What you wanted wasn't under any tree this week. So, to give you some inspiration, here's things stuck in the bottom of your stocking. Hope they give you some ganasto begin the new year. Check all upcoming deadlines.
Nakum - a website for mestizo writers
For Chicanos y otros to connect their writing better to our indio roots.
Info from the website: "For centuries, the identities of the peoples native to the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico have been subject to legal, political, and social interpretations that serve colonial interests. The mission of Nakum, the Coahuiltecan word meaning “we speak” or “I speak to you,” is to offer a public forum through which scholars of Native and Chicana/o studies can do precisely what the title suggests: speak from their own perspectives.
"In keeping with the general mission of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, this journal offers a space for the continued exploration of Hispanics’ indigenous identities. The journal thus brings together many of the conversations that the Institute has cultivated and, through its online presence, makes them available to a vast and growing audience of scholars, journalists, creative writers, and students with an abiding interest in hearing the voices of those who contribute to those discussions."
Open call for Sci-Fi reprints
Deadline: 4 January 2015.Upper Rubber Boot Books issued an open call for reprintsubmissions for an upcoming anthology of fiction and poetry, The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom, to be published in 2016.
"Editor Joanne Merriam is interested in explosions, adventure, derring-do, swashbuckling, dinosaurs, ray guns, von Neumann machines, fanged monsters, flame-throwing killer robots, chainsaws, antimatter, and blunt force trauma. She is also interested in writing which explodes our perspective of science fiction itself—literary fiction employing SF tropes, cyberpunk, speculative fiction, magical realism, infernokrusher, etc., are all welcome."
Open call for First Contact submissions
Book Smugglers Publishing is looking for original short stories from all around the world, written in English. "Our goal is to publish at least three short stories, unified by a central theme. Each short story will be accompanied by one original piece of artwork from an artist commissioned by us separately.
"The theme is: FIRST CONTACT. While we are huge fans of aliens and would very much like to receive submissions featuring first contact with aliens, we would love to receive a broader pool of stories and traditions. We welcome authors to subvert this theme, to expand horizons and adapt the prompt to other possible connotations and genres within the Speculative Fiction umbrella.
"What We’re Looking For:
• Diversity. We want to read and publish short stories that reflect the diverse world we live in, about and from traditionally underrepresented perspectives.
• Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult audience submissions are welcome.
• Creativity & Subversion. We love subversive stories. We want you to challenge the status quo with your characters, story telling technique, and themes.
• We are looking for original speculative fiction, between 1,500 and 17,500 words long. These SFF offerings must be previously unpublished."
Hidden Youth: Submissions
"We welcome stories by authors from all walks of life. We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community, including (but not limited to) people of color; people who are not from or living in the U.S.A.; QUILTBAG and GSM people; people with disabilities, chronic illness, or mental illness; and atheists, agnostics, and members of religious minorities. The protagonists of your story do not have to mirror your own heritage, identities, beliefs, or experiences.
"We also especially encourage short story submissions from people who don’t usually write in this format, including poets, playwrights, essayists and authors of historical fiction and historical romance."
Before you sign a contract–things writers should know now
An article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch contains only her opinions about where U.S. publishing is headed. It's not all good, but seems to be worth knowing about. Read it after half a bottle of whiskey.
From: Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014.
"Change has been happening for years, as mergers and acquisitions grew. Some of it has come from the fact that the large companies have finally understood the impact ebooks and online shopping have had on the industry.
"Much of the change is in response to 2013’s dismal fall sales, which happened courtesy of the Justice Department’s investigation of six major publishers and Apple for price-fixing. It didn’t matter how that case turned out; the case itself changed business as usual inside publishing."
Es todo, este año,
RudyG
My author name, Rudy Ch. Garcia, contains the middle initial Ch., as if it were an abbreviation. It's not. I adopted it to focus Internet searches around me, instead of on the millions of latinos on the planet who also have my given name. Besides to "market" myself, the Ch. emphasizes both my bilingual elementary teacher career and my bilingualism. The Ch. Draws questions and remarks, but hasn't propelled my fame. People can imagine it stands for the famous Che--an association I don't mind--or Chicano, which is also bien.
