection of paragraphs, scenes, vigorous but not-meaningful action. You can write, even sell, a lot of fiction without grasping what makes a good story. It took me years before I began to grasp this. I suppose some might say I still haven’t.

Another way to cut it: Figuring out what it is you can write that is not completely derivative, that somehow expresses your individuality but also connects with an audience. It takes time to do this.

With Mark Van Name you founded the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop. How did this come about and what makes it different than other workshops?

In 1984, Mark moved into his large house in North Raleigh. Gregory Frost made the idle comment it would make a good place for a workshop. Mark and I took that and ran with it, organizing a four-day workshop mostly for writers living in North Carolina. After that first year it expanded and moved to several other venues.

The workshop really wasn’t any different from the Milford workshops started by Damon Knight back in the 1960s. A group of professional sf writers gather, by invitation, in some place, each bringing the draft of a new unpublished work. They live together for a week, spend days critiquing each other’s stories, eat meals together, hang out in the afternoons and evenings. It’s stimulating and exhausting. With variations, this is the plan for Walter Jon Williams’ Rio Hondo workshops and numerous others in the genre.


Your latest reprint anthology that you co-edited with James Patrick Kelly is The Secret History of Science Fiction, where you explore the convergence of mainstream fiction and literary SF. When choosing stories what were you looking for?

We were looking for stories from the period of 1970 to the present that were real sf, or close enough so that we could make a case. In the event, we purvey a broader definition of sf than what is traditionally published in the sf magazines, but that has some history going back to even before Gernsback and the invention of sf as a separate genre. We wanted stories that were by writers within the genre, by writers who cross over from the genre to the so-called mainstream, and by writers firmly associated with the mainstream and not with genre.

You've spent quite a bit of time looking into slipstream, the edges of the genre. What is it about it that appeals to you?

The edges of genre are often where interesting work is being done. The edges of genre are where definitions and assumptions are regularly challenged.

What are you working on now? What's ahead for you?

I have a couple of new stories on submission but not accepted anywhere. I want to take another run at a lunar novel I started a long time ago. I don’t want to jinx it, but I’ve also worked with my agent of a proposal for an sf TV series. There’s talk about a James Patrick Kelly-John Kessel-Jonathan Lethem hybrid collection.

I just want to keep writing new things that interest me, and that will I hope interest others.

I've gone a couple of weeks without putting up an interview, but I'm pleased to announce that next week I'll be posting my interview with the incomparable John Kessel. We'll be focusing on his recent Nebula-winning novelette, "Pride and Prometheus," where he combines Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to great effect, but he also talks about his writing, workshops, his new anthology (edited with James Patrick Kelly) The Secret History of Science Fiction and more. Usually I post interviews on Wednesday, but because of Thanksgiving approaching I'll be putting it up on Tuesday. Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to tlmorganfield for her help this morning with my new Word 2007 that I've been trying out on my new Internet PC. Now that I've got it figured out I decided to install it on my Writing PC. And though I back everything up, I was a little apprehensive to make the final plunge to Word 2007, as I've heard a few writers complain about it. But it works great! (Word 2002 has been giving me problems on my Writing PC.) This may sound silly, but I feel like writing a new story this weekend on Word 2007 with all the fancy (and confusing at first) buttons and knobs. Hell, I feel like writing two new stories!

Thanks everyone for chiming in on my sale to Hub last week. As some of you know, selling "Pandering Dwarves" was a sale I really wanted to make. Back in 2007 I was in a creative slump, and this was the story where I started writing how/what I wanted to write. Throwing caution to the wind and being myself.

Here's a couple of snippets. The opening line, which is amazingly 140 characters. OMG…Twitterfic?

Once upon a time there was a little sidepocket universe consisting only of midgets who had been harvested from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

And from near the end where Tom Thumb and Little Betty encounter the decadent future-folk:

Merada nodded. “Don’t worry, Tom,” she said. “We didn’t bring you here to have sexual relations with you. Heaven forbid! Carls and I don’t even...”

“Merada and I sleep in separate beds, Little Betty,” the husband said. “We’ve sinned in the past, I won’t deny that, but we strive hard to keep our wicked thoughts as just that, thoughts. With our congenital defect, even the thought of the act that might produce offspring is most horrid to us.”

“Then why did you bring us here?” Tom had to ask. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Carlisle had his arm around Little Betty now and was pressing himself ever closer to her.

“Why?” Merada said, wide-eyed, riveting Tom’s attention toward her. “To murder you of course.”

*****
I just finished my rewrite/rekey of my story "Imago." Mostly rearranging a few sections but I did cut it down from 6600 words to 6300.

Got a new PC to replace my Internet PC that for some reason wouldn't get on the Internet. New stuff. Office Outlook instead of Outlook Express like I'm used to. And Word 2007. I've been using Word 2002. Word 2007 takes a bit getting used to, but interesting enough.

While I don't endorse this as a technique for interpersonal communications and/or building lasting relationships, it is an amusing notion…

And while I'm at it, a post-apocalyptic serving of irony...

Thanks to pabba for the heads-up to Rich Horton's review of Fictitious Force #6. I had almost forgotten about my story there. To my knowledge this is the first review of this issue: