I’m sure the wailing and gnashing of teeth will start any moment now. Waiting. Three…Two…One.

Crickets.

Anyway, I’m pretty much over this whole “free content” debacle. Not sure if I’ll ever publish anyone else’s stuff again or not. At this point, though, I’d best make it official: if you’ve submitted anything to Darwin’s Evolutions or had a “provisional” acceptance, that’s all released. I’ve deleted all the slush files and anything that I haven’t contracted and paid for. Sorry, but this venue is currently not accepting anything.

Attention authors and artists who’ve been published: My intention is to leave your work up for as long as you’re willing to let me leave it there as a visibility service for you. If you want it pulled, all you have to do is e-mail me or nudge me in some way or fashion and I’ll erase it from the database. Can’t do much about things that might have cached the stories or art like Google. The internet never forgets, after all.

Now, as for what I plan on doing with this space…well, I’ve actually been reading some of my favorite authors quite a bit lately.  Ergo, I’m more than likely going to actually post some reviews.  I also plan on maybe penning a blog post or two about the ridiculous world of speculative fiction writing and publishing from time to time.  In essence, it’ll just be a blog written by a guy who has done a little penning around himself and reads in kind of a narrow band of interest.

I’m sure the world can’t wait (/sarc), but I’m going to do it anyhow.

When I feel like it.

Which won’t be often.

Because, frankly, the world of spec fic is absolutely chock full of zero return on investment.  It’s something that should be approached only for fun and personal gratification because that’s pretty much sums up what it’s all about.  Far too many people take this endeavor far too seriously for my tastes.

Frankly, if you want to take this all seriously, be my guest.  I’m going to do whatever I do with this for fun first.  If someone wants to pay me for it when I’m done, that’s great, but first and foremost, I’m going to do it to entertain myself.  And when I say “it”, I mean writing or editing or reading or publishing or whatever I choose to be involved with as far as speculative fiction is involved.

Right now, I’m finding that getting my model airplane kit business back up and running is far more involving and satisfying than speculative fiction.  That having been said, I feel an urge to finish things up with Kevin with regards to Technosaurs.  I got a lot of satisfaction from that and I want to see the comic side wrapped up and play with doing the illustrated YA prose side, too.  Plus there’s my long-suffering collaborative novel with Kate.  And my extension of my Hell Forge story that’s about 1/3 done.  Lots of stuff that I’d like to pursue and finish.

But, I’m going to do it for me (and for my collaborators where involved), first.  I’m going to have fun doing it or I just won’t bother.

Given the crappy nature of publishing in this country (or the world, for that matter), that’s probably the most psychologically healthy thing I think I can do.

The primary reason for that is me because I am Evolutions.

Seriously.  Just me.  A guy with a measly three published short stories who barely knows how to run Wordpress 2.5 and can’t upgrade to save his ass. (I keep destroying the database on the dummy site I’ve been using to experiment.)  Editor?  Why do I call myself that?  Because I’m the only one doing it.  Ergo, that’s the only title I can use.  I don’t feel like an editor, but since I write checks and do all the editing and layout crap, editor it is.

But, the key point is, it’s not working.  It’s not working for lots of reasons but mostly because I lack the necessary OCD to run something like this solo.  Call me an odd duck, if you like, but I’d really prefer to work this in a team environment.  I prefer to have people to bounce things off of and listen to.  I don’t want to live in an echo chamber.  That was never the point of this effort.

Which, oddly, brings me around to what I wanted to talk about.

See, I’ve been spending a bit of time pondering about what the heck I should do with Evolutions since: a) I have no motivation whatsoever to work on it and b) I have no money to spend on it anymore since I’m with the 17-20% of Americans who are more or less still screwed by the recession and unemployed. (Read that last bit as “Darwin ain’t got no money.”

Part of this has to do with the ongoing maelstrom that is e-publishing.  Amazon, MacMillan, whatever.  The big boys are busy stepping on each others feet to the detriment of authors and genres pretty much everywhere.  The thing is, the big boys are so disconnected from their market base that it’d be laughable if it weren’t so damned tragic.  Well, emotions start to come to the fore at this point, so I’d best leave off that for a minute otherwise I’ll get a spittle-flecked rant going, and that’s not what I want.

The key is, I deviated pretty wildly from what I originally wanted to do with Evolutions and that deviation has trashed my enthusiasm.  See, the point of Evolutions was to provide an alternate path to publication - to open another door, no matter how cramped, for fiction to get out into the world.  I never really wanted to follow the traditional “periodical” model, though.  I just kind of ended up there, which was the big mistake.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think any of the issues I’ve strung together have been “mistakes”.  I love the stories and art that I’ve been able to share with people (both of you, God bless your gracious hearts.)  I don’t think, though, that another “traditional periodical” is what readers and writers need for their web-based e-reader friendly fiction at the moment.