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| not the prisoner's, but similar |
I recently received three handwritten letters and one story, in the mail, from a man who's in prison for a non-violent crime. So few people write lettrs anymore. His intimidated me, which surprised me. Theoretically, I now had the obligation to answer, not necessarily with a pencil, but with a letter I'd have to send through the mail. I haven't gotten over that and neither have I responded. The story that the incarcerated Chicano wrote is at the bottom of this post. I think it's surprisingly good, detailing his last day before beginning his sentence.
His letters reminded me of some of mine, my half of an exchange of correspondence that went on for about a decade, between me and an English teacher from my junior and high school. In the mid-70s she presented me with a velo-bound, Xeroxed copy, what's called a self-published book, today, containing almost two hundred pages of our letters. To some extent, seeing my words in print influenced my writing mania.
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| what my teacher gave me |
I still have the book but am leery of reading it again. Hearing your teenaged-to-20s self can be unnerving. What immaturity! What self-centeredness! What impassioned introspection about one little life. I intended to give excerpts from the introduction, but I can't do it. If I did, I'd be blushing, nearly shamefully, from what I feel was an over-kind assessment of my "vision, drive, sensitivities, and intellect," among other things. I haven't heard from my co-author teacher in decades. She may no longer be alive. But she left something--there's other copies!?--of herself, and me. The handwriting is gone, but the words between us are here.
Make up our own genres?
I'm going to borrow an artists' word and invent a new, genre term for my written works--fabulist mextasy. There, it's done. I might have to stop using it if the originator(s) feel it's counter to the intended meaning.
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| Hammond's new book, not fabulist mextasy |
Why invent a new genre? At the end of this piece, are Warren Hammond's thoughts that initiated this. I've heard the same idea from Chicano authors. Would Mario Acevedo's books do better as Chicano thriller or paranormal vampire stories? Are Manuel Ramos's books crime or detective or Chicano or all of that or other combinations? Genre is what literary agents, publishers, and readers want. It can make or break.
From this point on, I consider much ofmy writing to be fabulist mextasy. The original definitions are below. I do write somewhat in a fable tradition. I believe the term mextasy applies to much of contemporary, Chicano stories, whether they are speculative or not. And its play on fantasy seems descriptive of some works.
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| where mextasy began? |
From weekly posts, news and diatribes that I read, I've had it up to here (5'7.5") with exclusionary attitudes in the "American" publishing and writing world. It's a mostly white, mostly male, mostly oldsters dominated business. Getting our patasin the door, getting their conventions and organizations to include and welcome us is somebody else's lifetime task. Not mine.
So, I'd rather my unpublished works be true to themselves and my art--I call it--rather than be pigeonholed for the sake of marketability. If an agent or publisher insists on different, established genres, okay, I'll concede. Until then, welcome to the first author of fabulist mextasy. You have my unneeded permission to borrow, use, alter or propogate it, if you want.
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| my 1st fabulist mextasy, in Revista Iguana |
Definition of fabulist: “For two decades, a small group of innovative writers rooted in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror have been simultaneously exploring and erasing the boundaries of those genres by creating fiction of remarkable depth and power”, thus extending the definition of “Fabulist,” which generally does not include fantasy, science fiction or horror. Fabulist, is generally taken to mean magic realism without geographical boundaries, in other words, not necessarily Latin American. New wave fabulist simply stretches that definition to include other more non-realistic forms." Why mextasy: "Mextasy is more than a representation of ecstasy about or for Mexico; it is about the sensuous tracings Mexican culture leaves both sides of the border. More existential state than archive, Mextasy speaks to the living organism of Mexicanicity as it moves between the bodies of Mexico and the United States--an overt and covert delicious miasma that arouses as it excites, excites as it provokes. ¡Que viva Mexico!, within and without its borders . . . the image of Mexico in the United States."
"The human mind wants to categorize. When people go shopping, they want to be able to find things that they know they like. Categorization can be a double-edged sword. If you say, 'I am this,' and there's a whole audience out there that likes this, then it's good. But I think we as genre writers sometimes run the risk of categorizing ourselves too much.
