Niteblade #18

Two posts in less than 24 hrs? Inform the earthly distributors of a faith of your choosing, for it must be a miracle.

And now, let me tell you about Niteblade #18, lovingly called Spec Ed, which is short for Special Edition. And it is! It's a whole issue devoted to fantastically dark speculative poetry. Seeing as how I am a co-editor of this baby, together with Rhonda Parrish, it's not really my place to speak objectively about the quality of work in this little book. What I will say is that publishing a poetry-only edition takes guts and credit here goes all to Rhonda. Hopefully, readers of the genre will show the same degree of gutsyness in picking up these poems and giving them a chance--even if they don't normally read poetry. Did I mention that the packaging is really cool? Packaging, you ask, since when does Niteblade need packaging, being online and all. Well, listen up. This thing is not only deeply lyrical, it also comes to you as a real physical booklet that you can flip through and put on your shelves or give away. How cool is that?

If I have gotten you the least bit excited at all, please consider pre-ordering, because if you do so before November 30th, you won't even have to pay any shipping costs. So please, click me!

Good News

I'm pretty excited to see two more poems of my Dream Cycle (though Night Cycle is probably more appropriate) finding homes. Yesterday, I learned that Cerberus, Seeking Lethe will be forthcoming from Strange Horizons, and only a few hours ago, Erzebet YellowBoy wrote to let me know that Feral Dream Orphanage will be published in the "new" Jabberwocky in 2012.

Squeeee!

(And if you haven't read Erzebet's announcement yet, especially the part concerning lyrical prose, you should!)

I Snuck Merfolk Into Stone Telling!

Yes, I did. The tailed people come hidden in a poem, a 700+ words prose poem to be exact, A Masquerade in Four Voices. Of course there are more than just four voices in the poem, but who said poets should be able to count stuff accurately? Anyway, you can hear the poem on the site as well, took a lot of people to make this recording happen, because this poem, it's a dainty creature, only the best will suffice, and to be honest, this one was really demanding since the moment it wanted to be written just like that. A little stubborn, as poems go...


Emily Jiang
Mike Allen
Nathaniel Smith
Martin Kauper (audio editing)
Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan

Thank you so much guys! <3

Support the Arts

I guess you all know Strange Horizons, they have been around for ages, publishing high quality fiction, poetry, reviews, columns and articles. For free. And they pay their authors pro rates.

So consider this a signal boost for the Strange Horizons Fund Drive. But check this out, if you donate money--just a little--you are eligible to win one of these prizes! Cool, huh? You could also call yourself a supporter of the arts, and who doesn't want that title?

Poems for Morpheus

Over the last few months, I have been writing a cycle of poems about the Greek goddess Nyx, Night, who was considered the mother of Dream and Death and a multitude of other deities (not made fewer by the fact that I often mix Greek and Roman names or use them interchangeably), and about her divine offspring. So far, there are about twenty of these poems, some already accepted for publication (The Tally Of Forgotten Dreams Kept By Morpheus, forthcoming in Dreams & Nightmares and Sister Night, forthcoming in Bull Spec), some still in the submission queue, and others waiting to be polished. And of course, there are still those Dream Cycle poems that haven't been written yet.

At any rate, I like the idea of treating night, darkness, and dream in poetry, it's something that seems to appeal to me personally and I consider this one an ongoing project...

...just like the poems inspired by Tarot, difficult to write if you just like the idea of Tarot but haven't the first clue about what the individual cards represent. Inspiration through research! Research! That thing that always makes me wish I had several heads and a few more hands to go with them, for writing simultaneously, you understand. The first Tarot poem I successfully completed is the Major Arcana (forgot number): Death.

Halloween Is Coming Soon!

And to really celebrate the occasion--I mean more than just any other year--Reaven Electrick Ink will release a jittery creepy anthology this year: Jack-o'-Spec: Tales of Halloween and Fantasy, edited by Karen A. Romanko.

Why should I mention this, you ask? Well, for one thing, I have two poems in there, for another, a whole bunch of other people have even more awesome/creepy jittery stuff in there. Also, it's Halloween, and you need to start giving people treats that actually broaden their horizons (Halloween really will be taken off your normal map of the usual here, on to other places where even strange is stranger) and lower their blood sugar. And creep them out:

"Reading Jack-o'-Spec is like stepping into a Halloween party that's

been going on for 2,000 years. There's something delightfully pagan about these stories and poems, something that captures Halloween's dark,autumn atmosphere. Whether it's a mad scientist invoking Halloween ghosts on Mars, boys trapped in not one but two haunted houses, or a rich evocation of poetic seasonal spirits, Jack-o'-Spec has somethingfor all Halloween lovers." -- Lisa Morton, Author, The HalloweenEncyclopedia

More Fae! And Romantics! (But don't worry, no opiates...!)