Straight up here, Evolutions is a Wordpress blog web site.  The amount of content that can be shared by that site is limited by two things, basically: one is bandwidth and the other is money to pay for the required bandwidth and servers.  Theoretically, it would be possible to post thousands of short stories a day if such stories existed and the readership existed to consume those stories in such a manner that the costs of editing and hosting that fiction materialized.

So, if infinity is possible, the roadblock must be…people?

And the answer to this is, “Yes, people” - me in particular at the moment because of my deceased motivation but also in terms of demand.  Supply, well, that continues to amaze me.  Not in its overarching quality, mind you.  Rather, in the fact that people are willing to submit to a complete idiot such as myself.  That, in and of itself is a sign of how things need to change.

Another reason for my pondering comes from the work I’ve done with Sarah Hoyt in helping to spread her “Space Enough and Time” universe short stories.  Because the stories always draw attention, I started thinking about the dual goals that get satisfied every time we post one.  For Sarah, it’s all about publicity.  For me, it’s all about drawing readers in.  The thought vein runs deeper, though.

Well, in any event, I’ve got to come up with some semblance of enthusiasm for my original mission, which was to provide a reader and writer friendly webzine kind of thingy that would let more works get out there and more writers get known while providing readers with a certain assurance of “decent quality reads” that would make it worth the click-through.

What an ugly sentence and generally wishy-washy mission statement.  Still, it’s much better than the brainless PC pablum mission statements I was forced to observe during my time in corporate America.

Let’s glean that: 1) Provide a place readers want to go to on the web.  2) Provide a place for writers to put fiction for readers to read. 3) Make sure there’s some sort of quality control so that it’s not just some idiotic vanity site or fan-fiction clearinghouse.

I’ll add one more: pay it forward in a way that encourages authors to keep going.

That seems clear to me now but, damn!  Was it ever murky there for a while.  Like for 2 whole years, more or less.

Well, I’ve rambled on about that for a while but, to what effect?  Honestly, I want to change things.  I want to get back to what I yakked about with heartkin in Syracuse oh so long ago, even if I’m not one of them anymore.  I want to leverage the changes that are shaking up the big money interests so much because those changes should be better for both readers and writers and hell on the “extra hands” folks who uselessly suck money out of traditional publishing.

I have an idea of how I want this to go.  That being said, I would really like to have a discussion about it.  I’m tired of driving in the dark across Montana.  I don’t have the narcissistic ego for that.

Here’s what I want to do:

I want to get the discussion board running again and set up a “slush” discussion group just like what Jim Baen’s Universe used to do on Baen’s Bar.  The idea being that people can post their stories there and receive feedback (yeah, call it critique) with the goal of making the stories meet some level of “publishable”.  I intend to stay on top of it and smash any asshats who start playing bully or prima donna.  This is the “pay it forward” bit.

Once a story has reached a certain consensus of “good enough”, the author can then take it wherever they want to sub it out.  And let me make it clear right here that I don’t care where they sub it.  I encourage people to sub to places that pay decent rates first and foremost.  However, one of the places they can “sub” is up the chain to Evolutions.

The reality is that people won’t have to go that path any more than they had to at Universe.  People with confidence will be able to sub directly to the ‘zine.  Difference being, those who drop stories in the slush forum will get feedback from others and even editorial staff (me to start with) as to what does and doesn’t work.  Direct subs will get either rejections or acceptance, not feedback.

This, of course, brings us up to this whole idea of “publication”.  The goal of any writer who’s not writing for themselves alone is for other people to see their work.  That’s publication.  The reality of web publishing is that, whether someone else buys it an puts it on-line or you throw your story up yourself, it’s still publishing.  If someone can Google your name and find your stories on-line, ta da!  Most “serious” publications won’t touch the story with a ten foot pole.

In other words, first release rights are shot.  All you could possibly hope for are reprints after you’ve made a name somewhere.  This is the reality of web publishing.  In the past, there was also a certain stigma associated with web-published authors, but that’s fading away and doesn’t really mean much unless you try to claim web-published semi-pro or amateur credits on your cover letter.  Don’t do that.  Seriously.  No Brownie points will be garnered.  Pro web sites?  (i.e. SFWA recognized.)  Yeah, go for it.  Those count.

Distractions, distractions.

Anyway, the point is that I can’t really afford the model I have.  Unemployed, remember?  No readers, no donations, and I haven’t really grokked all the ad crap that feeds the webcomic dudes.

So, if a publisher can’t pay, what’s the point, right?

Well, okay, let’s ponder that for a moment.

There’s this huge pool of people who want to get published.  Thing is, there’s not that many places to get published.  That kind of drives down the relative value of fiction.  (We’ll kind ignore the whole “99% of all submissions are crap” issue for a moment.)  What’s worse is that the market sucks.  Steve Jobs thinks that nobody reads stories without pictures anymore.  Not that I give a blow about what that narcissistic pinhead thinks, but the nugget of truth in his flaming bias is that prose is severely disadvantaged when it comes to competing with things like web comics and YouTube.

Now, let’s see.  Somebody’s gonna jump up and mention Scalzi and Doctorow and whoever else is top of the wave right now in on-line prose exploitation.  Yeah, hooray for them.  Scalzi got PAID to blog and build up a readership before he did fiction.  Not sure about Doctorow since I know him by vague intimation only that he’s somehow successful online.  In any case, independent success by flinging fiction upon the pig sty that is the intrawebs is definitely not a guaranteed way to success.  Success via that route is the rarest of exceptions.

So, anyhow, why would anyone want to publish via Evolutions?  Because they wouldn’t be self-publishing.  That’s about all I’ve got.  It’s a way of getting work out for consumption in a manner that isn’t self-publishing.  And, over time and with enough decent quality stuff, there will be a readership that checks out what shows up on the site.  So, eventually it’s really being published as opposed to self-publishing and having a certain audience who might actually read and comment on your stuff.

Now, having said all that, I should point out that I do want to pay for fiction.  However, there’s no cash in the till.  Frankly, that’s part of why I’m unmotivated to do much at the moment.  I’m certainly not recouping the costs of paying for my hosting.  In fact, the only reason I’m keeping this thing alive is that I have other web projects based off the same account and keeping Evolutions on-line isn’t setting me back anything.

So, what to do.

Well, the idea occurs that if I’m not the only one selecting stories anymore (and puhleeeese, let me stop being the only one), maybe it’d be possible to do a co-operative effort to fund putting together the funding for prose and art for the actual releases.  That’d mean singling out the “best of the best” for paid publication in the main releases while letting the “good but not stellar” reads choose whether to go on-line for the love of it or to sub out somewhere else.

Hell, this brings up the whole issue of multiple people having a call on the money, too.  And the moment you have either money or land in the mix, that’s when the shooting starts.  God, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s really not worth it.  Maybe it’s better to have people piss their work away as self-published in vain attempts to build some sort of visibility or to keep pounding their heads against the slush piles after living in little crit-group echos chambers too long.

See, the thing is, I liked it when I got to write for people who would read.  This goes way back to 2002 and Barfly Slush.  It was nice not writing in a vacuum.  I met a few cool people and a whole boatload of psychotics, just like in politics or university.  It was nice to not be alone (although I could really, really live without the psychotics.)

I think it’d be nice to help folks share their work in a way that they’d have pride in what they’ve accomplished and without the stigma of being “self-published”.  If a decent and supportive community could come out of that, even better.  That’s what I’d like to have.

With really cool art, if at all possible.  Have I mentioned that I love my artists?  Yes I do, Sam-I-Am.

But, really, I’m kind of at the end of my rope.  I could do a lot to try and attain goals like that, but I’m not built to do it in a vacuum tube.  The self-hate kicks in and I simply can’t keep slugging along.

Anyway, I’d appreciate some thoughts about this.  If there’s a way to shake a money-tree to pay authors, that’s great, but I’d really like to have readers, too.  Can’t really have one without the other, actually, and I really do think that there’s an opportunity here, as nebulous as it seems to me now.  There’s got to be some way to pulling this all together in way that helps writers reach readers and helps build interest in the SF&F genres again.

Then again, it’s late and I’m babbling.  But I pay for this site, so if I want to babble, I’ll babble, damn it!

Feel free to babble back.  Free association is permitted and encouraged.  Innovation is needed.

We are proud to present this novelette-length short story by Sarah Hoyt set in the same universe as her recently released “Dark Ship Thieves” novel.

***

Before the first burner singed the air, I had jumped. I didn’t know why. Perhaps I wasn’t truly asleep and heard strange steps in the hallway. Or perhaps a voice whispering what was planned for us. I don’t know.

Whatever warning there was fell into my sleeping mind and made my body react. I woke up half way through my jump-and-dive, dragging with me my brother Pol, who slept in the next bed. We thudded together into a too-narrow space between his bed and the wall.

It saved our lives, because the blinding flash of the burner swung in an arc which sliced my bed in two, setting it on fire. Still half asleep, dazzled by the brilliance of the light, the acrid smoke in my nostrils, I pushed Pol further back and down, shoving him right next to the wall and pressing close to him, close, my heart beating a deafening rhythm.

“Cas, what–?” he said, his voice barely audible, because in addition to the sizzling sounds of the burners there were now screams and gurgles, moans and cries for mercy. I recognized the voices of my dormitory mates, and I didn’t want to recognize them. I’d never heard them sound like that.

My hand covered Pol’s mouth, my other hand tapped against his shoulder, in dark-water-language, “Shut up, shut up, shut up. Stay quiet. Shut up.”

He made a movement, but didn’t try to fight free or to speak again. The burners zinged and cut, and our dorm mates – judging by the noises – screamed and died. I braced my feet against the ceramite floor, and tried to become one with the wall. Thoughts ran through my head like water dripping from a burst tank. They’ll see us! They’ll set fire to the bed!

And at the same time, a mad part of me wanted to run out there and save my creche mates, the closest thing I had to a family.

