Tonight at midnight, “Between Two Treasons”, the second in my hopefully never-ending series of short stories about those lovable, man-eating, gun-slinging, ten-gallon-hat-wearing, prick-devouring centaurs goes live in issue #23 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

It is not for the faint-at-heart. Or the underage.

But please go read it anyway.

And the first one too, if you like—which is here.

This is some gloriously beer-addled 17th-century monk’s copy of a copy of a long-lost ancient jewelry engraving depicting a cloven-hoofed centaur residing at the center of the labyrinth of Daedalus. Whoever that monk was, if I ever manage to hunt down his moldering skull, I will give it a fat, wet smooch.

In all the blogosphere hullabaloo last month over the June closings of Lone Star Stories and Talebones, my posts included, and perhaps even more timely now with the recent closings of Farrago’s Wainscot and Baen’s Universe, I came across one really interesting comment. The stalwarts decrying the sky-is-falling mourners were almost as predictable as the mourners themselves, but this comment had a seed of insight I hadn’t seen before.

Lois Tilton, short fiction author and reviewer for The Internet Review of Science Fiction, in the preface to her July column, wrote:

But what I found most telling about all this discussion was the fact that, universally, the reactions I saw were decrying the demise of markets. Not venues where readers could go to find good stories, but places for writers to sell their fiction.

Fiction magazines should be about reading stories. They should exist for readers. Not writers. I don’t believe that a magazine can thrive when its readership is comprised entirely of writers trying to be published in its pages. Yet it seems to me that this is increasingly the case in the field of SF short fiction. I think we are coming to the point where we will have no readers, only a circle of writers feeding on themselves.

I think she’s absolutely right. I have thought for years that SF/F short fiction may already be at the point where its audience is almost exclusively other writers. This very state is suggested by the common derisive story subgenre label “award winner” to denote the type of stories that other writers love and therefore are more likely to win awards but that readers in general don’t understand or find entertaining.

In fantasy especially, I think this is related to the divergence between the readership of short fiction and of novels. Fantasy short fiction has become increasingly “literary” over the past few decades, yet fantasy novels with the traditional quasi-medieval settings and plot-based narratives are still bestsellers. Many writers and short fiction fans scoff at those novels, but they are clearly entertaining far more readers than fantasy short fiction is.

This was part of my reason for starting Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Not only do I really enjoy “literary adventure fantasy” short fiction that is both literary and traditional, I also wanted to try to bring some of that popular fantasy vibe back into short fiction, with stories that would hopefully impress other writers and also entertain readers.

Only “some” of that popular fantasy vibe, mind you–I must admit that some of its plainer aspects don’t appeal to me. But I do think that in great “literary adventure fantasy,” there is enough overlap to entertain both writers and sophisticated readers.

How well is it working? Visit Beneath Ceaseless Skies, read a few stories, and see for yourself. :)

What follows are Brillat-Savarin’s rules for achieving the perfect meal. As far as I’m concerned, among the poetry of the rational they ought to be considered on par with The Art of War, Ovid’s Art of Love, and the Phaedo. They open with a solemn invocation to a Muse of Eating invented on the spot, and they close with immortality—but what’s in between is the stuff of everyday, run-of-the-mill happiness.

But the impatient reader may ask, how, in this year of grace 1825, must a meal be contrived in order to combine the conditions which procure the pleasures of the table in the highest degree?

That question I am about to answer. Compose yourselves, readers, and pay attention; Gasterea inspires me, the prettiest of all the Muses; I shall be clearer than an oracle, and my precepts will go down the ages.

Let the number of guests be not more than twelve, so that the talk may be constantly general;

Let them be chosen with different occupations but similar tastes, and with such points of contact that the odious formalities of introduction can be dispensed with;

Let the dining-room be well lighted, the cloth impeccably white, and the atmosphere maintained at a temperature of from sixty to seventy degrees;

Let the men be witty without being too pretentious, and the women charming without being too coquettish;

Let the dishes be few in number, but exquisitely choice, and the wines of the first quality, each in its class;

Let the service of the former proceed from the most substantial to the lightest, and of the latter, from the mildest to the most perfumed;

Let the progress of the meal be slow, for dinner is the last business of the day; and let the guests conduct themselves like travellers due to reach their destination together;

Let the coffee be piping hot, and the liqueurs chosen by a connoisseur;

Let the drawing-room be large enough to allow a game at cards to be arranged for those who cannot do without, yet still leave space for postprandial conversations;

Let the guests be detained by the charms of the company and sustained by the hope that the evening will not pass without some further pleasure;

Let the tea be not too strong, the toast artistically buttered, and the punch mixed with proper care;

Let retirement begin not earlier than eleven o’clock, but by midnight let everyone be in bed.

Whoever has been present at a meal fulfilling all these conditions may claim to have witnessed his own apotheosis; and for each of them who which is forgotten or ignored, the guests will suffer a proportionate decrease of pleasure.

—Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin, Physiologie du goût, ou Méditations de gastronomie transcendante

It’s hard not to notice: the man’s got an ego on him. But he’s not wrong, is he? This stuff is gold. Interpret some of these things metaphorically, the way I do, say, that line about giants in the bible, and he could really be talking about my local writing group in Noho the other week, a recent weekend with my gaming pals, a night of blissful exhaustion and bisquick pizza cooked over a propane burner on a trail somewhere under the stars, or a protracted dinner with the Homeless Moon. Some of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

My article "The Sidewalk: Notes from an Amateur Bookseller" is available now at the IROSF. It's about my experiences last year selling books at my neighborhood's local flea market. You have to register with IROSF to read it, but it's free.

A sample:

Of course, I hadn't read every book on the table, especially most of the horror titles. Those were the ones my friends had given me in order to thin out their own collections. Whenever a prospective customer held up a horror novel and asked me what it was about, I'd always say "It's about a man"—(or a woman, depending on the customer's gender)—"who returns to his/her hometown, and there are ghosts in it and a haunted carnival."

Enjoy!

Two weeks ago, I read from my short story “Ebb” at the TNEO 2009 Flash Fiction Slam at the Barnes & Noble in Manchester, NH. That story, in the summer issue of Space and Time, has gotten some great reviews. TNEO is a week-long workshop for alumni of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, which includes me and my Homeless Moon cohorts and many other great young writers.

Another Odyssey alum, Abby Goldsmith, took some nice photos. Here’s one of me reading from “Ebb”: