#ralan

New Publishing, New Human

With both Apex Magazine’s and Shimmer’s recent news, I’ve been thinking about the State of the Thing; and that Thing of course being specfic publishing in the Near Now.*

  Nerdlandia

The field of weird and wonderful fiction has changed a lot since I started subscribing to ‘zines. There was that slow-burn month or quarter of excitement as you wondered what tales might arrive through your…

Ooh, good ones!

12. what’s your favorite place for writing resources?

It used to be DuoTrope, as a search engine for magazines, but then DuoTrope changed to paid subscription. These days I use ralan.com since it updates frequently and is free. The Nanowrimo website is also loaded with resources, especially during the summer camps.

9. a passage from a WIP

Fanfiction:

 Some bandage poked out from under his shirt sleeve. It poked out like a thorn from a rose. Astrid frowned at it.“Hiccup, what did you do?”“It’s not broken,” he said sheepishly. “I just sprained it doing a test flight, and Gothi saw because I landed near her hut. She was pretty angry and confiscated it since I crushed her herb garden.”“I don’t blame her! You risk your neck every time you use that thing!” she snapped. “Well, in any case as an apology I’m helping her rebuild her garden, and we got into a conversation about surgery,” he went on. “You had a conversation with Gothi,” she repeated. “Well, she drew, I responded. It is possible.” He scratched his peg leg in the dirt. “Aren’t you even going to ask how the twins got involved?”

Original:

That evening, my husband went out dressed in a hibiscus leaf and wore an abandoned black button around his navel. Musk loved catching crabs, especially when he pierced them with his needles and roasted their insides for dinner.

“If humans can do it, so can I,” he declared.

“Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “Humans are much larger than stone crabs of any size.”

We lived in a rosebush by the sea; Musk had insisted it had a good spot by a mangrove forest, where the little crabs grew with baby fish. I helped spear the little ones on needles and roast them on hot coals.

Musk that night didn’t listen to me; I could have tweaked his nose for that. He saw crabs skittering across the concrete road, while we were sweeping stray leaves off our rosebush, got dressed in his leaf and charged before I could grab his ear and stop him.  A pink crab hoisted him in the air and tore him in half. He squeaked.

Crabs do not nibble. They don’t even wipe the slits that they have for mouths. They merely stare with beady black eyes, pinch, and swallow. I know this because I watched, for a few minutes, my mouth open.