It wasn’t that I was particularly close to any of them. Pol and I were twins, a freak accident in the building process, an egg that gave our fabricators a bonus: another homo-aquaticus, designed for intelligence and cunning and speed, who could be trained for the war against the Earthworms.

Written by Sarah A. Hoyt
Illustration “Sirena” by Jesus Garcia

Let me start by saying I’m not allowed to read reviews of my own work. At least not unless friend, husband, son or trustworthy stranger has vetted it and told me it’s “safe.”  ”Safe” is defined as “won’t set Sarah off” I think, mostly because setting Sarah off results in this.

Before someone goes off on this being a patronizing rule to me, as a woman, let me add I know three other writers who have this rule.  They are all male.

This anticipated criticism - come on, ladies, admit half of you were thinking it - brings me neatly to my point.  The proximate cause - as opposed to the long-simmering cause - of this rant is the fact that a friend let slip that a reviewer (not sure if professional or private) of my work was disappointed because the main character of Darkship Thieves cares what the man she loves thinks of her.

Sorry for the minor spoiler above.  Yes, my novel contains a love story. Most of life (though not all) does.  It’s one of the things that makes humans tick.  If you wish, I will apologize, too, that my characters behave like real people, not like political cliches.

My main character is a woman who was grown but not in any sense raised, who, as a child, was indulged but not loved, who was educated but not taught. There is a reason for this, and it is given in the novel.  (Though not obvious by the time she falls in love.)  There is also a D*MN good reason most of her peers are men and she never made friends with the women whom she considered her social inferiors.

Now, Athena is self sufficient.  She has reason plenty to cry, whine and indulge herself in fits of vapors, but she doesn’t (unless getting violent and doing stupid things is a fit of vapors.)  If she asks anyone’s pity or indulgence in the book, it is more than I’m aware of.  (Yes, you’re supposed to feel when she’s down, but that’s totally different.)  She faces her problems squarely on and resolves them, though she often prefers the masculine solution of a quick uppercut.  (There is a reason for this, not having been conditioned or in any way socialized.)

If her love is not returned, she’s the sort that does a few stupid things to get rid of the feelings, and then life would go on.

HOWEVER, as Thena is exposed to normal people, normal families and normal feelings (for a given definition of normal.  Everyone in the book is a little odd.  Comes from the author) she’s like a kid with her nose pressed to the shop window.  Because she never partook of this, experienced it, or was part of it, she feels it doesn’t belong to her.  From which it’s a very short step to feeling it CAN’T belong to her.  Which bring brings feelings of unworthiness and confusion about what others must feel towards her.

Again, as she’s faced with the real, normal emotions of real, emotionally sound (or differently unsound) adults, she becomes aware her way of reacting to things is often counterproductive, not to say causes others distress and problems.  This too brings those feelings of inadequacy that result in self-examination and true growth.

In other words, Athena’s insecurity when tumbling headlong into love with unhealed wounds to her psyche created by the way she was raised is, in fact, human, logical, and what most of us would feel.

This brings me to the point - you knew there was one, right? - of this. People are not political cliches.  Real people are not mechanisms to push anyone’s political point of view, ideological posturing or pet cause.  Sure, there are things you can avoid doing to your characters - things that would legitimately set people off if your characters can be interpreted as a minority.

The main thing that sets me off is making your character into a walking billboard.  I swear these days most of the books I find (but don’t read past page twenty five) could successfully be written in the following way: The walking advertisement for my sense of victimhood and desire to compensate in writing for my failures in real life woke up.  She did a series of things that validate my shaky sense of self and my regret that I wasn’t born a rich white male.  The end.

Mary Sue is more than a nice girl in fan fiction.  She’s boring, for instance.  Particularly when she is the embodiment of any cause like… organized feminism.

Ladies, gentlemen, hermit crabs, bicycles and mandolins, first of all let me point out I’m not a joiner.  Am I a feminist?  Do I have to be because I was born with a vagina?  (A characteristic I appreciate in many ways great and small, by the way.)

Right now I’m hearing half the women - no, they’re probably not ladies.  Or for that matter gentlemen - in the audience talk about how I should be grateful for the gains feminists have achieved for me by marching shoulder to shoulder. (To shoulder, to shoulder, to shoulder.)

Poppycock.  Pernicious poppycock, at that.

There were some - minor - gains which were achieved for all women by organized feminism.  Suffrage, probably, was achieved by political action unless there was a technological-change/physical reason why women obtained it, of which I might not be aware.  (Perhaps the industrial revolution making it possible for a woman to earn a living, but I haven’t studied the matter in detail.)  Most of the gains in my lifetime - and in this, I was born about fifty “real” years before my peers in the US in terms of “liberation”.  When and where I was born a married woman needed permission from her husband to vote and get a job.  A single woman needed permission from her family to get a job.  (I have no idea if they could vote.) - came through technology and its influence on human life.

