Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

The Hook: Darkness Fair by Rachel A. Marks

February 3, 2016

MARKS-DarknessBrutal

The Hook:

The demon is crouched in the corner, between the Cheetos and the onion dip. It’s a small one, only about four feet tall: a low-level creeper. I flick my gaze over the spot like I don’t see it and open the cooler door to get a Coke.

I watch the cashier behind me in the security mirror as he finishes ringing up a customer. He notices me—eyes my ratty hoodie, grungy backpack, scruffy jaw, tattooed fist gripping the cooler handle—and reaches one hand under the counter, probably to grab the butt of a shotgun or a bat he’s got hidden there. He’s totally oblivious to the real danger that’s hanging out in the junk food aisle.

The bell on the door rings as the customer leaves.

I walk past the demon casually, hoping it doesn’t sense my awareness. It’s not here for me, though; its bulbous black eyes are trained on the cashier. Its scarred and misshapen wings twitch and knock at the shelf as its leg muscles tense, like it’s ready to pounce. Clawed feet dig into the linoleum floor, surrounded by traces of black ash and sulfur that seep from its skin.

I set the can of Coke down on the counter and toss a Snickers up there too—dinner of champions.

“Hey,” I say to the cashier. The chill of being too close to the demon crawls over me, but I clench my jaw and ignore it.

Rachel A. Marks writes:

My debut YA Urban Fantasy series The Dark Cycle begins with DARKNESS BRUTAL, where we get to know the homeless seventeen-year-old, Aidan, and learn about his very strange abilities, which he’s been using, up until now, to try and keep his little sister safe. It’s based loosely on the idea that the underbelly of society could hold the greatest treasures of humanity; you know that bum walking past talking to himself? He might be just the guy to save the world. Think of it as Dickens’ Oliver Twist meets TV’s Supernatural in the gritty streets of Los Angeles.

I wrote this opening after several missed attempts, since I was trying to decide where Aidan’s story really started. I wanted to reveal him and his world in a way that would allow the reader to see his everyday life while still providing enough information and action so it wasn’t boring. And so, I imagined the most mundane thing in the daily life of Aidan, and plopped a demon on top, which he would see as an “everyday” thing but the reader certainly wouldn’t.

Demons and snack foods. It’s an opening line that people seem to attach to and instantly want to understand and know more about. I also wanted them to see how the rest of the world saw him. So when the store owner looks on in suspicion we know Aidan is a little ratty and not fit for “good” society. He’s an outsider. And he’s more worried about the demon knowing his awareness than the store clerk suspecting him of criminality. He avoids his abilities. And so in this scene, we watch him fail to stay in the shadows like he wants.

As the story progresses Aidan begins to realize what he’s really running from, and why, and we see that he’s not alone in these strange abilities, even if he thought he was, as other young people crowd around him. Without spoiling it, one thing that makes this series unique in the UF world, are the ties it has to legends and history. Time is a central theme as the story reveals the ancient battle that follows Aidan and his sister, which will soon have them looking at each other across a chasm of their parent’s mistakes.

Book two, DARKNESS FAIR, releases today and is the second part of the siblings’ story. It takes the reader even deeper into the legends and magic that Aidan has to traverse to help his sister, and gives us the story from another perspective. We see Aidan settling into his new role and attempting to use and grow his abilities rather than hide from them. Just before it all goes wrong, of course.

Buy The Dark Cycle on Amazon

About the author:

Rachel A. Marks is an award-winning author and professional artist, a cancer survivor, a surfer and dirt-bike rider, chocolate lover and keeper of faerie secrets. She was voted: Most Likely to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but hopes she’ll never have to test the theory. You can usually find her hanging out with her four teenagers, reciting lines from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or arguing about which superhero rocks the hardest, while her husband looks on in confusion. Find out more about her and check out her art at www.RachelAnneMarks.com

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Contributor Copies, International Edition

January 26, 2016

informator

Many fine magazines with my stories in them arrived today.

ON SPEC #101, Canada’s premier SF/F digest, includes my humorous quantum physics story “One in a Million.”

NordCon XXIX convention booklet features the Polish translation of “Spidersong”

And Informator has been running my Tales of the Elopus mini-stories for close to a year, also in Polish translation. Pictured above is the second batch of the magazines — I think they ran all of them at this point.

Contributor copies make for a happy author. #SFWApro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Fire Sale on UFO Paperbacks

January 21, 2016

heavy_snow

There’s a major blizzard crawling along the East Coast this weekend, and what better way to fight snow and ice than with fire?

