Darin Bradley

Sent to me by Haj.

Farrago's Wainscot, Issue 11 is now live, featuring fiction by Paul Abbamondi, Forrest Aguirre, Autumn Canter, Edward Morris, Mari Ness, and Angie Smibert. Issue 11 also features poetry by Lee Stern, Amy Riddle, William Doreski, and Mark DeCarteret—as well as an experimental wordform by Mike Keith.

photo © GETTY

Only one link for you today. There's been too much going on in my boat lately—I can't keep up.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive.

Don't be fooled, kids. You're hearing a lot about the upturn. How it's beginning; how signs are starting to appear. Meanwhile, particularly in the west, unemployment continues to rise. Sure, it'll end eventually, but not this year.

My sweet, sweet girl. There's never been anyone like you.

I kept my promise: I bought you a cat tower with money from a professional book sale.

Thanks for the memories.

I'm sorry.

It's back! But let's be easy about this—take this nice and slow, like. Just a few links to ruin your weekend this time.



"FDIC gives up on Silverton Bank"

Sometimes banks are just so difficult. I mean, who can blame the FDIC. Silverton just needs some time to stand in the corner and think about what it did.

"States propose $24 billion in tax hikes"

You know, most of us like taxes. In theory. We like schools and roads and an economic infrastructure. But as cute as tax hikes are, soon, taxes are simply going to become what we're fans of paying. Not what we can actually pay.

"The new 'good' job: 12 bucks an hour"

No comment.

"U.S. dollar 'seriously overvalued' -- study"

I know, right. So, everybody stop making such a big deal about the dollar. Clearly, it's not worth it.

"German debts set to blow 'like a grenade'"

Ok, stop making a fuss about the German economy, too. Also not worth it.

And my favorite . . .

"Pastor Organizes Gun Celebration at Church"

You have got to be god-damned kidding me. That's just too precious for words.

And terrifying.

Doug Lain (who edits Diet Soap and who wrote my favorite short story collection, Last Week's Apocalypse) interviews me about Amaranth, cognitive theory, and the apocalypse.

So, give us a listen. The conversation was a lot of fun, and my voice doesn't sound as terrible as I feared it would.

Well, I didn't make it to WFC last year, or WisCon this year, but I'll be at WFC this year, in San Jose. The particular gaggle of dudes with whom I'll be sharing one of two rooms is, well, frightening.

So, anyway, it'll be good to see those of yous who'll be there.

John Klima reminds us that World Fantasy Award nominations are, like, due. Soon, anyway. Get your nominations in if you're eligible.

(Mr. Klima also kindly points out in his nominations that myself am eligible for a "Special Award, Non-professional" award for my work with the Old Man (a.k.a. Farrago's Wainscot). But so is Mr. Klima himself—and so is the third member of the often-publishing-the-same-authors-at-different-times-manourzinesaresimilarbutdifferent-trio, Matt Kressel.)

Here's my unofficial campaigning-for-nominations picture:


Note: in the background, miscreants—not to be confused with my campaign.

So give us a think, or a nomination, as you see fit.

Sure, the general dégringolade of Western Power offers up delicious blog fodder, but sometimes, it's more serious than a few lines in cheeky journal like mine.

First, a report by the Dept. of Homeland Security warning us that today's sociopolitical pressure systems may form a perfect right-wing extremist storm.

And we saw on Sunday that a doctor (who provided abortions) was murdered in his church by this disturbed person.

We've seen a largely nation-wide shift in power away from conservatism*, which is creating a power vacuum that, paired with increased unemployment and economic uncertainty, makes a good Straw Man for those who need something to blame life, the universe, and everything upon. Further, as we continue to take small steps toward honoring the civil rights of gay and lesbian couples; as we start to pry open the doors of stem-cell research that have been (until recently) firmly nailed shut; and as we stop neatly categorizing our national "enemies" as heartless, immoral, freedom-hating monsters—after all of this, I fear we're going to see even more acts of social disturbance. Why? People need explanations for things that go bump in the night, and our best stories come from gods and monsters.

*I'm using "conservatism" to make a general point here. Discussions of his centrist or crypto-conservative leanings notwithstanding.

I've fallen behind on keeping you all posted about your impending doom. Some things have happened since my last update: a website redesign, some novel proposals, web design . . . that sort of thing.

But anyway . . .

(From roxana: "Colleges Considering 3-Year Degrees to Save Undergrads Time, Money")

Didn't I tell you that higher education is screwed? Keep watching.

So, last year, snurri told me about FutureMe.org, a service that allows you to post-date an email to yourself for delivery on some future date.

