We have arrived at the tail end of yet another year. For those of us with children, it might sometimes seem that as the children grow so quickly, the years pass that much faster. It does to me. End-of-the-year retrospectives are also much in vogue. I often dread them, especially as there are so many events that seemed like they occurred years ago rather than months. Does it also seem to you that each year starts off with a leisurely gait but ends up in a labored-breath sprint? As a geophysicist, I understand that when it comes to time, the… Read More
Originally appeared in the July-August 2011 AIWCC Bulletin Waltz of the Asparagus People Robin Meloy Goldsby To say that this collection of memoir-styled essays with its vintage-gorgeous cover is a sequel to Robin Goldsby‘s splendid debut, Piano Girl, would be, to put it bluntly, missing the point. In a similar vein to her first book, the twenty-three short pieces comprising Waltz of the Asparagus People — stories written in the key of wonderful— run the gamut from the sublime (The Glass Piano) to touches of the surreal (Waltz of the Asparagus People) to the absurdly poignant (Naked and The Tattooed… Read More
Originally posted in Allegory, Summer, 2011 First of all, if it makes you feel any better to picture us naked and chained to our computers when you send in your stories, then go ahead. It used to work for me whenever I had to give a presentation in college. Well, almost always. It depended on who was sitting in front of me and the images raised. Okay, no more silliness. This is serious business. Really. Are you ready? I’ll summarize the process first before we get to the good stuff. You send in your story. As per the guidelines, of… Read More
Originally posted on Colin Harvey’s blog, May, 2009 Joining the ranks of those whose job it is to read submitted stories has not significantly increased my own publication rate since I joined Ty Drago’s editorial staff at Allegory in August of 2008. Not yet, anyway. But it will. I’m learning a lot about the things that make a story work from reading ‘slush’ – a term we do not use to refer to the stories in our pile. They are called submissions, and rightly so! During the Allegory submission period, Ty distributes the stories as they come in to whichever… Read More
I apologize for my loooooooooooong silence on this blog. I have been working steadily (but much too slowly) on finishing my fourth book (but my first hard SF effort), Gravity’s Gift. It has been a difficult but rewarding journey, and once I have put some finishing touches on the first draft and shoved it into a drawer for a brief but necessary slumber, I will have the freedom to do many other things. Like laundry. And gardening. And actually going outside. Whoa. There’s a whole world out there. And writing some short stories. (YAY! Short stories). And writing some more blog… Read More
