Wily Writers

So, I’m delighted to announce the release of their second anthology, Future Imperfect, which assembles the best stories of 2010 featured in Wily Writers online, including my short tale of future justice gone awry, “The Time Share.” Many thanks to Editor Angel McCoy for including my story in this fine collection of haunting, dystopian fiction. It’s still making its way through distribution channels, but will be is available in both print and e-book in a few days from Amazon, B&N, and several other sources.

If you can’t wait for a copy of your very own: paperback  e-book

Here’s the lineup:

“Loathsome Alyce”  by Sheila Crosby
“Memory in the Time of Bones” by Nathan Crowder
“Complete Artistic Control” by Bruce Boston
“Miriam’s Song” by Larry Lefkowitz
“9 Curzon Place” by Daniel W. Powell
“She’s a Liquid” by Ever Dundas
“Aftershocks” by Craig D.B. Patton
“Outsourced” by Shelly Li
“Absolution” by Matt Adams
“Grandmonster” by Sasha Janel McBrayer
“The Tunnel” by Matt Cowens
“Reckoning” by Bruce Golden
“Stuff of the Elder Gods” by K.C. Ball
“The Time-share” by Fred Warren
“A Necessity of the Present” by Jeremy Zimmerman
“Puppet Play” by Kelli D. Meyer

Katniss has unwittingly become the symbol of that hope–the Mockingjay, the Girl on Fire, the Girl Who Lived.

Where the first volume of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy centered on Katniss’ battle for survival in a world ruled by an evil totalitarian dictatorship, the second volume, Catching Fire, reveals the unintended consequences of her victory in the Hunger Games. Despite the Capitol’s best efforts to use her as a pawn in its demoralizing propaganda campaign, Katniss is now the focus of a desperate rebellion, and she quickly learns that to become a revolutionary, even an unwilling one, is to make herself and everyone she holds dear a target for the merciless reprisal of the Capitol, and its wrath will fall first on the most innocent and vulnerable. The danger is real and personal and imminent. There will be sacrifices, and treachery, and blood. It becomes impossible to distinguish between friends and enemies. The only defense is to keep fighting, always fighting, until the end.

The story’s pace is brisk and urgent, and any readers dismayed by the relatively mild action at its outset will be amply compensated later. Katniss’ emotional struggle to choose between her childhood friend Gale and her Arena comrade, Peeta, becomes even deeper and more complicated. We see glimpses of the other Districts and hints of the web of lies woven by the Capitol to keep them in line. Nearly all the characters wrestle with difficult ethical decisions under extreme pressure, and while some of their choices are murky, it’s encouraging that they’re striving so valiantly to do the right thing in a world that’s lost its moral compass.

What I found most striking about this story is its perspective on revolution. Despite our national heritage, modern Americans have little appreciation for the very real costs of rebellion against a tyrant. We write catchy pop ballads about starting revolutions and changing the world. We organize marches against authority figures and chant slogans as we throw rocks and bottles. We wear t-shirts bearing the images of “revolutionaries” unworthy of the title, or bits of uniforms and insignia from the larger, crueler tyrannies they spawned. Catching Fire shows that revolution is a deadly serious thing, and freedom, once lost, is murderously difficult to recover.

Catching Fire is a powerful, gripping tale that sustains the momentum of The Hunger Games and ends with a shattering revelation that nicely sets up the third and final volume, Mockingjay. The Capitol government still feels like an anonymous cloud of evil, despite the larger presence of its leader, President Snow, and that’s my biggest gripe. Given that the story is written from Katniss’ perspective, I expect I’ll gain more enlightenment, and satisfaction, on that front when she does.

Link to my review of Volume 1, The Hunger Games

Like the first volume in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire is for older teens and up, mostly due to the violent nature of the Games and the Capitol’s brutal tactics. It’s a great story for parents and children to read and discuss together. Though depictions of violence are restrained, they are often jarring. No profanity or explicit sexuality. Some alcohol abuse with consequences. Non-sexual cuddling/sleeping together by two characters trying to cope with severe emotional trauma.

I’ve been running the same-old, same-old page style for a while now, so I figured it was time for a change.  Enter the oh-so-stylish ”Chateau” theme. Marvel at its clean lines and elegant curlicues! Gasp at the stunning panorama it grants my banner image!

