I'm happy to announce that new market for science fiction and fantasy novellas has just opened up, thanks to my friend Dario Ciriello.
Panverse Publishing will be looking for pro-level stories of fantasy and science fiction between 15,000 and 40,000 words. Those of you familiar with the markets will probably remark on the fact that there are very few novella markets out there, so if you've been looking for one, here it is. They are currently accepting submissions for a Winter 2009 issue and will pay $60 per story. Details can be found at their website, and their page about submissions is here.
Good luck to all you novella writers!
Juliette, I'm kind of excited. Let me lay my new first paragraph on you:
ReplyDeleteIf it were any day other than Tuesday, I wouldn't have been in town. I would have been at home with Kieth and the girls on our prosperous little farm. But it was Tuesday. So, I was in the country town, already dusty though Spring was only half over, that humans called Robinsonville and Strlinkmr called something that translated roughly as "Strlinkmr and Humans Live In Harmony." Humans and Strlinkmr did live in harmony there, as in so many towns on Strlinkmrlad. And, the town itself reflected that happy fact, being a hodge podge of building and design styles that somehow melded into a place that was homely and welcoming for both races. It was simply "town" to the farm families of the district where I, like everyone I knew, went each week to do my errends, get the local news and gosip, and generally have an afternoon to myself.
This is fun, Catreona. Sounds retrospective to me at first glance. There's much more to work with here. Prosperous little farm still isn't doing much for me, but I like the dusty town, and the architecture, and I love the two names of the town. Here's a funny idea that you may or may not like: what if the humans have to have their own names for the towns because the Strlinkmr call *all* towns "Strlinkmr and Humans Live in Harmony."(They might have different native organizations amongst themselves, and so single out these Human-style towns in this way.) It's a thought. You have a bit of curiosity building in the "if it had been any other day," and I'm hoping things will start going bad in the next paragraph. Oh, and by the way, I think you want the word "homelike" and not "homely." I hope the rest of your scene touches such a chord with you also!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, things start going bad in the very next paragraph.
ReplyDeleteThanks for "homelike." "Homely" is the British term, and once in a while I get stuck and can't recall the equivolent American term.
Donno about retrospective. Per force there has to be some lull in order to accomodate the infodump, however cleverly tricked out the infodump may be. So, it may not be possible to remove that retrospective feeling entirely. Also, of course, this is a story, something that happened in the narrator's past, that she is remembering or recounting. I know not all stories written in the past tense necessarily are like that, but this one is.
Funnily enough, I had a similar idea for the town names. I'll have to think some more about the Strlinkmr and their thought processes and societal organization to see if it will work.
Dusting off this story was a good idea -- I've had a very nasty idea about which direction to take the plot.
ReplyDeleteIf timelines run parallel, and close together, then they can influence each other. Thus you get alternate timelines (where perhaps WWII turned out differently, but the rest of history up till that point is the same).
What happens to isolated timelines that cannot "cross-pollinate" each other? Entropy. They start to die, isolated from the greater reality.
So, what happens when someone hates you enough to use a time machine to change the past and isolate the timeline you currently inhabit?
A very belated thanks for the plug, Juliette! :) I'm getting some fine subs, and I think PANVERSE ONE is going to be a cracking anthology!
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