Category: WRITING

Bwi~! and Buyeo Wives, &c.

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That’s a word I think I made up myself, in Korean. At least, I’ve never heard anyone else say it, though Lime told me it sounds like the mopey protestation of a five-year-old. 븨~! This word is occasioned because my Sado Seja story did not make it into the Datlow/Mamatas anthology Haunted Legends. I’m sure competition was fierce, though, and they’re good editors. If only Nick had had the time to savage the story, I’d have learned a lot, I imagine. (But who has time?) Anyway, I’m going to do what I often don’t do… send the story out immediately. …

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Yay for Subs!

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I rarely stop writing for long. Sometimes it happens — a lot of this summer has been a dry spell for me, partly because I’ve been ridiculously busy with a bunch of other things — but usually, what does shrivel up is not the writing, but the submitting of work. It takes constant energy to do final edits and proofreads, to check where you’ve sent things and where else you could try, and to actually send them. This week I really need to print a few things and send out some print submissions, but I’ve taken advantage of places that …

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XY

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By the way, I forgot to mention this when it went up, but my column over at the Canadian women’s magazine Cahoots is different in nature than it used to be. In the old days, I wrote about blogging women, basically reviewing interesting blogs by women with quotes and praise and so on. However, I ran out of steam on that — reviewing blogs is just not interesting work, I think, and I prefer to just splat praise on my own site when I find a good one — so I talked it over with the editor and, inspired by …

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The Imo Incident (or, The Incident of the Imo Year, or maybe just Eight Days, or Eight Days in the Imo Year)

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Whew! Well, I’ve just about finished the finishing touches on a story I’ve been on-and-off working for a long time, my Sado Seja story…. which wasn’t originally a ghost story. Actually, I have heard a few people claim that there were ghostly happenings at Changdeokgung, and even Lady Hyegyong mentions palace ghosts — some poor woman who was executed for necromancy against the queen a generation or two back, for example, was thought to have left an evil spiritual residue behind — but strictly speaking, I’ve never encountered the story of Sado Seja as a “ghost story.” And yet Sado’s …

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Three Mountain Ghosts & Currently Reading

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That’s a working title, but there it is. I’m hurling myself over the gate in the Write-a-thon, here. That is, I’m working on “Fovea” with one collaboratron, and another story (with lycanthropic gangsters, with another collaboratron whose identity is now probably obvious to half my readers). For my third trick, the one on which I put in a thousand words today, I’m pulling together a triptych of ghost stories — somewhat linked, sort of, but also separated by time — set on mountains in Korea.

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Can You Read This?

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I can’t quite read this post in which Jeppe Larsen reviews the July 2008 issue of Asimov’s, but I think it’s in Danish. I can make out bits of what he has to say about my piece in the magazine, Første historie i nummeret, “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues” af Gord Sellar, er en beretning fra en sort amerikansk jazz-musiker fra en alternativ tidslinje, hvor rumvæsener i 1940′erne har koloniseret solsystemet, og hans oplevelser som hyret musiker på et af deres skibe. Meget autentisk skrevet og en rigtig god historie, også selvom man ikke ved noget om jazz. …

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Fovea &c.

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I’m collaborating with a classmate from Clarion West (shall I out you, sir?). The working title, which my collaboratron said was a placeholder but I rather like, is “Fovea.” Yeah, I had to look it up, too. It is what looks to be my first story involving, you know, space suits, landing on a seemingly deserted planetoid, dangerous hunters in pursuit… sorta space-adventurey, really, though with all kinds of other themes and stuff bubbling beneath the surface, and I’m feeling like I ought to check out some older, spacey SF, since I read and write so little of that stuff. …

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Wonmi Ghosts and Wonjjang Proofs

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I was hiking Wonmisan (Wonmi Mountain) just now. It was dark, and got me to thinking about ghost stories. I’m supposed to be working on one independently, but I let it stall. It’s for this call for stories, but the problem is, I don’t really know any famous Korean ghost stories. When I’ve asked around, a lot of people have said there isn’t a “most famous” Korean ghost story, and couldn’t really name me individual particular ones. What they did seem familiar with was types of ghosts — the “hungry ghosts” to whom scraps of food are thrown during ancestral …

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Clarion West Write-a-thon, 2008

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This year I’ve decided to do the write-a-thon again, though not in such a demanding way as I did last year. Last year, I wrote something like 15,000 words a week. Which made me, physically, a little sick, so I won’t be doing that again. (I need to get my blood pressure and health under control, plus I’m working on a big textbook-writing project and a few articles this summer.) So instead, I’ve got a more manageable goal in mind: I will write or co-write three or four stories during the write-a-thon, of which three will be going out by …

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Fan Mail

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I got fan mail today. Perhaps my first piece of Fan Mail ever.(1) It was about “Lester Young…” What a very nice feeling. It made my day. But now I should clear off my desk and grade some essays and exams. With a big grin on my face. 1. I’m not counting comments on the site here, because, although that also makes me happy and is appreciated, comments are not “mail.” I’m not counting emails from reviewers because, while reviewers can be fans, they’re not, er, “civilians” in the way I think of when I think of fans. I’m not …

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