Just made the day’s to-do list. I put ‘make a to-do list’ at the top and checked it off. Now I can say I accomplished half my list! Reminder: pick up beer for tonight.
Desperate Housewives
Note to self: don’t joke to burly cable guy about needing your Desperate Housewives fix. He might just be a fan.
New Story in July/August Analog
“The Bear Who Sang Opera” has appeared in the July/August issue of Analog. The story itself was a lot of fun to write — a sort of Travis McGee in space. (And if you haven’t read any of John D. MacDonald’s excellent Travis McGee books, you really should). I’d been wanting to create a series character for some time and it took me a couple attempts to finally get it right. In fact, I just finished another story featuring Dexter Duff, my intrepid interstellar investigator, so we’ll see if Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, likes that one too.
For those of you who have read some of my other science fiction stories, it’s set in the “Unity Worlds” universe, which I’ve used for a number of tales. Each one stands completely on its own, but some of the shared details give the stories a little extra flavor. Maybe I’ll put all of these stories into a collection one day, who knows.
Here’s the first page of the story . . .
The Bear Who Sang Opera
by Scott William Carter
The bear wanted his voice back. That’s what I thought he said, and I asked him to repeat it. The cochlear implant in my left ear had been acting up a lot lately — I blamed it on Targal’s frequent lightning storms — and I assumed he must have said something else.
“My voice,” he said. “I think someone’s stolen it.”
I took my boots down from the desk and leaned a little closer. “Your voice?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But you’re speaking right now.”
“Yes.” He bobbed his big furry head. “Oh. No, I see the problem. Not my voice. My singing voice. I need your help getting it back. You do help people find things, don’t you? That’s what I heard.”
His voice was deep and gruff, but he sounded sincere. Of course, I was no expert on bears, so how would I know? Maybe bears were good at lying . . .
If you’re interested in subsribing to Analog, you can do so here.
Sold a Story with Ray Vukcevich
I sold my collaboration with Ray Vukcevich, “A Stray,” to Fantasy Magazine, a story about a man going blind and his relationship with a rather unusual cat. This was only my third collaboration with another professional writer and two of them sold (the other one that sold was “The Man Who Swallowed Mirrors” with Jay Lake). I’m also a big fan of Ray’s work (find out more about him here), so it gives me an extra thrill to appear in print with him (or technically online, I guess). His collection, Meet Me in the Moon Room, is pure genius. I’ll have more about the story down the road when it appears.
If you haven’t looked into Fantasy Magazine, you should check them out. They’re doing great work — both with fiction and nonfiction. Everything’s free to read. There’s been a lot of folks trying to do online magazines, but from what I can tell, these guys are doing it right. I love the fact that they have a broad focus, everything from fantasy in popular culture to obscure slipstream.
I enjoy collaborating and will probably do it again — selectively. Contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t take less time to collaborate; it usually takes more, since you’re trying to combine two styles into one, and depending on the method of collaboration, there can be lots of back and forth involved. Plus, in most cases, you’re splitting anything you make 50/50. But it’s fun and the main reason to do it is to learn. In a way, it gives you an opportunity to crawl inside the head of another writer for a while. That, in turn, can make you look at your own writing in a new way, and allow you to incorporate techniques you may not have tried before. And of course, the best collaborations produce something that neither of you could have produced on your own. I think that’s what Ray and I managed to accomplish. Of course, we’ll let the readers judge.