Books, Booze & Barbara

I haven’t attended a lot of readings since the pandemic, but one of the few I have attended — although, admittedly, not often enough — is Randee Dawn’s Brooklyn Books & Booze @ Barrow’s Intense. It takes place once a month, every third Tuesday at an interesting bar in Brooklyn’s Industry City that specializes in ginger liqueurs (although it offers other drinks as well). Randee was nice enough to invite me to read, and I’ll be there on Tuesday, February 20th, along with a bunch of talented writers. It’s a good crowd, and it would be nice to see you there:

Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room
86 34th Street, Brooklyn, NY
Subway: D / R / N train to 36th Avenue, then about a 4 minute walk.

It’s free, but you can reserve a ticket if you want at this link.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in a little chat about the Jewish Futures anthology, I participated in a roundtable discussion at Con-Tinual, an online con run out of Facebook. Several of the writers who are in the anthology talked about their stories and their favorite authors, among other things; if you’d like to, I invite you to watch.

End of the year round-up

I’ve seen some year-end reminders of some of the great fiction that my writer friends had published this year. So I thought I’d add my own list to theirs.

I actually managed to get two stories published in 2023: one in F&SF, a magazine that I’ve been following for most of my life (yay!), and one in an excellent anthology. Neither story is available online, so I’ve linked the name of the magazine to where you can purchase the publication, while the second link is to the SFWA listings of available short stories from 2023; if you’re a SFWA member, you’ll find a PDF there.

Enjoy!

“Time and Art”
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2023 issue
https://www.sfwa.org/…/18162-krasnoff-barbara-time…/…

“Baby Golem”
Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora, edited by Michael A. Burstein
https://www.sfwa.org/…/18693-krasnoff-barbara-baby…/…

Jewish Futures, Hour of the Wolf, and new eyeglasses

So I’m on my way to the optometrist to pick up my new eyeglasses — two pair, one for reading and one for movies / tv / driving — and I glance at Facebook and realize that today is the day when the Jewish Futures anthology is officially published — and that this evening, Jim is broadcasting my recent NYRSF conversation with Sheree Renee Thomas on Hour of the Wolf at 9 a.m. on WBAI 99.5.

Jewish Futures is an anthology edited by Michael Burstein and published by Ian Randall Strock, with an introduction by Jack Dann, the editor of the groundbreaking anthology of Jewish fiction, Wandering Stars, which came out in 1974. (Michael talks a bit about the genesis — excuse the expression — of the project in a recent column he wrote for John Scalzi’s blog.)

I am very pleased to be included. To be honest, when I found out that the anthology was opening to submissions, I decided I needed to at least send in something, so I started writing in a frenzy of sarcasm and anger (there was stuff happening out in the world that I didn’t much like). The result is “Baby Golem,” a science fictional short story about a scientist stuck on a colony ship with an evangelical group determined to treat her as their pet Jew, and what happens when they ask her to make them a golem.

And of course, I’m thrilled to be included with a group of authors who I really respect and like.

The book is available here:  Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Brookline Booksmith. And if you want to listen to me chat with Sheree, who is an amazingly wise and talented person, you can hear it tonight (or whenever you want to) either on the radio or via the WBAI website.

Upcoming NYRSF conversation with Sheree Renée Thomas

I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be chatting with Sheree Renée Thomas on the online NYRSF Readings this coming Tuesday, August 1st, at 7 pm. We’ll both be reading short selections: I’ll read the story that was published in the May/June issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Sheree will present a sample of her writing as well. Since she’s both an extraordinary writer and the editor of F&SF, I hope to talk to her about her processes as an editor and a writer, along with any other topics that pop up (and there will be a Q&A). Jim Freund will act as host.

This will be a strictly online reading; you can find it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@JimFreund/streams or at Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/NYRSF.Readings. Hope to see you there!

New story (and awards eligibility post): “Where Things May Lead”

Illustration by Fran Eisemann using stock from NASA and Omni.

