Category: writing

Categories
steampunk writing

A Murder and a Tiny Dog

curiouscaseofmissclementinenimowitz-500Marta spied a curved white shape under one of the little tables, thanks to the new angle of perspective. Curious, she bent to retrieve what turned out to be a china teacup, mate to the one Simms had found on the end table, a brown stain dried on its bottom and side. Marta took a curious sniff, only to detect something bitter, hinting of almonds. “Oh my.”

“I’m still not going to let you shoot the dog,” Simms grumbled.

Marta crouched down, looking from table to corpse. It was too far for the cup to have rolled there on its own unless Miss Nimowitz had flung it in some final seizure, and that seemed unlikely since a few drops of tea had remained within. But perhaps it had been prodded by an unwary foot and sent skittering aside. More importantly, she somehow doubted that Miss Nimowitz would have prepared tea with two cups if it was just a final drink for herself.

Interesting, that.

“I’m less inclined to shoot it now,” Marta said, rising back to her feet. “The dog is a witness to murder.”

Simms gave her one of those looks at which he seemed to excel, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and resignation. “Did you really just say that with a straight face?”

“I’ve rarely been more serious in my life.” Marta waggled the teacup at him. “Miss Nimowitz was poisoned.”

“And shot.”

“Tough old bird.” Marta smiled. She checked the teapot on the end table, but could detect no hint of poison in the liquid still within. “Unless our little friend there has developed opposable thumbs, she had outside help with at least one of those activities.”

“Murdered twice and then robbed. Not a good week for her,” Simms commented, but his expression had become markedly less grudging. While the man wasn’t averse to firefights and throwing the occasional security guard off a train, his feelings about murder were generally in line with Marta’s—it was the sort of thing that gave honest criminals a bad name.

I loved writing this novella. I loved it. I do so hope you love it too.

Categories
feminism rants sfwa women in science writing

Lady [Insert Job Title Here]

This may come as a shock, but I am not a “Lady Geologist.” I do not examine women visually and use lab tests in order to understand their physical properties, provenance, and environment of deposition. I have never gone up to a female stranger, hammered a chunk off of her, and sent it to the lab so I could determine the abundance of her constituent minerals. That kind of thing would, I assume, land me in jail.

I’m a Sedimentary Geologist. I commit those sorts of friendly acts on sedimentary rocks, which are mineralogically more interesting and also don’t mind if you take a hammer to them. (Okay maybe they do mind, but they have no legal standing under current US law.)

I would likewise think that “Lady Lawyers” don’t limit themselves to female clients. And “Lady Engineers” don’t spend their time designing more durable women in AutoCAD. And “Lady Writers” (this I can speak to personally) don’t just write women or about women. And “Lady Editors” don’t leave trails of women in their wake, panting and covered with marks made in track changes.

Oh, right. The “Lady” is supposed to indicate that we’re a professional of some sort that happens to be a lady. And what’s wrong with that?

It’s simple. By feeling the need to point out that holy shit, that engineer is a woman, you are paying lip service to the idea that it’s only normal for men to be engineers. That women are the exception instead of just a normal part of the professional landscape. When you append or job titles with the unnecessary flag of gender, it effectively removes us from the work ecosystem and marks us as an invasive species, abnormal and not belonging.

Maybe I could have understood that more back when women were just starting to claw our way as a group out of the role of housewife, but our presence in the workforce hasn’t been a surprise in decades or far longer. (At my ripe old age of 32, I literally do not remember a time when women were not doctors, lawyers, and engineers, though admittedly not without struggle.) It isn’t shocking–SHOCKING!–that women write scifi. You have heard about this little book called Frankenstein, right?

And using the word Lady instead of Woman? Just makes it sound more cutesy and condescending because it’s a callback to all that chivalry bullshit. I’m not a lady, guys. I’m a woman. I’ve yet to hear someone referred to as a Lady Anything when her accomplishments or her gender weren’t then subsequently (if subtly) belittled. Wow, look what she did, and she’s a lady! Look what that lady did, unlike all those other women! Pretending to be amazed over and over again that we are here and working and doing just fine effectively erases our presence in the past.

Do you get what I’m saying? Do you get why I (and many of my fellow women, though please don’t think I am in any way claiming to speak for all women) are getting a little tired of that shit? Do you get why, even if it wasn’t meant to be patronizing or paternalistic, it might sound that way?

