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In the latest good news to come out of the forge, I’ve sold another short story! This one to the Dark Quest Books invite-only anthology Human Tales, to be edited by the inestimable Jennifer Brozek.

What are Human Tales, you ask? Tales of warning and terror about mortals who break their vows and kill supernatural creatures for no reason other than malice. Tales of saving the lovely mortal princess from the horrible mortal prince and what it took to bring her home, of rescuing babies from unfit parents and leaving a changeling in the baby’s place to teach their mortal parents a lesson. These are Human Tales.

My short, Bloody Spindle, was accepted on August 28. I didn’t post about it here because I’d just redone the writing page, and wanted to be sure to have something to talk about later in the week, you see. LOGIC!

Edits are forthcoming, which I have actually come to look forward to. I used to hate the idea of editing my stories, but a side effect of levelling up as a writer is the ability to recognize when people are making your work a lot better. Not taking it personally was my biggest challenge, which I’m over at this point.

Today saw a good amount of work on the novel, with high hopes to get some more short story work done this evening. However, I’ve got three sites to work on before that can happen, and a campaign game to put the final touches on for the crew of Adveriad … so those words may need to chew through their restraints with the dawn instead of dusk.

My good friend Professor Matt “Gecko” Adkins pointed out recently that there’s no single place on this blog where I list all my recent writing credits. While that’s a little embarrassing, it’s also true.

Or at least it was true!

The writing page has been updated with links to all short stories available online through the Edge of Propinquity, as well as links to purchase the anthologies I’ve appeared in from both the publishers and amazon.com, in paperback and Kindle formats.

As my focus has shifted more toward my writing than my design skills, I’ll be keeping that page updated on a much more regular basis moving forward. Check it out, and if you like what you see, why not leave a comment?

So! The good news I mentioned on Facebook yesterday comes in two flavors.

1. Writing: At GenCon this year, I spoke with the esteemed Jennifer Brozek about returning to the online magazine The Edge of Propinquity in 2011. We agreed that my current serial, Solstice, hadn’t reached the level of  my previous story, Vorare; and that while I wasn’t interested in revisiting Vorare, we agreed that Solstice’s time had come.

   I spent the next two weeks brainstorming and scribbling frantically. I wanted to get a story down that hit my sweet spots: Weird suburbia, rural horror, the Midwestern seasons, the new age, arts and crafts, obsessive characters and boundary issues. I wanted characters who were sympathetic but vastly flawed, characters with more distinct voices and more careful research put into their development and worlds. I wanted an outline that would let me start working well in advance of my due dates and plan for photos, images, foreshadowing and more polishing than I’ve done in the past for any serial work.

   I pitched Jennifer on Friday and received a thumbs-up on Sunday afternoon that made a good day great. I am tremendously excited about this new story and its world, and will be sharing it aggressively in the lead-up to 2011 and throughout that year.

   I hope you’ll come along – it’s going to be a fantastic ride.

2. Acting: My friend and colleague Diane Baia’s excellent play, The Wisdom of Serpents, has been picked up by Northwestern University to repeat her staged reading. I will be repeating my role as Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, which is an absolute plum for me. Historical Emperors with a dash of snark? JA, BITTE.

   I’m also elated for Diane, as one of the world’s foremost scholars on the life of Hildegard von Bingen will be taking part in the performance as well. Quite a feather in the cap of any writer, to be sure!

   This will take place on October 17 at Northwestern University. More details will, of course, be forthcoming.

Sweet fancy everything.

Not only did I complete all my tasks, I did it in a lot less time than I expected.

I saw Benedict’s Friday night for dinner, and set up the meeting for 2 PM today. I was worried about that, in retrospect, it’s perfect. I can get even more taken care of in that direction by meeting today instead of later in the week.

The MCCC site was a good three hours’ work on Saturday morning, but man, it was worthwhile. Lots of WordPress noodling that will help with a number of other sites and opens a lot of possibilities.

The Raue Center took two hours Sunday morning, with a bit still left to do – but the tools I need to complete that are back at the office, so they’ll have to wait until Monday end of day. The part I thought would be trickiest was actually the easiest with a simple Google search. Funny how often that happens.

Glorious Hands was done already, just needed polishing and submittal. That was settled in a half hour this morning, while Solstice took an hour in the afternoon to complete and refine. I’ll still need to edit it, of course, but it’s far ahead of where I would be otherwise.

The Triskele Moon poster was the most difficult. I wrestled for two hours yesterday but nothing was working right. This morning after the Raue work it took just an hour and a half to go from concept to completion, with L giving her thumbs up around lunchtime today.

So … wow. What a great weekend.

Now for the hard part, following through and reaping my reward to myself.

