Asimov's April/May: Malick Pan

"Malick Pan" has come out in the April/May issue of Asimov's.
It's a rather more fragmented and techie story than my usual stuff and I can't wait to see how people like it. So far the only review I could find was at the Last Short Story Project and it's a rather good one.
I'm glad I didn't let them down.

"As Women Fight" Asimov's Dec 09

The December issue of Asimov's is hitting stores and mailboxes as we speak and, along with stories by some very cool authors, is my own humble offering. "As Women Fight" is another gender story (no, I'm not bored with that yet) set in a pretty alien culture.
I can't wait to see how people like it.

Sale! Shoes-to-Run to Asimov's

This is my third sale to Asimov's. Shoes-to-Run is a triumph of rewritting and workshopping. Thanks to everyone who helped out, particularly the folks over at Codex and Sean Markey who, as always, doubled as critiquer, motivator and submitter.

And now that I've reached my fifth pro sale, I can confess the Plan. The Plan is simple: when I sold my first story to Strange Horizons, I decided I wouldn't try for a novel until I'd sold ten pro stories. Eventually, I did try for the novel before then and the novel flopped. Hubris! I won't do that again. So, now that I'm 50% there, I think I can make the Plan public: I won't try for a novel until I've sold my tenth story. That looks achievable right now and, either way, I don't want to put myself through the trouble of writing something longer than a short until I'm good enough to pull it off.

Also, I just came back from Villa Diodati 3 and have all kinds of stuff to say about the workshop. But I won't say them now, because Villa Diodati deserves its own post and I can't really take more time off sleep. There was a 5 day vacation in the Canary Islands after that, which will also get a post. Hopefully. I'm kind of busy these days.

'Cause Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin weren't enough

...now I get compared to Tiptree!

I quote:

Sara Genge writes a complex story of alien sex with her "Prayers for an Egg." Like Tiptree whose work this was reminiscent of, Genge is an outsider, Tiptree coming from Langley and the mainstream, Genge from Spain; her rhythm and cadences equally exotic to American genre SF.

These stories mark the highpoint of this issue, their 'difference' from the norm giving the issue a rare depth.

And because I have a twisted feminist mind, I'll note that all three writers I've so far been compared to are women. Not that I mind, not with those three. Just sayin'

I think "exotic" needs to become part of my name, somehow. Sara Genge, aka "Exotic". Sooo cool.

Slow Stampede sold to Asimov's

Ladies and Gents, I give you the storkiphant!

Ok, I'll admit. Slow Stampede is Science Fiction, not fantasy, so the storkiphants' legs are thicker and there's some sort of biological explanation for the weirdness, but that came after I started to write about them. Because they're just awesome. Because Daaaali rocks.

Oh, and there are also some merpeople in the story, but Daaali didn't get around to drawing any pictures of them. Sorry.

Asimov's seems to agree with me because they've bought the story. This is my second sale to Asimov's and I'm all fluttery inside.

"Slow Stampede" went through a long series of revisions which involved fellow writers, co-opted friends, useful rejections and much randomness. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped me get this one off the ground.

Special thanks to Sean Markey who read the last version, printed it out and mailed it for me from the US.

Sale and proation

Asimov's wants "Prayers for an Egg". This story was work-shopped in Villa Diodati, where the magnificent writers there said something along the lines of "more alien, less patchwork". The aliened-up version seemed to be to Asimov's liking.

The world needed a story about tentacles, tri-gendered aliens and their ambivalent relationship towards their own eggs. I've only written two stories with tentacles in them, but both have been accepted by pro mags. I think I'm onto something here. What's with editors and tentacles, anyway? Because yeah, I find them cool, but then I wouldn't put them in my stories otherwise. It just seems peculiar that, for once, the universe and I are on the same tree. I'm tempted to graft tentacles onto my trunk stories, see if they get sapped up... That's a fun writing exercise if I ever heard of one.

This is my third pro sale, so I guess I'm on proation, that ample space-time continuum wherein writers reside who have sold three or more stories to pro markets but who haven't yet achieved the level of excellence and consistency of say, Nancy Fulda, Jay Lake, Ruth Nestvold etc. For me the consistency thing is a big issue, I can sort of get things sort of right like 10% of the time but 90% of my writing is wasted on unfixable drafts. If anyone has suggestions to help with this, I'm all ears.

Now, should I join SFWA or not? The fact that I can doesn't mean I have to, but there might be cool stuff in that organization that I'm missing. So far, I've only seen the icky stuff.

Sorry if this blog post doesn't make any sense: I'm kind of giddy. I may have to go eat some chocolate.

Edited to add: Thanks to Marshall Payne who helped me with an early version of this story. I don't know how I forgot to mention him by name. This story has gone through a lot of fazes and there's probably other people who have critiqued it and who I've forgotten to mention in this post. Among them are several Hatrackers and several Liberty Hallers. Thanks to all of them. I doubt there has been a story that's been more critiqued and edited than this one has.