Guest post: Write, then write, and write again.

Guest post by A. Poythress

Writing creatively for an assignment takes a certain sort of mindset. Assignments don’t care about whatever ideas are taking up your attention, or your hopes and dreams for what you write. Assignments exist to make you sit down and finish them, even if you despise them or think you don’t need them. And from what I’ve learned in my own MFA program experience, you will have more assignments than you will know what to do with, especially the ones you don’t want to do. I have deadlines and projects and tasks that hit me from every side and I don’t have time for anything else. I certainly don’t have time to think about what an assignment might become once I’ve finished it.

That’s where the title of this essay comes in. While I’m taking classes during the semester, I have no brain power for things like submissions or publishing. All I have the energy for is making sure I have the minimum page count met and my sources cited correctly in the bibliography. Getting the words out is what counts. My professors and classmates and cohort are all there to tell me what they think of them (and boy will they). Once a piece is out of me, to be perfectly honest, I don’t go back to it until the semester is over, unless it’s one of the very few “full movements” I write per semester. Not because I hate the piece or think it’s not worth my time, but because there is no time for it. Not with the next due dates looming over my head like some sort of academic guillotine.

That, I’ve found, is what summer breaks are for. Most MFA programs don’t seem to have summer classes, so you’ve got anywhere between two and four months (contingent on your program) to take all those assignments you sped through like your life depended on it and fix them up. To a lesser degree, you can do this during your winter breaks, but as you’ll probably only have a few weeks breathing room before the madness begins again, there might not be much you can get done. That’s okay. You should really take it. Burn out is a real thing and it’s really scary. Take breaks where you can, when you can. You won’t regret it. I certainly don’t.

When the summer after my first year as an MFA candidate started this past May, I had a list of twenty-two pieces from my two previous semesters that needed editing before they could be sent out for potential publication. That doesn’t count the three pieces I started but didn’t finish during that same time that I wanted to work on before the summer was up. They came from lists of assignments for my past classes. You might have that many, you might have more, or less. What matters is you have a pile of them, all sitting there waiting for you. But how do you take something that you had to hand in for credit and turn it into a piece someone might (potentially) pay you for?

For an assignment, I don’t look too closely at what I’m writing. I want to get the raw bones laid down. The structure. The foundation. I want to make sure my frame is there, so I can go back to it later and hang the details from the rafters (is that how you build a house? I’m a writer, not a carpenter, obviously. Carpenters are the ones who build houses, right?). I’m not worried about editing it more than to give a once-over to make sure there aren’t typos or glaring incongruities. It doesn’t matter that it’s not perfect-that’s not the point. What I care about is finishing it so that I can get feedback from my professors and fellow students that tells me if I’m heading in the right direction, or if I need to rethink things entirely.

Here are a bunch of quotes from much more famous and much better writers than I am:

• “The first draft is a skeleton…just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising.” —Judy Blume
• “The first draft reveals the art; revision reveals the artist.” —Michael Lee
• “Don’t get it right—get it written.” —James Thurber
• “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” —Terry Pratchett

They’re all talking about first drafts of stories or novels, but it can be applied to school work as well! I think of all my assignments as my first draft-they don’t have to be anything other than my first go around. I don’t try to make them perfect. I don’t try to get them “just right.” I just finish them. Then I can come back and spiff them up later.

Once it’s time to sit with a piece and fix it so I can shop it out, I look at it with a very different eye. No longer am I looking at what my professor was expecting, or impressing one specific group with my wit and creativity. I want to make sure a broad audience can take it in and digest it and (hopefully) appreciate it. I can’t make it so esoteric that no one will understand it. I can’t think my “experimental” style that I played around with in the safety of the classroom will impress every magazine or publication. I have to take something rough and polish it to the point where other people will like it. We might say that we write for ourselves, first and foremost, but that’s cat dirt if you want to make a living with your craft.

"Friends" by Laura-Anca Adascalitei, © 2018.