Good. Now kindly knock it off.

When I’m at work, I’m a goddamn Sedimentary Geologist. I’m a Writer. The presence or absence of tits does not change either of these facts.

Categories
writing

Kindle Worlds – fanfic for pay

If you know any writers, you’ve probably seen this spewed all over social media today. Well, it’s my turn to spew. Amazon is starting a new scheme, this one to sell fanfiction. For profit.

That’s right. Fanfiction. Making money off of it. This is a thing now. Well, it had the feeling of inevitability as soon as everyone realized 50 Shades of Gray was tarted-up Twilight fanfiction.

I have some very complicated feelings about this, both as an author and as a fan. The author gets to go first:

I had one moment of pants-shitting terror until I actually read over the terms. The fact that this for-profit fanfic will be limited to only properties Amazon has a deal with, and that royalties will be paid to the owners of that property soothes a lot of potential worries that I might have had, and goes a long way to explaining how this venture would even be possible. They’re not going to go selling fanfic at random. And there’s actually a lot of control by the owners of the original properties (from the Kindle Worlds authors page):

World Licensors have provided Content Guidelines for each World, and your work must follow these Content Guidelines. We strongly encourage you to read the Content Guidelines before you commit the time and effort to write.

So that’s certainly offering more control over content than regular fanfiction does. This means if the original property owner wants no slash, there will be no slash. (More on this later in the fan section.) Honestly, this doesn’t sound like fanfiction so much as a new model for writing tie-ins. So yeah, from the viewpoint of writing, it sounds like it could be beneficial – original property owners could make some money, starting writers could make some money for something they’d otherwise give away for free, win-win, right?

Hm, maybe. One of the major issues that’s making me feel uncomfortable with this scheme is right in the terms as well:

When you submit your story in a World, you are granting Amazon Publishing an exclusive license to the story and all the original elements you include in that story. This means that your story and all the new elements must stay within the applicable World. We will allow Kindle Worlds authors to build on each other’s ideas and elements. We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.

And.

Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright.

Emphasis in both passages added by me. First off, all rights for the term of copyright is something that had writers across the internet shitting their pants over the originally proposed contract terms for Hydra and its sister imprints. These are bad terms. The term of copyright at this point, with the ludicrous nature of copyright law, means “as long as we can squeeze even a dime out of your work’s rotting corpse.” Copyright effectively does not end as long as someone cares enough to renew it.

Add to that the other part. Basically, any original work you add in this for-profit fanfiction, be it plotline or world element or character effectively ceases to belong to you in any useful sense. If I’m reading this right, you can no longer use these original elements of your own outside of this fanfiction. And even better, the original owner of the work can use your story elements without so much as giving you credit. This may sound fair at first blush (this is fanfiction, after all, right? You’re getting paid, right?) but I’ve known a ton of people who write fanfic (including myself) who have gone on to use elements they first developed in fanfiction to fuel their own original endeavors. Come up with a cool side character that you can transfer into your own original universe and then write awesome novels about? Tough titties.

So that’s something I find incredibly worrying.

In a more abstract sense, I’d also like to throw in a little “won’t someone think of the children?” Part of what had people up in arms about the Hydra debacle was that it blatantly targeted struggling writers, because they were the most likely group to go for shitty contract terms and not know better. This has all of the same hallmarks, but potentially worse since the series in question could have a very teen-heavy fan (and writer) base. Get ’em while they’re young, eh, and then they’ll think term of copyright is a-okay?

It’s not entirely downbeat. I think this might be a shot for new writers to start building their own fan base, which could be useful when they branch off and start writing their own work. Hell, it could be a way for talent to get noticed by the people who run these properties. Who knows.

Though that does circle us back around to the question of quality control. Obviously there will be some, thanks to the “Content Guidelines.” But I’m curious to know how much editing will be done. How much will this be an opportunity for writers to actually improve their craft? I’ve already seen epublishing treated often as a “well fuck the editors they don’t see my obvious talent I’ll just self pub online” escape hatch by writers that honestly need more work. (Please note, I am not saying all self published work is like this. Some of it is phenomenal.) Will the Kindle Worlds get swollen with badly written works by writers who are not getting the necessary guidance to improve? Look at the internet, man. There is a lot of fanfic out there. And a lot of it is really, really bad.

