More TWAN author profiles: Robins, Kurisato, Bell, Kozzi and Arkenberg

Eden Robins is co-editor of Brain Harvest: An Almanac of Bad Ass Speculative Fiction, a webzine that is probably the single best venue for flash fiction. She will lead off M-Brane #9 in a few days with her remarkable short story “Wildlife,” and will appear in Things We Are Not with her story “Switch.” It is the strange tale of Sweetness, a woman who finds herself trapped in a preposterous situation that is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Readers will not soon forget its darkly triumphant ending.

As with Eden above, I am pleased to offer in the space of a few weeks, two items from Mari Kurisato. Her story “Lurker” will appear in M-Brane #9, to be followed shortly after by its sequel “Connected” in Things We Are Not. In these stories, Mari takes the reader to an alternate world slick with the cybersphere and layered with mystery and discovery. It’s a place that will seem both strange but also strangely familiar to readers who live a lot of their lives on the web. Mari is also, of course, the artist who created the book’s beautiful cover art.  The timing happens to be fortuitous because I will be including subscriptions to M-Brane with pre-orders of Things We Are Not when the pre-order period starts in a few days, so readers will be able to get both of Mari’s stories at once. Win.

Around the little M-Brane world, Brandon Bell hardly needs any introduction. Regular readers will recall his gorgeous and stunning stories in our first and fifth issues. His new offering, the book’s titular story, “Things We Are Not…,” is a window on a world that has been blighted by a bizarre plague, where humans still manage to find some comfort in each other…where a magpie talks.  No kidding. Brandon has managed to seamlessly weld together a science fictional premise, an urban-fantastical atmosphere, and some old-time religion (of the Elder Gods kind). In addition to his M-Brane appearances, Brandon has also been published in Byzarium, Everyday Weirdness, Hadley Rille’s Return to Luna antho, and Nossa Morte (forthcoming). He has also been a chief architect of the Aether Age shared world project, which is one of the Brane’s next big upcoming projects.

Jay Kozzi presents a story that is probably the grimmest in the whole collection, but ultimately one of the most redemptive as well. “Pos-psi-bilities” covers the coming-of-age years of a young gay guy who fights to survive the degrading and abusive conditions of his home-life as tragedies follow one upon another. But he has a special gift and a special ally. I guess I will also mention that it is not all grit and struggle in this story: it contains a segment of the most vivid and fun erotica in the anthology. It’s a remarkable story, and I believe that Kozzi has considered finishing a novel-length version of it (a good idea, I say).

Therese Arkenberg’s “Reila’s Machine” is set in a world where a privileged class inhabits airborne cities, while the less well-to-do get by as they can on the surface. Eresbet is a woman on the run from the sky people, wanted for theft, when she comes upon the home and workshop of Reila. Soon we learn that Reila is building something illegal, and together these women will risk everything to assert their freedom. It may be one of the most “exciting,” in an action/danger sense, of all the stories in the book. Therese is a young writer in Wisconsin from whom I suspect we will hear a lot more from in the future. She also appeared in M-Brane #4 with her story “Mother.”

In a few days, I will post again with info on the six remaining writers and their stories. Also, stand by for information about the book going up for sale.

[Images are, from top to bottom, of Robins, Kurisato, Bell, Kozzi, and Arkenberg...mostly swiped from Facebook, y'all.]

TWAN AUTHOR/STORY PROFILES: Rustad, Jeffers, Shapter, Gaskell and Griffiths

Abby “Merc” Rustad’s story “Queen for a Day” will startle and delight readers. A story of a young woman who gets to be Queen, literally, for a single day, it is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. It is also a marvelously designed tale of a character who has suffered too much injustice in life finally finding a breathtaking way to set things right. Merc is an up-and-coming writer with one of the darkest senses of irony and sharpest senses of humor that I have read in recent memory. Regular M-Brane readers will remember her story “Unpermitted” in issue #2, and she has also had recent publications with Dunesteef and elsewhere. For more information on Merc, follow her entertaining blog.

A couple of weeks ago when I was deciding the order of the table of contents, I decided that I wanted to end the book in a way that would take the reader to a world whose atmosphere and sense of wonder would linger long after reading the story. Things We Are Not will conclude with Alex Jeffers's beautiful novella “Composition with Barbarian and Animal.” It is one of two reprints in this collection, having appeared in a different form, in Silverberg and Haber’s Universe 3 in 1994. From the first line, the reader is pulled into a lushly textured world of strange and highly nuanced social orders, language, religion, personal power and love. Jeffers says that this story may one day be the first segment of a complete novel set in this world. I bet that readers will share my hope that this will indeed happen.

Lisa Shapter offers one of the most deeply subversive stories in the anthology, her “The World in His Throat,” a stand-alone excerpt from a longer novel. Told in a mode that reminded me (for some reason) somewhat of cerebral East European-style sf (think the 1970s Russian-made film version of Lem’s Solaris), it takes on issues of gender roles and reproductive rights in the context of males—military men, no less—needing to bear children as the “mothers” of a new human colony on a distant planet. Without revealing too many “spoilers,” I think readers will find fascinating and perhaps surprising the course of events for the first child of this new world, a boy engineered with the ability to self-impregnate, and the decision he makes for himself.

