DESCENT INTO LIGHT

Since the beginning of May I have:

Spent a weekend at the home of writer Nicole Kornher-Stace and her husband Dan at a gathering that was informally dubbed “CoalCon,” with the likes of Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney, Francesca Forrest, Julia Rios, Caitlyn Paxson, Dominik Parisien, Paula Friedlander, Shveta Thakrar, Katie Redding and various lovely spouses and partners. We shared embarrassing early-years writing, had an evil laugh contest, ate at a wonderful Indian restaurant, and consumed much rum. (Or at least I did.) A special thanks to Autumn Canter for schlepping me partway to CoalCon and back. She’s a gracious hostess.

Managed to finally finish the first draft of a new short story during a write-in held at CoalCon.

Claire, Nicole and Dominik at CoalCon.

Learned while at CoalCon that the entire shipment of trade paperbacks for the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter had arrived at our house in Roanoke.

Traveled to Philadelphia to give a talk to the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society that turned out to be about Clockwork Phoenix 4 and Kickstarter with a dash of my new novel The Black Fire Concerto thrown in for good measure. I think I ended up spending more time answering questions than I did actually making the presentation. My thanks to Lee and Diane Weinstein for inviting me up and taxiing me around.

Waiting in the wings at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meeting.

Started sending out the remaining Clockwork Phoenix 4 rewards, both in ebook and trade paperback form, to everyone I owe them to. I’m not done yet, and really won’t be done for months yet, but the overwhelming bulk of the shipping and e-mailing will be finished by the end of this week.

The unveiling of the special singular signed edition of CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 4 in the special padded case Anita made for it to travel in.

Booked our room and rental car for ReaderCon in July. Started to fill out the giant programming sign-up, haven’t quite finished.

Got a couple invitations to a couple cool projects. Can’t say more.

Read through two months of submissions for Mythic Delirium. What’s left is what I’m holding for further consideration in putting together Mythic Delirium 29, the second-to-last print issue. If you haven’t heard from me at this point you’re more than welcome to query.

Contemplated whether I need to launch a Kickstarter to get the new version of Mythic Delirium where I want it to be. I think I will have to (ulp.) At least it won’t need to be as epic as the Clockwork Phoenix one was.

I’m thrilled to at last be able to publicly reveal the amazing cover for my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, which makes use of a spectacular digital painting by Lauren K. Cannon.

Plans were made to be foiled, but at present the plan is to release the novel in ebook and trade paperback formats in time for Readercon, so that would be, yes, July 11.

Folks who saw the interview with me at Bookstore-Bookblogger Connection over the weekend got a sneak peak at the cover. In the interview, conducted by the spirited redhead behind Little Red Reviewer, I talk about both The Black Fire Concerto and Clockwork Phoenix 4.

Last year the balancing act got really tricky, because I had two huge projects on my plate: the Clockwork Phoenix 4 anthology and the Kickstarter that funded it, and then there was my first novel, The Black Fire Concerto, my tale of magic-wielding musicians battling ghouls and sorcerers that I wrote on deadline for the folks at Haunted Stars Publishing. Somehow in there I also finished two short stories. I think I pulled that off by treating the novel as a break from editing (or vise versa) and viewing the short stories as breaks from the other stuff.

Speaking of Clockwork Phoenix 4 — I’ve been so busy getting stuff done that I’ve had no time to pause to post anything about what is getting done. So let me say while I’ve sort of caught my breath that everything is done. All the Kickstarter rewards have been made and/or ordered. All that’s left is for them to arrive at my house, and then for me to start sending them to your domiciles, if you’re either a contributor, a backer, or someone who had the wherewithal to order early. And we’re right on budget, shock of shock of shocks.

We’re definitely approaching the end game in the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter. The proofreading is done. I’ll be making the e-book edition of the anthology available to backers by the end of the month if not sooner, with the print edition to follow in May. (That’s for backers only, mind you — the book won’t be on Amazon et.al. until July — though if you’re not a backer, you can preorder. Every bit helps.)

