Bradley P. Beaulieu

I'm fortunate enough to have three stories coming out in the next three months (including November). "Sweet as Honey" just came out in Issue 15 of IGMS, "Good Morning Heartache" is coming out next month in Spells of the City, from Daw Books, and "In Memory Of" is coming out in January in the Spells & Chrome anthology from Catalyst Game Labs. As a way to promote these stories and the markets they appear in, and also to share a bit of my early work, I'm going to be putting up one piece of free fiction when each of these stories come out.

The first is "Flotsam", which appeared in Writers of the Future volume 20. Check back next month for another installment. You can also find this page in the Free Fiction Online tab on my home page.

Enjoy!

My story, "Shadows in the Mirrors," (which appeared in DAW’s Dimensions Next Door anthology) was mentioned recently in Ellen Datlow’s list of stories for her Best Horror collection. Pretty snazzy…

Well, a bit of good news to go along with the not-too-bad-but-certainly-disturbing news. I just got the word from IGMS that they’d like to publish my story, "Sweet as Honey." This is a story I wrote at Clarion back in 2006. It was a cool idea for a story, but a bit raw after Clarion. I rewrote it and sent if off, but it still didn’t quite hit the mark. The editor, Edmund Schubert, was kind enough to work with me to get the story into shape, and today he let me know he’d like to publish it. It will hopefully be out in the December issue.

So, I’m nearing the end of my experiment with Steve Gaskell. We’re writing a novella together, tentatively named “Skimming the Sun.” It was planned as a short story, perhaps a novelette, but it’s grown. We decided not to put any artificial constraints on it, and as it grew, we just let it — no conscious effort to reduce size, other than being open to reducing the size if it seemed warranted. It didn’t. It felt like this was the right size for this story. We’re currently at 32k and it’ll probably end up being about 35 by the time we’re done. It feels, oddly enough, like a tight 32k at the moment. Not much fat (though there is some).

I’ve been thinking about collaborations in general the last few days. This was my first try as a seasoned author. I know that collaborations will be handled in all sorts of different ways. For me and Steve, we divided the story into two parallel tracks, one “past” storyline and one “present”. Those also happen to correspond to the two main characters in the book, each of us focusing one of those characters, though I write about Steve’s character in my thread and he writes about mine in his.

Other than the difficulty of matching our schedules (he lives in Brighton, UK, I live in Racine, WI, USA), it’s gone surprisingly smoothly. I think one reason is that we have similar writing styles (though I will confess that I tend more toward plot-driven story — something I’m constantly working to mitigate — and Steve tends more toward character-driven story). I don’t think I have the right temperament to work with someone whose writing style is wildly different from mine, at least writing in this manner. (More on that in a moment.) I think another reason it’s gone well is that both of us have been very open to change, and I mean that in two ways.

First, we’re both open to allowing changes in the ideas that we’ve come up with or the things we’ve written. This is entirely necessary, I think, to a successful collaboration. You have to be able to give, even if it’s not quite how you would have done it alone. It may not even necessarily be better than what you would have done by yourself, only different, and that’s a different kind of benefit: you expand your horizons by allowing things to enter the story that you coudln’t have thought of on your own. That’s not to say that most of our suggestions don’t make the story better. Many of them do. But there are some where it’s almost a coin toss as to the benefit to the story. It’s more about personal tastes, background, tendencies, etc. And then it’s a matter of negotiating and trying to figure out which stays most true to the story and the characters.

The second way of being open to change is to have the chutzpah to recommend changes. I think we’ve both been very forthcoming about this, not being worried about offending the other. You can’t, assuming you really want to include someone else on a writing project, close yourself off to ideas. There have been a few cases where we’ve both had to just sit on an idea for a few days, mull it over, before coming to a decision. But, of course, you have to be able to stand up for something you believe in as well.

Even worse than recommending changes is actually rewriting certain sections of prose that the other wrote. When you’re reviewing, you’ll often suggest things, give examples of change. But this is out-and-out changing what someone wrote. I don’t mind when Steve does it with my prose, but I feel like I’m walking on eggshells when I do it with his. It’s a constantly changing landscape, doing this. It’s like walking inside one of those bouncy carnival tents: you never quite have your balance, no matter how sure-footed you are on solid ground. It’s a tightrope act. You have to get over your fears while not acting like a bull in a China shop.

