A couple years ago I was in the checkout line at a Borders bookstore. Behind me was a girl, eleven or twelve years old. In her hands she had a couple CDs, maybe one PS2 game, and three YA novels.

More novels than either CDs or video games! I wanted to give her a great big hug right there in the checkout line. (Which, as an unshaven middle-aged man, probably would’ve gotten me arrested…. :) ) But with reading rates plunging and modern kids distracted by more other entertainment options than ever before, any kid who’s reading any fiction is fine by me. If they learn to love reading and/or the stuff they’re reading, hopefully they’ll keep reading fiction as an adult. And with paranormal and SF/F/H the hottest thing right now in YA, it’s even better for us writers of adult spec-fic.

Author and blogger John Scalzi has a great post today on this very subject. He notes that YA novels have been finalists and winners for several of the major SF/F awards this year. And he thinks it’s great too.

This is of course all market-driven–YA readers are buying paranormal stuff, so authors are writing it and publishers are publishing it. But behind that market trend are millions of young readers who hopefully will carry an interest in fiction into their adult lives.

Yesterday I received great news about my magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. storySouth recently named BCS as the runner-up for their Million Writers Award for Best New Online Magazine of 2008, saying that BCS was “already a top online SF/F market.”

In addition, two stories from BCS were named among their Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2008: “The Crystal Stair” by Charles Coleman Finlay & Rae Carson Finlay and “Architectural Constants” by Yoon Ha Lee. These stories and the other hundred or so semi-finalists will be culled down to ten by May 15; then the public will vote top winners.

storySouth is an online literary magazine founded by writer and editor Jason Sanford. They tirelessly champion online literary fiction of all genres, including SF/F. Over fifty magazines were represented in the finalists for Notable Stories, so it’s a great honor to have BCS and these stories recognized among such great venues and work!

I just stumbled onto possibly the best object lesson in showing, not telling in fiction I’ll ever get.

In 2005, I wrote a story called “Hope and Erosion”, about a kingdom living in a sandcastle threatened by the rising tide. It was the second story I’d ever sold, to a Christian fantasy e-zine called Dragons, Knights and Angels. I was very proud of it at the time. At the time, it was the best story I’d ever written.

In 2004, all unbenknownst to me at the time, Jeffrey Ford wrote a story called “The Annals of Eelin Ok”, which was published in Datlow and Windling’s The Faery Reel, and won the Fountain Award for that year (and on whose website it can still be read for free). It’s based on the exact same premise: a tiny, fantastical being living out his life in a sandcastle made by human hands. His story is way better. I just listened to it on a Podcastle show from a couple weeks back, read by Rajan Khanna, who may be my new favorite podcast reader—his voice is understated, quiet and calm and eminently listenable, but somehow capable of hitting just the right emotional notes with the strength of a clapper striking a cathedral bell. It almost made me cry.

Here’s the lesson: everything about a story is more powerful when you’re experiencing it right there with the character. “Hope and Erosion” is told like a parable. Hermit, the hero, is a hero in the classic fairytale sense, the way Sir Gawain is a hero, or the Red Cross Knight. Which is fine, but there’s no understanding that kind of hero as a person. He’s away up there on the pedestal of myth.

Eelin Ok is a fairy, but he’s a person. His whole life is there on the page, his heart is open, and you’re in it.

I suppose this lesson may work better on me than on you, gentle reader, since you may not have had the luck to have written the exact same story as Jeffrey Ford. But if you feel so inclined, you might could get a similar effect if you read the two stories side by side.

Read the Jeff Ford story, anyway, if you haven’t. It’s awesome.

The rebel attack caught some stormtroopers less prepared than others.

My contributor’s copies of Space and Time #107 recently arrived, the issue that includes my short story “Ebb.”

They look gorgeous. As always, the typeface and printing is crisp and clean, and the paper is nice, thick white stock–much better many other print magazines. There’s a neat B&W illustration for “Ebb” by an artist named David Grilla, which is pretty cool. It doesn’t fit the setting exactly, but that’s no problem; it’s a weird setting.