Until end of day Sunday, Jan 24, UFO Publishing is offering 25% off all paperbacks (including the brand-new Funny Science Fiction which will begin shipping as of January 29!)

Click here to browse the selection of books. Enter the discount code FIRE at checkout to activate the 25% off discount. Shipping is always free on all orders within the United States.

#SFWAPro

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Help make “High-Tech Fairies and Pandora Perplexity” free for all.

January 19, 2016

A mini crowdfunding campaign started today on Moozvine. This website, launched last year, seeks to make excellent short science fiction and fantasy e-books available for all. Some stories are posted for free — readers are encouraged but not required to tip the author. You can read my “Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma” in that fashion. Other stories have a funded threshold. This means that if the funding goal is reached, the story will become available on the site for free, and users are welcome to share the e-books and the web version for free under the Creative Commons license (non-commercial.)

Since this is a short story rather than a novella the threshold is set reasonably low at $400. Anyone who pledges $10 or more will immediately receive the e-book for themselves and the free-for-all option will unlock as soon as full funding is reached. So please take a look, and help me share the project.

I also have two more Europe-related bits of writing news to report. I can now share that my Cthulhumor story “Recall Notice” is going to appear in the Tales from the Miskatonic Library anthology from PS Publishing. Also, my flash SF story “Grains of Wheat” will appear on the Concatenation‘s Best of Nature list later this year. Very pleased and honored to have my story selected!

#SFWAPro

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Funny Science Fiction Paperback!

January 15, 2016

Funny Science Fiction, UFO Publishing’s most successful anthology to date in terms of month-to-month sales, is now available in paperback! I’ll have copies at 2016 conventions I attend, but you can also snag copies here.

Happy Friday!

#SFWAPro

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Whom He May Devour published at Nautilus

January 7, 2016

My science fiction story “Whom He May Devour” was published today at Nautil.us — an award-winning science magazine. It’s about singularities, FTL, religious fanatics, love, terrorism, and cyborgs. And it’s gorgeously laid out and illustrated, and free to read online. So, what are you waiting for?

Read “Whom He May Devour.”

In related news, XB-1 magazine translated “High-Tech Fairies and the Pandora Perplexity” into Czech and published it in the January issue. I get to share the table of contents with Charlie Stross and Michael Swanwick. Not too shabby! You can click on the gorgeous cover above to see the larger version of the image.

#SFWAPro

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

The Hook: Steal the Sky by Megan E. O’Keefe

January 6, 2016

The Hook:

It was a pretty nice burlap sack. Not the best he’d had the pleasure of inhabiting, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t bad either. The jute was smooth and woven tight, not letting in an inkling of light or location. It didn’t chafe his cheeks either, which was a small comfort.

The chair he was tied to was of considerably lesser quality. Each time Detan shifted his weight to keep the ropes from cutting off his circulation little splinters worked their way into his exposed arms and itched something fierce. Despite the unfinished wood, the chair’s joints were solid, and the knots on his ropes well-tied, which was a shame.

Detan strained his ears, imagining that if he tried hard enough he could work out just where he was. No use, that. Walls muted the bustle of Aransa’s streets, and the bitter-char aromas of local delicacies were blotted by the tight weave of the sack over his head. At least the burlap didn’t stink of the fear-sweat of those who’d worn it before him.

Someone yanked the bag off and that was surprising, because he hadn’t heard anyone in the room for the last half-mark. Truth be told, he was starting to think they’d forgotten about him, which was a mighty blow to his pride.

Megan E. O’Keefe writes:

Right off the bat, I wanted readers to realize that Detan Honding’s view of the world is different than most. I think it’s fair to say that most people would be concerned to find themselves tied to a chair with a bag over their head, but not Detan – he’s calm as can be. Instead of worrying about what’s coming for him next, he’s busy critiquing the quality of the bag obscuring his vision.

And yet, Detan is beginning to show cracks of annoyance. Splinters are picking at him, and he’s growing bored – worried that he’s been forgotten about – but also trying to work an angle, trying to see his way clear of the mess he’s gotten himself into. The overall picture is that Detan is a man who’s familiar with danger, perhaps even thrives on it. He’s been in this chair or ones like it before, and though he’s a wee bit irritated, he’s confident he can see his way through.

