Contest to win "Servant of the Underworld"

My friend and fabulous writer Aliette de Bodard is holding a contest on her website right now, to correspond with the US release of her Aztec fantasy/murder mystery, Servant of the Underworld. If you'd like to take a guess at where she'll be going for her honeymoon, you could win a prize pack! To find out more, check out:

http://aliettedebodard.com/2010/09/24/announcing-the-great-honeymoon-competition/

Watch out, Reality- Eight Against Reality is available now!

It's here! I've talked about Eight Against Reality before, but now that it's officially available from Panverse Publishing and from Amazon, I want to take this opportunity to introduce you personally. Each story in this volume was written by a member of my writer's group, Written in Blood (you can tell we take our writing and critiquing seriously!) - and you may recognize some of these names, because two of us now have published books, and many others have had stories appear in venues like Asimov's, Analog, Black Static, Strange Horizons, and others.

I feel really lucky to be working with such terrific writers - I believe in these guys and in their stories, and it's this atmosphere of mutual respect and support that has kept our group together so long, and made us so successful.

You can find a blurb on each story on the Panverse website, but here's my own take on the stories in Eight Against Reality, including a short excerpt from each:

The Eminence's Match by Juliette Wade
You all know me... This story takes place in Varin, the first world I created and one I've worked on for about twenty years (!). The question I wanted to ask in it was this: what makes an evil ruler, and why would a servant consent to work for him? I wanted to cross the border from the easy assumptions of common fantasy into more psychologically and sociologically real territory.

Excerpt:
Shadowless in the light of two hundred and twelve electric bulbs on his vaulted stone ceiling, the Eminence Nekantor frowned down across his naked ribs. Look: two gold buttons at the waist of his silk trousers. Fastened, both of them, completely fastened. Deceptively fastened. They had been fastened wrong: lower-then-upper, not upper-then-lower. The difference stuck to the buttons like fingerprints. The difference felt like fingers pressing on his mind.

His servant’s fingers.

Kurek had done it. That was new: Kurek doing the buttons wrong
today, when they had been right yesterday, the day before—for months now already. That was different, unexplained. Unacceptable.

“Kurek,” he said. “These buttons are wrong.”

“Wrong, your Eminence?”

Kurek’s voice was tight, tight like closed fists. Recalcitrant servant! Always guarded, never conceding to the truth inherent in the Imbaticaste tattoo that covered his forehead: he was a tool, a tool to be used and controlled by the greater man. Oh, what it would feel like to break past those closed fingers, to lay him bare and open, to wield him in all his subtle complex talents. Perfect control: a prize worth all the unrelenting demands of the game required to win it. The game must never be neglected.


Kip, Running by Genevieve Williams
Genevieve is a librarian (a profession I greatly admire) and a terrific writer. "Kip, Running" is one of those stories where the setting of future Seattle seems to take on a life of its own, full of details and life - I recommend the story to anyone wanting a great example of portraying a character's struggle within a truly vibrant environment.

Excerpt:
The runners are lithe and young. None are older than sixteen. Nothing about their hair or clothing dangles in excess, though they ornament themselves in other ways: hair cut in patterns like ornamental lawns, tint cascading through the patterns like advertising. Tattoos adorn them like jewelry or ripple across their bodies like silk scarves, wet and shining in the omnipresent April rain.

Kip, small and subtle, gathers with the rest of them on top of the platform shelter at Pike Station, 120 feet above the Street. There are fourteen runners besides herself, eyeing her and each other as though plotting how best to throw their competition off a building. Like her, they’re masked and mirrored: a combination of camouflaged clothing, surveillance-reflective skins, and sensor-scrambling biosign suppressors will make watchful eyes slide right off them. Trainjumping is illegal, as are most of the other things runners do to win a race. Freerunning, bubble-riding, running along slidewalk rails—all of it.