"For instance, as I was writing my KOPbooks, I was thinking, this is great. Mystery readers will read them and science-fiction readers will read them. I'll appeal to two audiences.' What tend[ed] to happen instead, as I learned, was that mystery readers say, 'I don't read science fiction,' and science-fiction readers say, 'I don't read mystery.' So sometimes you actually end up marginalizing yourself. We geek ourselves out too much, and we become a little insular." I was excited that I won [the Colorado Book Award], and I do think KOP Killer is noir mystery first and science fiction second. I was pleased the science-fiction elements weren't held against me."
The letter from the prisoner
I left this story largely unedited. What I found intriguing was how it reveals the thoughts of a man on his way to prison. The minutiae somehow seem appropriate, however mundanely trivial the content might usually be. It's no literary masterpiece, but it made me wonder what I would write if I were on the bus. Or, what about if it was the day before my execution?
The Bus to Nowhere
On this particular morning I woke up early. I knew I would be taking the Metro to my court appointment. My intention was to meet a reporter outside the courthouse. Today I would turn myself in to do a ten-moth stretch in the state jail.
I showered and dressed in clothes I had preselected the evening before. I proceeded to prepare breakfast for my wife, as I normally did. By 6:00am she was in the shower. Her radiance made up for the sun yet to rise. I finished my morning tasks, then entered the bathroom. I handed her my wedding ring and asked her to hold it for me until my return. We kissed goodbye. I exited the back door. I drew the gate open and walked down the alley, six blocks to the bus stop.
Almost immediately, the bus approached. I sat my able body in a handicapped seat. Four older women occupied the seats behind and across from me. They were either on their way to work or returning. Either direction didn't matter. The years of domestic labor was recorded by the callous texture of their motherly hands. Housekeepers, maids, janitors, that mattered, neither. Their American dreams long ago swept away and disposed of.
A stop forward, another woman entered and took a seat. It must have been here that the importance of me and my day exited.
As one of the four departed, another waved gently, saying goodbye. "Until tomorrow." The exiter replied, "Si Diós quiere," meaning, "If God wills it."
The newest rider thumbed through her purse. She withdrew a few dollars--fifteen would be my estimate. Unnoticed, she passed it to the woman behind her. Obscured by the roar of the moving bus, she thanked the other woman. In response, the loaner said it wasn't necessary that she pay her all of it. The borrower looked up, commenting, "No, no, money only brings trouble." In her purse were a couple of other bundles with paper notes attached, as she had sorted these out the night before, her pending debts
Onward rode these women with lives as routine as the bus they rode. So, too, of the other six or eight passengers. A bunch of nobodies? For, after all, everyone knows--on these seats, unreserved, no one rides the bus. --fin--
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG., man of letters, and cartas, and spec stories, and author with the Spanish ch in his name
--> I'm sapped. By election results, doctors' ignorance about strange pains that I might go half-Stephen-Hawking about, and from not having gotten really drunk in over a month.
To meet a mental-lull that hit this week, below I include short, opening passages from three manuscripts. First I'll describe them so you can check whichever might interest you. Thet're teasers, intended to lure your into reading the entire tales, whenever they're published.
Previews of what's below:
#1: Sleeping Love - is set in Mexico's ancient times, when the people of Aztlan searched for the prophecy of the eagle, nopal and serpent. It begins with an elder proto-Azteca and some kids.
#2: Fatherly, Dragonly - is a cross-genre SF/F of so many elements, I can't list them. But it starts with a Diné water monster, then a Chicano shaman, then alien lizards, then….
#3: 5-Gashes Tumbling - is set in Aztlán. A castaway mexicano mestizo and Aztec indio find a First Peoples tribe who take them in, for a time. I call it an "experimental" roller-coaster of prose. If you read SW historical novels, try it.
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| What the children would create in Anahuac |
#1: Sleeping Love
In the ancient times on the Central Continent, the day seemed to be ending as usual. But this time, dozens of boys and girls suddenly sprinted far ahead of their tribe. They stopped at the mountaintop and shaded their eyes against the late afternoon sun. Their clothes made of animal skins let some of the cold through, but their run had warmed them. What they saw steamed them. Their faces lit up and they hopped around, screaming, "Grand Ta, Grand Ta, come look at it all!"