So okay. I’m desperately unmotivated right now, partly because I know how much crap I have sitting around that really needs to get done. The long-term planning thing is not so much my bag.

I’m going to appeal to my basest, most childike nature.

By Sunday night, if I have:

1. Completed the MCCC work for pro-choice site work (edit: done!),
2. Completed the Raue Center work for theatre site work (edit: holy crap, essentially done!),
3. Set up my meeting with Benedict’s for restaurant site work (edit: done!),
4. Done final edits and submitted the short story, Glorious Hands (edit: done!),
5. Completed the drafts for May’s Solstice story (edit: done!), and
6. Finished the poster designs for Triskele Moon Studio’s mother’s day show (edit: done!),…

Then I get this and I don’t let myself talk myself out of it the way I always do when I try to buy myself something fun that is not food or alcohol-based.

Which basically means if you see me fucking around on Facebook, for the love of god, slap me.

“They scream,” she had insisted, “as surely as any hawk soaring upon the thermals. “Whatever their names, whatever their pasts, Mother; they scream and cry and wail in the night, and they keep me from my sleep with the sharp sound of their terrors.” She spoke calmly, though of fright, and while the dark circles spread beneath her eyes they remained as bright and sharp as those of her Mother’s guardians.

Mother considered a moment, eyeing Aramina from behind her yellowing veil before she spoke. “Such girls are coal-strong,” she whispered, “and must burn or turn to diamond. Tell me, Ara, which would you be? Would you give light in your death … or in your power?”

Editors Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pilar have won the 2009 Australian Horror Writers’ Association Award for Grants Pass!

Judge James Doig said: “Grants Pass is a post-apocalypse anthology with an additional linking theme involving Grants Pass, an Oregan town that has become a symbol of hope to survivors. News clippings and reports of plagues and other catastrophes effectively set the scene and the book is neatly top and tailed with journal entries by Kayley Allard, whose blog entry “When the end of the world comes, meet me in Grants Pass, Oregon“ informs all of the stories. The concept is a strong one-it allows authors full rein to explore ideas, settings and plots, but the connecting links are such that the overall effect is greater than sum of its parts. And some of the parts are very strong indeed; stand out stories for me were “Animal Husbandry” by Seanan McGuire, “Men of Faith” by Ivan Ewert, and “By the Sea” by Shannon Page. What could have been improved? There is quite a lot of collateral-dedications, forewords, story notes, biographies-much of which could have appeared at the back of the book or excised altogether.”

I am frankly stunned to be mentioned in the same breath as Seanan and Shannon, both of whom had stories which I thought were the strongest in the anthology. Seanan is now writing for The Edge of Propinquity with myself and Jennifer, and if you haven’t already read her book Rosemary and Rue, you really should.

All of this would be good enough news, but wait! Jennifer’s now an award-winning editor, and her newest anthology, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, is now available through Apex Books — including brand-new stories by yours truly and Shannon Page.

Sometimes … sometimes you just have to write stuff you know is never gonna go anywhere.

He still sits behind a desk of old wood, held together half by tobacco resin and half by threepenny nails made of iron. You could say the same about Emmanuel Chaine, reaching across his desk to take the lead-crystal tumbler from a dead man’s hand.

“Hello, angel,” he says to the woman who threw the knife. “You time these things like other women time a quiche.”

“I’d take that as a compliment if you knew anything about other women.” Carmel waves to the cabinet at his side, pushing the red-velvet curtains of her hair aside with the other other hand. “Pour me one of those while you’re up.”

“I’m not up, angel.”

“Story of my life,” she sighs.

I have had three pieces of good news writing-wise in the past 24 hours. First is the pre-order of Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, referenced earlier.

The second: Grants Pass is now available through amazon.com! You can order the post-apocalyptic anthology, now up for a Stoker award, through the biggest bookseller in the world.

Finally, I’ve been approached to write for a third anthology this year. I’m very excited about the premise and am starting to work on the story tonight, here in the heart of Grimm country. More news as it becomes available on all three fronts.

Close Encounters of the Urban Kind is now available for pre-order through Apex Books with a special pre-order price.

We’ve all heard the stories of what happens to those who go to lovers’ lane and of the folly of flashing your lights at another car at night. We all know someone who knows someone that survived a meeting with Bloody Mary and another who picked up a hitchhiker that then disappeared. And we all know these stories aren’t true. They’re just urban legends. Right?

Wrong.

Sometimes the stories we hear are true. Often they’re more than they seem. These are the urban legends with alien explanations and the alien encounters mistaken for urban legends. The line between one and the other is so blurred in this anthology of stories about Close Encounters of the Urban Kind that you will never look another urban legend the same way again.