The Lonely Heart by Aliette de Bodard
Aliette lives in Paris (yes, I'm jealous) and writes awesome science fiction and fantasy in alternate-history pasts and futures. I love how she can bring the cultures of her characters and settings to life in so few words. This story is horror - which I don't usually read - but I still thought it was awesome when I got to read it as this anthology was being prepared.

Excerpt:
It was towards mid-afternoon that Chen became aware of the girl. She stood before Chen’s stall, watching the fake-jade effi gies of the Buddha and the coloured incense sticks, her eyes wide in the sunlight—she was no more than thirteen or fourteen, with the gangly unease of that age. To her left, children shrieked as they passed the Bridge of Impossibility, holding each other’s hands, and went into the temple complex.

The girl’s hand reached towards a small statue of a demon, touched it—setting off a coloured lightstrobe which illuminated the statue from within.

Normally, Chen should have snatched the statue away, and pointed out to her, in a firm voice, that you didn’t touch the wares unless you paid. But the girl was so young: skeletally thin, her skin taut over high cheekbones, her eyes wide with fear. And she was so familiar, in a way that made Chen ill at ease—as young and as malnourished as Chen herself had been ten years ago, starving in the streets of Fengdu. “Can I help you?” Chen asked.


The Flying Squids of Zondor by Doug Sharp
Doug has a razor-sharp sense of humor, and an incredible determination that keeps him writing against all odds. He can make me laugh at things I never expected. I see this story as falling somewhere between "Spaceballs" and Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life."

Excerpt:

SCIENTIST
Commandrix, this planetary system is unique in all the galaxy!
A week spent exploring it will unveil fundamental truths about
the most secret laws of science and…

DRON
(savagely)
Midshipman! Take this…

SCIENTIST
(fearfully)
It concerns the yadayadium, Commandrix.

DRON
Go on. The yadayadium?

SCIENTIST
All the yadayadium is concentrated on a single planet.

DRON
You mean…?

SCIENTIST
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. It’s oh so true.

The color drains from DRON’s face and décolletage. Her pupils twitch
and veins pulse erratically in each of her temples.
DRON
You mean…?

SCIENTIST
The miracle of sentient life!

DRON
Aliens, is it? I loathe aliens. Their voluptuous slime and warm,
stroking pseudopods. Their unspeakable probes, groping
tentacles, and cruel spanking claws. They make me…
DRON vomits copiously and wipes her mouth on sleeve. Her face
exudes naked revulsion.

Spoiling Veena by Keyan Bowes
Keyan travels the world for her work but always stays faithful to her writing and critiquing. She has great attention for detail and ambiance, and she has a lovely way of portraying extreme scenarios as though they were entirely normal, so she can then take them further as she does in this story.

Excerpt:
The snow thuds down like brickbats.

Instead of a soft and beautiful blanket, it lies on the grass in shards of ice. The party is ruined. It had sounded like such a good idea, snow in Delhi. Shalini should have known better than to trust Party Weather Inc. They haven’t been able to deliver. Shivering, she herds the children into the veranda, out of the way of the pounding white chips.

“Let’s bring in the cake, shall we?” she says, as the clatter of the hail on the cars parked outside distracts the children.

“Oh, can’t we go out in that, Aunty?” It’s a young boy called—Ajay, that’s it, Ajay Zaveri.

“It’s too hard, Ajay,” replies Shalini. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Or your lawyer mother to sue me, she thinks. India is becoming just too much like America since cable and satellite TV. She has releases of liability signed by every custodial parent, and still she worries.


Man's Best Enemy by Janice Hardy
Janice can write at a speed that leaves me in awe, and I always look to her for advice on plotting and action. She loves turning up the pressure and writing her characters into a corner - and if she can't immediately find a way to get them out of it, so much the better for the excitement of the final draft.

Excerpt:
“We thought it was just pups,” Deeke said, pressing the bandage hard against Louie’s belly. The blood he wasn’t stopping flowed dark, almost black, a vein tear for sure. I’d seen bites that deep before. Was an ugly way to go. Be kinder for Deeke to ease up on the pressure and let Louie pass out and die in peace, but Deeke would never do that. He was too soft-hearted. Even Mama said so.

