My Harlan Ellison Story

For those who don't know Harlan Ellison is a short (he sometimes has had the Napoleonic syndrome) vocal man who was the darling of the SF community when science fiction started to really take off in the 70s (maybe also the 60s for Harlan). He came onto the scene with a different style of story and was soon crowned king of the genre. Over the years other people have shared that title, such as Neil Gaiman but Harlan remains an iconic, nearly a god in the field. What he says, people listen to. He's rich, he's written various movies and he's not afraid to say what he thinks.

Back when I was in Clarion West (a writers 6-week intensive writing workshop) one of our instructors was Ed Bryant. He's not that well known unless you know the ins and outs of the genre. Once a protege of Harlan's Ed sold a lot of short stories and one, maybe two novels. These days he's a reviewer for Locus but Ed always has his finger in a few pies. We became friends from Clarion and though I see Ed rarely we get together when we can. Ed's a terrible communicator and often suffers from complications of his diabetes. I see him once a year or two.

Anyway, he told this story at Clarion and though he didn't say it was the esteemed Mr. Ellison who did this there was certainly an innuendo that who else but he would have done this. Supposedly Harlan was invited to a garden party in California (where he lives) and he did not particularly like the people organizing it. So he scooped up some lovely west coast slugs from his garden, tossed them on a plate and stuck them in the fridge until they were moribund. He took them out and covered them in whipping cream. At the party he put them on the table with all the other foods and left before they started to crawl.

It was also said that Harlan had once autographed a woman's breast. So now we move forward to a World Fantasy Convention. This is the professional convention for writers, editors and publishers. Everyone who attends is pretty much in the biz from some aspect. There is no fan track and no people in costumes. One night they hold the author signing and pretty much it's a huge room with almost everyone who's published anything sitting at tables to people can get their books signed. It could easily be 50-100 authors. Even my name was put at a table but since I'm an almost no-name Canadian (sold poetry and a few stories mostly to Canadian publications)it was pointless to sit at the table because few people would know me. So I wandered around.

I also don't believe in getting autographs and don't really see the point. I consider the author and not the signature important. So I started going up to the authors and asked them to sign my arms. As I said, the autograph would last a while and then be washed off and therefore no lasting signature. Everyone pretty much got into the swing of it, with female and male authors signing my arms. Harlan was there but I hadn't got to him yet. At one point Jack Cady was signing my arm and Harlan came up to the water cooler, mouthing loudly to someone, What's she doing? Why is she doing that?

So eventually I got around to Harlan and asked him if he would sign. Succinctly, he said, no. If you have a piece of paper or a book, I'll sign that. I then told him how I felt about autographs to which he replied you're cute. But he didn't sign.

I believe that if I had gone to him first as the prince of SF then he would have signed. After all it was there in his history. The next morning I was having breakfast with Ed when Harlan approached to check something with Ed. Then he turned to me and said, Why did you do that last night? That was very strange.

A compliment? Jealousy? Amnesia of one's own past? I have no idea but I found it amusing coming from Harlan after the antics I'd heard he's done.

Sunny Weekend Events

I love the warm weather. My body hurts way less and it's just great. My neighbor, who is renovating his home back to what it would have looked like in 1910 when it was built is now working on the outside. He said he's discovered where the bumblebees are living; in the holes drilled at the base and five feet up on his house, originally used for ventilation. As we stood there talking we observed the little bumblers going in and out and also into a break in the wood that overhangs my door (the bottom of the upstairs living room--I'm on ground level). He doesn't want his painters being stung but they're bees and there's a great shortage of them this year so he has a dilemma. Still, it's really nice to know we're housing bees and that they've made their hives in our houses. Symbiosis. Unfortunately, the wasps sometimes do the same and they're not quite as friendly.

I went to the Farmers Market at Trout Lake (thanks to Andrew for reminding me). It's early still in the season so it was mostly leafy greens, chard, lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, rhubarb, red peppers, honey, goat cheese (oooh baby, gouda and peppered, yummy yum yum), and some baked goods. I bought oyster mushrooms, the weird looking morels which I don't think I've ever had, radishes, tomatoes, goat cheese (could you tell). And it was hot out. It's loverly.