Fae Awareness Month is great. Super fun so far and important. My latest article is a little scholarly though, you'll find Goethe's poem Der Erlkönig (translated by yours truly) and a superficial interpretation thereof. Yeats is mentioned more than once, but it's okay, this is a piece for all the heart throbbing romantics out there. By now they should know where it gets them.

Cucumbers!

A little while back, an amazing project came to life, the Fae Awareness Month. When I heard that I immediately thought 'Fae...they are so much like...youkai!' and soon after I had signed up for one article, a little while later, for a second piece, but more of that later. For now, you can find out about Fae Awareness (for it is a serious issue, except for Yeats) and learn what the heck youkai are. Go here.

Alice In China

What would Alice in Wonderland have looked like in China?  First off, I think Chinese lifestyle is much more suited to the tone of the novel.  In China, people live their lives with less predetermination than we do (so, at least it seems to me. In case I'm offending anyone, sure wasn't intended).  It starts with buying stuff.  You haggle.  There are no fixed prices for anything, and agreeing on a price can take long.  Then, there are meetings and appointments.  All much more loosely than in the West, I can tell you.  Any plans you try to make in China had better come with a Plan B in case things don't work out quite the way you expect them to (because they usually won't).

So, no straight lines, at least not such as a Westerner could easily follow.  Oh yeah, and although people generally act friendly, they don't always mean it.  Like that one lady who kept charging Westerners more for water, especially if they didn't know any Chinese.  (I could call her the evil Water Witch and write a story containing wells, but that is for another time.)

So, a Chinese Alice, probably would have been less astounded by what one finds Down the Rabbit Hole, dressed in more silk, heavily embroidered.  The Caterpillar might have been a dragon, unhatched as of yet, and the endearing Cheshire Cat would have been a tiger of course.

I explored this different Wonderland that is, for all its differences, no less wondrous than what we already know, in this little poem.  Brew some tea, read, enjoy, and do not forget to take a close look at those tea leaves!

We Want Poooetry!

Happy news for poets! Niteblade has recently increased the pay rate for all accepted poems to 5$ per poem. In the world of poetry, I'd call that a grand thing indeed, and the Beloved Editor (aka Rhonda Parrish) cannot be praised enough for it.

At the moment, we are reading for the September issue. We would like to see more poems of high quality in the slush. Baffle us. Dazzle us. Sneak up behind us and shout BOO! Make us go all swoony with delight. Seriously, we can handle it. If you have something awesome, please read the guidelines here and send us the best you got. Get to it!

May: My Very Own Personal Poetry Month

So the last couple of days, I have been wow-ed on a regular basis. Hypothetically, I might have even shed some tears of joy. I think I'm still high from the sheer adrenaline.

Basically what happened is that I find myself poetry editor of Fantastique Unfettered and poetry co-editor (with Rhonda Parrish) of Niteblade.

Wow. WOW.

I don't really know why that happened, it just did and I am very much grateful and already feeling the weight of responsibility. Good then that I'm an ambitious gal. I mean, I just lost two markets I can sell my poems to, so I have to compensate in ambition, right?

A note about FU: I am very much tempted to spout out all the things I'd like in my poetry editor's inbox, the market is still quite new and there are possibilities. But I won't give in. Just this much, spec poetry loosely defined, genre-bending is acceptable. The quality of the work counts. I like my slush (submitting early in the reading period seems prudent): poetry-editor@fantastique-unfettered.com
(Please know that every poem is read twice at least, unless it is very obviously not a good fit for FU.)

I should also mention that you can find this review of Stone Telling #3 on FU's site. Please keep checking back (or follow me on Twitter or whatever) for there is more to come

For Niteblade, so far things look easier (from my end; and perhaps I should say clearer). The zine isn't quite so new, the tastes, at least genre-wise are established: horror and fantasy. All that's left for me to do is apply my pickiest, most critical self to the submissions, but since Rhonda and me will be co-editing the poetry...wait, no, we still want the best. Guidelines here.

Please send us things with their own heart...

A Word On Titles: They Are Hard.

Or at least, they are for me. You know, I keep thinking, the title of any given piece, that is the first thing the reader sees, sometimes if they look only at the table of contents, the title makes the difference between a reader giving it attention or passing it over. Following this logic, I feel that a title should be awesome, should give a little info on the piece without telling you everything.

And I just have no gift for finding such titles.

I'll come up with this really great poem or story that I think is sweet, and then I'll be finished and ready to hit save, and I just can't think of a name for the damn thing! I mean, like nothing creative comes to mind that doesn't sound trite or like an utter brain fart. Fucking titles, I think, but I'll still have to make one up because I don't really like anything titled 'untitled'. Yay conundrum.

