Salsa Nocturna by Daniel José Older – A Review

Salsa Nocturna Daniel José Older Crossed Genres (July 2012) ghost noir4.8/5

I didn’t win this book as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer. I won it as a backer of Crossed Genres’ Long Hidden kickstarter!

Happy Blog Birthday! Part 2!

My blog is two years old today! Happy Birthday to the blog!

Two years? Seriously?

Yes. Two years!

Isn’t that wild?

Words in Progress – 2013

So, 2013 is coming to a close. Another year gone like lightning. At least, that’s how they feel to me, for good or ill.

It’s been a busy writing year. I seem to have really caught the bug for writing and submitting, being rejected and submitting again. And writing again and again. Kinda like it.

As much for my own curiosity as anything, here’s a list of what I wrote and/or had published in 2013.

• “To The Edges” – published in May in Crossed Genres’ Winter Well: Speculative Novellas About Older Women. Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly happened in September.
• “Buccinum Anningiae” – written this summer. Submitted and rejected. Submitted again. No word yet.
• “Mind Over Murder” – also written in the summer. Submitted and ACCEPTED! More news soon.
• “Piper Deez and the Case of the Clanless Woman” – written in 2011. Submitted and ACCEPTED back then. But things got weird with that editor. Long story. Anyway. Submitted three times this year, rejected all three. 😦 Back in development. Planning to resubmit in early 2014.
• “Ketset Kismet” – written this fall. Submitted and rejected (awesome rejection email, though–very encouraging). Looks like I’ll be submitting somewhere else in 2014, maybe in February.
• “Meanwhile, Inc.” – I have a title, an idea, and am about 1000 words in. Another possibility for a February submission.
• The Travelers – the long-suffering novel. Still in process. The whole thing’s outlined now and the final scenes are coming together. Still working on the plan of having this draft finished in the next couple weeks and then spending 2014 rewriting.

Goals for 2014.

• “Breaks Like Glass” – another Piper Deez story, written in 2012. Submitted and rejected three times back then (I’m sensing a trend here.). I want to fix it and submit somewhere next year.
• Write more and submit more!

All those rejections up there seem a little sad, don’t they? But really? Of all the stories I’ve written since 2011, I have an acceptance rate of 43% (7 stories written; 3 accepted). Even if I do the math using number of submissions (12) instead of number of stories (which is probably the more accurate way to do this), I come up with a 25% acceptance rate. That’s ridiculously good.

So, yeah, as far as writing goes, it was a pretty good year in my world. Thanks, everyone, for reading my sporadic posts this year, and maybe even buying the books over there on the right. I wish you all the best in the new. I hope 2014 is as good or better for all of us.

“Writing on the wood is prohibited.” (Photo credit: Nicolas Karim) Random pic WordPress suggested. Kind of neat, huh?

 

Link Treats

Time to share another collection of links with you. A little bit of everything today. Enjoy!

Fat and fit?
Andreas Heinakroon takes on another controversial topic with his typical aplumb. Something worth thinking about.

A Compromise: How To Be A Reasonable Prescriptivist
Kory Stamper talks about the ongoing duel between prescriptivist and descriptivist language folk. I have run-ins with the kind of prescriptivist she talks about quite often. A lexicographer’s trebuchet would be handy.

MLK: Sanitized for Their Protection
The sanitizing of Martin Luther King is something that’s troubled me for years now. The Weekly Sift looks further into the co-opting of a brilliant revolutionary.

Winter Well: Speculative Novellas About Older Women
This link is nothing but shameless self-promotion for me and my fellow Winter Well authors. A starred review from Publishers Weekly!

You Are Worth It
Feeling down and not so thrilled with yourself. Give this post by The Belle Jar a read. She’s talking to you.

I think there’s a trebuchet in this picture. I love it anyway. Česky: Obránci hradu (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The State of Things

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted something that doesn’t have a video or a list of links attached to it. It’s been a busy summer, like I’ve said. Care for an update?

Over the last few months, I wrote and submitted two new short stories to a couple of themed anthologies. Still waiting to hear. There’s also been a lot of reading. I’ll be done with the next WOGF Challenge book soon and will have a review. I went old school this time; so far, it’s another good one.

The Travelers continues to limp toward its conclusion. I’ve mainly been typing up (dictating, really–my wrists have been sore lately) pages I’d already hand-written. That’s been interesting: 1) I wrote some of these scenes months ago (maybe longer), so I’m revisiting them with various levels of “cringe” and “oh, that’s not too bad”; and 2) Windows speech recognition doesn’t always hear quite what I said–latest fave mistake: “put a sock fuzz” for “bodhisattvas.”

