Last year my story “Premeditation” appeared in Darker Companions, a book of stories collected in tribute to Ramsey Campbell. “Premeditation” is a very short horror story. You might think to look at it that it couldn’t have been much work. But it went through many versions, one of which turned into comedy. I went so very far astray, working on this one. I had no idea what was working. Eventually, I pulled back from the brink and continued to refine my original vision of the story, and it settled back into horror again.

But there was always something about the comic version that I liked, if only because it turned into its own completely different thing.

Tonight, after watching some eagle rays frolic in the bay, I remembered this version and the fact that I had always intended to put it up on the Fiction section of my blog under its original title: “Kapu.”

My short story, “A Mammoth, So-Called,” is now available in the current issue of Asimov’s Magazine.

 

I answered a few questions about my latest short story, “A Swim and a Crawl,” over at The F&SF Blog.

“This is a story for anyone who has committed completely to something, and then changed their mind when it was too late.”

This is also possibly the first time I’ve admitted in a public forum that I’m writing a Gorlen Vizenfirthe novel, which takes place not long after the events in “Stillborne.”

Tor.com devoted one of their “Lovecraft Rereads” columns to my old story, “Leng.” They were very, very nice to it. I was especially gratified by their appreciation of the phrase “yak-fraught.”

The discussion could rightfully care less about spoilers, and assumes you have read the story, which is available in Lovecraft Unbound but also right here on my website: “Leng.”

 

“I’m sitting in the Cafe Marrabor when he realized he had the tense and point of view all wrong.”

Avoid cheap A QUIET PASSION luxury wall-hanging knockoffs!

F&SF has put up one of their blog-post interviews, where I discuss a few of the things that went into “Stillborne.”

In other news, I just deactivated my Twitter account. It was cutting into my time for reading and writing; it was increasingly hard to justify putting energy into that particular forum. If you see any accounts popping up, purporting to be me, well…they’re not me. If I go back to Twitter at some point (for instance, at some publisher’s request, to promote a new book), I will let people know on my blog that it’s me again.

I continue to maintain the usual Facebook page.

UPDATE (11/13/17): I have re-activated my Twitter account, just to hold the spot so it can’t be poached. I won’t be active there, but it will automatically update when I post on this blog. I won’t have access to the account, won’t be able to read notifications or direct messages; I’ve handed it over to a third party for safekeeping.

 

The current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is now available, featuring the latest, longest, and possibly lastest Gorlen Vizenfirthe story. This final novella (close to 50 pages in the magazine) also contains the beginning of the series, curled up larvally inside it.

It’s available at newstands, by subscription, or in various electronic formats.

All the details here!

To write “realistic” fiction, you look out the window and send your imagination there. To write fantastic fiction, you look at that window in a mirror…and send your imagination there. The light coming through the window is the same light. But the feeling you get when you look through the mirror window is very different, and that’s what fuels my imagination. It goes back to childhood. I looked through windows like anybody else. But early on I noticed that looking out the window in a mirror created a shivery feeling…and I’ve been pursuing it ever since.

[resurrected from an old Facebook post]

 

I have been proceeding ploddingly at my self-appointed task for the Clarion West Write-a-Thon. Updates appear sporadically here.

Here is the start of chapter 9 of what is today being called, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Now With Many More Monsters.

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Space Vampires (also known as Mind Parasites) are admittedly near the top of the list, but still, the dead calmness thing is officially pinned at the top. Justine died, she rested, and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, free of miniaturized nuclear submarines in search of tumorous targets, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, and not a generic one from a James Wan movie, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe, except perhaps in the voice of Pinhead.