The Cooling Sun Sold

The Cooling Sun sold to Terminal Earth anthology. Second anthology sale, and this time a 6k story, not a flash. The idea came to me when I learned that for the last couple of years, the sun's output has been a bit off, so the general warming trend has been momentarily stopped. So, in the story the sun's output drops so that Venus will get about as much light as we do now.

Another experience that was grist. Last time to Ukraine, We tried to save money by going Aerosvit, rather than Austrian Air. They listed modern Boeing aircraft, so we tried. Big mistake. Out there on the tarmac in Kiev was a surprise. A Yakolev with one engine making a grinding racket, not like a modern jet at all. We took the bus there, and got on. The overhead bins didn't have doors, anything could have flown around, hit people. The noise? In the story and in reality, like dinosaur sized bees.

On the way back Odessa was fogged in so we couldn't leave and they wouldn't transfer us to another airline, so we have two more days in Odessa before we could go. It was their only flight. It went one way one day, and the other day back. Last time on that airline. Great material for fiction, though.

So, I'm told it will come out toward the end of the year. In print!

A bit of recognition

Just a lil bit. Fictiondaily.org found Mandala, I know not how. The teaser they used to entice people to the site was:

"For all I knew, she was a bug-eyed wallaby with a taste for gallium arsenide: the stuff my brains are made of."

It comes early, but really, is that the best sentence in it? Authors are supposed to be bad judges of their work, so I'm not going to question that judgment. I can wonder, though...

In the nine thousand words of the story, they chose those 23? Just asking. Not: "She blinked, and I mourned for them in the moment they were hidden." Not, "It was never the eunuchs who led in battle, monks who won the West, or placid women who strode across the rockseas of Cleopatra's World." not, "Sky of ink, falling tiny round laces of snow, and in the center of it all, us together, the still point on the spinning world, in the twirling galaxy."
Who am I to say?

Master Mind has sold

Master Mind will have a place in Nova SciFi, probably in the Fall issue I'm told. David Gerrold is still stuck, as far as I know, in his War Against the Chtorr series because he tried for first person psychotic. It has been 17 years. Lotsa promises. All hat no cattle. I attempted a hallucinating protagonist, shelved it for a year, and rewrote in cold third, strong narrator. Only way not to daze the reader. You can only ask so much.

It came out of a rather anti-idyllic start to my college sophomore year, in the Mesozoic, when the best editing tool available was corasable paper, plumbers did more than fix pipes, and women traded secrets about better back alleys. One sophomore drank himself to death and was discovered by the smell. Another lost her battle for normalcy, succumbing to schizophrenia.

I imagined her life after dropping out and wondered if her disease might, under the right circumstances, be beneficial. What if her past were wiped out in an EMP, she walked out of the institution where she had been committed, and tried to help with the war effort? And the attackers were mind control aliens?

Redirects

Ray Gun Revival is going to be revived, hopefully.
There is a change of status.
Read more about it here.

So, two of my stories will live on only on the scribd site. The RGR website will go down soon. The affected stories are:

The Third Shadoc War
and
Bff.jov

Click to read them on scibd. I must not have progressed too much, because I still think they're fun. Not embarrassed by them yet.

Mandala is Up

Follow the Link:
Mandala
Enjoy
Scott

Mandala sold

A Fly in Amber

VERY happy about this one. First Novelette. I really love this story, as immodest as that sounds. Sometimes characters become so alive that it doesn't really seem that you own them any more. The bird flies from the nest where it will. Is it a first contact story, a love story, a road story? Echoes of the Odyssey, Jungian psychology and of Niven's World out of Time. If you've never been on a New England winter sleighride, sung Palestrina, or walked a labyrinth, you can. Out in May. Link when I get it.

Maid Marion sold

First flash sale. First sale at semi-pro rates (due to brevity, not big bucks). 52 stitches
http://52stitches.blogspot.com/
First flash pub. First horror pub.
I'll post a link when it's up.