Today Orrin Grey blogs briefly about the Fungi slush. He mentions the need for a cover letter and a word count. Aye. This is important and useful for us. Eventually all the stories on hold will be put in an Excel spreadsheet and categorized. That is where nuances such as “is this a reprint” or “how long is it” matter. If we can have quick access to the information, the better. It saves us having to open a file and squint as we try to figure out who (or what) wrote this and how long is it. Furthermore, biographical data helps me. I don’t mean I want to see cover letters that detail your every move but if you say “I am a Canadian writer living in Toronto. My credits include so and so. Here is a X word story for your anthology” that is a huge help. Why? Well, because if you are Canadian I know I should: a) Submit your story for Canadian awards and anthology compilations b) Keep you in mind if we do an all-Canadian anthology c) Nationality is one way CIP data is cataloged. And librarians look at this too. So a brief cover letter does provide me with much needed tidbits. In short: if you are Canadian I’d definitely like to know. If you’re not Canadian, I’m still interested because I may use the data to determine how many authors from how many places submitted. At the very least I want a word count and a cover letter in the body of the e-mail.
Stories that deal with the following are very numerous right now:
- Person turns into mushroom. Nothing else.
- Person ingests mushroom. Nothing much happens.
- Sentient mushroom sits and thinks.
But mushrooms are more than that! Fungi can be an inspiration for fashion. They can eat plastic. They may appear in Prehispanic statuettes. Mushrooms have been consumed for thousands of years, you don’t have to set your stories in the present. Oh, and mushrooms grow all over the world. Please, more stories from different cultures!
Think outside the mushroom box and impress us with your style and originality.
Fungi is open to submissions until February 15. More information here.
We’ve been accepting submissions for the Fungi anthology for about two weeks. If you are going to send something, here are some pointers (as I see it, I do have a co-editor and he may also be blogging about this in the next couple of days):
- There is an excess of people-turn-into-mushrooms-the-end stories.
- We need more geographic and cultural variety. It’s all looking very present-day urban USA right now. No historical stories. Barely any sci-fi.
- On that tangent, I don’t mind straight horror but where is the mushroom noir? Or the steampunk with truffles?
On the slush break down: Alright, where are the women and the international writers? Is there a secret party nobody has told me about going on right now? If so, I want in on the action. If not…um, won’t you send something?
Fungi is open to submissions for another two weeks (until February 15). More information here.
Note: Too many people are also playing it safe. If a mushroom anthology is not the place for bold risk-taking, I don’t know what is.
I really wish I was at the point in my writing career where I’m super-famous and everyone wants to buy stuff from me. But since I’m not, I have to do the agent dance like all the other mortals.
Thus, I’m cleaning up the novel and writing a blurb/pitch/whatever-the-hell-you want. Here is the blurb. I need feedback. Would you want to see a partial based on the following:
Mexico City, 1988: Meche, fifteen years old and a dork by default, has two equally unhip friends – Sebastian and Daniela – and a whole lot of records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future begins to look brighter for the trio. Meche and her friends have a chance to fix everything in their lives. They’ll piece back together their broken families, change their status as non-entities and get a love life.
Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the city, Meche returns for her estranged father’s funeral. Meche manages to cope with her family and things are going well enough until she runs into her childhood friend, Sebastian. Suddenly, Meche is pulling out old Polaroids and remembering things she buried a long time ago.
What happened back in ’88 to destroy her strong bond with Sebastian and Daniela? And why did Meche have a fall-out with her father?
Sound Fidelity is a novel of magic, music and heartbreak.
While I have your attention, Orrin and moi are interviewed about the Fungi anthology and what we want to see in the slush.
I leave you with a video by Mecano:
The open submissions period for Fungi (an anthology I am editing with Orrin Grey) is fast approaching (January 15-February 15) and I wanted to talk about mushrooms and size.
We generally think of mushrooms as small because we are used to seeing little white caps growing on the ground. We do not imagine them as large, but some of the largest organisms on earth are fungus. One species, Armillaria solidipes (formerly Armillaria ostoyae), known as the honey mushroom, was found in Oregon a few years ago. It has been growing for some 2,400 years and covers 3.4 square miles. Now let Alice chew on that!
To make things more difficult, some mushrooms don’t look like mushrooms at all. The Annulohypoxylon thouarsianum resembles a lump of coal. It’s inedible. Not that you’d like to sauté that thing.
Then there are the mushrooms that glow in the dark, members of the Mycena family. It doesn’t get any groovier than these babies.
In conclusion, when considering possible ideas for Fungi think of all the fungal variety surrounding us. Oh, and do check my list of things I’d like to see in the slush. Enjoy the mushrooms.
This is not a love song. Meche could not stand most love songs. Especially the sappy ballads of the 80s, so cheesy you could choke on them.
Mexico City, 2009
Meche folded the magazine and finally decided to look out the window. The Federal District lay below, a great beast that seemed to have no beginning and no end, towers and buildings rising and dotting the valley. The roads were twisted snakes criss-crossing its surface, the cars tiny ants raising to their anthill. Twenty million people all gathered together – smashed against each other in the subway, crammed into the buses – with the Angel of Independence saluting them from above its pedestal.
It was eighteen years since she’d seen the city. Twenty since she’d last seen her father.
Now he was dead.
He had been pickling his liver for three decades and smoking since he turned twelve, but she’d thought him immortal.
Meche rubbed the bridge of her nose.
She didn’t even have a black dress. She knew her dad would have said to wear whatever the hell she wanted: dead is dead. But her mother would expect black. The whole nine days of mourning. The food they’d feed the guests. The nightly prayers.
If it had been up to Meche she would have cremated him and tossed his ashes in the Gulf of California, like he wanted. But her mother had insisted on the casket, the funeral, the prayers to follow.
She collected her bags and pulled the luggage, trying to find the familiar face among the sea of strangers.
So it begins. Revisions for Sound Fidelity, my novel split between two time periods: a group of teenagers in Mexico City in 1988 and one of those teenagers returning home many years later. What is worse than writing 75,000 words of a novel? Revising those words. I have no idea how one is supposed to do that, though I have a little notebook and a red pen for corrections. Well, plus the printed pages of the manuscript. I plan to be done in a couple of weeks.
If you’re interested in reading the revised copy when I’m done, let me know. I need a Beta Reader before I start shipping it out.
I spent a lot of time listening to the songs below when I was writing. Hell, I spent a lot of time listening to music because the novel deals heavily with records from the era.
Keane, Somewhere Only We Know (This not from the 80s)
Miguel Bose, Aire Soy (This is the 80s. Can’t you tell?)