Take “bite” for example. When I was initially writing it for my first workshop, I just wanted to make sure it fulfilled the requirement for a “full movement”: that there was a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that it met the ten-page minimum requirement. There were no other guidelines. I had the idea because I’d been working with my therapist a lot about my gender presentation and I’d bitten my lip in class on the day we first started working on the movement. That was it. I thought about a girl who couldn’t stop bleeding because she couldn’t be honest with herself, and then I wrote until I had a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s all I did with it, in that class. My professor had comments about it here and there that I noted, but didn’t have time to do anything about.

When I went back to it during my first winter break so I could potentially find it a home, I took those comments my professor gave me and I applied them. Could I heighten the isolation of Kat and the loneliness of her small town? Could I make her a more well-rounded character? Could I slow down in some places, speed up in others? Could I heighten the tension? These were all questions I had to ask and answer, because they were questions potential future readers would have. I wouldn’t be able to sit with them like I did my professor and fill in all the blanks for them. They had to be explicitly or implicitly stated in the piece, because it had to stand for itself, away from me and my explanations. While you can defend an assignment until you’re out of breath, once something is out for publication, there’s nothing more you can do for it.

For assignments, I am as wild and out there as I possibly can be, because I can justify myself there. That’s what that space is for. My professors have said flat out that they expect me to learn to see the box I feel most comfortable in and then kick down the walls. They don’t want me to simply produce the same piece again and again. We all have styles, no doubt, but you can always weave your style into something new and different. And maybe, when I’m being wild and crazy for my assignments, I can figure out something about myself and my writing I’ve never thought of before. That’s an amazing feeling. But when I’m trying to publish? I’ve had to learn to tailor my writing to the audience I want or the publication I’m vying for. That’s just how it goes, when you’re starting out. Maybe one day I’ll be famous enough that the New York Times will ask me for a short story, any story I’m willing to give them. Until then, I have to follow their guidelines and show them there’s a reason to give me a chance.

That doesn’t mean I’ve changed who I am or what I’ve written. A no doesn’t mean no forever in the literary world. It just means another potential for a yes somewhere else down the line. Having a strong sense of who you are as a writer is hard to find, I get that. It took until I started my MFA program to really understand who I was. Other people find it outside of academia. You have to let yourself be open to the process, whether that’s by going to school or through just putting yourself out there and learning on your own.

But I’ve also had to put in more work than I ever thought I could, since I decided I wanted to “make it” as a writer. I’ve had to work pieces until I never wanted to see them again in my life. I’ve had to swallow my pride and ask for help. I had to be willing to hear no a hundred times before I heard my first yes. And then the process repeats.

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A. Poythress is in their second year working towards an MFA in creative writing. They primarily write horror and fantasy stories about queer folk and women. You can find them shouting at the sun on Twitter at @ap_mess, or for updates you can go to their website, apoythress.com
  

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A. Poythress's short story “bite” appeared in The Future Fire #45, May 2018.

Interview: Bart Leib of Crossed Genres

If you hang around the kind of circles we do, you almost certainly know about Crossed Genres, originally a monthly speculative fiction magazine, now a quality small press publisher of anthologies and novels. Over the past few weeks, CG have been running a very successful Kickstarter fundraiser, first to keep the press going, then to resurrect the magazine, and finally—if they make their next stretch goal—to make the magazine a pro paying venue. Given the fine work CG have showcased over the years, allowing them to pay their authors a professional rate would in my view be an excellent, and natural, idea. I urge everyone to support them with a few dollars (or squid or euro or schillings).

We've asked Bart Leib, co-editor of Crossed Genres Publications, a few questions about their work.

The Future Fire: You put up a Kickstarter appeal to save Crossed Genres Publications, and received the minimum funding in what seemed like minutes. (Congratulations!) Do you have any specific plans for books that you couldn't have released otherwise? What is the first new thing you're going to do? Are you looking for proposals, submissions?

Bart Leib: Thanks for the congrats! We're still kind of reeling, and realizing how busy our schedules have suddenly gotten! ;)

We've never felt that we were restricted from publishing any book on a particular topic. One of the great things about being a small press is that we can publish what we want, and publish more daring ideas that the big publishers can't because they're worried about how much money they'll lose. Being smaller means we can be more flexible, and produce titles unlike anything else available.