Grand Ta's chest felt like it glowed. It did that whenever young ones wanted to share their discoveries with Ancient Him. He touched his wrinkled cheeks and smiled to smooth them out, but they could never be smooth again. Removing his rabbit-hair cloak, he dropped it by his nagual. Though only he could see it, the mountain lion-spirit had always been with him.
As he reached the children, Grand Ta wondered, Have we finally found it? They let him through so they could show him. Gigantic ahuehuetl cypress trees held up the sky over an endless, deep-green valley filled with wonders. He was so amazed, he didn't hear every child.
"See, Ta, see?" He saw armadillos fleeing into the jungle. The children saw the hunter, a spotted ozelotl jaguar, and heard its grunt-coughs. Imitating those gave them the giggles.
"Look at them!" He saw red-green-blue-feathered parrots and quetzals splotching the rainforest. Youngsters instead saw dancing pieces of rainbow, which they playfully copied.
"Just listen to those!" Scores of ozomatli monkeys swung from branch to branch and chattered in funny tongues, making the children giggle louder. Grand Ta too caught the giggles.
He thought, This place is so bewitching, they could forget their heritage and the Ancestors. I will be remembered as a good teacher only if I use this moment to strengthen their minds and hearts. When they were almost out of wind, he signaled for them to gather where he was starting a sacred circle. Adults moved aside for the children and stayed back.
The young people sat and squeezed one another's hands. They hoped there would be time to play before night fell, but they could wait a bit longer. The tribe had traveled thousands of miles and years. Searching for a prophet's vision.
Grand Ta clapped once and everyone crossed arms. Quieting, they focused on him. "We reached here because our souls are strong. But where did we come from?" He perked his eyebrows and hoped they kept all the answers close to their hearts. We'll see how close.
A plump little girl rose and moved black bangs off her face. "Lost is our land, its name was--uh--is Aztlán."
It's good she corrected herself.He asked, "And did we change?"
"Yes, but we sing that we are still Aztecas!" Her friends grinned that she had done well.
Ta clasped his hands. "Why did we survive?"
An older girl stood up. "We hold our tribe tight to us." She grasped her shoulders, then the sides of her head. "We think our own thoughts!" Her face showed, Please ask me more.
Ta's knees shook from the hard climb. But resting must wait. "How do we treat others?"
"We harm no form of life or other tribe, except if we must," the girl said firmly.
Some black-haired monkeys howled and children fidgeted, yearning to go see. Remembering the Elder's teachings, they calmed themselves. [you also will have to fidget until this is in print]
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| Non-Diné image of Diné entity |
#2: Fatherly, Dragonly
Tieholtsodi didn't always enjoy awakening in subterranean darkness; his grotto reminded him of the solitary eons during the First World, when only creatures walked the Earth.
"What, no children? They're always up and out earlier than their old dad." He imagined himself fossil-like, since his body required inspection for ageing decrepitude. Opening his three-foot-wide mouth, he flexed to limber up muscles anchored about his ovate head.
Drawing on spirit-power, he appealed to the super ascendants. "Blessed Holies, grant me more light." No answer. "As usual, they're as responsive as a sacred mountain." He shot out one of his five tentacles and nabbed a blue catfish busy chasing trout. Crunch, crunch!
Old as a mountain himself, Tieholtsodi was wise enough to know the Blessed Holies rarely responded. "What's the point of having goddesses who won't lift a finger to help?" And the next best idea for relieving the darkness--a shaman? "Like people on the reservation say, there's never a good one around when--"
Stretching tentacles made him feel younger. He'd been a great-looking, water dragon, at the onset of the Third World when humans appeared. "Now I'm like a fat octopus with squashed head and fewer tentacles. Oh, and how the amber skin fades." He scraped tiny pill clams latched to his hide, seeking a nest. "So much of me fades. If my Diné worshippers saw me now, they'd laugh their little red nalgas off."
Feeling into the dimness, he traced cavern walls. Not much had really changed in the millennia since he'd claimed the haven for his family. "They better return soon. Can't venture far and risk detection by men. Or alien beasts."
#
Both little creatures had been warned not to venture far from home, but today the world was filled with new wonders, sounds and smells. What's a kid supposed to do?