I wrote these intro paragraphs to have a slight sing-songy tone, a definite rhythm that, when it breaks, the reader notices – further emphasizing the cracks in Detan’s sense of calm. He may be telling himself everything’s okay, but the wear in the veneer of his flippant demeanor is already beginning to show and, by the end of the book, he may just be strained to breaking.

Buy Steal the Sky on Amazon.

About the author:

Megan E. O’Keefe was raised amongst journalists, and as soon as she was able joined them by crafting a newsletter which chronicled the daily adventures of the local cat population. She has worked in both arts management and graphic design, and spends her free time tinkering with anything she can get her hands on.

Megan lives in the Bay Area of California and makes soap for a living. It’s only a little like Fight Club. She is a first place winner in the Writers of the Future competition and her debut novel, Steal the Sky, is out now from Angry Robot Books.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

2015 Year In Review

December 31, 2015

This has been an excellent year for me as an anthologist, but perhaps a tiny bit of a step back for me as a writer. Here’s why.

I published two new anthologies, both toward the end of 2015: UFO4 and Funny Science Fiction. Year to year the new UFO volume seems to launch stronger than the previous year and swells up the sales of the previous volumes to go with it. UFO4 was no exception — it has launched strong and I’ve enjoyed strong sales on the series in the last quarter of the year. The real surprise however, was Funny SF. It was meant to be a budget project: reprints only, Amazon only, e-book only. It was mostly meant to be a vehicle to help promote the UFO series. But then, selecting funny stories from among the best the last ten years worth of professionally published material has to offer can result in a pretty damn good book, and the readers agreed. It has sold better than any other book I’ve launched to date and continues to sell very well. I am already reading for the Funny Fantasy volume to be released this summer, and will follow it up with Funny SF 2 next year.

I’m also working, concurrently, on three anthologies! In addition to Funny Fantasy, I’m in the early stages of work on UFO5, and I’m also editing a non-humor anthology, Humanity 2.0, for Arc Manor. Which is great, but it also takes up an enormous chunk of my writing time.

And that’s where the step back comes in for me as a writer. I had my first collection and a novella published in 2015. I was nominated for an award. And I still say there was a setback. Why? I simply did not produce the volume in 2015 that I had in the previous two years. I wrote a whopping 24 stories and 66,000 words of short fiction in 2013. In 2014 I wrote only 13 stories totaling 38,000 words. That’s because some of my word count was dedicated to the novel. In 2015, I completed only 11 stories totaling 23,000 words. However, my novel is now at about 60,000 words total, 2/3 of the way to finishing the first draft.

Although I wrote slower this year, I am still selling what I write pretty well. I already placed 6 of the 11 stories I wrote this year, and sold all the remaining stories I wrote in 2014. That leaves only 3 un-placed stories from late 2013, and one from 2012 which is sort-of sold but the contract hasn’t been signed yet.

I earned $2275 off my short fiction writing in 2015 (also about a third down from last year) having sold a total of 19 stories (including reprints). I made a total of 155 submissions, over 20 of them still outstanding, which means I also collected nearly 120 rejection slips, or about the same number as last year. A much higher percentage of my submissions this year were reprints, both because I haven’t written as many new stories and because I have so many more reprints to choose from as the great many stories I sold in 2013 and 2014 are coming off exclusivity.

Looking to 2016, my main goal is to finish the novel (yes, I’ve been saying that for a while now, but progress has been made, however slow, and at the rate I’m going I should be able to finish it.)

Thanks for reading my ramblings on this blog in 2015 and happy New Year!

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The Hook: Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen

December 29, 2015

The Hook:

Rüsul traveled to meet his death. The current had carried him away from his home island as if it understood his purpose. He lost sight of the archipelago before dusk, as much a function of the falling rain as the southerly wind that pushed him onward. In the days since, the sun had risen and set unseen, a slightly brighter spot that eased itself across the overcast sky. Nor had it cleared at night to permit a glimpse of the heavens. The clouds changed color as the rain ebbed and flowed, and the wind drove him across the water of its own accord toward an unvisited destination. Rüsul didn’t care. He had no need to hurry. He could feel the increasing proximity in his bones and that was enough. More than enough. An aged Fant on a raft alone and at sea, the wind filling his makeshift sail and carrying him toward the last bit of land he would ever stand upon. His father and mother had each left in the same manner, and their parents before them. That’s how it had been, going back generation upon generation to the very founding of Barsk.