A number of the other rewards we’re offering are finished or in the final stages.

Here’s the hat and the e-reader case Anita made that are going to two lucky backers:

Here’s a close up of the e-reader. Click the photo to go to Anita’s album where she documented creating it.

And for those who are going to be getting the special chapbook edition of The Immigrant by Cherie Priest, here’s what the wraparound cover by Paula Friedlander looks like:

Pretty sweet, eh?

Pandora continues her publicist duties.

The newest preview/review of Clockwork Phoenix 4 popped up this week, this time from Tangent Online. (No one seems to want to wait till June — thank goodness the buzz is so good so far.)

Here’s the crux of it:

This 4th volume of Clockwork Phoenix contains an excellent diversity of speculative fiction ranging from cold and hopeless to harsh but victorious and warm and fulfilling. It was a pleasure to read.

Reviewer Louis West has kind words for almost all the stories — I’m not sure if there’s a system here, but I count three stories as “highly recommended,” four stories as “definitely recommended,” four stories as “recommended,” one “simple but profound,” one “thought-provoking” and one “poignant and compelling.” We’ll take it, yes we will.

Since reviewers aren’t waiting to share their opinions, I’ve made the book available for pre-order in e-book and trade paperback form for anyone who isn’t already getting a copy through Kickstarter. (The Kickstarter folks will get their copies first, of course.)

Follow these links to get a gander at the first and second reviews. Or you can take my word for it that so far, this book is on a roll.

The official Clockwork Phoenix 4 publication date is still three months off — though I’ve made the anthology available for pre-order through my Mythic Delirium account, see below — and the second review just came in, from writer, poet and book blogger Bonnie Joe Stufflebeam.

At her Short Story Review blog, she has this to say:

This volume contains eighteen original stories which can only be classified as speculative; most of them blur or even reject genre lines altogether. The common thread which runs through these stories is a sense of unsettling strangeness. There were several moments when reading that I felt physically altered, only to realize that it was the story and not my body which was causing the queasy feeling in my gut.

That is not to say that these stories are not enjoyable; they are, in a discombobulating, shiver-inducing kind of way. And there were several of the tales which left me thinking on them long after I had finished reading.

I raise my glass in a toast and drink to that!

She highlights the short stories by Richard Parks, Yukimi Ogawa, A.C. Wise, Alisa Alering, Corrine Duyvis, Kenneth Schneyer, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Barbara Krasnoff. (Congrats to those writers!)

It’s fascinating to me to compare Bonnie’s take to Lois Tilton’s. (Click here to see the antho’s first review.) Both reviewers agreed on a handful of points, varied wildly on most everything else, but had nice things to say about the book overall.

I’m going to take this as a good sign.

And, in case this tempts you to reserve a copy:

Prices include shipping & handling

United States $20.00 USD Canada $30.00 USD World $35.00 USD

Because I never have enough to do (heh, heh) I have proposed a discussion, a workshop and three group readings for the upcoming ReaderCon convention in July. As of last week, all have been approved.

I share their descriptions below.

 

• GROUP READING: CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 4
  “All of the critically-acclaimed CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthologies have officially debuted at ReaderCon since the series began in 2008. That bond deepened when editor and publisher Mike Allen launched the Kickstarter campaign for CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 4 at ReaderCon 23. The campaign was a smashing success, the latest lineup of boundary-pushing, unclassifiable stories has been bought and paid for. At this official reading, the new anthology’s authors will share samples from their stories with all of you who helped make this book reality.”

 

• CROWDFUNDING: THE GLORY AND THE PERIL
  “In this troubled market, small publishers, authors and editors are all turning to crowdfunding to get the backing for their cherished projects. Novelists, anthology editors and magazine publishers are asking for funds on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other sites and coming away triumphant. So if you want to try it for yourself, how do you make it work? What do you avoid? What unexpected problems lurk? Author, editor and publisher Mike Allen, veteran of a $10,000 campaign to fund the anthology Clockwork Phoenix 4, will lead a discussion of what works, what doesn’t, and even what successful campaigners wish they’d done differently.”