Which brings us around to my much less mixed and generally less positive feelings as a fan.

Let me just put it out there that I find the idea of for-profit fanfiction thoroughly repugnant, as someone who has been writing fanfiction nearly her entire life. This is a little less so on the grounds that it’s done in concert with the creators, but still. In the depths of my fannish soul, I do not like it. Maybe I’m one of a dying breed.

Beyond that, there are two main concerns that I have as a fan:

1) If this becomes a useful revenue stream for the property owners, will this give them incentive to try to crack down on free fanfiction on the internet? While we know that fanfic has a way of surviving even when the holder of copyright doesn’t like the fact of its existence, this could make life very unpleasant for people. Obviously, this is a moot point unless the “licensed” fanfiction starts making a lot of money. But one does have to wonder, why bother paying even a pittance for fanfic on the Kindle when you can get it for free at AO3 or Fanfic.net?

Other than for the shiny badge of sanction, I suppose. Which brings me to point the second:

2) The “Content Guidelines” were mentioned before, but we don’t know why kind of things might be in them, other than no porn. How strict a control will there be on what is depicted in these stories?

While much of fanfiction is pure, joyful (and often badly written) brain crack, the one thing it can do, at times unwittingly, is give voice to viewpoints and characters that are marginalized in the original properties. For example, while a lot of slash can be porn for the sake of porn, it’s also there as a vehicle for depicting relationships between male characters where there wasn’t one in the series. While homosexual characters are becoming more common in the actual shows themselves, if you believed fanfiction you couldn’t throw a rock in a given episode without hitting a gay character. And while this may sound flippant or trivial to you, I believe it can have a profound impact. Frankly, yaoi and slash fanfiction were what started me as a teenager on my journey to realizing that gay people are (holy shit) people, and that I’m bisexual. Fanfiction can let side characters, often people of color, shine when they are given no opportunities in their original show. How will this work with content guidelines, and so on?

There’s a lot of fanfic out there. And there’s a certain magic to having to sort through it all to find stories you like. In the process, you’ll often find out that what you like isn’t necessarily what you thought you’d like.

A lot of this is just me spinning my wheels. Kindle Worlds is a thing that’s going to happen, and there’s no stopping it. There’s also no knowing how profitable will be. It could be a massive hit. It could be dead and forgotten in a year. We’ll find out. But while we wait to see how it develops, I can’t shake my feeling of profound unease.

While I’ve seen several blog posts that include, “If property X were in Kindle Worlds, I’d sure be tempted to write for it…” I’m not going to join that club. I have no interest in this scheme, not under those terms, no way, no how. Not even if it were Avengers. Because I do it for the love. And because some day I’m going to write the adventures of the little waffle iron that could.

Further reading:

Categories
steampunk writing

Read it now – The Ugly Tin Orrery

theuglytinorrery-500

“You wouldn’t dare.” The conductor, a fit man in a crisp blue uniform now unfortunately stained with sweat and powder thanks to his insistence on resisting rather more athletically than had been necessary, gave her a wide-eyed look. Recognition and horror dawned in his eyes as he took in her scarlet coat. There was only one pirate who had that particular quirk of dress, after all. Perhaps he’d missed the memo explaining that the infamous Captain Ramos was female.Marta smiled at him. It was an expression she had, quite literally, practiced in front of a mirror for years to perfect. In her role as pirate captain, that smile was calculated to state, why yes I am quite mad and have a fraction of concern for human life so small, you might as well save your time and round it to zero. “Pirate, Mister…” she peered at his little name badge, “…Lewis. I’m a pirate. Is there anything my ilk does not dare?”

Mostly a bluff, that. Captain Ramos was not one to slaughter droves of innocent civilians, though she had in fact shot a conductor once, because he’d gone after her with a paring knife from a nearby fruit bowl. It had been an embarrassing incident for all involved—terminally so for the conductor in question—but Marta had made good use of it nonetheless in the cause of convincing other potentially brave souls that she really was that mad.

“You’re a madwoman.”

“If I must keep repeating myself, this conversation will become intensely dull.” But she examined him carefully, taking in the signs of distress and mentally calculating which way he would crack if just a bit more pressure were applied. She drew her pistol and pointed it squarely in his face.