By the time I was eighteen, my life, except for cultural factors that made it hard to be out alone after eight (not that this ever stopped me!) was equivalent to that of my peers in the US.  What changed it was widespread access to the pill, which saved women from unending pregnancies, a lot of household appliances that freed them from unending drudgery, and yet more technology that made it possible for women to earn a good living.

[Cultural factors remained a pain, but I will assure you that if every Portuguese woman (or even a majority of them) had dealt with the issue of men thinking she was a hooker when she was out alone after eight - night classes - by wearing stiletto heels and applying them forcefully to the crotch of the offending male, that too would have changed by now.  Shoulder to shoulder isn’t doing it.]

Yes, there were some protests and things at the same time, and they might have sped things up a little - maybe.  Which still doesn’t give anyone the right to demand that I be grateful to people who did things for themselves before I was born - things I never asked them to do, nor felt any need to have done.  (Me living my life as myself, not as a cliche feminist.)

The idea of this … biological-clan gratitude is antithetical to liberty, free thought and morality.  By trying to make me fall in line and behave in a certain way because of what “they did for me” these women remind me of Victorian parents continuously telling the children how grateful they should be for this and that and how that demanded absolute loyalty.  I think it works on most women because they were raised to be dutiful daughters. (Yeah, okay, so I was too.  But it didn’t take.)  This gratitude and falling in line because you wouldn’t want to offend a group that has “fought so hard for you” (though really for themselves) you give power to political shills who in the end use who you are and what you are to stay in power.  And they will continue to justify their existence by fighting for ever-more-specious “rights” so you continue to be grateful to them and feel you need them. [Oh, you don’t want to hear me on the subject of Herstory and womyn.  Political battles should be fought without hurting innocent philology what never done any harm to no one.]

All of which reminds me of the sticky girls in kindergarten.  This was a group, roughly composed of every other girl in the class, that clung together in smarmy self-satisfaction (the clinging aided by a quantity of fruity hard candy which to this day I can’t smell without revulsion) “We’re pretty and clean.  We’re not like those BOYS.  If a boy is mean to one of us, all of the others of us must stop talking to him.  If a girl plays with boys she’s nasty.  If a girl pulls our pretty curly hair, we’ll cry till teacher or mommy punishes her.  Wha, wha, wha.”  Note that when you actually needed the sticky girls they were never there for you.  Heck, when one of them needed the sticky girls, they weren’t there for her.  They were a vast - I did mention sticky, right? - writhing pool of self-satisfaction and passive-aggression and they backstabbed each other continuously.

I’m not a joiner, as a rule, and when I join groups it is because I have thought long and hard and decided to do so.  NOT because I was born with some characteristic that they think means they own me.  No one owns me.  And you don’t have a claim to my loyalty or gratitude because you did something for yourself that you think benefits me.

Are there women I honor as having been pioneers of female rights?  Oh, sure. Someone had to break the gender barrier, even once tech made the barrier not needed.  I honor those women who - living their own lives - went into professions where there were few or no women and performed competently, quietly and in a way that earned the respect of their colleagues.

I don’t feel grateful to them, as such.  I presume they wanted to go into those professions - otherwise they’d be crazy - and didn’t do it specifically for me.  However, I do honor their bravery and autonomy in pursuing what they wanted regardless of what society told them.  Mind you, I honor men, children and small animals who do the same: live their lives the way they want to and excel at their avocation regardless of social or physical obstacles.

Which brings me full circle into what started this.  You see, what I want to do is write.  Not only that, but I want to write real people, not walking billboards holding aloft a banner that says “I am for the rights of all women to behave like automatons who support what our purported leaders tell us is good for us.”  I want to write real people without being told I’m being anti-feminist or a mean girl “wha wha wah.”

Had I made Athena into a creature who did not care what anyone thought of her, I’d have had to either make her a sociopath or a cardboard cut out. And while characters with issues interest me, sociopaths don’t.  As for cardboard cut outs, they don’t do much.  And, oh, yeah, it is normal for love to make men and women feel insecure.  My husband was convinced I would reject his proposal though there was never any chance of that.  Had Thena’s attitude been “He’ll love me because I’m all that” she’d have been repulsively self-satisfied or completely androphobic and convinced any male must be grateful for ANY female’s attention.

Which brings me to me as a reader - not me as a writer: I am getting very tired of reading sociopaths, cardboard cut outs, women who view men SOLELY as means of sexual satisfaction and/or things to fight against.  (And yes, the ‘things’ is justified.)  A culture in which an historical romance cannot be published without the author making the woman some sort of anachronistic proto-feminist is a sick, sick, culture.  More importantly, it’s a boring culture.  This trend is losing both male readers and those female readers who like males.  Heck, it’s losing every reader who hasn’t been taught she has an ax to grind - or didn’t believe it - because all these books are is Mary Sues defending the sticky-girl author against the mean boys and girls she can’t take on in real life.