 

• OPEN MIC POETRY READING
  “ReaderCon has become one of the rare hubs for poetry in the esoteric field of speculative literature. Come here the full range of what speculative poetry has to offer: humorous, gritty, beautiful, moving. Fans of the Rhysling Readings of previous years shouldn’t miss this.”

 

• GROUP READING: MYTHIC POETRY
  Over the past decade, speculative poetry has increasingly turned toward the mythic in subject matter, with venues such as Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, Mythic Delirium, Stone Telling, Cabinet des Fées, Jabberwocky, and the now-defunct Journal of the Mythic Arts showcasing a new generation of poets who’ve redefined what this type of writing can do. Come to the reading and hear new and classic works from speculative poetry’s trend-setters.

 

• SPECULATIVE POETRY WORKSHOP
  “Speculative poetry can be defined a number of ways, but one way is this: a speculative poem uses the trappings of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or more unclassifiable bends in reality to convey its images, narratives and themes. The speculative poetry can unfold with the same subtlety and power that speculative fiction does, with considerably fewer words. Come prepared to write.”

 

Signups for individual readings haven’t happened yet. Because I have the possibility of a first novel and/or a first collection to promote there, I’m going to sign up for one once those are offered. Now the question is, how to get people to come? Much as people seem to enjoy listening to me read, I have the damndest time with that, so hmmm. Offer cookies and chocolate? Dangle the threat of eternal enmity over no-shows? Cookies and chocolate are probably less exhausting in the long-term…

…and the old Mythic Delirium is going away.

In a nutshell, the print edition of Mythic Delirium, which only publishes poetry, is going to be wrapped up and put to bed.  And a new version of Mythic Delirium will launch in July that will exist in web and e-book form, that will publish fiction as well as some poetry.

In terms of immediate consequences, what that means is the current Mythic Delirium submission window, which lasts through May 1 (click here to read the guidelines) will be the last open submission call for poems for the print edition of Mythic Delirium. The poems accepted will go into Mythic Delirium 29, which I plan to have out by October of this year. The final print issue, Mythic Delirium 30, due out in Spring 2014, will be a retrospective issue spanning 15 years of poetic highlights.

NOTE: I am not currently reading unsolicited fiction submissions. I’ll do that during the next submission window, Aug. 1-Oct. 1.

There’s a tiny, tiny handful of subscribers to the print edition whose subscriptions go past Issue 30. Those subscribers will be offered the option of completing their subscription by picking from the available back issues, receiving an issue or a subscription of the new electronic version, or receiving a refund of the portion of their subscription that hasn’t been filled. Those subscribers will get notices to that effect.

The new version of Mythic Delirium, which I’ve been personally referring to as “Mythic Delirium Zero,” will launch in July (to coincide with the release of Clockwork Phoenix 4). It will follow the models established by Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, et. al., though in a more modest form. It will be published as quarterly e-books that contain three stories and six poems, and also published online at the soon-to-be-renovated mythicdelirium.com website at a rate of one story and two poems per month.

Fiction-wise, the first two issues are already filled, with stories by Marie Brennan, Georgina Bruce, Ken Liu, Alexandra Seidel, David Sklar and Patty Templeton. Poem-wise, the first issue is full and the second is filling, with work by Liz Bourke, C.S.E. Cooney, Amal El-Mohtar, Karthika Nair, Virginia M. Mohlere,  S. Brackett Robertson, Sonya Taaffe, and more to come. At left you can see the mockup cover for Issue 0.1, with a stunning cover by Danielle Tunstall.

(If you’re familiar at all with my MYTHIC antholgies (Vol. 1, Vol. 2), the new Mythic Delirium will very much follow the pattern those books set.)