The man’s eyes went wide, and he tried to jerk his hands up defensively, only to be stopped by the firm hands of one Lucius Lamburt. Lucius played his part beautifully by growling into the man’s ear, “Now then, sonny, you don’ want ta give us no trouble.” Lucius also played the part beautifully of having been born, as far as anyone could tell, as some sort of gorilla who was subsequently partially shaved and outfitted with the surprisingly well-tailored clothes of a man.

…though knowing Lucius, Marta reflected, he was quite likely serious. The man was unhinged in all of the most useful ways. “If you please, Mister Lewis. I wouldn’t want to overexcite our Mister Lamburt with the sight of blood.”

Lucius laughed in the conductor’s ear, accompanied by a fine spray of saliva. That, at least, was more obviously an act. Lucius had a bit of a thing about bodily fluids.

The conductor was quick to lead her into the third freight car then, and rip up the floor paneling that hid the safe. While the main point of the raid had been the train’s cargo-a shipment of steel bars and some much-needed, delicately machined replacement parts for their various engines-there was really no reason to leave the store of gold and silver on the train behind. It was just good business.

“Captain, this ought to be the last of the crates,” Simms called from behind.

Marta glanced up to see the tall man walking down the narrow hallway toward her. He held one end of a wooden crate that had been painted a rather odd shade of green. “Are you certain, Simms? That doesn’t look like the rest.”

“The maker’s stamp–” Whatever Simms might have been about to point out was lost when the door to the car crashed open and a man with a shock of wild yellow curls flung himself through. His dove-gray jacket was torn and his tie in complete disarray, one glove missing as well, the other stained with ink or possibly grease, it was difficult to tell from this distance.

With wild desperation he flung himself at Simms, arms flailing. “That is my trunk! Mine! You can’t have it!”

The attack was sudden and ferocious enough, despite the almost comical size difference that was revealed when the short, slight man proceeded to cling to Simms like a monkey, that Simms dropped his end of the crate. It hit the floor with a crash and the man who had been holding the other side lost his grip as well, cursing as he did so. One side of the crate lost its integrity, boards splintering outward.

As Simms tried to pry away the fingers of the much smaller man free, bearings cascaded from the splintered crate. Swearing, Simms stumbled and then began to slip freely on them, arms windmilling and legs skating to and fro as the much smaller man pummeled him about the head and shoulders with one hand.

Marta, Lucius, and the conductor, momentarily forgetting he was a captive and this might have been the perfect opportunity to escape, openly stared.

“Ah… shouldn’t someone help that man?” the conductor said, after a moment.

“Naw, ‘e’s fine. Winning even, I’d say,” Lucius answered.

The sad truth of it was, Marta wasn’t entirely certain to whom they were referring.

Released today at Musa Publishing! If you liked the excerpt, there’s more where that came from!

Categories
writing

The Dining of the Cats

Chapter 1

Lorn Gorstorfsson stood at the parapet, eyes piercing the uneasy night from above a gnarled red beard in which a sparrow could easily become lost. Overhead, the Harvest Moon hung, fat and full; much fatter and fuller, he thought bitterly, than the actual harvest.

That was the price, he’d been told, for ignoring tradition for so many years. Traditions existed for a reason, even when they seemed nonsensical, or even silly. They’d kept the people of Tyrafyl safe for countless centuries. It was only in the reign of the most recent king that things had fallen by the wayside.

And what a terrible harvest had been reaped, for that time of inattention: floods, terrible storms, bad harvests, and all while the king engaged in debauchery, ignoring his closest advisors and taking shelter behind the supposed infallibility of the crown.

Well, Lorn thought to himself with grim amusement, the man hadn’t seemed all that infallible when he’d fallen down those three flights of stairs and onto a pike someone had left so carelessly propped against a table.

Someone. Oops.

Only now there was a vacuum of power at the top of the onyx steps that led to the throne. And while life was unpleasant enough for the peasants and even minor (if ambitious) nobility like Lorn, with belts tightening by the week, there was something about that massive, carved wooden throne. Everyone wanted to sit in it. Everyone thought they knew best.

Even Lorn himself. He had ideas, about defending the country, about expanding the borders to compensate for the harvests and bringing new lands into the kingdom. No one had listened to him seriously before now, but perhaps they would.