In “The Offside Trap,” Stephen Gaskell confronts homophobia and the psychological pain of denying who you are in the context of a sports story. Jacksy is a football team captain (that’s “soccer” to those of us in the States) with a strange ability. His personal life and his understanding of himself is upended when a new man joins the team, a man that Jacksy suspects of being a stealth gay and whose very presence comes to be perceived as an attack. Readers who know me personally may raise an eyebrow that I, the epitome of the non-sports fan, even selected a soccer story for this book. Readers will see why I did, however, when they read this one. It is gripping and darkly beautiful, much like (I am told) the game itself can be. Stephen Gaskell is a Clarion grad, a Writers of the Future published finalist and recently appeared in M-Brane SF with his story “Prisoners.”

As readers of Michael D. Griffiths’ “Skinjumper” serial in M-Brane are aware, Mike has a fascination with the concept of cloning and mind/body transfer as a means of literally changing one’s biological sex. His offering for Things We Are Not is not a Skinjumper story, but it does deal with technologically-aided sex-swapping.  With science fiction television, such as Star Trek, I have been told that the producers call episodes that are set entirely within the spaceship “bottle shows.” Also, back in the early days of science fiction movies there were plenty of examples of stories where a crew of people (men, mostly) travelled through space and worked out their very dramatic yet very Earthly issues in the confines of a ship. This story sort of took me back to those days. We have here a small party of people, men of no particular virtue other than their abilities to run a spaceship, who come into conflict with each other as a bizarre series of events plays out. It features gender-switching and an unbalanced, grotesquely sexist villain prowling the corridors. I was happy when I found the story because I had been thinking that we needed a grim “bottle show” to round out the book’s spectrum of subgenres. Mike’s next Skinjumper tale will appear in M-Brane #10.

In a few days, I will post again with some information on a few more writers and their stories.

[Images from top to bottom are of Rustad, Jeffers, Gaskell and Griffiths.]

THINGS WE ARE NOT progress report; update on cover art and the contest

As I mentioned on the main M-Brane page the other day, the "official" release date for Things We Are Not is now probably 10/15 rather than 10/1. It may actually come sooner, but I don't want to promise it since it's already 9/15 and I still have to get the print proof in hand and approved (it's arriving shortly). Format for the print edition is a 6x9 trade paperback, and it will run approximately 350 pages. It contains about 140,000 words of fiction. So a pretty hefty book!  I can't wait to see it in physical form. I hope to announce the prices for the print and electronic editions within a few days, and I expect to have some pre-order deals to announce.

I am changing course somewhat on how to present the cover art.  I had planned to have two distinct editions with the girl cover on one and the boy cover on the other (which plan inspired the vote/contest to select the favorite). It turns out that doing two different covers--because of the way my print publisher works--would make this essentially two distinct publication projects, creating a number of hassles too dull to describe in detail here. Also, since I will be selling/shipping most of the domestic orders on the print edition directly from here rather than directing everyone to Amazon, it would add another layer of logistical challenge just as far as having the right amount of the right kind of book on hand. It sometimes happens that what once seemed like a brilliant plan looks much less so when all the details become known.

So, here's the new plan: I am still using both pieces of art, but the girl version will fill the front cover and the boy version will appear on the back, and I am endeavoring to not have the lads be too obscured by back-cover text. This way, everyone can enjoy both pieces of Mari's artwork, while the overwhelming winner of the vote gets to be on the front. I should be able to display an image of the finished cover within a few days. As to the vote:  I am going to leave the dollar donation buttons for the girl vs. boy contest up. I will still enter anyone who votes into the drawing for the Fabulous Prize (see original post on the contest)!  At this point the female cover has an insurmountable lead in the voting, and since I need to go to press with a final cover shortly, I am going to declare that the lovely ladies have won this election in a landslide. But it's still worth trying to win the prize, and those dollars all go toward the good cause of keeping M-Brane alive and well.

In a few days I will be posting some profiles of the book's authors on this page. So check back soon (I will also place notice of news on this page on the M-Brane main page as well).

SPONSORSHIP DRIVE STILL NEEDS $105!

See the "Sponsorship" post earlier on this page for details on how to be a Benefactor! This funds drive has gone amazingly well so far, but we still need about $105 to reach the goal. And we need to reach the goal. I will, as described below, consider donations of any amount as applicable to this sponsorship. Any further "votes" in the cover art contest (see below) will apply. Also, any payments for new subscriptions to M-Brane SF will apply. We will succeed.

COVER ART CONTEST, with PRIZE!

