Apologies for my long absence!

I realize it has been quite a while since I have had anything new to put in here!

The first thing I would like to do is to thank everyone who has sought me out to give me any feedback on Ice after the Pseudopod podcast. It is all very encouraging and I appreciate if very much.

I currently have two stories out for submission, and another two ready to go out shortly, so hopefully something will come of my efforts! I have a few other pieces in the works as well.

‘The Cursed Wreck’ is another Lovecraftian piece: Leah Ingersoll, a graduate student in Nautical Archaeology, is troubled by mysterious shifting artifacts on an underwater site off the coast of Turkey. I admit this piece was heavily influence by my own degree program, but despite it or because of it, I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

‘Happiness Man’ is the story of a man who invents his own God in order to fulfill his spiritual needs. I wrote this story a while ago, with a specific magazine in mind. However by the time I finished, it had changed formats. It’s been rejected once already but I’m not quite willing to give up on it.

‘Keep off the Grass’ is a fantasy horror piece told from a child’s point of view, and set in a world where the environment is very dangerous indeed. In all honesty, I was inspired to write this by the background material a friend of mine prepared for a home-grown setting for a role playing game. I liked the ideas presented quite a lot, and turned it n to this piece. I haven’t submitted this one yet, but that’s more a logistical matter than anything else – I want to send it to a Canadian magazine, but I need Canadian stamps for the SASE. I will be sending it out in the next few weeks, however, as I am headed up to the Great White North for my sister’s wedding.

‘Soul Proprietor’ is actually a re-write of a very old story of mine. I actually first wrote it in a university creative writing class back in, oh… 1998? Wow. I sent it around to a few places at the time (okay, two – I admit a disappointing lack of tenacity back then), but it was ejected. Still, I like the setting, and the premise. It’s the story of a man who buys souls. I thought that if I spiced it up a bit it might have more appeal. It also needed a stronger ending. I re-wrote the whole thing from a first-person point of view, and added a final scene which I think gives the reader a greater sense of closure. Hopefully it will have more market appeal this time around! I haven’t sent it out yet as I am trying to decide where it should go – it also needs to be properly formatted. Ahh formatting. I should do a post about the submission process, and about how I (eventually) choose where I will send my stories.

‘The Shadow of a Place’ is a piece still under construction, but the idea was to take an old convention of horror and modernize it. I don’t doubt it has probably been done before, but it was still an interesting premise for me. In this case, it’s the idea of going to visit a childhood or college friend and finding them much changed by strange events, places, or both. I started writing this on a bright sunny beach on Paradise Island, partly because the incongruity amused me. Especially as I had just read Ambrose Bierce’s short story ‘The Suitable Surroundings’.

So, that’s what’s in the works. I’ll try to post when I have news on any of these fronts, but I admit it is more likely to happen if it is good news! Honestly, however, this has not been a great writing year for me. I was very busy with school and work at the beginning of the year. I am trying to make it up this summer, however – see above!

One of the things that has been keeping me busy is work on my Dissertation project. This June, I traveled to Harbour Island (Briland) in the Bahamas to do some logistical research and help determine the feasibility of the project I have in mind: a community survey. This will let me examine a colonial maritime community and use the information I gather as a basic for comparing it to more urban and agricultural societies. Or such is the basic premise. My trip and the follow up work I have been doing this summer have been very encouraging. This is a viable project with a string amount of community interest and support. My next big hurdle is going to be finding funding! Tomorrow, then, I am attending a grant writing seminar offered through campus. I hope that it will prove useful.

Pseudopod

I'd meant to post about this earlier, but now I can include some more pertinent links!

I re-sold Ice as a podcast to Pseudopod, and it is available here as of today! Check it out, leave them (and me!) comments :)

Pseudopod, Escape Pod, and Drabblecast make up my trio off weekly podcasts, though I am also looking forward to Podcastle when it (finally) gets off the ground in a month or so.

Meanwhile, I should note that I am working on a few pieces at the moment, but that this semester has not been kind to my writing time.

If you came here from Pseudopod, thanks for visiting!