We've never been open to proposals for anthology ideas before, but that's mainly because we're limited on the number of titles we can release. However, I've always wanted to be able to bring aboard a guest editor to spearhead a project they pitch that we'd like to publish but don't have time to handle ourselves. The ability to do that is also limited by funding, so depending on how well the Kickstarter does overall, we may do that in the future.

And we're always open to novel submissions! We'll be publishing our third novel, Sabrina Vourvoulias' INK, in October! We'd love to find another excellent novel for publication in late 2013.

TFF: Your stretch goal was to resurrect the fiction magazine incarnation of Crossed Genres, and now you're aiming to make that a pro-paying venue if you receive just a few thousand dollars more. Tell us briefly about the CG magazine format. What made this 'zine stand out from the crowd, in the past?

BL: Each month, we choose a new genre or theme. And submissions for that issue must combine that genre or theme with some element of science fiction and/or fantasy. Hence the name, 'Crossed Genres'! The structure encourages writers to challenge themselves and as a result we've gotten some truly amazing and unique stories.

The zine is published online each month, and collected into quarterlies for print and ebook editions. (This may change to biannuals depending on what the Kickstarter enables us to do.)

We will of course be continuing the practice when the zine re-launches in January. In fact, we've already decided what the theme will be for our first new issue: BOUNDARIES, and all its various interpretations.

TFF: CG has always been a diversity-friendly magazine and you have been involved in advocacy organizations such as the Outer Alliance. In what ways has the magazine actively promoted inclusiveness and social issues in the past? Do you have any new or different plans to do so in the future?

BL: We've had issues of the zine dedicated to under-represented groups like LGBTQ and characters of color. This has carried over into our other titles, as we've published books dealing with women and body issues (Fat Girl in a Strange Land), slavery/racism (Broken Slate), immigration (INK, coming in October) and more. We've always actively encouraged stories which address these topics and include these characters, in addition to what any given submission call is for.

This will always be a part of how CG works, and we're going to step up our efforts in the future. We want writers to know that they don't have to wait for a specific call for characters of color, or LGBTQ, or strong women – they can send us stories with those characters any time! We want those characters represented throughout our publications!

TFF: What else is on the horizon for Crossed Genres, creatively speaking?

BL: In July, we're publishing a collection of short stories by Daniel José Older titled Salsa Nocturna. (In their review, Publishers Weekly called Daniel a "rising star of the genre"!) Then in October we're publishing the above mentioned INK. In Jan/Feb 2013 we're releasing Menial: Skilled Labor in Science Fiction (submissions open through June). And we currently have an open submission call for novellas of strong older women, titled Winter Well, which we're hoping to have ready for WisCon 37 in May 2013! Winter Well will be the first time we publish novellas, and we're very excited about it!

The Kickstarter is also going to provide something new. One of the pledge rewards gives backers input on the subject of an upcoming anthology we'll publish. After the Kickstarter is over we'll talk with those backers and come to some consensus (it's unlikely that everyone will be 100% on board with the final choice, but we'll do our best to satisfy everyone). We've never had this sort of collaborative input before – in fact no one's ever had any say on the topics we've chosen except my co-publisher Kay and I. Who knows, it could bring about an idea that had never occurred to us before!

TFF: Do you have anything else you'd like to tell our readers about CG or any of your other work?

BL: CG has always been a labor of love. We never expected to make money from it – and still don't! When Kay lost her job, the easiest thing to do would have been to shut CG down… no one would even have blamed us, considering the situation. But that option was simply never on the table. We immediately started plotting the best way to save it instead.

We decided to pursue the additional Kickstarter goal of paying pro rates because we felt it would give us the best chance of creating some long-term sustainability for CG. That's damn important, because we want to keep doing this for a very long time.

Someday, we hope to have the flexibility to publish other things, like comics, children's books, and more. All that would be well down the road… so we hope people who enjoy and appreciate what we're doing now will help us get there!

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Support Crossed Genres Magazine's Kickstarter campaign, get lots of fiction and other goodies, and be part of more future greatness.

Guest Post: I Didn't Know I Was an Alien, or: How I Became a Recombocultural Sci-Fi Guy

text and art by Ernest Hogan

It's the 21^st century. Modern media interconnects the world. Suddenly, we have a global civilization, and it is diverse.

