Mates of State

Mates of State turned out to be the soundtrack for the writing of my novella. I eventually added some Zero 7 and Sade, but Mates of State was at the heart of it. It got to the point that when I heard their song, Now, it would put me right into the world I was writing about. That's a powerful thing when you have to produce words. I can't find a decent video for Now, so here's what might be my second favorite song from Mates of State, My Only Offer. Maybe you'll dig it.

http://youtu.be/TeVfiJ-ea6Y

Done-ish

The Done-ish Horror!

My novella is done and I was about to send it out when I remembered that I told my beta-readers they had until the 15th to get back to me with any issues, so I figured I'd better wait. At least out of courtesy, because I received loads of great feedback from people who got back to me early. Of course, if one of my procrastinators points out a new and important problem, I'll be very happy that I didn't ship the thing out just yet.

I've spent most of the last eight hours fooling with the thing and now I think it's time to get out of the house.

Later!

I Suck At Blogging

I'm saying it for my sake because you already know. It's exactly like alcoholism. EXACTLY!

Anyway, I'm starting to burn out on the social networks, and I really should be here more. I'm not going to say I'll try to do better, because I've lied to you enough in the past. I've broken too many promises. I'm exactly like a deadbeat dad.

Right now, I'm working on finishing up the fifth draft of my novella. This is the draft where I try to fix the things that my beta readers complained about where I can see that they might have a point. There are plenty of things I don't agree with and you don't want to try to please everybody, or else you get a shitty story. I don't like shitty stories.

The Chimney Sweep and the Steeplejack

The latest episode of Beware the Hairy Mango is sitting over on that other site, just waiting for you to listen to it! The Chimney Sweep and the Steeplejack! Oh, baby!

Horse & Sunshine

Now that my title has lured in all my druggie pals, look at my swell pictures! I love this horse. It stands near the Fort Pierce library, so I see it every month or so (The daughter and I do regular rounds of six or seven county libraries), except at Christmas when they surround it with a huge fake tree. I'm pissed that there's no plaque or sign with the artist's name or title of the work.

Our Story So Far

Holy crap! I haven't posted here in a month and a half! If anybody's still out there to read this, my apologies.

I've haven't had anything to add to The One-Thousand (that's the list of stories, not this blog) because I've been working on big projects. I wrote over 23,000 words of a new novel and then put that aside while I started a novella for The Galaxy Project.

I often write bits and pieces of a story at first and then add to it so it gets larger with subsequent drafts. Others write long and then cut. When I reached about 8,000 words on the novella, I suddenly felt like my skeleton was in place and declared the beginning of the second draft. I just topped 14,000 words yesterday and I'm now declaring the beginning of the third draft. I'm going to read the whole thing through tonight (for the first time, really) and make notes about what still needs to be added. I make notes in ALL CAPS because this is one thing that transfers from file type to file type. I also want to brainstorm a few different endings and see which I like best. I have an ending now, and although it's nice, I don't think it's going to stick with anyone after they're done reading.

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

I'm not making any kind of juicy confession, that's just the name of the song. I was sure I posted this here before, but I can't find it. Don't look at this as one scene of a rancid film. Look at it as a music video. In that sense I think it's gorgeous. I love the look, the set, the clothing (I'd say costumes, but when this was filmed, they weren't costumes, they were clothes), the whole nine. Kudos to director Richard Lester. And it's a great song too.



http://youtu.be/jz7IjXu0DfQ

The Boy Graduates!

The Boy, also known as Ian Alexander Sanborn Smith, graduated from Treasure Coast High School tonight. Yay! Looking at his grades a couple of months back, I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to pull it off, but he did lots of make-up work in the last few weeks of school, and here we are. 

The ceremony was held in the Adams Ranch Equestrian Arena. This made me hope that all the graduates would come barreling in on horses. No frickin' dice. Speaking of barrels, the blue one in the foreground is for garbage, not rodeo clowns.

Here are the graduates in the school colors, the boys in black, girls in gold. As you can see, we were in the nosebleed seats.

Here's The Boy with me. He looks like he stepped out of a Superman film.

Here's the blurry Boy with his sister. His mother was on his right but she demanded that she not be blogged

Everything's Coming Up Stones

Which are much more dependable and durable than roses. I'm talking about friend-of-blog (sounds like something the Hulk would say. Blog Smash!) Grant Stone, who had one hell of a month and I'm here to pass along the fruits of his hard work, to your good fortune.

I already told you about his story at Strange Horizons, Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984) and I just told you again.

Plus, issue #2 of his awesome fanzine, b0t, came out. You can download it as well as #1 here: http://b0tzine.com/

And then after that, his steampunky story, A Ruby in Rain appeared in audio at The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Listen here, you! http://www.ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com/2011/05/17/tales-from-the-archives-six/

What's more, Grant's story, When Her Wings, is part of the Tales for Canterbury anthology to help New Zealand earthquake relief efforts along with stories by heavy hitters like Neil Gaiman, Gwyneth Jones, Jay Lake, Jeff VanderMeer and Sean Williams. But of course, you'll want it for Grant. Buy that (cheap) here: http://randomstatic.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_10&products_id=51

By this point I feel like I'm writing hearts all over my notebook with Grant's name in them. But wait, there's more! Can you believe it?