You'll see over in the right-hand column under the Benefactor donation buttons, two more donation buttons, entreating you to vote for either the "Boy" or "Girl" versions of Mari Kurisato's cover art for Things We Are Not (images with this post). The contest rules are quite lax:

1) Vote as many times as you want--the dollars collected go toward the same fundraising drive as the Benefactor plan. Can't decide whether you likes girls or boys better? Then vote for both! And, as I always say, "Vote early and vote often."

2) Ballot-stuffing is fine. Want to get other people to throw in some money and vote a hundred times under your own name? Fine. We don't mind. The $1.00 "poll tax" makes us look the other way.

3) The winning cover art will be hailed and feted as The Winner, though both images will be used anyway in two

different editions of the book. But only one will be the "real" Winner. Which gender will it be?

4) A prize winner

will be chosen at random from among the voters (I'll know who you are and how to contact you from the Pay Pal receipt that I will receive). Despite the rule about ballot-stuffing, each person voting will only have his or her name entered into the contest pool once, to keep it economically fair (though repeated voting is still encouraged because the dollars are all for a good cause and it can have an impact on whether girls or boys "win").

and now....to announce The Prize:

A copy of the print edition of Things We Are Not (with cover art of your choice) personally inscribed by artist Mari Kurisato and yours truly. Mari will also add to the book a special one-of-a kind print of an as-yet-unseen piece of original artwork! Awesome!

The polling station is now open.

SPONSORSHIP

Yesterday I announced the title, table of contents and put up a cover art preview for Things We Are Not (see previous post). I have also set up this separate M-Brane blog page just for matters related to the anthology.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am quite impressed with the diversity and quality of stories that I ended up with for this project. Some stories deal directly with issues of sexuality, while some incorporate it as an incidental element in the story. The collection has a good gender balance also, with female writers creating both female and male characters; male writers doing the same; and writers of both sexes imagining some new expressions of queer sexuality that are made possible by science fiction. The authors themselves represent across the spectrum as well. While I do not know the personal orientations of all of them (nor is it my business), I happen to know that plenty of the stories come from str8 male and female writers as well as gay guys and lesbians. I am very happy that the premise of the book did not ward away straight writers, nor did it attract too much cheesiness from gay male erotica writers (note: I very much like gay male erotica, but I didn’t want it to dominate the collection; I’ll also note that a lot of str8 female fantasists seem, for some reason, to be especially good at writing gay male erotica).

Now to the necessary panhandling portion of this post: The initial publication of the anthology involves a couple of up-front costs that I would like to have comfortably defrayed ahead of time to ease stress on my little family. New subscriptions and single-copy sales of M-Brane have been seriously lagging for the last couple of months, and the treasury is being depleted rather too quickly. I am going to do some advance sales of Things We Are Not soon, which should help, but I have decided to also offer a way for interested parties to support this project for a very modest sum in exchange for some promotion by way of M-Brane (the zine and the blog) and within Things We Are Not. Specifically, I would like to raise an extra $500. More would be great, too, but $500 would make things comfortable both for the launch of the book and for the next few months of the zine. This is how I would like to do it:

Become a Benefactor of M-Brane SF and Things We Are Not:

In exchange for a donation, I am offering the following:

1. Listing on a sponsorship page in Things We Are Not of your name or project or company, a one-line description of who you are or what your business is, where applicable, and the address of your webpage, if applicable. For example, it could say something like: “Chris Fletcher, President of the United States, Defending Democracy, www. whitehouse.gov” Or “Big Scary Object Magazine: The biggest and scariest sf magazine in the Galaxy. (website)” Or “Clive McPowell, DDS: Dentist and lover. Best oral care.” Or, “Olaf Stapledon, deceased science fiction writer. Follow my new blog at…” And so on. You get the idea. And you don’t need to be selling anything either or pushing a website. A sponsorship can just be on behalf of yourself or even anonymous.

2. Listing of the same sponsorship information, with my abundant thanks, in M-Brane #9 (October).

3. Listing of same sponsorship information, with web links, on the Things We Are Not blog page for as long as this page remains up.

4. For donation amounts of $20.00 or greater, all the above plus an electronic advance review copy of the book (in PDF), issued a week or two ahead of the official publication date of the paper editions and the other formats, and a year subscription to the PDF edition of M-Brane SF.

I am placing a new donations button on this page (upper right). I am not asking for a specific level of contribution from anyone—I just want to meet the total goal one way or another. If I were to suggest an amount, it would probably be ten dollars, but if anyone can do more than that, it would certainly be appreciated. If some people can’t manage that much but can do a smaller amount, then this is much appreciated as well. After placing a donation via Pay Pal, sponsors can then email me mbranesf (at) gmail (dot) com with whatever info or acknowledgement I should include on the sponsors page.

Cover image preview

The great Mari Kurisato has prepared two fantastic images as possible cover art for this book. I preview them both here as they might appear in the finished product. Please note that this design is just a mock-up, a temporary thing meant to convey roughly what the book cover may look like. The final product may (almost certainly will) be different. I will be conducting a vote, as part of an actual contest with a prize, to determine which of these images ends up being on the final cover. More news about that will follow soon.