I’m very grateful for the opportunities the Clockwork Phoenix kickstarter gave me to transform and transition my longtime labor of love. And I look forward to sharing the results with you, in both new format and old, as the year proceeds.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve begun sending out advance reviewer copies of Clockwork Phoenix 4. As it shakes out, Lois Tilton of Locus Online ends up having the first word on my Kickstarted anthology, turning around a review more or less immediately (click here to go read.)

She notes that this is her first-ever crack at one of the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies and says, in part:

a rare original anthology … takes best of show this time. … The tone ranges from dark to heartwarming and simple. The overall quality is high … Several of the pieces are quite challenging. Readers will do well to pick up a copy.

Kenneth Schneyer’s “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” not only receives a “Recommended” rating, but also her “Good Story Award,” the only one she declared in February. She calls it “A piece that rewards re-reading.”

She also gives a “Recommended” to Nicole Kornher-Stace’s “On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse.” (Yay, long titles!) She calls it “A fascinating puzzle of a fiction.”

She also offers particular lauds to stories by Ian McHugh, Richard Parks, Gemma Files, Tanith Lee, Corinne Duyvis, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Patricia Russo, and, notably, has very little that’s critical to say about the stories she didn’t actively praise.

Because it’s not clear from the review, I feel the need to clarify: Lois read an uncorrected proof, provided to her just two weeks ago. (That is one spectacular turnaround time.)

However, the anthology will not be publicly available for sale until July. (The others, of course, can all be had now.) Ideally, Kickstarter backers will receive their e-book and/or trade paperback copies in May/June, assuming I can keep the schedule on course. Regardless, by then it will have been proofread.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that I still have a few trade paperback ARCs left if there’s a reviewer out there who’s interested.

(NOTE: This is culled from a recently posted update on the Clockwork Phoenix 4 Kickstarter. If you’re a backer, and you haven’t read the full update yet, I recommend that you do. It’s chock full of things you need to know, much of it time sensitive.)

I’m thrilled to be able to share the official table of contents of Clockwork Phoenix 4.

• Yves Meynard, “Our Lady of the Thylacines”
• Ian McHugh, “The Canal Barge Magician’s Number Nine Daughter”
• Nicole Kornher-Stace, “On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse”
• Richard Parks, “Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl”
• Gemma Files, “Trap-Weed”
• Yukimi Ogawa, “Icicle”
• A.C. Wise, “Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story”
• Marie Brennan, “What Still Abides”
• Alisa Alering, “The Wanderer King”
• Tanith Lee, “A Little of the Night”
• Cat Rambo, “I Come from the Dark Universe”
• Shira Lipkin, “Happy Hour at the Tooth and Claw”
• Corinne Duyvis, “Lilo Is”
• Kenneth Schneyer, “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer”
• Camille Alexa, “Three Times”
• Benjanun Sriduangkaew, “The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly”
• Patricia Russo, “The Old Woman with No Teeth”
• Barbara Krasnoff, “The History of Soul 2065″

This is a truly international anthology – with contributors hailing from seven countries – that encompasses off-beat takes on sf, fantasy, horror, or combinations of two or more, as well as interstitial works that just can’t be easily classified.

We received more than 1,400 story submissions during our reading window, and we whittled them down to sixteen short stories and two novelettes that all together total 87,000 words, making this the largest volume in the series by far. All of the writers have received their contracts and I’ve begun sending them their payments. This crucial stage is what the Kickstarter was all about; I wouldn’t be able to pay the writers at all, much less offer them a worthy pay rate per word for their work, without the generosity and support of all our backers, and of those who helped us out in other ways.

I’ll be publishing Clockwork Phoenix 4 simultaneously in trade paperback and e-book formats. I’m aiming for a June release, and then an official reading and launch party at ReaderCon in Boston in July, the same convention where I officially launched the Kickstarter last summer, and where I’ve launched all three of the previous volumes.