Category: Novellas

Novellas, Papers, SFF, Short stories

2014 In Review

OJ

It’s been a busy year, writing-wise. First – and most important! – my PhD thesis has been completed and accepted. Thank fuck. One of the case studies, “Witnessing the Waste Land: Sight, Sound and Response in Edith Sitwell’s ‘Three Poems of the Atomic Age'”, has been published in UnderCurrents: the Journal of Critical Environmental Studies.

I’ve also had my first novellas published. Trading Rosemary (January) and The Don’t Girls (October) were both published by Masque Books. I’ve also self-published two others: The Life in Papers of Sofie K. and Vita Urbis.

On top of that, I’ve had three short stories published: “Vita Urbis” (a short story that would later grow into the above novella) in the urban fantasy anthology Twisted Boulevard by Elektrik Milk Bath Press. Also “Tommy Flowers and the Glass Bells of Bletchley“, which was published in The Dark Magazine, and “The Mussel Eater“, published by The Book Smugglers.

If I’m perfectly honest, I’m fishing for awards nominations. A long shot, but it would be nice. I’m focusing primarily here on two pieces: Trading Rosemary and “The Mussel Eater”.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards, for speculative fiction by New Zealand writers, are handed out every year Down Under, at the National Science Fiction Convention. As far as I understand, it’s free to nominate and you don’t have to be a Kiwi to do so. Both TR and TME are very NZ focussed – the first is eligible for the Novella or Novelette category, the second is eligible for the Short Story category. Nominations, if you’re feeling kind, can be sent via email to sjv_awards@sffanz.org.nz. They close on January 31st.

Secondly, the Hugos. I’m in my second and final year of eligibility for the Campbell Award. Trading Rosemary is eligible in the Best Novella category, and TME in the Best Short Story (admittedly, though, there have been so many fine short stories this year that I don’t have a lot of hopes for it there). Rosemary has been getting some positive attention from book bloggers and critics, however, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her. If you’ve read her and liked her, please consider nominating!

All in all, a relatively successful year – especially academically. Hopefully I can now focus more on other writing now that the beast that is my thesis (540 pages, people!) has been laid to rest.

Novellas, SFF

So You’ve Written A Mystical Pregnancy…

OJ

Vita Urbis - High ResolutionI know. I know.

They’re terrible. You think I haven’t seen them or read them and thought “What is this bullshit?” Granted, I don’t hate them as much as I hate the Magic Baby, Child of Prophecy, but then nothing comes close to the hate I have for that.

I mean, a woman’s more than an incubator, and it’s a sad fact that inflicting a character with a mystical pregnancy pretty much turns her into little more than a host organism victimised by her own capacity for reproduction. No choice, no agency.

So why did I feel the need to add another story to this pile of idiocy? I’ve just self-published my November novella, Vita Urbis, wherein the main character, Vita, gets knocked up by a city. Yes, roll your eyes, go ahead. I don’t blame you. I did as well, on the grounds of better late than never. See, this novella is based on a short story I wrote, published earlier this year in the urban fantasy anthology Twisted Boulevard. That was unadulterated mystical pregnancy for you, though my idiot self didn’t see it until far too late. Although the story was intercut with scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, so transformation and some really twisted reproduction was par for the course. (Leda fucked a swan, for God’s sake. Say what you like about Vita, but at least she’s not out molesting the local wildlife.)

So I felt the need to do a fix-it job. Hence the novella – and if it makes matters worse then hell. It’s only a novella. I can always write another one.

To improve the expanded version I did three things. First, in the Ovid intercuts, I emphasised the themes of choice and agency. The novella is set around images of reflection – the stories mirror each other, the City with its own underworld, Vita reproducing through work and womb – so strengthening the metamorphoses helped to (hopefully) strengthen the whole.

Secondly, I gave Vita more choice… and made the City an active player in giving her that choice. For example, there’s a point where she considers abortion, and the same entity that got her pregnant in the first place makes it clear that it would support her if that’s what she wanted to do. It’s actually helpful about it. I’ve done things like this to try and return some agency to Vita, to make her more than a passive receptacle.

Finally, it’s the mirror effect again. Vita, in effect, knocks up the City before it lays so much as a smoky tendril on her. An architect, Vita reproduces herself in the buildings she designs, in a deliberate attempt to recreate the City in her own image. Little wonder the City wants to return the favour… Their relationship is mutually exploitative, especially as after the earthquakes that accompany Vita’s labour, her buildings might be the only things left standing.