There's so much happening this weekend. There is some sort of performance festival happening in east Van, in the living rooms of peoples houses: performances, burlesque, spoken word, music. Rhea's on her way over and we're about to check it out. Tomorrow is the heritage house tour (my neighbor plans to be on it next year) so I'm hoping to go wander through heritage houses of different vintages.

And my friend Sam is having a garden party, the wear white or frocks, eat delicacies and strawberries in cream, kinda thing. I'll go to that later. He has a tiny tiny hovel and therefore quite a good sized yard. My only problem is that I need to do some work this weekend too, alas.

May Submissions

At Twilight Tales www.twilighttales.com we do the great Summer Submission Challenge. No prizes, no accolades, just community and encouragement to get people to write. So without further ado, this was my month of May.

SUBMITTED IN MAY: 40 submissions
Spec fiction: 23 submissions
“Serpent’s Mouth” Pagan Fiction Award
“In God’s Image” Cryptopedia
“Timebubbles” Neo-opsis, Withersin
“The Brown Woman” Withersin, Town Drunk
“Fashion Victim” Pedestal
“Changes” IGMS
“Safe Sex” New Genre
“Nick of Time” Weird Tales
“Flight” Clarkesworld
“Cold Bones” Story Station
“Amuse-Bouche” Deathlings
“Lady Lazarus” Interzone
“Visions in Red” Spacesuits & Sixguns, Fantasy Magazine
“Snow White’s Long Day” Cicada
“In the High Tower” On Spec
“Bite Me” Realms of Fantasy
“An Ill Wind” Talebones
“The Boy Who Bled Rubies” F&SF
“Gingerbread People” Heliotrope (FBS)
“Lady of the Bleeding Heart”GUD
Fiction: 9 submissions
“Touch the Magic” Strange Horizons
“No Place to Go” American Short Fiction
“Bird in the Hand” Pulpnet
“Cipher” Atlantic Monthly
“The Diver” Chattahooche Review
“Sackcloth and Ashes” Fog City Review
“Slow Burn” Cincinnati Review
“Elastic” The Sun
“House of Cards” Prairie Fire
Poetry: 8 submissions, 36 poems
“Secrets of Trees”, “Garuda’s Folly”, “Negotiating the Power that Drives Me Round,” “Dark Side,” “A Match for Nostradamus” Strong Verse
“Courtship,” “Whole World,” “What Goldilocks Learned” Going Down Swinging
“Biography,” “Circle,” “In Relation,” “the perfect crime,” “Oh You!” Sub Tropics
“Persephone Dreams,” “Finding Dionysus,” “The Traveler,” “Geomystica,” “Of the Corn” Tin House
“Sweat Lodge,” “Between the Lines,” “Dust,” “Evidence,” “In the Garden” Agni
“Heaven’s Vault,” “Beltane Fires,” “Spinning Wheel,” “Bones of the Earth,” “Spirit Bottle,” Pangaia
“Pilot Flight,” “Illuminating Thoughts,” “Remembrance,” “The First Taste” Dreams & Nightmares
“Sundance,” “Vampire Girlz,” “Shadowrealms,” “Shortsighted,” Mag of Speculative Poetry

ACCEPTED: 2
“The First Taste” Dreams & Nightmares
“Stocking Stuffers” Naughty or Nice antho Cleis Books

REJECTED: 13 submissions, 7 stories, 20 poems
“Gingerbread People” Heliotrope (FBS)
“Alien Invader” Baen SF contest
“Lady of the Bleeding Heart”GUD
“Timebubbles” Neo-opsis
“The Brown Woman” Withersin, Town Drunk (dumb on my part as I forgot they want light and this is darkish)
“Lady Lazarus” Dark Wisdom
“Visions in Red” Spacesuits & Sixguns (6 hours to reject *sob*)
“Trials of Lemons,” “Time,” “Millennim’s Edge,” From the Asylum
“Sweat Lodge,” “Between the Lines,” “Dust,” “Evidence,” “In the Garden” Agni
“Heaven’s Vault,” “Beltane Fires,” “Spinning Wheel,” “Bones of the Earth,” “Spirit Bottle,” Pangaia
“Pilot Flight,” “Illuminating Thoughts,” “Remembrance,” Dreams & Nightmares
“Sundance,” “Vampire Girlz,” “Shadowrealms,” “Shortsighted,” Mag of Speculative Poetry