Doc looked up and glared, her dark eyes hard enough to make Deeke flinch. “You heard pups and ignored them? How stupid can—Shawna, hand me that clamp—how stupid can you be?”

I handed Doc her clamp from the tray by the examination table, careful not to bump her. Wasn’t a whole lot of room in the clinic, but it was the only room in the hotel with enough cabinets for all her supplies.

“Need more gauze?” I asked. The bloody pile was getting large.

“No, I’m good. Well, Deeke?”

Deeke licked his lips and glanced down, so I knew he was about to fib. Not an outright lie though or he’d be scratching his ear. “They were just yippers, and Louie said—”

“Oh, Louie said, did he?” Doc scoffed. “What’s the first thing you learn about pups?”

Deeke winced. “Where there’s pups, there’s dogs.”


Love, Blood and Octli by T.L. Morganfield
Traci has kids at home just like I do, and somehow keeps writing and building her reputation as an expert in Aztec stories. The thing I love about this story is the way she can portray a broad range of experience from the innocent to the frightening, all in a resonant tone reminiscent of ancient storytellers.

Excerpt:
On my seventh birthday, the Feathered Serpent gave me my name. Many snakes lived among the reeds near the pond, most of them full of poison and spite, but this one was different. He was no bigger than the other snakes but was covered in feathers; white ones on his slender body, and long, exquisite emerald ones—like those of the precious quetzal bird—around his neck. I met him as I swam around the pond.

“What a strange creature you are!” I called when I saw him flying above me.

The feathered serpent looked at me with keen yellow-slit eyes. “Ah, Ayomichi,” he declared.

I laughed. “I’m not a turtle.”

“You swim like one.”

“I’m a girl.”

“I can see that. But you’re also Ayomichi. It’s your name.”

“My name? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Certainly your mother calls you something?”


Dancing by Numbers by Dario Ciriello
Dario is one big reason why I am where I am today with my writing. His prose flows like honey and he has huge amazing ideas - not just like the idea behind Dancing by Numbers, but also the idea behind Panverse Publishing's novella anthologies and Eight Against Reality itself. He is an inspiration.

Excerpt:
Ten days to go until the opening of Tchaikovsky’s The Emperor’s Hunting Lodge. We’ve been working six hours and I can feel Max’s strength fading with every lift. Anthony, our company director, is getting that tight, drawn look he gets when he’s trying not to scream. That’s just the way Anthony is, and everybody knows that. Still.

In the wings, before stepping out to join Max for the final pas de deux, I find that infinitesimal, still, center of balance I’ve been exploring. I focus everything, my whole being, into the very center of my body for that one lift. Max sweeps me high, I experience a moment of empty darkness, and then—

The studio is gone. I’m in an amphitheater, turning, held high by hands of banded iron. The humid air is heavy with pungent herbs. Clusters of hissing torches light the stage from either side while a chorus of red-robed women raises a pulsing chant. A moon of blood hangs low over a semicircle of banked seating filled to capacity.

Most startling of all, I know exactly who I am, and where: I am another dancer named Lyra, in a world entirely unlike my own. The superimposition of selves, of experience, of knowledge, overwhelms me.

Later, I remember I maintained my brilliant smile all the way through. That’s what a professional does.


I feel lucky to be a part of the Eight Against Reality project and I encourage you not only to buy the anthology, but to learn more about these fantastic writers. I hope the links I've provided will help you to do just that.

The Myth of the Native Speaker

In the last few days, I've seen a lot of discussion of international speculative fiction, where to find it, who writes it, etc. See Charles Tan here, Nick Mamatas here, for example. Although I started composing this post before that discussion got fully launched, I think it is relevant to that discussion, because it addresses the discrimination and injustice that surrounds the concept of native speakers, both in verbal speech contexts, teaching contexts, and in sf/f writing. And who knows? You might even find some situations here to give you worldbuilding or story inspiration while we're at it.