I mentioned above about not wanting to work with someone whose style was wildly different than my own. What I mean is that I couldn’t tackle a story in this way: both of us writing, both editing one another’s prose. But I could envision another way of working, and I know collaborations that have worked this way: both writers plot the story and create the characters (see, there I go again — I put plotting first…), but only one person writes. Then both edit, and one person (usually the same person again), incorporates the edits. Lather, rinse, and repeat until the story’s finished. That way, the story comes out with a single voice. Otherwise you might end up with a Frankenstein story that has clearly different writing styles in different sections. (That might be pretty cool for the right kind of story, but those stories are vastly outnumbered by those that would benefit from a single voice. Plus, both writers would have to be really good to pull something like this off. It’s not something I think I’m ready for yet. Maybe someday.)

So far, it’s been a great experience. And I think the story’s going to be a good one. Time will tell…

A while back I got hooked up with Catalyst Game Labs, who bought Shadowrun (though I don’t know all the details of that purchase). They’re coming out an anthology of fiction called Spells & Chrome, set in the Shadowrun universe, and I got tagged to write one of them. The story I wrote ended up being pretty cool. It’s about a netrunning Grannie with a Thermite-grenade-packing poodle. Now how can you go wrong with a protagonist like that? I don’t have a release date, but I’ll post more as I have it. Woo hoo!

Rich Horton is a prolific reviewer of speculative fiction. He keeps a blog, and at the end of the year, he posts summaries of the short fiction markets that he’s read. Well, he tagged my story, "Cirque du Lumiere" from the Fellowship Fantastic DAW anthology for special mention. I highly respect Rich’s views, and so I’m excited to be mentioned.

I’ve been spending most of my writing time over the last few months on short stories. I had a few requests for rewrites from editors, one of which didn’t work out. The other is still out, but I’m crossing my fingers. It’s one of my Clarion stories from back in 2006, a story about a woman who tends bees. She uses the wax to create candles that can help people forget about someone they know by weaving a hair from the person into the wick. But things are turned upside down when she realizes that she used one of her own candles. Now she just has to figure out who it was she forgot. The rewrite really brought out some new aspects of the story that I hadn’t explored before. So I hope it gets picked up in its current form.

I’ve also been working on a collaboration. My second. The first one of my first efforts ever, with a friend who as also interested in writing but similarly new to the craft. Predictably, it didn’t work out. Neither of us were good enough to pull something like that off, so we set it aside.

The new one is a sci-fi story about a solar power transmission platform and a pair of solar flare racers that get caught between a chance to leave their brutal existence on the station for a new life on Earth and a growing movement to overthrow the choke hold the platforms have had on the working populace for decades. I’m working on it with Steve Gaskell, one of my fellow Clarionites. Needless to say, I’m a bit more up to a collaboration than I was back when. It’s been enlightening, as Steve and I have slightly different approaches to story generation. I really admired Steve’s work at Clarion, so it’s been fun batting story ideas back and forth and also editing each other’s drafts. We’re almost done with the first draft, and hopefully we’ll have it ready for review in early Feb.

We’ve been using Skype to talk back and forth about the story (he lives in the U.K., so Skype has been very useful). And we’re using Google docs to collaborate on the actual writing. That’s been … ok. From a collaboration standpoint, it’s great. We can edit one another’s stuff, add comments, etc., without handing a document back and forth via email. I was trying to do the Word doc shuffle in the beginning, and it was a real pain in the ass. But from a pure word processing standpoint, Google docs has a way to go. It’s a beta, so I’m trying to be charitable about it, but there are quite a few quirks (bugs) and quite a few features missing that I’m used to in Word. But it’ll work for this one story, and I’m sure it’ll improve as time goes on.

The Winds of Khalakovo has taken baby steps forward. I’m going to finish up the solar story with Steve and then hit it hard. I’d really like to have the second draft wrapped up in a few months and then send it out for full review.

This story, which appeared in the June issue of Realms of Fantasy, picked up a Nebula nod. Only nine more to go!

If you’re a member of SFWA, and you’d like to give the story a read, you can do so here.

My story, "No Viviremos Como Presos," is now live over at IGMS, courtesy of Issue 9. For my Clarionite friends out there, this was the Wall story. If that doesn’t help, you can preview a portion of the story even if you don’t buy the issue.

I have a story in this anthology, and it just went officially on sale. I share the TOC with friends and fellow writers Paul Genesse, Anton Strout, and Don Bingle. If you pick up a copy, I’d love to hear what you think of the story.

I’ve sold a new story to the fine folks over at Martin Greenberg’s place for an upcoming DAW anthology called City Fantastic. The story was pretty fun to write. It’s about a black woman fighting to save her son from a crazy old man and a promising young trumpet player who’s been dead for twenty years. It’s set in New York, and it was a lot of fun pulling all my NYC experiences together to write it. I’ll post more when I know the release date, but I believe it’ll be closer to the end of 2009 or early 2010.