It sounded fun, and it was around the time of my birthday. Thinking of the birthday-to-come this year (30), I typed myself up something motivational and self-congratulatory and life-affirming and all of that. There was also a bit of your usual "Don't get frustrated about publishing" business.

What's cute is that I sold Amaranth about two weeks after that.

So, in the end, Old Self got pwned by Future Self!

yuki_onna's recent birthday post reminded me that I turn 30 in four days.

Well, okay. I s'pose there's no fighting it.

Paul Jessup's Glass Coffin Girls, the sixth volume in PS Publishing's "Showcase" series.

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

About ten months ago, I sold my first novel, Amaranth to Juliet Ulman at Bantam/Spectra. I've mentioned the thing off and on since then, in the occasional blog-post, but really, things have been understandably quiet as I waited out the process. About four months ago, I handed in a second draft of the story, based on a conversation Juliet and I had up in the Governor's Club Bar in the Madison Concourse Hotel. It was very auspicious, sitting up that high, watching a massive thunderstorm roll in through the massive windows.

And then, as a first-timer, the fretting began. Would the revision be good enough? Would I have to kill off all of my "darlings"? Am I not a Special Snowflake^TM?

Last week, David Pomerico over-nighted me his and Juliet's edits on the manuscript (much to my surprise—I was expecting regular snail-mail). Nothing wakes you up on a Saturday morning like finding your long-awaited story hulking outside your front door. And after an exciting afternoon of looking over the comments, that's when I realized what a complete dolt I'd been, fretting like that. Editors are not your enemies—at least, David and Juliet were not my enemies. When I'd finished the second draft, back in Oct./Nov., naturally I figured I was a genius. Writing could not possibly get better than what I'd sent.

Of course, not so, but isn't it pretty to think so?

Anyway, with their help, this third (fourth?) draft is way bitchin'. The myth of the solitary writer, hammering brilliance out of his or her fingertips, is crap. It's usually a collaboration. I took about five days to incorporate their changes and re-arrange some chapters that were, shall we say, not quite cutting it. It was a bit of an editing binge, but since I work as a visiting assistant professor, I've got nice big gaps between "work days" in my week. Today I finally finished the last polish, let Rima (my first, best critic—when I can make her teary-eyed (via writing!), then I'm usually doing something right) give it the once-over, and then vacuum-tubed it back to H.Q. In a few weeks, we'll see how well I did. I'm betting there will be another draft or two, probably with fewer Big changes, so in the end, my wart-of-a-first-draft should be a stylin' beauty mark.

So, some action shots:



(Revision Central, before the manuscript ended up in about five different piles, as a result of some franken-chaptering)



(A little revision help, cat-style. Usually, every time I left the study, she camped herself on the manuscript.)

So, that was exciting. One of these days, it's going to have a cover, and book design, and a barcode. Won't that be a trip?

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

So, I certainly haven't done one of my fireside apocalyptic chats lately. I've been wrapped up doing some secret Farrago design work, and gardening. It isn't that I'm not still aggregating news about the End of Times, it's just that I'm thinking about what I've collected, read, collated, etc. thus far. It feels to me that there's another mini paradigm-shift taking place re: perspectives on recession, depression, collapse, etc. I'm trying to get my fingers around it.

But, not to leave you totally hanging: R. sent me this link, and it's a good counter-perspective to consider: "Bipolar Media".

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

Maybe you did. Maybe it seems like things have quieted down. Let me remind you that there is a real fear of the stock market shedding another 40% in March. I still hold that between summer and fall of this year, we are going to see An Event. I could be wrong—it could come sooner.

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FDIC shutters four banks in one day (Is the non-capitalization of words following the first in an article title an AP style thing? It's weird. Majuscule, all the way down the line, bitches!)

Get ready for a wave of bank failures (Still weird. Just look at it!)

Where the banks are failing (All right, this is starting to piss me off.)

Failure to save East Europe will lead to worldwide meltdown (Okay, I'm over it now.)

Eastern European currencies crumble as fears of debt crisis grow

Cash crisis forces California to free 55,000 prisoners

Mississippi Passes Legislation Protecting Gun Owners During Martial Law (Look at those gorgeous caps. Oh, also—the legislative process is usually reactive, not proactive. Just saying—it's in the zeitgeist.)

Trump casino group in bankruptcy (Let's all watch The Apprentice now because it will be ironic.)

Firewood Ratings and Information (Yeah, and you thought you'd done your homework.)

And this . . .



Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world:

"Nissan has announced plans to cut its Sunderland workforce by 1,200. Thousands of unsold cars are stored around the factory's test track."