Stronger than usual, an underwater current carried them for miles, banging them against rocks, dragging them through deep, smooth silt as if the lake wanted to play-wrestle. Just like Daddy!Colorful, flashing lights appeared in the distance, but no matter how hard and fast they swam, they couldn't catch up. Smell tasty, little fishes! Waters tasted of burnt trout, to fill their achy bellies. Might be a present from Blessed Holies! The odor lured them toward the mystery.
#
Commander Brondel had to cackle. "At least from this new, salt dome, our castaway troops can venture into canyons above, their forays unbeknownst to Earth dwellers. To those we let live, anyway."
He switched off a hologram of the flowchart he fine-tuned each morning. "Father, not everyone's ready to see the culmination of our dream." A small hologram displayed Father's image--stark against gunmetal gray walls--in officer's uniform, a fine figure of his species, tyrannosaurus-like but with shorter tale and thicker forearms. The image had adorned his limestone casket.
Brondel straightened his pale-green tunic, scraped claws over the olive-tinted scales of his hand. He pumped a fist-salute toward the image and chanted his regular pledge, "Father, you'll soon be proud. Our day approaches." Breathing deep through croc-like nostrils, he added something new, "I can almost smell it." He grimaced. Oil-sodden walls smelled of the raw fuel humans had extracted. The filtration system's air scrubbers constantly hummed, never sparing Brondel's nostrils.
After relocating to their first quarters under dry land, Brondel had used his Council, advisory position to loosen restrictions about surface ventures. He'd advocated, "A four-foot taller, superior reptilian species--two hundred pounds heavier, with twice the intelligence and technology of homo sapiens--shouldn't be denied fresh air!" He received applause, and laughter.
Brondel rechecked the holoscreens were functioning, and that his ten-foot-wide, rock-milled desk appeared orderly. He brushed lint off his tunic, prepped for his second-in-command's report. "That everything's going as planned. Father always said face-to-face is the only way to be sure." He rubbed his belly, anticipating good news. Including about the little monsters.
#
Rising too quickly, Tieholtsodi scraped spikes running down his back against the ten-foot ceiling. "Gagh! Serves me right. Should've taken us to the open seas where we could've found a big, bright cavern with scrumptious starfish and plump octopi. What was I thinking!"
Necessity, not thought, had landed him here. Over eons, the Four Winds dried up the Great Inland Sea. As it receded, it left the Colorado River to gouge the rolling hills and desert plains dotted with juniper and piñon. Tieholtsodi and his siblings had taken refuge deep in the humans' Lake Powell.
He brushed his body's rough bristles and sniffed under tentacles. "I should head mid-lake to rid myself of bottom-rot smell from the filthy waters. So few places left for a decent bath. I'll find one after my babies return.
"Of course,"--his eyes widened--"first they'll want to play Pile-on-Daddy." Pretending interest in something else, his children would suddenly jump and knock him down, then pummel him with their little bodies.
He chuckled and checked his blue talons for splits that might cut the children. "Should've been born with suction cups, like the octopus." He withdrew talons and spikes, like when hugging his young. "Ah, if fatherhood was my only duty. But no! That would've been too easy. I had to be a monster dragon. A tailless, wingless, flameless one. Fire-breathing would've been nice. Like Estranged Dragons have, sort of."
Dangling tentacles into the cold current, he hoped to lure one of the last, great fishes, that added spice to eternal life. His tentacles sensed manmade chemicals and the lake's rising temperature and falling volume. "Eventually, it'll snuff out larger fishes, like the red people prophesized." For a hundred years, he'd worried about the lake dying. "Someday, we'll escape to the open seas, even if I must dig us a way out. Hopefully, those aren't desecrated."
He nabbed at teeth latching onto his tentacle. "What?" Pulling in the catch, he exchanged bared fangs with a five-foot alligator gar thrashing to escape. "The children will be pleased! Haven't seen a meaty one your size in hundreds of moons. From where--" Something was wrong. The great catch had been too quick and easy.
He thought, Is this gar, bait? Someone send it, thinking I'm a stupid monster? Not native believers who respected him, or any "civilized" humans who thought he was myth. "That only leaves the Estranged Dragons."