So, I’ve written a mystical pregnancy. For the first and last time, probably. If it sounds like something you might be interested in, get yourself over to Amazon.

You can still roll your eyes if you want to.

Novellas

Birthday Challenge

OJ

So, I’m a bit slack with this writing thing. If there’s a way to procrastinate, I’ll find it. For the past few years, my go-to distraction source has been the PhD, but now that’s coming to an end (O frabjous day!) I can’t even kid myself that any future procrastination will be something productive.

One can’t very well be a writer if one is too damn lazy to write. You see the problem here.

So, I’ve given myself a challenge. Last month was my birthday, and I happened to self-pub a fantasy novella: The Life in Papers of Sofie K. Starting then, and for the next year, I’m going to try and produce a novella a month. Actually, it doesn’t have to be a novella. A poetry collection, a collection of short fic, anything that’s relatively substantial – but I reckon they’ll mostly be novellas. This isn’t because the world is in any dire need of my dulcet prose – as if! It’s more of a documented attempt to force the habit of daily writing.

Hopefully by the time October rolls around next year I’ll have become accustomed to it and my procrastination levels will have gone down. (They can’t very well go up.) And I’m sticking this on the blog because, well, public shaming is a motivating force.

Novellas, SFF

“The Life in Papers of Sofie K”

OJ

sofiekcoverMy new novella is out! My new novella is out!

The Life in Papers of Sofie K. is based on the life of Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya. It’s basically a literary/fantasy bio, maths meets magical realism. The premise comes from events in Sofie’s childhood – the poor kid had the most terrible Nanny. This cheerful woman apparently had a bent for macabre tales, and Sofie had life-long screaming nightmares about witches and werewolves and the Black Death. Now, I’m not a parent but I dare say if I had a small child I wouldn’t be tucking them into bed with stories about how people infected with bubonic plague were nailed inside houses that were subsequently set alight.

I mean, come on! Nanny dearest makes the Brothers Grimm look like fluffy bunnykins.

In my novella, Nanny’s nightmares come to life: Sofie is shadowed by a monster that is all her nightmares combined. But it’s not an enemy – it’s her shadow-self, sort of daemon and direwolf and Patronus, following Sofie through the universities of Europe. Because Sofie herself is also monstrous – or perceived as being so, with her enormous mathematical talent that allows her to break out of traditional gender roles and make her own way.

My last two novellas have been published by Masque Books, and Masque’s great. But this is too short for them, and I’ve been curious about self-publishing for a while now. I’ve a few more short novellas nearly ready to go that will probably end up the same way but Sofie K. is the first. Here’s a brief taster:

Sofie wants to study at the university at Berlin. This is not an easy thing: she lacks the parts preferred to do so, and the monster is no help. The professors do not want it in their libraries and their lecture rooms, with its thick soft paws and teeth that are too crescent for them, too light and lunar for comfort. Sofie cannot argue that they take the one without the other, cannot leave the monster at home. It is bound to her and will not leave, and she does not try to make it. If it were lost she would lose herself, so while she stops it from burying its teeth in those that thwart her, keeps it from poison and breaking and hammers, she does not leash or muzzle it.

Despite this, there is yet an avenue open to her: an appeal to the senate, a plea for scholarship. A chance for talent to rise above, to compensate for monstrosity. Sofie knows that she will need to sell herself, to walk the line between sty and nightmare, to look the part of a serious student. She holds herself as her father does, stiff-spined. She must appear more pig than monster, a curiosity in place of threat. Her shoes are sensible, rubbed clean of mud with thin lines of delicacy and they make a subdued clatter when she walks. An ugly bonnet makes her look older than she is. It shadows her mouth, and if Sofie ever had a tendency to simper then the bonnet does away with it, because she saw herself in mirrors before she came and this is not a hat to simper in. She does not wish to appear ridiculous.

(She knows some people will see her so anyway.)

The senate is unmoved. Talent is not enough for them–nor ability, nor enthusiasm. Even in clattery shoes she walks too lightly for them, has too much the whiff of monster. An aberration: something to be kept out with spells and salt and silver. They see only the bonnet (not how ugly it is, or the careful preparation behind it) and their fixed idea of women says that Sofie would be happier if she left maths well alone and circled millinery instead.

Anyway. If you want to read more you can find Sofie and her monster on Amazon. Check it out if it sounds like you!