Lawrence M. Schoen writes:

Barsk is an anthropomorphic SF novel set in the far future. As an elevator pitch, think Dune meets The Sixth Sense, with elephants. Its themes explore prophecy, intolerance, friendship, conspiracy, loyalty, and a drug that allows one to speak with the dead.

As I originally wrote this book, this was the opening to chapter two. But wiser heads prevailed and even though Rüsul is not the book’s main character (not even close), he is a good place to start.

There’s a gravitas to that opening line. It’s perhaps the best hook I’ve ever written. It promises drama and emotion, destiny and agency, and then immediately slips away into building the scenario, laying down the groundwork for a story in which the weather is at least as important as life and death.

The character is resolved to an action, his death, but he’s not in any hurry. He’s set off to embrace it, and the journey will take as long as it takes. Establishing that as his motivation in the first paragraph, I was naturally obligated to thwart it, and do so with the rest of the chapter. All too quickly we discover that events have been set in motion with the express purpose of interfering with the time honored tradition of an old man (or at least, an old elephant) sailing away to his death. And if echoes of the myth of a place where all elephants go when it’s time to die are starting to stir in your mind, well, let’s just say that the book’s subtitle was no accident.

Much of the book is told from the point of view of a historian (who is also the protagonist), a chronicler with a specialty of studying the prophecies of a founder of the planet’s society. This allowed me to play with the frisson that results when exploring the past explicitly involves predictions of the future, as well as that classic physics problem of the effect observing a thing has on the thing itself. Along the way I had the opportunity to invent a new type of subatomic particle, define how memory really works, make an argument for a new type of immortality, play out some teachable father-son moments, play games with telepathy, obsession, righteousness, free will, and a really disturbing child who worked very hard to steal the entire novel away from me.

After more than twenty years writing and selling stories and novels, five published books from small presses, nominations for the Campbell, the Hugo, and the Nebula, Barsk is far and away the best thing I’ve ever written. I hope you enjoy it.

Buy Barsk on Amazon

About the author:

Lawrence M. Schoen holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, has been nominated for the Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula awards, is a world authority on the Klingon language, operates the small press Paper Golem, and is a practicing hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues.

His previous science fiction includes many light and humorous adventures of a space-faring stage hypnotist and his alien animal companion. His most recent book, Barsk, takes a very different tone, exploring issues of prophecy, intolerance, friendship, conspiracy, and loyalty, and redefines the continua between life and death. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his wife and their dog.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

FUNNY FANTASY Submissions Guidelines

December 28, 2015

FunnySciFi_cover

I’ll be publishing an anthology of reprint stories in the summer of 2016 titled FUNNY FANTASY. It will follow on the heels of FUNNY SCIENCE FICTION, my 2015 reprint anthology. For this book I’m seeking stories that are:

Funny.
Fantasy.
500 – 7500 words in length
Were originally printed in the last ten years (2005-present)
Were printed in curated venues paying at least $0.01 per word – for this book please don’t send material from token and non-paying venues, self-published, posted on your blog, published in magazine/anthology you yourself edited, previously unpublished, etc. To reiterate, only material published in venues paying *all* contributors at least $0.01/word upfront will be considered.
Please do not send stories you previously submitted to any volume of Unidentified Funny Objects or Coffee anthologies.

Payment: $0.02 per word + contributor copy.

Rights sought: Non-exclusive print and electronic rights (aka I’d like to include your story in paper and e-book editions of FUNNY FANTASY and keep it in print for as long as I’d like. All other rights remain with the author.)

How to submit:

E-mail submissions as an RTF, DOC, or DOCX attachment to: ufoeditors @ gmail dot com

Format the subject line as follows: FF: <Story Title> by <Author> (Approx. Length)
Example: FF: Dreidel of Dread by Alex Shvartsman (800 words)

In the body of the email please specify where and when the story was originally published. If this info isn’t included I will assume the story breaks one of the guidelines above and send a form rejection.

Response times: I will try to reply within a week or two with either a rejection or a bump notice. Final decisions will be made in the Spring. Since these are reprints and I require no exclusivity, feel free to submit them elsewhere at the same time. Please send one story at a time. Once you receive a rejection or a bump-up notice you may send another.

Submission window: Now through February 29, 2016

If you’d like more insight into the kind of stories I like, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of FUNNY SCIENCE FICTION or any of the UFO anthologies (linked to your right.)

I’m also looking to license an existing drawing for the cover. If you have something that might fit (once again, see existing covers as a point of reference) please e-mail me a link to the image.

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