If he'd gorged on the gar, he would've missed the far-off squeals. "My babies!" He bashed the fish against the wall and flung it aside. He flattened himself manta-ray-like, tentacles to the Four Directions, and one upward for Centering. He focused, probing for the youngsters' auras. "Found them!" Sighing in relief, he radiated an eddy that rolled a boulder onto the gar.
Still, more was wrong. "They aren't inthe lake! They entered a river, miles away. Blessed Holies, why'd they stray-- Have to get to them, before they're spotted or--"
#
When the two young ones reached a river delta, they sensed strong the tasty morsels and funny lights. We're so close!Daddy might be mad later, but they were just little babies, as he always called them. What could it hurt? [find out, when it's in print]
#3: 5-Gashes Tumbling
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| What Chaneco tumbled down |
Your Lordship, I attest that in Anno Domini 1599, Tomás Chaneco--unjustly conscripted out of the capitol of Méjico to become the expedition's cook--and I, as cook's helper, found ourselves lost and abandoned in the northern deserts of Nueva España. Since our skills were limited to shamanism and journalism, respectively, our leader, the Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, promoted us to Lead Scouts the year in which we reached what that Oñate christened, Santa Fe de Nuevo México,which we peones quickly shortened to, Santa Fe. The pendejo Oñate enjoyed naming things more than he relished charging windmills, unto the hinterlands, providing his men ample opportunities to, among other pastimes, infect native women with the pox, much as the otherwise useless priests also spread Catholicism.
Shaman that he was, Chaneco excelled at turning water into wine, and I, at turning wine into news, but our scouting skills lacked mucho, causing us to become separated from Oñate's rabble. "But, good riddance to bad basura," Chaneco said, to which I concurred, especially after menso Oñate had the feet cut off of every adult male in the Acoma Pueblo and enslaved its women for indecencies, which your Lordship knows of. At the last, from what we heard, Oñate galloped off in search of the Quivira city of gold the indios had made up to rid themselves of him. I admit I prayed he'd encounter los Apaches en Téjas.
Your Lordship, rather than backtracking--not one of our fortes--and following that fool's errand, or heading south where we predicted we'd face charges of desertion, Chaneco and I trekked north where turquoise, much revered by our Mexica kin, and tribes renowned for their fantastic legends--such as, of monsters--were said to reside, hoping los indios there would treat us better than others had received and that the monsters were as genuine as Quivira.
Months later, by a tributary of the great river the Lilliputian-brain Oñate had imaginatively named Colorado--from its red color--los indios Havasupai granted us temporary sanctuary in Supai village. We two mestizos, luckily browner than we were facially hirsute, greatly learned from the somewhat shorter People of the Blue-Green Waters, until our eventual kidnapping by monsters of our own making that, hopefully, never terminates in a sentencing, your Lordship.
On one of Supai's delightfully cool mornings of however many more remained of Tomás Chaneco's "nagging" longevity--he claimed he was close to two hundred--he chose, for whatever reason, to scale the fifty-five-degree incline above the twin Supai Sisters' alamo-yeso cabin. There, beneath the cascadas of Hualapai Falls, soaking in its travertine pools, the tribal elders had blessed the peach pits we gifted them and regularly joked about our worth as lost explorers, or recounted tales about los espiritus who frolicked in the pools after midnight. Or they deliberated over the dinosaurio petroglyphs inscribed in sorcerer's blood--not those along the big cañones that Spanish priests would later condemn as "Abominations!", but others higher up the narrow arroyos where elders assured us even the espiritus de las cascadas dared not venture. [you can venture there when this reaches print]
# # #
In the last year and a half, I completed a YA alternate-world fantasy with two teen Chicano protagonists (boy and girl); a children's indigenous mexicano fantasy retell; one lengthy, SF/F mexicano-indigene-Chicano short story; a SF time-travel story into Denver's past; a short, mexicano-indigene fantasy; and a YA fantasy novella. They're all in agents' and editors' slush piles, their fates, to be determined. From this peak you've gotten, of course, let me know your opinions, suggestions or criticisms about any of them. Y gracias por eso.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG, a.k.a. the Chicano spec author, Rudy Ch. Garcia, on his way to vote again, in case this week was simply a mirage
Crossed Genres Publications will publish Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (expected release Jan., 2016).
