New Anthology: Alternative Truths

You may have heard about the 45th President of the United States a couple times.

Maybe.

It's possible.

Well, so did a bunch of authors. A bunch of authors who wanted to do something about... that whole thing. But what the hell were those authors to do?

They were to write, of course. Hence, Alternative Truths was born. 24 tales from authors who #standwithher.

24 glimpses into the potential futures, from the hopeful to the hopeless (Guess which one mine was? Hopeless. The answer's hopeless.).

"Nevertheless, she persisted," is our favorite slogan to come out of all this, and we do miss all those complete sentences. If you're lucky, you might even find a few in the stories.

Stand up. Resist. And get some great fiction all at the same time.

Read on Kindle for 4.99

Top 5: Modern SF/F Magazines

I've often spoken and written about how short fiction is the life blood of sci-fi and fantasy. I grow more convinced of this all the time. Almost every great, well-known SF/F author has a massive backlog of short stories that you could peruse. Hell, some of them made their entire living on short fiction.

But that lifeblood doesn't flow if nobody can pay for those short stories… so magazines. People have to read magazines for the magazines to pay authors. And there's a lot of them out there. The list I have here is in no way extensive. These are just my five favorite SF/F rags this week. They're all magazines I think deserve a little support, because they do good work. They put out quality fiction, and that should be rewarded, in my opinion.

5: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

It would be hard to do this list without mentioning this particular magazine. It's been around since before the web (This marks year 67 of publication), and it's collected a lot of just straight-up quality pieces in that time. It's hard to apply a general qualifier to all of the work they publish, as it really ranges across the board. The only thing that ties it all together is how plain-old good the fiction is.

You can get a subscription to them starting at around $37. Why such a steep price? We're talking physical magazines in your mailbox.

4: Daily Science Fiction

While the whole body of work isn't going to be to everyone's tastes (They publish five days a week, 52 weeks per year.), something in DSF is going to appeal to everyone. My main reason for including this one is that it's free. Completely free, a short (Very short) story delivered to your inbox five days a week, entirely free of charge.

So if you want to subscribe, just go over here.

3: Shimmer

Shimmer is a weird one. I'm not judging – they'll admit it. Their fiction is beautifully written and stylistic. A lot of magazines focus on how their fiction isn't pretentious and doesn't take itself to seriously. Shimmer is pretentious and it does take itself seriously. Very seriously, in the best of ways. It's the very fact that the authors take their work so seriously that makes Shimmer such an incredible magazine to read.

Shimmer is just $15/year, so why not give them a chance?

2: Fireside Magazine

Shimmer is strange. Fireside is strange, but more accessible to the general populous. Very heavy focus on character and concept If those are the kinds of things you like to see in your stories, I really can't recommend Fireside heavily enough. They're very selective, and it really shows.

They're also free, but they pay their authors very well, and they're entirely kept afloat by crowdfunding, so consider throwing something atthem, if you enjoy their work.

1: Clarkesworld Magazine

Now, I love all the magazines before this, as well as a lot of others that didn't make the list (Basically just because I didn't have space.). But this one was always going to be on the list. It was always going to be number one on the list. If I had to pick one SF/F mag to read for the rest of my life, it would be Clarkesworld. There's just something about these stories. They are purely character-driven, more than any other selection of short fiction I've ever seen. Their stories are consistently up for various awards when that season rolls around. It's one of very few sources of fiction that has provided me with a story that changed the way I think about science fiction and writing and the way short stories should be structured.

They run as low as $2.99 per issue, so it's pretty hard to beat that, in my opinion. I can't recommend a Clarkesworld Subscription enough. I really, really can't.

And that's my little primer on SF/F mags. As I said, there are a lot more of them out there that I didn't get to put in. Maybe I'll put them into another post… or two… or three. However many it takes.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Voss

Subgenre Saturday: Magical Realism

The first installment of Subgenre Saturdays was all about bizarro fiction which, as the name suggests, is bizarre. But it's bizarre in a very in-depth way. The plot, the characters, the writing style, even the formatting of the books can sometimes be very strange.