I'm sure you know the term "native speaker." Someone who speaks a language natively is someone who's grown up in a place where a particular language is spoken and thus has learned it when they were first learning language. I'm a native speaker of English, for example. I have friends who are native speakers of many languages: Urdu, Japanese, French, Spanish... the list goes on. Your book might contain native speakers of these world languages, or one (or more) of your own making.

For a person learning a foreign language, the idea of a native speaker takes on additional importance. The native speaker is the goal. "Nativelike" language use is defined as the pinnacle of success. Along with this comes the idea that you need to have a native speaker as a teacher, because otherwise how will you hear the language you're learning as it's really spoken in its country of origin? Indeed, if you learned it from someone who was once a student like you, wouldn't that be learning it halfway? Or would it?

Be careful. The biggest myth about native speakers of any language is that they are infallible.

Native speakers aren't infallible - just look around the writing boards and you'll be able to watch native speakers of English agonize over what a pain in the neck spelling is, or grammar. They'll argue on and on about one usage or another. (They're entitled to - which is something I'll come back to later.)

I remember when I was learning French. It was a second language for me, though I was still a toddler when I started learning it. I put a lot of effort into my learning. I wanted to be good at it, to speak with native speakers - an admirable goal that really is much of what language learning is all about. One day I got a letter from a pen pal in France, and it had spelling errors in it. I couldn't believe my eyes. Wow, people in France might not always spell French correctly? Well, when you think about it, of course it makes sense. People make spelling errors all the time, native language or no.

If you think about the concept of native-speakerhood from the point of view of language variability (and also world languages), you could argue that there is no one single English that everyone learns. The English one learns depends on what varieties of English one is exposed to. Does that include a particular dialect? Does it also include the standardized English of the news, and of the schools? What about engineering or medical terminology? What about literature? And - let's push that one a little further - what about science fiction and fantasy literature? Each of these sources is going to provide different kinds, complexities, and flavors of English.

The plot thickens when we take the myth of native speaker infallibility and turn it around. The faulty assumption of native speaker infallibility implies an equally faulty assumption of non-native speaker fallibility. This second myth is so powerful that it is used to invalidate the language use of learners all over the world.

Here's a relatively harmless example. When I was living in Japan I could never tell jokes. Things like puns sprang out at me but if I ever tried to use them for humor, people wouldn't laugh. They wouldn't even look confused and fail to get it. They would say, "No, no, no, you have it all wrong," and launch into a language lesson. I was making the joke precisely because I had already learned that lesson. But because I was a non-native speaker, the automatic conclusion was that it wasn't a joke at all, but a mistake.

Here's a subtle example that I think you might recognize, if you're a highly proficient second or third (etc.) language speaker. I have trouble getting my French friends to correct my usage because they understand me. If you accept effective communication as sufficient for a non-native speaker, you're not likely to help someone tune their language to become more accurate and articulate.

And here's an example that made me so angry that I didn't like myself. I started studying Japanese as my major in college, and then spent two years living in Japan studying it intensively. So when I came back to the US, I looked for Japanese teaching jobs. I taught first- and second-year Japanese at a California high school for one year and helped lead a trip to Japan with the school baseball team. The following year I moved to another school where I taught Japanese to 6-8th graders. At each of these schools I was the sole teacher of Japanese and in complete charge of my curriculum and activities, testing, etc. Then, after I began my Ph.D. program to study Education (and the teaching of Japanese in particular), I taught Japanese for one semester as part of a team run by native-speaking teachers of Japanese. Everything changed. We team-taught the classes so no single teacher saw any one class more than twice a week. For non-natives, that was once a week. For at least the first four weeks of class, I and the other non-native teachers weren't allowed to correct our students' homework without having our own work checked by the native teachers, regardless of our previous experience. Not once in the course of that semester were we given responsibility to correct testing material without supervision. It was not a situation I felt I could continue in beyond the end of that semester.