And if you are an author who is NOT a sticky girl and who only does this to avoid attacks by reviewers and rejections by editors, stop it.  Stand up for yourself and tell the accusers to take a hike.  (If you absolutely must have a group, join my gang.  The other outliers and I might not hang together, profess the same goals or have the same ideas.  We do however, metaphorically speaking, meet up behind the bike sheds after school to throw a bucket of chum over the heads of the sticky girls.)

The few men who venture to read the female characters who are billboards for top-down dictates by womyn would in fact be justified in either never having anything to do with women or being attracted to ideologies and religions that strive to keep women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.  Heck, some of these books have caused me to foam at the mouth and growl about “damn girly writers” till my husband laughs so hard he sprains something.  (He thinks I don’t realize I’m a woman, which makes it funny.  Of course I realize I’m a woman.  I’m not, though, nor have I ever been a “sticky  girl.”)

So, to return to the point, yeah, my character will care what the man she loves thinks of her.  How much she cares and how much insecurity she displays depends on who she is.  For instance, Kyrie in the shifters’ series, though in many ways also having a dysfunctional childhood, is much more self-sufficient than Athena.  She was tried and survived before - instead of a poisonous combination of being emotionally put down and physically spared and indulged.  So if the man she’s involved with - Tom - is being asinine, she shrugs and goes about her business and/or gives the situation a sharp redirect, till it’s fixed.  It wouldn’t occur to her to worry he’ll judge her unworthy.  It wouldn’t occur to her to worry that anyone would judge her unworthy.  But Thena is not Kyrie, and neither of them is me.  They are their own people in their own world, who live lives in their own way and who are not merely vehicles for my point of view.  I write them like I write my male characters: as logical products of their environment, upbringing and (to an extent) genetics.

I apologize if this annoys anyone.  But if all you want is to see a reinforcement of received wisdom, you’ve come to the wrong place.  You see, I despise fruity hard candy and my writing is not designed to bind us together shoulder to shoulder.  If it’s designed to do ANYTHING beyond entertain, it is to make you think.  And that, I believe, will make life far better for future women - and men, and children, and hermit crabs, giraffes and mandolins - than any marching shoulder to shoulder.

Anyway, here’s the link:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/evolutions-vol-2-iss-1/7904466

You can purchase Vol. 2, Iss. 1 from Lulu as either a print-on-demand trade paperback or as a high-quality PDF download.  The Mobi, Kindle, and smaller-file-sized PDF will be along in a bit.

Authors and Stories in this issue:

The Finder Fields by Charlotte Comley, Illustrated by Christian Podgorski
Tea and Fairy Cakes by Kelly Madden, Illustrated by Jesus Garcia Lopez
No Beast So Fierce written and illustrated by Lazette Gifford
Hysteria by Rob Sharp, Illustrated by Marge Simon
Minor Details by Jaleta Clegg, Illustrated by B.C. Hailes
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf by Julie Frost, Illustrated by Karl Nordman
The Ninth Tenant by Leslie Fish, Illustrated by Jennifer Brazas
Derek the Can Opener by Jim Penge, Illustrated by Karl Nordman.

Includes an interview with Anne Bishop and a review of her trilogy omnibus, The Black Jewels Trilogy.
Also, a review of the manga Princess Resurrection.
And finally, a question and answer session with our cover artist, Jennifer Miller.

I will be releasing Vol. 2, Iss. 1 shortly.  This issue of the ‘Zine will feature 8 stories along with some non-fiction content that will take the total page count over 100.  That means that the Lulu P.O.D. version will be, for all intents and purposes, a 6×9 Trade paperback anthology.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to release it in time for Halloween proper, even though it’s the “Halloween” issue.  The reason is that I a) underestimated the time needed to lay it out and b) decided that the last two stories I added at the last minute deserved illustrations as much as any of the other stories.

Not that I really have the free-state money to buy the illustrations, but I guess I can go without lunch for a week or so or maybe sell off a paintball gun on Ebay or something to recoup the greenbacks before my wife divorces me.

Anyhow, as soon as the last bits of art come in, I’ll be uploading things to Lulu for the POD and downloadable PDF versions.  There’ll be two PDF versions.  One high-resolution that is the same as is used for the Lulu POD typesetting and one lower-resolution for the memory-space conscious folks.  We’ll add Mobi and Kindle versions shortly thereafter, as well.  The following Monday will see the start of releasing the stories to free web-only reading.

It looks really good in my desktop publishing software at this time.  Jennifer Miller’s cover art was carefully adapted by Kevin Wasden into yet another killer cover.  The stories are all great, each in their own way, and they’ll all now have their own art to go with them, and the art continues to amaze, even at the story illustration level.

Laterz.

Darwin

It happened this way: I’d just hunkered down to breakfast beside my favorite rock.  It’s a lovely thing: all crumbling and lichen-covered.  I like it because it looks a lot like me, except it has no feet.  I was taking my first delectable bite of beetle sandwich when the sun vanished.  Fabric brushed my face, and something heavy and disturbingly cushy plopped onto my back.  I said “oof”, and forced my eyes open to see a tattered skirt and a pair of high-heeled, curly-toed boots.