Today, we're going for a different sort of bizarre. Everything seems all right, everything's familiar, either as modern day or something historical (normally modern day). Except your neighbor drinks blood, your boss is a psychic, and there's a dragon that lives in the alley down the road. And nowhere will anyone even give the slightest suggestion that anything might be out of the ordinary. Not even the narrator.

Welcome to magical realism. People react normally to outside stimuli, such as being attacked by the dragon who lives in the alley. You're still going to be pissed that he caught your skirt on fire, but that doesn't mean you question him being there.

The most well-known example of magical realism is probably Big Fish (I've only seen the movie, so I can't say for certain if the book is magical realism as well.). Everything's just fine and normal… but a fish turns into a woman, heaven is a hidden village in the middle of the woods, and you can see death in the eye of the witch in swamp. It's all absolutely real. It's not really dismissed (except by the son, but that's central to the plot), but it's not really explained, either. It just is. That's magical realism in as much of a nutshell as possible.

My favorite example is a short story by the grandfather of magical realism: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges. A short story, it still took me an hour to read, and a couple hours after to roll it all out in my head. Which should give you an idea just how trippy it is. Essentially, a secret world order is trying to create a new world and make it real by writing the history and culture of it and letting it pervade the world. And eventually? It does. And it comes into being. Not just something 'so real you can almost touch it,' but something that can't be real, even though you're pretty sure at this point it is. Modern magical realism, on the other hand, is dominated by a single man, the same way Borges dominated it in his day. Bruce Taylor, Mr.Magic Realism himself. He also dabbles in bizarro fiction and other more conventional styles, but he's most known for his work in this strange little subgenre.

In the realm of TV, you have Twin Peaks (or almost anything by David Lynch) and, perhaps most familiar to a modern audience, Lost. A bunch of people getting to know each other that just happens to be set on a time-traveling island. And when you get back into film, you have Pan'sLabyrinth (here's a war, and here's some weird stuff that may or may not be magic) and Stranger than Fiction, the story of a man who also happens to be a character in a famous novelists work. Once it's established that he's actually hearing the voice of the author, nobody ever questions the strange things that happen. It becomes a morality tale about the nature of death and life and suicide.

I realize that wasn't much of anything, but really, magical realism is like a bird flying by. You can observe things about it, but capturing the bird is almost impossible. If you have a better grasp on it, I really hope you'll comment. I feel confident in what I've said, but it's a tough nut to crack, so I always welcome a new viewpoint. And make sure to subscribe up above if you want to stay up to date on everything to come.

Voss

4 Short Stories You Need to Read Today

With 2014 drawing to a close, as I do every year, I'm feeling the distinct desire to ingest media. Most specifically, literature and television. I know, TV's going to rot my brain. Doesn't mean I don't partake of it occasionally, particularly when I'm too tired to properly absorb literature. After all, it would just be a waste to let the written word slide over me, rather than penetrate deep.

But I'm getting way off topic.

Lots of lists float around this time of year: 10 Things to Make 2015 the Best Year Ever, 46 Shows to Watch Before Netflix Rends Them From Their List Next Year, 268 Things You Wish You'd Found out About Early Enough to do Them Before the New Year.

I'm hoping to provide something a little more doable. So I give you my end of the year list: 4 Short Stories You Need to Read Today.

Or, you know, whenever you have the time.

No pressure.

This list spans genre, length, subject, time periods, complexity. The only thing I really tried to do was make sure that, if I included it, it was free to read online. Click the story title in the list and it'll take you right to it. These aren't in any order, other than which story weighed on my mind the most at that exact moment.

So, let us begin.

