I’m back from the annual Odyssey workshop alumni week, where we lecture and critique and live in steamy dorms again. Highlights included reading my story from the Homeless Moon 3 chapbook, “NEW! The ‘Gearwork Rose’(TM) Automated Gratification Engine,” aloud at the Barnes & Noble reading, learning more about writerly promotion and how to read aloud, and (as always) drinking fine and eclectic beers with Mike DeLuca.

Another big highlight for me was a couple long conversations with several people about a point I’ve reached in my writing. For several years now, I’ve been consistently getting my stories passed up by slush readers but not bought by the head editors. These stories are as good as I know how to make them, but I still haven’t been able to crack through.

So I’ve arrived at a crossroads. And unlike in the fine Southern mythical tradition, the devil was not waiting there to cut a deal with me. But hashing out some possible new projects and tweaks to my approach, with several supremely supportive and insightful writers, showed me a few really neat new paths to explore.

Although the drinking of fine beers is one of the main reasons I go, the writerly insight and discussion is right up there too. It’s a lot like hashing over scientific problems with a research group–arriving at insight by both talking and listening, an individual insight that’s a product of the group whole. Of course, the process is only as good as those other people you’re hashing with, and these were some of the best I know. It truly does take a whole foulburg.

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(”Foulburg” is supposed to be a term that means the shanty-town outside the walls of a medieval city, but from googling I fear that it originated with 80s epic fantasy author Raymond E. Feist and isn’t an actual recognized term. But why let the truth get in the way of a cool line? :) )

Go enjoy a two fisted fable rooted in my love of hyperbolic and melodramatic action storytelling!

http://www.brainharvestmag.com/2010/07/grudge-match/

And I love the comment at the bottom. Please feel free to leave your own!

Cheers!

JSR

Readercon was pretty fun. It may have been the first con I’ve attended where I didn’t feel weird, awkward or out of place hardly at all. And to think, it only took five years…and some beer…to achieve! I appeared disguised in mutton-chop extensions and a false Scottish accent on a “Future of Short Fiction Markets” panel, drank a lot of fine beer (no Brick Red though, disappointingly!) with a lot of fine people, read from “Between Two Treasons” at a packed Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading, and sat sheepishly behind the Small Beer table taking credit by proxy for all their wonderful new stuff and repeatedly forgetting to give away Daily Planners and talk up Weightless Books.

We did in fact get The Homeless Moon 3 Chapbook out in time. Barely in time, but it happened! And they went like hotcakes. I printed about 200 and ended up with less than 50. And then I gave away a bunch more to the Odyssey 2010 class at the TNEO mixer. Not many left. Get one now!

Here it is in its natural habitat in our suite at TNEO:

Tomorrow night (sorry for the short notice—you know how I am with these announcement things), I’ll be reading a new William-o poem at the TNEO Flash Fiction Slam, starting at 6:00 PM at the Manchester, NH Barnes & Noble. I’ll be joined by other fine Odyssey grads including my pal Scott H. Andrews, Hannah Strom-Martin (whose story “Father Pena’s Last Dance” appears in this month’s Realms of Fantasy, Barbara A. Barnett, Rita Oakes, Ellen Denham and many others. Here’s a map. Please come by and say hello!

Featuring:

Scott H. Andrews, “New! The ‘GEARWORK ROSE’™”
Jason S. Ridler, “Iron Horse in the City of Stone”
Michael J. DeLuca, “The Unicyclist’s Fate”
Erin Hoffman, “Precise and Invariable Laws”
Justin Howe in Absentia

PLUS Erin Hoffman’s astounding Steampunk Story Generator!

For the first time, this year’s chapbook is available in print, PDF, EPUB and PRC formats! Woo! Get it free!

Want to read a fantastical retelling of the Minotaur myth with pro wrestlers in the 1920s? Then check out "Skulduggery at the Junction" at The Edge of Propinquity!

http://www.edgeofpropinquity.net/library.asp?id=301

It's loosely based on the history of when pro wrestling became "fake" during the 1920s, the life of Ed "Strangler" Lewis, with a nod to Hemingway.




Enjoy!

JSR

I was recently asked by Mishell Baker of the Clarion Foundation (who has a great story in BCS #47) to guest blog about my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies. They’ve had agents, like Matt Bialer and Russ Galen, do guest posts about the state of things in their part of the field. Mishell suggested that I talk abut why I started BCS in the particular niche of “literary adventure fantasy.”

I’ve talked about that in some other places before. It’s always hard for me to put it into words, since anything about fiction is so subjective. I really enjoyed thinking about it still more and refining my explanation, and this guest post I think is the best I’ve ever gotten it.

So if you’d like more insight into how I view literary adventure fantasy and BCS in general, check out my guest post and add your two cents to the discussion.

Dolichonyx oryzivorus, summer plumage. Upland meadow, Graves Farm Sanctuary, Haydenville, MA

Got back from ReaderCon yesterday. It was awesome.

I saw and drank with lots of people I knew (Tom Crosshill, Maggie Ronald, Anne Cross, Mike Allen, Jay and Erin, my eternal partner in barley Mike DeLuca, and many others), met and drank with lots of new people I now know (Matt Kressel, Corry and Mary, Rajan, Amy, Mishell Baker, and many, many others), and had great interesting conversations with all of them.

Photographic evidence of the former, courtesy of Matt Kressel:

The BCS reading had eight authors, including one right off the airplane! :) And the room was packed with readers and fans. Thanks to everyone who read and everyone who came to listen.

And especially to everyone who came up to me in the Dealer’s Room or at parties and said they really like the magazine. That is always awesome to hear, each and every time, and I’m delighted you’re enjoying our fiction.

I will be at ReaderCon this weekend, the small and very cool literary F/SF con in Boston.

I’ll be promoting Beneath Ceaseless Skies, with some snazzy flyers featuring our new gorgeous cover art and some postcards with the cover of the Best of BCS anthology.

There will be a reading of BCS authors, including Margaret Ronald, Matthew Kressel, Mishell Baker, Erin Hoffman, Tom Crosshill, and more. It’s Friday at 6pm in the VT room. Drop by and hear some great literary adventure fantasy.

So if you see me in the halls (or in the bar! :) ), feel free to say hello!

You thought it wouldn’t happen, we ourselves are not unsurprised that it is actually going to happen, but it is. The Homeless Moon chapbook 3 goes to the printer tomorrow, and we’re releasing it at Readercon 21 at the end of the week. And it will no doubt appear online and in ebook form a little later on.

I’m going to deviate from the usual MO and not give away the cover art just yet. We’ve done something a little different with this year’s chapbook, both in theme and subject matter, which I think you will like better if it lurches suddenly up over the crest of yon hilltop, hits you with a targeting laser and says boo.

No, I did not just give it away. That was a reference to the Chapbook One cover.

What has not changed: I did the cover, Erin did the layout, and all of us did the editing, the proofing, and the kickass eclectic fiction.

Here instead is some other thing I decided not to use for the cover:

See you at Readercon. Most likely you’ll find me at the Small Beer dealers’ table hunched over a stack of unfinished TNEO crits. Or at the pub hunched over a Sam Adams Brick Red.