“Hey, Lady,” I said–and it came out a little more gruff than I intended, what with the extra weight on my spine and all–”The rock’s over there.”

She jumped up and whirled around.  The sun was at her back, so I couldn’t see much more than the droopy hat and a frazzled snarl of hair, but I’m pretty sure she was looking back and forth between me and the boulder as though trying to figure out which of us had spoken.

I cracked my mouth open so she could see it.  “You’re blocking my light.”

She bent down and peered at me.  Her nose almost touched my face.  “And a good thing, too,” she said.  Her voice was like branches snapping in the wind.  “You look hideous.”

“Yeah, well that’s about how you smell.  You should do something for your tooth rot.”

Written by Nancy Fulda.

And I walked out of the library with The Tuloriad in my hands.

People like to hate Ringo and Kratman, especially those narrow minded and intolerant members of Denialists Universal, also known as the American Left.  What you can’t deny, though (at least if you actually read the book instead of skim it for little word bites that you can then try to use to pretend you read it in a spittle-laced defamatory “review”), is that between them Ringo and Kratman do an excellent job of writing entertaining fiction.  This comes out in the way that they hook the reader in the very beginning and don’t let them go to the end.

Honestly, I don’t know how much of this book was done by John Ringo and how much by Tom Kratman.  I think in the main that I sense the Colonel Kratman’s continually improving style throughout.  There are places where the voice seems to de-synch from the main, and I think that’s where Ringo might have had a hand.  Both voices though, are engaging and character-driven.  This isn’t a book that’s easily put down once you’re into it, as I found out to my bane during a series of later-than-I-should-have-been-up reads.

The overall gist of the book involves a refugee clan of the “evil” Posleen invaders, at last driven from earth.  This particular clan, though, is led by the Posleen hero Tulo’stenaloor, the creator of a clan of “5 percenters”, i.e. a clan made up of the smartest of all the Posleen.  In desperation, he accepts the offer of an escape ride from earth from a shady Indowy with obviously ulterior motives.

From that beginning we delve quickly into a two-pronged telling.  First is Tulo’stenaloor’s mission to save his clan and, by extension, his race from extermination at the hands of vengeful humanity.  The second is a rescue mission of a different sort: a human driven effort to save the very souls of the Posleen.  This second course of the story includes a variety of characters from the Ringo-Kratman collaboration, Yellow Eyes.

The question of human religions in the face of alien contact is one that has been frequently touched upon but rarely well addressed.  Especially of late, such occurrences are typically used to denigrate the very idea of religion (especially Christianity) in keeping with the worst instincts of “progressive” (i.e. Marxist/Leninist/trans-national socialist) indoctrination.  The idea, such as presented in The Tuloriad by Ringo and Kratman, that religion is not only meaningful but potentially critical to the survival of a race is, in the current anti-anything-that-vaguely-smacks-of-traditional-conservative-values publishing community, not only novel but gutsy.

This is not to say that the book is some sort of proselytization as normally seen in the commonly hackneyed and overbearing attempts at preaching-fiction published in Christian book stores.  In fact, the book has none of that.  There are several meaningful discussions about religion, but no proselytization despite the overt goal of the second prong of the story. What you get, instead, is a story that reads as part mystery, part adventure, and part discovery.  The flow of the story is organic, smooth, and easy to follow, especially if you’ve got even a little familiarity with Ringo’s Aldenata universe.

Overall, I found The Tuloriad very enjoyable reading.  The characters and plot lines are engaging, and the overarching story arc had a definite beginning and end.  Finally, my primary flag that denotes a good book went off: I was sorry there wasn’t more of the book to read when I was done.

Well done and boy am I glad I’ve still got my library card.

“Not so fast,” Kursiff the monk said as Fenris turned to leave. “What about the little ones? We have to get them back to their village.”

There were six- two babies and four walkers, blocked off in the corner of the wizard’s rooms, huddled together and whimpering. Kursiff was aware of their eyes following him and his fellow adventurers as they moved around the wizard’s rooms. looting.

“Oh, aye, I’m sure that you can handle that yerself,” Fenris said as he stuffed jewelry and coins into a sack. “Or mayhap our wizard here?”

“Me?” asked Podha with a squeak in his voice. The elf put down the book he was hefting. “No, no no, that is far beneath the dignity of a-”

“You still here?” boomed a big voice. Rollin the warrior poked his head in from the hallway. “Let’s shake a shank. I hear that there’s trouble in the foothills.”

“What about the wee ones?” Kursiff asked, pulling his dagger out of the sorcerer’s skull.

“Pixies?” Rollin looked around wildly, drawing his sword.

“No, you dolt!” Kursiff straightened and pointed to the children barricaded behind a makeshift corral made out of spears and chairs. “The villager’s children, the ones the wizard stole.”

Written by Jane Chirgwin.  Illustration by Marge Simon.