Oh, and thanks to Sarah Kelly and Will Ludwigsen for your excellent critiques. You guys rock.

A while back I entered into an agreement with Sony’s new eBook venture through Marty Greenberg’s group (they edit many of the DAW anthologies). This online store and their new eBook reader is a direct parallel to Apple’s iTunes store and their iPod products. They (I assume) allow you to easily download books and short stories from their site to your reader. I don’t know in reality how easy or not it is, but I imagine they spent a lot of time making it right. As far as I can tell, Sony’s reader and Amazon’s Kindle are the two new, Next Big Things with respect to readers.

In any case, I now have a story up on their site. The story is "Chasing Humanity", a story that appeared in DAW’s Man vs. Machine anthology last year. It’s a near-future story about a female reporter who’s chasing an AI, the first one to be deemed "human". Her chase, and the reason for the AI’s disappearance twenty years ago, makes her realize she’s not only been chasing the story, she’s been running away from her past.

Edmund Schubert is trying to spread the word about the excellent magazine he edits, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. They’re giving away free fiction so readers can take a look to see if they like what they see.

In Edmund’s own words:

To Readers of Science Fiction and Fantasy everywhere,

When you have something great, you want everyone to know. So you tell people about it. You share it. You pass it along to friends everywhere. Well, that’s what we’re doing with InterGalactic Medicine Show. We want to make sure everyone has had a chance to check out what we’re doing, so we’re offering up a sampling of our stories – for free.

During the month of February we are going to make one story from each of our first four issues available at no charge. Two stories will be set free on February 1st, and two more on February 15th. Just visit www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com and explore the table of contents; the free stories will be clearly marked.

Issue one’s free story will be “Trill and The Beanstalk” by Edmund R. Schubert, issue two’s will be “Yazoo Queen” by Orson Scott Card (from his Alvin Maker series), issue three’s “Xoco’s Fire” by Oliver Dale, and issue four’s “Tabloid Reporter To The Stars” by Eric James Stone. Each story is fully illustrated by artists who were commissioned to create artwork to accompany that tale — as is every story published in IGMS.

“Tabloid Reporter To The Stars” will also be featured in the upcoming InterGalactic Medicine Show anthology from Tor, which will be out this August (we wanted you to get a sneak peek of the anthology, too). However, the other three stories aren’t available anywhere except the online version of IGMS.

It’s really quite simple. Great stories. Custom illustrations. Free. We’re pleased with and proud of the magazine we’re publishing; now we’re passing it along to our friends and telling them about it. We hope you’ll enjoy it and do the same.

Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com

Now go forth, good readers, and read…

You can order it now from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. For any fellow Clarionites in the audience, my story, “Cirque du Lumiere”, appears in this issue. There are also stories by my friends, Paul Genesse and Don Bingle. The inimitable Alan Dean Foster also appears in the anthology, edited by Kerrie Hughes and Martin H. Greenberg.

Synopsis

13 new stories about testing the bonds of fellowship on fantastical worlds

The bonds of friendship and fellowship are key to many fine fantasy and science fiction novels, most notably Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. Now top tale-spinners offer their own unique takes on fellowship in thirteen original stories, featuring a girl who finds her best friend through a portal to another world, an adventure on an alternate Earth where a not-quite Holmes and Watson take on a fascinating challenge, a group of urban mages playing the “True Game” for high stakes, a squire determined to help his master’s ghost fulfill his final mission, and more. Together, these stories dramatically illustrate how fellowships can alter destiny and change worlds.

I got a nice little bit of news this morning. Rich Horton provides a year-end summary of various magazines and he just posted a review of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and he posted a nice mention of me as providing one of the standout novelettes.

One of my Clarion stories from last summer has found a home. For any of you Clarionites out there, it was the wall story, the story about the photographer and his grandfather who got a bug up his ass to stop the spyders from tagging the immigrants hopping over the completed US-Mexican border wall. IGMS has agreed to buy it, and it should appear in the summer or fall of 2008.

Yay!

The Fix Online has reviewed Intergalactic Medicine Show #6, which includes my story, “How Peacefully the Desert Sleeps.” A snippet of the review:

 A rare western fantasy tale, “How Peacefully the Desert Sleeps” steps outside of the greedy white man versus the noble natives cliché, revealing all involved to be merely human after all.

I know I said this book was coming out, but I don’t think I ever posted when it actually did come out. (Hey, it’s been one busy month for this sad little puppy.) Man vs. Machine hit the shelves on July 3rd. I received my copy a few weeks back, and I’m enjoying the stories I’ve read so far, especially Jean Rabe’s “Stalking Old John Bull.” If anyone picks it up, drop me a note or comment her and let me know what you thought of it.