Actually, that's an illusion. Civilization has always been diverse. Unless you are part of an isolated tribe that never contacts the outside world, you have to deal with cultures not your own. It's a basic survival skill going way, way, way, way the hell back.

This illusion is part of the colonial tradition. The conquerors come in and bring “civilization” to the natives, who are expected to cooperate if they don't want to be wiped out. In my part of the world, the Wild West, AKA Aztlán, AKA The Southwest (of the United States of America), it gets interesting – especially since I'm of Mexican descent, with some Irish thrown in, and I accidentally have the same name as the controversial Father of Ragtime.

I find myself to be a vintage, veteran multicultural (though I prefer the term “recombocultural” for reasons I'll explain later) science fiction writer.

Some folks would say speculative fiction – and they may be right, but let's get to that later . . .

I didn't intend to become Mr. Sci-Fi Recombozoid. It was thrust upon me, like my ethnic identity and place in society.

I was a wee tot way back in 20^th century, in the Fifties. I was born in East L.A. – some folks call it the Barrio, my parents called it the Neighborhood. For me it was the flowers in my grandmother's garden that towered over my head. I thought the whole universe was like that.

Science fiction came in through the television set. Space Patrol and Commando Cody taught me about the larger universe. Later, Forbidden Planet landed at a local drive in. My developing mind learned early about crossing borders, and new frontiers.

At first the monsters scared me. I was plagued with nightmares, but couldn't stay away. Eventually, I came to love the monsters. They were easier to identify with than the whitebread-kid mold that the media was trying to stuff me into. I found it was easier to tell the kids at school that I was Martian rather than explain myself.

Those were the days of Godzilla multiculturalism: Japanese monsters, Mexican vampires, Russian space epics, European sleaze, and Filipino horrors were mixed in with the low-rent Hollywood fare. We can't forget that after Bruce Lee, guys in the ghettos and barrios felt they could be heroes, too.

It was the fabled Sixties. Besides comic books and monster movies, there was the space program, UFOs, ESP, LSD, and a world gone mad on the evening news. After the Chicano Moratorium riots, I found out I was part of a minority group.

Before that, Chicanos were invisible. Teachers would talk about “Mexicans” – as if we weren't in the room with them. Suddenly, we were problem. It was easier being a Martian.

So I let my overdeveloped imagination go wild. I wasn't just into science fiction – I was into surrealism, satire, underground, art films, low-budget obscurities, anything weird and out of the ordinary. Cultural mutations became a life-long obsession. Science fiction was a focus, but never a limit to my interests.

By the Seventies, my reading went to Edgar Rice Burroughs, to Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Dangerous Visions and the New Wave were a big influence – yes, “speculative fiction.” I also read translations from other countries when I could find them. I was always happy to find a new kind of sf.

I also reveled in writers like William Burroughs, Ishmael Reed, and Hunter Thompson.

I boldly started writing and trying to sell my work, I didn't limit myself. I tried to come up with the most daring, outrageous stuff I could, inspired by the diverse world I lived in.

Yeah, it took me years to get good – but even after I improved, I noticed that the genre and I were going in different directions. After Star Wars, science fiction became popular, but suddenly, everyone thought they knew what it was – traditional melodrama in funny clothes – and it wasn't what I was doing.

It was also assumed that the audience was white and male – all heterosexual nerds.

I was told things like “You have blacks and hispanics in there – you have to be careful, they get offended, you know.”

My name – that I share with a black historical figure – had them thinking I was white.

By the Eighties, I began to sell stories. These were out in the fringes, but I had my foot in the door. Some readers were confused as to what I was doing in their sci-fi magazine.

And I wasn't just submitting to sf markets. I sent my stories everywhere – especially if they paid well. It just happened that most of the places that have published me have the words “science fiction” as part of their title. There seems to a tolerance for strangeness in some of these places. It also may be a hold over from when science fiction was a catch-all term for things you didn't understand.

When I sold Cortez on Jupiter, I didn't mention anything about the Chicano or Aztec stuff. Or the Spanglish. I played up the science fiction elements. I had learned how to get away with things.

