I Am NOT the Beastmaster

Adventure

Just got my copy of Adventure, a collection of new pulp and genre fiction by Chris Roberson, Kim Newman, Michael Moorcock, Paul Di Filippo, Matt Rossi, and many others, including my first published short story.

Regular readers of this blog won't be surprised to learn that my contribution takes a look at the conventions and tradition of one particular set of superheroes.  I'm not sure whether the recent return of Hal Jordan makes it very timely or very out of date; in any case it's not about him.  It's about the last in a long line of heroes, thrust into a role he was never prepared for and despised because he's not his predecessor.  The genre, of course, is feel-good comedy.

Acknowledgments are due to Matt Rossi, who besides being a longtime collaborator and sounding board got me involved in this project; Chris Roberson, who provided some expert editing; and Abhay Khosla, who presented a much earlier, cruder version of this story to the world back in the dimly lit mists of prehistory, or at least grad school.  Thanks to all.

Oh, and for anyone keeping track:  fiction is a hell of a lot faster than most academic publishing.

First Lines

I don't normally do blog memes, but I liked this one when Chris Roberson did it a few weeks back and I've been thinking about chiming in ever since.  The idea is to share the first sentence or paragraph of any currently unfinished projects.  I'll interpret that to mean fiction, since you really don't want to see the academic stuff in process.

This first one comes from a project I've been working on for over three years now (idly for almost two).  It isn't actually the first line, just the first one I wrote; I almost always write my beginnings last.

“Pigs at ten o'clock.”

Gary hunched forward, peering over the dashboard. The Armory, a pugnacious little New Deal blockhouse at the entrance to town, was aswarm with National Guardsmen. Hundreds, at least, milling about the vehicles jammed into the tiny parking lot, spilling off of the grounds, flooding back into Greenbelt proper.

And that would be why I always write the beginnings last.  (It's from a prologue set in 1970, by the way.)

Here's the start of another episode I hope to work into the same novel.  This one needs no introduction:

“Hey man. I loved Rocksteady vs. the Glandroids from Mars.” A flash from childhood: The band members, grown to titanic proportions, crushing a host of malicious androgynous sex robots under their rhinestone-studded platform boots while the Capitol Records building and the rest of the L.A. skyline burned in the background. The classic Kelly Freas album cover, which he’d bought with the monies of four weekly allowances, was suddenly more vivid than anything else he had experienced or remembered in the last twenty years.

There's another one, too, but it isn't quite ready for public view:  a short story that combines aspects of the police procedural, popular culture criticism, Homicide, plagiarism, and the genre you most associate with me, confessional autobiography.  Hopefully that'll be finished soon.

The Right Card Game

It's official: my first fiction sale should be published next year. I've gotten a story accepted for Adventure, an anthology of contemporary pulpish fiction published by MonkeyBrain Books and scheduled for release in 2005.

Many thanks to Chris Roberson, Matt Rossi, and Abhay Khosla (even though he doesn't know that he, too, played a part in this strange affair, many years ago).