Alpha Reader and I had a really good brainstorming session last month figuring out where The Travelers should end up. Lots of good questions and conversation. Let’s see if that translates into a good story!

In the realm of already-published business, Winter Well received a starred review from Publishers Weekly! There were good things said about my story “To The Edges,” which made my day, and continues to, even though the review came out last week.

I also ran into the dark side of attempting to get published yesterday, when I discovered that the latest issue of a magazine I’d submitted another story to was just terrible. (TW for rape; it’s on the right) It felt like a backlash against the really cool hashtag #DiversityinSFF that was happening on Twitter last week. Obviously, this place is not the home for my badass space detective. I immediately submitted somewhere else that feels a lot more welcoming to anyone who, you know, doesn’t find assault titillating. Here’s hoping they think my story’s a good fit, too.

In the what’s-happening-next category, I’m going to be posting an interview with Justin Robinson, author of the soon-to-be-published City of Devils. That’s going to happen on the day his book’s coming out, Sept. 24. I hope you’ll tune in for that. Should be fun. There might even be a giveaway!

That’s it for now, I think. How’ve you all been?

I love this photo: the composition, the colors, someone reading! Man sits on bench reading (Photo credit: Ian Livesey)

Monday Morning Music

Look at my blue eyes, look at my brown hair, look at my color. What color do you see?” he demand [sic] to know. “My mother was 100 per cent white,” Jeffries said, his blue eyes glinting in the New York sun. “My father is Portuguese, Spanish, American Indian, and Negro. How in the hell can I identify myself as one race or another?” – Herb Jeffries

So, it’s Memorial Day here in the U.S. I’m enjoying a long weekend that still has another day after this to go. Long weekends are lovely.

I was thinking that, for today’s music video, I’d go with something related to my novella “To The Edges,” which Crossed Genres published this past Friday. The protagonist, Zed Bleakstead, is a fan of cowboy movies, including some really old ones, even though most of the heroes in those films are all men and all White. At one point in the story, though, she sits down to watch (and fall asleep to) a film called Bronze Buckaroo. The film’s from 1939 and is one of the first westerns in the sound era to star an all-Black cast. Herb Jeffries (credited as Herbert Jeffrey) plays the lead. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube, if you like. It’s an interesting bit of history as well as being a silly, old cowboy movie. And have there been all-Black westerns since then? I know, in my research, just finding westerns with people of color as protagonists was a disappointing task.*

What does that have to do with music, you ask? Well, Herb Jeffries didn’t just play a cowboy, he was a singing cowboy with a beautiful voice.  And he’s an interesting person (still alive at this writing–he’s 99) who I want to learn more about. Louis Armstrong discovered him performing in Detroit and suggested he try his luck in Chicago. When he was asked for his background by a prospective employer, Jeffries stated he was “a creole from New Orleans,” choosing to pass as a person of color instead of as a white man, which he could easily have done.

Interesting choice. When he performed, he darkened his skin further. Which is, well, it’s hard not to think “blackface” and wrinkle my nose, but the thing is, he lived as a Black man offstage when American apartheid was in full swing, and he could have done otherwise.

“In those days, my driving force was being a hero to children who didn’t have any heroes to identify with,” Jeffries says.  “I felt that dark-skinned children could identify with me and, in “The Bronze Buckaroo,”  they could have a hero.  Many people don’t realize (to this very day) that in the Old West, one out of every three cowboys was a Black… and there were many Mexican cowboys, too.” —herbjeffries.com

Jeffries succeeded in becoming a hero to a lot of people. Herbie Hancock‘s parents named their son after him, for example. But then, when he married Tempest Storm in 1959, he labeled himself White on the marriage certificate. Jet magazine asked Jeffries about that, which is where the quote at the beginning of this post comes from.

Identity and race are complex things, especially during periods of time when the folks with the most power would prefer that they weren’t.

Hm, has there ever been a time when that wasn’t/isn’t the case? I don’t know.

But I do know that, after he was done playing a singing cowboy, Herb Jeffries went on to sing with Duke Ellington‘s orchestra. Yes, indeedy. Here he is singing his hit “Flamingo.”

And here’s a clip from Bronze Buckaroo with Jeffries and the Four Tones singing “Got the Payday Blues.” Pardon the skipping, please; it’s the best I could find. Beats the hell out of Roy Rogers, though, doesn’t he?

___________

*I didn’t discover this site until after “To The Edges” was done.

Things to Look Forward To

Given how half-assed I usually am about this blog, it impresses me that I actually have blog things planned. Scheduled even.

The usual stuff, you know, like Monday Morning Music. The big surprise there is I even have next week’s video picked. That just doesn’t happen. So, there’s that.