In my dissertation I learned some interesting things when I compared native and non-native teachers. The teachers I studied were of Japanese, but I'm sure much of this would also apply to English. When it comes to pragmatics - the subtleties of representing social identity and politeness behavior - we aren't typically conscious of what we do. If someone describes a situation to you and asks you what you'd say, you won't typically say what you would say, but what you believe you should say - and those aren't always the same thing. I think you can see the difficulty for teaching contexts. Non-native teachers, however, are more conscious of what they do, which makes them a great resource for teaching students in this area which is so critical for social and linguistic success. My conclusion was (in quick simplified summary version) that teamwork between native and non-native speakers is ideal for learning.

This all leads me to the following conclusion: both non-native and native speaker perspectives on language have value. This isn't just true for language teaching, but for writing as well.

Non-native speakers of English writing in English will do interesting things with the language, because they don't have the same underlying experience of language sources that a native speaking writer has had. Trouble may of course arise, as when an expression is ambiguous and the writer isn't fully aware of that ambiguity. But the alternate language background makes it easier to avoid falling into cliché, and can bring a freshness to writing style the likes of which you won't see in the writing of a native speaker (who, when avoiding cliché, will achieve freshness of a different variety).

Yet these writers can still fall into the trap of the assumption of fallibility. My friend Aliette de Bodard, has a debut novel, Servant of the Underworld, that has just come out from Angry Robot books. One reviewer claimed that the qualities of her writing that he disliked could be explained by the fact that English was not her native language - and while most other reviewers praise her work enthusiastically, you can imagine that Aliette was highly insulted by this. It piqued my own indignation to such an extent that I began writing this post. Her science fiction and fantasy writing grow directly out of a long history of reading sf/f in English - a natural source for the wonderful English she uses, which is then augmented in flavor and originality both by her own creativity and her unique perspective on the English language. She is also very articulate in discussing her own cross-cultural and cross-linguistic experiences with writing, so go take a look at some of her thoughts, here.

Aliette is not alone. Indeed, she's following in some very famous footsteps. History is full of works - classics in fact - written in English by non-native speakers. One of the most famous is Lolita, written in English by the Russian Vladimir Nabokov. [Reviewed here (1958).] And then there's Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad, a native speaker of Polish (here's another article about him).

I can't say that I haven't unconsciously fallen into the trap of not "getting" a non-native speaker's jokes. But after having worn the shoes of a non-native speaker, and experienced some of the consequences, I know I always try to question my own unconscious assumptions about language use and proficiency.

I hope you also find this post has given you some interesting things to think about.

Many paths to a writing career

"It's hard to get published."

Everybody knows this, even people who never plan to become writers. I knew it when I started writing, when I'd just discovered this storytelling drive I had inside me and had no idea (yet) where it fit into my life. I'd always had an artistic drive, and always had interest in science fiction and fantasy, but had never put them together before. So I wrote first and figured it out later.

When I first got to the point where I wanted to try to get published, I had no idea how to start. This may sound familiar to some. I was living in Japan at the time, and the internet resources for writers hadn't really come into their own yet, so I mail-ordered a couple of books about agents and publishers and how to go about writing query letters and all that lovely stuff. Some of you will recognize at this point that I was writing novels rather than short stories. That was where my experiences with rejection began! On the other hand, I learned early that rejections with comments were pure gold, because they were feedback from someone on the other side of that mysterious wall that lies between the publishing world and the lowly newbie writer.

Now there are lots of internet resources out there for writers: AgentQuery, Preditors and Editors, SFWA's Writer Beware, Duotrope's Digest, etc... But it's still hard to get published, and there's no easy answer just waiting out there for a writer to find. This is because there are many different paths that can lead you to a successful writing career, and if you ask two (or three, or four) writers how they got to where they are, chances are they'll each give you a different answer.