This had been his idea, for all he regretted it now. A return to the old ways to place himself in better attention, bring some light onto his rather convoluted bloodline. And that was why he found himself standing out on the walls, breath steaming in the air, boiled leather armor the only thing between him and freezing in the unseasonably cold autumn night.

By all rights, there should have been a storm, perhaps one of the great autumn blows where there was snow and purple lightning, crashes of thunder crackling through the ice riming the streams. But no, it was just cold, cold and calm, not a breeze stirring the bare branches of the palla trees.

From within the keep, an unholy howl rose, cat after cat raising its voice as if shrieking at the moon. The hairs on the back of Lorn’s neck stood, as did those on his sinewy arms, what few were left behind after the wash of dragon fire he’d taken as a young man.

Four times, the cats howled, once for each of the quarters. He’d read in the tomes of lore this would happen, but had not truly believed it. After all, this festival had not been observed in his lifetime.

The doors of the keep boomed hollowly, four measured strikes, someone indescribably ancient and powerful asking to be admitted.

Lorn licked his suddenly dry lips, smoothing his beard down with one hand. “Destarn River Keep bids you welcome!” he shouted. After a moment of hesitation the other sentries followed suit. “Open the doors!”

As two guards, their own boiled leather armor less impressed and adorned than his own, hurried to man the giant winches that would open the formal gates, the cats howled again. In the sky, the moon washed red. And in the inner court of the keep, somehow over the din he thought he could hear the soft weeping of those chosen. Girls, their curls adorned with thorns and holly, waited with their milk white backs bowed under massive stone serving platters.

The Dining of the Cats was about to begin.

Categories
steampunk writing

Now available for pre-order: Murder on the Titania!

Coming 3/15/13!At long last, my steampunk murder mystery novelette is available for pre-order from Musa Publishing! The phrase “unspeakably excited” doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel about this. The novelette will be released on April 5th! Get it while it’s hot!

Here’s a taste of what it’s about:

When theft turns to murder, retired Colonel Geoffrey Douglas knows only two things for certain. The Air Ship Titania carries 300 passengers and crew. And any one of them could be the murderer…

In the wake of global Infection and hard-fought wars to drive the disease out into the wilds, the survivors have slowly rebuilt a polite society that relies upon airships and steam engines to travel safely between the remaining Grand Duchies. In times of peace, old war heroes must find new ways to make themselves useful. But where there are ships, there are pirates, and darkness waits in the most unexpected places…

After years at war, retired Colonel Geoffrey Douglas tries to accustom himself to a more tame career as the Grand Duke’s chief of security, but he can’t seem to let his guard down. He sees danger around every corner. Worst of all, he’s often right. And when a simple mission to deliver precious cargo for the Grand Duke goes wrong, Geoff finds himself in a race against time to find a murderer before the Air Ship Titania lands and the murderer can escape.

But there are 300 passengers and crew aboard, and the murderer could be any one of them. When Geoff discovers a second murder victim, he realizes this isn’t just a fight to prevent the murderer from escaping: it’s a desperate race to stop him from killing again.

I had a lot of fun writing this and hopefully you’ll have just as much fun reading it. As you can tell, Colonel Douglas is a very serious investigator with a very serious mustache, and he’s not about to let a murderer get away with a crime under his watch. Technically if you’ve read The Jade Tiger you’ll have one over on poor Geoff for most of the story, so enjoy your advantage!

Here’s an excerpt so you can get a feel for my writing:

Geoff sat up with a gasp, for a moment disoriented in the darkness, recognizing neither the bed nor the thin strip of light leaking in under the door. He heard only snapping tree branches, the crack of distant guns, shouts, and screams as the Infected slammed into his company’s defensive lines. No, he realized, those sounds were in his mind, mixed with someone pounding frantically at his door, rescuing him from a thoroughly unpleasant dream. He took three deep breaths to calm himself, then felt along the wall to find the lamp and turn the power back up.

“A moment,” he shouted. “A moment if you please. I’m awake. Let me make myself decent.” He slipped from bed and quickly dressed. His shirt was rumpled, collar and cuffs undone, and his tie nowhere to be found, but he deemed it good enough for the ungodly hour.

There was a young officer other side of the door, face pale, ginger hair disheveled. His uniform had a lieutenant’s stripes on the shoulder.

“What is so important that it couldn’t wait for a decent hour?” Geoff demanded.

