btw, when are you going to post the ‘answer’ to the “Vast Bit of Hod” story? It’s been bugging me ever since (in a good way)

Which I have been meaning to do for sometime. So.

Harold, the central character in A Vast Bit of Hod, is completing a crossword when we meet him, behind the counter in the weird antique / collectibles store where the story takes place. The crossword clue is the title of the story. If you aren’t good at anagrams, here is an anagram server to help you. We’ll come back to what the anagram is momentarily.

A Vast Bit of Hod began life when my friend Dana, fellow Clarion writers’ workshop graduate, sent out an email challenge to write a story about a shop that sells lives. Because I’m working on novel length things, I hadn’t written a short story for a time, but this challenge brought an idea to mind that I couldn’t resist. Our Clarion tutor Neil Gaiman says that novels are like a long journey, whereas short stories are like seeing a tree and deciding to climb up it. So I decided to climb this tree.

For three years now I have been studying Buddhism. I enjoy it from an intellectual perspective, and I’ve found the insight meditation techniques it teaches tremendously helpful. Two linked ideas in Buddhism are karma and reincarnation. These are both hard ideas to grasp from a rational perspective. There is no evidence of any mechanism in nature to make ‘what goes around come around’, and very few people I know believe they will come back to life as a goat, or even an Emperor. But as myths they point towards the idea that our behaviour defines our life, an idea I do believe.

So in my shop customers enter to select the new lives which they will incarnate within after when they are reborn. They deposit their old lives in the form of an object which they hand to the shop keeper, and select a new object which symbolises their new life. I’m afraid I’m not very complimentary about the lives many of us choose. In particular I heap a little scorn on the fantasy lives we escape in to, while our actual lives decay around us. For a writer of fantasy, I’m oddly ambivalent about the role of fantasy in our lives.

A Vast Bit of Hod is an anagram for (excluding the ‘of’) Bodhisattva. This is the Buddhist term for, depending on your translation, either humans well on the path to enlightenment, or those who are enlightened but choose to live in the world and help others reach enlightenment. Harold is a little bit of both.  He isn’t exactly kind to Anthony, but he does what needs to be done to help the young man move from one life to the next. At the end of the story, Harold is left holding a simple wooden bowl, the traditional begging bowl that is the only possession of Buddhist monks who have renounced all worldly things. Harold has another lifetime or two of suffering before he is ready for nirvana. But first he fancies another biscuit…

You can read A Vast Bit of Hod here.

There is a popular myth that back in the good old days writers could make a living from short fiction. It’s a myth continued in the idea of the ‘pro-rate’ of pay for short fiction. 5 cents a word can add up to a nice little bonus payment, but it’s only professional money if you are living in the 1920s. And only then if you lived on beans and fresh air.  The only reason the ‘pro-rate’ matters at all is because it gives at least some indication that the publisher is committed enough to invest a little cash in their enterprise.

The only real measure of a short fiction market is the quality of its curation. As readers we rely on editors to curate the best material to suit our interests. That is why the average start-up fiction magazine that publishes thirty stories lacks any value, while the excellent Clarkesworld which publishes just two stories a month has become the top market in short SF. As writers, publication in an excellently curated market is one of the best indications that you work has achieved quality.

Writing fiction is not a manufacturing process. Success is not a product of your Rate of Productivity x Stories Published x Cents per Word. A dozen stories in a dozen ‘pro-rate’ markets can mean less than one story, in one well curated market which puts it in front of the right eye-balls.

If you are fortunate you will be able to return to your work in a few hours, or the next day. But for many of us writing happens around the commitments of life and work. You might return to your writing a day, a week, a month or sometimes even years later. So you have to trust that every time you come back to your work, it is better than when you left it. The ideas it is made of may have changed a little, or a lot, but the new ideas will be stronger, and closer to the spirit of what you are trying to express.

If you enjoyed this post please consider making a small pledge to the World SF Travel Fund

• Writing is a Process: Lessons from Sharon Creech (teachingmahollitz.wordpress.com)
• YouTube Videos about Writing (storytreasury.wordpress.com)
• Intimidated by ideas (peterkirsch.wordpress.com)

Circe’s in Serendipity magazine.

***

Rings grew out of lots of thinking I’ve been doing about magic in urban settings, and the specific image of a girl who collects rings. What she does with those rings got darker and darker as the story progressed, but strangely the character of Amalfrida became more and more sympathetic, at least for me. I think this might be one of a whole set of stories about Amlfrida’s strange, strange family. This is an extract, I’m afraid if you want tor ead the whole thing you will have to petition someone to publish it. Its currently on the slush pile at Realms of Fantasy.