On top of all that, Grant's story, Wood, has been chosen to appear in the first volume of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror! No link yet, but when there is one, you'll see it on this blog.

Shit, man, you knocked it out of the park with this month. Here's wishing you scads more like this one!

And if you guys, hadn't figured it out yet, this is a writer you'll want to follow. Say, "Hi," here: http://d1sc0r0b0t.blogspot.com/

Singed

No, that's not the past tense of sing. I'm feeling a little worn out, but not burnt out, just singed. I've got one more episode of Beware the Hairy Mango to do for MuchoMangoMayo and though it's mostly written, it's going to get finished tomorrow as I'm running on about three and a half hours sleep. I'll do it better in the morning. It's been a rough month, but I enjoyed the work. I'm pretty sure I'm taking May 31st off, then I'll jump back into writing fiction June 1st. That's going to be a weird shifting of gears.

A Tale of New Hope City

A Tale of New Hope City is the first story I ever got paid for. I sold it to Dave Felts for issue 4 of his magazine Maelstrom Speculative Fiction back in September of 1999. (Dave now runs SFReader.com, which you may enjoy) I'm re-publishing the story here because you currently can't find it anywhere else, and who knows? You might dig it. I just figured out how to do the jump thing on my posts so you don't have to scroll through the whole story to see what the post before this one was. I'll run the story behind the story in a few days. Remind me if I forget. Have fun!

A TALE OF NEW HOPE CITY

by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Dev's song rains down on me in the cold twilight of New Hope City while the roofrunners untint their optical flaps. For the first time today the City of Brass can be viewed by the naked eye without nerve damage. Dev's a friend of mine, a scanner who spends his evenings deprived of four senses at the base of one of New Hope's catch towers, smelling the molecules that float through its thirty story filters. The Citymind determines what his data indicates, prioritizes responses and alerts the proper servants. Dev sings low priorities to me, what the Aesthetic Guard passes over. I only act on vandalism and disfigurement. I'm a free-lance street-sweeper without compensation. I don't need it; I'm Latimer Vul.

MuchoMangoMayo

I can't believe I haven't talked this up over here, but I'm kind of dumb. I've got a big event happening over at my podcast, Beware the Hairy Mango called MuchoMangoMayo. Normally you're lucky to get one episode a month from me, but for MuchoMangoMayo I'm doing a new episode every single day in the month of May. If you like things that don't make sense, but not more than five minutes worth at a time, this is the show for you. Go listen!

http://bewarethehairymango.com/

Young Love on the Run from the Federal Alien Administration New Mexico Division (1984)

I'm in the middle of scheduling a new Mango post, but I have to drop that and everything else for the moment, because I just discovered that friend of mine and The One-Thousand, Grant Stone, has a new story up at Strange Horizons! Whoo! If you don't know science fiction, let me just say that Strange Horizons is, in my opinion, the best online text science fiction magazine there is. Of all my Fiction Crawler recommendations, I've chosen more stories from Strange Horizons than any other source. That's an awesome win for him.

Go read it and be entertained! http://www.strangehorizons.com/2011/20110509/younglove-f.shtml

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

On May 8th, 1991 I sent out my first story submission to a magazine. Because I don't remember when I started the story, I mark the beginning of my writing career from that date. The story was called Lives and Times and is number 1 of The One-Thousand. It wasn't a very good story, though I don't think it was horrible. It felt, even as I wrote it, like something written in the 1950s, an eccentric scientist tests out his theories on memory on his best friend who's got Alzheimer's with some unpleasant results. I still like the science fiction idea behind it. Our scientist takes the idea of seeing your life flash before your eyes and decides all the brain's neurons must be firing at once during a moment of intense stress. He figures out a way to make it happen without the stressful event.

Besides being my first submission, the story was important to me because it was the longest thing I had ever written to that point and the first longer work I had ever finished. I sent it to Amazing Stories. It had been my dream for years to be published by Amazing Stories, the oldest science fiction mag at that time. I didn't get published by Amazing Stories, even after six more tries. In fact, an assistant editor there used to eviscerate my work. Most rejections are simple form letters. If someone takes the time to tell you how bad your story is, well, that's a fresh new circle of Hell. At least I got those rejections out of the way at the very beginning.

I just became eligible to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and joined a couple of weeks ago. That marks the twenty year trip rather nicely, though I would have been horrified when I started if I had known it would take so long. A lot of people could have done what I've done in eight years or even less. I had life to deal with, like everyone else, but also, I wasn't the hardest worker. The one good example I have to offer from this journey is persistence. Say whatever else you will about me, a whole hell of a lot of people would have quit before that twenty year mark, especially with the many hundreds of rejections I received.

I'd like to think I have an iron will, but anyone who knows me (and I'm one of those people) knows that the strength of my will is equal to that of an over-boiled noodle. The truth is I quit loads of times over those twenty years. And every time I jumped back in a day or a week later. I didn't really have a choice in the matter. This is what I do and I'd do it no matter what. It feels really good that some other people are now able to dig what I'm doing too.

Given what I've said, I guess I don't have any inspirational advice. I'm not going to bother saying follow your dreams or stick with it, because you're already struggling to do the thing you feel you must do. You have been for years. If it's not in you to do a thing, you only have to quit it once. If you really love it, you'll quit it a thousand times.