Y'ha-nthlei Is Deeper Than They Know

So, there I was, sitting in the Maritime Cultural Landscapes symposium at the Society for Historical Archaeology’s 2008 conference, listening to papers on surveys of submerged prehistoric sites, based on identifying potential sites by looking at general land configurations. It makes sense. Of course it does. Lots of interesting ideas are being bandied about. Suddenly it strikes me that my decision to wear Y’ha-nthlei perfume (by the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab), a reference to the submerged home of the Deep Ones, Lovecraft’s imaginary half-man half-fish creature cultists of Dagon and Cthulhu, was strangely appropriate. From there, my mind spiraled off on a number of related tangents. What about writing a story about submerged cultural material survey finding Y’ha-nthlei or some related site? (It didn’t help that at least one of the topics was discussing work around Rhode Island!) What about a whole maritime cultural landscapes approach to dealing with the underwater component of Lovecraft’s mythos? I think it would have potential. What struck me as being really interesting, however, was the idea to do it as a fake academic blog, with doctored GIS and sonar images showing this unexpected underwater complex, and writing as some academic investigator trying to put together the pieces of this fascinating puzzle. Imagine trying to wring oral histories out of recalcitrant Innsmouth residents and their potentially violent reactions, the experiences of the investigator on the verification dives, etc…

I think a blog would be a good way to update the ‘academic voice’ in fiction, as well. I really like that academic voice in fiction, as you might have picked up on (partly because, well, ‘m an academic, and partly because of the authority associated with it). However, I think that too many people follow the old ‘journal’ style, or the ‘letters to a collegue’ thing that’s been done a million times. That’s not really how academia works these days, and if we authors want to access that voice of authority in a modern tale, which is entirely valid, we need to do so in a medium that captures its modern spirit. I like the idea of a blog a lot, although I don’t think I have the time or resources to really do it properly. For this story, I’d at least need a good collaborator for the images. It would also be a difficult thing to sell – I’m not sure how, or if, you could market such a thing. Maybe if I approached an online publication? Or I could ‘self-publish’ it by just making the site and having a donation button/paypal link sort of deal. I do wish I had the web-page making know-how to do this!

However, the fiction potential wasn’t all that struck me (although it struck me pretty hard!) There are also legitimate academic questions to pose of Lovecraft’s work and his portrayal of this fictional maritime culture surrounding the worship of the otherworldly Gods. The conjunction of the alien and the submarine clearly reflects his views of these two environments, aquatic and cosmic, as spaces which share (or at least shared in his time) an aura of mystery. It can’t be a coincidence that R’Lyeh is a mysterious sunken city, hiding I the then-unknown depths of the pacific. This isn’t saying anything new – scholars of Lovecraft have pointed out these analogies before. But it is still interesting way to look at perceptions of the maritime world, and even those who interact with it. Again, it is no coincidence that Innsmouth was once a prosperous maritime community. But what about the idea that they are resistant to the advance of civilization – they retain their maritime orientation, and in fact intensify it, by cementing their relationship with Dago, and extend their landscape interaction into the maritime sphere as well. What kind of commentary about rural maritime life is *that*? There’s two things to look at: the maritime cultural landscape created *inside* the stories, and the one that is perceived by Lovecraft that he drew upon for that creation. These are just threads that are running through my head; I’d love to explore them further, but I thought I’d jot them down here as a start.

Now, don’t think these are the *only* thoughts that have been running through my head during these presentations! There is a lot of good work going on out there, and I have lots of other things, less Lovecraftian, going through my mind as well. But this, as I said, struck me really strongly, an I wanted to put something down on paper before I forgot. I bet I could work some kind of academic paper out it… And maybe a fake academic blog as well ;)

Podcasts

I've recently become rather enamoured of podcasts, as someone who doesn't have a lot of time to read, and keep up with the news. My current job is a lot of data entry, so I can easily afford to listen to the news, or to other kinds of casts, while I'm typing. Consequently I'm feeling a lot better informed than I have for a while! I like the concept of this type of media - it's like picking all the good parts out of radio. I also like that it seems to be encouraging a lot of genres of programs that are issued just as podcasts that might not have found audiences big enough to support them before the internet! I have been a fan of audio formats for stories since I discovered The Shadow and other 'old timey' radio serial programs. It combines my love of short stories with my, ah, lack of reading time.

In any case, I've also been directed to an even better combination - short story podcasts, in various genres! There are three that I am especially fond of at the moment:

Pseudopod - a horror broadcast with a fantastic title if I do say so myself.