I’m very happy to see this story in print. It’s probably the most extreme of my “literary traditional fantasy” stories in that the narrative veers well into literary territory, but the story also has one of my most meticulous, almost SF, scondary-world settings. It also has an ending that editors at several top-level magazines completely missed, so I’m delighted that the folks at Space and Time enjoyed it.

If you’re interested in checking it out, Space and Time now offers a PDF subscription at half-price. You won’t get the thick white stock, but you will get all the crisp print!

Hi all. Behind on updates again, but just wanted to get in a quick update. More posts coming soon, including a Smeagol update -- he has a vet re-visit next Saturday. Overall, he's doing much better -- more details soon. :) Much travel ahead... NYC this weekend, Seattle next month (for LOGIN Conference, where erikbethke and I will be discussing BetterEULA's second year), NYC again in June for State of Play, TNEO in July, and of course many trips to LA in between... I've given up updating my Dopplr account.

So, writing stuff!

Here are some links:

• "Stormchaser, Stormshaper", in today's issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  
  
• "No Signal" and "Bag Man" in issue 10 of Farrago's Wainscot.

In Beneath Ceaseless Skies, also check out Marie Brennan's "Driftwood", and, if so inclined, her wonderful post about the magazine on her LJ. If podcasts are your thing, also check out the mag's audio fiction.

In Farrago's Wainscot, also check out other great stories by Bruce Boston & Lee Ballentine, Toiya Kristen Finley, Jason Fischer, Jason Heller, S. J. Hirons, and Matthew Kressel, poetry by Miranda Gaw, and a very interesting experimental word piece by Jeffrey Barnes.

Go forth and read!

In a move that could affect the majority of SF/F short fiction magazines currently operating, there is a motion up for vote at this year’s WorldCon to abolish the Hugo Award category for Semipro Zine.

This Semipro Zine category covers many of the most vibrant magazines publishing today, including Clarkesworld Magazine, Weird Tales (which published my story “Excision” in #347), and Fantasy Magazine. My own magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies also fits this category.

Many great stories have appeared in Semipro Zines since the category was established in the 1980s. These magazines publish far more new writers and experimental fiction than the “pro” zines do. Clarkesworld Magazine and Weird Tales were both nominated for this Hugo this year. I think it would be a shame if we lost this Hugo category as a way to recognize accomplishments made at this vital level of short fiction publishing.

Editor Neil Clarke has started a website to Save the Semipro Zine Hugo. It features listings of Semipro Zines and awards they and their fiction have won. It also explains the WorldCon voting process and how attendees can participate.If you are as concerned about this as I am, please visit his site and learn what you can do to help.

A very complimentary overall review of my online fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies in a blog post by fantasy novelist Marie Brennan.

Of course, Ms. Brennan also has an interest in BCS because we’ve published several of her stories (the second of which is due out in Issue #14 in a few days). But I think it’s even higher praise to hear that the magazine is impressing people as readers.

I started BCS because no fantasy magazine was consistently publishing the type of fantasy stories that I love to read–set in a secondary world (invented or historical) and focused on strong and interesting characters.

It sounds like that type of fantasy is also what Ms. Brennan likes to read. So I’m delighted not only that she’s enjoyed specific stories in BCS, but even moreso that she’s enjoying the overall flavor of fantasy that BCS specializes in.

If you do too–if you like fantasy with strong, driven characters that’s set in awe-inspiring worlds–definitely check us out.

Opening Day–for some of us, the greatest day of the year. After three months of winter chill and another of spring training, the boys of summer return–a sure sign that the weather will soon warm and leaves will soon be on the trees. There’s also an egalitarian feel about Opening Day that I love–on Opening Day, every team is tied for first place.

With baseball these days just as big-money commercial as everything else, Opening Day now stretches over several days and some seasons over several continents. But my team’s Opening Day actually will be today, thanks to one timeless constant that even television contracts and pushy agents can’t change–the weather. :) To paraphrase a young pitching phenom from the Carolina League twenty years ago, some Opening Days you win, some Opening Days you lose, and some Opening Days, it rains.