My new poem, “Ekpyrotic Theory” is up at Lakeside Circus.
Despite the title, this is a love poem.
You may also be interested in reading about the ekpyrotic universe theory in the Wikipedia.
New Poem and Notes: “The Pyromancer”
For those of you who missed it, Goblin Fruit ended 2014 in style by posting their last issue with one minute to go before the year ended.
It is a beautiful issue as usual; I particularly adore the poems from Rose Lemberg, Alena Sullivan, and Neile Graham, but everything is scrumptious.
And one of the poems is mine!
“The Pyromancer” was inspired by me watching 4th of July fireworks with my family at Boldt Castle in, oh, 2012? 2011? A while ago now. (We’re Canadian, but at that time we lived just next to the American border, and my mother’s side of the family is American.) The whole “lights of boats on the water” thing was a thing I didn’t have to make up; I’ve always loved the look of many small lights in darkness, whether that’s the stars, a bunch of tourist cruise boats, or even just the street lights and porch lights of nighttime suburbia. That was where the poem started. Any statements in the poem that may be construed as being about magic, perception, resilience, etc, came afterwards. 🙂
(“Turning to Stone“, published earlier this year, was conceived at the same time and on the same excursion. I was in a busy holiday city and had a bad meltdown… You win some, you lose some, I guess! And then you can write about both.)
A tiny poem
Niteblade #30 is now out, and with it, my tiny poem “Abominable Snowman”. (Yes, the lines visible after that link are the whole poem – though with Niteblade that’s generally not the case.)
If you go here you can see Alexa Seidel, Niteblade’s poetry editor, saying some very kind things about the poem (and about my poem “The Mermaid at Sea World”, which was published in Niteblade earlier in the year).
Though I do have a small correction – “Abominable Snowman” isn’t a haiku. The number of syllables is wrong, and some other stuff (if you are a Japanese haiku traditionalist) is also wrong. It is merely a tiny three-line poem, but I am okay with that. 🙂
Please do check out the rest of the issue as well.
Self-Portrait as Bilbo Baggins
The first issue of Liminality is so gorgeous, you guys. And it has a poem by me about hobbits. (As well as amazing work from Sofia Samatar, Adrienne J. Odasso, Lisa M. Bradley, Erik Amundsen, Gemma Files… Basically just drop what you’re doing and read this whole thing, okay, guys? It is delish. 😀 )
The Self-Rescuing Princess
I’ve somehow been totally dumb and missed this for the first several days it was out. But! My poem, “The Self-Rescuing Princess”, is up now at Lakeside Circus!
This is my second short piece appearing in Lakeside Circus. The first, in Issue One, was my micro-story “The Button”, and I have another poem coming up in Issue Three. I am now wondering if I can challenge myself to somehow appear in every single issue ever… 😀
Anyway, it’s an angry little survivor poem with princesses in it. So, if you’re into that, go check it out.
A podcast version of this poem, read by Carrie Cuinn, is in the works, but has yet to appear. I’ll try and link you guys to it when it’s available; it’s a monologue style of poem, and those are the MOST fun ones to read, so this ought to go well.
My spooky science-fantasy poem, “Evianna Talirr Builds a Portal on Commission”, is now available in Year 1 of the HWA Poetry Showcase, along with works by Geoffrey A. Landis, Ann K. Schwader, and many other famously spooky poets of spook. These were the Horror Writers Association’s favorite poems out of what was submitted to them in their contest back in April.
Ev, a sort of Lovecraftian mystic-scientist who both invents and destroys things, has been creeping around and showing up in different works of mine for some time now, but this is the first time one of them’s actually sold. So, I’m pleased.
More later. IRL stuff has been keeping me away from the blogosphere, but it’s slowly getting back under control.
Goblin Love Song
I’ve got a spooky little poem up in the latest issue of The Literary Hatchet.
It’s free! And I love how they illustrated the page. This one’s possibly NSFW, though, especially if you read out loud. 🙂
The Parable of the Supervillain
Annnnnd before I even catch my breath from that last poem, I have a new one up in the March issue of Apex Magazine! Wheeee!
(I’ve wanted to publish a poem in Apex ever since Catherynne M. Valente was the editor. *crosses things off bucket list*)
The Parable of the Supervillain
Fun fact about this poem: The first draft was written in February 2013. The line in which the narrator discovers her ex-husband “lazing in the U.S. Virgin Islands” originally said “lazing in Tahiti”… But then Agents of SHIELD came out, and using the word “Tahiti” in a superhero poem means something entirely different now. I’m used to revising poems in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons, but that was a new one. 😀
Now I’m imagining all sorts of crossover fiction, of course.
*spins in circles*
The Mermaid at Sea World
So I installed a plugin to let me crosspost between LJ and WordPress, and I was going to think of something SUPER AMAZING to start off my WordPress blogging with, but then life happened and now it is March and oh, hey, I have published another poem!
How about that.
“The Mermaid at Sea World”, a short poem of mine containing a human sacrifice of sorts, is now not only published in the latest issue of Niteblade, but they named the issue after it! Which is super cool and flattering.
Note: there’s a preview available, but it’s not the whole poem; to find out what happens to our eponymous mermaid, you will need to pay for an issue. (Or wait for donations to rise above $50, at which point I believe the whole issue will be released as HTML.)