So only days after I finished sniffling about my poor publication showing, my story “Where Things May Lead” has been published in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, along with a lovely illustration by Fran Eisemann (who is the editor-in-chief of the publication, so obviously wears many hats).

The story is a little different from my others in that it is a fairly straightforward science fiction story about how our actions may lead to increasingly significant consequences — even if we’re not aware of it. I wrote it with just that idea in mind; seeing how a single event or development, thrown out into the world, can eventually offer greater change than we may know.

I’m very glad that it has found a home with such a great publication. Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores offers its fiction for free, but exists on subscriptions, so if you enjoy my tale and others that are on the site, take a look at its subscription page.

Awards Eligibility post

Just an FYI: Since this is probably my only awards-eligible story for 2022 (my other publications are a flash fiction piece and a reprint), I’d appreciate any consideration for nominations you might think appropriate. (Just trying to overcome my usual reluctance to self-promote. Nothing more to see here, move on….)

Apologies to all my writer friends

Credit: Carole Raddato

I have started seeing all the recommendations for the various writing awards — Hugos, Nebulas, etc. — going up on various social media, and I’ve realized that I have not kept the list I promised myself I would of the stories I read this year. Which means that I haven’t put together a list of recommendations — and since I’ve got a particularly busy December ahead of me, will probably not get around to it, no matter how much I may promise myself I will.

Possibly that was due to a rather enervating sense of discouragement I’ve been feeling lately. I won’t go into the reasons — some of it is simply personal family business, but others just feel to me like sour grapes, and so not worthy of expressing in public. This year, for example, I don’t really have any stories of my own that I could possibly recommend; the only ones that were published was a flash fiction piece and a reprint that appeared in an independent anthology. (However, I will say that the latter publication, Hell Hath Only Fury, is a charity anthology whose profits will go to The Brigid Alliance, an organization that helps people who need abortion care; the book contains some excellent and angry original fiction.)

At any rate, I shouldn’t complain. I do have three stories that will, at some point, be coming out in publications that I have huge respect for: Kaleidotrope, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. And I’m working on both a short story and, fates willing, a novel — assuming I have time to finish either.

Meanwhile, though, I beg the pardon of all the very worthy and exciting writers whose stories deserve to be touted for the various awards. But I can at least recommend checking out AC Wise’s Eligibility and Recommendation Links Roundup 2022, which is a great place to find tales to recommend — or even just to read.

Strong Women – Strange Worlds

Greetings! Tomorrow (Thursday, May 21st at 7pm) I’m going to be part of a fascinating project called Strong Women Strange Worlds, twice monthly (first Friday, third Thursday) science fiction readings by a group of creative women writers. The organizers are extremely well-organized (which isn’t always the case with a reading, online or otherwise) and very nice, and I’m really looking forward to it.

If you’d like to attend, please do! We each will have eight minutes to read, chat, or whatever; I’m going to read “Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance” from The History of Soul 2065, which I timed out at exactly 7 1/2 minutes — so I’m going to dive right into it and hope I can finish it in time. (If you’re interested in the background of that story, you can find it here.)

The online event is free, but you do have to pre-register — which you can do at the SWSW website. Hope to see you there!

Lost Signals, or how I wrote out of my comfort zone

So here’s the story: Some time ago, Chuck Gannon, a fine writer and a very nice guy, asked me if I’d like to try to contribute a story to an anthology he was putting together that would take place in his Caine Riordan universe.

I had only read one of the novels in the series a year or two earlier, and had made the rather serious mistake of starting with Book 2 (Trial by Fire), which meant I really had very little idea of what was going on.  At first, while I liked the space opera vibe, I was a little confused by the action and why the characters were doing what they were doing, so I finally put it aside. But I really respect Chuck as a writer, and was very pleased by being asked to the party, so I said, “I’d like to give it a try. Let me start the series from the beginning, and try to come up with a story, and we’ll take it from there.”

