Jump the Black- 2013 in Review, Part One

On January 1st, 2013, I sold Jump the Black to Rick Klaw's Texas-themed sci-fi anthology Rayguns Over Texas, which was my first pro-level genre sale.*

I haven't ever really talked about the story itself, as it didn't seem appropriate when I first sold it. 
When it was coming out, it made more sense to talk about the anthology as a whole. 

I should preface this by saying I'm really not a short-story writer.  It's just not a format I have a lot of affinity for, and I don't tend to write them without a specific purpose or plan.  However, "invited to submit to this anthology" works very well as a specific purpose or plan. 

So, I received the invite and remembered a nugget of an idea that I had had for a sci-fi story.  It was little more than this: A sci-fi future with a large interstellar, multi-alien community, but Earth isn't a part of it.  Earth is the place you leave to have opportunity.  Earth is Mexico.

I did some research into border crossings, the lengths people go to in order to get in the States.  I thought about "coyotes"-- those who "help" others get across the border, and the methods they use to do it.  The conditions people will submit themselves to, the trust they will place on those bringing them, and the hope that when they emerge on the other side that an opportunity will be there that will make it all worth it.





And I wanted something in there that could be a direct allegory to swimming across the Rio Grande. Thus "jumping the black"-- where the smuggled humans, freshly awoken from the paralytic "sleep" they were put in to avoid getting noticed by the scans-- have to leap through empty space from the smuggler's cargo hold to a port left open on the space station, so that they're off the smuggler's ship before his cargo gets inspected.  If the humans jumping don't make it safely... that's their problem.  Also, if they get caught right when they get in the station, their problem. 

I really enjoyed writing this, and it definitely clicked one big button for me: I could write a lot more of it.  I kept it at 4000 words to make it fit easily in the anthology, but I could easily expand the story to novella length, building out what happens next once the humans make it off the rock.

But, as I said, selling that on January 1st was an excellent way to start 2013, and I was quite pleased to see it in print in September.

--
*- My story for The Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction was paid at over a dollar per word, but it was only 21 words long.  Twenty-two with the title.  But it wasn't genre.

Hugo Nominations: Best Short Story

As I am attending WorldCon in San Antonio this year, I'm entitled to vote on the Hugos.  As opposed to my qualms about nominating, I have no problem with voting, especially since I have the opportunity to review the nominees. 

So, let's start with the Best Short Story nominations.  There are only three nominees this year, due to a rule involving nominees needing to receive at least 5% of the nominating vote.*  The nominees are:

• “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard ( Clarkesworld, June 2012)
• “Mantis Wives”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• “Mono no Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

"Immersion" follows two story tracks: a woman who has lost herself to life in an "immersion" suit  (essentially Google-glass with real-world avatar), and a young woman who works in a restaurant who knows how to use the immersion suits.  The first woman is essentially clinically depressed, and her use of the suit is a metaphor for putting on a fake-it-for-the-world face while feeling dead inside.  There is a certain degree of classism attached to the suits-- the use of the suit is uncommon amongst the restaurant family, and the young woman needs to get hers out and put it on to interact with the occasional customer who wears them, namely the couple with the depressed woman.  Now, why she needs to wear her suit to interact with them isn't clear-- they are engaged with the real world, just from inside their suits.  It seems mostly so the restaurant owners won't come off as a bunch of hicks to the besuited couple.  Not that the woman cares, she's barely aware of what's going on.  The two women have a moment of connection, but not much really comes from it.  It struck me that there's a lot more story here, condensed down to short-story length to the point where something crucial got lost.

"Mantis Wives", I was expecting to like more than I did, mostly because I really enjoyed Kij Johnson's "Spar", which was a wonderful use of economy of words.  Economy of words still applies here, but it's not a story.  It's more of a prose poem, a listing of sexual variants employed by Mantis Wives (who normally would practice sexual cannibalism) in order to avoid or prolong said sexual cannibalism.  It's a lovely gem of an idea, but doesn't do much with it.

"Mono no Aware" is an interesting tale of a one colony ship that escaped some unknown disaster on Earth, so they represent the last survivors of humanity.  The protagonist is the only Japanese native on the ship, thus the lone remainder of Japanese culture.  Something goes wrong with the ship, and he volunteers to repair the damage, which he ties to the Go lessons his father gave him as a child.  This one is dense with ideas, probably a bit too much for under 5000 words, but I definitely enjoyed it, and wanted to read a longer version of the story. 

So, my ranking order would be

1. "Mono No Aware"
2. "Immersion"
3. "Mantis Wives"

___In other news, there's an interview of me over at Book Country.  Go check it out.

___
*- Hugo voting math always strikes me as exceedingly complicated.  I'm sure it makes sense, but every time I've seen voting-results tables they've made my eyes cross.

Just a few bits of news

I may have mentioned this before, but my short story "My Name Is Avenger Girl" was accepted for the superhero anthology "The Protectors", edited by Paige. E. Roberts.

Also, my short play "Pleasure to Meet You" is being produced as part of The Vestige Group's "Muses IV: Memories of a House".  This is the third year in a row a piece of mine has been featured in their "Muses" series.

I have had a productive week, even if the three 3No6Mo projects didn't really advance in a word-count related way. I didn't NOT, advance, mind you, just not as much as I could have.

But I DID take that first chapter of the otherwise unpublishable Fifty Year War and give it a re-work and clean-up pass. I've found a few markets that it could fit in as a short story.

What's funny is how, a few years ago, I felt that chapter was in a pretty solid place. Looking at it now there were so many things-- little things, mostly-- that I felt could be fixed or cleaned up or written out. Some of the changes just involved streamlining. There were several character and worldbuilding elements that were either dead weight, or unnecessary without the larger context of being part of a novel. I'll be taking that to my writing group on Tuesday.

I also started the Fourth Draft of Thorn of Dentonhill (Veranix #1). I got some new comments which involves mostly tweaks, but one very critical comment that a certain plot element is not given enough weight soon enough, so when it does finally get some explanation, the reader didn't care anymore. I've now added a new sequence in the first chapter which address that.

Finally, I did some publisher/agent research. That's how I found out about the above.

BAN01: 4557