Some start with short stories and others start with novels. I started by writing novels, and then after a time friends said to me, "You should try writing short fiction." I got the impression from some of them that it would be easier to get short fiction published than novels. Since I'd had no success with the novels I'd written so far, I figured, "Why not?" So I started writing short stories, and learning how to do those, because they're very different from novels and require different kinds of skills to get right. I got lots of rejections, from lots of different markets. The fact of the matter is, I'm not sure which one is harder. But you'll never know which one is easier for you if you don't try both. My friend Aliette de Bodard has a novel coming out from Angry Robot, entitled Servant of the Underworld, but by the time she sold it she already had a great career going and lots of fans from her short fiction.

Some people sell their short fiction first to semipro venues, and others to pro. I always figured, start at the top with each story you want to sell, and work your way down as it gets rejected, from pro to semipro, to token venues. But the fact of the matter was, I lost patience with the endless cycle of waiting, and after I ran my work past a few semipro markets, I pretty much left it in the trunk. I have several friends who have sold many pieces to semipro markets before breaking into the pro markets - and at least two who now make regular money from their sales of short fiction, hooray!

Some people pitch a novel to a publisher first, get a deal, and then find an agent. Others go straight to getting an agent through the query approach. My friend Janice Hardy, for example, landed an agent without any previous fiction sales, simply on the strength of her new novel, The Shifter, which she sent queries for and then pitched to the woman who would become her agent at the Surrey International Writers Conference. If you think this is impossible, well, you can feel reassured that it's not. It just may not end up being the path that is successful for you.

Some people go to lots of conventions and network like crazy. Others don't. This is a funny one, because I never figured I'd find this to be my own route. Are you kidding? I started out writing in Japan, and then after I got back to the US I had my kids, and it was all I could do just to get out to a local convention for a few hours during the day. But, interestingly enough, this turned out to be my path - because I kept working on my writing, and because I got to meet a few wonderful people.

In thanks to those people, I'll tell a brief version of the connections here. I first went to BayCon, my local convention, in 2003 when my son was 3 months old. There I went to a session run by Kent Brewster, who recommended that I submit to the BayCon writers' workshop the following year. So I came up with my very first short story and went in 2004. One of the pros on the panel at the writers' workshop was Dario Ciriello, who got word after the workshop was over that I was looking for a face-to-face writers' group, and invited me to his. Dario was also the one who put me in touch with the BayCon programming folk, with the result that I was on a panel about the Seven Wonders of the World in (I think) 2006. On the panel with me was a lovely author with whom I struck up a conversation, Deborah J. Ross. She encouraged me to come to the SiliCon convention a month later, and there introduced me to Sheila Finch, because Sheila and I share an interest in linguistics. Sheila was the one who told me that Dr. Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog magazine, liked stories about linguistics. So I took some time, got my linguistics story together and sent it off, and it sold in December 2007, appearing in Analog in July/August 2008. It was also at SiliCon that I met my friend Lillian Csernica. We hit it off immediately, and she helped me with the interminable revisions of my novel, Through This Gate. At a certain point, she said she'd like to recommend me to her agent. Well, she never did - but only because I ran into her agent at the 2009 Nebula Awards weekend, and remembering what Lillian had said, walked right up to her and said hello. This turned into a pitch, and a full manuscript request, and finally this October, into an agency signing. I could never have signed with the Grayson Agency (blog) on the basis of queries alone, but they happen to be just the right agents for me. Who would have imagined it?

I am immensely grateful to these people who have helped me get to where I am. I have found that the science fiction and fantasy writing community has a great sense of helping in return for being helped, and I am already trying to pass on what I know in this great spirit.

All of this is to say that if you want to have a writing career, you have to keep at it. Be dogged. Meet people, query, submit, and above all, write, write, write. Try to make your writing better at every opportunity, because you never know which path will suddenly open up for you, and when it does, you'll want to be able to give the right person a piece of writing that really knocks their socks off.

I wish you all the best in your own endeavors.