*****

I am not a goth. Being goth is like being pregnant; best aborted at the first opportunity. I thought I was a goth for precisely one week after my thirteenth birthday, then I actually met a goth and that, as they say, was that. A goth is just a model B drone, as much a product of the cultural cookie cutter as any peroxide blonde bimbo. Goths are a shadow of a shadow. I am the shape from which the shadow is cast. Or so says my father.

‘Hey, nice goth outfit.’

I look down at my plain black tee, black skirt, black leggings and black boots. Yes, they are Doc Martins. Then I look up at the boy and manufacture an edged smile.

‘I am not a goth.’

‘Oh.’ Dumb pause. ‘Right.’ Idiotic hesitation. ‘Sorry.’ How do boys get away with being so stupid?

I have accidentally strayed in to the guitar shop. A dozen adolescent males are staring at me as though I am the final representative of an otherwise extinct species. There are important philosophical reasons why girls do not come in here. Why have I violated them?

‘Hub’ The boy sticks a hand out for me to shake.

Hub is the bearer of the tuffty blue hair that has drawn me unwilling into this hellhole of masculine posturing. I saw it from outside and just couldn’t resist scouting out the owner.
He has the typical loser chic of a young man with a fine future in stock replenishment. And what kind of name is that?

‘What kind of name is that?’

‘Oh right, yeah. Hubert. My parents didn’t like me.’

‘Mine don’t like me either.’

‘What did they call you then?’

‘Amalfrida.’ This is unprecedented. I never tell people my name.

‘Oh right, yeah. What does that mean?’

‘How should I know!’ I snap. He looks suddenly crestfallen and despite myself I feel guilty.

‘Look, mostly people call me Fred.’

‘Oh right, yeah. Fred.’

‘You say that a lot.’

‘What?’

‘Oh right, yeah.’ I parrot in my best dork impression.

‘Oh right, yeah.’ There is a pause and then we both burst out laughing. This carries on long enough that people start to stare.

‘My name.’ I say once things have gone quiet and we are just looking at each other. ‘It’s traditional. Gothic.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t a goth?’

‘Not goth. Gothic. My family. They’re like ostrogoths? Going way back to the old country.’

‘Old country?’

‘You really do ask a lot of questions.’

‘Oh…wow. Um. So do you play guitar?’

I play clarinet and flute at grade eight, write musical notation as fluently as I read it and composed my first cantata at the age of nine but am forced to admit that no, I do not play six string guitar.

‘I know four chords.’ The moron tells me proudly.

His blue tufts have been waxed into unruly spikes, stiff like the blood crusted mane of a tribal warrior. I can’t help finding it cute.

‘So what brings you in here?’

I am utterly appalled to find my heart beat quickening as I consider my reply. I do not get nervous about boys!

‘Giving you the chance to ask me out.’

No sooner have the words left my mouth than the colour leaves his face and for a moment he looks like he might have just peed himself. What fun! To his credit he recovers his composure with a smile.

‘Where should I ask you out to?’

‘Dunno. What you doing now?’

‘Dunno. Nothing.’

‘Then ask me if I want a latte.’

‘Right. Do you want a latte?’

‘I’d love one.’

It turns out Hub is allergic to coffee. And milk. So he has lemon tea, then we end up just floating around the shops like ghosts, talking relentlessly about nothing at all. How we end up starring into the glass display cases I do not know.

I recognise the ring instantly, although I have never glimpsed it before. It is a circle of hand forged silver, twisted at its crown into the curved cross of the ankh. The tip of one finger presses against the glass, like the flickering snake of a tongue tasting the essence of desire.

‘Do you want it?’

‘No’ I lie.

He looks at me confused. Am I really that obvious? I suppose he thinks am not able to afford it or some such.

‘Hey its OK, I’ll get it for you. How much is it?’

The trader is a Pole. I know him. He can’t recognise me, if he did he would cut his own throat before even considering selling this thing to a daughter of my fathers family.

‘I don’t want it. I don’t want you to give it to me.’

‘But it goes with all your others. I have to get it for you. No big thing, right?’

‘Everything is a big thing.’

I turn and walk away, weaving through the sudden crowds that surround us.

‘Hey!’ He grabs for my arm.

‘Don’t touch me!.’

I turn sharply and slap him across the face, hard. I don’t know who is more shocked, him or me. And then I bolt, running as fast as I can. I will not see him again.