Escape Pod - a sci-fi broadcast, again with a great name!

The Drabblecast - quirky to twisted short pieces, often with a scifi/horror-ish bent.

With those plugs made, I should also note that this entertainment discovery also translates into potential new venues for publishing my own work! All of these casts will buy previously published material as long as it doesn't violate any other contracts. And since most places still only buy First North American Serial Rights, you can sell a story twice, which they advise, and get two checks. works for me! I am in the middle of submitting Ice to Pseudopod. Why not, hmm? I think it would work quite well as an audiocast.

And while I'm plugging podcasts, I think I should also mention another one that I am quickly growing quite fond of: Search Engine, a CBC radio program about how the internet and related technology is effecting social change on various levels.

Ice

High Seas Cthulhu is going to be hitting bookstores on October 1st, and the Elder Signs Press site says it is shipping now!

The editor, William Jones, invited us authors to leave an explanation of what inspired our stories over on his blog, but having written it, I figured I may as well post it here as well.

“Ice” came to me from a lot of places.

I was rifling through the school library one day and I came across a little leaflet published by August Derleth that was basically the transcription of a panel discussion he’d moderated at some convention back in the 60’s. It was a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi authors talking about Lovecraft’s work, how it had influenced them, what they’d thought of playing around in his world, and so forth. The only author whose name I remember was Fritz Leiber.

Someone asked whether any of them actually found Lovecraft scary. Most said no. But Leiber spoke up about when he was young and reading this stuff for the first time, back in the days when people didn’t take the domestication of the environment quite so much for granted, when it still felt like there were distant, unknown places here on Earth.

It made me want to try and recapture that feeling of mystery and the unknown, and I thought the antarctic was a good setting. I’ve been studying anthropology and maritime stuff (where stuff = history, archaeology, etc) for a while now, and ship societies interest me. I’d done some reading the previous term on social interactions between crew and scientists on long research voyages which had stuck in my mind for whatever reason.

The goal was to create a story with a strong atmosphere of menace and mystery, and to play with the idea that maybe we don’t know our world so well as we believe and that there might be consequences for our modern ignorance and complacency. I wanted to play more with some of the ideas and impulses that inspired Lovecraft than with any specific mythos elements.

Also, I was living with a friend in Toronto during a heat wave, and he had no air conditioning. It was nice to be able to think about being somewhere really cold.

Abstract

Oh yes - here is the abstract for the paper I am going to give at the SHA meetings this fall:

Material Culture and Maritime Identity: Identifying Maritime Subcultures through Artifacts.

Piracy was a significant facet of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maritime culture, yet archaeological contributions to our knowledge of piracy are few. They are fewer still in reference to pirate interaction ashore. Material from a handful of land sites with known piratical association, contrasted with artifacts from contemporaneous non-maritime sites, provides a starting point for investigating whether or not material culture assemblages can provide any insight into differences between pirates (and other maritime cultures) and those of the general land-based society. Where these differences do exist, they may provide insight into issues of identity within these groups.

Well, here goes...

First off, I just got back on Monday from my two week trip to the Bahamas. It was a research trip and was, well, medium productive anyway. I couldn't find any of the specific information that I was looking for in the archives, but it was definitely worth going if for no other reason than to see the place and make some good contacts. Oh, and the delicious food, beautiful beaches, and rum drinks served out of a coconut. What can I say, the archives weren't open on the weekends... My ultimate goal is, of course, to return and do some archaeological work. I still don't have a specific site, but I do have a strategy that I hope I can employ. What this will mean is another trip and a lot of knocking on rich people's doors and asking "Hey, can I dig a hole in your yard?"

Well, we'll see. I hope I can manage things a bit more with a bit more polish than that - maybe do some lectures at the historical society or at some local venues first to drum up interest and *then* talk to people about, well, digging holes in their yards!

In other news, the publication work on High Seas Cthulhu proceeds apace, and I learned from the editor (William Jones) of a contest over at Shoggoth.net to win a free copy. It doesn't take much to enter, so give it a shot!

I also have another story that i am hoping to polish up and send around this summer, called "Happiness Man", and another Mythos tale I'm working on called "The Cursed Wreck" which I hope to be done with, along with some sort of pirate-related academic article (arrrrticle?) by the end of August.