There are also book-related blog things in store. My Winter Well editor, Kay Holt, tagged me for the Next Big Thing blog hop. She also tagged the rest of the Winter Well authors, and we’re all going to take part, talking about our works in progress. The schedule is this:

• Minerva Zimmerman on May 12 (this Monday)
• M. Fenn (um, that would be me) on May 16 (Thursday)
• Marissa James next Monday (May 20)
• Anna Caro next Thursday (May 23)
• Winter Well available next Friday (May 24)!!

I’m excited to read about what these talented women have in store for us. I hope you’ll join us!

And speaking of talented women, Susan Jane Bigelow is going to be posting here on May 28, release day for her new book The Daughter Star. She’s going to be talking about her writing/editing process and how The Daughter Star changed over the course of writing it. Should be pretty cool

I think that’s it for now. Women Learn To Be Women #3 is still in process, as are some reviews I need to post, but I’m not going to pretend they’re near ready. But they will be! Someday! Soon!

WordPress’s selections for photos were impressively random for this post. I won’t bother you with all the wrestling photos (yeah, I don’t know either), but this one made me smile.

A well (Photo credit: Andreas Solberg) It’s also a little wistful, isn’t it? Poor little rusted can all alone.

Weekly Linkroll (Monday edition)

Yeah, links didn’t happen yesterday. But here they are today.

An Open Letter to Jane Doe, the Victim of the Steubenville Rape Case (Trigger Warning)
Lucy’s Football made me cry last week. This post is beautiful, and I’m torn between hoping that Jane Doe reads it and that she is staying the hell away from the Internet for a while.

I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter. I Am A Person.
The Belle Jar discusses the problem with the language used when standing up for women. Even if this is used in a well-meaning way, it’s still defining women by their relationship to men, not on their own. Patronizing and not good.

New Peacock Spider Video!
Bug Girl’s Blog posts a really cool video featuring peacock spiders. Even if you’re afraid of spiders, you might dig this. So cute!

Dark woods
I love cemeteries, so this Wordland post hit the spot. So many stories lay hidden.

Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History
One week left to get in on this wicked cool kickstarter that will fund a speculative fiction anthology with stories from the points of view of folks who normally don’t get to write history (wow, long sentence is long). I gave what I could and am excited to read it when it comes out. The list of writers already signed up is pretty amazing. Check it out.

Eisenstadt v. Baird: The 41st Anniversary of Legal Contraception for Single People
Can you believe that  legal access to contraception for single people has only been around in the US for 41 years?

New poll finds the majority of women voters consider themselves feminists
Feministing shares the results of a recent Ms. poll. Surprisingly good news.

Pterosaur: Dinosaur Named After Daisy Morris
Five year-old girl discovers a new dinosaur and has it named after her!

Words in Progress

So, the Winter of the Novel is almost over. Spring arrives in about a week and a half. Where does the novel stand?

Well, I’ve edited the bulk of it and spent a lot of time parsing out what (out of everything I’ve written) belongs in this novel and what belongs in the other. I’ve also written about 50 or so pages, and that’s pretty good for me, productivity-wise, so yay. Thirty-seven of those pages are typed up and living in Scrivener now.

Is it done?

Ha ha, no. Not hardly. But it’s coming along, and I may even be ready to begin the final act. Not sure, though. With all the parsing and such, I’m not really clear on how the thing flows anymore, so the next step in the plan (and I’m hoping to have the first 4 parts of that step done by the start of spring) is to:

1. get everything typed up that needs typing,
2. including all of my scribbled edits, most of which are not in Scrivener
3. print the results out, and
4. give to R, alpha reader extraordinaire, so he can read it in its new form (however long that takes), and then
5. discuss what needs tending to and where to go next.
6. Go there.

Seems like a good plan. Here’s hoping it works.

In other writing news, I sent back my galley comments for Winter Well this week. It’s a gorgeous book with really cool stories therein; you’re going to want to read this.

I’m also pondering submitting something to Crossed Genres’ newest anthology in the making, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History. More than pondering; there was actual writing last night. We’ll see how that holds up. Gotta say, it was interesting to switch gears from future dystopian USA to early 19th-century England. That might explain the strange dreams I was having early this morning, none of which I can remember now. Should have written them down!

Want to help make Long Hidden an even better book than it’s already looking to be? Chip in, why don’t you? I did.

Your random pic for the day. Did you know Parse was a place? I didn’t. It’s the Persian name for Persepolis. (Photo credit: m.khajoo)

Winter Well Giveaway

That book I mentioned yesterday with the spiffy new cover? If you want to win a free ARC, you can! Get thee to Goodreads.