“Something awful’s happened, sir. Captain told me to fetch you quick as I could—”

“Is it my luggage?”

The lieutenant shook his head, swallowing hard. “No, sir, it isn’t. It’s much worse.”

Geoff nodded, then dug his lorgnette from his traveling case. The little device was rather battered and showing its age, but still serviceable. “Then you’d best show me the way, Lieutenant…?”

“Collins, sir.”

Geoff followed Lieutenant Collins along several hallways and down two flights of stairs. Soon they were at the top of another set of stairs, these ones plain metal that led down to the crew quarters.

There was a small crowd gathered at the bottom of the stairs, most of the people dressed in the uniforms of the crew or servants. More to Geoff’s interest, there was a body sprawled untidily across the deck plates, a pool of dark red spread out in a halo from the back of its head. The head itself was turned at an unnatural angle, far back and to the side.

It took only a moment for his sleep-muzzled mind to place who it was at the bottom of the stairs: Lord Caraway. It made little sense for the man to be in this area of the ship, but the truth was inescapable: he was very much there, and very much dead.

And now I’ll get back to work on writing the third novella for the series – because that’s right, there will be at least four more after this one!

Categories
Uncategorized writing

I’m number one! (in the Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll!!!)

762881Strange Horizons published the results of their Reader’s Poll this morning and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Comes the Huntsman is first place for short story! Thank you everyone who voted for me! Thank you so much!

Comes the Huntsman is a story that’s still incredibly special to me (and not incidentally the story I wrote in 2012 for Tom Hiddleston’s birthday – my ‘Hiddlestory’ if you will). I donated the $105 payment I received for it to UNICEF.

So today, in celebration of taking first place, here’s what I did:

new donation

Thank you to everyone who read and everyone who voted! I’ll try to keep making good art!

Categories
Uncategorized writing writing advice

How much are you worth?

The question is more literally “How much is your writing worth?” but since art is in effect a piece of you that you have offered for the consumption of others, I think it’s a fair question.

In the last day, there’s been a minor blow-up about Random House’s new Hydra imprint. Simply put, the contract is horrifically awful. Cory Doctorow pointed out you’d be better off self-publishing through a site like Lulu.com. Scalzi said the contract would make any good agent’s head explode, and later dissected a contract from the sister imprint Alibi. Random House has now written the SFWA a letter about this matter, and the SFWA has responded quite negatively. If you are someone who hopes to some day publish a novel, you should read these posts. You need to educate yourself about this, because there are people out there (apparently including in big publishing houses who should know better) who want to exploit your work.

And if you’re a reader of fiction, you should pay attention to. Practices that hurt writers will ultimately hurt readers, in a myriad of ways. We depend on each other.

What really pisses me off about this entire thing is that it blatantly targets new, struggling writers. Because we’re desperate, and we may not understand how precious our rights are, and which rights we should expect to retain as a matter of course. As a new, struggling writer, I know how tempting it can be to grab at any offer that will get your book in print somehow, because then you get to feel like a real writer. Trying to get published sucks. It involves constant rejection. It involves waiting for immense periods of time just so someone can tell you no over and over again. It’s fucking depressing. And I know that the opportunity to escape that cycle of rejection can feel like someone’s thrown you a rope when you’re drowning.

Only sometimes, the rope is the tail of a poisonous snake. Or a hydra. (See what I did there?)

You ultimately have to ask yourself what is my work worth? Ask yourself what am I worth?

I can tell you right now, your work is worth more than giving up all of your rights and paying for the privilege of seeing your name on the cover of an ebook. You and your work are worth enough that you should not be paying production costs. You and your work are worth enough that you should not have every single right stripped from you for the full term of copyright. You’re worth way more than that. And your friends who are writers are worth more than that too. So tell them to avoid these imprints. Tell them it’s a bad deal. Tell them that in publishing, money should never come from the author, and we have to fight to keep it that way.

You are worth putting up with the rejection until you get a good yes. I know how it is, man. I’d do just about anything to get one of my novels in print. But I wouldn’t do this, because my work is mine, it’s me, and I’m a financial gravity well toward which money flows.

 

See also:

Categories
free read writing

Utar the Radish Farmer

So, this is entirely @mbennardo’s fault. LET IT BE KNOWN.