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

For those few who have read Amaranth, if the general trends in our real-world on-going economic collapse haven't already creeped you out (blah, blah, fiction-reality, blah, blah), then the recent trend of civil-unrest-instructions graffiti definitely should.

(Thanks to Rima for the link!)

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

Just heard School of Seven Bells for the first time on my favorite radio station, and, uh, I know where some of my paycheck is going.

When did I begin failing to keep up with the scene. Was it when 29 rolled over? What the hell's going to happen this year? I turn 30! Will it be all Beach Boys and Jon Secada from here on out?

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

There are, perhaps, too many sites, readers, and blogs out in the ether that offer advice to aspiring writers. Let's add to the mess—after all, it's a conspiracy to keep you confused.

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Every time you read a block of advice about writing or how to be published, you should read it skeptically. Including this one. These blocks of advice are particular to . . . well, particular writers, editors, venues, etc. Ideally, one will collate the "best" (based on personal reading opinion and perceived usefulness) blocks of advice into a sort of gestalt whole.

I edit a small zine that focuses primarily on interstitial, bizarre, or (even) experimental work. Specifically, I edit the fiction that appears in this zine. I do not pay large sums of money. My zine is not funded by a grant; is not supported by an established, profitable press; and is not for sale. It's free, which means that the costs of operation come out of mine and my co-editors' pockets. Editing this zine requires, in a quiet month, about ten hours a week of my time. In a busy month, it requires more like twenty or thirty.

There you go: a decent foregrounding of how to receive this advice, based on who it's coming from.

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Let's start at the "top."

Presentation of Self

When you send a submission to a venue (like mine) that receives them exclusively via email, the first thing the editor is going to see (before your name, even) is your email address. If your email address reflects the nickname you were given as a five-year-old, or indicates your raging interest in some obscure hobby, or reveals your talented capability to down jager-bombs, do not use that email address to send your submission. In the end, will I reject your story outright because it comes from "l33tman2000@awesome.com" or "snugglebumpsy@cute.com"? No, of course not. However, you're kidding yourself if you don't think that the first thing I do, the very first reaction I have to your submission, is to roll my eyes and sigh. Look, your submission is, in most cases, one of dozens, or hundreds, or thousands. If you offer an editor a reason to be pre-disposed against your work, there's a real likelihood that he or she will be.

Instead, sign up for a new email account—Gmail seems to be the industry standard these days, and it's free. Do not make the address cryptic or overly personal. This is your writer's inbox—your super-cool, super-mod, hipster friends do not have to even know you have such a lame email address. Use your first name and your last name. Like this: bob.bobson@gmail.com (No similarity to any actual Bob Bobsons intended) or this: bobette.bobson@gmail.com. Even simple initials are acceptable (b.bobson@gmail.com).

Now, is your email address less "visible" in my inbox? Yes, it blends right in. Contrary to what you may think, this is a good thing.

Moving on.

With your spankin' new, professional email address, you draft your cover letter. Some venues don't like them, or don't allow them. You know what? If that's the case, but you really want to write one, too damn bad. Violating the editor's preferences just irritates him or her. Most will discard your submission outright.

But, let's say that cover letters are allowed, or required, as they are at my zine. Great, now you get the chance to pull at my heart strings, or demonstrate how bad-ass you are in your local writer's group, or that you've found an ingenious way to get your new gmail account to accept wingdings as a valid font.

No, you don't.

First, you take the two minutes it requires to browse the venue-in-question and find out who the hell you're sending this story to. Is this a big thing? No, in fact, not doing it won't really count against you at all. However, taking these 120 seconds to look up the name of the editor helps predispose him or her to at least receiving your submission with a bit more warmth. After all, editors are no more cogs in a machine than you are. They have names, and they're usually fond of them. They might like that you give (or offer the appearance of giving) two small shits about their zine—enough that you looked up such a small detail.

Next, you let the editor know, in very direct language, that you're offering up your short story for his or her consideration. Like this: "Attached, please find "[story title]" (approx. X,XXX words) for your consideration." If it's a simultaneous submission (you've taken the time to find out if these are allowed), add a line to the above: "This is a simultaneous submission." Just like that. Easy as crap.

Next you summarize your story in a few lines, right?

No. At best, it's going to be forgettable and grossly under-representative of the whole of the work. At worst, you're going to reveal, before the editor even gets to the first line, that this story is not what the editor likes. He or she will doubtlessly still read it, but again, we're talking about subconscious pre-disposition here.