When it came out, I got good reviews (The best [first novel] I've read in science fiction since Neuromancer. – Locus), and bad (an avalanche of excessive verbiage and abominable prose style – Locus, a few pages later). But nobody called it dull. And some folks really liked it.

When my second novel, High Aztech, came out, the publisher did not promote it. The ad in Locus showed the cover, but had no text. No review copies were sent out. People told me that they had to call the publisher and cuss them out to get copies.

Still, High Aztech gained an audience. People still discover it and put good reviews online. You could say it has a cult following.

And in the introduction to the glossary for the Españahutl slang is my first use of the word recombocultural. I coined to explain what I do in my work, that was rapidly being label multicultural – a term that was becoming maligned, and associated with political correctness. The recombo is as in recombinant DNA, emphasizes that what I am writing about are the cultural mutations that happen when cultures come together, fuck & fight, damage chromosomes, and generate fascinating new monstrosities.

But, back in the Nineties, they weren't ready for diversity. The New York-based publishers wanted formula entertainment for their sci-fi consumers that didn't present disturbing concepts. They assumed that the audience was white and middle class. Non-white characters were either pale or only showed the back of their heads on the covers.

Ideas became scarce. I kept meeting readers who said, “I like science fiction because I always know what's going to happen.” I wondered what I was doing trying to write in this genre.

Also, word spread about my ethnicity. It seemed like I was being treated differently – like the most talented leper they ever met. Like an alien. And it didn't seem to matter if I was legal.

I could still sell occasional short stories to far-out fringe markets, but New York wouldn't touch my novels. The rejections followed the same format: They would praise my work as highly original, then tell me that it wasn't what they were looking for. Then they'd inform me about the latest hot, new trend – military sf, sexy vampires, zombies . . .

After years of rejection, I published my novel Smoking Mirror Blues through a small press. I got a hint of why New York wouldn't touch it when an artist refused to do the cover because of a tantric sex ritual in the beginning. There was also a Chicano mad scientist, lesbian lovers, religion, politics, and the world-as-we-know-it reconstructed to illustrate conflicts that are shaping the future. Yet it has attracted a following.

As the 21^st century lurched along, I gave up on New York. They still saw me as an unpublishable alien. The audience is now seen as being young women who are sexually attracted to the undead. And publishing is going through a crisis, with the economic turmoil and the arrival of the e-book. They say they only want to publish bestsellers, but nothing seems to be selling.

In the midst of it all, I see young writers coming on the scene, doing the sort of thing that I have been doing for decades. I hope they get treated better than I was. My advice to them is to write the most exciting fiction they can, inspired the world they live in.

Projects like We See a Different Frontier show promise by doing things in a non-traditional manner. We need these experiments. I expect to see traditional publishing dropping dead very soon.

Empires are falling. Colonies are rearranging. Cultures are mutating.

Recomboculture is in the air.

I have given up on being “commercial.” I am releasing my novels as ebooks, and working on ideas that the dying publishers wouldn't dare touch – like my science fiction bullfighting novel. I have seen the audience, and they are diverse.

The funny thing is, I am not alien – I am native. I am impure, a Chicano, a mestizo, a mongrel. And that is the future.

Ernest Hogan's Cortez on Jupiter is available as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Smoking Mirror Blues and High Aztech be available later in 2012. Links to short fiction that can be read for free can be found at his blog, Mondo Ernesto.

Expanding review activities

Recently we've been keeping my eye open for opportunities to expand our reviewing activities beyond books and magazines, while keeping our focus on speculative and weird fiction and the small and independent press.

Just in case anyone's listening and might have review items to offer, some of the areas that have occured to us recently are:

1. Young Adult/children's literature: the crossover between genre publications and YA novels is strong (see previous post), and I feel that titles in this area need to be reviewed with a focus on their intended audience, rather than just as "lightweight" specfic;
2. Interactive fiction: there's a growing medium of interactive fiction in e-books (with iPad apps receiving the most attention); a book that you interact with rather than just reading is a good part of the way toward being a computer game, and I think both deserve the attention of speculative readers and reviewers;
3. Performance: we're very keen to feature occasional reviews of local theatre productions, interpretive dance, or whatever else might class as "performance" with a speculative element.