That’s what I did. I read the first book in the series, enjoyed it, and found I was now able to appreciate the second, and the third. At that point, I came up with an idea for a character and a story that Chuck (thankfully) liked. The result: The story (“Blaming Caine”) is part of this really nifty anthology called Lost Signals of the Terran Empire, alongside some really talented writers. It’s now in the midst of copy editing and production; stay tuned for publication dates, etc.

One final note: Even if I hadn’t made it into the anthology (and I’m happy I did!), I found this an excellent opportunity to stretch my wings a bit. Writing in somebody else’s universe made me step out of my comfort zone in a way that I found rather difficult — and extremely worthwhile. So my thanks to Chuck for that as well.

Kickstarter Kraziness

I honestly don’t know how they do it. Folks who do Kickstarters, I mean.

I’ve contributed to a few Kickstarters, and I’ve had friends and colleagues who have run them. I was very happy when they succeeded, and disappointed for them when they didn’t.

But this is one of the first times that I have a horse in what is turning out to be a close race, and now I honestly don’t know how people do this without going absolutely insane.

Okay, here’s the story: Two months ago, at the Readercon SF convention, I was invited by Crossed Genres’ Bart Leib to contribute to an anthology called Resist Fascism: A Call To Action. Crossed Genres is a small publishing concern run by Bart and co-founder Kay Holt that used to put out a magazine, and has published a few anthologies, including at least a couple I’ve had stories in.

The idea, Bart told me, was that this would be a fast-and-furious publication of several speculative fiction stories that could be released just before the mid-term elections. I said sure, what a great idea! I’d love to try.

I went home and, over the next couple of weeks, worked on the story when I could get away from my pay-the-rent freelance work. After several discarded tries, I actually got a story in by deadline. Which was, to my delight, accepted.

However, as I write this, the Kickstarter for this anthology, which I’m very much hoping will be a reality, is four days from deadline and about $2,000 away from its $6,000 goal. The result? I’m running out of fingernails to chew.

How the heck do they do it? Bart and Kay are both exceptionally nice, talented folks, and apparently can set up the Kickstarter, arrange for the contributor rewards, organize the anthology, and then spend hours on social media publicizing it, and watch the clock tick down to deadline, without completely losing it. I certainly would. Am. Might.

Phew! Okay, enough of that. I should take a breath, and go back to my writing — after I check what’s going on with the Kickstarter, of course….

 

Published: “Hard Times, Cotton Mill Girl”

After a long publication drought, I’m pleased to announced that my short story, entitled “Hard Times, Cotton Mill Girl,” is appearing in the latest issue of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, a long-running publication available here in PDF, ePub or Mobi versions.

The story has its beginnings in a day trip I took with some friends to Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell, Mass., a few Readercons ago. It was a fascinating visit; this is an old cotton mill that you could walk through along with a small museum that illustrated the lives of those who worked in it. (And the history of Lowell is, in fact, fascinating — it was an attempt by well-meaning people to create a relatively safe environment for young women doing factory work. If the subject interests you, I encourage you to check it out.)

One reason I was so interested in visiting the mill is this: I was brought up with a consciousness of labor history. And one of the books that I remember looking at over and over again when I was a child had a photo of a little girl in a factory looking wistfully out of a window; it was accompanied by a poem by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn that I learned by heart:

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

The memory of that photo and poem, along with the tour we took at the museum, sparked the story.

Finally, when I started writing, I looked for a picture of a girl who could be my protagonist. I found this one. It was taken by Lewis Hines in 1908 at the Lincoln Cotton Mills in Evansville, Ind., and is entitled Girls at Weaving Machine.

I don’t know the name of the girl in the photo, or if there is any way of finding out who she really was or what happened to her. Everything else in the story is, of course, imaginary. But this is the girl I saw in my mind when I wrote about Emilia.