Most of all, weep in joy and amazement at the mountain of superfluous links purged from the sidebar…I did.

Does it elevate your reading experience, or does it make your eyes bleed? Perhaps your reaction is simply…meh, whatever. Let me know. I’m still moving the furniture around, so suggestions are welcome.

According to Ray Peacock of HeartlandRails.com, the photographer:

The Soo Line Railroad is the primary United States railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, controlled through the Soo Line Corporation, and one of seven U.S. Class I railroads. It is named for the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad, which was commonly known as the Soo Line after the phonetic spelling of Sault.

Like all trains that pass through the Frederation, this one runs on subjective time, which feels like forever when you’re standing all by yourself on the platform of a train station in the middle of nowhere with snow all around.

The original image can be found at Viewliner LTD, a blog chock-full of beautiful pictures and commentary on railroad culture, both current and vintage.

There are no musclebound fighters with rage-contorted faces, no magical girls in frilly outfits, no angsty androgynous princes or ditzy coeds in this comic. No bone-shattering martial-arts slugfests, no spurting blood or severed limbs.

What you get is a slightly-pudgy, bespectacled office worker…taking a walk. Stick with me here. I know I’ve probably just lost any readers under the age of 30, but the artist’s execution of this prosaic concept is really a thing of beauty.

The Walking Man is a gentle call to slow down. We follow this unassuming salaryman as he wanders through the neighborhoods and countryside of his town, and as each episode unfolds, we begin to notice little details along with him–all the things we rush by every day in our hurried lives and never see.

He gets lost–a lot–but it doesn’t bother him very much. He accepts his disorientation with calm good cheer and discovers more nooks and crannies of his world filled with small wonders. The flight of a bird,  the unfolding of a flower. Taniguchi’s clean, precise drawings are nearly photographic in their detail at times, and they really shine when his character stumbles upon some magnificent panorama, like a sunset view from the branches of a tall tree, with the city spread out below.

Sometimes the Walking Man revisits a bit of his youth in these walks. It’s clear he still treasures those memories and cultivates a playful, mischievous frame of mind that pops out every so often in surprising ways. He climbs a tree. He scales the fence at a local community pool and takes a late-night dip. He sprints up the stairs of a tall apartment building, perhaps to see if he still can. In one episode, his glasses break, and he spends the afternoon enjoying the fractured scenery.

The Walking Man is married, and happily so. Sometimes his wife accompanies him on his little jaunts, and there’s no doubt this couple is perfectly matched. They adopt a stray dog who provides another excuse to hit the road and who sometimes pulls our hero into more interesting adventures. There’s very little dialogue, just a few snippets of conversation here and there between the Walking Man and his wife, or with someone he’s met along the way. More often than not, it’s a simple admission after gazing around an unfamiliar locale: “Ah, I’ve lost my way.”

I suppose one reason I found this manga so attractive is that I have a lot in common with the Walking Man. I’m a middleaged, bespectacled office worker (striving to avoid the pudginess), and I enjoy nothing so much as taking a long walk for no reason other than the joy of experiencing nature and discovering interesting little things about the world around me. And I certainly need to slow down more often. There’s a tranquility blended into Taniguchi’s suburban neighborhoods and rural landscapes that soothes the spirit like a taste of cool water in the heat of summer, or a sweet sip of cocoa in January. He shows me streets and country lanes very much like the ones I’ve meandered in Korea and Japan, and I think, Yes, it felt just like this. Perhaps I’ve walked along this street before.

The Walking Man is available in one volume as a full-color paperback–it’s expensive, but  if the cover is any indication, it’s beautiful and worth the investment for serious fans. You can also find it online in black-and-white at http://www.anymanga.com/walking-man/001/001/ . There is some brief nudity in chapters 6 and 16 (swimming, and in the bathtub), but otherwise, the content is suitable for all ages.

2011 was a novel-writing year for me, and novels are all-consuming–when I’m working on one, not much else gets done. The good news is that I finished The Seer, it was published in November, and I was happy with how it turned out.

Bad news–most of the other writing goals I set last year were dead on arrival.

"Amish zombie romance...It's gonna be big."