What you do get to do is take a line or two or three and identify yourself. Let the editor know if you have any relevant degrees, are an active part of a writing group, have attended some workshop, or if you have been published elsewhere. Do not list all twenty of your awesome publications. Yes, they're awesome, but the editor doesn't want your life history. Pick your favorite three, list those, and then add "and others."

If you don't have any relevant information like this to share, no problem. Just skip that step. It won't really make as big a difference as you think it will.

Then, be polite. Say "thanks" or "looking forward to hearing from you" or "sincerely" or whatever you like. Type your name at the bottom of the submission. I'm serious. Not doing so is lazy and dismissive. I don't care if your name appears in quotation marks alongside your email address in the "from" section of the email. That up there, that's code, data, email-servers communicating with email-servers stuff. Down here, in the cover letter, that's "person" stuff. Be a person.

Think I'm kidding about this stuff? You think you're a special snowflake and you're going to engender my sympathy by telling me something like you worked in food transportation for thirty years, retired, and decided to try your hand at writing? You think I'm going to take it easy because this is your first submission evar?

No.

You have to assume that I'm an asshole. I may not be, and I actually might take it easy on you, but are you willing to take that chance? Most editors have been a part of the field for years, have trained as writers themselves—some, like me, may owe a bazillion dollars in student loans from earning degrees in literary studies. Don't prance into the field wearing your best tiara and say by implication that you don't give a rat's ass about the incredible devotion, discipline, and practice it takes to be successful in writing (or anything). True, you may be one of the lucky few who tripped and fell into writing as an untrained-but-brilliant genius. In that case, none of what I'm telling you is going to matter, but statistically speaking, that's not likely. In fact, it's closer to impossible.

Picking a Venue

This is the time-consuming part. Look, I know how it is. When I first began submitting short stories, I used the bird-shot technique. I'd skip on over to Duotrope or Ralan's or Writer's Market, and I'd do some category searches for which venues accepted which genres. I was on fire; I needed to get things moving. That was enough research for me. So I'd bundle up my subs (I even took the time to do everything I listed above), and I'd fire them off, one-after-the-other, to the zines my assiduous research had revealed.

And you know what? They were uniformly rejected. It could be that they were just bad stories (although some later found homes when I stopped submitting this way), but what's more likely is that they weren't suited to the zine I was sending them to. Instead of gaining time by not reading the zines, I lost it by submitting to places that never would have accepted the work in the first place, had I taken the time to read their material. See, just because a market listing says that a venue accepts "magical realism" or "fantasy" or "horror," that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. Sometimes, the editors-in-question don't write those market listings, meaning those categories may not even represent what they like to publish. But let's say the editor did submit that information. You have to keep in mind, genre labels are massive, inaccurate, amoeba-like categories. You need to take the time to see how that zine interprets "magical realism" or "fantasy."

Sound time-consuming? It is, and it should be. By doing this, you stop shooting blindly into the dark and start targeting your submissions with surgical precision.

What's worse, you need to be sure to read recent material. Editors' tastes can change over time. So, while you may find a story similar to your own, that was published by the editor-in-question three years ago, that's not enough. You need to see what he or she has been buying for the last two or three issues. The field changes rapidly (particularly if you're writing under the "speculative fiction" umbrella). Keep up.

Presentation of Work

Right, those requirements up above might be a pain in the ass, but they're not un-doable. In fact, once you start doing things this way, you'll see how much time they save.

Great. You're on the right track. The submission has been appropriately matched to the venue, you present yourself professionally, and the cover letter is nice and clean.

You can still screw it up. The actual format of the story is the easiest way to do this. Often, venues specify how they want material formatted. In my case, I require that you format your story like this. (As an aside, most editors require this format, particularly in the spec. fic. field, so you might as well get used to it.)

But you don't like that format, or you don't want to take the time to "OMG?? RE-format the whole story?!?" Too damn bad. Those formatting requirements are there for a reason, and usually it has to do with readability. Editors and their assistants are reading a lot of material, and they like it to suit their viewing tastes. Is that selfish and unfair? You bet your ass it is. If there are minor violations of the format I prefer in a submission, I'll sometimes overlook them, but they irritate me, which is not what you want to do. If there are gross violations, I reject the story without reading it, and since I rarely send personal rejections, you won't even know why your story got bounced.

Do not dress up the text. Putting drop shadows on the title is stupid. Enlarging the text of the title, or rendering it in bold—that's stupid, too. Is your title so weak that it needs help? Yes? Go re-do it, then, and come back to me with a little respect for said title. Give it a chance.