However in this review, rather than simply rave about how good the book is, I’m going to compare it with Lois M Bujold’s Sharing Knife series (which I have also reviewed in the past).   I’m inspired by this partly because of a post written a few weeks back on the Mad Genius Club blog discussing females in Speculative Fiction. In the comments to that post someone mentioned that Fawn from the Sharing Knife (TSK) series was interesting because she’s not a typical genre heroine.

What is interesting about Fawn is that she’s sort of the junior partner to her lover/husband. We, the readers, know that she helps him a lot and that Dag, the husband, loves her as much for her sparkling mind and indomitable spirit as anything else - yes she has curves in all the right places but then so do most young women. However the world at large undoubtedly sees Dag as the hero and her as the add-on because Dag has groundsense (i.e. can do magic) and Fawn can’t. Dag is also much older and your classic taciturn scarred veteran. One of the things that Fawn does well is make Dag approachable and less fearsome to people but this facilitator role is not going to be perceived as important as Dag’s activities. This is not especially surprising, we always diss these facilitator folks - think of how interpreters. PR agents etc. are seen and it makes sense.

The fascinating thing about Dave Freer’s Dragon’s Ring is that Meb - the heroine - is everything that Fawn is but yet more in that she really becomes an equal part of her partnership with Fionn in a way that every one will realize. There are numerous parallels between Dag/Fawn and Fionn/Meb that make comparing the two very interesting.

Both Fawn and Meb start off as young, naive, innocent village girls who are forced through circumstances to grow up extremely fast and cope with a world rather larger than they or their village parents ever really understood. Both are relatively uneducated but both have the spark of intelligence and a decent moral sense. If this were a D&D world both would fall in the “Lawful, good” part of the spectrum and both would have minimal scores on things like experience, yet both have great hidden strengths. Their attraction to their partners is that unrealized potential and the desire of their partners to awaken that potential and guide it.

On the other hand Dag and Fionn are neither young nor innocent. They are also both outsiders to their societies and have great powers. The difference is that Dag is respected his known powers but is generally seen as rather dour. Fionn on the other hand, despite having probably more powers, is not respected for them but is known for a certain low humour. Even people who know he is powerful discount his constant statements that he intends to destroy the world and think he’s just pulling their legs whereas he is deadly serious. Dag by contrast is recognized as a past hero and his statements about changing the world are taken at face value (and people tell him to stop being such an idiot).

The relationship between the two couples starts off very much the same. Dag and Fionn both rescue their girls and feel compelled to continue to protect the naive yet talented girl they’ve just saved.  Romance doesn’t raise its head quite so quickly in Dragon’s Ring - Meb tries to pretend to be a boy whereas Fawn is clearly a fertile female - but other than that the two heroes act in similar ways to nurture their girls and give them the education they need.

The societies depicted in both books are not dissimilar - they are essentially the same pre-feminist society that humans have lived in for most of the last couple of milennia if not longer. A woman’s place is, for the most part, to be subservient to her husband/father and there is plenty of discrimination against women to ensure that they stay in their place. Meb pretends to be a boy because girls can’t be apprentices and in both worlds unattached girls have little ability to protest the advances of unwanted suitors or rapists. Boys are allowed to sleep around but girls that do the same thing are sluts or harlots.

Another similarity is that both cultures are on the cusp of drastic change and there are of course many in these cultures who are resisting this change by any means possible. On the other hand both Fionn and Dag are “agents of change” to borrow from another SF series. They see the drastic change as a requirement and view their partnership with Meb and Fawn respectively as a key part of that change. Not only is their relationship key to the change, letting go of the girl would mean a victory for the forces of conservatism.

Yet while there are numerous similarities there is one big big difference. Meb has the potential to be as strong a mage as Fionn while Fawn is genetically limited to her total lack of ground-sense. Fawn learns how to find workarounds to her limits but she can never breach the limit. Meb on the other hand is a danger because she has the power but has never been taught to properly control and channel it. This is the key difference and makes Meb, in my opinion, a rather more suitable feminist heroine. Meb goes from pretending to be a powerless boy to accepting and utilizing her inborn talents whereas Fawn, although she matures, can never really challenge or compete with Dag in his core magical competency. Fawn is limited to “soft” power if you like but Meb can challenge on rather more levels. Of course that doesn’t mean fighting it out with muscles - small women don’t beat large men that way - but in the end Meb uses her in-built talents to do things that Fionn could have done but doesn’t.

Fawn on the hand is left living happily ever after with a baby. If ever you wanted to illustrate the modern maternal dilemma of family vs career then despite their similarities in background that would be the difference between the two endings. Not that I think Fawn is unhappy with her choice whereas (and I’m in danger of getting more spoilerific than I want) Meb is certainly desperately unhappy with her choice - its just that the other options are worse.

One thing is for sure though, both authors are great. But if you’ve read TSK I think you’ll get an extra kick out of Dragon’s Ring by comparing the two.

Review courtesy of Francis Turner
(who hails from the UK, so I’ve left his continental spelling intact.)

Dragon’s Ring is available for pre-order on Amazon.com and as an e-ARC from Baen Books.