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Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

The newest issue of the zine, featuring Ken Liu, Theodora Goss, Rachel Swirsky, Shira Lipkin, Sonya Taaffe, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Rose Lemberg and more, has made the transition to a physical object. Tomorrow it will go to the printer for binding. Evidence below:

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

If you submitted a story to Clockwork Phoenix 4 in October and you haven’t received a response, it’s either because I’m holding your story for further consideration, or it somehow fell through the cracks in my submission system. Either way I encourage you to query.

We received about 500 submissions in October. In November so far we’ve gotten about 120. In allowing multiple submissions but barring simultaneous submissions, I feel I have an obligation to get back to everyone in a timely fashion so no one ends up with several stories tied up for a ridiculous length of time. My heartfelt thanks to my assistant editors, Sally Brackett Robertson and Sabrina West, who are helping me keep the task manageable.

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing

At prezzey.net, Bogi Takács asked me for a clarification of what “rococo sf” means in the Clockwork Phoenix guidelines.

This was my response:

My plea for “rococo sf” has caused puzzlement before. I recognize that recommending that people read the books to see what I mean is both obvious and futile, but if you read the sf stories I’ve actually published in the Clockwork Phoenix volumes (“Palisade” by Cat Sparks, “Oblivion: A Journey” by Vandana Singh, “Choosers of the Slain” and “Murder in Metachronopolis” by John C. Wright, “The Endangered Camp” by Ann Leckie, “Surrogates” by Cat Rambo, etc.) youll see that there is some element of the bizarre and/or the avant garde and/or the poetic and/or the dream-like that permeate them. Most writers who tackle elements like this in their prose and plots choose to do it as fantasy, but it can also be incorporated into convincing science fiction, and when someone pulls it off it makes me very, very happy.

Other sf stories in the pages of Clockwork Phoenix include Jennifer Crow’s “Seven Scenes from Harrai’s Sacred Mountain,” C.S. MacCath’s “Akhila, Divided,” Barbara Krasnoff’s “Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance,” Leah Bobet’s “Six” and arguments can be made for other stories that cross over from the slipstream side, such as Tanith Lee’s “The Woman” or Gregory Frost’s “Lucyna’s Gaze.”

You might ask why not call it “avant garde sf” or “surreal sf”? Well, to my mind that isn’t correct, because though I want the sf in Clockwork Phoenix to have that sumptuous strangeness, I also want it to be comprehensible. So I picked “rococo,” roughly meaning in this case “elegant and ornate” and also “florid” or “artistically complex,” in an attempt to give a sense of what’s different about what I select. Really, those descriptors apply to almost everything I pick in some way. Except when they don’t. (*Insert evil laugh here.*)

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Strangeness

I wanted to show off how Tim Mullins handled adding the poet names to Paula Friedlander’s art.

Next comes printing. Now is a good time to subscribe.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

Before Hurricane Sandy has her way with the East Coast, I wanted it known for the record that Mythic Delirium 27 has cover art now, created by Paula Friedlander.

The table of contents of Mythic Delirium 27 can be found here. If you don’t want to miss this issue, subscribe here.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

I’m pleased to announce the poems that will be appearing in Mythic Delirium 28, scheduled to be published in Spring 2013. It’s a pretty eclectic mix, though road trips figure prominently.

• Día de los Muertos • F.J. Bergmann
• The Beast • Rachel Manija Brown
• Mice • Beth Cato
• Maud Gonne, After • Alicia Cole
• The Serpent Explains the Nature of Tricksters to His Wife • Ruthanna Emrys
• The Princess Becomes a Prophet • Jeannine Hall Gailey
• Wheels • Adele Gardner
• The Last Siren • Andrew Gilstrap
• The Green Green Rain • Neile Graham
• skin • Lynn Hardaker
• Circe in Manhattan • Wendy Howe
• Gleaming • Mari Ness
• The Theatre Golems • Dominik Parisien
• Rare Annie • Caitlyn Paxson
• How to Bring Your Dead Lover Back • K.L. Pereira
• The Motor Prayer • Donald Raymond
• Doomcall • Alistair Rennie
• Persephone Set Free • Sofia Samatar
• Revising Horror (The Wrong Mouth) • David Sandner
• The Nostalgia of Roads • Alexandra Seidel
• The Ceremony of Innocence • Sonya Taaffe

Don’t want to miss an issue? Click here to subscribe.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium, Poetry

My poem “The Vigil,” dedicated to Nicole Kornher-Stace — and also one of my “Claire-dare” series of poems from late 2010 — has just appeared in the newest issue of Goblin Fruit.

Making this appearance extra special, the audio reading is by Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney herself. And making it extra, extra special, artist Elisabeth “Liz” Heller based her illustrations for this issue on my poem — check out the steed of bone and straw below, and the imposing woman you see riding it when you click through. I think it’s the best illustration of one of my own poems I’ve ever seen. And even sweeter than that, the next poem in the issue, “Blueshift” by Sonya Taaffe, is dedicated to me. What a great early Halloween present.

Tags: Claire-dare
Posted in Audio, Poetry, Writing

My “Tour of the Abattoir” audio column for Larry Santoro’s Tales to Terrify horror podcast skipped the month of September so that I could finish novel edits for The Black Fire Concerto, coming very soon as an e-book from the fine madmen at Black Gate.

But now “Tour” is back. In this installment I review Laird Barron’s slightly hard-to-find first novel The Light Is the Darkness as well as the recent theatrical release The Possession (with a little bit of snark tossed in for The Devil Inside, from earlier this year.) Then, in the “live” segment of the column, my buddy Shalon Hurlbert and I compare and contrast two films about zombie sieges at radio stations, Dead Air and Pontypool. It’s an “Abattoir” feast!

Let’s not forget the main fiction feature, “The Stuff of the Stars, Leaking” by Tim Lebbon. And if you’re a Laird Barron fan like I obviously am, last week TtT presented Laird’s new darkly funny novelette, “Frontier Death Song.”

Posted in Audio, Novels, Reviews, Signal boosts, Strangeness, Writing

Congratulations to poet Sofía Rhei (and translator Lawrence Schimel) whose poem “The Magic Walnut” from Mythic Delirium 25 is a contender for the 2012 Dwarf Stars Awards.

(I’ve mentioned earlier that my own poem co-written with Anita, “Unland, Unlife,” is also in the running, along with many other worthies. May the best poem win!)

Posted in Awards, Editing, Mythic Delirium, Poetry