In other, writing-related news: Kathleen Bellamy let me know that my story “Horus Ascending” was going to be part of the forthcoming IGMS anthology. Full TOC here, and some pretty awesome company.
Oh, and I forgot to post because I was in the internet black hole, but you can find my write-up about “Exodus Tides” over at the IGMS blog, Sideshow Freaks.
“Exodus Tides” grew out of several conversations at last year’s Eastercon about immigration: both about society’s acceptance of massive influx of migrants, and of how migrants themselves dealt with leaving the homeland behind, and starting a new life in a foreign country.
So it would appear I’ve sold my short story “Exodus Tides” to Edmund Schubert at IGMS. Many thanks to everyone who took a look at it when it was still titled “Siren Song”: it went through VD6, and it was up on OWW for a while, where it was Editor’s choice [1]. People who helped include Pete Aldin, Larry Pinaire, Karen Meisner, Nancy Fulda, Sara Genge, Ruth Nestvold, Ralan Conley, and Stephen Gaskell. And many many thanks to Douglas Cohen, who took a look through my rewrite in record time; and to Edmund for the awesome suggestions.
Contrary to most of my fiction nowadays, it’s set in France, in a nameless Parisian suburb; and it’s got mermen, and the sea and the Abyss. Sort of urban post-apocalyptic fantasy, I guess, if you really want to pigeonhole it…
Mother never spoke about the sea.
She’d been very young at the time of the exodus, Aunt Albane said: a mere smolt, able to swim on her own but not yet ready to mate or bear offspring. Father had dragged her from the depths as the Dark King raged, and they fled together, ahead of twisted, shadowy shapes with harpoons and tridents–never stopping till they reached the safety of the seashore.
“But how did he swim?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine Father–small and portly with a shock of pale white skin, out of breath when he climbed the stairs–as someone who had ever been at ease in the sea-depths.
Some tidbits about the writing of “On Horizon’s Shores” can be found here at Edmund Schubert’s blog. As usual, Edmund will also run tidbits on all the other stories, which are always interesting (and which, I, for one, am very much looking forward to reading).
