I’ve largely discontinued this blog, but…

I do post regularly at LiveJournal http://thunderpigeon.livejournal.com/

And you can find me at Facebook http://www.facebook.com/david.a.sklar?ref=profile

And sometimes Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1643477.David_Sklar

<cross-posted from my LiveJournal>

Hello, all, and welcome to another installment of the Drollerie Press blog tour. I’ve sat out the last couple of months, because real life has been a lot of work, but I’m back in again this month because I just couldn’t resist the topic: dangerous writing. You can find my post at E.G. Diehl’s blog.

E.G. Diehl is a phenomenal writer whose poem “The Roadseller’s Trade” will appear in the Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic anthology (for anyone thinking of submitting, there are still 15 days left to the deadline, but we’ve received some stories–and so far only one poem–so good that we knew they were making it in no matter what else came). Her novel Kinlea Keeper is available from Drollerie Press now.

And I have the honor of hosting  , aka Angela Korra’ti. Anna organized this blog tour in the first place, and an earlier edition of the blog tour includes a hypothetical encounter between Tamneth Ellheuin, from my Shadow of the Antlered Bird, and Christopher MacSimidh from Anna’s phenomenal debut novel Faerie Blood. I’ve been seeing a remarkable amount of buzz around Anna and her writing, and if you haven’t heard of her already, then you probably will hear of her again. So, without further ado, here is Anna the Piper, writing about dangerous writing:

Dangerous writing, you say?

I guess that depends on your point of view. Personally, I don’t feel that most of what I write is dangerous, or even terribly controversial. Certainly compared to a lot of what shows up in fantasy novels these days–and in popular media in general, really–I’m arguably quite vanilla. I don’t do over-the-top violence or gore. I don’t do explicit sex scenes, nor am I explicit in describing on-camera romantic connections. The fact that I have a gay male couple as secondary characters in my first published novel isn’t even very unusual anymore, given how male-male pairings are becoming more common in speculative fiction these days.

Still there are certainly those in the world–like oh, say, the sort who would ban Harry Potter books from school libraries–who’d take issue with the fact that I write about magic. Or about inhuman beings and creatures. Or four people of diverse religious backgrounds, Christian and pagan and agnostic, taking a meal together and none of their religions being a big deal. Or, yeah, well, queer people. Especially queer people in an established, healthy relationship every bit as strong as the straight relationship between my heroine and hero.

By those standards, then, probably the most dangerous thing I’ve written to date is “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”. The core idea for this came into my head as I grew aware that several folks in my social circle both online and offline were transgendered. As part of processing this into my own view of the world, I came up with the idea of a story about a princess who woke up one morning to find herself transformed into a man, and who had a young (female) servitor in love with her real self. This princess would have to make the call about whether to stay in her male shape, which would arguably get her more social freedom and power and even a shot at marrying the young servitor–or being true to herself and to her servitor and finding a way to turn back into a girl.

I never actually wrote this story, though, until a friend of mine invited me into an anthology he wanted to do, one that involved a) queer themes, and b) magic spells. Now, up until this point I hadn’t even seriously considered writing short pieces. I prefer writing novels. But Cerridwen’s story, at this point little more than a core concept and a title, seemed like it would fit into this anthology very well.

The anthology never materialized. But I still have the story, and with it, the strong suspicion that Cerridwen and Damhnait have a greater part to play in the history of their world than even the brief glimpse I’ve already given them. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, you can find it here. Thanks for reading!

* * *

Angela Korra’ti is the author of the Drollerie Press novel Faerie Blood and the short story “The Blood of the Land” in the anthology Defiance. This is the last stop on this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour! But if you’d like to head back around to the beginning, you can visit John Rosenman’s post hosted by Sarah Avery over here.

Well, now the contract’s been signed and sent back, so I can say that “Tears in the Sea” will be published next month in the January 2010 online edition of Cabinet des Fees. “Tears in the Sea” is part of a larger project, The Skin We Wear, which is a series of short stories (and a few poems) that work independently but, when taken together, comprise a complete novel. Previously published pieces of The Skin We Wear include the story “Behind the Tower” in Straying from the Path: New Tales of Little Red from Drollerie Press, and the poems “Increments” and “What Lurks” on The Ghazal Page. Though I must admit I don’t think you’re likely to pick out the larger story yet. By some strange sort of anticoincidence, no two of them have the same characters.

If you can’t wait until January to get your fix, I’ll be in Artocratic on December 18th, with two previously published poems. “My Last Seattle Poem (the Beginning of Landscape)” placed 2nd in The Willamette Week’s annual poetry competition in 1992, and “The Decline of the Beat Poets by Nigel Turtleneck” first appeared in Paterson Literary Review in 2005.

In addition, my story “Wood” will appear in Like a Sacred Desire: Tales of Sex Magic from Circlet Press. This is for adult readers only–my first venture into writing erotica. I might not have written it, except that asked me to submit a story. But I am nevertheless proud of the work I did there. I made a commitment to myself from the outset that I wouldn’t write it unless I could tell a story that worked as a story–and not a story with erotic elements tacked on but one in which the erotic elements are integral to the telling of a meaningful story. I think I succeeded. And, based on a conversation with the editor about the other stories she chose, I think that most if not all of the book may fall into a similar mold.

Drollerie Press has recently released the long-awaited anthology Straying from the Path: New Tales of Little Red, which includes my story “Behind the Tower,” about a transgendered individual’s journey to wholeness after hormones and surgery don’t quite make her who she is inside.  A disturbing read in many ways, “Tower” explores issues of gender, identity, and magic, as well asthe old standbys sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

Also includes stories by Authors Adrienne J. Odasso, Jennifer Moore, Batya Deene, Fraser Sherman, Angela Rega, Imogen Howson, Jo Thomas, Joselle Vanderhooft, Jessica Tudor, Greg O. Weatherford, Hilary J. Nowack, Genevieve Valentine, Skadi meic Beorh, H. Anne Stoj,  Lee Pletzers, and Teresa Wymore. And truly wonderful illustrations as well.