Of course, that’s not the whole story. A lot of my 2011 writing was channeled in different directions than I expected last January, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, it’s about going where the muse beckons rather than counting words and publications and sales. I took on a weekly writing gig at Speculative Faith, which I’ve enjoyed very much, I’m doing some slush reading at ResAliens, and I helped judge a couple of writing contests at Stephanie Morill’s GoTeenWriters forum. I can’t really put a number or a price tag on my investments in those activities, but I feel like they’ve broadened my experience as a writer, and I intend to continue them.

So, here are the 2011 statistics, and they’re brief: One novel, one short-story collection, six short-story sales–four reprint, two new. I also had ten FTL short-story publications (that’s “for the love,” not “faster than light”), two in Splashdown Books’ Aquasynthesis anthology and the rest in their Avenir Eclectia shared-world project.

Looking ahead, 2012 will be another novel year–I plan to finish the final book in my Muse trilogy September-ish, but it probably won’t appear in print until early 2013. So, I’m not going to put a lot of energy into mapping out goals this year, other than to attempt to fence off the time to write and submit more short stories.

Onward into the new year. Excelsior!

Over at the Avenir Eclectia shared-world serial fiction project, another episode in my tale of Smith, the Artful Dodger, appears today. It begins as an ordinary day for Smith and his crew of orphan pickpockets, working the marketplace near the Avenir space station’s cargo docks…

Charlie paused to pull something from the pocket of a corpulent man who was arguing with a cloth merchant. Smith was relieved to see he didn’t double-dip but moved smartly along. Only a practiced eye would have noticed anything amiss. Cecile was focusing on the womenfolk, tapping a succession of purses and waist packs, twirling along like a ballerina. She had promise, that one.

But then, someone gets caught  in the act…and it’ll take a miracle to keep them out of prison this time.

Read the whole thing, or…

This link will provide all the episodes in Smith’s story so far.

Avenir Eclectia has been a beehive of activity the past couple of months, and there are a ton of great stories in the works from some very talented writers. The adventures span two planets with settlements on land, undersea, and in orbit, with new stories posting three times a week. Check it out at www.avenireclectia.com.

"Messiah," by He Qi (www.heqigallery.com)

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” - Luke 2:11-12

When King David was settled in his palace,
and the LORD had given him rest from his enemies on every side,
he said to Nathan the prophet,
“Here I am living in a house of cedar,
while the ark of God dwells in a tent!”
Nathan answered the king,
“Go, do whatever you have in mind,
for the LORD is with you.”
But that night the LORD spoke to Nathan and said:
“Go, tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD:
Should you build me a house to dwell in?’

“‘It was I who took you from the pasture
and from the care of the flock
to be commander of my people Israel.
I have been with you wherever you went,
and I have destroyed all your enemies before you.
And I will make you famous like the great ones of the earth.
I will fix a place for my people Israel;
I will plant them so that they may dwell in their place
without further disturbance.
Neither shall the wicked continue to afflict them as they did of old,
since the time I first appointed judges over my people Israel.
I will give you rest from all your enemies.

The LORD also reveals to you
that he will establish a house for you.
And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins,
and I will make his kingdom firm.
I will be a father to him,
and he shall be a son to me.
Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me;
your throne shall stand firm forever.”  - 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14, 16

The angel Gabriel was sent from God
to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,
to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph,
of the house of David,
and the virgin’s name was Mary.
And coming to her, he said,
“Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.”
But she was greatly troubled at what was said
and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
Then the angel said to her,
“Do not be afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.

“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,
and you shall name him Jesus.
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,
and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

But Mary said to the angel,
“How can this be,
since I have no relations with a man?”
And the angel said to her in reply,
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore the child to be born
will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, Elizabeth, your relative,
has also conceived a son in her old age,
and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren;
for nothing will be impossible for God.”

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.”
Then the angel departed from her.  - Luke 1:26-38

Brothers and sisters:
To him who can strengthen you,
according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages
but now manifested through the prophetic writings and,
according to the command of the eternal God,
made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith,
to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ
be glory forever and ever. Amen  - Romans 16:25-27

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris’n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Third Sunday of Advent

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
To provide for those who mourn in Zion– to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.
They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed.
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. - Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. - Psalm 126

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
For the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
According to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. - Luke 1:46-55

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.