STORIES STILL OUT(from January on—markets only): 13
Venus Press, Abyss & Apex (poems), Dark Recesses, Aeon, Cleis Books, Chizine, Ruins, Magic & Mechanica, Cthulhu Sex, Splatterpunk Press, Hub, HLQ Spec, Holy Horror

BELIEVED LOST (markets that have not responded to queries and older than 9 months)
Drill Press, S.M.U.T. (I supposedly had stories coming out with these first two),Bloodrose, Like Water Burning, Storie, Andromeda Spaceways (they changed their system around this time), Pine, Arabesque, Adbusters, and all of the European markets including 9, Glasnost, Galaktika Magazine (bouncing), Real’nost’ Fantastiki, Nowa Fantastyka

Rewritten 3 stories, one that hadn’t seen the light of day in ten years. Reading Kushiel’s Chosen, finished Kushiel’s Dart, stuck on Iron Council.

Revisionist Poems and Stories

This came about on another list when I mentioned that I've just sold my poem "The First Taste" to Dreams & Nightmares. It will be out in the January issue and is a revisionist poem about Persephone. I was asked what I meant by revisioning.

I ran into revisioning somewhere way back, maybe first to do with the retold fairy tales, especially the ones that were in the Datlow/Windling anthologies. I've also run into it in poetry but don't remember when anymore. It could have been in the creative writing courses at UBC or in the world of speculative poetry.

I guess the basis for any revisioning poem/story is that instead of a third person or narrative tale of a hero's or god's deeds, the tale is now told in first person. It might also be in the voice of the lesser being/mortal/bad guy who traditionally would be fairly two-dimensional. Getting into the psyche of the person and how they really felt.

This is sort of what happened to SF when it evolved past the embryonic stage of BEMs and started to become more realistic; or magic realism, set in today's world with just a small twist. (Is this the bastard child of canlit and spec fic?)

Like all genre words, it's just another fancy word for categorizing what we write. :) In my revisioning poems (which really is just the tale from another point of view) I've written on Dionysus, Kore/Persephone, Athena, Leda, Psyche, Demeter, Aphrodite (though the last really doesn't fit the same way as the others).If I was at home I'd just post the poem here, as it's a closed list and I wouldn't break any rights. I've also written one story on the oracle on Pythos before it/she became the Delphic oracle.

I'm sure there are other takes on revisioning but this is pretty much how I see and understand it.

The Mystery of Editing and Writing

I've received my first cluster of fantasy and horror stories from Aberrant Dreams to read and reject or pass on to the editor in chief. First I'm amazed at the caliber. I guess I expected a range of skill levels but so far they're all quite high. High that is in execution: grammar, structure, etc. So then now comes the hard part.

I must discern from these only the best, the new twists and tales. And yet, there really are only so many pastiches in fiction. There is the descent into madness horror tale: am I mad, is some supernatural force make me mad, will anyone believe me, who will triumph? I even have one myself and it takes a very new twist or style to make this sell.

There is the ghost story: I don't know I'm a ghost, I know and will get revenge, I'm hanging on to make things right/wrong/bettah.The vengeful ghost, the remorseful ghost, the lovestruck ghost, the downright evil-Satan-is-my-slave ghost.

That's just two examples. As a writer myself who still gets enough rejections I have several ulterior motives for being an editor. One is that it might help me pinpoint what doesn't work/sell in my stories. And already, after one week of reading (about 15 stories) I'm beginning to see what it is.

A story must sing. It must stand on a pedestal, shining above all the rest. An editor once told me my story could have been written by a cipher. I always remembered that intriguing comment. What did he mean? He meant that technically all the elements were there. It's the same as ten people being shown all the technical aspects of paint and blending colours and brushstrokes. They may all have the technique down but maybe only one will blend his paints and subjects to make a truly stunning picture. It's the same with writing. Almost all of the stories are sound, but they need a new twist.

The voice must be unique. It is why, I believe (though I've only read 1.5 of his books) that China Mieville caught on. Perdido St. Station is a completely unique, never before envisioned world. Iron Council I'm still trying to finish. It not as technically sound, has all sorts of grammatical and structural errors, which probably were a bit harder to discern because of Mieville's writing style. It's also a bit of a trudge but his voice is so very unique you want to know where it's going.

