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Brain Harvest Magazine
Weird flash fiction, delivered to the mobile. Neat idea. I should submit something. But I should write something of that length first. The following quote was in the rather unimpressive first story of theirs that I read. "Don’t you know that you only find what you’re looking for when you stop looking for it?" Amen.
02:23 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: lit-journalsThe most comprehensive good advice I know is the Zen admonition to live as if you were already dead.
sl---devils-devils-everywhere-narrative1i4.doc
Editing a previous draft. Good to take some time away and get some objectivity. Then you can read it fresh and see what it wants to be (as opposed to what you tried to make it become). Only through the first few pages of the edit. 11:04 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: in-progress, devils, draft, writing, fiction
sl---morris-bobetter-narrativeais.doc
At last, a first cohesive draft. 09:12 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: writing, fiction, swapmeet, bobetter, draft, in-progresssl---morris-bobetter-notes5.doc
Notes that haven't made it into the first draft of Bobetter's Oboe. 08:41 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: fiction, draft, bobetter, swapmeet, in-progress
What happens to junk left behind in foreclosed homes? That is a very good question, and ripe for storytelling, either from the POV of the former home-owner, or, even better, the POV of the foreclosure people. Sad, really. In fact, this video interview format would make a great trope for a piece of fiction. 09:50 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: inspiration, setting, character, story-starter
I don’t care about golf, but this periscope is fantastic. I want to write a story about someone who happens upon something like this accidentally. Perhaps a long-abandoned and overgrown gold course. Thank you boingboing.
09:45 AM
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Tags: inspiration, setting, story-starter
Sci-Fi Hugo Award magazines
The following is a list of magazines I grabbed from Locus Magazine’s voting page for the Hugo Awards, which is a good indication of whether they’re well-regarded in the industry, and thus where it would be good to get featured.
Analog
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight
Ansible
Asimov’s
Black Gate
Cemetery Dance
Clarkesworld
Electric Velocipede
Electric City
F&SF
Fantasy Magazine
Internet Review of Science Fiction
Interzone
Jim Baen’s Universe
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
The New York Review of Science Fiction
Postscripts
Realms of Fantasy
SFSite
SFWeekly
SF Revu
Strange Horizons
Subterranean
Talebones
Weird Tales
sl---morris-bobetter-narrative08u.doc
I haven't read it through yet, but I believe this is an actual semi-readable draft. Or real real close. 04:18 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: fiction, writing, draft, in-progress, swapmeet, bobetterPossibly my favorite Youtube video ever. I have nothing to offer in terms of storytelling. Just be captivated. 11:48 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: inspiration, video
James's Metastasizing Face
Her name was Dorothy. And though we never introduced ourselves, I have no choice but to blame her for the simple reason of synchronicity. I was on the train, packed in with all the other commuters, and had to look somewhere. She was cute. Small but thick lips, dark hair pulled back into an early twenties bun. A mismatch of colored clothing over Asian skin. Green framed glasses. She was reading, something called Hurricane I think out of an old hardcover book with those pages that make your fingertips feel dry and rough. I had to look somewhere and she was pleasant to look at. We were holding on to the same slick metal pole to keep from falling over. When the train cleared out at the first city stop, she sat down and continued reading. I watched her, tried to determine what age or nationality she might be. And then she looked at me. She looked directly and did not look away. After a second, I turned away, but I know that somewhere in that look, somewhere in that second, she did something to my face. Whether she took something, like a photo may steal your soul, or whether she gave something, like a curse or a flea, I cannot say, but I can say this: my face is changing. It is metastasizing. By the time I saw here again, at the coffee stand, when the barista called her name and taught it to me, my skin already felt loose and warm. Before noon, the skin had dissolved from the scalp to the bottom of my chin leaving only muscle and tendon and cartilege. By night it had regrown, but woody. I woke up and my face was a thick wooden mask with black horns and a red nose and false wooden eyes and slits beneath the false eyes for my real ones, and my ears were twice the size, though the back of my head still had it’s brown shaved hair. I stayed home to monitor it, called in sick, which everyone understood. Sometimes my face’s rate of change seemed to be speeding up, moving through phases minute by minute, and other times it seemed to slow down, taking almost a full day to shift. But then maybe it has stayed constant and it is only my assumptions on the borders between the phases that is mistaken. What do you call a face, and not just an expression, an unformed proto-face, or the sloughing of a face past its prime?
Today, my face is that of a reptile. I can tell by touch. There are no more mirrors in my house.
(The face becomes a butt and I walk on my head and hands, until I meet her at the art show and we shed our scales like fish.)
10:41 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story-starter