1: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges

Borges is arguably the very first writer ever identified with the genre of magical realism. And in a lot of ways, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is most certainly magic realism. But in a lot of ways, it's more. Or less. Or just something else. The 'story' is sort of it's own thing. The closest examples I can give you aren't all that close. It reminds me of Flatland, in the way that the main body of the 'story' is a description of the culture of Tlön. It reminds of me of the early 90's PC game Myst, in the way that the described and heavily detailed world of Tlön becomes it's own sort of reality. And it reminds me of the Codex Seraphinianus… which makes perfect sense, since the Codex was inspired by the short story. But as fair warning, you'll want to make sure you have ample time to read it. It's only about 5,000 words, but you'll likely need to stop at several points to look up certain philosophical theorems, or translate the sprinklings of German and Latin throughout. And then you'll need time to mull through the story after you read it. It's very dense and a very mentally tiring read. But well worth the effort.

2: The Lady, or The Tiger? By Frank R. Stockton

Loved by critics, hated by high school students. Which is so often how it goes. But if they could just look past the necessity of their teenage rebellion, they could see how wonderfully tragic The Lady, or The Tiger? is. A princess loves a man too low for her status. When the king finds out, he puts the man to the usual trial for crimes he's put his royal interest in: he must choose between two doors. One hides a woman of appropriate social standing, the other a nearly starved tiger. He doesn't know which door hides which, of course. If he chooses the door with the tiger, it eats him, of course. If he chooses the woman, she doesn't eat him, but he is required to marry her on the spot. The beauty of this story is that the princess knows which door has the tiger, and which door has the woman. But the woman is an attendant the princess despises. As to the fate of the man, it's never revealed.

3: Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe

I often bring up Berenice as one of my favorite short stories, or among the best of Poe, or good short stories you haven't heard of. And for good reason. More than really any story I've ever read, Berenice is just straight-up creepy. And I know that Poe is known for horror, but most of his stories never really got to me. Berenice did. The obsession. The strange catatonic episodes. The memory loss. It all builds to the climax, one of the eeriest scenes ever penned in the English language, in my opinion. Thirty-two little ivory things scattered on the floor.

4: For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn by Ernest Hemingway

Well, possibly by Ernest Hemingway. Technically, the jury is still out on the actual author, but it's widely accepted/purported that it was penned by Hemingway. I don't have a link, because the title is also the full text of the piece. Widely considered the epitome of flash fiction, and for good reason. It is everything flash is supposed to be: tiny, powerful, memorable. And it's among the tiniest, most powerful, and most memorable out there. Just think about it for a moment, think about what it must mean. Or what it might mean. And whether it's really Hemingway or not, the 'Six Word Story' has taken hold of writers everywhere, both as an exciting medium and as a challenge.

Of course, this isn't in any way a comprehensive list. But these are stories you will find jumping to my tongue when someone needs a recommendation.

What are your must read shorts?

Voss

What's New, What's Not, Where's Neverland

I answer everything but the last question. Everyone knows you just go to the second star on the right and then straight on 'til morning.

I hope you had a glorious weekend, everyone. I had company and so couldn’t get on too often. Sorry about that. But what matters is that I'm here now, and I've got an update on what I've been doing lately. I want to let you, my loyal fans and followers, get the first taste of what's been happening in the Vossverse… or UniVoss… I haven't decided on a name yet.

A lot of my time has been taken up prepping to launch The Jester Prince next month. It's the first time I've never released a direct sequel before, so it's proving interesting. Watch out for that touring the blogosphere in mid-August.

As for active, butt in chair, fingers on keys writing, it's been going between a few things, including blogging. I've been slacking off on my blog for a while, but I'm rising back up to the challenge. So you'll get to see a lot more of my smiling… words?

I've also thrown together a few shorts for various anthologies: Mortimer, the story of a girl and her pet monster, The Bruja's Gate, a tale of Dia de los Muertos gone off kilter, and Saur, a quick bit of flash set after an interplanetary war. So, keep an eye out for those.

Most of my time, as of late, has been spent dealing with The Park, a record of a controversial reality show from. Journals kept by the contestants, eMails from within the production company, reviews; all combined together to create a single cohesive record.

So, you can keep your eye out for that in the near future as well.

That's what's been happening lately. If you want to keep caught up on all my other goings on, just follow me up top. It only costs a couple seconds and a bit of your soul. But souls are highly overrated, anyway.

Voss