FenCon

I'll be in Dallas next weekend Sept. 27-28 for the FenCon convention. Here is my schedule:

You Got SF in my Mystery!
Saturday 10:00 AM Addison Lecture Hall

Handwavium And Technobabble
Saturday 6:00 PM Pin Oak

Why Should You Join A Professional Organization?
Sunday 10:00 AM Pin Oak

Why Worldcon?
Sunday 1:00 PM Trinity I - IV

I don't have an autographing but I'll still have copies of "The Clock Struck None" if anyone wants to buy one.

"Back Own My Stab"

"Back Own My Stab" in Every Day Fiction is my 85th story published since June 2003. It went live on Tuesday. There were some very nice comments:

Derek McMillan • Great story. I love the paradoxes of time travel. They are literally endless. Excuse me I have to go and give some advice for my teenage self, but will I listen? Not on your life :)

Tibor Simic • A neat old-fashioned story with a cool final sentence. I'm not a big fan of expository dialogue, especially at the beginning of a story, but here it works rather well.

terrytvgal • Original and fun. Time travel lends itself to so many possibilities and I generally always enjoy this sort of story.

Shelley Lerea • Fun, interesting story! I love time travel stories, good job, four stars!

Walter Giersbach • Lou, this is a terrific riff on the time travel trope. Especially good because it doesn't beg belief and there's a secondary theme of lust derailed for love and happiness all around.

Bud Clayman • I liked the story. I didn't connect that much with the characters as Martin was a cold fish, but the piece was clever enough to hold my attention. It had many twists and turns which made it interesting.

There was the usual slew of nastiness from people who either don't get it, or think their taste is God's mind, and the normal attacks on the author's abilities.

I have two stories pending publication in Tales of the Talisman and Stupefying Stories. I currently have 17 stories on submission is various and assorted slush piles.

"Otherwise"

I've started a blog called Otherwise where I will be reprinting my alternate history fiction.

It kicks off with "A Rocket for the Republic", originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 2005.

It was the last story Gardner Dozois bought before he retired as editor of Asimov's. It placed 3rd in the Best Short Story category in the annual Asimov's Readers' Poll in 2006. It has subsequently been reprinted in "Fantastic Texas" (2009) and "Texas and Other Planets" (2010). It will also be reprinted in the upcoming "Letters from Gardner" being published by The Merry Blacksmith Press.

My goal with Otherwise is to reprint a story once a week.

Here is a link:

"Captain of the Clouds"

Sunday and Monday I banged out my latest short story, a retro-pulp dieselpunk alternate history called "Captain of the Clouds" It starts with an eleven-year old boy on a raft in the Mississippi who pulls an airship captain out of the water after he is tossed overboard when his dirigible is hijacked.

It's a cute story with a happy ending. I'll probably never be able to sell it. The major genre magazines only want stylish bullshit about how much the future's gonna suck. But I really pretty much write for myself, so who cares? I like it, and that's all that really matters. If anyone else happens to read it and also like it, that's so much gravy.

Sixteen slushpiles

Latest on the submission front: Dropped three stories in slush piles this weekend, for total of 16 total out on submission.

"The Sub-Basement"

The Ironic Fantastic No. 3 has just been published. It has my short story "The Sub-Basement". This is actually the most recent story I've completed; I finished it the first week of June. Here's a link to a free PDF download:

I hadn't had a story published since May, but if things proceed on schedule, I may have three more stories published this month - "Bigfoot Fruit" in Common Oddities Speculative Fiction Sideshow, "Back Own My Stab" in Every Day Fiction, and "Riders of the Red Shift" in Stupefying Stories. That would mean I will have had twice as many stories published in one month as I had since the start of the year.

"The Sub-Basement" is my 84th story published since 2003.

In the mail

I dropped a signed contract for "Cerulean Dream" in the mail to David Lee Summers of Hadrosaur Tales for its publication in the winter issue of Tales of the Talisman.

That's always a nice feeling.

Closeout Sale

I am somewhat pleasantly surprised to realize that — in both cases — the two stories that were accepted on Sunday were the last to go in their respective publications next edition. "The Sub-Basement" was the last story to go into the table of contents of The Ironic Fantastic No. 3, while Every Day Fiction issued its line-up for September right after they accepted "Back Own My Stab".

Of course Sunday was August 31, but I had no idea I would come skidding under the door twice on the same day.

With three acceptances this week I decided it's time to start replenishing my stock of stories and I got the first 1,000 words down tonight in my next short story, "Chasing Madame Booyah".

Catching up

Every Day Fiction has bought my flash "Back Own My Stab". That's three acceptances in a week, and two in one day. Earlier Sunday The Ironic Fantastic took "The Sub-Basement" for Issue No. 3. Tales of the Talisman bought "Cerulean Dream" for its winter issue on Wednesday.

I spent some time Sunday reading over submissions for a short story contest. I noted one aspiring author was guilty of "style over substance abuse".