You know what else? I'm not going to steal your ideas, so don't tell me they're protected by copyright—above all, don't put that damn copyright symbol anywhere on the draft. First, you're telling me ab initio that you're such a bad-ass that your ideas are at risk of being stolen. Secondly, you're telling me that you think I'm shady (possibly). Finally, you're telling me that you don't realize the damn thing is already protected. Don't believe me? Look it up. Don't trust your 1986 edition of some Writer's Digest guide to formatting.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, this is one of my biggest editorial pet peeves, so I may be approaching it with more vitriol than is needed.)

As for which rights are available, you can tell me that if you really want to, but most venues will tell you which rights they are looking to acquire. If those specific rights are not available, don't submit the piece. When I open up a submission, I assume the writer has looked to see which rights I'm after. This, in and of itself, isn't a big deal, but the less meta-text you can put up there in the heading of your story, the better.

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Now, in my inbox anyway, your story gets the fairest shake possible. Maybe the text is killer, and you'll be the next one on the T.O.C. Maybe it's not—remember, if a venue rejects your material, it doesn't mean it's "bad." Each venue has carved out a specific piece of the "good writing" pie, and that's all it wants. I reject good stories all the time—because they're not representative of the aesthetics my specific zine tries to corner.

(As an aside, if you get rejected, never respond to the rejection. No matter how much you want to. No matter how mean I am to you. Know why? Because editors talk. We really, really do. Publishing circles are smaller than you think. Already think they're small? Well, they're smaller even than that. If you respond to a rejection, it will almost never come across the way you intend—which can fully be the editor's fault, and not yours. Next, your name and the story of your rejection-response will be passed around. Unfarily and one-sidedly. You can be blacklisted and not even know it.

If you need to bitch about a rejection, that's what drinking-buddies are for.

No one said any of this was fair, so don't try to make it so. Be smart instead.)

There are, of course, issues of craft that we could talk about—the most common mistakes that will sabotage the telling of a story—but that's a topic for another time.

Remember, that while these practices seem to make your submission "invisible," that's a good thing. You want the business part of your writing and presentation-of-self to be as transparent as possible. The only alternative is to be "visible" somehow, and that never works out the way you want—it's a negative thing, not positive.

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

Have you been keeping up? I'm not sure I have.

Pencils down. Here are the answers to the, "How Much Closer are We to Losing Everything" quiz.

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1) GM Cutting 10,000 Jobs (This on top of the Big Three's Tuesday deadline, when they must prove to congress that they have developed feasible new business models, or else . . .)

2) Bullion Sales Hit Record in Rush to Safety (You can always gauge market panic by watching the sales and price of gold. It's a Gold Rush!)

3) International Monetary Fund May Run Out of Money to Fight Crisis in Six Months (Well, won't that be fun?)

4) World Trade Organization Chief Warns of Looming Political Unrest (Can you guess why?)

5) . . . on that note: Global Economy Top Threat to U.S. (the new director of national intelligence tells us that global economic turmoil and the instability it could ignite [have] outpaced terrorism as the most urgent threat facing the United States)

6) Charter to File for Chapter 11 (This isn't the end of the world, as Chapter 11 is a debt-protection repayment schedule, but still, if the internet suddenly gets quiet . . . )

7) Time to Break Up the Banks? (I to-old you so.)

8) German 10-year Bund Auction Fails For a Second Successive Time (This means that the German government can't get what it needs/wants for its bonds. It's bad. Germany may be approaching bankruptcy.)

9) Stock Market to Fall At Least Another 40% (There are growing predictions that we're going to see another large-scale meltdown, probably in March.)

10) Domestic Hair, Plasma, and Sperm Sales Up (Well, why not?)

11) Charities See Donations Drop as Need Spikes (This isn't good.)

12) Europe's Industrial Base May Never Recover

13) EU At Risk?

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And for the extra credit answer: I accepted any 300-words-or-more essay-question answer that acknowledged that you are, indeed, entertaining the reality that everything we're used to is quite likely to change. Extra points to those answers that revealed any foresight regarding what people will do for and with themselves if the Big Bubble Pops.

Don't think the Big Bubble will pop? How about this video addressing how the U.S. came within three hours of complete financial and governmental collapse, which would have resulted in worldwide crashes within 24 hours? (The relevant bit begins at about one minute, twenty seconds in, after the understandably panicking woman's question)

Originally published at Darin Bradley.

Don't think you can call glvalentine out on a blog-topic.

For, she is without fear, and will call your bluff.

Still, I am amused that she took time out of her day to look this stuff up. Maybe we should suggest more blog-topics . . .