On a hill overlooking the Camsted valley stands a man, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, hands with short, stubby fingers and square palms. Earth hands, his Mam had called them. Stone hands they also got called, by anyone unlucky enough to mistake soft-spoken for weak after a night of drinking.

Utar the Radish Farmer leans on his hoe, watching black clouds of crows swirl above the valley. He leans back his head and whistles piercingly through the generous gap between his front teeth, a special combination of tones and trills that some might call magic, but he just calls sense.

One black dot breaks away from the cloud and spirals through the air toward him. Utar waits patiently, squinting against the cheery yellow sunlight of the afternoon. A few minutes later, a crow lands on the handle in a flurry of wings, balanced on one foot. Utar tilts his head back, squints against the feathers until she’s gotten settled.

He knows this crow. She has a set of golden dots on top of her head, like the beauty marks of a lady. They’ve talked before. “Good day, Lady Crow.” He’s also heard this called magic, being able to talk to birds. Seems like more good sense to him.

She clacks her beak. “Very good for us, Utar.”

Utar tilts his chin toward the valley. “There a battle on?”

“Have you ever known anything else to draw us in such numbers?”

“Nay, ’tis true. What’s the chance the lines might move this way a mite more?”

She inspects him with one black, sparkling eye. “There’s a soothsayer on the side of the man in red. We could trick him in to it easily enough.” Then she turns her head to inspect him with the other eye. “For the normal price.”

Utar nods slowly. “Agreed.” Man in red probably means the Duke; he’s always sounded like the superstitious sort.

The crow takes off and Utar heads back down the hills of his radish farm. “Mattie,” he calls to his wife, “get the girls. Battle’ll be coming this way soon.”

Mattie throws down the lump of dough she’s been working and gives him an annoyed look. “I’m in the middle of baking.”

“The high and mighty don’t consult with the likes of us.” He smiles, catches her by the waist, nuzzles her neck with a stubbly chin until she shrieks and gives him a playful slap. “Get the girls. We’ll be wanting to bury anything we can’t carry.”

“Aye. But if they burn my house down again, the next one better have an extra bedroom. And a bigger kitchen.”

He nods slowly. “Agreed.”

By nightfall, they hear the drums of the marching armies, but they’re already cleared out, up a hill and into their neighbor’s fields, backs bent under bundles of clothes and cooking pots, with a basket of winterberries as a peace offering for letting them stay a few nights.

Three days later the crow with golden spots finds Utar again. She’s flying heavy and drunk, gorged with carrion. Utar has to steady her with his fingers when she lands on the haft of his ax; he’s been helping out with the firewood.

“Battle done, Lady Crow?”

She belches in the least ladylike way imaginable. “And a big one at that.”

“My thanks. I’ll get the sweet red corn for you this year, my word on it.”

“It strikes me, Utar. You never ask us who won.” The crow lets out a croaking laugh, interrupted by another belch.

“Aye.” He shoos her away and calls for Mattie to get the girls, finish breakfast, get ready to go home. He doesn’t even wait for goodbyes; he spikes the ax into the nearby stump and heads back over the hill.

Utar only spares the briefest of looks for the smoldering ruin of his house. He collects his hoe from its hiding place and wades into his fields, feet sticking in the churned up battlefield muck, more blood than dirt. The scent of decay coats the back of his throat, but he’s used to it by now. Humming a working song, he sets to hoeing the blood, the burned cloth and charred wood, the hacked-up flesh and bone into his fields.

It doesn’t matter to him, who has won or lost. All he cares about is the good earth and its feeding, the way the soil drinks in death and turns rich and black with life. What he gives to his fields, they return ten fold in the best radishes in the fief.

And if it makes him smile, sometimes, to think that noble kitchens seek out his produce and feed their new crop of warriors on their previous crop of warriors, well.

He’s just a radish farmer, simple folk. What does he know.

Categories
writing

2012 Stories

We’re now into 2013 which means it’s time to start thinking about awards for stuff from 2012! Woo!

I have three short stories that are eligible:

The Jade Tiger – Penumbra, March 2012
Comes the Huntsman – Strange Horizons, July 2, 2012
Entangled – Specutopia, July 13, 2012

Regarding Entangled, I’ll be posting it on this blog in February since Specutopia seems to have gone defunct.

Please think of me kindly!

(Completely coincidentally, nominations are now open for the Hugo Awards, she types while ducking her head with shame.)