All Drollerie Press e-books are on sale this week and next for $1.99 or less.  Including my Shadow of the Antlered Bird and the 2 anthologies I’m in: StereoOpticon and Needles & Bones.

The anthologies usually retail at around $10, so if you read e-books, this is a great time to pick them up.  Antlered Bird is currently listed at $1.59–I’m not sure if that’s a glitch or not, and I’ve e-mailed the publisher to check, so I don’t know how long that extra bit of savings will be available.

Also a great time to pick up Sarah Avery’s Rugosa Coven books, and works by many many wonderful Drollerie Press authors.

Sale ends October 17.

I can’t listen to music when I write, save for on rare occasions…if there is one song that’s perfect for a scene, or some classical or instrumental music, turned low, that I’m not overly familiar with, those are things I can listen to while I write.  But mostly, I can’t because music, to me, tells a story all by itself, and most of the time it’s not the story I’m trying to tell.

For instance, have you ever heard Smetana’s “The Moldau”?  (Note, I said classical that I’m not overly familiar with, earlier…)  It starts out all gentle and floaty, then becomes this dramatic march.  When I listen to it, it becomes the story of the Queen of Winter, and her love for a man of the summer lands, and their battle, and the triumphant end.  “Bolero” is a chess game, fought between a couple and the cruel man who wants to steal the wife from her husband.  Roxette’s “Fading Like a Flower” is a parlor piece, set in the 17^th century…a love story between a highwayman and a young lady.  Maybe it’s because I started listening to the radio in earnest when I received my first radio in 1987, when the TV show Friday Night Videos was still on, showing the rock videos for the most popular songs of the week, but I always see images when I hear a song, I put together a story.

There have been, once in a great while, songs that spurred a story that I would have to write.  There was a song by INXS’s Michael Hutchence, that he sung for a movie soundtrack called “Rooms for the Memory,”  that inspired a short story.  I remember, since this song was on a tape, going over to my Brother Word Processor, hitting play, writing for the length of the song, pausing, rewinding, hitting play again, over and over until the story was done.  To be honest, I’m not sure if the song and the story that eventually came from it match each other very well, but this was how I managed to write…and finish…my first short story.

By the way, the next Drollerie Chat is on Sunday, September 27th, at 4:00 PM eastern.  We’ll be giving away copies of our September releases…so come and talk to us!

New news!

I will be coediting an anthology with Sarah Avery for Drollerie Press.  The details:

Drollerie Press is seeking entries for a pair of short anthologies.

• Trafficking in Magic deals with the sale and transport of magical goods and services, including magical beings, artifacts, fortune telling, communing with the dead, and other spells for hire, or the sale of magical energy itself
• Magicking in Traffic deals with magic in the flow of traffic–which could be street traffic, commerce, the flow of energies, or something else entirely–whether to aid, block, or manipulate the flow of traffic, or simply to play in it

Creative interpretations of the title(s) are also encouraged.

Both will be edited by Sarah Avery (author of Closing Arguments and Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply) and David Sklar (author of Shadow of the Antlered Bird). The two e-books will be sold together as a pair. If sales warrant a print edition, it will be set back-to-back in a single book with 2 front covers.

Contributors are encouraged to send 1 short story or up to 3 poems. Query first if sending fiction over 12,000 words or poetry over 100 lines.

Submissions close January 5, 2010.  Send submissions for this anthology only to magic[at]drolleriepress[dot]com

I didn’t think to take my password with me, so this blog didn’t get updated the whole time I was on vacation. A few updates did appear on my LiveJournal.

My final schedule for Pi-Con is now up on the Appearances page of this Web site, as well as some vague sketching out of appearances for next year.  The newest news there is about Pen Wars, a competitive collaborative writing contest in front of a live audience at a bar in Bloomfield, NJ.  There will be more details forthcoming later.

And hey!  A Celebrate Chocolate Day bonus!

In addition to a discount on The Chocolatier’s Wife, you can also celebrate Celebrate Chocolate Day with some free prose from me!

Back before Sarah was born, I went and banked some blog posts, figuring that for a couple of weeks when I was too frazzled to write, I would be able to just click “Publish,” and the posts would go out into the world.  Well, it turned out I was too frazzled to just click “Publish,” so I’ve had these things languishing in a file, some of them long past the time when they were relevant.  This one seems to have become relevant again, so:

If you haven’t seen it already, I donated a vignette last year for use in promoting WickedFaire.  To publicize this year’s theme, Jeff Mach set up the virtual Wicked Chocolate Factory, which includes individual rooms written by different authors.  Each room contains a vignette or piece of flash fiction, an illustration, and a link to the author’s Web site.  At present, the factory consists of two stories by Jeff, one by me, and another by the lovely and talented Sara Harvey–who, I might add, recognized “Garden of Dreams” as mine even early on when a glitch had the vignettes up without the authors’ names.

Enjoy!

In other news, I’ve recently found out from the good folks at Drollerie Press that today is Celebrate Chocolate Day. And to celebrate this day, they’re giving a 20% discount on The Chocolatier’s Wife by Cindy Lynn Speer.

And they’re giving an incentive to spread the word: If you pass word along about The Chocolatier’s Wife and let Deena know by posting a link here, then you’re entered to win a gift certificate from Fannie May Chocolates. As a Drollerie author, I’m not eligible to win, but I want to see Cindy’s book do well, and if one of my friends can get a treat in the process, so much the better. So please spread the word, and you may get something sweet for your efforts.