Being as unimaginative as I am when it comes to titles, I actually managed to give two separate pieces the exact same name. Twice. So far.

In both cases, a poem and a story have to share a name.

The first incident was 'The Other Road'. The poem is here and the story is forthcoming from Sam's Dot. In this case, I wrote the poem first but even while I was writing it, I began to feel that it had a story somewhere in it. However, I'm not sure I would have ever sat down and actually written that after I was done with the poem, but Tyree Campbell of Sam's Dot suggested that it would work better as a story and so, people pleaser that I am, I wrote it. Naturally, the story and poem share the same roots, but they turned out quite differently. Both may deal with the same narrative but they still look at it from different angles. Also, the story really does have a different ending. It even has a sequel that I so ingenuously titled 'The Girl Who Chose The Other Road'. You can find it in Shelter of Daylight Issue 5.

Now, the other incident is 'Wine'. The poem was published in Basement Stories #2, right here, and the story has not yet found a home. It does contain violence and sex however, though nothing very graphic. Probably. This time, there is no connection between those two pieces (though on a side note, 'Wine' is also one of my Red Riding Hood poems; I've been doing a lot with this fairy tale).

I don't know if I'm the only person who has trouble naming what she wrote properly or if, like coffee, that's just a writer thing. I'm not saying I never came up with a good title, but something that really satisfies me, grumpy critic that I am in my heart of hearts? Well. I guess I'll just have to add 'Become master namer' to my (long) list of highly desirable achievements. Grrr.

Haiku

By Alexandra Seidel

the blanketing sea
bodies stark against the surface
we wait for sunrise

The Appeal of Slush or Why I'm Afraid of Zombies

Since some time last December, I am happily reading slush for Niteblade Magazine. I only ever see stories, so my poetry slush experience is still non existent. I got to do some more reading as a first reader for the Odd Contest; that was really rewarding.

What I like most about slush reading is the sort of talent you get to see, people who you can tell are only just starting out with arranging words right there on that scary, empty white page, and those who show you so little when you want to see so much more of that writing.

Allow me to tell you what will get favorable attention, at least from this set of eyes.

See, there is this totally obvious, seemingly no-brainer: read the guidelines. Even if you disagree with them, stick to them. Just sayin'. I mean, if you managed to write this awesome, awesome piece of dark delight, you can go the whole nine and format it correctly, right? Please, do.

Also, if you do sent something to a certain magazine, make sure it fits. For example, Niteblade stories need an element of fantasy or horror. Your story can be fabulous, but without horror or fantasy, at least for Niteblade, you'll unfortunately not get an acceptance, instead you'll spend time waiting for a rejection slip.

A hook is a really good idea. Not that I myself always get that one right, but you want something at the beginning of your story that makes sure your reader cannot stop until it's all over. It has to be something shiny, for who among us does not share the magpie's like for shiny things, or something sensuously dark that likewise will make you want more.

I like conflict in a story. By this I suppose I mean a certain conflict that is resolved in a satisfying manner. Aristotle called it catharsis, the feeling of cleansing. I do not mean to say that I want to feel like I need to take a shower after I read a story, mind you!

This leaves me with The End. Yes, how a story ends matters to me. Even if the writing so far was great, a story will lose all its appeal if somehow I get the feeling that something is missing, that not all questions were answered, that I am left wanting. Keep your reader satisfied.

Of course, after you wrote the Perfect Story, proofread it. Properly.

And then, there is zombies. Now, I don't have anything against zombies as such. But zombies are a bit like vampires: you can only stand so much of them and as the genre has been explored a lot already, the part that you actually want to see had better be damn good. This is doubly true for zombie apocalypse. Yet, this story is a great example for a well thought out, well executed zombie apocalypse tale. I love this piece.

See, it's the badly written zombies that I fear...

Looking for Places that Yield Poems

So, lately I was thinking about mapping out the world a little more, poetry wise. That made me think that there is some amazingly engaging travel writing, but as far as I know little travel poetry. But I don't wanna side-track yet again.

I was basically thinking of places I'd like to go. At this point I'd like to mention that I'm happily considering suggestions.

Because lists are a great way of doing these things...(no order of preference here):

1. London
Have never been there. Figure there are loads of interesting places to see. Might be very touristy though.

2. Spain
Like, Barcelona or Madrid. I like the Spanish in general, I love the language.

3. Japan
Just my place. Temples, martial arts...seafood. Okay, just my place except for the seafood. I'd like to see Kyoto.

4. India
Elephants! And isn't India more or less the cradle of Buddhism?

5. New Zealand
Just because. New Zealand is old, and I like old things.

I did not put China on that list because I've been there. But! I would love to go back...only pity is that that would cut me off from Facebook and Twitter. Which reminds me, Egypt isn't on my list either. Oh dear, this shall not end in politics...

...WORLD PEACE!