Do you publish/produce/perform in any of these areas? Do you review these kinds of works? Do you have any suggestions for publishers/producers we should get in touch with to ask for review copies? Any other neglected areas you think we should be looking into? Please let us know.

Indie/Small Press YA publishers of genre

So I've been wondering for a while if there are many small presses that publish genre novels for a young adult readership. (By "genre" I mainly mean speculative and weird, or sci-fi/fantasy/horror, if you prefer.) My main interest is that I'd like TFF to move in the direction of reviewing children's and YA literature in addition to the material we currently cover, and we focus on the small and indie press. Others will have different uses for this information (if they're writers, readers, artists or publishers themselves, say). And that said, I don't know what we'll actually do with this list when we have it.

I should confess I haven't been looking very hard; I asked around on Twitter a few weeks ago, and I've done a bit of Googling and browsing Duotrope, so I bet I've missed plenty. (Not checked Litmags, Ralan or E-Zines, for example. Not looked at the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook.) But I thought I'd post the results of my first trawl to see what others can add.

Here's the preliminary list of small or indie presses who seem to have interest both in YA novels and in speculative/weird fiction (except where noted, I've not always yet been able to ascertain that they have published anything that is both at once; bolded titles seem the most focused on the combination in question).

• 4GenresPress (unclear what focus, but website lists both speculative and juvenile)
• Bell Bridge Books (Southern): "fantasy, horror, young adult, mystery"
• Big Mouth House (YA imprint of Small Beer Press)
• Bold Strokes Books (includes LGBT, speculative, and YA)
• Coteau Books (Canadian writers)
• Cyberwizard Productions: includes speculative and other genre lines, and a children's books line
• Diversion Press
• Drollerie Press: fantasy and genre books including "Kettlestitch" YA imprint
• Eternal Press: erotic and paranormal publisher including a YA line
• Etopia Press: focus on erotic and romance, but strong speculative holdings and a YA line
• Helm Publishing
• Medallion Press (young adult imprint)
• Mundania Press: will consider YA if in their target genres (esp UF/PR)
• Nightfall Publications: horror/paranormal/genre; seems to include YA line
• Sumach Press (feminist and inspirational books)
• Tu Books (an imprint of Lee & Low): "fantasy, science fiction, mystery--diversity for children and young adults"

We'd be very grateful to be told of any omissions from this list, or anything I've erroneously included. (I have consciously excluded any press that explicitly rejects any LGBT or "alternative" content, or that seems only or primarily to deal in religious/spiritual material.)

Has a bad review ever made you buy a book?

Publishers often say that all publicity is good publicity; in a world where the economics of attention (how do you get noticed in a deluge of print, e-book, pro-, small- or self-published, promoted and even free fiction?) outweigh the economics of scarcity (make my product rare so I can charge more for it), I can see how this would be true. Anything that brings your product (in the case of publishers, the author) to the attention of the consumer (the reader) is a good thing, right? If you're in an airport wanting to grab a book for that flight, then a name you recognize, even if you don't quite remember from where, will get your attention before all the faceless authors on the shelf. I'm sure everyone who slated Dan Brown's writing style contributed to his blockbuster status, and no doubt Docx is delighted that so many intelligent and reasonable people disagree violently with his poorly thought out rant about genre fiction. In theory, all this works fine.

But I'm curious: does this work in particular cases? Has a bad review ever made you go out and buy a book?

I can think of two reasons (and a commentator on Twitter suggested a third) this might happen:

1. the reviewer is obviously incompetent, tasteless and/or morally repugnant, to the degree that when s/he says, "This is the most boring/slow/pinko book I've ever read!" you realize this means it might have some depth/intelligence to it;
2. the reviewer has some valid criticisms of the book, but despite (or because) of those you think you might like it anyway (this happened to me recently with some customer reviews on Amazon of Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest, where the most popular reviews are negative, but one complained about fluid sexuality, and another said the language was too poetic--both fine by me!);
3. (@ferretthimself suggests) that books that provoke emotional reactions and strong opinions are likely to be more interesting, and therefore worth reading.

I'm looking for concrete examples, what books have you been out and bought (downloaded, borrowed from library, etc.) on the basis of a bad review or recommendation? Was it a good idea?