And of course the story must be new. You can get away with a slight slant on a story if it bubbles with new life and that fey touched voice. I'm sure other wisdoms will fall into place as I read more but I'm already receiving an education and getting a true sense of the caliber of competition out there.

Environmentalism & Politics

There has been quite the hullabaloo in the media lately as politicians have woken up from a twenty-plus year hibernation to look around in sudden alarm and go "Oh my, we have an environmental problem." Hello?

When I was a teenager I wouldn't litter and a friend asked, oh why bother? I said, well it may only be me today but then tomorrow it might be me and someone else, because they saw me not littering. And the next day there could be three or four, etc. I feel vindicated that at least recycling has become more of a norm (at least in some provinces) than it was in my teens.

And at least by the time I was in my twenties I was reading about the Gaia Hypothesis (how the world is one symbiotic living organism and what you do to it in one place affects the whole)and how our pollutants were wreaking havoc with the world and if we stopped all smog causing agents then it would take at least fifty years to see any positive results.

In 1998 I wrote for a now defunct e-magazine (victim of the dot com downfall) called technocopia.com. It looked at how new technology was changing one's life and lifestyle, from cell phones in third world countries to robotic heart surgery. I was researching fuel cells and hybrid cars and came across the Kyoto Protocol. Governments had already signed up for it. So how is it in 2007 various governments have dropped out of fulfilling the requirements and now cry it will break the bank because there's not enough time?

I hear Stephan Dion say on CBC that pollution has just become a problem? What!! Just? Puhleese. I'm not sure what the benefit was to Tony Blair to stand up and start waving the big green flag but it suddenly looked like the cool thing to do and Canada jumped up beside him. George Bush of course is still in right wing crusder war mode.

But I'm cynical enough and eyes open enough to wonder why politicians would suddenly go on about this when a lot of us have known there's been a problem for over twenty years. Well, hmm, minority government. Who wouldn't want to keep our country green and with air we can breathe? For Harper it's a surefire way to garner a shiny star on his report card. But it would be much more believable if saving our resources wasn't done because of political maneuvering and was just done because it's the right thing to do.

And yet, the Conservatives whine and shuffle their feet and say oh we can't meet the Kyoto Protocol. Or, maybe we could but it would cost gadzillions and all you poor Canadians that we normally only care about when you're voting will pay the price. A few weeks ago on CBC the Current had business leaders from various sectors and they were saying that they were on board with changing and implementing environmentally safe processes and procedures. The interesting thing here was that all of them said that it would be more cost effective and they would probably actually make more profit by switching over. So how is it that the Baird Report says we're going to have to pay with our first born?

Perhaps I'd almost believe that maybe, just maybe, our lovely government was actually concerned with the environment and not with losing power if it wasn't that I see this as a big smokescreen. What have polls of recent years shown is the number one priority for Canadians: universal medicare. So why aren't we hearing more about this? Because it needs a massive overhaul. And we've all turned to look at the shiny new green flag being waved so that we won't notice the huge cutbacks, the ever longer waiting lists, the rampant deadly infections running amok in hospitals and killing people. Because the government can win votes easier with this lovely green beast than with the monster of medical coverage.

I was willing to let go some of my frustration, anger and disgust with the head-in-the-sand attitude various Canadian governments have had if it meant at least something was being done. But then we get the Baird Report; more stalling about actually really doing something.

I'm trying to do my part and have for years. I'd get a hybrid car if I could afford one. What part is the government really doing? Will they put teeth into their policies or leave them to gum the ankles of corporations and groups that continue to pollute? I'll wait and see.

Decade Monikers

I got thinking about the Roaring Twenties, and the Dirty Thirties. The Fighting Forties, the Faithful Fifties, the Swinging Sixties...then what happened. I'd heard these before plus the Space Age Sixties. I imagine these decade monikers came from news or other articles that garnered a fair amount of attention and then because of the rhyme/alliteration they stuck. But each progressive decade becomes vaguer. Were there any such tags attached to the 70s through to 2000? Did anyone ever hear different ones? Why was I thinking of this today? I have no idea, the rain, the sun, the passage of time.